Straight upright sat the rider, in military fashion, with a firm seat in the saddle, a strong clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from too impetuous a plunge. From his bare head his long hair streamed upward, waving like a plume. His hands were concealed in the cloud of the horse’s lifted mane. The animal’s body was as level as if every hoof-stroke encountered the resistant earth. Its motions were those of a wild gallop, but even as the officer looked they ceased, with all the legs thrown sharply forward as in the act of alighting from a leap. But this was a flight!
Filled with amazement and terror by this apparition of a horseman in the sky—half believing himself the chosen scribe of some new Apocalypse, the officer was overcome by the intensity of his emotions; his legs failed him and he fell. Almost at the same instant he heard a crashing sound in the trees—a sound that died without an echo—and all was still.
The officer rose to his feet, trembling. The familiar sensation of an abraded shin recalled his dazed faculties. Pulling himself together he ran rapidly obliquely away from the cliff to a point distant from its foot; thereabout he expected to find his man; and thereabout he naturally failed. In the fleeting instant of his vision his imagination had been so wrought upon by the apparent grace and ease and intention of the marvelous performance that it did not occur to him that the line of march of aërial cavalry is directly downward, and that he could find the objects of his search at the very foot of the cliff. A half-hour later he returned to camp.
This officer was a wise man; he knew better than to tell an incredible truth. He said nothing of what he had seen. But when the commander asked him if in his scout he had learned anything of advantage to the expedition he answered:
“Yes, sir; there is no road leading down into this valley from the southward.”
The commander, knowing better, smiled.
IV
After firing his shot, Private Carter Druse reloaded his rifle and resumed his watch. Ten minutes had hardly passed when a Federal sergeant crept cautiously to him on hands and knees. Druse neither turned his head nor looked at him, but lay without motion or sign of recognition.
“Did you fire?” the sergeant whispered.
“Yes.”
“At what?”
“A horse. It was standing on yonder rock—pretty far out. You see it is no longer there. It went over the cliff.”
The man’s face was white, but he showed no other sign of emotion. Having answered, he turned away his eyes and said no more. The sergeant did not understand.
“See here, Druse,” he said, after a moment’s silence, “it’s no use making a mystery. I order you to report. Was there anybody on the horse?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“My father.”
The sergeant rose to his feet and walked away. “Good God!” he said.
THE MIND OF THE HORSE
We’ve spoken of herds and instinct, and despite millennia of interaction we still have only a general concept of the unknown, the unspoken, the unfathomed intelligence of wild animals. There’s no telling how intelligent wolves and coyotes are. But look at the way they observe and how they adapt. We know that birds, especially the corvid family, are very intelligent. Parrots too, and of course, dolphins. There is an intelligence in all animals that human beings, for the most part, are too arrogant to see.
The horse-human relationship uplifts the intelligence of both. I don’t mean “learning,” of course, but “wisdom.” I think it is really significant that the Buddha has this term, “dependent co-arising.” Buddha rode a horse, Kanthaka, and he understood—perhaps based a lot of his thinking on the fact—that they mutually uplifted each other, that there was this cycle of one causing the other to rise beyond instinct and into a stage of deeper interaction.
We have discussed, and will continue to talk about, this idea of equine intelligence. But while that is a little-understood reality, the idea is supported by its darker side: horse sociopathy.
There are isolated cases, for example, of psychotic horses that hold a grudge.
I know a story of a great trainer, Tom Moore, who was attacked in a stall by a stallion, almost killed. At the last minute a groom came in and used a pitchfork to push the stallion off, and Tom was saved. Moore sold the stallion. Years later, Tom was judging a show hundreds of miles away, and in comes the horse, who has now been gelded and was in a competition with a rider on his back. The horse saw Tom and ran at him to attack. The horse had to be withdrawn, immediately.
I don’t know whether, unbeknownst to Tom, that horse was beaten or whether it was born crazy. Like some people, there are psychopathic horses. There is no rehabilitating the animals and they must invariably be put down before they can harm a human or another horse.
It’s interesting, though, that an animal that is in no way a predator should have a brain that has the capacity to focus its rage or hate or madness. Especially if it isn’t being challenged for leadership in any way.
Perhaps we should call this the dichotomy of the horse or the horse with two faces. I don’t know. I do know that alone among all the animals, the horse had unique qualities that ancient peoples did not have the time or capacity to understand. I hope one day that we do, because it will almost certainly lead to a greater understanding of our own darker sides.
Mr. Stiver’s Horse
THE WIT AND HUMOR OF AMERICA, VOL. 3, by JAMES MONTGOMERY BAILEY (1907)
Shortly after serving in the Civil War, James Montgomery Bailey (1841–1894) returned to Connecticut, where he founded a newspaper, the revered Danbury News. He wrote articles, he wrote books—and he wrote this tale, which appears to be his sole foray into the topic of horses. It is another tale that demonstrates little ways in which most of the time, to a horse—intelligence and empathy notwithstanding—the horse comes first.
