by Paul Bagdon
“Ees muscle, no fat.”
We all hefted our beers, laughing. Arm held up his whiskey glass and the tender brought over another trio of doubles. After we’d all finished our drinks we went back to Tiny’s shop. We stopped at the corral to gawk at the buckskin mare for a bit, and then Arm an’ me rode over to the mercantile. Our packhorse was tied to the hitching rail in front. The poor critter was as loaded as he could be, but there didn’t seem to be much weight to what he carried in his bags—just size and bulk. I went in to even up. The price was $47.34, which is a pretty stiff amount of money, but what the hell.
The stuff that’d been minute ice particles had turned to snow as we wet our whistles in the saloon. There was some wind behind the snow, but visibility wasn’t too bad. We rode at a walk. At one point I reined in, swung down, and stepped over to the packhorse at the end of the rope wrapped around my saddle horn. The clerk had done what I asked; there was a bottle of whiskey carefully wrapped in a grain sack and brown paper.
“This will warm us up a bit,” I said to Armando.
We got to the ranch just before dark and tied the packhorse to the rail in front of the porch. Then we saw to our own horses, rubbing them down, graining them, filling their buckets with fresh water. When we got back to the house, the packhorse had been unloaded and he stood there looking hungry. “You go on in,” I said to Arm. “I’ll look to this guy—give him a little treat.”
Although he wasn’t sweated at all, I rubbed him down and gave him a bucket of molasses grain and another of fresh water. Arm’s and my horse picked up the scent of the molasses immediately and started nickering and carrying on for their share. “Hush, you silly bastards,” I told them. “You didn’t carry nothing but a couple of men. This fella carried everything the ladies wanted.” I picked a nice leather halter an’ brought it into the house with me.
It was warm in the kitchen and there was a good fire in the living room. Blanca and Teresa fed us our usual steaks, potatoes, and some cut carrots as a special treat. After we ate we moved out to the living room to watch the fire.
There’s something hypnotic about watching a good fire burn. It takes a man away, deep into his thoughts—his good thoughts—and makes him feel at peace with the universe.
I found my eyes closed and my chin on my chest and decided to head up to bed.
“Put your clothes outside your door,” Teresa said. “We take care of them.”
I entered my room. On my bed were brand-new denim pants and a nice work shirt, along with socks and long johns. I moved that stuff to the floor, stripped, put my old clothes outside my door, and climbed into my bed. I heard Armando come up the stairs and then, a few minutes later, the soft steps of one of the women. After that I heard nothing.
The next morning I looked out my door, expecting to see my washed clothes. There was nothing there. The space in front of Arm’s door was bare, too.
“Hey!” I called. “Where are our duds?”
Blanca came to the stairs and glared up at me. “Those was rags. They smelled like the peeg pen. Some we cut for washing cloths, the other we burned. Use the clothes you found on your bed.” She turned away, not caring to argue the subject. I dressed. Everything felt stiff and scratchy, but had that fresh fabric smell that was pleasant but never lasted long. Arm came out of his room dressed exactly as I was. We looked at each other, both embarrassed.
“Maybe you geeve up the horses an’ go work in the mercantile,” Arm said. “You dress for it.”
“Me? You look like that damned fool Dansworth did yesterday, ’cept fatter.”
Arm made the gesture with his hand that was understood in all languages, and we went down to eat.
After breakfast and a smoke, I got the halter I’d brought in the night before. “I didn’t want cold leather on the stud’s face,” I explained to Blanca.
“You need a wife,” she said, “then you don’t bother with no loco horse.”
I got a bucket of grain and a flake of hay from the barn and when I got to the corral, Arm was already sitting on the top rail. I climbed up and over. The bay looked at me as I approached him, but there was no fire in his eyes. He was slowly becoming accustomed to me—and figuring out that I was the guy who fed him daily.
I tossed the hay at the snubbin’ post and set down the grain bucket in front of me. Naturally, he was going to go for the grain first. As he dipped his head I held the halter in front of his muzzle an’ he slid right into it. I closed the buckle and took a couple steps back.
