A Good Horse Read online

  When Mom and I piled into the cab, Daddy said, “Who was that fellow?”

  I said, “He’s a groom. He’s from England.”

  Daddy humphed. Then I heard him mutter, “Doesn’t act like a groom, if you ask me.”

  Mom had my ribbons and the little trophy in her lap. They had already congratulated me, but now she put her arm around me and said, “You did wonderfully well, Abby! Did you have a good time?”

  I thought that the easiest thing to say was yes, and that’s what I said. “No” and “Sort of” were both wrong, and if you were champion and you hadn’t imagined being champion a mere two days before, then of course you had had a good time. “Almost”? “More than a good time”? “An unbelievably good time”? I didn’t know what the right thing was. I said, “How was church?”

  “Oh, they missed you.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Brad missed you. Carlie had a hard time with those kids by herself.” Watching the Greeley kids was a two-person job—that was certainly true.

  Daddy said, “Those kids are old enough to settle down, that’s my opinion.”

  I looked around Mom at him. He seemed in a bad mood. Mom lifted her eyebrows just a little. Then she said, “What’s done is done, and I think it was worth it.” She patted the ribbons and the trophy. “And not just because of the prizes. It seems like Abby got a lot of good experience, and both she and Black George will benefit from it.”

  After that, we were quiet.

  I was tired. I dozed off on the way home.

  It was dark when I woke up as we were turning into our road, past the mailbox. Maybe because I was sleeping, Daddy was the one who got out to open the gate, and I felt Mom (I was leaning on her shoulder) move over into the driver’s seat to pull through. I yawned a couple of times. Mom stopped again, and then Daddy got in on my side after locking the gate. He yawned. She yawned. The yawns went around.

  But we stopped yawning when we pulled up beside the barn and Daddy said, “What’s that out there?” And then we sat up and really heard what we’d been hearing since we came through the gate—a lot of mooing and bawling. All the shapes resolved themselves in the twilight, and there they were, Mr. Jordan’s cows and calves from up the hill, wandering around.

  Mom said, “Uh-oh.”

  Dad said, “Must have broken through the fence.”

  Mom said, “What now?”

  “Well, there’s no place for them down here. They have to go back up the hill. You go in the house and call Jack Louis and I’ll put Black George away.” Jack Louis was the ranch manager.

  I said, “What should I do?”

  Daddy said, “Go change your clothes, honey, because my bet is that we are going to have to herd these animals back up the hill.”

  While I was changing my clothes, I didn’t hear Mom talking to anyone, so I figured that Jack Louis wasn’t home. And when I got back outside, Daddy had put away Black George and gotten out Lester, Lincoln, and Happy. Both the geldings and the mares were standing by their gates, waiting for their hay, but when I went to get them some, Daddy said, “Better not. These cows are used to getting hay, and if they’re hungry enough, they could break down our fences to get at the hay. Best just do this as fast as we can.”

  It was completely dark by the time we had the horses tacked up, though there was a three-quarter moon. Mom was being very quiet, and Daddy had to come over and tighten the cinch of her saddle. Then he kissed her on the forehead and said, “The Lord will provide.”

  She nodded.

  We led the horses out of the barn. Daddy stepped onto Lester. Mom went to the mounting block and got on Lincoln. I climbed the gate of the gelding pasture. I did stop to pat Jack, who was snuffling my jeans pocket. As soon as I was in the saddle, I could feel that Happy was happy. Almost before I settled myself, she was trotting toward the place where the cows and calves had gathered in a group and were mooing and bawling. As soon as we got even a little close, though, the cows lifted their heads and started to walk around. Daddy raised his hand. I stopped, and behind me, Mom stopped.

  We sat quietly while Daddy looked them all over, then counted them—six cows, six calves. Then he said, “Okay, the trick is to get them out from between the mare pasture and the gelding pasture and then up the hill to the left, around the gelding pasture, and back to where they broke through the fence.” He had some tools in his saddlebags, too, because he was going to have to fix the fence if he possibly could—that was four strands of barbed wire—“Should’ve been five, I can see that now,” he said. “Now, Sarah, honey, you just walk along there, about ten feet from the fence of the gelding pasture, and, Abby, you walk along about ten or twelve feet from your mom. Just walk. I don’t want them moving fast. I’m going to go through the mare pasture and be there when they come to the end of the fencing, and maybe they’ll turn up the hill.” He opened the small gate and went behind the mares, who were gathered by the fence, looking at the cows. There was another gate at the far end. He moved slowly; Sprinkles followed him for a few steps, then lost interest.

  We did it. Lincoln was perfect for this. He didn’t seem to care about the cows. Walking along was fine by him. Happy, though, was a little eager. If there were cows, then you were meant to chase them, according to Happy. Her ears were pricked and she was jigging underneath me, but she wasn’t hard to handle. She seemed to know that Daddy and Lester were up to something—when they went into the mare pasture, she whinnied. Someone in the gelding pasture whinnied back to her. The cows stared at us—we could see their eyes and tongues shining in the moonlight—and they bawled and mooed, but they moved—all but one, and when she didn’t move, Happy turned of her own accord and went toward her. The cow got going—she trotted over to the group and joined them. Her calf was right on her heels.