The other morning at breakfast Mrs. Perkins observed that Mr. Stiver, in whose house we live, had been called away, and wanted to know if I would see to his horse through the day.
I knew that Mr. Stiver owned a horse, because I occasionally saw him drive out of the yard, and I saw the stable every day—but what kind of a horse I didn’t know. I never went into the stable, for two reasons: in the first place, I had no desire to; and, secondly, I didn’t know as the horse cared particularly for company.
I never took care of a horse in my life; and, had I been of a less hopeful nature, the charge Mr. Stiver had left with me might have had a very depressing effect; but I told Mrs. Perkins I would do it.
“You know how to take care of a horse, don’t you?” said she.
I gave her a reassuring wink. In fact, I knew so little about it that I didn’t think it safe to converse more fluently than by winks.
After breakfast I seized a toothpick and walked out towards the stable. There was nothing particular to do, as Stiver had given him his breakfast, and I found him eating it; so I looked around. The horse looked around, too, and stared pretty hard at me. There was but little said on either side. I hunted up the location of the feed, and then sat down on a peck measure and fell to studying the beast. There is a wide difference in horses. Some of them will kick you over and never look around to see what becomes of you. I don’t like a disposition like that, and I wondered if Stiver’s horse was one of them.
When I came home at noon I went straight to the stable. The animal was there all right. Stiver hadn’t told me what to give him for dinner, and I had not given the subject any thought; but I went to the oat-box and filled the peck measure and sallied boldly up to the manger.
When he saw the oats he almost smiled; this pleased and amused him. I emptied them into the trough, and left him above me to admire the way I parted my hair behind. I just got my head up in time to save the whole of it. He had his ears back, his mouth open, and looked as if he were on the point of committing murder. I went out and filled the measure again, and climbed up the side of the stall and emptied it on top of him. He brought his head up so suddenly at this that I immediatel
y got down, letting go of everything to do it. I struck on the sharp edge of a barrel, rolled over a couple of times, then disappeared under a hay-cutter. The peck measure went down on the other side, and got mysteriously tangled up in that animal’s heels, and he went to work at it, and then ensued the most dreadful noise I ever heard in all my life, and I have been married eighteen years.
It did seem as if I never would get out from under that hay-cutter; and all the while I was struggling and wrenching myself and the cutter apart, that awful beast was kicking around in the stall, and making the most appalling sound imaginable.
When I got out I found Mrs. Perkins at the door. She had heard the racket, and had sped out to the stable, her only thought being of me and three stove-lids which she had under her arm, and one of which she was about to fire at the beast.
This made me mad.
“Go away, you unfortunate idiot!” I shouted: “do you want to knock my brains out?” For I remembered seeing Mrs. Perkins sling a missile once before, and that I nearly lost an eye by the operation, although standing on the other side of the house at the time.
She retired at once. And at the same time the animal quieted down, but there was nothing left of that peck measure, not even the maker’s name.
I followed Mrs. Perkins into the house, and had her do me up, and then I sat down in a chair and fell into a profound strain of meditation. After a while I felt better, and went out to the stable again. The horse was leaning against the stable stall, with eyes half closed, and appeared to be very much engrossed in thought.
“Step off to the left,” I said, rubbing his back.
He didn’t step. I got the pitchfork and punched him in the leg with the handle. He immediately raised up both hind legs at once, and that fork flew out of my hands, and went rattling up against the timbers above, and came down again in an instant, the end of the handle rapping me with such force on the top of the head that I sat right down on the floor under the impression that I was standing in front of a drug-store in the evening. I went back to the house and got some more stuff on me. But I couldn’t keep away from that stable. I went out there again. The thought struck me that what the horse wanted was exercise. If that thought had been an empty glycerin-can, it would have saved a windfall of luck for me.
But exercise would tone him down, and exercise him I should. I laughed to myself to think how I would trounce him around the yard. I didn’t laugh again that afternoon. I got him unhitched, and then wondered how I was to get him out of the stall without carrying him out. I pushed, but he wouldn’t budge. I stood looking at him in the face, thinking of something to say, when he suddenly solved the difficulty by veering about and plunging for the door. I followed, as a matter of course, because I had a tight hold on the rope, and hit about every partition-stud worth speaking of on that side of the barn. Mrs. Perkins was at the window and saw us come out of the door. She subsequently remarked that we came out skipping like two innocent children. The skipping was entirely unintentional on my part. I felt as if I stood on the verge of eternity. My legs may have skipped, but my mind was filled with awe.
I took the animal out to exercise him. He exercised me before I got through with it. He went around a few times in a circle; then he stopped suddenly, spread out his forelegs, and looked at me. Then he leaned forward a little, and hoisted both hind legs, and threw about two coal-hods of mud over a line full of clothes Mrs. Perkins had just hung out.
That excellent lady had taken a position at the window, and, whenever the evolutions of the awful beast permitted, I caught a glance of her features. She appeared to be very much interested in the proceedings; but the instant that the mud flew, she disappeared from the window, and a moment later she appeared on the stoop with a long poker in her hand, and fire enough in her eye to heat it red-hot.
