Spirit of the Horse

by William Shatner

  But to return to the horses. There is some improvement. Milda has actually learned to walk. Maid has proved her thoroughbredness by never tiring on the longest days, and, while being the strongest and highest spirited of all, by never causing any trouble save for an occasional kick at the Outlaw. And the Outlaw rarely gallops, no longer butts, only periodically kicks, comes in to the pole and does her work without attempting to vivisect Maid’s medulla oblongata, and—marvel of marvels—is really and truly getting lazy. But Prince remains the same incorrigible, loving and lovable rogue he has always been.

  And the country we’ve been over! The drives through Napa and Lake Counties! One, from Sonoma Valley, via Santa Rosa, we could not refrain from taking several ways, and on all the ways we found the roads excellent for machines as well as horses. One route, and a more delightful one for an automobile cannot be found, is out from Santa Rosa, past old Altruria and Mark West Springs, then to the right and across to Calistoga in Napa Valley. By keeping to the left, the drive holds on up the Russian River Valley, through the miles of the noted Asti Vineyards to Cloverdale, and then by way of Pieta, Witter, and Highland Springs to Lakeport. Still another way we took, was down Sonoma Valley, skirting San Pablo Bay, and up the lovely Napa Valley. From Napa were side excursions through Pope and Berryessa Valleys, on to Ætna Springs, and still on, into Lake County, crossing the famous Langtry Ranch.

  At Usal, many hilly and picturesque miles north of Fort Bragg, we turned again into the interior of Mendocino, crossing the ranges and coming out in Humboldt County on the south fork of Eel River at Garberville. Throughout the trip, from Marin County north, we had been warned of “bad roads ahead.” Yet we never found those bad roads. We seemed always to be just ahead of them or behind them. The farther we came the better the roads seemed, though this was probably due to the fact that we were learning more and more what four horses and a light rig could do on a road. And thus do I save my face with all the counties. I refuse to make invidious road comparisons. I can add that while, save in rare instances on steep pitches, I have trotted my horses down all the grades, I have never had one horse fall down nor have I had to send the rig to a blacksmith shop for repairs.

  Also, I am learning to throw leather. If any tyro thinks it is easy to take a short-handled, long-lashed whip, and throw the end of that lash just where he wants it, let him put on automobile goggles and try it. On reconsideration, I would suggest the substitution of a wire fencing-mask for the goggles. For days I looked at that whip. It fascinated me, and the fascination was composed mostly of fear. At my first attempt, Charmian and Nakata became afflicted with the same sort of fascination, and for a long time afterward, whenever they saw me reach for the whip, they closed their eyes and shielded their heads with their arms.

  Here’s the problem. Instead of pulling honestly, Prince is lagging back and manoeuvring for a bite at Milda’s neck. I have four reins in my hands. I must put these four reins into my left hand, properly gather the whip handle and the bight of the lash in my right hand, and throw that lash past Maid without striking her and into Prince. If the lash strikes Maid, her thoroughbredness will go up in the air, and I’ll have a case of horse hysteria on my hands for the next half hour. But follow. The whole problem is not yet stated. Suppose that I miss Maid and reach the intended target. The instant the lash cracks, the four horses jump, Prince most of all, and his jump, with spread wicked teeth, is for the back of Milda’s neck. She jumps to escape—which is her second jump, for the first one came when the lash exploded. The Outlaw reaches for Maid’s neck, and Maid, who has already jumped and tried to bolt, tries to bolt harder. And all this infinitesimal fraction of time I am trying to hold the four animals with my left hand, while my whip-lash, writhing through the air, is coming back to me. Three simultaneous things I must do: keep hold of the four reins with my left hand; slam on the brake with my foot; and on the rebound catch that flying lash in the hollow of my right arm and get the bight of it safely into my right hand. Then I must get two of the four lines back into my right hand and keep the horses from running away or going over the grade. Try it some time. You will find life anything but wearisome. Why, the first time I hit the mark and made the lash go off like a revolver shot, I was so astounded and delighted that I was paralysed. I forgot to do any of the multitudinous other things, tangled the whip lash in Maid’s harness, and was forced to call upon Charmian for assistance. And now, confession. I carry a few pebbles handy. They’re great for reaching Prince in a tight place. But just the same I’m learning that whip every day, and before I get home I hope to discard the pebbles. And as long as I rely on pebbles, I cannot truthfully speak of myself as “tooling a four-in-hand.”

