Sunday's Colt & Other Stories

by Randy D. Smith

  We would monitor Nan and her colt for a while to make certain that the fighting didn’t put the colt or the jenny in some type of dangerous predicament. The lead rope could get twisted around the colt’s foreleg if he chose to strike at the jenny. The colt could throw himself and be unable to get to his feet. Or if he was especially strong, he might shake loose from his halter. Such situations seldom developed, but experience taught Grandpa that some caution should be exercised. Usually after a day or so of being tied to Nan, the worst young bronc became meekly submissive to the dictates of the halter.

  Grandpa was seventy years old. We usually broke eight to ten horse or mule colts a month from early spring until late fall. He seldom took a chance with any of them. He liked to say that there were two ways to break a colt or filly—one method was with the back, the other with the brains. He took great pride in the fact that the vast majority of his colts were brought from halter to harness or saddle without the animal ever bucking or fighting. His methods became simple. He always gave the animal time to accept its circumstance and always put the animal in a situation where it had few options other than acceptance. He abhorred rough treatment, but he could be firm when it came time for a colt to accept his will. He liked to tell that he loved horses and mules from a professional perspective. Horses were neither pets nor friends, but tools. Only a greenhorn thought of them in any other way. An animal that could not be trusted had no value to a man who had to depend upon the beast for his livelihood. The more service an animal could render, the more value. He priced his livestock according to the amount of dependable service that he felt would be provided, and he seldom had stock on hand that was not spoken for. We worked hard and made a good living. O. C. Tate’s horse and mule ranch had a national reputation. Grover Cleveland rode an O. C. Tate stallion to his inaugural.

  I didn’t notice the buckskin pinto colt that was slung across the pommel of Bill Sunday’s saddle as he approached. Grandpa was twenty feet from Sunday when he stopped and sighed.

  “Where did ya find him?” Grandpa asked.

  Sunday centered the colt in his saddle and shook his head. “His mama took a lightning hit, I reckon. I found her in my pasture south of Seward. This little fellow was just waiting for her to wake up.”

  Grandpa tipped his weather-beaten Stetson to the back of his head and gave Sunday a disgusted look, “That storm was three days ago and this colt couldn’t be more than five days old.”

  I stepped past Grandpa to get a closer look at the colt. He had a dandy head and was well marked. He was buckskin with black mane and tail, a nice white blaze pattern between his eyes, four white feet from the cannons down, and a white spot the general shape of South America on the upper right side of his withers. Other than some white patches scattered along his belly, he was regular buckskin.

  “Got a lot of mustang in him from his daddy,” Bill said softly as I examined the colt, “but his mom was pure thoroughbred. He won’t be a tall horse, but I’m betting he’ll be all guts when it comes to cow work.”

  “If you had an ounce of decency, Sunday, you’d have used that old Colt on him,” Grandpa said as he pointed to the holstered, 32-20 single-action that old Bill habitually carried.

  Sunday threw me one of those looks. His face said it all: Help me out, Andy. Say something to get me off the spot. He’s going to tell me what a fool I am. I know the colt probably doesn’t have a chance, but I just couldn’t bring myself to put him under.

  I could only shrug and mug a reply. “Don’t look at me. I know exactly how you feel, but why should I look like a fool to save your face?”

  “You ought to know better, Bill,” Grandpa said. “That little feller doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in July!”

  Sunday cast his eyes toward the small, white-frame house on the sandy knoll behind us. “I thought maybe Nell…”

  Grandpa quickly looked over his shoulder to see if she was in sight before speaking. “Don’t you get her involved in this. I know how that’ll work. You’ll ride off a-smiling and scratching; feeling like you did your bit while we’ll get the pleasure of watching her sit up all night trying to save this orphan. Then we’ll get to see the look on her face when we have to haul a dead colt from the kitchen. Meanwhile, you’ll have forgotten all about the matter. Your conscience will be clear and her heart will be broken…again.”

  Sunday’s eyes cut to mine. I shook my head and stared right back. He knew we were on to him.

  Grandma called from the porch, “What you got there, Bill?”