The stallion stood there for a long moment, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Then, he decided he didn’t like whatever the thing was on his muzzle and behind his ears, and commenced to buck, squeal, rear, strike, and anything else he could think of. He even dropped to the ground and rubbed his head back and forth trying to get rid of the halter. I stepped back another few steps to be out of his range if he decided to kick my ass for me. He didn’t.
“Now he gonna try to scrape it off with his good foot, like the perro scratching a flea,” Arm called to me. I nodded. That’s what ninety-nine out of a hundred horses would have done. The bay didn’t, perhaps because he couldn’t carry most of his weight on his twisted foot. Instead, he lowered his face into the grain bucket and began to chew. I walked over to where Arm was an’ climbed up. “Tell the truth, I thought you were pooshing too fast with the halter this day,” he said, slapping me on the back. “But I was wrong.”
“I’m a little surprised myself,” I said. We sat there and watched the stud empty the grain bucket and walk over to the hay. I found myself looking at the strange tracks he’d left in the inch of snow that’d fallen overnight. He tracked perfectly—rear hoof dropping precisely on top of the imprint in the snow made by the front hoof.
Armando must have seen where I was looking. “Ees too bad. With four hooves, the horse, he run the ass offa them thoroughbreds the reech people race. He beat the short horses, too.”
“They’re not called short horses no more,” I said. “Now they’re quarter horses.”
“Well, hell. Same teeng.”
We sat on the top rail for a time. I have to admit that watching a horse eat hay isn’t what a fella would call exciting. “Wanna go fetch our mare?” I asked Arm.
“I got only a little money an’ you ’mos busted, too. I’ll get some from under the bed for both of us. Then we ride, no?”
I’ll be the first to admit that keeping all that money under my bed wasn’t the smartest thing we’d ever done. Still, we figured we’d often need quick access to it and neither of us trusted banks. Neither of the ladies would steal a sip of ice water in hell, so the money was safe where it was.
It’s hard to remember how cold winter is when a man is in the midst of a West Texas summer. But, winter is a bitch, and it seems like the wind never stops. A bucket of milk left outside will freeze solid, troughs for animals constantly need ice broken in them, and firewood is consumed at an impossible rate to keep at least one part of a room warm, directly in front of the fireplace. Good, well-cared-for saddles creak and groan, well pumps freeze, making them impossible to use, and wind whistles through the best of houses—including ours.
We rode into Hulberton with scarves wrapped around our faces, bundled in herder’s coats, and thick sheepskin gloves. Our horses grew beards almost immediately—the freezing of their moisture as they breathed out. Running a horse could—and probably would—burn his lungs because of his gulping of the arctic air.
And let me tell you this: there’s nothing quite like a West Texas storm. Cattle on pasture huddle together and freeze solid, as dead as the statues they appear to be. A yard of snow isn’t a big deal; some of the storms last three and four days and dump five feet or more of snow.
Farmers, ranchers, and settlers string ropes between their houses and barns. It’s easy to get lost in the blinding white fury of a storm. Men and women freeze to death a few feet from their homes.
We rode up to Tiny’s barn and tied our horses at t
he rail. They’d be fine; the cold wasn’t a real ballbuster, and the wind was slowing down some.
Tiny had most of his sale horses in stalls and those outside clustered together at the edge of the barn, out of the wind. Tiny was graining the stalls as we shoved up the front sliding door wide enough to get in, and then closed it.
“Your mare is in the second stall from the end,” Tiny said. “I got a pot of coffee going on my forge fire. Help your ownselfs—I’ll be with you in a bit.” Arm and I did just that, using metal cups that hung from horseshoe nails on the wall. It was no surprise that the coffee was half whiskey.
“Ees good,” Arm said. “Warm a man’s blood, no?”
We took our coffee down to the second-to-last stall and looked over our mare once again. She was as near to a perfectly conformed horse as I’ve ever seen. There was a gentleness in the depth of her chestnut eyes as she looked at us for a treat. Tiny had a bushel of crab apples against the wall. I got one and palmed it to the mare. She took it— gently—and crunched away at it.
