Girl and Five Brave Horses, A (11 page)

This car was a Studebaker Commander and was to be mine and Lorena’s. It was a victoria with jump seats set behind the front seat and a back seat behind them. It had a storage compartment along one side which was covered with black velvet and specially built heavy bumpers both front and back. Why they were specially built or why we had them put on, I don’t know, and I wouldn’t remember them at all except for something that happened later. The tire cover on the back had a picture of a diving horse painted on it with the words: “The Great Carver Show—High-Diving Horses.”

When we finally set out from California it was almost the first of the year, and we drove caravan style all the way from Sacramento to Pennsylvania, Al following us. It was beyond a doubt the best trip I had ever made; we could take our time and stop where we chose and not be hurried by train schedules. Although I was beginning my fifth year with the show, I still had not lost my hunger for travel. I enjoyed that journey with an intensity that still enables me to recall a time or place or person with amazing clarity. Only one mishap occurred.

On the second day out of Sacramento Lorena was driving (we took turns), when suddenly, for no apparent reason, she lost control and the car wheeled off to one side. By its own momentum it careened up onto a ridge, where it came to a sudden and violent halt and then teetered back and forth. The extra-heavy bumpers weighed it first down, then up, then down like a child’s seesaw.

With the force of the stop the car suddenly seemed full of Pekinese. Candy and luggage and crackers shot forward in a flying mess. I can remember clearly that when the car finally stopped teetering Lorena reached up and adjusted the rear-view mirror.

We took stock and found that I had banged my knees and ruined my stockings but had suffered no other damage. Lorena had taken a punch in the stomach when she was thrown against the steering wheel. As we were sitting there sorting ourselves out from the crackers and candy, Al came around the bend in the Big 6 Special and slammed on the brakes. Jumping out, he ran over to us and stuck his head in the window. “What in the God damn hell,” he said, “are you doing here?” There was never an adequate answer.

We reached Lorena’s farm about the middle of January, and a few days later the horses arrived. There were now only three of them. Lightning had died and Judas had been traded after Dr. Carver’s death for a horse named Apollo. We hated to lose Judas, but he had been useless ever since 1924, when he had been retired because of his too dangerous style of diving. Now that Dr. Carver was gone Al had forced himself to make the trade, since we needed a new horse desperately. John would be going out with Lorena, which would leave us only Klatawah, who was getting old. We knew we would have to retire him soon since he was nearly thirty, though he still worked with almost his usual fire. Daddy Carver had used Silver King and a horse named Powder Face until they were thirty-seven and thirty-eight years old, respectively, but they hadn’t carried a rider, and it was harder on a horse in every way to have extra weight on his back. So we knew we must begin to look for a horse to take Klatawah’s place, and Apollo was Al’s choice.

Choices are never easy. With horses there is absolutely no way of knowing whether a likely-looking one will make a diver until you start to train him. The fact that a horse will jump in a river and swim across for his own pleasure when he is back on the farm does not mean that he will show the slightest inclination to jump off a forty-foot tower with a rider on his back. In fact, the odds are very much against it. This means that a lot of money and time and patience are usually expended before a new diver is found. Still, time and patience and money had to be spent if the act was to stay in business, so before leaving California, Al found Apollo and hoped he would work out.

At least he had the primary requisites. First of all, he was pretty. In the beginning he had been so painfully thin that his hipbones stuck out, but Al, with his eye for horseflesh, recognized his potential and by feeding him the best of everything turned the big rawboned buckskin with black mane and tail into a rather swanky-looking horse.

Second, he was a cold-blood, another of the requisites. Klatawah was our only thoroughbred horse, because as a rule thoroughbreds proved too temperamental. In an act such as ours the rider had to be certain an animal could be depended on to react in the same way time after time after time, and this was not usually true of thoroughbreds. They were so high-spirited that one could never be certain what they would do. The term “cold-blood” refers to any horse which is not a thoroughbred or a standard-bred (those bred for harness racing). An ordinary plow horse or farm horse is a cold-blood, and this is what Dr. Carver and Al always looked for.