  The morning sun danced across her white hair as she stepped from the shadows.

  Sunday smiled with relief. “I got me an orphan colt here, Nell. I thought maybe you might be able to do something to help him out.”

  “Bring him up to the house, Bill. I’ll see if I can’t get something down him,” Grandma called before stepping through the screen door.

  Grandma Tate was a tall woman, just a few inches shorter than Grandpa’s six-foot frame. While Grandpa easily carried a big-shouldered two hundred and fifty pounds of bulk, she was thin and lanky. Her hair was cut short and so white that it drew your eyes to her in a crowd. Judging from the old tintype wedding portrait hanging on their bedroom wall, she had been a beauty in her youth—soft-featured, doe-eyed, and dark-haired.

  Sunday immediately swung down from his gelding and lifted the colt from the saddle. He stepped by Grandpa in an arrogantly victorious fashion as he made his way toward the house.

  “Your day’s a-coming,” Grandpa said as Sunday strolled toward the house.

  Sunday was able to sneak a wink my way as he passed, juggling the mildly resisting colt in his arms.

  “Andy, why don’t you water Bill’s gelding and tie him in the shade,” Grandpa said as he followed Sunday toward the house.

  I did as he told, checked the progress in the halter-breaking pen, and then rushed to the house. I found them gathered around the colt on the screened porch adjoining the front kitchen. Sunday had the colt by the neck, his rump wedged into the northwest corner while Grandma was gently coaxing the colt to try a little raw cow’s milk from a rubber nipple stretched over the mouth of a milk bottle. The colt protested and balked until he got the first accidental taste of the milk.

  Grandpa chuckled, “Look at that. He’s really giving that nipple a once-over.”

  Grandma nodded and smiled. “I think this one just might make it. He’s just hungry enough to accept the nipple and not so weak that he doesn’t have the strength to suck.”

  When the colt had drained the bottle of its half-cup contents, Bill suggested that the colt could use some more.

  “No,” Grandma said firmly. “The worst thing you can do is give him too much too quickly. I’ll give him another taste in an hour or so.”

  As Grandma withdrew the bottle, the colt strained against Bill’s hold.

  Grandpa chuckled at the colt’s antics. At that moment I wondered if he had been so reluctant to accept the orphan because of the potential of Grandma’s broken heart or his own. As I remember, it was always the two of them staying up all night, trying to save a colt or calf. In fact, it seemed as though Grandma took the death of the young animals a bit better than Grandpa. But no matter, I could always expect a day of quiet work and silent meals when a youngster didn’t make it.

  As Bill struggled to restrain him, the colt lurched forward as quick as a rifle shot and kicked the old cowboy in the shoulder. Bill lost his balance, falling back into the corner.

  “Boy! That little feller’s got a hair trigger!” Bill laughed as he rubbed his shoulder and regained his balance.

  I grabbed the colt about the neck to hold him before he knocked Grandma from her feet as well. His tiny frame tensed at my touch and his strength was impressive. As I held the colt fast, I noticed the tiny white forehead marking resembling a lightning bolt.

  “Lightning.” I whispered as I gained control of my prize.

  From that day forward, the colt had his name.

  We ha
d a bit of luck with the colt two days later. Grandpa showed up for breakfast and reported that Sally, a dark brown American saddle brood mare, had issued a stillborn filly during the night. Sally was an extremely protective mare and usually raised a fine colt. Although Grandpa felt that the bloodlines of the stillborn filly were better than Lightning’s, he was thankful that we had the little buckskin to use as a replacement.

