Horse Lover (8 page)

We turned our horses, yelling to each other or using hand signals to communicate over the thunder of pounding hooves.

“I’ve got these over here.”

“Get ’em in one group. We’ll bend ’em round and take them back.”

“Stay ahead of them if you can, boys.”

Everyone’s adrenaline cranked—cowboy, cattle, and horse. This was exactly the situation in which you wanted to be on a horse like Saber. Here I was on this little bitty horse that had barely been ridden. Instead of running her first full-court press in the school gym, Aunt Jemima had been tossed right into the heart of an
NBA
game. But there we were, galloping and turning and trying to ring-in steers rippling away from us. Aunt Jemima was fully engaged. It was as if she had a sneak preview at the playbook. I was asking her to do what I would have asked Saber to do. She was rising to the occasion and making a hand.

For an hour we labored to turn those steers sideways, slow them down to a trot, drive them into a bunch, and bend them back near the water trough. Every one of us galloped several miles to get the job done. The backs and armpits of the crew’s shirts were drenched in sweat and sweat dripped down the horses’ flanks and necks. Only one renegade steer wouldn’t stop. Aunt Jemima and I watched him jump over a fence into the neighbor’s pasture. I could feel her pulling me to go after him. She knew where he was supposed to be and it wasn’t over there. Her work was not yet done.

I tried to calm her down. “Jemima, he’s too far ahead of us to ever catch him. And you’ll run yourself down if I let you go after him.”

She didn’t like that answer. She kept her head up and watched him grow smaller. She was telling me she was good for the chase. I could feel that she still had energy. It was my job to figure out how much and not let her overrun. I know the feeling of wanting to do the job right and get it done. She had just proven to me that she was a game player. I needed to honor her request.

I relented. “Okay, let’s see if we can find a gate.”

I turned her and she went into an easy gallop along the fence. A gate appeared and I got off, opened it, and remounted.

The steer looked to be about a mile away.

“If you think you can catch him, I’m going to pitch you the slack. You pick the pace, Jemima. Take it kind of easy, though, because we have a long way to go.” I hoped she heard my cheers more than my doubts.

She leapt forward without a spur and the chase was on. She chose an easy, steady gallop. The distance between the steer and us began to decrease. Her endurance and strength amazed me. We were covering country, past mesquite and creosote bush. Pretty soon, I heard a second set of hooves hitting the ground and smelled the disturbed dust rising up into the warm air. The gap between the steer and us closed to one hundred yards. My doubts dissipated. By golly, she just might catch this guy.

The steer jumped off a small bank into a sandy canyon. Without hesitation, Jemima followed.

“Aunt Jemima, if you can catch him, I’ll rope him.”

I took my rope and built a loop. Jemima’s gait suddenly changed from smooth to choppy and right then, I knew she had nothing left. She had hit the anaerobic wall. The steer was twenty feet in front of us. I started swinging the loop around my head, aimed for the steer’s horns, and threw it. It floated through the air and settled over the exhausted animal’s head. I yanked the slack and dallied the rope around the saddle horn. Everything came to a complete halt. We couldn’t have gone another two feet. Between Aunt Jemima and the steer panting and my heart pounding, I couldn’t hear the cicadas buzz.

We sat there and waited for the cowboys to show up. They weren’t far behind.

“You take this steer,” I said, handing the rope to one of them. “I’ve gotta take care of my horse.”

I dismounted and stood there, wiping sweat from Aunt Jemima’s neck and shoulders. She stood there, legs splayed, sides heaving. I continued to rub and love on her until her panting slowed.

“Jemima, you gave me one hundred percent of who you are. You got the job done, baby. You have the biggest heart I’ve ever seen,” I kept telling her. “You’ve made me a friend for life.” After she recovered, I slowly rode her back to the trailer.

I had arrived in that pasture anticipating the ordinary but left having experienced the extraordinary. It wasn’t the stampede that was unique, or lassoing the steer. Responding to the thrill and tension and adventure of the unexpected is all part of being a cowboy. It defines who you are. What I found extraordinary was the heart of the horse I rode, the effort she gave, an effort few horses ever give. It was an amazing day, the day I fell in love with Aunt Jemima.

