Wild About Horses

by Lawrence Scanlan

  Dick and Adele became active in the Eglinton Hunt Club and then the Pony Club. The latter was a British invention designed to teach children riding skills despite the onslaught of mechanization after the First World War. Like the Boy Scout movement, another British idea, it spread all over the world.

  A Canadian colonel launched its counterpart in Canada in 1934, then passed the reins on to Adele in 1939 when he went off to war. She became district commissioner of the Pony Club of Canada and held that position for ten years. Membership then cost 75 cents a year, and a Pony Club button set you back another seventy-five pennies. Most children brought their own ponies, but some just hung around, drawn to the ponies like ants to honey.

  One such boy was named Brian Murray. “I’d lose sleep over that boy,” Adele recalls. “During the war the Pony Club put on a horse show in Riverdale Park, a fund-raiser for the war effort. He had no mount, but he was so keen. He’d sit on the fence, pat my friend’s pony, hold him if asked. His father was blind, his mother took in washing but he had a paper route. And that was the only reason he was able to afford the $1.50 and join the Pony Club. Eventually, the Pony Club moved to new headquarters, but the bus would only go so far and Brian would have to walk at least a mile and a half. In winter we’d hold meetings at someone’s house. Each kid paid $.25 toward cocoa and cookies, and we’d have speakers — vets, blacksmiths — lectures on stable management, films. That boy just soaked it all up. But was it right, I thought to myself, to encourage his interest in horses?”

  Years later Adele got her answer in the mail. Someone sent her a clipping from the Racing Form — a story from the U.S. about a leading trainer. Brian Murray. He had started by walking “hots” (cooling down horses after workouts) at Woodbine Race Track in Toronto and bandaging horses. An owner was going to put down a crippled horse, but young Murray nursed him back to health and won, said Rockwell, “more money than he had ever seen in his life.” The Racing Form article confirmed that his dream of a life with horses had been fulfilled; the dream had begun with ponies.

  The Pony Club, for Adele and for all her little charges, was a way of life. Jim Elder, Norman Elder and Tom Gayford — Olympic or Pan American Games champions all — took instruction as boys from Dick and Adele. Likewise, in the United States the Pony Club has long been a launching pad for champions. The eventer Bruce Davidson, dressage rider Robert Dover, show jumpers Tim Grubb and Michael Matz all cut their teeth in the Pony Club.

  The pony taught them their riding manners, and clearly taught them well. Like the Rockwells, Jim Elder was born into the horse world. A pony named Madelaine, a skewbald Shetland-Welsh cross twelve hands high, introduced the boy to walk, trot and canter.

  Elder remembers the pony and the woman who taught him to ride that pony. His farm is only a few minutes’ drive from the Rockwell farm. Perched on the edge of his couch before a great fieldstone hearth, Elder ranged over his life story, moving back and forth in time. Still trim, he told some stories to make a point, others to make me laugh, some because he could not resist. His is a life peppered with horses and when this man talks horses the words cannot come fast enough.

  “The Don Valley was our playground then. It was a wonderful valley with dense woods. This would have been the late 1940s and 1950s. Those were the Pony Club days, and Adele would give us lessons. She just loved the sport and passed it on. She and Dick became the grand old mom and dad of ponies. We’d have pony shows and Adele would give each of us an opportunity to run the show and do each job. My strongest friends are from those days, and most of us are still riding or still involved with horses.”

  When Elder got too big for Madelaine, he went on to ride horses and fashioned a sometimes glorious and ofttimes challenging life in the saddle. He rode in the hunt, played polo and helped set up the Toronto Polo Club. His souvenirs of a life in the saddle include two broken backs (one from steeple-chasing and one from schooling a horse) and several Olympic medals. My sense is that he rode out of the same gleefulness he took to riding his twelve-hand pony, a pure delight he still seems to possess.

  By the late 1950s, the Rockwells were raising Welsh ponies. Too many Pony Club kids were riding unsuitable and badly trained mounts.