  After our usual breakfast of fresh side bacon, eggs, fried potatoes, and biscuits, Grandpa and I made our way out to the corral to skin out the dead colt. I stopped by the buggy shed to retrieve a few lengths of binding twine. It was an unpleasant task to skin a stillborn colt or calf, but it was the surest method for getting a mother to adopt an orphan. By taking the hide from the sides and back of the dead animal and tying it to the orphan’s back under the belly with binding twine, the mother’s scent would be on the orphan. This usually aroused the mother’s maternal instincts toward the foundling. Once the colt had cycled the adopted mother’s milk through his system, the hide could be removed. By that time there was enough of the mother’s scent on the orphan that she would continue to claim him. It was always an odd sight to see a young colt or calf wearing the crude hide jacket for his first encounter with his adoptive mother, but it usually worked, especially if the mother possessed strong maternal instincts as Sally did. The only other methods available were to try to catch the urine of the mare and pour it over the orphan or simply force an adoption. Forcing an adoption meant tying the mother in a stall and monitoring the sucking of the orphan. This was hard on the mother, orphan, and the people involved. It usually meant a daily fight for dominance, and since colts naturally nurse several times a day—grabbing a snack here and there when convenient—the procedure wasn’t as natural and usually resulted in a bloat-bellied and underfed colt or calf. Neither method worked nearly as well as using the hide. Lightning was accepted immediately by his foster mother and we were able to remove his smelly jacket three days later. It wasn’t long until a passer-by would doubt that the little buckskin wasn’t the natural offspring of the tall brown.

  Grandpa and Grandma had lived together for fifty years. They had raised five children to adulthood, all of them born on the ranch. They were married in Cottonwood Falls, Kansas in 1860, just before homesteading the rolling sandhills of central Kansas a hundred and fifty miles west. They went west in a covered wagon and settled into a sod dugout that was eventually used as the root cellar on the same sandy knoll where the house stood. Grandma liked to tell of those early years on the prairie. She told of how the young couple had faced down some drunken Indians with a shotgun on the journey out, and the year of the terrible prairie fire when they huddled together in the dugout as the horrendous blaze roared past them. There was the time in 1868 when an Indian uprising caused them to flee in their wagon with two infants to Fort Larned for protection. It was five years before they had a neighbor within five miles. I once asked Grandma if it was lonely during those early years. She said that she thought she was going to lose her mind a few times before the babies came. They would go for months without seeing another soul. She took to talking to herself just for some company. Once she had infants to care for, it wasn’t nearly so bad.

  The three oldest children, Glenn, Beryl, and Opal, were twenty years older than Delmar and Jean. Glenn had served in the military, rising to the rank of cavalry sergeant before taking a position as a Deputy U.S. Marshal in Missouri. Beryl had gone to work for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad when he was sixteen and little had been heard from him after that. The last word from him had come from the Yukon during the gold rush of the 1890s. Rumor had it that he was in California. Opal had married a dry goods merchant from Larned where they prospered until he was killed in a horse wreck. She then married a homesteader who took her off to La Junta, Colorado. She wrote regularly, but the distance kept her fairly isolated.

  Delmar was my father. He had remained on the ranch to partner up with Grandpa. He and my mother died during an influenza epidemic shortly after I was born. My Aunt Jean was married to the postmaster in St. John, twenty-five miles southeast. It took most of a day to get to the small settlement that had been built around the newly established Santa Fe railroad, but of all my aunts and uncles, it was Jean who maintained the most contact.

  Living with my grandparents was the only life I knew. They had always been old. Our neighbors to the north, the Thairs, were old. Bill Sunday, a bachelor cowboy who ran a one-loop outfit to the east was old. The Porters, a black family of former slaves, lived two miles west. Ben Porter was a good farmer and we shared seasonal work—especially during harvest and hay cutting—but I had little dealings with his children who were mostly girls. I grew up with horses, mules, cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs, and guns. I went to Eden Valley School through the grades with the Porter girls and a strange kid named Curt O’Dell. Curt always seemed to be in a world of his own—quiet and sullen. He didn’t finish school. My last year, it was just Polly and Edna Porter, their little brothers and sisters, and some younger children from some other homesteads. At fourteen years of age, I was out of school and ready to see the world. The only problem was that Grandpa and Grandma needed me. It was one thing for the oldest children to leave and go their separate ways, but that was thirty years earlier. They didn’t say that I couldn’t go. I’m sure they would have allowed me. It was just that I couldn’t leave them. We had ranch hands and wranglers but none of them stayed for long. I was part of the ranch. I took pride in it and pride in myself for being a part of it. Even old Bill Sunday said that I was as good a wrangler at fourteen as he had ever seen. But then, when you’re raised on the back of a horse, such talents would only come naturally. On the ground I was tall, big footed, and awkward.