  We still consider our trip is just begun. As soon as this is mailed from Eureka, it’s heigh ho! for the horses and pull on. We shall continue up the coast, turn in for Hoopa Reservation and the gold mines, and shoot down the Trinity and Klamath rivers in Indian canoes to Requa. After that, we shall go on through Del Norte County and into Oregon. The trip so far has justified us in taking the attitude that we won’t go home until the winter rains drive us in. And, finally, I am going to try the experiment of putting the Outlaw in the lead and relegating Prince to his old position in the near wheel. I won’t need any pebbles then.

  THE UNCERTAINTY FACTOR

  I didn’t know Christopher Reeve well.

  We met at industry functions, at science-fiction conventions—there was always a fuss about “Captain Kirk Meets Superman”—and of course through our love of horses. I certainly knew him enough to know that he was a good, intelligent, articulate man who was as much in love with his horses as I am with mine. In fact, I am told that he had a clause in his movie contracts that the producers would bring one or more of his horses to the movie sets, no matter where they were, no matter what location it was, so he was able to ride between shots. That’s how much he loved this sport, this … art.

  Chris hadn’t sat a horse for sport until he was thirty-three, when he learned to ride to play the dashing Count Vronsky in the film Anna Karenina. I’ve heard that he was immediately struck with a dilemma: he was smitten with horses … and allergic to them. He was forced to take antihistamines to ride and—we’ll get into this more later—within a few years the allergies went away. Horses do help us to heal.

  Anyway, he began training in earnest. Chris studied very hard and he was very, very good. He started eventing and especially loved three-day eventing, which is a very challenging, and somewhat dangerous, sport. It requires great physicality, great stamina in the horse and rider as you make your way up hills, through water, and of course jumping. In every other jumping sport, the rails give way if the horse knocks them. Points are deducted and that’s usually the worst of it. But in three-day eventing, those are permanent jumps. Not quite as high as the Grand Prix, but they’re usually trees. I’m not exaggerating. I was just at the Kentucky State Park in Lexington last week, running beside these jumps, and they are big gnarly tree trunks. Not only isn’t there any give, they’re gigantic. They’re six feet long, and wide, and four to five feet high, and the horse has to jump over them. And if he scrapes one of them, he scrapes it. But if he hits it, he’ll brake himself and the rider will be tossed. If you hit it, if you smash into that trunk—that’s tough to walk away from.

  An observation, here—the tragic wisdom of hindsight. Chris was a big man, six foot four, and he muscled up to play Superman. The ideal jockey is about five-one, five-two, 110 pounds, very light and exceedingly strong. Men like the fabled Willie Shoemaker are among the best athletes in the world.

  Chris had added a lot of muscle on his upper body, which is not what you want when you’re into jumping the way he was. And even though he was no longer pumping iron, riding as much as he did is a great way to build stomach muscles, biceps, to expand your chest. So he stayed fit … and top-heavy.

  In 1994, Chris bought a twelve-year-old Thoroughbred named Eastern Express and he decided to compete in the Commonwealth Dressage
and Combined Training Association finals in Culpeper, Virginia. That’s a three-day event. While he was jumping, a freak accident happened. The horse refused to go over a jump. It just stopped. Chris was thrown forward, and his hand went into the bridle, tied up, and he couldn’t protect himself. He fell on his head on the opposite side of the fence, jamming his spine, breaking his first and second vertebrae. They didn’t know at the time how extensive the damage was—he was paralyzed from the neck down—but he also stopped breathing. Paramedics were able to push air into his lungs and, of course, raced him to the hospital.

