And then the one who had whinnied at us, a huge red-brown stallion, came jogging up the hill to us, his eyes shining, his fine head tossing, his ears pricked forward.
That’s Lika, my mama said. Your sire.
Sire? My father?
Lika was a majestic horse, far, far bigger than Mama, and he came to a stop right in front of us. I tell you true, I was kind of scared, and I could feel my heart galloping hard inside me. I leaned against Mama’s side, never taking my eyes off him.
He rubbed nostrils with Mama, and she rubbed his back and didn’t move away, and I figured the two of them were saying howdy. And then that big stallion started in circling us, like he was looking me over, his big head right close to my flank. At that, Mama whirled about at him, and her ears went back, and she bared her teeth. But she didn’t nip at him, just kept her eyes on him, like she was saying, You watch yourself, and I knew that she was making sure he knew who was who when it came to protecting me. But it seemed then that I didn’t need protecting, not from him, anyway, because after a minute, he pushed his nostrils gently against mine, and I smelled him good and he smelled me back. I liked what I smelled and didn’t feel so scared anymore. He nosed up to Mama again, then turned away and trotted down the hillside and back to the herd.
I watched him go, his big, wide reddish flanks, his black mane and tail flowing, his coat shining with little circles as the setting sun glinted off it. And then, as he returned to the herd, I saw something odd and couldn’t figure it out.
Another horse. A horse with something on its back. Galloping toward us.
Mama? I asked. I quick sidestepped till I was behind her, almost tangling myself in my own legs in my hurry. Mama didn’t seem scared, though, and raised her head and nickered, welcoming this new creature.
A human, she told me. Jasmine, the human who named you.
And then this human was beside us, and—oh my. She and the horse were not just one. She slid down, separating herself from the horse. And there stood that horse, and it looked just like me and Mama, though it still had something on its back.
A saddle, Mama said, seeing my look.
Then Jasmine began making squeaking, squealing noises, and I tell you, it hurt my ears, but Mama didn’t seem to mind at all. Jasmine threw herself at Mama, draped herself over Mama’s neck, and Mama nosed her up and down, welcoming her!
“Rosie! Rosie, you’re back!” Jasmine cried. “With your beautiful foal! With Koda. Oh, I can’t wait to tell Papa!”
Then Jasmine threw herself at me, and I thought Mama would bare her teeth at her, but no, Mama let her touch me. I quivered. My flesh almost hurt at her touch. But just for a moment. Because she was burying her face in my coat and making happy sounds, rubbing my belly and my flank. I knew then, from her sounds and her touch and her smell, that she was safe to be with.
Jasmine kept on leaning her head against me, all the while rubbing my coat and patting my face. “Beautiful! Just beautiful!” she said to me. “Do you know that? You’re beautiful. My dear Koda, my new friend! And that’s what your name means, did you know that?”
Well, I didn’t know, but I made a whinnying sound at her because I had just learned how to whinny. Besides, I liked her immediately.
She laughed, so I knew that she knew that I liked her. “Yes. It means ‘friend’!” she said. “Koda is a Sioux Indian word for ‘friend.’ We will be friends forever, you and me, pretty Koda!”
I turned my head to Mama then. Was that all right—to be friends with Jasmine? I already liked her very much. But I belonged to Mama, didn’t I? Mama was just nibbling at the grass and didn’t seem concerned, so I guessed it was all right. In fact, it made me very, very happy to have a new friend, though I can’t say I understood everything that I was feeling.
But there was one feeling I did understand—how tired I was. The sun was almost down, and I was hungry and I so much wanted to meet the herd. I moved gently away from Jasmine and over to my mama. Mama moved closer to me, allowing me to nurse, and she pushed her head against Jasmine, telling her to leave us alone.
Right away, Jasmine understood, and she moved toward her horse and leaped up. “Good night!” she said. “I’ll be back tomorrow. And as soon as I can, I’ll bring my papa to meet you.”
When Jasmine was gone, I wanted to ask Mama more about her, and even about her papa. And I wanted to meet the herd. But I was so tired. So all I said was, Mama? Can we rest awhile?