  The first pony they entered in the Welsh class, a new class at the 1958 Royal Winter Fair in Toronto, was a pony named Ardmore Gretton Sunlight, from the newly registered Ardmore Stud Farm of Adele and Dick Rockwell. “She was supreme champion,” Dick recalled, “and she showed against all the mares and all the stallions. They pinned this three-foot-high ribbon on her — she had to lean to one side to avoid stepping on it. When we got her home she came down the ramp of the horse van and surveyed the territory as if she were queen. She had been gentle and retiring, but from that day on she was the boss, the lead pony in the paddock.”

  9.3 If polo ponies and cow ponies can be this imposing, when is a pony no longer a pony but a horse? (photo credit 9.3)

  Then came Ardmore Flyaway. If ponies have reputations for mischief, blame him and others like him. One day Dick looked outside and saw that the stallion was not alone in his paddock, where he should have been, but on his way to the next field with the mares. Dick put the pony back in his paddock, then went inside the house and accused Adele of forgetting to close the gate. Certainly not, replied Adele, who looked outside to see Flyaway once again about to enjoy mare company. Now it was her turn to accuse Dick. But their mutual indignation turned to wonder as they both watched: Flyaway deftly applied his hind end to the fence, and each time he did so the slide on the gate moved. Now and then he would interrupt proceedings to inspect the bolt. It took five or six minutes, but he got the gate open.

  Eventually, the Rockwells had to deploy both vertical and horizontal controls on Flyaway’s stall after he let himself out (using a similar tactic as before) to engage another stallion named George in battle. During the skirmish Flyaway had cut George’s lip and by the time the two were separated, Flyaway — a pure-white Welsh pony — was covered in George’s blood.

  When not making trouble, Flyaway was winning ribbons all over North America. Flyaway is the only pony to have been named grand champion four times at the Royal Winter Fair. For five years he was the model North American champion at the National Welsh Pony Show in Devon, Pennsylvania. He sired half the champions whose ribbons adorn the pink room. Flyaway finally died in the spring of 1997, at the age of thirty-seven.

  Thus do old ponies sometimes earn gracious retirements.

  In October 1989, I was in southwestern Germany, among a small group of Canadians who were guests of a prominent German horseman. He and his wife lived rather splendidly in a country estate outside Stuttgart.

  The hospitality, I remember, was both warm and formal. The elegant six-course dinner was served by a fleet of young men from the Lufthansa catering service, as tall and sleek as dressage horses. They kept our glasses filled with champagne or distinctive Swabian wines made from grapes grown on hillsides in Stuttgart itself, the bottles wrapped neatly in stiff white linen.

  As the meal ended, our host exited the dinner table. Some minutes later we were called to the foyer, and there, wide-eyed and magnificent, stood the newest addition to the stable — a two-year-old colt pawing the Turkish rug at his feet and showing signs of agitation. I have no idea why the horseman felt compelled to bring the horse inside the house. Eccentric pride, I suppose.

  We later toured the barn, where more fine horses were kept. Some were led out and run by grooms up and down stone walkways that we might see their fine action and conformation. But in one stall stood something immovable and gray, bearded, shaggy and ancient. He looked like a pony from a fable, a pack pony for elves and dwarves.

  Here stood the childhood pony of our hostess, a fine dressage rider. She had felt too much affection for the pony to sell him when she had grown too big to ride him (likely three decades beforehand) or to put him down when he was beyond being ridden by anyone.

  She had not forgotten the pony, once a nimble fellow and almos
t too much to handle. Nor should we.

  Old western films often ended with a resonant bugle call — music to the ears of beset pioneers, their wagons drawn in a circle against Indians. The blue troopers gave chase to the painted ponies, closed in, and the warriors bit the dust.

  The historical facts are otherwise.

  Wagons never circled. And if the warriors chose to make a run for it, they almost always escaped; it was the troopers’ horses who ate the dust. The scrubby little Indian ponies were exceedingly fast; the troopers’ mounts were large, comparatively slow and heavily burdened.