  That news shocked the world and especially the horse world. It was personally very sobering. Despite all the years I spent with horses, I have to confess that for about a six-month period, every time I got on a horse I thought of Chris Reeve. Every time I put a leg over a horse, I thought, “Is this my time to die or be crippled for life?” Even with the passage of time, he was frequently in my thoughts.

  Eventually, one day, I was traveling to New York and instead of flying into JFK I flew to Newark, because Chris was at the Kessler Rehabilitation Center in West Orange, New Jersey. I had called ahead and said, “I’d love to come and visit with you.” And he said, “I’d be delighted.”

  Lord, I didn’t know how he would react, how I would react. I didn’t know what to expect after all this time, the many months that had gone by when he was incommunicado. He couldn’t walk, he had no control over his body below his neck, he couldn’t even breathe without a ventilator. I tried not to think about what to say or do, just to be there for him, whatever that meant.

  I entered through the glass doors of the hospital, and I saw him in the wheelchair. I immediately felt such an identification, such an empathy for him, I could hardly keep the tears from my eyes. He saw that, I’m sure. He must have been used to that.

  But I walked over and he spoke first, saying, “Sit down, Bill.” So I sat beside him and I couldn’t help but notice the battery that operated the lungs, the mechanism that opened and closed his chest. He could only take very short breaths and he had to marshal those to speak. And he said with his first breath, in about three phrases, “Tell me. How your horses are. And how much you love riding.”

  Those words, the intonation, the longing he put into them—they will stay with me always.

  The rest of the evening was all about horses. I cannot say what was in his heart during my visit, but I know what was in his eyes in spite of everything:

  Joy.

  A Military Steeple-Chase

  CAPTAIN R. BIRD THOMPSON, IN SPORTING SOCIETY; OR, SPORTING CHAT AND SPORTING MEMORIES, VOL. 1, EDITED by FOX RUSSELL (1897)

  I present this story in honor of Chris: a hearty, living, thundering tale. If this were a film, he’d have starred in it with confidence and stature.

  According to the original book publication, Thompson was one of “various sporting celebrities and well-known writers on the turf and the chase.” He was apparently British, which is implicit in his other writings about angling, duck hunting, and partridge shooting in and around London. Never once does he reveal anything about his military background, other than what can be gleaned from this memoir.

  No matter.

  It is a delightful read, evocative, once more, of a different time. And, in a way, the last line is probably as good as any as we make our way through life.

  We were quartered in a very sporting part of the country, where the hunting season was always wound up by a couple of days’ steeple-chasing. The regiment stationed here had usually given a cup for a military steeple-chase, and when we determined to give one for an open military handicap chase, the excitement was very great as to our chances of winning the cup we had given. As there were some very good horses and riders in the regiment, it appeared a fair one, eight nominations having been taken by us. There were also about the same number taken by regiments in the district. Our Major, who was a first-rate horseman, entered his well-known horse Jerry; I and others nominated one each, but one sub., a very celebrated character amongst us, took two. This man’s father had made a very large fortune by nursery gardens, and put his son into the army, where, of course, he was instantly dubbed “The Gardener.” He was by no means a bad sort of fellow, but he never could ride. The riding-master almost cried as he said he never could make “The Gardener” even look like riding; not that he was destitute of pluck, but he was utterly unable to stick on the horse. He had a large stud of hunters, but when out he almost invariably tumbled off at each fence.

  Amongst those who nominated horses was the celebrated Captain Lane, of the Hussars, who was said to be so good a jockey that the professionals grumbled greatly at having to give him amateurs’ allowance. No one was better at imperceptibly boring a competitor out of the course; and at causing false starts and balking at fences he was without a rival. The way he would seem to be hard on his horse with his whip, when only striking his own leg, was quite a master-piece. Report declared that he trained all his own horses to these dodges, and I believe it was quite true, as his were quite quiet and cool under the performances when the rest were almost fretted out of their lives.