I still loved her to pieces. Maybe I could ship her up to South Dakota after things got settled. I bet she’d relish it up here. In the meantime, maybe John could find me a horse of my own.

Neither Congress nor the Bureau of Indian Affairs had given us the green light of approval for the sanctuary. I couldn’t call Congress, but I could call Roger Running Horse. “My supervisor told me she’s been so busy that she just hasn’t had time to address your issues. I’ll press her a little harder this week. I’m sure she’ll approve it right away once she sees it.” I tamped down my frustration, said I would check in again, and turned my attention to the ranch’s needs.

John and I got busy spreading phosphorous on one-third of the hay meadow. If the results turned out to be as good as I hoped, we’d do another section the following year. The soil content within individual pastures varied, an invitation for horses to overgraze the tastier grass and ignore the rest, so we reconfigured the fence lines to create pastures with as much common soil as possible.

I put the word out around the community that I was looking for some day laborers—a painter for the buildings at headquarters and some hands to start tearing down the sheep barn. John was right. There were more jobs than local workers. I ended up recruiting a painter I knew from Tucson, who also happened to be an alcoholic, but he did good work when sober, which was what he would be if sequestered on the Arnold Ranch. He said okay, he’d dry out for a while, so I flew him up to South Dakota and set him up with a sprayer, fifty gallons of paint, and a case of ginger ale. Two weeks later, he was a new person and so was headquarters. Just looking at the bright-red barn and the white house with green trim made me puff up like a rooster. I returned him to Arizona, then flew in two brothers who had worked on Lazy B, Carlos and Ramon, to tear down the sheep barn. They had hauled half the salvage wood to headquarters when the first of three political apples dropped in the bucket.

Senator DeConcini’s aide bubbled the news over the phone. The senator had created a rider granting the
BLM
authority to contract for a wild horse sanctuary, then recruited enough support to tack it onto a bill that sailed through Congress. This was the linchpin of the sanctuary, the authorization we had been waiting for. It was like we crested the ridge, caught sight of the finish line, and starting rolling down the hill. Goddamn, the sanctuary was going to happen. It felt exciting, intimidating, and vindicating. My feet hadn’t even touched the ground before the second apple fell. Within the week, a
BLM
rep called from Washington
DC
. Though far less effusive than the aide, he said the bureau was on board but to hold on to my hat, we had details to work out.

Dayton and I drove up to the
BLM
office in Rapid City five different times to haggle over those details. The final version of the contract called for us to keep all mustangs we received in good flesh and good health. We were to turn them out on grass as much as possible and, when necessary during the winter, feed them hay. We were granted the power to euthanize sick and injured animals. Each month we were to submit a statement that accounted for each horse, and each month the State of South Dakota would receive payment from the
BLM
and apportion it to us. I would receive $1.15 per horse per day and Dayton a tad more since his smaller operation was less efficient than our larger acreage. The contract would extend for four years. And the final detail: the
BLM
agreed to ship three hundred wild horses to Dayton’s ranch and fifteen hundred horses to the Arnold Ranch. Yes, one thousand five hundred unadoptable wild mustangs would take up residence on the ranch I had purchased on a whim. The vision that had been thrust before me was being brought to life bearing my blood and sweat. If you can have an out-of-body experience signing on a dotted line, I did.

But one detail remained. That third apple had yet to fall. “How about if I set up a meeting with your supervisor?” I said over the phone to Roger Running Horse. He said good idea, especially in light of getting horses soon. Congratulations. How exciting. Blah, blah, blah. He would get on this so as not to delay delivery of the horses.

Nothing happened.

I called again. “What the hell is going on?” I didn’t bother to hide my anger. The smiling snake charmer gave me some lamebrain excuse about an urgent situation the supervisor had to attend to. I hung up totally frustrated.

I could feel panic start to rise. This bureaucratic beast had its jaws wide open, ready to swallow our project. I began to quiz neighbors and consider every possible angle. Do you think we can just go ahead and turn the horses out? Will the
BIA
fine us if they find horses running on their land? Will they hire cowboys to round them up and take them away? Where would they take so many horses? I decided there was a fly in the ointment somewhere, and one way or another I would have a face-to-face with this supervisor.