Just then Stiver’s horse stood up on his hind legs and tried to hug me with the others. This scared me. A horse never shows his strength to such advantage as when he is coming down on you like a frantic pile-driver. I instantly dodged, and the cold sweat fairly boiled out of me.
It suddenly came over me that I had once figured in a similar position years ago. My grandfather owned a little white horse that would get up from a meal at Delmonico’s to kick the President of the United States. He sent me to the lot one day, and unhappily suggested that I often went after that horse and suffered all kinds of defeat in getting him out of the pasture, but I had never tried to ride him. Heaven knows I never thought of it. I had my usual trouble with him that day. He tried to jump over me, and push me down in a mud-hole, and finally got up on his hind legs and came waltzing after me with facilities enough to convert me into hash, but I turned and just made for that fence with all the agony a prospect of instant death could crowd into me. If our candidate for the Presidency had run one-half as well, there would be seventy-five postmasters in Danbury to-day, instead of one.
I got him out finally, and then he was quiet enough, and I took him up alongside the fence and got on him. He stopped an instant, one brief instant, and then tore off down the road at a frightful speed. I lay down on him and clasped my hands tightly around his neck, and thought of my home. When we got to the stable I was confident he would stop, but he didn’t. He drove straight at the door. It was a low door, just high enough to permit him to go in at lightning speed, but there was no room for me. I saw if I struck that stable the struggle would be a very brief one. I thought this all over in an instant, and then, spreading out my arms and legs, emitted a scream, and the next moment I was bounding about in the filth of that stable-yard. All this passed through my mind as Stiver’s horse went up into the air. It frightened Mrs. Perkins dreadfully.
“Why, you old fool!” she said; “why don’t you get rid of him?”
“How can I?” said I, in desperation.
“Why, there are a thousand ways,” said she.
This is just like a woman. How differently a statesman would have answered!
But I could think of only two ways to dispose of the beast. I could either swallow him where he stood and then sit down on him, or I could crawl inside of him and kick him to death.
But I was saved either of these expedients by his coming towards me so abruptly that I dropped the rope in terror, and then he turned about, and, kicking me full of mud, shot for the gate, ripping the clothes-line in two, and went on down the street at a horrible gallop, with two of Mrs. Perkins’ garments, which he hastily snatched from the line, floating over his neck in a very picturesque manner.
So I was afterwards told. I was too full of mud myself to see the way into the house.
Stiver got his horse all right, and stays at home to care for him. Mrs. Perkins has gone to her mother’s to recuperate, and I am healing as fast as possible.
THE HORSE AS HERO … NOT
I mentioned Gene Autry and other movie and TV cowboys previously. Bless their well-meaning hearts, they, along with many of the authors I’ve read while finding stories for this book, have perpetuated an enduring, loving, but absolutely wrong idea about horses. I’ll get to that in a moment.
Having spent a lot of time around horses, both as an actor and as an owner/breeder/rider, I know something about the animal. And I’m here to disabuse you of a notion that crosses both my film and real-life experiences: do not believe what you see on-screen and on TV or read in wonderful adventure stories. Horses are magnificent, they are at times brave, but they are not heroic. And by that I mean, I do not think that horses recognize a human being in trouble. They will not gallop to their rescue, as we’ve seen Silver do for the Lone Ranger.
It’s true that they recognize that the human being is acting in a different manner—for example, if they’re writhing in pain or screaming in fear or breathless with a heart attack. But they would not recognize the human as being in trouble, so much as they would recognize the human acting in an aberrant way. The horse having made that determination, there are two possible results. First, it may frighten the horse. Or second, it will m
ake the horse curious. That second option will lead back to the first—or else a third option: they will not be fearful but will continue doing whatever they were doing. None of which helps the stricken or endangered rider unless someone schooled in horses happens to notice the animal acting strangely.
To my knowledge, horses have never really placed themselves in front of danger as perceived by the horse—keeping in mind the horse wouldn’t necessarily recognize a bullet or a knife as dangerous. They would just know attitudes. For example, they would instinctively recognize a predator. They may never have seen a lion, or a tiger, or a really big cat, but their intuition would be to flee that scent and that sound. Also snakes. They’ll react to the motion, the sound. They may, in their panic, rear and come down on an enemy, frighten it away. But whatever instinct has been bred through a million years, the ones who react to danger the right way—by flight—survive. And the ones who don’t react by running off, or who are so panicked they run down a dangerous slope—they do not survive.
By comparison, dogs are different. I’ve had one or more dogs every year of my adult life. I’ve had tens of dogs. Dogs are not herbivores: they are territorial carnivores. When a dog is part of your family, part of your pack, it considers you the alpha dog. It expects you to do the heavy lifting: feeding, walking, grooming … protecting. And if there is a perceived threat, and the dog barks or bites, what is being expressed is actually aggressive behavior based on fear. However, the dog will also protect you, protect the pack, protect their territory to the death.
Spirit of the Horse Page 9