Dante of the Maury River

by Gigi Amateau

  Best I could tell, the last of the show visitors pulled out of the Maury River Stables long about three o’clock. The students gave us our sweet feed in the paddocks, and then they left, too. We were in the field but for a lick when Daisy came trotting over to me in a huff, holding her head high in the air. Here comes another lecture on leadership, I thought.

  She eyed the new horse. “I’ve been observing the Belgian. Macadoo could take the geldings over anytime if he really wanted.”

  “But he won’t. He’s too busy missing his old life. Spends his nights wishing on stars, not picking fights,” I told her.

  I looked around at the school horses and the boarders. All appeared calm and right in our pasture. Earlier, Ashley had emptied out the drinking tub, cleaned it, and filled it with cool, clear water. By morning, we would drink it dry.

  Just minutes before turnout, Stu had chucked a couple of square bales into the field. No interlopers from the mountains — no deer, no coyotes, no bobcats. Not a stray skunk in the field. No loose children. No horses fighting.

  All is well, I said to myself.

  I accounted for Macadoo up at the boulder, grazing and wishing like he liked to do. I noticed that Gwen, on the mare side of the fence, always stayed close by him. The boarded ones — Charlie, Cowboy, and Jake — were dirtying up the water bin already.

  All geldings present and safe.

  Except for Napoleon.

  The Shetland was missing.

  I scouted the field. He was not behind the cedar. Not on the great boulder, where he often stood to admire the view. I scanned the horizon and searched my memory. Stu had turned Napoleon out last, after giving us hay. Last I remembered was seeing his little legs trotting toward dinner.

  One of my charges gone. Missing on my turn at the top.

  I raced around the pasture whinnying. Angry that he was hiding from me. Afraid, when I couldn’t smell or see or hear him. “Napoleon! Napoleon! Come out, now!” I commanded. Nothing.

  I paced alongside the mare field and whinnied for everyone to join me at the fence. Soon, all had come together. Mares and geldings, horses and ponies, and the boarders, too.

  “Who saw him last?” I wanted to know.

  The Belgian spoke up. “Earlier, he was near the back fence, grazing alone.”

  “Yes, I was nearby for a while. Then I got thirsty,” said Jake. “But that was a while ago.”

  “Search this field,” I ordered Macadoo. “Go to the gate and call for help,” I told the boarders, for we needed everyone.

  “Whinnying won’t do any good,” said Cowboy. “The truck is gone. Stu is gone. Mrs. Maiden is, too.”

  I pinned my ears. “I don’t care. Get down there.”

  Cowboy trotted off. Jake and Charlie followed him.

  Just then, I heard Macadoo squealing at the back of the field, closest to the Maury River. “Look! A break right here in the electric fence.”

  “He went through it,” I said.

  Then, for assurance that no other gelding would get the same idea that Napoleon evidently had, I bared my teeth and said, “You’re all forbidden to leave this field.”

  The restless mares called us over for news of the Shetland.

  “He’s gone,” I told them. “Toward the river.”

  “I’ll go after him. I know the mountain,” said Macadoo.

  “I know the mountain, too,” Gwen said. “I’ll come with you.”

  Daisy interrupted. “The Thoroughbred will go. The Shetland trusts him. Only the ancestors know why, but Napoleon loves Dante.”

  Macadoo challenged her. “With all respect, Daisy, I’ve spent my life in the splendid mountains.” He snorted toward me. “That soft horse has spent his life running in circles. He’s hardly been out of this pasture. If you send him, I’ll soon be out tracking the forest for the both of them.”

  Daisy pinned her ears at the Belgian, but Gwen defended him. “Mac is right about this, Daisy, and you know it. You’re mistaken to send Dante.”

  Daisy pawed at the ground. Her word was final.

  I pawed at the ground, too. Was I afraid? You bet. Afraid I’d never find Napoleon. Afraid Macadoo and Gwen were right about me. But I understood what Daisy was doing. She was giving me an opportunity to step up and be a leader who ruled by example.

  “Boarders, keep calling for help,” I ordered.