Yes, my mama said. We’ll sleep now. We’ll meet the herd tomorrow. We’re both tired. I’ll need much energy and strength for the meeting.
Why, Mama? I asked.
You’ll see, Mama said.
Well, that was all right with me. Because by then, the stars were beginning to come out, and moon came with them, and below us, the horses all became quiet and still for the night. When I was finished nursing, I lay down at my mama’s feet, feeling warm and happy. Tomorrow we would meet the herd.
Meeting the Herd
The sun was just creeping above the trees when I scrambled to my feet. Mama had moved off a ways into a soft glen and was nibbling at that bright green grass. Below us, I could hear the herd awakening, feel the rumbling and muttering of hooves. I wondered why they hadn’t moved up the hillside to us, the way my sire had done. But then I figured they were just waiting to see what would happen with my mama. I remembered the way she had bared her teeth at my sire, and maybe the others were scared she’d nip at them, too. I already knew how fierce and brave Mama was.
I moved up beside her and began to nurse. After a while, I asked, Now, Mama? Can we go down now, Mama?
Come, she said. Stay close.
We trotted through the meadows and grasses, the river running alongside us, Mama leading the way, me tight behind her, feeling excited and a little scared all at once. It took a while to reach the herd, because it seemed they had moved on in the night. Or maybe it was that my eyesight had gotten better, and things weren’t quite what they had seemed the day before.
Anyway, soon we were close. And closer. And I tell you, my heart was racing almost as bad as when the twitchy-eared critter took off after me. But the smell was all right. These horses smelled fine, the way horses should smell, and I began to calm down.
At the bottom of the hill, Mama stopped. Then, slowly, she moseyed right into that crowd of horses, and right away, they came nosing in to see.
I stayed behind my mama. A big stallion, a bay just like me, came up to us, and Mama whirled around at him. He moved back, but he didn’t seem to mean me harm. He just circled us lazily. And then another bay came up, and another, and then a little pinto pony, and then some colts—my size! Mama told me what each one was named, but there were so many, I couldn’t remember. I remembered only two—one of the colts and the pinto pony—and that’s just because they were kind of like me. The colt was called Will and the pinto was Gilgo. Seeing that they were about my size, I thought maybe they’d want to play. I began to ease away from Mama’s side, not too far, just a little, and I kept an eye on her.
Mama was busy making it plain to the other horses who was the boss of me. She kept shoving and nudging at the ones who came up to inspect me, and a few times, she took a little nip at the sides of the bigger ones who got too pushy. But it was pretty clear, even to me, that none of them meant me any harm. They were just curious, that’s all.
After they had all nosed around me, they seemed to tire of me, all but Will and Gilgo.
Come run! Will said.
Well, running was what I did best. But did I dare leave my mama?
Mama was trading talk with some mares, and it seemed to me that the mares were kind of excited, switching their ears back and forth, maybe talking proud about their new colts and fillies—Mama, too. I moved a little further from Mama then, still not quite sure if I should, till she said, Go on, little colt. Go run.
Well, that was about all I needed to hear.
So I took off, with Will right on my heels and that little pinto, Gilgo, trail
ing not far behind. The sun was high by then, and the wind at my back, and I ran, head up, sniffing the air.
Will raced past me, then whirled around and began to leap, bucking his rear legs up, his back bent, then straightening out and doing it all over again.
I just watched him. It looked fun, so I asked him, What is that? How do you do that?
Crow-hopping, he said, and he showed me how it was done. It took me a few tries, but before I knew it, I could crow-hop just like him, like I’d been doing it my whole life. And the two of us went bounding about—sometimes racing, sometimes crow-hopping—all over the place. Gilgo tried to crow-hop, too, but I think she wasn’t as young as we were, and she didn’t do so well.
We went on playing most of that morning, racing one another, and it was clear that we were good runners. Running is what quarter horses do best, my mama had told me, and it was sure fun to test it all out. I won most of the races.
