Horse Lover (9 page)

“Okay, guys, we’re going to have a little dance here,” I said while making a loop with the rope. “This is your new home and you’re going to like it. Trust me on this.” I took a few slow steps along the side of the trailer, closer to the bunch. If the group bolted, I wanted to be out of the way. “But you won’t know that unless you give it a try. So I’m here to help you get your feet going in the right direction.” I slid the loop over the end of the broom.

“Who’s up first for this adventure? You can tell the others out there all about it. How you got pulled off the trailer and into the corral in less than sixty seconds.” The bunch twitched and shuffled and warned me away with snorts. Every head remained down.

“It’s getting kind of warm in here. The fresh air and breeze is going to feel good. And all that hay, it’s real sweet. You can stretch your legs, too.”

As if curious to see if there really was a brightly lit world, a horse close to me lifted its head. I swung the broom handle through the air, dropped the loop over its head, and tightened it.

“
GO
!” I shouted out the trailer. Carlos hit the accelerator. The rope stretched tight around the horse’s neck. The startled animal spun around toward the chute. Down it went on its rump, forelegs stuck out trying to resist the drag. Its hooves clamored and tapped against the slippery metal floor. The rope pulled. The horse flailed against the lack of oxygen. A few more feet and he was in the chute. I signaled to Carlos to keep pulling. The horse’s eyes bugged and he was gasping. He slid to the bottom and I ran down the incline.

“Whoa, Carlos!” Tractor and horse stopped. Carlos shifted into reverse to give the rope slack. I loosened the noose and pulled it over the horse’s head. He scrambled to his feet shaking his head, sides heaving. He gave me a good glare before trotting off to join his compatriots.

Ramon and Debbie clapped, but there was no reason to take a bow. Thirteen horses stood in the truck behind me. Three hundred sixty-four days and twenty-three hours of year one with the horses stood in front of me. The driver checked his watch.

I waved Carlos back into position, slid the loop on the broom handle, renewed my determination, and walked back into the truck. Horses jostled.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it? A quick dance. Who wants to go next?” A roan raised its head. I swung the broom handle over her like a boom on a movie set, raised the handle, and let the loop slide off. Bingo. I yelled to Carlos. Panic filled the animal’s eyes and limbs. But it was a quick ride to the chute and down it. Again, the rope loosened easily under my hands. I made sure that it would not become a deadly noose. The roan took a few deep gasps and clopped into the corral.

Carlos and I became more efficient. Each time I approached, the horses stood quieter. I chatted and they responded by looking up. I was looping the broom for the tenth time when a pretty chestnut horse with a long black mane turned on her own and trotted the length of the trailer and right down the chute. She pulled the other horses with her single file like they had practiced the drill a hundred times. The gallery erupted into another round of applause.

Maybe these last five decided they didn’t want to endure the brief struggle like their buddies had. Maybe they finally smelled the hay. Maybe they realized they were here to stay and no sense fighting it. Maybe they were weary of hearing me talk. I shrugged my shoulders. It was not for us to know.

Before the driver latched the doors of the trailer, John and Russ pulled up in the pickup. They eyed the tractor in the corral, the knotted saddle rope snaking behind it.

“So how’d it go?” John asked. He knew damn well how it went.

“Went just fine. These five horses here,” I said, pointing, “just walked off without a hitch.” And thankfully without rope burns.

The only one burned so far was me. Fortunately it wasn’t a first-degree burn or even a third-degree burn. It was more like feeling singed around the edges. With thirty-five more truckloads of mustangs expected, I just prayed I wouldn’t go up in flames.

8.

Vying for the Upper Hand

I saddled Clyde and, like every morning for the past four weeks, we headed through the corrals to the horse pasture just north of headquarters. Four hundred horses now lived there. Semitrailers had chugged up the ranch road two or three times a week, bringing more horses from Bloomfield. Later, after that facility emptied, they would come from Nevada, New Mexico, and sometimes Wyoming. The anticipation of horses arriving drifted over fence lines and pulled in neighbors and an occasional local journalist, all armed with cameras. On days we had an audience, the cowboys and I would stand a little taller or sit straighter in our saddles. Thankfully we never again had to deal with balky horses that refused to unload. But the mustangs made sure to show their resistance in other ways.

