Horse Lover (16 page)

John and I returned to the barn, got on our
ATV
s, and headed back out to the meadow. We opened the gate and zipped out to fetch the wanderers. They saw us coming. Heads raised and tails swished, but there was no nervous pawing of the ground or gathering. They were asking us in their language what we wanted. We drove in a wide circle around them, indicating that we wanted them to return to their assigned pasture. They understood. The leader started off toward the gate and pulled the rest of the group in an easy gallop. The gate was about a mile away, and John rode out in front, leading them. I followed behind.

For a moment, I forgot about
20/20
and the filming, forgot about everything I needed to do. As often happened, the beauty of the creatures in front of me pushed out all other thoughts. The elegance of their form and the ease they displayed in running mesmerized me. These weren’t groomed-to-the-hilt racehorses with shiny coats. Nobody wanted these horses but me, the cowboys, and this section of the South Dakota Sand Hills. The horses ran with the grasses and the sky, the lines of separation evaporated. The sky, the sun, clouds, horses, grass, hills, horizon. All were one. I cut the motor and listened to the muffled thudding of hooves that made the ground sound hollow and the swish of legs against the grass. Their tails and manes streamed in the air. For a moment, all was right with the world. I restarted the
ATV
and gunned it to catch up.

The next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the ground, on my stomach, my head turned to one side. I had the sensation of coming out of an afternoon nap where you sleep so hard you can’t remember what day it is or where you are. I thought it odd that a piece of metal lay near my outstretched arm. I moved to grab it. Sharp pains jolted me into awareness. That’s when I saw the
ATV
turned on its side. The handlebars were bent down indicating that it had rolled over. The sound of a motor grew louder. I tried to lift my head up, but a jackknife of pain kept it down. The motor roared next to me, then stopped.

John yelled, “Al, are you okay?”

I tried to push up off the ground, a fruitless effort. All I could do was groan. John’s boots and jeans appeared.

“Roll me on my side,” I said.

“Let’s not rush this. Let’s make sure everything’s intact.”

I gingerly moved muscles and limbs. Neither of us thought my neck or back were injured, but the condition of my left shoulder, sides, hips, and right ankle were a far different state of affairs. The pain shot right into my gut. I concentrated on not throwing up. John tried to lift me into a standing posture, but I slumped to the ground. I needed to get to a hospital, but it would be an hour before an ambulance could arrive.

“Go get the Suburban and Debbie,” I said. It hurt to talk. “If you can get me in there, she can take me to the hospital. Put some padding in it and a pillow.”

His mind must have gone through the same scenario. “Yep, the ranch ambulance. I’m on it.”

He fetched my hat from the grass ten yards away and helped settle me against the wheel of the
ATV
. For the time being, the grass was a soft mattress.

“Promise I won’t go anywhere,” I said. He looked like he didn’t want to leave but hopped on the
ATV
and drove off. The drone of the motor dwindled. I concentrated on breathing and not moving for what seemed like an hour. I tried to figure out what might have caused the wreck, but my last memory was of the horses galloping ahead. The breeze pressed against the cold sweat covering me. At last, I heard the grumble of the Suburban. John backed it up close to my slumped body. Debbie jumped out and came over, concern spread across her face. Somehow, the three of us managed to get me up and into the makeshift ambulance.

“John, look around. See if you can find what I hit.” He never did find any object, hole, or camouflaged outcropping.

I lay on the blankets in the back and marveled at how uneven the ground really was. The road was even worse. And here I thought we had smoothed it out.

We rolled through a pothole that must have been a mile deep. “Deb, I’m not dying back here. You don’t have to race to the hospital,” I said. “Any more bumps like that last one and you’ll have to find me a stick to bite.” I’d bite it in half. I focused on inhaling and exhaling, which wasn’t the easiest task. Highway 20 felt like a paradise of freshly asphalted roadway. It afforded the opportunity for a few thoughts to seep in.

What was happening at the ranch? How long would it take the production crews to set up? Where would they film? I was pretty certain the horses would perform well. I hadn’t wanted the crew to come, but now I was bummed at missing the event. John was more than capable of handling the horses and people. But still. In between the throbs of pain, frustration pulsed at having had the wreck and now lying immobile in the back of the Suburban. By the time we finally pulled into the emergency entrance at Cherry County Hospital in Valentine, Nebraska, I was one ornery, beat-up mess.

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.”