A Good Horse Read online

  Jack must have been reading my mind. Sometimes, a horse reads your mind and doesn’t like what he sees in there, I guess. Anyway, Jack started misbehaving almost immediately—he was pushy on the lead line and kept getting ahead of me, so that I had to do what Jem had told me and stand in front of him and insist that he step backward. The first time, he was so resistant that I had to pop him with the rope under his chin, which I hadn’t had to do in months. Then, every two or three steps, I had to halt him and insist that he halt when I halted. Of course he moved his feet, so I had to make myself be strict and mean what I said, and not move on until he had actually stopped moving his feet and relaxed. After doing this three times (plus the popping), I was feeling bored and therefore impatient. I couldn’t believe that after all this time, he still wasn’t leading properly, when there were so many other things that were more fun that we might have been doing instead of me leading him from the gelding pasture to the pen.

  Then I stopped again, and he stopped, and I turned my head to look at him. His head was cocked in my direction, and his ears were forward. His eye caught my eye, and his nostril flared, and I thought at that moment that he was utterly beautiful, the most beautiful horse I ever saw, and also he was a baby, hardly bigger, in his way, than I was. His hooves were small, his legs were thin and long, his body was wiry, and his mane was just a line of hairs standing up along his neck, about halfway between fuzz and real black hairs. He was unbelievably cute, and I reached out and stroked him on his neck, at which point he lifted up on his hind legs, easy as pie.

  He was a baby. Well, maybe he was more of a toddler. I waited for Jack to come down (a long second), and then I remembered Jem saying that there are things we simply ignore, and I walked toward the gate again, stopping twice. Jack stopped with me both times. He even waited quietly while I opened the gate and then led him through it.

  I undid the lead rope and let him trot away.

  In the pen, he made me a little nervous, though, especially when he began squealing, pawing, and kicking as he trotted and galloped around me. The squeals were sharp and short, as if he were angry—he would pin his ears, let out a high squeal, and in the middle of it kick out, or twist into the air, or throw his shoulders to one side and paw the air, then he would run three strides and stand up on his hind legs. And he didn’t always stick to the periphery of the pen—sometimes, he would cross pretty close to me as if he didn’t know I was there, or didn’t care. He ran around. I wondered if I should leave the ring and let him play on his own, but I got a little nervous right then about getting to the gate. If he was coming toward me, would he stop? I didn’t know. I did decide to hold the two ends of the lead rope together and swing the loop toward him if he came too close, but when I did that, I felt like I was chasing him away.

  He went around me to the left.

  I stepped backward and to the right, and he turned inward, the way he was supposed to, and headed to the right, but he bucked and squealed and kicked up. I saw his back hoof. It was nowhere near me, but it looked like it was pointed at me.

  When my father’s brother John was fifteen, back in Oklahoma (Daddy would have been twelve), he went to put one of the mules they had out in the corral with the other mule and the four horses. He opened the gate, led the mule through, and took off the halter. The mule leapt forward, twisted, and kicked out. He kicked Uncle John right in the side of the head, above his ear. Uncle John fell down, and Uncle Luke found him there sometime later, when Grandma sent him out to see why John hadn’t come in for supper. He was already dead. They figured out what happened by the bruise above his ear.

  When a horse kicks, you don’t ever say that he or she meant to get you. It’s your job to know that a horse (or a mule) can always kick and to stay out of the way. Some people would say that that is your number 1 job—you never approach a horse from behind, especially the first time; you always keep your hand on him when you go around his hind end, and you stay right up by him, because when you are right next to him, he can’t land one on you. You stand to one side when you pick up his back feet or brush him back there or comb his tail. When you are riding in a line of horses, you stay back and keep your eye on the horse in front of you for any sort of threatening gesture. I knew about kicking as well as I knew anything. I knew that maybe the mistake Uncle John made was that he didn’t walk his mule through the gate and turn him so that they were facing each other, and then take off the halter. I knew all of this, but I couldn’t help thinking that after what I had done for Jack, and what I had thought of him, he still wouldn’t mind kicking me if he was mad at me. I flicked the rope at him again, and he ran around the arena, squealing and bucking. I stood there.