I dismounted and opened the gate. The horses closest to me shot up their heads and flipped back their ears as if responding to the entrance of a drill sergeant. Hooves thumped the sand and snorts filled the air, encoded messages alerting the others to come to attention. But instead of lining up for inspection, the herd turned in unison and hauled ass in the other direction, away from the enemy. Me. Their caretaker. By the time I shut the gate and swung back in the saddle, they had disappeared over hill and dale, headed for the farthest corner of the square-mile pasture.

This wasn’t the first time we had gone through this drill. During their first week at the ranch, they remained in the corrals. As long as no one disturbed them, they stayed calm. If they felt threatened, they bunched together in a corner, heads down. At week’s end, we turned them out to the horse pasture. They had yet to learn that we came waving an olive branch, not hot shots or long sticks with white flags.

Clyde trotted through the open space, unperturbed by the scent of his unruly wild cousins.

“Let’s hold up here,” I said.

We stopped on the brow of the first hill. The herd had vanished. I hopped off and dropped the reins, ground-tying Clyde. He didn’t waste time burrowing his nose in the grass. I swished my boot through the plants. Less resistance than a few days ago. I dropped to my hands and knees, the sandy loam yielding to my weight in a way the hard sands of Arizona never did. I examined the soil, searching for gaps where plants had been yanked from the ground by the teeth of hungry horses. If cows had been in this pasture, their bovine jaws would have sculpted the vegetation into neat teepees. Horses dive straight down like bomber pilots, mouths open, and bite, giving grass a flat top haircut or uprooting young plants.

Clyde and I rode to another section of the pasture, then to another and another. A few times, we saw horses in the distance grazing. They were grazing well, all right, maybe too well. The grass had shrunk by about 50 percent and its density had thinned. The pasture needed a rest, which meant the horses needed to move to fresh prairie. I knew this time would come. I had hoped it would be after the horses were trained, but if I waited to complete their training, this pasture would be trashed. Within less than half a year of owning the ranch, I would have broken my promise to the land.

Tomorrow was Saturday. Maybe Jordan could recruit some of his buddies to help move the horses. A little voice inside me said the more the merrier. At least I thought the word was merrier. In retrospect, it might have been something more like warier.

“Tomorrow we may have a helluva race,” I said to Clyde. “Get ready for some real cowboying.”

Seven of us were horseback—me, John, Russ, and Marty Blocker, a longtime cowboy who was so enamored with the wild horses that he had been volunteering his help on weekends since they had arrived, plus Jordan and a couple of his high school buddies, Mike and Jason. On Lazy B, this size crew could round up a thousand head of cattle on twenty square miles. Even though we had one-twentieth the space, I welcomed the extra hands. A chilly easterly wind had kicked up during the night. We gathered in the corral, collars up and hands gloved, to go through tactical maneuvers.

“The minute we get to the gate, the horses are going to bolt,” I said. “They usually take off for the back northwest corner. Let’s head out there in a line, run them round the outside of the pasture, then get in position to wing them through the gate.” In such a small pasture, this was the only plan possible.

“Piece of cake,” said Jason. The cocky teen crowd seconded him. If the horses had been trained, I might have echoed that second, but my silent vote went to the more conservative “wait- and-see” side.

The herd was grazing about a quarter mile from the gate in a valley between hills. Our appearance tripped an electric current that zinged through the bunch. Within moments the horses were on the move, heading up and over the opposite hill.

“Dang, those suckers are fast,” said Jason, sounding a bit more humbled.