  Daisy brought us all together. “We can’t wait around for Mrs. Maiden. There’s much to fear in the night, and our Napoleon is out there alone.”

  Macadoo whickered. “He’s tough, Daisy. Haven’t you heard Claire call him a demon pony? Coyotes would be crazy to mess with Napoleon.” Macadoo tried to reassure everyone.

  Gwen spoke softly. “Napoleon’s not afraid of coyotes.”

  I had to admit that as his friend, I didn’t know the pony feared a single thing on earth. “What is he afraid of ?” I asked.

  The Hanoverian lowered her head. Quietly, so that only the school horses could hear, she said, “He’s afraid of the dark.”

  Daisy whickered at me. “He’s always with you the minute the sun sets, isn’t he? Always nearby,” she said.

  I had to agree. “All night he stands so close to me, up underfoot. I’ve often teased that he wasn’t weaned properly, but I reckon it’s no joke.”

  “He feels safe when he’s near you,” Gwen said.

  I snorted my disbelief. “But why would a pony be afraid of the dark?”

  Daisy spoke up. “I will tell you a story that my dam told me when I was a filly, but we must be quick. We’re losing daylight.”

  I whinnied for her to get on with it.

  “Once, on an island far away from here, across the ocean”— Daisy interrupted herself to explain —“an ocean is a great body of water, much, much larger and deeper and fiercer than the Maury River, or any river you could imagine.”

  “I’ve seen the ocean many times,” said Gwen. “I grew up on an island in the ocean. Called Manhattan.”

  “Go on, Daisy,” I urged her.

  “Yes, well, you see, the Shetland’s breed originated in the Kingdom of Scotland, mine in the Principality of Wales. Both of our native lands are cold, barren, windy places. One thing the Shetland Isles do have is mountains. Mountains with caves and tunnels. Deep, dark narrow doorways with openings enough that only a small pony can get through. There was a time when these small, devilish ponies occupied every cave of the Shetland Isles, hundreds, thousands of them peering out from burrows and hollows. Then came the dark years.”

  “What happened to the Shetlands then?” I asked. Everyone crowded closer to the fence line to hear.

  Daisy hesitated, as if she couldn’t bear to go further. “One day, men came to capture the diminutive horses. Most all of the ponies were stolen from the mountains, captured, blinded, and sent deep into the earth to serve the greed of man, pulling out riches from the coal mines. The ponies started out living in the earth and then were forced to stay there, many never to see the light of day.”

  “But what has all this to do with Napoleon?” I asked. “That all happened a long time ago.”

  “Not as far back as you might imagine. The ancestors that were subjected to this abuse live on in the Shetlands of today. It will take more than a hundred years over for the breed to heal from such suffering and oppression.”

  “But I don’t understand,” I said. “No one here would ever hurt him. What is he afraid of ?”

  Macadoo uncharacteristically lashed out at me. “Do you even hear yourself ? No one wants to hurt you, either, but all you do is react to the harm that’s been caused to you in the past. How can you possibly not understand?”

  “Napoleon was never in the mines himself. That’s all I meant,” I said.

  Daisy tried to explain. “Dante, the fear of the dark is in his blood. For many generations, the grands and greats of Napoleon’s family lived underground in coal tunnels. Even Mrs. Maiden has learned to keep him in the sunshine. She doesn’t even try to put a fly mask on him or co
ver his face. What she knows without knowing why is that he needs light at all times. Why do you think the barn is never dark? Napoleon colics when all the lights are out. So, you see? We all have bloodlines, for better or worse.”

  Daisy’s story stunned all of us into silence, and I did finally understand. My own ancestry, my breeding, made me fleet of foot, and the Belgian’s made him strong in back. The Shetland’s made him fear the dark, and night was coming.

  “Now, hurry,” Daisy urged me. “You’re in the most important race of your life. A race against the sun. Napoleon is small and vulnerable out there alone and very likely afraid. You know something of him now that few outside of his own breed will ever understand. Bring him home.”

  My fieldmates were counting on me. Napoleon was counting on me.

  If I had doubted it before then, all doubt was erased. I loved the Shetland and would do anything for him, including swallowing my pride to ask a draft horse for help. “Macadoo, you’re right. I don’t know Saddle Mountain. Where do I start?” I asked the Belgian.

