Emma and the Cutting Horse (16 page)

Emma’s dad leaned forward to talk to his
brother in the seat in front of him.

“John told us that they would be using a
bigger herd and heavier cattle for the finals. These are the
fifteen best horses out of over three hundred that started in the
Futurity, so they want to really put them to the test. The light
colored cattle are Charolais crosses. They have a reputation for
being harder to handle than other breeds.”

The announcer began introducing the judges
and explaining the scoring system again, and the fifteen horses
came in through the back gate and began to warm up. As Emma watched
Miss Dellfene loping around in a circle with the other horses, she
realized that what she felt when she looked at the mare was the
kind of admiration she would feel for any great athlete. She had
made it to the finals in spite of her small size, crooked knees,
and owners who could barely afford to pay for her training, and she
deserved respect for that.

At last, the Finals began. Miss Dellfene
would be the eighth horse to work, but Emma’s hands were already
clammy, and she had trouble sitting still.

“Don’t talk while the horses are working,”
Kyle told Sarah and Sandra. “I have to concentrate.”

He pulled out his catalog and his pen to
record the vital statistics. In spite of her nervousness, Emma hid
a smile.

The third horse to work was a beautiful,
sorrel stallion owned by the King Ranch.

“My research shows that this is the one to
beat.” Kyle told Emma. “His scores are very consistent and the man
who is riding him has already won the Futurity four times.”

The flashy stallion pulled out all the stops
in his performance. He was always in exactly the right position and
had astonishing athletic grace. The crowd called out their approval
and the scoreboard registered 220 ½.

“That will be hard to top,” Emma’s dad said,
drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair.

“Number 8 is Miss Dellfene, owned by the
Eagle Springs Ranch and ridden by John Brown,” the microphone
blared.

Emma was surprised; as she had been each time
she heard the familiar names spoken by the announcer.

The high scores of the horses that had worked
before her did nothing to intimidate Miss Dellfene, and it was
impossible to tell from a distance if John was nervous. His hat,
the dusty gray one he always wore in winter, was pulled low, as
usual, hiding his eyes. The mare’s red coat gleamed, and she
entered the herd in her typical businesslike way and drove a big,
red steer out into the arena. Then she outmaneuvered him with
joyful exuberance and the same elegant footwork that had drawn
cheers from the crowd the day before. She appeared to know which
way the steer was going to turn before he did, and blocked his
moves expertly. Her movements were as graceful as the dance steps
of a ballerina, and her long red mane flew around her neck and head
like the flowing tresses of a model on the cover of Vogue. The
audience shouted in approval.

When the red steer turned away, John took the
mare back into the herd for a second cut. This time a heavy, white
steer galloped into the open, and almost immediately Emma could
tell that it wasn’t reacting like the other cattle. When it turned
back toward the herd it crowded very close to the mare, and didn’t
seem intimidated by her dancing presence. The big steer stood only
a few inches shorter than the mare, and carried his head up,
blowing angrily through his nose with bovine arrogance. Emma felt
her hands and feet begin to tingle.

Miss Dellfene laced her ears back along her
neck, but as the steer turned and ran toward the side fence, it
crowded closer and closer as though the dancing horse was no threat
to him whatsoever. When they reached the side fence, the steer
turned to face her, put its head down and flung itself into the few
inches of space between the mare and the fence. A collective gasp
issued from the crowd. Emma heard her father murmur, “Oh, my God!”
Miss Dellfene leaned against the monstrous steer squashing it
against the fence, but it shoved its great bulk through the tiny
opening, nearly knocking the mare off her feet. She staggered
sideways, pushed off balance by the steer, which squeezed past her
and dashed back into the herd.

Miss Dellfene and John took several seconds
to recover, as though they didn’t believe what had just happened
either. John slowly reached down and touched her on the neck and
then turned her back toward the herd to get another calf out; but
the buzzer sounded before she had time to separate one from the
others.

“Does that count?” Emma asked her father
desperately.

“I’m afraid so,” he answered. “The steer got
past her. I don’t think it matters how he did it.” His face looked
shocked.