The last group of mares galloped out of sight. A curtain of dust rose from the far side of the hill, separating our team from theirs. I glanced at Russ, Marty, and John. They wore that look a seasoned cowboy gets when faced with a challenge. Every species has its silent language and
Cowboy sapiens
is no different. They sat straight in their saddles, one arm bent at a right angle holding the reins, squinting out from under their hats, assessing the situation. We all knew the mustangs could run faster than the wind pushing against our backs. Our horses could run too, but they carried a rider and a saddle. We’d have to be the smarter players on this field.

We set out at a trot to put our rudimentary game plan into action. Russ, Marty, and Jason peeled into a line on my right; John, Jordan, and Mike spread out on my left. We stretched several hundred yards. We swung in formation toward the west corner of the pasture just to make sure no horses had wandered over there. Finding none, we turned northwest.

Four hundred horses clumped in the corner, facing this way and that. We closed in at a slow, nonthreatening pace. They began to vibrate with panic. Heads shook and bobbed, tails twitched. Nervous whinnies sifted through the wind. Stranger danger. Get ready to run. We had trespassed ten yards into their personal space when a group of lead horses bolted out of the bunch at a full gallop. Along the north fence they raced, like pent-up steam escaping a boiler, heading east away from us. The herd fell into a stampede maybe fifty horses wide and rocketed toward the northeast corner of the pasture. I expected them to stop there, but instead they turned the corner and kept going south, picking up speed. At that speed they would beat us to the south corner. I waved my arm in the air, signaling the crew to my right to change directions. If we crossed the pasture as the crow flies, maybe we could get to the gate first. Unfortunately, the gate wasn’t in the corner, but about a hundred yards beyond it. We’d have to arc our line from behind the gate out into the pasture. The horses would see seven cowboys blocking their way and slow down. That’s when we would wing them through the gate and into the corral. We galloped parallel to the dust cloud rising behind the hills on our left. But when we bounded over the final hill, the horses were ahead of us.

“They’re about to round the corner already,” yelled Marty, and he spurred his horse into high gear to try to get in position to turn them into the gate. John was close behind.

The lead mares took the last corner like race cars at the Indianapolis 500 headed for the finish line. Marty and John were still several hundred yards short of being in position. The horses roared past the gate without so much as a glance. If there had been a checkered flag, it would have swished down declaring the mustangs the winners.

I pulled up and watched four hundred crazed horses run past me, necks outstretched, blindly following each other, intent on doing a victory lap in full throttle. The wind pushed gritty air into my face, my nose, my ears. From somewhere, a little voice taunted. “You think you can train these horses? Who’s the sucker now?” I hit the mute button. That’s the last thing I needed to hear. As it was, the horses had written the first chapter in the training manual. It was titled “How to Get Your Way.”

I edged Clyde out of the dust storm and the cowboys followed. Twelve eyes looked at me. “Well, boys, we lost that one,” I said. “Score is horses ten, us zero.”

“More like twenty to zero,” said Marty and turned his head to spit. Defeat always stings more when you’re on a fast horse.

My mind sifted through the slim pickings of game plans. “We’re going to play the second half a little differently. Russ and Jordan, you go roust those bastards out of the corner and swing in behind them. Follow them on around. The rest of us will spread out and be ready to turn them in the gate. Everyone got it?” Heads shook in acknowledgment. Russ and Jordan galloped off and the rest of us took our positions. “Mike, move over toward John. There’s too big a gap.” I waved him to the left. A horse would accept that space as an invitation to bolt through it.

This plan had to work. Sweet Jesus, we couldn’t be having horse races every time we tried to move the herd. The other grazing pastures were six to eight square miles. If we had to keep repeating this gathering game, it would be chaos. Our horses would tire by the second go-around and the crew would get frustrated. Today wasn’t so bad; it was our first attempt and felt more like adventure than anything else. Training. That’s what these horses needed. Would their wild spirits respond? I kicked the worry aside and focused on the distant cloud of dust inching toward us along the fence line.

The lead horses galloped into sight. They looked to be going a step or two slower. No wonder. They had been running almost nonstop for about four miles. The lead horses blew around the corner, saw us, slowed down, and realized that this time they had no other choice. They turned and went through the gate without a hitch.

