San Domingo: The Medicine Hat Stallion

by Marguerite Henry

  “Did he say yes?”

  With firm assurance Mrs. Lundy smiled. “He didn’t say no.”

  • • •

  Off into the ocean of grass the three dogs—Dice, Blacken, and Penny—led the way, tails waving in a frenzy of bliss.

  It was a day of sun and sparkle. A skim of snow had fallen the night before, washing sage and buffalo grass. It seemed as if the world had been swept clean for their holiday. The sun warmed their backs, the wind blew for their pleasure. They sucked it deep into their lungs. Swinging along bareback on Domingo, following the little man on Choctaw, seemed as wondrous to Peter as riding tandem with the Lord beside the still waters of Rawhide Creek.

  Peter trotted up and glanced sidelong at Brislawn. “Why, he’s almost all hat!” he noted in alarm. “A big wind could blow him clean through a house, like he was a straw.” Under the brim of his hat the man’s eyes were busy, scanning the buttes far distant and the game trails close by.

  Watching him, Peter reasoned, “Three weeks ago he saved my life. Now it’s my turn to help him.” His mind went skipping for ideas; suddenly his voice clamored for attention.

  “Brisley . . . sir . . . could we, I mean Domingo and me . . . could we ride out with you tomorrow?”

  The man was singing lustily:

  “Oh, I was born in Ireland

  One night when I was young . . .”

  The rest of the words turned into humming as if to ready an answer.

  Peter tried again, more urgently. “Sir! I could set up your tripod and plane table; I could be your recorder. And a prospector taught me how to throw a diamond hitch; I could pack all your gear. And I could make camp and cook rice without its boiling over. And I could . . .”

  The humming stopped. Penny, Blacken, and Dice had struck rabbit scent and were yapping in pursuit.

  Brislawn twisted half around in his saddle. “Hound music is prettier’n man’s any day, ain’t it?” Then looking straight at Peter he said, “I’m honorated by yer wanting to come. If we both was five year older, or even two, I’d snap up yer offer quick as an eye wink.”

  “But I feel old, Brisley. And you yourself told Pa I was quicker’n any other boy my own age. And I’m strong!”

  “Yes, yes, I know. And besides bein’ old for yer years and quick, ye’re spunky as a dog with his first porcupine. ’Tain’t that at all, at all. It’s yer ma.”

  “My ma?”

  “Yup. She needs you until little Aileen can be the comfort you are.”

  Mr. Brislawn pulled up to a halt. “There’ll be a right time to go, son,” he said. “And you’ll know for certain when that time comes.”

  “How’ll I know?”

  A band of wild horses crowned a slope in the distance. Bugles and whinnies cross-fired over the plain.

  Mr. Brislawn paused, wanting to be sure Peter was listening. “Ever hear of a writin’ man, name of Cervantes?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Wa-al, my grandsire of County Donegal—he’s the one spelled his name O’Breaslain—he used to read to me from a book called Don Quixote which was writ by this feller Cervantes. I can recomember the best part, word for word.”

  “What was the best part?” Peter asked as the wild horses disappeared. “And why isn’t your name O’Breaslain anymore?”

  Mr. Brislawn chuckled. “As to yer last question, only way I can figger is my gran’ther dropped the ‘O’ in the ocean coming over.”

  “Maybe he wanted to be American in a hurry,” Peter suggested.

  “Could be just that. Now as to Don Quixote . . .” The little man’s voice changed to a high quavering, as if he were his own grandfather. “ ‘There’s a time for some things,’ ” he intoned, “ ‘and there’s a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.’ ”

  “But how will I know when it’s the time for great things?”

  “I’m a mystic, son, like all the Irish, and I prophesy you’ll know for dead certain when the time comes.”

  The two horses were pawing, growing restive, inching toward each other. Choctaw touched nostrils with Domingo, who let out a squeal in pretended fierceness. Then he sneezed in Choctaw’s face.

  Brislawn exploded with laughter. “They’re bored with our palaver, and spoilin’ for action.” He pointed to a golden eagle cleaving the sky. “Let’s fly!”

  With barely a touch the two mustangs struck off in unison, bolting through the rustly grass at a full gallop, catching up to the hounds still on the line of rabbit. The eagle soared over them, a winged pacesetter. Neither horse minded uneven ground, but went faster and faster and would not be headed. Domingo, enjoying himself, trumpeted to the heavens, frightening everything in his way. A pronghorn buck sent his harem of does dashing for safety in bounding leaps. A sage hen squawked skyward.