By noon, with the sun so hot, I was just about worn-out, so I went and found my mama and had me a good drink till I was filled up. I lay down then, in the shade of the cottonwoods alongside the river, and I must have slept. Because next thing I knew, there was the sound of hooves, moving fast, and I scrambled to my feet. Something new to see.
Coming up alongside the river were two horses with riders on their backs.
Well, I went and found my mama and asked what was happening.
Maybe herding us back to the homestead and our human family, my mama said. Some of the herd roam free in summertime. Some of us don’t. You’ll see.
And though I didn’t know what a family or a homestead was, or why we were going there, Mama had raised her head and was nickering at the coming riders, so I knew that it wasn’t something to be worried about.
Soon those riders were upon us, and then I nickered, too—for one of them was Jasmine. She rode up right beside me and then leaped off her horse, throwing her arms around me and nuzzling herself against me, just like she had the day before.
I rubbed my head up and down, up and down against her while she patted me, letting her know how much I liked her touch.
“Oh, Koda!” she said. “Good morning, my beautiful colt!”
She turned then to a male human who had just dismounted. That one was rubbing my mama’s head and ears, and Mama was welcoming him with little nickering sounds. This is Jasmine’s papa, Mama said to me.
“Papa!” Jasmine cried. “Come look! Come meet Koda!”
Mama whinnied again and moved closer to me, and I could see that she was proud to show me off. Jasmine’s papa came and looked me over real good, running his hands over my flanks, my back and chest and belly, and Mama didn’t seem at all worried about that. He stroked my mane and tugged gently at my ears and whispered to me. I could tell from his voice and his touch that he was a good human.
When he was all finished exploring me, he turned to Jasmine and put his arm around her. “Jasmine,” he said, “I believe Rosie’s produced the best colt ever!”
Jasmine leaned into her papa, just the way I lean into my mama sometimes. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” she said. “Papa? Mama will love him, won’t she? I can’t wait for her to see him. I bet he’ll make Mama feel better.”
“He will,” her papa said. “We’ll trot Koda right up close to her veranda this afternoon.”
“And when Mama’s better,” Jasmine said, “and when Koda’s older, all three of us can ride together.”
“We’ll do just that, sweetheart,” he said.
“Now, come on, let’s get these two down home. I’ve got work to do.”
He turned back to my mama, and Jasmine put her head against mine. “Wait till you meet my mama!” she whispered. “She’ll love you. But she’s sick, Koda. She coughs all the time. But don’t worry, the minute she sees you, she’ll feel better.”
Well, I wasn’t worrying, except then Jasmine held out her hand, and over her arm was—could it be? It was—a snake!
I reared back, but Jasmine only laughed. “It’s a rope,” she said. “It’s just a lead rope. Want to smell it?”
She held it out to me. I backed off some more. Snakes are like cougars, Mama had said. They’re not our friends.
“It’s just a lead rope!” Jasmine said again. “Here, sniff it up good. I promise it won’t hurt you.”
Well, I had already learned about what to trust and what to not—what was good and what was bad. And Jasmine was good. So I leaned my head in—but not too close—and sniffed at that rope.
It didn’t smell bad, but it didn’t smell good, either. It was just plain.
Jasmine’s horse had bent his head and was nibbling at some grass, and he didn’t seem afraid, so I figured it was all right to sniff some more.
“See?” Jasmine said when I’d had my fill. “Now, try this.” She looped a rope and slid it gently over my nose and ears. “This is a halter. Does it feel all right? Can you stand it? It won’t hurt you.”
Then she fastened a long rope to the halter. It didn’t hurt. But it felt bad, and I looked at my mama.
It’s all right, Mama said. It’s a halter and lead rope. They won’t hurt you.
She was standing docile and quiet as Jasmine’s papa put a halter and lead rope on her. Well, if it was fine with her, it was all right with me, too, though I can’t say I liked it much.
And then Jasmine got atop her horse, and she urged me to run beside her, so of course I did, though I tossed my head this way and that, with the strange feel of that rope tugging at me. Still, it wasn’t a bad feeling once I got used to it. Then, once my mama came up alongside, and Jasmine’s papa came alongside atop his horse, we all went galloping down the hill to that homestead my mama had told me about.