“We done good,” Arm said.
I pulled off a glove and reached into my pocket for Tiny’s money. We watched the mare until Tiny was finished with his chore, and then the three of us walked back to the coffeepot. I handed our friend the cash.
“I got the bill of sale all wrote out,” Tiny said. He took a neatly folded sheet of paper from the drawer of a small table and handed it to me. I didn’t check it over any more than Tiny counted the cash I’d given him. That isn’t the way we do things. A man’s word is as good as he is, and Tiny was a good man. He poured himself a cup of coffee and topped off our cups.
“You gonna take her back today? She’s welcome to stay here as long as you want,” Tiny said.
“We got the hay an’ grain already,” Arm said. “We’re ready for this fine mare.”
“Dansworth was snooping around again yestiddy evening,” Tiny said. “What he told me was that he was looking for a couple horses to save his trip from bein’ a waste, but he spent most of his time lookin’ at your mare.”
“I guess that dude sumbitch can look all he wants, but he no gettin’ near our mare,” Arm said.
The sliding door began to open and all of our heads snapped in that direction. The two men who’d stopped at our ranch eased into the barn and shut the door behind him. They approached us.
Ignoring Tiny and Armando, one of them spoke directly to me. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. “This here’s five hundred dollars,” he said. “Mr. Dansworth wants that mare.”
“Mr. Dansworth can go to hell,” I said.
“What he wants, he gets,” the man said. “He’ll own that mare one way or another.” He turned and he and his partner went to the front of the barn and out. They left the door open.
“You boys keep a close eye on that horse,” Tiny said.
Chapter Five
We had a helluva storm a couple of days after we brought the mare to the ranch. Arm and I rigged a shelter for the mustang. He would have battered his way through a stall in five minutes— he’d never been in an enclosed structure before. The mare, our horses, and our packer we kept in stalls. We’d run a stout length of rope from our back door to the barn door—and we needed it. I also ran one from the house to the corral where the mustang was. I doubt if I’d have been able to find the barn or the corral, ’cept for sheer luck, without that guideline. Every year we hear about a man or woman freezing to death within a few yards of safety in their home or barn.
The wind howled like a devil hound from hell and the snow was whipped parallel to the ground, mounding into massive drifts against anything that attempted to challenge the power of the storm.
Teresa and Blanca didn’t seem to be bothered by the storm. They had all the supplies they needed to feed us royally for at least a few weeks, and the safety of our horses was of no consequence to them—it was clearly defined man’s work.
Armando and I had different perspectives on our weather-imposed captivity. We found a checkerboard on a bookshelf and it didn’t take long to make little discs to use as men: mine were carrot coins and his were slices of pickle. We played several games, all of which I won. That pissed Arm off no small amount—he wasn’t a man who could live with losing at anything.
His face was almost scarlet red and his hand trembled as he moved his pieces. “Arm,” I said, “let’s knock it off, okay? It’s only a dumb game and you’re gettin’ all wound up ’bout it.”
“Ees a gringo game, no? If we play a Mexican game, I keek your white ass.”
“Maybe so. The thing is—they’re only games. Ya know? I don’t see why you get so bent an’ twisted over a game. It’s crazy.”
“Now I am loco, no?”
I sighed. “Let’s have a drink.”
Arm’s usual calm demeanor returned immediately. “Ees bes’ idea you’ve had in a long time, Jake. You gotta learn to calm down, no?”
I fetched a bottle from the kitchen cupboard without responding.
Later—after we’d done some damage to our booze supply—Arm bundled up to check things out in the barn, muck the stalls, and feed hay and grain. I put on pretty near every piece of clothing I owned and followed the guide rope to the corral. Horses are herd animals by nature—they don’t like being alone. I think that worked in my favor with our stud. I wasn’t another horse, but I was better than no company at all.