  I was also green. Other than our semi-annual trips to Larned to buy and sell stock, and irregular visits to St. John and Seward, I had little contact with the outside world. We sold grain at the Walnut Hill Mill, twenty miles north on the Arkansas River, and on special occasions we visited Great Bend. But for the most part, I worked horses and mules, did chores, and helped my grandparents. I worked hard, and to the best of my knowledge never lacked for anything. My prized possessions were my tall-crowned Stetson hat that my uncle Glenn gave me when I finished school, a Heiser Rocky Mountain Roper saddle that had been my father’s, and an octagon-barreled .22 Winchester pump-action rifle. The little rifle was an eye catcher—nickel plated with extremely dark walnut woodwork. Grandpa bought it from a fellow in Seward who claimed he needed some seed money. Grandpa felt that it was more likely beer money, but the rifle was a bargain and I needed one to replace a worn out old single shot Stevens. I was never more than a few feet from the Winchester. As can probably be guessed, I seldom missed anything that I shot at.

  Grandpa had two sections of grassland and a quarter section and eighty of farmland. We raised a little wheat, red cane, dry land corn, and alfalfa for the livestock. Grandpa built his cowherd up to a hundred head of Herefords and a few Jersey milking cows, which was a lot for those times in that area. He also raised mules and horses. He had twenty brood mares and a mammoth jack burro called Simplex that he bred to the mares. He also purchased unbroken colts for training. Sometimes we would have fifty head that needed to be broke. We also kept hogs, chickens, geese, turkeys, and ducks for home use. We always had at least one good border collie to help handle stock. Grandpa always named the dog Laddie. After a few years we got so we referred to dogs that had passed on as Laddie One, Laddie Four, or whatever number was appropriate. When Lightning came along, we were on Laddie Five. Laddie had always been a good name and Grandpa was superstitious about changing the name for fear he would get a chicken killer or egg sucker if he did.

  Our day work was usually fairly regimented depending upon the season. We rose at sunrise and immediately fed the stock and milked the cows. A couple of hours later we ate breakfast and decided on the day’s work. By eight or so we were in the fields or working livestock. By eleven we brought in the teams, fe
d, and watered them. We ate at noon, usually freshly killed fried chicken, boiled potatoes, and chicken gravy. We would usually rest for an hour after dinner—unless we were putting up hay or threshing wheat—before returning to the fields. By six o’clock, we would change teams or begin evening chores and milking. Depending upon the season and work to be done, we might eat our supper after chores and return to the fields, or call it a day. Grandpa always tried to keep a couple of men on during the farming season of spring, summer, and fall. They did most of the fieldwork while Grandpa handled the stock. During threshing season or hay harvest, we might have crews of twelve men, usually neighbors who shared work. I always enjoyed those times when we had big crews. We ate like kings, each woman at each homestead seemingly trying to outdo the others in preparing harvest meals. There was always lots of practical joking and good-natured conversation during those times. The days were long and the work hard, but the communal aspects made it fun.

  Grandpa had a nice place but it wasn’t anything special. We had an enormous barn that was the center of activity during the day. It was a gable-roofed affair with a loft and stalls on both sides of a center alleyway. “O. C. Tate Horses and Mules” was painted in black on the second story loft drop door. A hay grapple hung from the peak above the door. Hay was lifted from wagons to the loft and dumped with a pulley system that depended on a team of mules on the opposite end of the barn. When I was small, the grapple team was my responsibility. Later, I usually worked in the barn spreading and stacking the loose hay with a pitchfork. The barn was surrounded on three sides by rough plank corrals. To the south was the breaking corral where most of the horse work took place.

  Between the working corral and the house was the wagon and tack shed—a ramshackle clapboard barn with large rolling doors. There was also a chicken house and a brooder house west of the tack shed. On the hill were Grandma’s house and the washhouse with a windmill for pumping water. There was also a taller windmill in the stock corrals. Hog pens and the outhouses were west of the house at the base of the hill. They seemed to go with each other.