Horse Lover

by H. Alan Day

  The doctor on duty immediately ordered X-rays and said I would be spending the night, so I sent Debbie home. By midafternoon, the diagnosis came in: a separated shoulder, a broken ankle, cracked ribs, and a bruised hip. Thank God I had rolled on sandy soil and not concrete. I was wheeled into a room and moved onto a bed. All I wanted to do was lie still. Nurses and doctors kept looking in on me. Just as I was dozing, a nurse said my blood pressure was too low. Five minutes later a doctor arrived.

  “We think maybe you’re bleeding internally,” he said, “but we don’t have a way to test that. The best thing to do is load you on an airplane and send you up to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.”

  I said, “No, I think I’ll just stay here.”

  “We’re just a little country hospital. This isn’t the place for you.”

  “Well, I feel like I’ve already gone five hundred miles today. I’m used up. I hurt in places that I didn’t know could hurt. I’m tired. I need a nice, warm, soft place to rest.”

  “But you’re not understanding. We think this is serious. We’re recommending airlifting you.”

  “Yeah, I understand. But my answer is no. I’m not going there.”

  The doctor and nurse looked totally frustrated. “What would you want us to do if we didn’t have enough blood to sustain you and here you are in Valentine and not in Rochester?”

  “I do understand what you’re saying to me. My answer is you’ll either fix me up or I’ll die. And I’m okay with either.”

  They left in a huff. I could hear them in the hall discussing my possible demise. Someone said, “Let’s send for Dr. Trimble because this idiot cowboy doesn’t get it. Maybe he can talk some sense into him.”

  In a little bit here came Dr. Cleve Trimble. He looked at my eyes and demeanor and color and talked to me enough to know I wasn’t out of my head. For the next two hours, we chatted about all kinds of things, except for the wreck—our lives, our goals, and the tracks that took both of us to this very spot. We formed a lasting friendship. By the time he left, I just wanted to sleep and gather strength. Sometime during the night a nurse woke me to take my blood pressure. It had rebounded and was strong.

  The next morning, I announced that Debbie would get me. Dr. Trimble said that he wanted to keep me another day.

  “I can stay quiet at the ranch just as well as here,” I said.

  “Well if you’re going to be that hardheaded, you have to get out to the front door without assistance or a wheelchair.”

  A nurse brought in a set of crutches, and I proceeded to take a few steps. My body let me have it, but I managed to crutch my way out to the front door. It took forty minutes. Debbie and the Suburban were waiting with the passenger door opened. As I climbed in every joint and muscle screamed, then subsided into a low roar.

  Debbie pulled away from the entrance. “Is there anything I can get you?”

  I knew exactly what I needed. Dairy Queen. I placed my order and Debbie came back with vanilla-chocolate twist soft serve ice cream in a cone. Maybe I had died, because it sure did taste like heaven.

  Later John came over to the doublewide to fill me in on the day’s details. The horses responded just as we had trained them to do. At the director’s request, John had moved them—all fifteen hundred—to different pastures. The horses looked great, Dayton presented himself nicely on the program, and everyone was happy—everyone but me, lying grumpy and sore in a hospital bed. After hours of filming, John advised the director that the horses were telling him they were tired of being hassled. The director insisted on one last shot of the herd galloping over the top of a hill toward the cameraman filming at the bottom. John reluctantly agreed but warned, “Tell your cameraman to get his footage on the first try, because there won’t be another opportunity.”

  He waited until the cameraman was in position at the foot of the hill. “You better be ready,” John advised him. “When they come over the hill, they’ll be going so fast they’ll be past you before you know it.” The cameraman signaled that he was ready. I can only imagine what he felt when he heard the hooves of more than a thousand horses thundering and felt the earth vibrating. They came over the hill right at him, then split around him on both sides; he was so traumatized that he forgot to push the start button on the camera. Rumor had it from those who were there that he appeared to wet his pants as the horses swept by.