  He pawed at the ground. “Use your ears. Use your nostrils. Those whiskers you won’t let anyone trim? You’ll need those, too.”

  The boarders took up their posts. So did the mares.

  Macadoo, Gwen, and Daisy looked to me.

  “I’ll find our pony. I won’t come back until he’s found and safe,” I promised.

  The lick of the problem before me was this: all the other Maury River Stables horses had experience on the trail. They knew the river and the mountain.

  Not me.

  Except for the unorthodox hours I had spent in the Willis River with Filipia, my entire life up to that moment had been lived in confinement, of one fashion or another. A stall, a ring, a track, a trailer. Walls brought me comfort. A fence was as natural to me as the moon and the stars.

  I had no skills, no knowledge, no nothing that I needed for this search-and-rescue mission.

  Plus, plenty of time had passed since anyone had believed in me, and I felt a bit rusty as to how to handle that.

  Though what choice did I have but to go forward?

  Napoleon’s stubbly, well-insulated body had plowed through the loose electric fence and brought it down. I stepped over the cold fence ribbon and started down the path toward the Maury River. Mrs. Maiden and her students used this path with school horses to access the river for late-summer swims and to reach Saddle Mountain all year long. The trail was only wide enough for a single horse to pass. The grass alongside me had gone to seed, but it still stood long and dragged across my forelegs.

  A bright, early star sparkled high in the sky, sitting below a shard of daylight moon. Opposing each other in the sky, the moon and sun hurried me along my way. Soon, one would take over and the other would take off.

  The riding trail ended at the north bank of the Maury, which was running shallow that fall. I waded on into the riverbed, and my hooves sank down into the soft silt. The exposed pebbles and rocks allowed me to pick my way across. The water calmed me and helped me to focus. I paused and let myself acclimate to the river. I needed to think and to breathe.

  So far, Napoleon was nowhere to be seen or heard or smelled. Not on the banks of the Maury and not within eyesight or earshot. Only a few little wrens scavenged along the river’s edge, but no trace of a pony.

  Right then, I thought about turning back, but behind me I heard Macadoo whinnying. “Remember: ears, nose, whiskers! We’re with you, Dante!”

  The single star hanging in the sky glimmered brighter, and I thought I’d best keep moving, like the Belgian suggested. No time for fear and no time for a swim.

  My prize for crossing the Maury was spotting a ferocious tangle of teeny-tiny hoofprints left on the muddy south bank.

  I whinnied and whickered and whinnied again.

  Nothing.

  A few steps out of the river and the ground turned hard and dry, and it became impossible to track the Shetland any farther. Three trails branched out at my feet. One south. One east. One west. I figured that with my luck, the pony had wandered off into the deepest hidden crevice of the mountain’s forest, so I took the southerly route down instead of the trails flanking east and west that went up and around toward the bald, exposed peak.

  Fortunately, Mrs. Maiden and Stu kept the paths around Saddle Mountain navigable and easy to see with good footing. The mountain had long ago been logged. Back then, dirt roads had been cut to allow in trucks and dozers to seize the biggest trees. Breeds like Macadoo’s would have done such work. Although the Belgian and I often butted heads, I’ll admit that right then I closed my eyes and wished him with me, but I needed to prove to the herd that they could count on me.

  Around the bend, I heard autumn leaves crunching and fallen limbs snapping. I dropped my head to sniff the path and, lo and behold, picked up a fairly fresh scent of hay and sweet feed. Napoleon for sure, I figured.

  My whiskers came in handy, just as Macadoo had predicted they would. I sensed a subtle motion in the ground up ahead of me, so I hurried down the hill toward the sounds and vibrations and smells.

  Then, I stopped dead. Because I knew if I didn’t make the right decision, I might end up that way myself, and Napoleon might, too.

  Oh, I saw the little fellow, all right. Not more than a tall tree’s distance away. Ears pinned back and doing all he could to make himself invisible and fierce at the same time.

  Trouble was, something stood between us. Not a beaver nor a bobcat. Not a coyote nor a fox.