  I couldn’t see Daddy, but I could hear him canter toward the far end of the mare pasture. I was sure that the cows could hear him, too—cows are as smart as horses and have plenty of opinions. But right then, their opinion of Daddy was that he wasn’t their business. Mom and I walked along. Mom started singing, softly, “Ridin’ ole Paint, leadin’ ole Dan. I’m goin’ to Montan’ for to throw the houlihan.” I could tell she was feeling better. I said, “What’s a houlihan?”

  “Sweetie, I have no idea. There’s feed in the coolie, there’s water in the draw. Their tails are all matted, their backs are all raw. Not these, of course. These live in the lap of luxury.”

  “I love their ears.”

  “And they have beautiful eyes.”

  I said, “Loud, though.”

  We laughed.

  We walked very slowly, but now I could see that the first cow had come to the end of the fencing. Of the mares, Effie and Sunshine had walked along with us, on the other side of the fence, just out of curiosity, I guess. And Jack, too, was trotting around, as if the cows were his business, like everything else. He tossed his head and kicked up, then stood and snorted at them, his tail lifted and his ears pricked. The cows didn’t even give him a look. Then I saw Daddy and Lester, standing like a statue just past the far gate of the mare pasture, where the fence turned down toward the crick. We did not want the cows to go that direction. As the first cow stepped out from between the two lines of fencing, Daddy stepped forward, but only two paces. The cow turned to avoid him, and her calf followed. The second cow was right behind the first one. I saw her stop and stare at Daddy, giving a big moo, then the first cow stopped, too. Daddy moved one step in their direction, careful not to get at all in front of them. They stood still, and then Lester tossed his head and snorted, and the two cows bunched together and turned a little more. It was then that they saw something—freedom, maybe—up the hill, and they began to trot.

  Because the grass was so golden and there were no trees on the hillside, it was much easier to see the cows and the calves as dark shadows against the pale background. We could see Daddy, too—he turned Lester and walked him back and forth in a semicircle, as if he were making a little wall all by himself that the cows
could not pass through. But Mom and I on Lincoln and Happy just kept walking. It wasn’t until all of the cows and their calves were out in the open that Daddy waved to us to pick it up, and then we trotted just fast enough to keep up with the cows but not fast enough to alarm them. Cow number 3 and cow number 4 turned, too—a little farther out into the hillside than the first two, but they did turn, and then they hurried to catch up with the first two.

  Then, right then when I was remembering what a long day it had been, and thinking how strange it was to be out here on Happy in the night when I had been jumping Black George sometime earlier in the day, right then when Mom was starting another song, sort of under her breath and to herself—“From this valley they say you are going”—right then, the cows took off, and they were fast. Daddy took off after them, always trying to stay to the outside of them, and Happy took off, too, with her head stretched forward like a dog after a bone. She meant it—she was so fast that I had to grab the saddle horn to stay with her. Behind us, Lincoln was doing something, because Mom stopped singing and went “Oh!” but I didn’t know what it was, because I was too busy trying to stick with Happy.

  We galloped in a big arc up the hill, and the cows were tearing along in a curving bunch, Daddy and Lester just ahead of them, Daddy leaning forward in the saddle. He was good at this—I had forgotten how good. He had grown up herding cows, and it didn’t matter that he didn’t get much practice in California. He just did what he knew to do. At one point, the cows slowed down, and I thought they were going to stop—it was a steep hill—but they started bawling and running again, and Daddy kept pressing them from the side and Mom and I kept pressing them from behind. When I got a chance to look back at her, she was holding the saddle horn, but she was keeping up. In fact, one of the calves veered to the left, and Lincoln went after it, and Mom stuck right with him. We got most of the way up the hill.

  I could see the broken place in the fence against the hillside, and for a moment, the cows were heading right for it. Then the curve of the group folded too far to the left, and just when I saw this, Daddy must have seen it, too, because he cut in front of me, between me and Mom and the cows, and galloped up the hill, pointing them toward the hole. It was easy to see what I needed to do—I needed to get up a little faster and keep everyone turning. The plan was that Mom would keep driving and Daddy and I would make a kind of two-person chute at the gate, and the cows and calves would go through it.

  It worked fine until one of the calves ducked behind me and ran back down the hill. Since all the cows and all the calves were in a group, as far as we knew (they weren’t our cows, and we didn’t know them personally), it was impossible to say why the calf broke away. The oldest of these calves was about three weeks old, so normally he wouldn’t want to leave his mother. I saw Daddy on the hill pull up Lester and stare after the calf, then take off his hat the way he did when he didn’t know what to do. The rest of the animals were still in a bunch sort of heading toward the break in the fence. I was below Daddy on the hill, and just then he waved to me to keep doing what we were doing. Happy stared at those cows, and when the group bulged outward in our direction, she made a little jump toward them. The bulge disappeared. And then the group seemed to break up, and one of the cows burst out and ran down the hill. That would have been the calf’s mom. At first, she didn’t look like she knew where she was going, and she ran sort of toward Mom, but then she turned, saw the calf, and headed toward it. Mom and Lincoln stopped and then came on up the hill. Daddy got the others back into a bunch, but this part was a little scary.