  All in all, the 20/20 folks were quite pleased with the program. In fact, it earned the show an Emmy for nature photography. We always wondered how much better it might have been if the cameraman had gotten that last shot. The BLM people were pleased, too, as the show put the wild horses and our management of them in a kind light. Our friends who saw the 20/20 program asked where I was. I don’t imagine the program would have changed much if I had been there.

  All my injuries healed in time except for my shoulder, which I never bothered to have surgery on. Now, when the weather turns cold, it still reminds me of the ATV ride that morning in South Dakota. The lump formed by the displaced bone looks odd, but I’m not fixin’ to enter any beauty pageants, at least not in the near future. Once again, life taught me that mishaps can occur at the most unexpected of times.

  The sun peeked over the edge of Lazy B’s rolling eastern hills. Aunt Jemima and I had already ridden four miles from Big Tank, where we were rounding up that day. It was a large area to cover, about twelve square miles. I had a crew of eight, but they were out of sight, working their designated areas.

  We had gotten out of bed at 3:30 a.m., downed a breakfast of steak, eggs, and black coffee, and bounced in the pickup the five miles to Big Tank, where the roundup would start. The previous night we had left our horses there with extra feed in the corral. Each cowboy caught his horse and saddled up. It was Aunt Jemima’s turn to be ridden and she let me know by the swing of her head and stomp of her feet she was up to it. So here we were, Jemima and me and about thirty head of cattle. I couldn’t see anyone else. The hands riding on either side of me were about a mile away, hills and canyons separating us. Jemima and I herded the cattle toward Tank 4, a dirt water hole that had been bulldozed out of a rocky canyon years before. From there we would go down toward Big Tank and, on the way, hook up with the other cowboys and the rest of the herd.

  The cattle drove easily toward Tank 4. It was about 9:00 a.m. when we arrived. The spring air had shrugged off its cool temperature under the growing heat of the sun. The cattle were thirsty from clomping through dust and stopped to drink from the pond. Jemima and I followed the last cows to the water. The leaders had gotten their fill and were filing out onto the trail. Jemima and I walked around the tank to gather the remaining cattle and have them follow their mates. All of sudden Jemima stopped and grunted. Her weight shifted. She looked back at me, her eyes pleading for help. Nothing in front of us looked alarming or out of the ordinary. Perplexed, I looked back. Her right hind leg was raised.

  “What’s going on, Jemima?” I said. I patted her hip, but she remained rooted in place. I dismounted to have a look. A stick dangled from the inside of her right thigh. It was a curved creosote stick about a foot long with a circumference about as large as my thumb. She must have stepped on one end of the stick and the other end went flying into her. I gently pulled on it, but there was no give. It must have wedged in her muscle, which meant it had penetrated deeply. No wonder she stopped. She wouldn’t be able to take another step with that stick in her leg. It needed to come out right here, right now.

  “Hang tight, Jemima. This may hurt.”

  With one quick motion, I yanked out the stick. She jumped and tried to move away but couldn’t put weight on her right leg. Blood gushed. Within seconds it began to rhythmically pump, spilling in a dark-red pool on the dirt. I pushed my thumb against the puncture wound. The blood ran down my arm and dripped off my elbow. It ran down Jemima’s leg. The puddle on the ground formed a dark tributary that flowed toward my boot. Jemima’s thigh quivered. The pain had to be severe. The blood ran fast. I wondered
how long it takes for a horse to bleed to death.

  I spoke to calm us both down. “Jemima, wow. This is really something. But you’re holding steady. I need you to keep doing that while I get something to stop this bleeding.” With my free hand, I dug in the rear pocket of my Levis for my handkerchief. From the front pocket, I retrieved my pocketknife. Keeping my thumb pressed against the wound, I managed to cut a piece of fabric and wad it into a ball. I stuffed it into the bleeding hole. Almost immediately, it became soaked, but the blood went from pumping to dribbling down her leg in rivulets. The ground under her now was stained. I had so much blood on my shirt, chaps and the leg of one jean I could have been mistaken for the injured.

  Jemima knew I was trying to help. She hadn’t kicked or tried to move my hands away. We were a team and we were going to get through this fix.