  The something was a black bear. By the looks of her, easily outweighing Napoleon. As hefty a pony as he was, this bear had him beat by at least a body. Maybe more.

  Let me explain exactly how a horse who’s never been on a mountain or in a forest, never explored a wild piece of earth, knows a bear when he sees one.

  For one, the absolute fear that started at the tip of my ears and shot simultaneously to my eyes and my gut told me that whatever that critter was, posturing on its hind legs there between the Shetland and me, well, it was not my friend.

  Horses are, as everybody knows, genetically inclined to make one of two choices when faced with a scary, unknown thing: fight or flee. And I couldn’t fly away, even though that’s what I was best at. Not without the Shetland.

  Now, I had never faced a fight in my life. Not counting the pretending that Covert and I used to do at Edensway, and not counting all the dirty kicking and pushing and shoving that went on at the track. I could give as good as I got in my racing days, but taking up with a bear on its home turf was an entirely different test. I found a little courage and made a big diversion.

  First things first. I whinnied with everything I had to draw the bear’s attention off Napoleon. A high, shrill whinny carried a message to the Shetland: “Get to the river. Get home.”

  Napoleon’s one smart little guy. He didn’t bother with salutations or formalities, but took advantage of the confusion.

  “She’s quite a crabbit, that bear. Lovely in her own way, but contrary,” Napoleon cautioned as he galloped right past me.

  I hoped to gain him enough time to reach home.

  Now, I could see the bear had four legs — not altogether unlike mine, but shorter and stumpier. At present, she was pawing with two and standing on the other two. And further, I deduced that if I ran faster on four legs than two, then so did Mrs. Bear.

  If I could keep the angry beast upright for as long as possible, Napoleon might get down the mountain and across the Maury. So I reared up, too, and that made me appear to grow at least a pony’s length taller than that bear.

  Just then, two little balls of black fur came rolling and tumbling out of the forest, down the bluff. The bear cubs — I admit they were cute — had left their hiding place to come see about all the fuss. I do know a thing or two about protective dams. Cute as they were, the little cubs provided two excellent reasons for their mother to fight to the death. She let out a roar that smelled like trout and sounded like thunder.

  A gra
velly growl of my own was rearing to get out. I let it fly and struck out at the bear. Believe me, she struck back. We danced around that mountain together, both of us on two feet, until I knew I had to quit fighting and start flying. A bear, I learned in an up-close-and-personal way, has got two things that a horse hasn’t: sharp claws and nasty, sharp teeth. I never had liked pointy things. The time had come to flee.

  I prayed Napoleon had safely reached home. The bear was throwing one heck of a hissy-tissy fit, and I couldn’t hold her off any longer. I didn’t know I had it in me to whip around in a spin worthy of Daisy, but that’s what I did, and I retraced my steps at racing speed. Splits that would’ve astonished old Gary.

  The bear proved herself a grand runner. She gave a contest, all right. On the sunny side, I was as tickled as teasel to know that I could still move like lightning.

  I didn’t glance back once because I didn’t need to. Her hot breath panted at my hind end so close that I used her exhale for fuel in getting to that extra gear and then some. On the gallop back to the field, I used my large heart for the purpose to which it was most familiar — working with oxygen, and lots of it. I burned along the old logging trail — hooves afire — and sent a covey of quail and a rafter of wild turkey scurrying down into a ravine to get out of my path. Not a moment for dillydallying.

  I hit the Maury River only about six lengths ahead of Mama Bear. I learned two more things before the chase was over. Bears can run fast. And I can run faster.

  Truly, sixty lengths would not have been a comfortable enough win for me. I tore across the Maury in about four strides. Left that bear on the south bank, glowering at me to come back and fight. By the time I picked up the trail leading to the gelding field, I was weaving around, breathing hard. I slowed to a trot, praying little Napoleon would be there to greet me.

  As our pasture came into view, I recognized him standing there on top of the gray boulder that jutted out of the ground. It was too dark to tell a buzzard from a hawk, but I knew it was him standing guard. He started whinnying a greeting like I’d been gone for way too long.