  I was not doing what Jem Jarrow would have done, which was to make Jack do stuff, at least change directions lots of times and stay back from me until he was a little worn out. I had done that with Jack over and over and never minded it because I enjoyed watching him. I realized I had better do that now, and so I did, flagging him on with the loop of rope, stepping back so he would turn, flagging him back the other way, and then, after he had gone a few strides, doing something sudden (even shouting “Boo!”) so that he would jump and get the tension out of his back, the way I had done with Rally (though I kept thinking of Rally as Ornery George). And it was true that the more things I had Jack do, the more I enjoyed watching him, and the less I thought about whether he really loved me or not. Daddy hated it when anyone talked about horses loving someone. As far as he was concerned, horses were all about the carrot and the stick—they were good for carrots and stopped being bad if you hit them with a stick. And asking whether horses “loved” you was almost blasphemous—love comes from God, and horses, as far as we can tell, don’t know anything about God.

  Jack was trotting to the left. He had calmed down some, and his steps were brisk but even. He arched his neck and turned his head a little toward me, and I stepped back so he would turn inward and go the other direction. His neck arched a little more, and his tail lifted, and then he did turn inward, but he did not go the other direction. He trotted toward me, and then, when he was right in front of me, he reared slowly upward, looking me in the face. He stood there. Then he came down and turned to the right and trotted away. I was surprised.

  Then I realized that Daddy had come home while we were working and was standing outside the pen, looking. He said, “That colt is getting bossy.”

  I said, “He does feel peppy today.”

  “Has he ever done that before?”

  “What?”

  “You know what, missy.”

  “No.”

  “He was testing you.”

  “By rearing?”

  “Of course.”

  By now, Jack was standing by the rail, quiet but looking at me.

  Daddy added, “He could have hurt you.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Sheer luck.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Daddy took a deep breath. Now he was Being Patient. “Why don’t you think so?”

  “Because when he reared up, he looked at me, and when he looked at me, he curled his front legs back. He did. I saw him.”

  But I knew that Daddy was right, too, and that I had better get Jack to do things, plenty of things, because for the last half hour, I had been thinking about whether he loved me or not, not about whether he was behaving himself, and even though he curled his forelegs back and did not touch me with them, the way he touched the geldings, he really should not have reared up at me in the first place. I went to the side of the pen where we kept whips and found the flag, which was a whip with a piece of cloth tied to it.

  I went back to the center of the pen.

  Daddy was still standing there, but he didn’t say anything, the way the teachers don’t say anything when you are taking a test. I flicked the flag toward Jack, who was looking pretty hard at me, anyway, and he jumped and then trotted to the right. I flagged him on so that he would go a little faster, and then, when he kicke
d out, I flagged him on again. He bucked. I flagged him on again. Only when he was trotting nicely, around the outside of the pen, and looked where he was going in a businesslike manner did I lower the flag and let him slow down. He slowed down. But before he stopped, I flagged him on again. The thing is, he has to get the feeling that when he does something that he wants to do, it is you who is letting him do that. If he does something he wants to do that you don’t want him to do, then you have to keep making him do that until he doesn’t want to do it anymore. Or, as Daddy might say, the wages of sin is that you have to keep sinning until they let you stop, at least if you are a colt. I stepped back. He turned toward me, looking at me. I stepped back again. He stepped toward me and lowered his head. So I went up and petted him a couple of times on the nose. Then I stepped back and waved the flag so he would trot to the right. This time, he trotted nicely.

  Daddy said, “That’s better.”