  Cavalry mounts typically stood sixteen hands high and weighed up to twelve hundred pounds. Half Thoroughbred, one-quarter draft horse and one-quarter mixed saddle stock, they were bred to carry a well-armed, self-sufficient soldier on long treks. Each horse had to bear the heavy saddle and the soldier in it, plus his weapons and ammunition, mess kit, canteen and rations, overcoat, blanket and bedsheet, along with the horse’s halter, picket rope, feed bag and oats.

  The typical Indian pony, on the other hand, averaged a little under fourteen hands and weighed about seven hundred pounds. The pony usually possessed a large head and little feet, heavy shoulders and hips and fine, strong limbs. The conformation, to pioneer eyes, was not the best, but the pony was sturdy and capable of great feats of endurance. His rider traveled light, with only a bridle and saddle pad, weapons, a small robe and a little dried meat.

  And so it was that the “hammer-headed” painted pony, called a “cayuse” or “squaw horse” by scornful pioneers, almost always outdistanced the cavalry. Colonel de Trobriand, a cavalry officer on the plains, was clearly impressed. “The Indian pony without stopping,” he wrote in 1867, “can cover a distance of from sixty to eighty miles between sunrise and sunset, while most of our horses are tired out at the end of thirty or forty miles.” He found that “the movement of Indian horsemen is lighter, swifter and longer range than that of our cavalry, which means that they always get away from us.”

  By the end of the nineteenth century, warriors became farmers and ponies took a turn at the plow. Too light for the task, painted pony mares were bred to Morgans and Percherons, and soon enough tribal horses looked like cavalry remounts.

  But in an even greater irony, the ponies who could deliver Indians from the hands of the white man could also, it turned out, deliver the white man’s mail.

  On April 3, 1860, while an animated crowd looked on, a bay mare left Pony Express headquarters in St. Joseph, Missouri, to begin the first mad dash across the continent. History does not record the pony’s name, only that she was “bright,” but she must have been eager to get under way. Hawkers and souvenir hunters, aware of what a historic — and potentially profitable — occasion this was, had been plucking hair from her tail to make rings and watch chains they hoped later to sell.

  The freight company founders who launched the express service had seen a clear need. In the absence of a crosscountry stagecoach line, it fell to pioneers to carry mail from one coast to another. When President William Henry Harrison died in 1841, four months elapsed before Californians got the news.

  Pony Express mounts — usually, they were mustangs rounded up on the plains or ponies purchased from tribal owners — were small (fourteen hands or less) and often weighed eight hundred to a thousand pounds. The riders, short and wiry, about the size of jockeys, were astonishingly young — under eighteen years of age and some only fifteen. The company (headed up by stalwart Christians) made them swear never to drink to excess, curse or gamble, never to treat the animals cruelly and never to act other than as gentlemen. Anyone who broke the oath risked being fired without pay.

  These young men had names that belonged in novels of the Old West: Sawed Off Cumbo, Deadwood Dick, Yank Little, and sometimes they went by only one name — such as Whipsaw or Boston.

  One rider’s name was Johnny Frye, and if you believe the tale that follows, then thanks to Johnny we have doughnuts. Frye rode a stretch between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Seneca, Kansas, and had made something of a name for himself as a jockey at local races. Several young women had noticed him and would wait for him along the way with cookies and cakes that he would grab as he raced by. But his admirers saw how he struggled to hold the desserts in one hand and to hand-ride (pump the reins) with the other. Why not, one young lady reasoned, put a hole in the middle of her baked offering? That way Johnny could slide a thumb through it, lean forward for a bite and still keep both hands on the reins.

  9.4 Pony Express: not the first courier service in history but easily the most celebrated. (photo credit 9.4)

  Whatever Pony Express couriers ate, they took it on the fly. Riders changed horses every ten or twenty miles, carried no more than twenty pounds of mail and sometimes had to gallop 75 to 125 miles a day. The aim was to get the mail pouch — or mochila, as the Spanish called it — from St. Joseph to Sacramento, California — more than two thousand miles away — in eleven days. At some 153 stations along the way, the pouch would be hurriedly transferred from one exhausted horse and rider to a fresh team, and away. The names of some stations, such as Fort Laramie and Carson City, still sound familiar. Riders earned up to $125 a month and the cost of mailing a single letter was $5 — a lot of money then.

