A Collection of Plain Horse Tales Read online

  Pa didn’t return the handshake. Instead, he carefully looked Morgan over from head to foot. “My friend, you’re a good bit bigger than me. While I’m sure you and your pals all understand our bet”—Pa nodded his head and they nodded theirs—“just in case you were to lose, I want to see you put up your wager in front this time. Your bet against my racehorse was seventy-five dollars. If you can ride my new horse once around the course, you don’t owe me nothing. But if you don’t ride him around the course, you owe me one hundred and fifty dollars. Before I hand you the reins, do you need to go home to get some money?” Pa smiled.

  Morgan looked past the wagon at each of the dozen horses in our train, then slowly reached in his back pocket and pulled out a bunch of folded greenbacks. He counted out, from one hand to the other, one hundred and fifty dollars and returned the few remaining bills to his back pocket. “Who’s going to hold the money?,” he asked suspiciously.

  “Well, I think it’s only fair that the money stay with the horse,” Pa said. “Why don’t we stick it under the saddle or the cinch?”

  As Morgan nodded, Pa said to me, “Billy, go make sure there’s a saddle on Benny and bring him over here.”

  I unhitched Benny from the train and led him over. When I handed the reins to Pa, he stood a little in front of Benny and toward one side. “Sometimes this horse can be a bit mean,” Pa said, pointing a finger right near Benny’s eye.

  Benny dropped his head, snorted and kicked up his rear heels. Morgan’s friends laughed but Morgan just smiled calmly.

  “I’ll hold his bridle,” Pa said, “while you put the stake under his cinch.” Morgan approached the mounting stirrup and stuffed the folded greenbacks between Benny’s cinch and bellyband.

  Pa handed the reins to Morgan and said, “The worst thing about Benny is that he’s damned stubborn.” Pa shook his head from side to side. Benny suddenly moved backward and sat down on his hind legs with his rump on the ground, like your dog sits when he’s next to the dinner table. Morgan closed his mouth in surprise, but his friends broke into laughter.

  “The trait that drove his last owner to sell him, though, is that Benny’s so lazy.” Pa hitched a thumb under his suspender. Benny’s left leg slid forward on the ground, he threw his head up to the right and rolled over onto his left side with all four feet sticking out in front of him. He plopped his head down onto the sod as if he was dead. Morgan stepped back and groaned, “Whoa!” His friends let out a howl of laughter.

  The folded greenbacks were between the ground and several hundred pounds of solid horseflesh. “Looks like Benny covered your bet, Morgan!,” one of the townsmen chortled.

  Luckily, there weren’t any women close by, because Morgan called Benny a couple of names that aren’t very polite. Then he got stuck on the notion that if he could get Benny up, maybe he still could ride him. He tried pulling Benny’s halter, lifting Benny’s head, rolling Benny over, lifting Benny’s legs—and his face was red and sweaty by the time he got down on his knees and tried to push Benny up at the rump. His pals were doubled over in laughter and even Pa got to chuckling.

  Finally, Morgan just stood there breathing heavily and staring at Benny. Slowly, the man’s head went back and his mouth fell open and he started laughing along with the rest of the men.

  Pa put a hand up to his head like he was smoothing his hair, and Benny folded his feet beneath him and rolled upright again. While kneeling down on his front two legs, he got up by raising his rump in the air first. Pa went around to the mounting stirrup, pulled the greenbacks from under the cinch and dropped them in his pocket.

  Before the men left, Pa showed them a few more tricks Benny could do from hand signals and a couple that he could do from voice commands. By the time it got dark, Benny had showed all the tricks he knew, and the townsmen felt they’d got their money’s worth.

  Benny didn’t live too much longer, but while he was sound, he helped Pa collect some wagering money that otherwise would never have been paid. When Benny died, Pa never again made a bet on Grandma unless the wagering money was put up in cash first.

  The Bet Pa Lost

  Someone once asked me if Grandma ever lost a race. Well, the answer to that question is “yes and no.”