  Jack turned in toward me again, lowered his head again. I stepped up to him, facing him, and lifted both my hands and waved my forefingers at him. He dropped his head just a little more and took a step backward. He was ready to consider further suggestions. I snapped the lead rope back onto his halter and then asked him to step over to the right and then to the left. He did what he was asked. Then I walked the lead rope around behind him and placed myself on his other side and pulled, just a little. He turned his head, turned it more, turned it more, until he was practically bent in two, and then he stepped under and turned his body all the way around until he was looking at me. I did this again, and then wrapped him the other direction, so that he had to turn all the way around. Then I petted him. His head was down and his ears were flopped. He was a good boy at last. I scratched him lightly all along the roots of his feathery mane, and he leaned into the scratching just a little bit. He gave a groan.

  Daddy said, “You do a good job with him, but it’s a good thing we gelded him.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I’ve got work to do. You want to ride Effie first or Happy?”

  I chose Happy. He got on Lincoln. Ten minutes later, we were climbing the big hill behind the gelding pasture, toward the Jordan ranch. What with the heat and then everything else we were doing, I hadn’t been up the hill in two weeks. Happy was a small mare, muscular and strong. She climbed the hill as if she had been waiting just to do that very thing for days. Lincoln had a harder time. But the weather was good, and about halfway up there was a breeze. It smelled sweet.

  The surprise was the calves, six of them with their moms, up under the oak trees. They had long, dangly ears and triangular heads. Their skin hung in wrinkled folds, and they were blue, the color of smoke. I had seen plenty of calves over the years, both brown Herefords with white faces and black Angus. Calves were always cute. But these Brahmas were really cute. The one nearest the fence had a dark-colored crown on his head and a tuft the same dark color on the end of his tail. While we were watching, he started nursing the cow. I could see that she had a big hump where the withers would be on a horse, and he had a hump, too, though tiny. Herefords and Angus are flat across the top, head to tail. Brahmas are kind of surprising-looking if you aren’t used to them. The cows and calves were noisy—there was a lot of mooing.

  We walked the horses along the fence and tried to get a look at all of the calves. Two were lying down, but the four that were standing had big knees and a fold of skin that dangled between their front legs. One of them was much more speckled with dark dots than the others—almost as if a drift of soot had fallen on him. The calves looked at us as we rode by, but it seemed like the cows couldn’t be bothered with something as unimportant as a couple of horses. Happy was interested in the cows, though. As we walked along, she stared at them, her ears pricked. She was much more interested than Lincoln. I remembered what Jem Jarrow said, and thought that Happy really, really wanted to play.

  Daddy said, “Good cattle for a dry area, and these look healthy enough, even the calves. I’d stick with Herefords, though, out here in California. Best flavor.”

  One of the calves watched us as we made our way along the fence and then suddenly mooed at us. Happy flicked her ears. The calf mooed again, and Happy whinnied. I laughed.

  “I think she’s saying, ‘Let’s have some fun!’ ” said Daddy.

  “You never see this kind at the rodeo,” I said.

  “Too fast,” said Daddy. “Brahmas can run when they want to. Jump, too.”

  “I love the color.”

  “These are beauties, no doubt about it,” said Daddy. “I’ll be interested in the bull when they turn him out in a couple of months. I haven’t seen him yet.”

  We turned and began to make our way down the hill. I let Happy pick her own trail—she was good at it and went diagonally, first to the left and then to the right. She moved right along. Lincoln wasn’t as good at it, and Daddy had to sit back with his heels way down, reminding Lincoln how to shift his weight backward. I never saw a horse tumble down a hillside, but every so often I was surprised when one didn’t. That was the way it was with Lincoln.

  We could see our ranch from above—the house, the barn, the pen, the arena, and part of the gelding pasture, and most of the mare pasture. The valley was golden and rolling, and Mom’s flowers looked bright against the broad expanse of grass. There was something else, too: off to the left, sitting on the hillside—that dog. We hadn’t seen him in maybe a week, and I had sort of forgotten him, thinking he had moved on or something like that. He was sitting up straight, his back legs square and his front paws together, ears up. Every moment or two, he lifted his muzzle and sniffed the wind. He also watched us. But he didn’t move. Daddy said, “Looks like he thinks he owns the place, doesn’t he?”