When we finally halted, Jasmine got off her horse and tethered him to a tree. Then she began walking slowly, leading me by the rope, away from my mama, gentle-like, talking to me the whole time and showing me things.
The first thing she showed me was the place where she lived—her house, she called it—and she said that they slept and ate inside of this place. To me, it looked like a row of tree trunks without leaves, laid sideways, with a roof on top, and I wondered why she’d want to sleep in there and not out under the stars. And then she showed me a barn and creatures called cows and another creature called a dog. She picked up the dog so that I could see him good. His name was Honey and she said he was her favorite dog in the whole world, but I can tell you, he was a mighty little creature, no bigger than the baby rabbits I’d seen bounding around the meadows.
There were also humans everywhere. Some were big, and one was small, kind of like Jasmine, except smaller. Her name was Violet and she was Jasmine’s baby sister. And then I got to meet Jasmine’s mama, but we didn’t stop to visit long, because her mama was feeling poorly. I could tell that from the way she coughed and coughed, and how she had to rest herself against Jasmine. But she was awfully pretty, and she said she thought I was the mightiest colt ever.
There were so many other things to see and sniff out and learn about, but then I began bucking back against that rope again, tossing my head, because suddenly I was hungry and thirsty.
“Oh, Koda!” Jasmine cried. “I’m sorry! You need your mama, don’t you?”
I did. And I was so glad that she knew what I felt the moment I felt it.
She turned right around and led me back the way we’d come. I pricked up my ears and walked smartly then, looking this way and that, so happy at all that I was seeing in my new homestead. I felt kind of proud of all that I knew, and I couldn’t wait to tell my mama all about it.
I figured my mama would be as proud of me as I was of myself.
Two Thousand Miles to Go
For the next two years, I roamed the pastures with other horses—older ones and some colts and fillies, too—once I had been branded and marked. I wasn’t old enough to be ridden yet, so Jasmine often rode up alongside me on her horse, talking to me and teaching me things. At first, I didn’t go far—never out of sight of
my mama and the corral—because I was still nursing and I liked knowing that my mama was nearby. But after a while, I didn’t need my mama’s milk so much and began nibbling at the grasses, and I wandered further and further.
When winter came on, we were all herded back to the corral. The snows fell and everything was frozen and still, and I could paw hard at the ground and find not even one little shoot of green grass. When that happened, Jasmine and her papa made sure that Mama and I and all the horses had plenty of hay to eat and a good portion of oats once in a while.
And so for those two years, I lived that way—roaming the pastures in summer, and holed up in the corral and the barn in winter. That second winter, Jasmine came into the barn one morning and wept into my side, hugging me close. Her mama had died in the night, and her baby sister, too, and after that, for days and weeks on end, she didn’t visit me very much. And when she did, she and her papa both, their heads were bowed low, as though they were carrying a mighty weight on themselves. Jasmine seemed to be sickly, too, and she coughed the way her mama had coughed that day I first met her.
And then, the year I turned two, in the early part of the springtime, when the soft winds had just begun to blow, Jasmine came running to the barn one morning. She had begun visiting the barn again every morning, and it seemed that some of her happy spirits had come back. Each day she whispered stories to me about a place called Oregon. Now, on this morning, she threw herself at me, hugging my neck hard, just the way she used to do.
“We’re going, Koda!” Jasmine cried. “We’re going to Oregon! We’re going on the Oregon Trail! We’re going to gallop along for miles and miles and miles. Papa says the air is clear in Oregon, and I’ll stop coughing, and we’ll build a whole new life there. So Papa sold everything, well, almost everything, and he bought some oxen and a big wagon and put all of our things in it that we want to bring along. And we’re going to join the wagon train by the river! It’s just a mile or so from here, and our wagon and oxen are already there all loaded up and ready! And guess what, Koda? You’re coming with us, and your mama, too. Aren’t you happy?”
Koda Page 2