Third, Apollo was young. He was about six years old, the right age to begin training. Younger than that, horses still feel coltish and behave accordingly. By the time they are six or seven, horses have worked most of the play out of their systems.

Finally, Apollo was a gelding. Dr. Carver always preferred stallions to mares and geldings to stallions because they were easier to handle. In the beginning he had tried to avoid having them castrated, so that they could be used later for breeding purposes, but Klatawah soon showed him that wouldn’t do. Once when he was on the high tower, about to make a dive, a mare in season trotted up out front pulling a buggy, and Klatawah nearly tore down the tower getting to her. He backed down the long ramp, scraping the rider as he went. Dr. Carver decided not to risk a repetition of that performance. Always afterward when he bought a stallion he had him cut.

With the mares it was different. They did not become violent during the mating season, but they did get restless, and since there wasn’t much a person could do but see them through it, Dr. Carver preferred not having them in the first place. Lightning and Snow had been the exceptions, but Snow didn’t carry a rider and was so temperamental anyway that it would have been hard to tell when she was in season and when she wasn’t. Lightning’s defense was that she was so beautiful no one could have resisted her no matter how much they might have wished to.

Even with these favorable characteristics, however, Apollo was an unknown quantity. Was he shy? Was he stubborn? Was he loyal? Was he brave?

No one knew and no one would know until we had begun his training. Horses are like people; they form likes and dislikes, experience anger, sorrow, joy, and loneliness, as well as cowardice and courage; and courage, the most important quality of all in a diving horse, cannot be taught. A person cannot whip a horse to courage any more than he can whip the fear out of him. In fact, whipping only increases the fear. Dr. Carver never owned a whip himself and never allowed his grooms to use one. “A whip-trained horse is a broken horse,” he always said. “Our horses aren’t whip-trained. Our horses are educated.”

Al began Apollo’s training in California and found his progress slow but felt that, once we were situated where we could go into intensive training, he would quickly improve. On the contrary, by the time a practice tower was put up and a tank dug on Lorena’s farm, Apollo seemed to have forgotten everything he had learned. This was very strange, since experience had shown that a horse never retrogressed. Nevertheless, Apollo had retrogressed completely, and Al, to his supreme disgust, had to begin training from scratch.

Training is a lengthy process, taking weeks and sometimes months, during which a horse progresses from the low tower to the high just as a rider does. In the beginning a lead rope is put on the horse, attached to his diving harness and long enough to reach out to the front of the tank. Here the trainer takes his position, coaxing the horse to come off the twelve-foot tower and dive into the tank. This he does by tugging gently and constantly urging in a calm, sure voice. Sometimes a horse simply refuses to be budged by the tugs or the voice, and if he continues to do so over a reasonable length of time all efforts are abandoned and he is sold.

Usually, however, most animals can be talked into trying it at least once, and this was true of Apollo.’ Al soon had him to the point where he would come off the low tower, but from the very first he showed an appalling lack of style. This was bad, for if a horse didn’t have style he just didn’t have it and, like courage, style is impossible to teach. In Apollo’s case he came off the tower with all four feet spread as if he were trying to fly and invariably landed with a belly flop that sent water in all directions. He was awkward and ungainly by any standards, but Al kept working with him, hoping he would improve.

In the meantime he kept the lead rope on him, as he did with all the horses, even after they had graduated to the high tower, in order to help them get their heads up out of the water and keep them from strangling. It also helped guide them out of the tank. After a while, of course, a horse learned to take care of these details for himself, even to keeping the water out of his nose by sucking in his nostrils, as I had noticed Lightning do the first night I watched her dive.

Of course it was from the high tower that a horse really showed his spunk. From that height only the truly brave would dive and, as we were finding out more surely day by day, Apollo wasn’t one of them. It soon became apparent that he was a dud.