  In one of the villages we were in, after Pa and the owner of the local livery stable—Mr. Jenkins—had finished some horsetrading early in the day, Jenkins proposed that they meet again toward evening and each run their best filly. Naturally, this man was willing to bet that his mount would be first across the line, and he wagered an amount that was a bit more than Pa was used to hearing from the average bettor.

  Pa didn’t think nothing more about the race, until word of the match started to go around the village, and tradesmen wandered up to make side bets. When the owner of the feed store came over to the wagon to make a bet on the liveryman’s roan, he chuckled: “Jenkins’ filly’s got to win—’cause Doyle can’t afford to lose.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Pa asked,

  “Doyle Jenkins’ farm burned down a few weeks ago and all he’s got left is his livery,” the miller said. “The fire took his wife, but spared his son and daughter. His daughter was badly burned, though, and needs a heap of doctoring. Doyle’s going to need every double eagle that Lady Luck rolls his way!”

  Well, Pa used to say to me over and over: “One of the most important things I learned in the Cavalry was this—don’t never risk nothing you can’t afford to lose.” After the miller left, Pa paced up and down in front of the wagon. I was surprised a short while later to hear him turn away a couple of men who came by to bet on the roan.

  After Pa had stopped pacing, he told Ma he was going to go over to have a word with Mr. Jenkins; he wanted me to come along to bear witness to what was said.

  Jenkins was in the back of his stable, smithing shoes, when we came up to him. He laid down his tongs and wiped some sweat from his neck, but didn’t look up from the foundry, when Pa said: “Mr. Jenkins, I’d like to call off our race for this afternoon. I’m prepared to go ahead with it if you insist, but I heard that you’ve suffered a great loss lately—and I wouldn’t want to see you lose anything more...which you may not be able to afford to lose. It’s only fair that I tell you: my horse has never been beaten!”

  Jenkins was silent while he worked the bellows, then he said: “Every steed stumbles sometime, Colonel Hooper. At the end of the day, I’m either going to be able to pay my child’s doctor—or I’m not. After my boy exercised the roan this morning, he told me she’s never run faster. I think I know a little about horse flesh; I’ve bet everything I could with you already or I’d bet more!” He lifted a red-hot horseshoe off the anvil with his tongs, dropped it in a bucket of water and the discussion was ended with a hiss of steam.

  Jenkins started hammering on the anvil again, and by the time we were back on the street, I figured I knew what Pa was thinking: he wouldn’t be able to face himself if he took money that should have gone to the girl that was burned.

  Yet her pa wouldn’t let him out of the bet!

  “Golly, there’s no way I can hold Grandma back,” I told him. “You know it’s all I can do just to hang on when she’s running with another horse.”

  Pa stopped walking, turned suddenly, and headed back into the livery stable; I followed.

  Pa told Jenkins he would be willing to add twenty-five dollars of his own money to the purse if Jenkins agreed to one small change in the conditions: instead of running the usual single course around the track, the winning horse would be the one that finished first after running twice around.

  Jenkins gazed at the lanky roan in the rear stall for a moment, nodded his head, and smiled this time as he shook hands with Pa.

  When we arrived at the down, Ma shivered to see Jenkins’ daughter sitting in his carriage. She was about my age—thirteen, maybe fourteen. Even with all the white gauze that was wrapped around her arms and legs, and the loose cotton blanket that was draped around her, parts of her face and hands weren
’t wrapped and you could see she’d been badly burned.

  Her older brother was already mounted as if he was anxious to get the ride over. As we lined up our nags, I could see redness in the boy’s eyes; it looked like he either hadn’t slept much or maybe his pa had said something mean to him. Although he was bigger than me, he acted like he was scared of me.

  When the starter fired the rifle shot in the air, Jenkins’ roan jumped back—and before the boy could spur her forward again, Grandma was already two lengths ahead. I worried right away that Pa’s idea for fooling Grandma just wasn’t going to work!

  This boy was a weak rider, anyway, so the roan wasn’t going to run any harder than she was forced to. Half way around and heading back toward the line on our first course, I could see out of the corner of my eye that the roan was only at the quarter mark.