“Those bastards knew where the gate was all along,” said Marty. “They were just testing us.”

I had to agree with him. They had entered this pasture through that gate. They knew where it was. They were letting us know they would take the gate when they chose and not a lap sooner. We were on the scoreboard, but the horses had won the match.

The roundup pointed in bold letters to the need for training. They were only responding in the way in which they had been taught: Humans are the enemy. Flee from them. We needed to change their thinking. More than anything, I wanted to succeed in doing that. In the past I successfully trained horses, but I also had failures, and I did not want to relive the pain of failure, especially as I had experienced it a decade ago.

I had been managing Lazy B full-time for about eight years and had just lost a horse from my string, so I needed a replacement. I spent quite a little time observing our crop of young horses and chose a good-looking filly whose mama I had ridden years back, before we turned her out with the mares to raise foals. She had been a nice horse, very solid and good to ride. Like her mother, this filly was blond, with broad shoulders, a large frame, and an amiable disposition, all traits of a good horse. I decided to name her Candy after one of our family’s friends, whose sunny disposition and pretty face always made me smile.

Our longtime cowboy Claude Tippets heard me calling the newest horse in our remuda Candy. He said, “Alan, that’s a really bad name for that horse.”

“What makes you say that?” I said. “Didn’t know a bad name made a bad horse.”

“It’s too pretty a name. That filly can’t carry a name like that and carry you at the same time. She’ll die.”

Maybe Claude was losing it. Next he’d be telling me to keep salt in my chaps to throw over my shoulder. I shrugged. “Well, we’ll see about that.”

“Nope, she won’t live. Ya named her wrong,” he insisted. “She should be called Squaw Piss.”

If I had seen a crystal ball sitting on the corral post maybe I would have changed her name, even to Squaw Piss, but I didn’t, so she remained Candy, and Candy remained sweet with one exception. When I went to fetch her in the horse pasture, she’d nuzzle me and enjoy being petted. She remained cheerful while being saddled, but as soon as I’d get on her, she’d put her head down and go to bucking. She couldn’t buck very hard, so she never bucked me off, but when the cycle started, I had a hard time getting her to stop. I figured she was one of those young horses that had to go through the bucking phase. Eventually I’d just ride her out of it, so I kept riding her in an effort to do that.

She still hadn’t ditched her habit the day I saddled her for a pleasure ride. The summer rains had spit-shined the ranch and persuaded grass to grow, especially in the big floodwater draw that ran past headquarters in the east pasture. An inviting blanket of green covered its normally dry dirt bottom. About a mile and half down, the draw spread out into a big hole, maybe a hundred yards long and fifty yards wide, that remained bone dry until the summer rains filled it. Then it turned into a twelve-foot-deep water hole. I thought we’d go check it out, then ride through the pasture.

We hadn’t even left the corral yet when Candy went to bucking. When I got on her she bucked. When we went out the gates she bucked. When we rode through the draw she bucked. Each time, she’d buck a few jumps, and I’d get her pulled up and scold her either verbally or with a little bit of corporal punishment—a spur, a slap of the reins—enough to let her know she was misbehaving. This went on and on as we progressed down the draw. I thought she’d get her head up and start paying attention to the work we were doing, which was nothing more than me riding her trying to enjoy the scenery. But no. She had to buck.

By the time we arrived at the water hole, we were hot and downright irritated with each other. The waterline had edged up as far as it could go without spilling onto the land. The calm water invited us to cool our tempers and wash the sweat off. I decided we would go for a swim. Since a horse can’t buck in water, at least that nonsense would end for a bit. I rode Candy to the edge of the water, but she refused to put her feet in. I spurred her. She turned left. I turned her back and spurred her again. She turned right. That darn horse was doing everything possible to avoid the water. This was ridiculous. I grabbed the get-down rope with its big cotton knot at the end, swung it with one hand, and popped her a good one on the hip.