The situation was actually very acute, since Al had signed more than the usual number of contracts for the coming season in the belief that by summer Apollo would be diving in form. Now in place of the mediocrity for which we would gladly have settled we had nothing at all.

About this time another problem arose to complicate matters further. Although the doctors had given Lorena permission to ride and she had ridden for Al the past two seasons, she decided, after thinking it over, that it would be too great a strain for her to ride as well as manage the act. She would be completely alone except for a groom to see to the horse and would have no help with the supervision of the tanks and building of the towers or with the financial side of things, so she decided she would get someone to dive for her. This would be easier than trying to find someone to manage the act, for it took years to learn the business. This meant that we now had the problem of finding a rider, which could be almost as difficult as finding a horse. In this instance, however, Fate took a hand and was kind. About the time Lorena decided to act as manager instead of performer, I had a letter from my sister Arnette.

Arnette was now fifteen years old. I was nine years older than she but more devoted to her than to the others because by the time she came along I was old enough to appreciate her. From the first there had been a bond between us and a closeness we were to continue to share for the rest of our lives.

She had been an admirer of mine since she was very small, and I had no sooner become a rider of diving horses than she wanted to learn to ride too. Of course she was much too young at the time and I had ignored her pleas, but now she was a junior in high school and I no longer had an excuse. She could join us for the summer and still be back in time to enroll for her senior year. As for her qualifications, from the pictures she had sent me I could see that, physically at least, she seemed ideally suited for the job.

Arnette was not as tall as I and somewhat heavier, but the heaviness was muscle, not fat. She also had a freshness about her that was very appealing. There was a radiance that struck everyone and prompted a friend of Mother’s to refer to her as “the beauty of the family.” I took the letter to Al, hoping he would agree to let her come. He said if I was willing it was all right with him.

Now all I had to do was decide whether I could afford to let her take the chances I knew a rider must take.

Ninety-five per cent of the time a horse’s dives are good, and if a rider has the proper training she can take care of the other five per cent; but there are accidents in everything, and they are more likely to happen to people who put themselves in dangerous positions than they are to those who do not. By allowing my little sister to come I would certainly be placing her in greater jeopardy than if she stayed at home.

On the other hand, Arnette resembled me. She didn’t want life to be ordinary; she craved experience as I did and I wasn’t certain that by refusing to let her come I’d be doing her any favor. After all, the most and worst that had ever happened to me were friction burns on my legs, a sprained ankle once when Klatawah took off at an angle and twisted my foot between himself and the uprights, and a bang on the head I received one night when he turned over with me still on him and I hit the bottom of the tank. Still, there were girls who had been injured more seriously.

One had had her front teeth knocked out and another had broken her nose. Another had fractured a cheekbone, which left a sunken place in her cheek. Worst of all, one man had actually been killed. Though it was true he had not been a member of the troupe, he had been a Hollywood stunt man and should have known how to handle himself. He begged Dr. Carver to let him ride so that he could have some publicity pictures made, and Dr. Carver finally agreed. He went in all right but he didn’t come up, and when rescuers dived in and dragged him out they found he had broken his neck.

In spite of all the negative arguments, however, I felt that if Arnette had any real talent for riding I could teach her, and if I taught her as carefully as Dr. Carver had taught me she’d be safe.

Having settled the mental debate to my satisfaction, I sat down and wrote her to come, and almost immediately got a reply saying that the school was going to let her take her exams early that year and that she would arrive sometime about the middle of May. May 15 was a month before Lorena’s season opened, which allowed enough time for training. Many girls learned to ride quickly, more quickly than I had. If she was in as excellent physical condition as she appeared to be in her pictures, I might be able to dispense with her ground training and start her off on the low platform.

On the day Arnette arrived Al and I met her at the station. The first thing I noticed was that she had cut her hair. “Arnette,” I said darkly, “I wrote you not to cut it. We like our riders to look like girls, not like boys. You look perfectly terrible.”