  By the time Grandma and I crossed the finish line on that first turn around, the roan barely had even reached the three-quarter mark.

  Ever since Pa bought her, Grandma had been raced for only one course around the track; so—just as I always did—when we crossed the finish line, I leaned down and patted her on the neck.

  Sure enough, Pa’s idea did work: Grandma started slowing down, just like she was going into her cool-down run.

  Now, usually, by the time she started coming around the course for the second time, I’d pull her to a stop and begin to walk her down. So she seemed a little surprised when the roan came galloping past us as we again neared the halfway mark. But I patted Grandma once more to assure her that the race was over, and then kept her running fast enough so that it wasn’t over for the Jenkins boy, or his sister and Pa.

  When my Pa paid off on the bet, he didn’t look as happy as he did when he was collecting on his bets; but I heard him tell Ma later, that he felt like he’d done the right thing.

  She must have felt so too, because as I was reharnessing Grandma, she gave Jenkins’ girl a Cherokee medicine doll she’d made when I was just a child.

  Still, if you ask me if Grandma ever lost a race, I’d have to answer “yes and no.”

  The Horsetrader’s Start

  Like many of his fellow soldiers in the Cavalry, Pa grew to respect the Indians.

  After some of the tribes stopped resisting the white man’s presence, Colonel Hooper was one of the first troop leaders to start taking Indian braves along as scouts on patrols.

  But at first both the Indians and soldiers were uncertain of their new partners, and this sometimes led to tragic misunderstandings...such as the one that troubled the Colonel—my Pa—throughout his lifetime.

  Shortly before Pa mustered out of the Cavalry at age 35, he was told to take a squad from Fort Sage and set up an outpost on the prairie to protect the surveyors who were working for the railroad. Just two months before, he had charted some hills to the north and had taken along an older scout who was known as Shining Bear. The redskin and the soldier had gotten along all right on that trip, and the Cherokee’s rifle had brought down plenty of rabbits and grouse for the frying pan. So when the patrol escorted Shining Bear back to his campsite, Pa paid him well in silver, and told him in sign language that he might come and fetch him sometime if he needed his help again.

  Shining Bear camped by himself in the rugged crags near the Cimarron River. As a youngster, he had grown fond of a white girl who had been taken captive by his tribe, and one day he chose her for his wife—even though this meant they could no longer continue to camp with his tribesmen. Soon he sired a daughter and, not long after, his woman died of typhus—which was spread by fleas from animal hides. The child was raised at a mission, according to the story Pa heard, but this had all happened many years before.

  That summer morning when Pa decided to take Shining Bear with his squad up into the Panhandle, all the recruits were in drill so Pa had to make the ride to the scout’s campsite himself. He was nervous about riding the open trail to the Indian’s teepee unannounced, so he approached the clearing among the rocks at a slow pace; and although it was a warm day, he kept his blue cap and jacket on so the scout would recognize him more quickly.

  When the lone teepee came into sight, there was a wisp of grey smoke coming out at the lodgepoles and the redskin’s pony was tethered nearby. Pa reined his horse to a stop just inside the clearing, with the bluff to his back, and called out in greeting: “Yo! It’s Will Hooper!”

  Shining Bear ducked out of his teepee with his rifle, looking surprised like he hadn’t heard Pa ride in. He held up his free hand and started walking toward Pa. Pa wasn’t sure if Shining Bear recognized him so he decided to sit still, and maybe take off his cap.

  Suddenly Shining Bear stopped, said a couple of words in Indian, cocked his rifle, dropped to one knee and fired toward Pa. When Pa heard the bullet whiz over his head, he knew the Indian had missed. Before the gunsmoke cleared and he could aim again, Pa pulled his pistol and shot. His bullet went through the throat, and the Indian crumpled forward and died without a word.

  But before the scout’s rifle clattered on the gravel, Pa heard a whining scream behind him and the sound of something sliding down the bluff. His horse jumped, bucked and turned to face the bluff, and Pa’s pistol went flying as he grabbed the saddlehorn. The horse reared, but Pa caught the reins in one hand and kept the horse from bolting. Rolling right down in front of their feet, in a rain of dust and gravel, was a huge yellow mountain lion.