  Despite the oath never to mistreat ponies, riders often rode for their lives and the ponies paid the price. There were the usual obstacles — deserts to cross, dust storms, rainstorms and blizzards, snowy mountain passes, clouds of biting insects, rattlesnakes, grizzly bears and cougars and, of course, war parties with designs on the Express pony and/or the rider’s scalp. One rider, a young man named Joseph Wintle, was chased for many miles before he finally reached the relay station, where his pursuers gave up. The poor pony who had saved his life, however, died on the spot.

  The danger along the road was often great, but so was the savvy of the riders. J. G. Kelly once took the mochila from another rider who had been shot by Indians and died shortly after reaching the station. But at Quaking Asp Grove, where his colleague had caught a bullet, Kelly put his trust in the horse: he took his rifle in both hands, dropped his reins on the horse’s neck and sent him at a gallop through the pass. The trail was crooked, two miles long and only wide enough for a horse to pass through — a perfect place for an ambush. Kelly stopped only once — at the top of a hill to let his horse rest — and when he spied movement in the bushes he kept firing until it stopped, then he sped on. He made it, but soldiers who came through that same pass a few days later did not.

  A lame or indifferent mount might have cost a rider his life, or many other lives, especially when towns under siege needed Pony Express riders both to deliver the mail and to fetch the cavalry. In Nevada in 1860, the Pah Utes around Pyramid Lake were blamed in a murder; half the posse sent to punish them were killed in an ambush. The fearful citizens of Virginia City converged in a stone house, and waited for the attack they believed was imminent. Those in nearby Carson City converted a hotel into a fort and likewise prepared for war. Help would only come if the Pony Express could get through.

  When “Pony Bob” Haslam arrived in Carson City, he found every available Express pony out with the doomed posse. He fed his poor mount and coaxed another seventy-five miles out of him, but the rider at the next relay station was too frightened of the Pah Utes and refused to carry the mail. Pony Bob galloped on, and by the time he reached Cold Spring he had gone 190 miles without a rest. The station at Cold Spring had been attacked, its keeper killed and all the horses taken. After a rest of only eight hours, pony and rider sped on. By the end of his marathon ride, Pony Bob had gone 380 miles and had been in the saddle almost continuously for thirty-six hours. Some may find it odd that we remember the name of Pony Bob but none of the extraordinary ponies who rode so long and so hard.

  The record for long-distance riding among Pony Express riders, though, was claimed by William Frederick Cody, known later as Buffalo Bill. Young William started riding for the Express when he was fifteen. Th
e son of a stagecoach driver in Iowa, he was by that time already a fine rider. Impatient with the short, safe runs he was assigned in the beginning, he yearned for the longer, riskier rides. He got his wish: the sometimes deadly 116-mile Wyoming run from Red Buttes to Three Crossings.

  On one occasion, Cody arrived to find his replacement dead, so he rode another pony west and then other ponies all the way back east again — a virtual nonstop dash of 384 miles and just a shade longer than Pony Bob’s epic ride.

  By the time he was hired by the Kansas Pacific Railway to supply meat to its construction crews (he killed five thousand buffalo in eighteen months), Cody had made a name for himself. The legend of Buffalo Bill was born. His horse (called Lucrezia Borgia after a member of the Renaissance family whose name became synonymous with political ruthlessness) shared at least some of that fame.

  Buffalo Bill soon discovered he could make a handsome living with his Wild West shows — entertainments put on in arenas for eastern folk wanting a taste of the Old West. Bill Cody simply played himself, or perhaps a grander version of himself.

  From the 1880s until the early 1930s, these touring circuslike shows featured mock battles between white actors dressed as U.S. Cavalry and Indian actors in full headdress; displays of horsemanship; and, of course, wagon trains under attack. But because the arenas were round and action was what the crowds wanted, the wagons moved in a circle. Film directors saw this and almost every bad western since has had wagons circling. As far as I can determine, no wagon master ever uttered the famous words “Circle the wagons!”

  9.5 Buffalo Bill: his wild west shows ensured his own fame and helped perpetuate the cowboy legend. (photo credit 9.5)