I got in the pickup and set out for Pine Ridge prepared to go on strike and raise hell until I met the supervisor. On an impulse, I stopped at Stan Whipple’s office in St. Francis. When I told him where I was headed and why, he broke out in a big grin and told me to sit down. He handed me a cup of coffee.

“Your nemesis is gone,” he said. I assumed he was talking about the supervisor. “No, no. Roger Running Horse. He was your worst enemy. Did his utmost to completely block your project. He was transferred out of state to another job.” Stan explained that he and the other employees of the tribe had watched Running Horse weave his treachery but felt their hands were tied. They didn’t want to make the war with the
BIA
any worse. “I’m sorry, man. We watched him manipulate you, and we couldn’t do anything about it.” This was my first, though not my last, exposure to interagency chicanery. Running Horse never submitted any of our plans to his supervisor and even went so far as to ask the tribe to not approve our request. He was one bad dude.

A few days later, I presented the sanctuary plans to the supervisor. She gave immediate approval to graze the horses on
BIA
land. The last golden apple dropped in the bucket. I drove back to the ranch in a euphoric cloud. I passed the gnarled post. Just before the cattle guard, I stopped, put the truck in park, crossed my arms over the steering wheel, and looked out over the prairie. I tried to imagine mustangs galloping across the hills, ears back, tails outstretched. Having lived my life with horses, I thought it would be easy, yet I couldn’t quite conjure the image. Would they be happy, aloof, crazy? Would they sound like thunder? Would I be right there, riding close to them? Soon enough I’d find out. I put the truck in drive and crossed over onto the ranch.

That’s when the ranch spoke up. No longer would it be called the old Arnold Ranch. Nor would it be called the Day Ranch. It was begging for its own identity, and what it wanted was Mustang Meadows Ranch.

“I like it,” I said out loud.

Mustang Meadows Ranch, the first government-sponsored wild horse sanctuary in the United States.

Part Two

7.

A Stubborn Start

It was mid-September and I was puttering in my office, accomplishing about as much as an expectant father back in the days when we were relegated to rank vending machine coffee and curled magazines in maternity waiting rooms. Yesterday’s phone call had unleashed waves of that same nervous energy. The voice at the other end said a load of horses was ready to ship out from Bloomfield, Nebraska, and would show up around noon tomorrow. Meaning today. Meaning in two hours. Meaning I had better find something else to ease the jitters.

I shoved the bookkeeping ledger in the desk drawer and grabbed my hat. A chat with Clyde, that’s what I needed. Earlier I had sent John and Russ out to the West Whitelands pasture to repair a windmill. No sense in having everyone wait around headquarters. They would be back before the horses arrived. The Pitkin kids had tried to talk their way out of going to school, but John reassured them that unloading the horses was no big deal. The mustangs would run down the truck ramp into the corral in minutes. “Besides,” he said, “they’ll be with us for a long time.” But a shadowed rendition of their collective pout crossed his face when I doled out the windmill assignment.

The intermittent whir of a distant drill pulled me toward the corrals. In one of the small corrals north of the barn Carlos straddled the top rung of metal tubing, steadying one end of a long piece of lumber while Ramon attached the other end to a post with lag screws. I opened the main gate into the large training arena. At dawn John and I had walked through it for the fiftieth time, shaking the fencing and rub boards that Carlos and Ramon had reinforced. It was a fortress. Strong enough to withstand the power of angry or crazed mustangs and, at six feet tall, too high for them to jump.

I walked across the arena into the cool sanctuary of the barn and let my eyes adjust. Dust lazed in the shafts of light. The calming scent of worn leather, seasoned wood, horse feed, and horse soothed my nerves. From his stall, my new horse, Clyde, gave a nicker of recognition. We had gotten acquainted over the last several months after John bought him for me. A handsome sorrel, Clyde fit the bill as a good ranch horse. He wasn’t flashy or high-strung but a solid horse to ride. I grabbed the curry brush off the wooden box next to the grain barrel.

“Hey buddy,” I said, walking into the stall. I stroked his nose with my hand. “How ya doin’?” I ran the brush along one side of his neck. His coat had started to thicken, a response to the expanding chill of nights and decreasing warmth of days. He pushed against the pressure, his head arcing one way, then another in a figure eight of contentment.