Emma felt Kyle put his hand on top of hers
and squeeze it. His rough, callused fingers felt friendly and warm,
and she turned her hand and laced her fingers through his.

John rode to the far end of the arena with
his head bent and his shoulders slumped. Some of the people in the
audience clapped to express their regret.

The scoreboard showed a score of 203.

* * *

Emma couldn’t concentrate on the rest of the
horses. She felt numb. Sandra turned around to face Kyle.

“Did she lose the money?” she asked.

“Yep,” Kyle answered. He continued to hold on
to Emma’s hand resolutely.

“That
is
so
wrong! That cow was
too big. Can’t you protest or something?”

“Nope,” Kyle said, keeping his eyes on the
arena.

At the end of the finals, Miss Dellfene
placed thirteenth. She received the mandatory fifteen-point
deduction for losing a calf. Emma’s dad walked down into the arena
and accepted a check for six thousand and twenty-two dollars in
winnings. A photographer took his picture with Miss Dellfene and
John.

“She just won at least twice as much money as
we have invested in her,” Emma’s mom said.

Somehow that knowledge didn’t make Emma feel
any better.

Waiting for Emma’s father to come back up to
the stands, time crept slowly. No one could think of much to say.
The awards continued for the Non-Pro Division. Finally, Emma’s
cousins got up to leave with Uncle David.

As they gathered up their jackets, Sarah
turned to Emma.

“Sorry about your bad luck,” she said.

Life was full of surprises.

“Thanks,” Emma said.

When he finally returned, Emma’s father
carried a box that held a large silver and gold belt buckle with a
cutting horse on it and a tiny ruby mounted in the center.

“If I wore it, I wouldn’t be able to bend
over and pick up anything I dropped on the ground,” he joked as he
passed it around. “John has one just like it.”

“Where are John and Miss Dellfene?” her mom
asked.

“They’re not leaving for home until morning.
John is really down about what happened. He blames himself for not
recognizing that the white steer was ‘sour’, as he put it. I sure
don’t blame him though. He said from the start that a big part of
winning the Futurity was luck, and we just ran out of it today. She
still made it farther than I ever dreamed she would.”

“What happens now?” Emma asked.

“I’m not sure. First, John will take her back
to his place. Next weekend a man is coming from Houston to look at
her. He’s bringing his vet to get an x-ray of her knees. If the vet
thinks her knees are sound, he’s offered us twenty-five thousand
dollars for her. He wants a horse for his teenage son to ride in
youth cutting competitions.”

“Wow,” Kyle exclaimed. “Are you going to sell
her?”

“I guess we’ll have to. She’s worth too much
to just put her in a pen and look at her, and we sure don’t need a
cutting horse. If we kept her, she’d probably get struck by
lightning or something.”

For a moment, disappointment coursed through
Emma. Her feelings for the little mare had come a long way from the
day they brought her home from the sale snorting and kicking at
Ditto. She would never really love Miss Dellfene... not like she
loved Ditto, but there was something so beautiful and determined
beneath her plain sorrel coat, some special talent that Emma was
sure she would never find again in a horse. She knew she would
remember watching the mare’s ballet-like performances with her
heart in her mouth for as long as she lived.

“Let’s go home,” Emma’s mom proposed. “I’m
tired and wrung out, and I want to sleep in my own bed.”

Most of the crowd was already gone when they
started down the steps toward the ground floor. Emma glanced over
her shoulder at Kyle, who was bringing up the rear.

“Sarah and Sandra think you’re ‘outta
sight’,” she whispered, rolling her eyes.

“That’s nice,” Kyle answered quietly behind
her, “but I’m waiting for you, Imogene!”

* * *

The rest of the weekend felt like the day
after Christmas. The effect of the days of unrelieved excitement
took its toll, and Emma slept late Saturday morning. When she woke
up, she lay curled under the covers, hesitant to face the chilly
bathroom and the normal chores of the weekend. She could hear her
parents talking in the kitchen although it was long past the time
when her father was usually outside tending to the never-ending job
of caring for livestock. Scenes from the Futurity played over and
over in her head; the hoots of excitement from the crowd, and the
awful hush that fell over the coliseum when the white steer pushed
past Miss Dellfene and disappeared into the herd.