  Pa and the horse stared at the twisted, motionless carcass—its tongue between its teeth and a tidy bullethole under one eye.

  Pa slumped for awhile as he collected his nerves, looking up at the edge of the bluff—about a bullwhip’s length above him—from where the cat would have lept and landed with four sets of claws in his back. Once both of them were on the ground, the Colonel would have been a blur of blue cotton, bloody skin and yellow fur. So the old scout just may have saved the nervous soldier’s life.

  Pa buried Shining Bear’s body under some stones, turned the scout’s pony loose to forage for itself, and left the teepee as it stood. He felt too foolish to tell anyone about what had happened, and a short while later he decided to quit the army.

  His mother lived just over the Panhandle, near Dodge City. He hadn’t heard from her for awhile so he decided to give her a visit. When he arrived at the ranch, he learned that his mother had died several months before. His sister and brother claimed they hadn’t known where to reach him, and had already split up the ranch property. But when he showed up, they did agree that some of the ranch property should have been his and so they gave him all of the livestock.

  A cattle drive happened to be on its way through to Kansas City, so he sold all the steers in Dodge. That left him with fifteen mature roping horses. Pa took them in tow down to Mocane in the Panhandle, the location of the only mission he’d heard of between Amarillo and Wichita.

  At the mission, Pa asked the grey-haired priest if he knew of a half-breed woman whose father was known as Shining Bear. Yes, this priest had been her first confessor—and still was. Though twenty-five years old now, she still lived at the mission, where she cared for the livestock and taught riding to the children.

  The priest sent a Kiowa boy out to the paddock to fetch her, then led the traveler to a dusty corral and showed him where he could water his mount and fifteen charges. While Pa was priming the pump to fill the trough, the Kiowa boy strolled up with a small, black-haired woman who wore a red flannel shirt and buckskin breeches. More like she was telling him than asking him, she said, “You have news of my father.”

  Pa thanked the Kiowa boy, then asked her if she would sit with him in the chapel. She led him to a cool, dark room in the wooden main building, which had hewn benches and an altar toward the front and was backed by an Indian blanket with a cross woven on it. She pointed to a place for him to sit, went to one side of the altar, lit a candle and came back and sat quietly beside him.

  With many sighs and pauses, Pa told her the story he’d never told anyone else—about how he had s
hot and killed the man who was her father. She listened without interruption; and she did not cry. When he had finished the account, he watched her dark eyes for reaction. She lowered her head and softly sang something in Cherokee, which sounded to Pa like prayer.

  Then she took his hand in both of hers. “I understand. You are forgiven. You are a kind man. Thank you for telling me; I barely knew him.”

  Pa told her he would feel better if he could do something to make things right. He owned little, he said, but he had brought fifteen good horses which he would like her to sell and do whatever she wanted to with the money—give it to the church, if she wanted.

  She smiled and patted his hand. She said she had given most of her life to the church, and that she was soon to leave the mission to take a job with a stable in Enid. “But there are Cheyenne on the Black Mesa near Colorado who would trade silver for those horses. I would not be afraid to travel there with you, if you would not be afraid to travel with me.”

  Pa leaned back and sat silent for awhile. Then he went up to the altar and lit a candle next to the one she had lit. And that’s how my Ma and Pa started out together.

  Horse of a Different Color

  When you make your living buying, selling or swapping horses, you can’t afford to have a horse die or wander away.

  One evening after we left Big Bend, we camped in a clearing that was about midway to the Silver Lode trading post. As usual, I had picked out two stout trees, as close to the clearing as I could find, and I tied a hemp rope between them. Then I took each horse out of the train and tethered its bridle to the rope, leaving enough room for each one to browse some grass—when there was some, as there was here—or to lay down if it wanted to. Then after supper I went to sleep in my bedroll near the fire; Ma and Pa slept nearby in the wagon.