  Peter felt Domingo’s body springy beneath him, felt him turn on his speed to pass Choctaw. What did he know of politeness to a royal Irishman from County Donegal?

  Choctaw’s ears laced back. He lengthened his stride, galloping beat for beat with Domingo, up a swell of hill, over and down, up the next and down, up and over and down until at last Domingo sailed ahead and Brislawn pulled up, laughing, calling to Peter to swing his horse around.

  “Ho, ho, ho!” he cried. “I knew it! I knew it!”

  Peter turned back to join him. He was laughing, too, in sheer animal joy. He caught Brislawn’s excitement. “Knew what? Knew what?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes. I knew it! I knew it! Pure Spanish Barb! Pure Andaluz!”

  Peter hated to interrupt, to spoil the man’s triumph of knowing whatever it was he knew.

  “Son!” Mr. Brislawn cried. “Do you know what horse-god you’re riding?”

  “Is it Spanish? Is it Anda . . .?”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Andaluz. But more!” The words quickened. “When the Sioux let you keep Domingo, they knew the prize they were giving, but do you?”

  Peter laughed breathlessly. “Yes, yes, yes!” he exclaimed, copying Brislawn. “A faster horse there never was!”

  “But more, Peter! More!” He put Choctaw into a dogtrot. “That colored bonnet over his ears! He’s a Medicine Hat!”

  “He is?”

  “He is, he is! To Injuns he’s Big Medicine. Sacred. A god. Nothing can harm his rider. Not slingstone nor arrow. Not rifle ball nor lightnin’.”

  Peter grinned. “That ought to please Ma!”

  “And his ribs!”

  “What about his ribs?”

  Brislawn was chuckling with his secret knowledge. His eyes shone. “This, now, is something revolutionary. Only a few of us knows. Y’see, little Barb horses has but seventeen pairs o’ ribs, or less. That’s proof o’ their authentication. Big manmade horses, howsomever, has eighteen pairs!” He gave Choctaw a joyful smack on the rump. “I calls the big ones mantinkered horses, while Choctaw and Domingo—they’re puro Español. They can outlast the big ones any day.

  “And another thing . . .” He slowed Choctaw to a walk and his words came out slowly, thoughtfully. “And another thing,” he repeated, “their spinal colyums is one more proof of purity. Our Spanish Barbs has five lumbar vertebrae whilst the manmade tinkered horses has six.”

  “But, sir, how can you tell till they’re dead?”

  “Oh, there be other signs, too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Our horses has crescent-shaped nostrils and short backs, and the legs in front make an upside-down V, like both legs is growin’ outa the same hole. They’re not like some of the tinkered horses with a leg square on each corner, like a table.

  “I ’spected you’d like to see how ’tis, so last night I diagrammed you some pictures of the diff’rences between our purebloods and the man-made horse. You jes’ keep these for ref’rence.” And he handed over the sketches.

  Peter studied them as he rode, while Brislawn talked on like a wound-up toy. “Away west o’ here, I got me a homestead nestled in the Red Fox Hills a mile back from the Oregon Trail.
That’s where the Spanish Barb ponies and the red foxes run strong. Yup,” he added wistfully, “I got me a little shack there for my old days, and a root cellar that’s never seed a carrot or turnip.”

  “Bones in it?” Peter asked, grinning.

  “Yep, ribs and vertebrae of the loyal mustangs who’ve taken the long, long trail. Someday you’ll come there to see the proof o’ purity, and me.”

  He slid down from his horse and examined Domingo carefully. “Hmmm, round-boned from knees and hocks down. Forelegs straight as a rule. Chest deep. And legs V’d up nice. Why, this feller could go thirty mile and back the same day! He could walk flat-footed fifty mile in less’n ten hours!”

  Suddenly Mr. Brislawn let out a whistle. “Well, I’ll be hog-tied! I jest noticed your Barb is minus any chestnuts on the insides of his legs! Now you’ll allus be able to identify him!”

  “I could anyhow.”

  “Mebbe yes, mebbe no. Horse thieves’re mighty clever at paint-daubin’ and disguisin’ even a Medicine Hat.”