  “There aren’t any roads up here, Jemima, and even if there were, we don’t have a trailer to haul you home.” I wiped my hands as best I could on my shirt, then rubbed reassuringly on her thigh and flank. “I think the bleeding is starting to slow. We’ll give it another ten minutes, but then we’re going to have to move and figure out how to get down to Big Tank.”

  She turned her head slightly and flipped one ear forward. I stayed on the ground and kept my eye on the seeping wound. When I couldn’t detect flowing blood, I stood up. The cattle had long since gone, but they were the least of my worries. They had been through gentling school and wouldn’t try to escape. Right now, I needed Jemima to put down her leg and take a step.

  “Okay, we’re gonna give this a try. I’m going to lead you down the path. We’ll take it slow.” I took the bridle reins and moved in front of her. She stood stock still. “Come on, Jemima,” I said, giving the reins a tug. She didn’t offer to follow and her leg remained in the air. The pain must have been too great. What could I do? This was one serious mess.

  “Jemima, damnit, you have to lead. We have to work together. What’s it going to take?” We stood there looking at each other.

  If she wouldn’t lead, I’d have to drive her. I wrapped the reins around the saddle horn. If she had ever desired freedom, she was probably miffed it came now. I found a stick a few yards away, got behind her and tapped her with it. She put her leg down and hobbled a few steps. It was painful to watch; she could bear only a little of her weight on the right leg. We started our slow journey, Jemima with her heavy limp and me in my heavy chaps and heeled boots. After a hundred yards, I yelled to her. “Whoa, Jemima, whoa.” She heard the tone of my voice and stopped. I caught up and bent down to examine the wound. There was no fresh blood on her leg. The plug was holding.

  “We’re doing okay here,” I said, rubbing and loving on her. “We’re on our way to Big Tank. Sooner or later the other cowboys will see we’re behind and they’ll come back and help us. But for now we have to keep making our way down the trail.”

  We started out again. My spur rowels clanked on the stones. I’ve always thought cowboys walking with all their paraphernalia look out of place. I’m sure the hawks soaring overhead and the chipmunks darting between their desert holes thought so too. In another hundred yards, I called, “Whoa, Jemima, whoa.” I caught up with her, checked on her wound, and gave her another pep talk. And so we haltingly made our way downhill along the dirt cobbled with lava rock. Had there been shade, it would have been as tempting as ice cream, but there was only the beating sun.

  Forty-five minutes later we caught up with the cows. They had followed the trail toward Big Tank but with no one pushing them, they had stopped and were dillydallying and eating grass. Before I realized what was happening, Jemima walked off the path, got around a cow, and drove her back to the trail. I was astounded. I had seen cow dogs go after cattle and bring them back, but never a horse. Horses don’t work cattle without a rider. But here was Jemima, still nursing a wound, stiff with pain, and off she went without me saying one word. It was just like Jemima to stay engaged in the activity at hand. If I was out working cattle, she wanted to work cattle and be part of the process. Well, she was being part of the process right now, just like she would have been if I had been on her. We remained a team.

  As we got closer to Big Tank, we had less area to cover, so the distance between us and the other cowboys narrowed. They could see Jemima walking and me walking, each working our side. One of the hands came riding up.

  “Well, I see your horse is more cowboy than you today,” he said, and turned to spit. “You’re not cowboy enough to ride her, but she’s cowboy enough to keep driving the cattle.” He suppressed a grin. I showed him the wound. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “I never saw a horse work cattle without a rider.”

  By now the limp was slight. I got on her to see if she could carry my weight. Yes, she could. The team came in as one.

  I put her in the small corral we had, got in the pickup, and drove back to headquarters to get a trailer. After I hauled her home, I doctored her with antibiotics. Despite the dust and dirty handkerchief, the wound never became infected. It healed so rapidly, in fact, that two weeks later, Jemima and I were out riding again.