  When the handicap came out I found, to my great disgust, that such a crusher had been put on my horse that I at once put the pen through his name—not caring to run him on the off-chance of his standing up and the rest coming to grief, or with the probability, anyhow, of a punishing finish. However, the next night after mess, the Major called me up to him in the ante-room, and said: “I hear you have scratched your horse, and quite right, too. I have accepted, and if you [world] like to have the mount, you are quite welcome.” Of course, I was greatly delighted, but told him that I had never ridden in [a] steeple-chase before. “But I have,” growled the Major, “and am not going to waste over this tin-pot,” as he irreverently called the cup, “so I can show you the ropes. Come to my quarters after breakfast to-morrow, and we will try the horse.”

  The next day I went there, and found the Major mounted, awaiting me, and Jerry—a very fine brown horse, with black points. I soon discovered that he had one decided peculiarity—viz., at his first fence, and sometimes the second, instead of going up and taking it straight, he would whip round suddenly and refuse. On thinking what could be the cause of this trick, I came to the conclusion that his mouth must have been severely punished by the curb when he was first taught jumping; and on telling the Major my idea, he allowed me to ride him as I pleased, so instead of an ordinary double bridle, I put one with a couple of snaffles in his mouth, and very soon found that this had the desired effect. Indeed, after a few days, he took his first fence all right, unless flurried, and before the day seemed quite trustworthy.

  When we got back after our first day’s ride, the Major told me, rather to my amusement, that I must go into training as well as the horse,—adding, what was quite true, that he had seen more amateur races lost through the rider being beat before the horse than by any other means; so when I had given Jerry his gallops in the morning, I had to start a mile run in the afternoon in flannels or sweaters.

  The course was entirely a natural one, about three miles and a half round, and only two ugly places in it, chiefly grass, with one piece of light plough and some seeds. The first two fences were wattles on a bank, with a small ditch, then an ordinary quickset hedge, followed by an old and stiff bullfinch. After this a post and rails, a bank with a double ditch, and merely ordinary fences till we came to a descent of about a quarter of a mile, with a stream about twelve feet wide, and a bank on the taking-off side. Next came some grass meadows, with a very nasty trappy ditch, not more than four feet wide, but with not the slightest bank or anything of the kind on either side,—just the thing for a careless or tired horse to gallop into. The last fence, which was the worst of all, was, I fancy, the boundary of some estate or parish, and consisted of a high bank, with a good ditch on each side—on the top a young, quick-set hedge, and, to prevent horses or cattle injuring it, two wattle fences, one on each side, slanting outwards. After t
his, there was a slight ascent of about 300 yards; then there was dead level of about a quarter of a mile up to the winning-post.

  On the evening before the chase, we had a grand guest night, to which, of course, all the officers of other regiments who had entered horses were invited. We youngsters were anxious to see Captain Lane, of whom we had heard so much.

  On his arrival, after the usual salutations, he enquired of the Major whether he was going to ride, and, on receiving a negative, asked who was; and on having the intending jockeys pointed out to him, just favoured us with a kind of contemptuous glance, never taking any further notice of us.

  The celebrated Captain was a slight man, about five feet eight inches, with not a particularly pleasant look about his eyes, and looking far more the jock than the soldier. The steeple-chases were fixed for the next day at 2.30 P.M., but, as a matter of fact, all the riders were on the ground long before that for the purpose of examining the ground and the fences.

  The Major came to see me duly weighed out, and gave me instructions as to riding—that I was not on any account to race with everyone who came alongside me, nor to make the running at first, unless the pace was very slow and muddling, of which there was little danger, for quite half the jocks, he said, would go off as if they were in for a five furlong spin, and not for a four mile steeple-chase.