Footsteps came down the hall toward her
bedroom and Emma’s mother stuck her head in the door. When she saw
that Emma was awake, she came into the room and opened the
curtains, admitting a shaft of sunlight that hurt Emma’s eyes.

“I made you a cup of hot chocolate, Sleeping
Beauty,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and pushing
Emma’s hair back from her forehead. “The paper has a story about
the Futurity on the front page. Want to get up and read it?”

LOCAL HORSE MAKES GOOD, the headline shouted,
and a picture of Miss Dellfene pivoting gracefully in front of a
calf at the Futurity filled the entire top half of the page.

“Must have been a slow news day,” Emma’s dad
said, chuckling. A smaller picture below showed Emma’s dad and John
standing in front of the mare as he accepted the belt buckle and
the check for her winnings.

Emma scanned the story, written by a reporter
who had attended the finals.

“Many veterans of cutting horse competitions
felt that Miss Dellfene, owned by Justin and Stephanie Dean of the
Eagle Springs Ranch just north of town, was the most talented horse
at the Futurity. Unfortunately, Lady Luck threw her a curve in the
finals in the form of a huge, belligerent steer. Still, it is rare
for a horse owned by someone outside the cutting horse business to
progress so far in this stiff competition that draws the best
cutting horses from all over the world.”

Sipping her hot chocolate, Emma felt a secret
rush of pleasure; at least part of this year of wild dreams had
come true. Her gaze wandered over the rest of the newspaper, lying
scattered across the table. LOCAL BUSINESSMAN SENTENCED, a small
headline announced. Emma pulled the section closer.

“William T. Haynes was sentenced Friday to
twenty years in the state penitentiary following his conviction on
two counts of child abuse,” the article began.

“I noticed that article, too,” Emma’s mother
said. “Our own little problems certainly take on a different
perspective when something like that happens.”

* * *

Hannah and Katie were waiting in the
bleachers with extra copies of the newspaper on Monday morning. As
Emma worked her way up through the crowd, several kids slapped her
with high-fives as she passed.

“Congratulations, Emma,” one of the teachers
on duty in the gym commented. “You’ll have to tell us all about
it.”

As Emma turned to smile at the teacher, she
heard a crash and someone bumped hard against her back. Books and
papers flew in all directions. She stumbled and then caught
herself, turning to find Candi on her knees, her purse and books
scattered across the bleachers. Candi scrambled to gather up the
contents of her purse, stuffing lipstick, folded notes, pencils and
hairspray back inside. Emma reached down and picked up a handful of
books and scattered papers, handing them to Candi. Their eyes met,
and the din of the crowded gym faded for a moment as they stared at
each other.

“I’m...I’m sorry...about your father,” Emma
said quietly, holding her gaze.

For a fleeting instant, she thought she saw a
flash of pain behind Candi’s eyes, but then it was gone, and she
glanced around at the kids sitting nearby, as though searching for
something to say. Then she turned to Emma again.

“Me too, Cowgirl,” she said, as she stood up
and pushed past Emma to climb up to the top row.

Bibliography

Travis, Byron,
“
Fun, Footwork and
Fantastic Cash”,
The Quarter Horse Journal, Volume
30,
February 1978, pp 108-114

2005 Official Handbook of Rules and
Regulations,
National Cutting Horse Association, Issue no.
58

Handbook, Twelfth Annual NCHA Cutting
Horse Futurity Sale,
National Cutting Horse Association,
1977

Will Rogers Memorial Center,

http://www.fortworthgov.org/publicevents/wrmc/index.asp

About the
Author

Martha Deeringer writes for children and
adults from the back porch of her home on a central Texas cattle
ranch where she lives with her husband, two grown children and an
assortment of grandchildren. Her history articles and personal
essays have graced the pages of many regional and national
magazines. Martha loves kids, horses, dogs, books, gardening and
chocolate chip pizza. Occasionally she has embarrassed her
grandchildren by writing magazine articles about them.