  Of course that day bonded Aunt Jemima and me even closer. I knew she had a big heart, but its depth amazed me. She had the stuff you need out on the range when you’re miles from nowhere and no one—true grit and loyalty. From that day on, whenever I said, “Whoa, Jemima,” she stopped. Whether she was in the pasture or corral, eating or working, she’d stop and wait for me. I’d come up to her and rub her head, her neck, and speak softly and sweetly to her. Because that’s what you do when you have a partner. You give them as much love as they give you.

  15.

  On Thin Ice

  We had to get there. Even on gusty mornings when tiny, sharp snowflakes stung our eyes and cheeks and the cold snaked through our jeans and gloves. That’s when we ditched the spurred leather boots for lined waffle stompers with thick rubber soles. Better traction on iced mud and drifting snow. We pulled our wool caps down as far as they went, slid our hands in gloves, and headed toward the barn. Some days the gray sky hung so low I was tempted to prop it up with tent poles. Other times it fell, in millions of crystal pieces that blanketed the ground white. Regardless, the cowboys and I had to get out there. We had to feed the horses and cattle.

  At least we had it easier than our midwestern forefathers. They didn’t have a heated tractor cab with windshield wipers. Or a bale wagon that loaded five bales at a time, each weighing fifteen hundred pounds, then ground them up and spread them in a long pyramid across the pastures. We needed twenty-five to thirty pounds of hay per mustang, which equated to fourteen bales of hay per day. If our machinery broke down, as it was prone to do, we radioed back to headquarters and had someone haul out a new part or the backup tractor and feeder kept on the premises for emergencies. Before a blizzard hit, we moved the livestock closer to headquarters, behind the tree claims. Even then, a whiteout might obscure the horses or stacks of hay. We drove slowly. Tried not to run over a horse or fence. Felt our way over the ground.

  Weekday. Weekend. Holiday.

  Sun. Rain. Hail. Wind. Lightning. Snow. Ice.

  Feeding the horses was as much a responsibility as feeding our families. Even without the government contracts entrusting the horses to our care, we would have done it. For the love of horses, we did it.

  I checked the clock before answering the phone. Six a.m. Late for a cowboy, but not for a cowboy the morning after popping corks off champagne bottles to ring in the New Year.

  “Hullo.”

  “Al, it’s John. Sorry to wake you so early on New Year’s Day, but at the moment we’ve got a rather unhappy scene up here.” His voice held an uncharacteristic tension.

  “What’s going on, John?”

  “I don’t know if you saw a weather report recently, but yesterday it got pretty warm. During the afternoon some horses broke through the ice on the pond over in the leased meadow. About fourteen drowned. I just can’t believe it. The ice still looks to be a foot thick
. The warmth must have weakened it and with the weight of several hundred crossing over, well . . . damn. Somehow the sheriff and county attorney got wind of it and they came knocking at the door this morning before we had the coffee going. The county attorney was most unfriendly.”

  Whoa. Now, that’s like getting a bucket of ice water dumped over your head. In an instant, it dissolved the fog hovering around my brain but took my breath away and sent chills down my spine.

  “Well, why would the sheriff and county attorney be there? What reason would they have to be involved?”

  “The county attorney is talking cruelty to animals, possibly starvation.” Before I could wrap my head around that one, John continued. “The local TV station in Sioux Falls picked up on the news. A reporter has been wandering around out front, and a helicopter’s been flying overhead pretty low for the past hour, scaring the shit out of the horses. Marty said they’re running around like nervous wrecks.”

  Holy Moses. I had fallen asleep on a smooth-running train that derailed during the night and now lay in a crumpled mess. But one thing I knew. When an emergency hits, you get your ass in gear. Fast. Even if it means leaving your home on a holiday.

  “I’m coming up there, John. Tell the sheriff and county attorney I’ll be available to talk to them tomorrow. Or tonight if need be.”

  I could almost feel John relax over the phone. “Okay, I’ll tell them,” he said. “This isn’t the first time animals have fallen through the ice and died. The Randall Ranch lost a thousand head of steers some years back. But I’ve never seen a reaction like this.”