  The gap in the fence was fairly small, which was good for repairs but bad for getting the cows through—you didn’t want the outside ones to either break down the fence or get turned back. We had to slow down but keep going, and try to thread the needle. I could tell by the way Daddy was working at this that he had decided to think about the stray cow and calf later and just concentrate on the group. Then I saw the first cow go through the hole in the fence, with her calf right on her heels. Daddy and I closed in on them, or rather, Lester and Happy started being more firm in their instructions, and moving toward the cows with their ears pricked and their attitude very intent. At one point, one of the calves must have brushed against some wire, because it jumped away from the group and bawled, but Lester went for it and pushed it back into the group. Pretty soon more than half of the group—maybe five or six animals—were through the hole.

  Then we heard Mom say, “Wow!”

  Mom was still behind us, fifty feet down the hillside and coming up, but she had stopped and now waved down the hillside. Daddy was working the last of the cows, but I looked where she was pointing. That dog was running up the hill, straight for the calf and the cow. Just as I saw this, the cow started mooing like mad and backing up the hill. The dog went straight for her, and I was sure he was going to jump on her back like some wild animal or maybe grab the calf by the throat and kill it, but instead, he lowered himself and seemed to slide toward the cow and the calf, head down and ears flat. By this time, the cow had turned around and the calf was practically underneath it. The dog didn’t bark or make any noise, and then he ran in and nipped the cow on the heel of one of its back hooves; then he started running to and fro below and behind the cow and calf, until the cow decided to move up the hill and the calf with her.

  Daddy still hadn’t seen this—he had the cows in the pasture and was getting off Lester to try and fix the fence. He shouted, “Abby! Abby!” I cantered Happy up the hill.

  He said, “All you have to do is w—”

  I said, “Look down the hill.” Even from this high up, you could see the cow and the calf and the dog perfectly well.

  I could tell that the last thing Daddy wanted to do was look down the hill—he sniffed, but then, there they were, cow mooing and calf bawling, both of them running up the hill with the dog at their heels. Daddy whooped and then laughed, standing there, holding Lester by the bridle.

  The dog was good—he didn’t just drive them straight. If he had, he would have run them into the fence. But he knew that they had to get where Daddy and Lester were, and so he went out to the right and got the cow to cross the hill. Daddy saw them coming and took Lester out of the way to the left of the gap, and that’s where I stood, too. It took a few minutes, and my heart was beating, but it was like the dog never had any doubt about what was going to happen. He got the cow and the calf to where they were in front of the gap, and then the cow saw the other cows (and, of course, everyone was making an incredible racket), and then they ran through the gap and joined the others.

  By this time, Mom had reached me where I was sitting on Happy, and she was laughing. “Did you see that?” she said, and the dog, who had stopped and was staring at the group of cows, looked over at her. That was what made me laugh. I was the one who was supposed to guard the gap on Happy while Daddy fixed the fence, but I didn’t have to. That dog sat down maybe ten feet below the gap, right in the middle, just sat there with his tongue out of his mouth a bit but a confident look on his face, and believe me, those cows weren’t going anywhere. When they moved more than he liked, he barked.

  I got off Happy and gave the reins to Mom, and helped Daddy just a little bit. The posts weren’t broken, but some of the wire was, so we strung four new strands and rolled up the old strands and Daddy stuck those in his saddlebag. When he mounted again and we walked down the hill, the dog didn’t move for a long time—he just sat there, guarding the cows. It wasn’t until we were almost to the gelding pen that I looked back up the hill and saw he was gone.

  The horses were a little wild from all the activity and not having gotten their hay, but by the time we had fed them and put Lincoln, Happy, and Lester away, everything was calm and back to normal, except, of course, that it was nearly eleven o’clock and I was dead on my feet.

  The next day, Mom let me sleep. And I did sleep—I looked at the clock when I woke up, and it read twenty after six. I thought I would look at the clock again, j
ust to be sure, and it read half past ten, and the room was light, and I didn’t have any sense of time having passed. When I sat up, I remembered Black George and the jumping and Jane Slater, and when I was in the bathroom, I remembered driving the cows up the hill in the moonlight, and then I remembered the dog. It wasn’t until I was looking in my closet that I remembered that it was Monday and I had missed the school bus.

  Mom came in from outside when I was getting the cereal down from the pantry, and she had a big smile on her face. She said, “Oh, you woke up! You must have been exhausted. I went in your room at seven, and you were so dead to the world, I just couldn’t wake you.”

  I said, “What did Daddy say?”

  “Not a word.” She pointed to the ribbons and the trophy, which one of them had set up on the sideboard. “He knows you did a good job. Yesterday and last night.”

  But she was still smiling. Then I happened to look out the kitchen door. There was a dog on the porch. There was the dog on the porch. I said, “Mom! Who is that?”

  And she said, “Oh, you mean Rusty?”

  “Rusty!”

  She laughed.

  The dog pricked his ears.

  “How do you know his name is Rusty?”