  We walked on down the hill. When we were about halfway down, the dog got to his feet and walked after us, step by step, watching what we did. When we got to the barn and dismounted, the dog stopped where he was, maybe a third of the way up the hill on the other side of the gelding pasture, and sat down again. He still looked like he owned the place. Daddy watched him for a long moment before walking Lincoln over to the gelding pasture and putting him away, but he didn’t say anything.

  By the time we were on our last horses of the day, Sprinkles and Sunshine, the dog was gone.

  Hay Net

  Painted Stone Wall Jump

  Brick Wall Jump

  Chapter 6

  I GUESS I THOUGHT THAT NO TIME WOULD HAVE GONE BY SINCE I showed Gallant Man in his pony classes in the spring, and nothing would have changed, including me, because I was actually amazed when I tried on my show clothes the night before we were to take Black George over to the show and discovered that the sleeves of my jacket were too short, and Mom had to stand in front of where I was sitting in a chair and pull and pull on the bottoms of my jodhpurs to get them down over the tops of my jodhpur boots. As for the waist snap, well, we didn’t even try to make that stick together—I just put a safety pin at the top of the zipper and covered the whole thing with a belt. At least my hard hat fit, but I knew that, because I had worn it when I schooled Black George, and my boots fit, because they were new. But I could feel the fronts of them if I spread my toes—they weren’t going to fit for long. When I moved around in the front seat of the truck as we were driving Black George over there, I could feel my shirt popping out in back, too. I felt truly stupid.

  And, of course, the first person I saw when I got there was Sophia Rosebury. Sophia Rosebury was exactly my age, and she was a big star around that barn—her instructor was not Miss Slater but Colonel Hawkins himself. Colonel Hawkins ran the whole barn (Miss Slater worked for him), and he had been on an Olympic team sometime, though I could never remember which team or when.

  Sophia Rosebury was built like a pencil—maybe an inch or two taller than I was and about half as big around. She wore very large braces on her teeth—bigger than any I had seen in school—and she had blond braids down to the middle of her back. She was not what Stella would have called �
��so attractive!” but Sophia Rosebury was a good rider—anyone could see that—and her horses were nice, though not especially nicer than Gallant Man and Black George. What Sophia Rosebury had was perfect equipment. Her saddle was still tan—almost new, but rosy and supple. Her bridle matched her saddle. Her jacket fit as though it had been made for her, and she wore high boots—shining black ones. Nothing Sophia Rosebury was wearing was poking out where it shouldn’t be. Her stock sat neatly underneath her jacket collar; her breeches went smoothly into the tops of her high boots. Her sleeves met her gloves and covered their edges. The same could not be said about me.

  We were at the show grounds for about fifteen minutes before Daddy managed to find Miss Slater—long enough for me to unload Black George and tie him to the trailer and watch Sophia Rosebury be given a leg up onto her perfectly cleaned and braided horse, then have her boots wiped by someone who must have been the groom. When she was absolutely clean in every possible way, Colonel Hawkins looked her over, and they walked toward the warm-up ring.

  When Miss Slater saw me, I could see that she agreed with my feelings about my outfit, because she took one look at me and said, “Oh dear.”

  I looked down. The cuffs of my jodhpurs had ridden up and were about halfway up my legs. Well, that’s what it seemed like. They were not that short, but they were too short.

  Black George looked good, though. Between us, Daddy, Mom, and I had spent all day the day before trimming him and bathing him and combing out his tail hair by hair. His tail, in fact, looked spectacular—black and shiny and almost brushing the ground, so full at the bottom that it seemed to float. And, of course, the saddle and bridle were clean. Daddy knew how to get things clean.

  Miss Slater looked at her watch, then she said, “We have twenty minutes before we have to warm up. Abby, come with me. I’ll take you to the storeroom.”