  Peter grew light-headed with excitement. He had always known Domingo was special, but to have a horseman like Brislawn say so made it gospel true.

  They stopped at noon beside an Indian moon calendar with rays of stones laid out on the earth like spokes of a wheel, the hub a buffalo skull. In friendly silence they ate their lunch, sharing corn bread and jerky with their dogs, and apples with their horses.

  On the quiet way home Brislawn suddenly said, “For my little Choctaw stallion that I caught in the Stairstep Mountains, and my mare Sweet Sioux, how would you like to trade Domingo?”

  The words spurted out like air from the bellows. “What kind of trading was this?” Peter thought. “God-high praise for Domingo, and then the offer! Most men scoff at the horse they want, call him a mangy rat or worse, figuring to buy him cheap.”

  Peter tried to let his mind play with the idea, the way Pa would. Sweet Sioux and Choctaw together could have many colts. Enough so he could have a band of his own, and they could travel to Laramie Peak and on to far places. In a leap of imagination he saw each colt and filly. He laughed outright. Not any of them, nor all of them together, could equal one San Domingo.

  Brislawn took the silence for indecision. “How ’bout if’n I throw in Billy-goat and Nanny?”

  Peter let out his breath in a long sigh. “Thank you, Brisley, sir, but y’see, Domingo and me are teamed up for life. He’s not for trading. Ever.”

  Stranger on Horseback

  IN THE middle of the night, with a full moon for his lantern, Robert O’Breaslain from County Donegal finished loading his mules, Ping and Pong; his stallion, Choctaw; and the burro, Jenny Lind. Everything, from delicate instruments to shovel and frying pan, was stowed in its precise place. Then he saddled up Sweet Sioux, tied his bedroll to the saddle, levered himself up, and was about to ride out when the door of the soddy flew open.

  Gabriel, braying his good-bye to Jenny Lind, had awakened the entire family. Peter and his father arrived at the corral almost at the same moment. Unable to hide his pleasure over the departure, Mr. Lundy was no longer miserly with his words.

  “G’morning, Brisl’n,” he said affably. “A strong east wind’s a-blowing; you should make twenty-thirty mile today, easy. I see you’re all rigged up and rarin’ to go.”

  “Yup. Time to eat my dust as a rover must.”

  The little man looked straight at Jethro Lundy, but the words were marked for Peter. “I prize the time I had here,” he said, “and I thank ye for your home and fireside.”

  Peter’s father made a stab at returning the politeness. “And I’m obliged to ye for teachin’ the boy to add, s’tract, and divide.”

  “’Twas easy, Lundy. The boy’s smarter’n a treeful of owls. But you learned him something I couldn’t.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I tell you, Lundy, yer old hatband would of split in two if’n you’d heard him turn down my tradin’ offer!”

  From behind them came a caterwauling of commotion—the goats butting each other; cats hissing and berating Dice; the rooster crowing to the dawn; Ping, Pong, and Jenny answering Gabriel with raucous brays.

  Peter felt a prickle of alarm. He watched his father’s face tighten, heard him out-bellow the animals to silence. Then the penetrating voice snapped: “Your offer, Brisl’n? What was it?”

  “Why, ’twas two of my pure-blooded Spanish Barb mustangs in trade for little Domingo. Y’see, Lundy, the lad was dead right to turn me down.”

  “How so?”

  “Without knowing, he felt that his stallion was sacred. Only a boy that Injuns loved would be allowed to keep a pure Medicine Hat. Lundy, you yerself know that most horses on the trail give out; you’ve got a corral full of ’em. But Domingo is ready any day for a fifty-mile ride!”

  Jethro Lundy’s eyes narrowed; the iris and pupil seemed to disappear until only slits of white showed. When he opened them again, his face was inscrutable. He started to speak, but the noise of the animals changed his mind. He strode off to the trading post without a good-bye.

  Brislawn slipped down from Sweet Sioux and went over to Peter. He put his hand lightly on the boy’s shoulder. “Once,” he said, “my brother Ferdie and me got into a wild stampede for gold in the Black Mountains.”

  Reaching into his pocket, he took out a piece of bone looking very white in the dawn, except for one end which shone with a gold capping. He pressed the trinket into Peter’s hand.

  Peter felt of its warm shininess.