“It’s a big day. Our new life is going to begin.” The muscles of his shoulders shifted under my hands as he stretched his head forward. “I have to tell you—and this stays between you and me—we have it all to learn with the wild horses.” I stroked down the withers to his front leg, my free hand following the wake of the brush, a comforting motion for both of us. “Jesus, fifteen hundred of them,” I said. Clyde gave his head a little shake and snorted. “What if we can’t handle them? What if they refuse our training? Refuse to be our friends?” I could hear Red and Roy insisting that a herd of horses couldn’t be trained and would never accept friendship. Clyde reached around to the brush and nuzzled my stalled hand. “Well, I can’t help it. You’ve gotta admit, it’s a little frightening.”

I moved up to the swale of his back, home to my saddle. The brush bumped over a clump of hair wadded by sweat. I smoothed it out and felt carefully for tiny thorns that might rub into his skin and create a sore.

“Well, it’s too late to back out now. The fat’s in the fire.” I rounded up my fears, stashed them on a shelf in the back of my mind, and tuned in to every cell and fiber saying the sanctuary would be a success. The ranch was a horse’s paradise, like an all-inclusive resort with an endless supply of grass and open pasture. On these grounds no one would chase, harass, or kidnap. Our job was to replace the horses’ mistrust with trust, their fear with friendship, and I believed we would succeed.

“I’m telling you, Clyde, it’s all in the training.” Clyde swished his tail and pawed a front hoof. I pulled the brush along his back hip and felt him tense. His head came to attention and he wiggled one ear. I stopped. Only the screeching drill and sharp caw of a crow reached my ears.

“All right now, what would you think about getting some fresh air?” Clyde pushed his nose toward the barn wall. That’s when I heard it. The distant rumble of a diesel engine. A vehicle had to be within two miles of ranch headquarters for a motor to be heard, at least by a human. Judging by its throaty growl, the vehicle was large. For a moment I thought maybe I had lost track of time, that amid my musings, morning had shifted into afternoon, but the slant of sunlight slipping through the barn door said high noon had not arrived.

It had to be the horses.

“Damn, they’re early.” So much for John and Russ being present. At this point, there was no way to summon them. I’d have to manage alone. I gave Clyde a pat, returned the brush, and set out to greet the driver. I was halfway across the lawn when the cab of a semi edged into view and behind it a trailer as long as five flatbed pickups. The beast ground to a stop where the road forked.

The driver rolled down the window and tipped up the bill of his ball cap. “You Alan Day?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. The air held an astringent, wild smell. “You sure got on the road early.”

“Yep, we started loading these guys at four-thirty this morning. Went without a hitch. Gives me time to head back to load cattle for points north.” He patted the steering wheel as if satisfied with the day so far. “Horses got a bit of a ride over that road of yours, though.”

“Yeah, well. Be glad you weren’t here last week before we filled in a dozen giant potholes. You’d be cussing me up and down right now.” A horse whinnied inside the trailer. The cargo was eager to unload. “Follow the road around to the left and I’ll open the gate for you.” I hopped on the running board and grabbed onto the mirror bracket. The driver shifted the rig into low gear and along the road we rolled, past the training arena to the north corral. I opened the gate and he made a U-turn and backed up to the chute as I spotted him. By the third try, it was a perfect fit. The airbrakes hissed and the engine breathed a sigh, then stopped. Carlos and Ramon had abandoned their work and sauntered over to watch the festivities. Debbie stood next to them loading film in her camera.

The driver climbed down. From a cubbyhole on the side of the cab, he removed rubber boots, coveralls, and gloves, his uniform for working with livestock, and put them on. He walked around to the back of the truck and looked at me: “You ready?”

My voice said yes, my thoughts said I hope so. The driver walked up the chute to the back of the trailer and unlatched and pushed up the gate. He quickly climbed out of the way. A bay head with a white star between the eyes popped out into the sunlight, ears forward, eyes inquisitive. Debbie’s camera clicked. The bay headed down the chute. On his tail came a sleek brown mustang, shaggy mane bouncing in the breeze. Black, white, gray, a palomino, and more browns—in less than two minutes a baker’s dozen had entered the corral. They shook their heads and snorted. A few trotted around exercising the stiffness out of their legs.