I slung a ration of molasses oats over my back and a flake of hay under my arm—I’d stashed a bale of hay and a supply of grain in our mudroom when the storm was still building—and went to visit our stallion.
It ain’t like he greeted me with a smile and a song or as a long-lost brother, but he didn’t offer to take me apart, either. The shelter we’d built, which was a simple triangle of barn wood with one open side, was holding up well. Snow was drifted against the windward side, which actually kept some of the horse’s natural heat inside with him.
I fed him his grain and broke up the flake of hay in front of him. He dove into the grain and began to nibble hay. I reached very, very slowly for his face when he raised his head to chew. He’d built up quite a beard of frozen spittle and exhalation, and I figured it couldn’t be any too comfortable for him. He took a half step back, but then stood. Moving as slowly as I possibly could I reached out my right hand and busted off a good part of the icicle. The bay’s eyes widened for a moment and his muscles tensed. I was set to leap to the side if he lunged at me. We stared into each other’s eyes for what seemed like a long time and then the horse dropped his head and went back to his hay.
What the hell, I thought. In for a penny, in for a dollar. I touched his shoulder very gently. He tensed up all over again, staring at me with a long stem of hay hanging from his mouth. We watched each other again for a bit and he went back to his hay and I kept my hand on his shoulder.
Some of the best trainers and horsemen I know mumble to their horses, not necessarily making any sense, but making human sounds. Some sing—Christmas carols, sea songs, bawdy stuff, whatever—but it’s all done in a droning sort of monotone. I decided not to push my luck.
There were lots of horse apples behind the bay, but I didn’t dare fork them out. I moved a good amount of them with my boot so he wouldn’t be standing in them. I’d have loved to take a hoof pick to his feet, but anything like that would be a long time coming. I broke up the ice in the small water trough in his shelter and left him with his hay. I felt real good about how it’d gone.
I followed the line I’d rigged from the corral to the barn to help Arm with the chores, but he was almost finished with his work there. He had the mare out in cross ties in the midaisle between the lines of stalls, and was checking her hooves.
He was at her right rear. “Look,” he said. He tapped the mare’s hock and she immediately raised her hoof up to be examined. Arm straddled it and cleaned the manure out of it with a hoof knife. “This gal, she had real good care an’ training, too. I peek up all her feet jus’ as easy as this
one.”
I looked over my horse, Arm’s, and the packers. Arm had mucked the stalls, cast a few handfuls of lime on the floor, and put down lots of fresh straw. The water buckets were filled and each animal had a ration of hay. “I don’ give molasses grain today—eet gives them too much desire to run, no?”
“Good idea. We don’t know how long the storm’s gonna last. Seems like the sumbitch has already gone on forever.”
“Es muy verdad.”
We followed the guideline to the house. Arm was in front of me by maybe a yard, and I couldn’t see him at all. It seemed to me that the storm was becoming stronger and the snow thicker, rather than abating.
Once in the house holding mugs of half coffee and half booze, Arm suggested another game of checkers. I declined. “I don’t feel like arguing with you, my friend. You’re too much of a pendejo—making up your own rules and pissing vinegar every time you lose—which is every game we play.”
We sat at the kitchen table. Armando grumbled a bit about the checkers, but then we began to talk about both our favorite topics—horses, and particularly, our horses—the mare and the stallion.
“Theese is not the best time to breed,” Armando said. “It ain’t the natural time, you know? If we cannot bring mare into heat, our stud will do her no good.”
“Yeah. But even during the winter, the cycle is about twenty to twenty-five days. If we can tease hell outta her with the bay, an’ then breed, we could catch her at the right time.”
“Sí. But eleven months later—een winter again—we have a foal.”
“Well, hell. That gives us plenty of time to insulate a birthing stall an’ a stall for the mare an’ foal to wait out the rest of the winter in.”
“Eensulate?”
“Yeah. Double-board it covering cracks, hang thick blankets to keep out chill, maybe—if we need to—cut a barrel in half an’ get a small fire goin’ in it. Anyway, we got nothing to lose by trying, right?”