  “It’s an elk’s tooth I found there in the foothills,” Brislawn explained with a chuckle. “I panned barely enough gold to fill it. You keep it as a wee meemento of the fun days we had. It’ll allus be worth a dollar; mebbe two.”

  Peter managed to nod his thanks.

  “Now, son, don’t watch me out of sight; that’s a strict Irish taboo.”

  Peter spoke his first words of the morning. “What would happen, Brisley, if I did?”

  “We’d never set eyes on each other again in this world.”

  “Then I won’t watch,” Peter said, swallowing his sorrow. The soddy door opened, and he heard Aileen crying out, “Brislee-eee!” and his mother calling, “God be with you.”

  He saw the little man climb aboard his mare, lift his hat in salute, and ride out. When all his caravan had fallen into place, following him, Peter closed the gate and turned his back, covering his face. Leaning against the fence, he listened until his ears hurt. Brislawn hadn’t said he could not listen. He waited a long time, waited for the ringing, rollicking words,

  “Oh, the Kings of Ireland . . .”

  But there was no song. None at all. Only the drumming hoofbeats dying away into nothing.

  With Mr. Brislawn gone, a stillness fell over the soddy, and didn’t lift with the days. Everyone seemed changed. Mrs. Lundy sang less, and laughed hardly ever. Aileen became cross and peevish. Grandma slumped in her chair by day and babbled in her sleep by night: “Oh, the Kings of Ireland, they gave me birth . . . Oh, the Kings . . .”

  Peter hid his feelings in silence. Always before, Mr. Lundy had been given to long, moody silences. Now Peter held his tongue, while his father stormed and howled and called Brislawn “that disputatious, interferin’ Irish disrupter of homes.”

  One day when the father could bear the boy’s stillness no longer, he sent him off on the early stage to Fort Laramie, twelve miles away. His errand was to deposit some orders at the post office there, and to bring back two heavy steel drills and a tool for removing wagon tire bolts. Peter wondered whether this was the time to run away; he’d think about it during the trip. But without Domingo, what fun would there be? And how would he travel?

  With the mail and eight silver dollars in his pocket he boarded the stage, curiously noting a horseman who stayed behind at the trading post. He was not bullwhacker nor herder nor outrider. He looked like an important man from the United States, and he sat a tall, rangy Thoroughbred that Brislawn would have called a man-tinkered
horse. Peter thought about Brislawn as he wedged in between his fellow passengers, figuring where he might be by now, and wondering if the little burro slowed him down any.

  Then the stage started, and he forgot everyone and everything in the pitching and tossing of the coach as it went jouncing over the plain.

  • • •

  Fort Laramie was trading post, blockhouses, soldiers’ barracks, storehouse, and post office. The bigness and bustle of the place bewildered Peter and hurt his ears. He did his errands at once and was glad to catch an eastbound stage for home. The driver, a jolly fellow, invited him to sit up on the box beside him and regaled him with the peculiarities of his team of six mules—the ticklish ears of Tom, the handy heels of Harry, the rearin’ Wheeler—until Peter knew them all, plus some thunderous new cuss words.

  With his bullhide whip and his talk, the driver made time and distance fly, so that Peter was back at his own trading post to water and feed Domingo himself with daylight to spare. Dice met him with a brief wagging of his tail, then a whine. He took a few steps toward the corral, stopping to see if Peter followed.

  “Wait, boy! Just let me deliver the tools first.”

  The trading post was humming, as usual. Peter laid the tools on Adam’s bench and ran out before his name was called. “I’ll beat you to the corral,” he told Dice. And the two broke into a wild dash.

  Halfway there Peter saw new heads lifting. He ran faster, squinting to make out a big horse, new oxen, and a span of mules. Then his eyes strained for Domingo. He whistled for him, but only Gabriel answered. With Dice nosing ahead, he ran searching in and out of the sheds that lined one side of the corral. All the other animals, new and old, followed out of curiosity.

  In the pit of his stomach Peter felt the beginnings of terror. He cried to Dice, “Find Domingo!” Together they ran along the corral fence, Dice snuffing audibly beneath, Peter scanning the rails. None was missing. None even broken.

  Peter ran back across the rutty road, stumbling and picking himself up again, the sickness in his stomach worsening. Inside the shop he darted around people, casks, and kegs, firing questions at his father: “Where is Domingo? What’s happened to him? And oh, Pa, why?”