Before any of us bystanders could comment, the driver opened the gate for the next bunch of thirteen to exit. Down they came, single file, as easily as the first. Although these horses were a far cry from the thoroughbreds of a white-fenced Kentucky ranch, they also weren’t nearly as skittish as the horses that I had watched in Palomino Valley. Their Bloomfield experience had taught them not to panic at the sight of humans. Their frames were filled out like they had been eating regular meals and their coats had a healthy sheen.

The driver’s footsteps echoed along the metal bottom of the trailer. We heard the third gate open. He jogged out, climbed over the chute, and jumped with a thud to the ground. Debbie put her camera to her eye. Nothing happened. No clopping footsteps. No heads poking out. I squinted down the shadowed lane of trailer. At the far end, I could make out seven or eight horse rumps in an arc, heads down in a defensive huddle.

The driver reached under the seat of his cab and pulled out a billy club. He banged it on the side of the truck. “Come on, now. Git.” Metal rattled and echoed inside the trailer. The horses held their position. He continued banging, but no movement ensued. “Well I’ll be damned. They got in there just fine. Why won’t they come out?”

I turned to Carlos and Ramon. “You two go over to the other side of the truck and start pounding. Debbie, you come on this side.”

The five of us pounded and shouted and pounded some more. I expected the lead horse to turn at any moment and exit the trailer. But it didn’t. Two or three minutes of noisemaking failed to dissolve the invisible bonds that held the bunch together.

I grabbed a stick from the ground and pushed it through a slat of the trailer. It ran into the muscled side of a horse. “Move,” I yelled, to no avail.

Carlos climbed on top of the trailer. Ramon followed. They pounded and yelled. “
Vaya, stupido caballo
.” I peered through the slats but didn’t see any movement inside. Debbie looked at me, eyebrows raised in question. I was mystified. What had scared them?

“I’ve got some hot shots in the back of the cab we could use,” said the driver.

Good Lord, the horses had been here all of fifteen minutes and already I was being asked to break one of my top rules. Some ranchers and haulers of livestock resort to the electric prods to get cattle moving. The animals get a pretty good sting, as I discovered once when I tested one on myself. I considered them inhumane. There had to be another way. If John was here we would be able to noodle over some ideas, but I was solo on this one.

“Want me to get them out?” The driver had his hand on the cab door.

“No,” I said. “We don’t use prod poles.”

“Okay, do what you want, but get these sonofabitches off. I’ve got to get back on the road. That next load is waiting.”

Debbie, Carlos, and Ramon looked at me, the boss, the supposed horse expert. The sun had reached full strength and a dribble of sweat ran down my back. Shit, shit, shit. I never had a horse that wouldn’t come out of a trailer. My first contact with wild horses, and I’m poking a stick into them and don’t know what the hell to do next. I wanted to yank them out. Yeah, like I would really yank out the remaining fourteen horses. Maybe pull them out, but not yank.

Pull. Now there was an idea.

The image of a truck stuck in a desert wash roaring with summer rains flashed through my mind. The Lazy B cowboys and I had been struggling to free it. I was fourteen and didn’t want to meet my dad’s eyes if we came home without one of our vehicles. As a last-ditch effort, I suggested tying one end of some nylon rope to the Jeep on dry land and the other end to the truck stuck tire-deep in water. The rope stretched to breaking point, but it held and pulled the truck up the bank.

“You guys wait here a minute. I have an idea.” I headed for the barn.

I grabbed three saddle ropes from the tack room, knotted them together, and coiled the long rope. On my way out, I grabbed a broom. The tractor we had been using to haul lumber sat parked on the side of the shed. I slung the looped rope over my shoulder, climbed up in the tractor seat, and balancing the broom on my lap, drove along the outside of the corrals to the gate. Carlos ran up and opened it. The horses in the corral scattered nervously out of the way. I swung the tractor around and backed it up to the bottom of the chute. I tied one end of the rope to the tractor’s back hitch.

“Carlos,
aqui
,” I said, pointing to the tractor seat. Carlos got up onto the tractor. “When I give the go-ahead,” I explained in Spanish, “you take off. Keep it strong and steady. I’ll tell you when to stop. You’ll have to back up quickly to release the tension in the rope. It’ll be less than a minute. Make sure you stop right when I say.” With rope and broom in hand, I went up the chute and cautiously approached the knot of horses. Tails swished.