Horse Lover (17 page)

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.”

“We’ll sort it out when I get there,” I said. “Right now I need to check the weather, make a flight plan, and top off the fuel tank. I’ll be wheels up within the hour.”

I hung up and flopped back on my pillow. Sue burrowed next to me.

“Doesn’t sound good,” she said. I looked at the ceiling, so white and clean, like fresh snow. A sliver of hopeful sunshine ran its length. Who would have thought of horses falling through melting ice? This wasn’t in the handbook of my upbringing.

“I’ll make a burrito and fill a thermos of coffee. You can take them on the plane,” Sue said.

I rolled over and hugged her. Sustenance before the storm.

Flying twenty thousand feet above the problems of the world for four hours afforded me time to think. The problem was I didn’t know what to think. Had I been careless? Or was this an unavoidable act of nature? We always watched the weather reports for winter storms, but in this case we should have been watching for a warming trend. If the possibility of this tragedy wasn’t on my radar screen, was I liable for it? And what exactly did “liable” mean?

The plane’s wheels touched down on the dry runway. The midafternoon sun splayed its golden rays between islands of gray clouds. The icy air gave no indication that its warmer cousin had been in town. By now the pond probably had refrozen. Knowing that I would soon see the herd and the victims and be able to assess the situation soothed my anxiety.

An hour later, John and I powwowed in his kitchen over hot coffee.

“First, a bit of bad news,” said John.

“Like there hasn’t been enough already?”

He smiled in a weary sort of way. “One of the mares tried to jump the fence when that chopper was buzzing around, but she didn’t quite clear it. Marty and I found her caught in the barbed wire. She was already dead.”

Early on, we had noticed the horses react to the sound of a helicopter. If they heard even a distant thump, thump, thump, they would gather and go to running. I could just see it. The news helicopter circling, low and buzzing, just like when the same angry bird captured the horses in the wild. Surely they panicked and ran blindly in all directions, haunted by this past life nightmare. The pilot probably had no clue about the fear he incited. All he saw below was a bunch of wild, crazed, presumably untrained horses. Here I was trying to protect the horses and keep them as stress free as possible. If there was cruelty to animals, it was that fucking helicopter. What was that county attorney thinking, going to the media before we had a chance to talk? Especially since the drowning didn’t seem to be an unprecedented event.

“Tell me about what happened at the Randall Ranch,” I said. The details might be fodder for tomorrow’s meeting.

John relayed the sad story. Eight years ago, in the middle of January, a big norther blew in and whipped its white fury on the land for three days. The Randall steers were in a pasture north of a large lake, but the blizzard dropped so much snow it covered all the fences. The cattle drifted southeast, away from the storm, right over those concealed posts and barbed wire. The entire herd tramped out onto the lake. One thousand cattle weighing in at six hundred pounds each. The ice gave way and the cattle crashed through into the frigid water and drowned. No one charged the owner with wrongdoing for the simple reason he had done nothing wrong. He ultimately paid for the accident with bankruptcy. Lost his ranch and ended up moving to a different state.

“It happens,” said John. “That’s the worst case I know of. And no one said anything beyond ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’”

My heart went out to this stranger, this fellow rancher who succumbed to what can be a blessing or a curse: the weather. Sometimes the clouds roll in on cue and other times they leave you high and dry. I looked out the window. The sun was calling it a day. I’d have to postpone a visit to the pond until tomorrow, though first on the agenda would be a meeting with the county attorney.

I walked over to the kitchen phone and dialed the number on the card the county attorney had given John. He was unavailable, so I left a message saying we would be there by nine o’clock the next morning.

Debbie came in to start dinner, with Megan skipping behind her. “Megan, set a place for Alan.”

Megan opened a cabinet and took out placemats. “You sit here tonight,” she said, laying one in front of me, “and I’ll sit here.” She laid another placemat next to mine.

“I wouldn’t want to sit by anyone else but my girl,” I said. It was a comfort at a time like this to be surrounded by people who cared.

John and I retired to the family room to watch the news. The county attorney had been effective in his media campaign. The local
CBS
station reported that more than a dozen wild horses had drowned in a pond outside of Winner, South Dakota. Alan Day, owner of Mustang Meadows Ranch, was being investigated for animal abuse, the newscaster said over a clip of the horses filmed from the helicopter. The mustangs ran in all directions, manes and tails flying, as frantic as I had imagined. Distraught from abuse, a viewer might conclude. So much for my mitigating any further damage to the situation; the intensity had just quadrupled. The local news ended and the national news began.

Halfway through the broadcast, Debbie called us to dinner. John was about to turn off the
TV
when the newscaster said, “And now from South Dakota, a tragedy on a government-sponsored wild horse sanctuary.” Good grief. A wire service must have picked up the story. Millions of eyes around the country saw the same dramatic images of panicked horses. I almost could hear the collective groan from the
BLM
executives watching the news from their homes. It echoed mine. Definitely not the publicity I had described to the
BLM
back in
DC
.

John flipped off the
TV
. The New Year was less than forty-eight hours old and already it had snowballed into an avalanche.

I have participated in negotiations with tension levels ranging from one to ten. Even those strung taut with anger and anxiety managed to start with a protocol of pleasantries. A hello and shaking of hands, an offer of coffee and a chair. Except for an unemotional handshake, the pleasantries at the county attorney’s office in Winner were frigid. Even my “How you doin’?” didn’t elicit a response from the stern-looking man fortressed behind his desk. John and I pulled up chairs and sat down. I sensed it was up to us to get the conversation rolling.

“I received the call about the horses yesterday morning at my Arizona ranch,” I said. “Within forty minutes I was in my plane. It took the better part of the day to get here, but here I am, eager to sort out any problems we have.” The county attorney’s face could have been chiseled in the granite of Mount Rushmore. “But you’re going to have to help me, because I’m not sure exactly what those problems are.”

Starchy silence filled the room. I forged ahead. “John mentioned that you had been out at the ranch yesterday morning and saw the horses in the pond and made some statements to the press about possible criminal activity. I saw the segment on the news last night. Local and national.” This time the man on the other side of the desk nodded. “But I’m having a hard time grasping just what the criminal activity is. How do horses breaking through melting ice translate into a legal or moral or emotional crisis?”

“The newscast was correct. We are proceeding with a criminal investigation.”

“I don’t understand. What possible criminal activities could there be?”

“Mr. Day, there’s no reason for you to be here talking to me. You’ll have to wait for the investigation.”

“That’s fine. I’ll wait,” I said, my voice filling the room. “But there has to be something you’re investigating.”

The county attorney huffed like he was dealing with some sort of remedial student. “Our office has cause to believe that the horses under your care are being starved, which would constitute cruelty to animals. We don’t know what we’re going to uncover here. We are proceeding with an investigation.”

If a person can go into shock two days in a row, I did. What did this noodlehead know about our operation? “Those horses are fed and watered each day. We’ve had them for three years and we’ve never missed a day feeding them.” The man on Planet X sitting on the opposite side of the desk gave me a cool stare. “I’m not sure what your goal is here or why you’re even involved,” I said.

“This happens at least every five to ten years when we get a sudden thaw,” said John. “Livestock fall through the melting ice and drown.”

The attorney didn’t bite. “If you’re abusing them, I intend to put you in jail, Mr. Day.” He glared me down like I was a danger to society and we would all be safer if I was off the streets and in prison. He didn’t even bother to fake remorse for the death of the animals. “I want to postmortem six horses to determine if they’re malnourished.”

This guy had his legal pistol cocked and aimed at me. But what the hell was there to find? Only horses with full stomachs, certainly.

“I have no issue with that,” I said. “Give me the name of your vet, and we’ll get them over as soon as we cut them out. The cold last night froze them and I suspect they’re in about two feet of ice.”

He reached for a pad of paper and pen.

“How will I know when this investigation is over?” I asked.

“The statute of limitations is seven years. You’ll know by then,” he said. He scribbled on the paper and pushed it across the desk.

John nodded in recognition of the name. “I know where his office is,” he said.

I tapped the paper on the desk. “I still don’t understand,” I said, truly clueless to what this guy was thinking and planning. “How long is this investigation going to take? Seven years?”

The lifted chin, the cool stare. “We’ll come for you with handcuffs if we want to press charges,” he said and stood up.

No pleasantries concluded the meeting.

I climbed into the pickup’s cab mystified. What was this fellow after?

“You’re a big fish around here, Alan,” said John when I shared my befuddlement. “If our friendly county attorney lands you in jail, he can slap that on his resume and present it to voters. It’s like saying, ‘I brought in the bad guy, vote for me.’”