Some More Horse Tradin' (13 page)

He said, “I'll give you the horse back that you traded to me and $50 boot for him.”

“Tom,” I said, “I rarely if ever trade a horse off that I want back, but I'll take $200 for the roan.”

“Why, Ben, you know there ain't no horse worth $200!”

And, I knew that was really the truth according to the times. He said, “I want to ride him. There couldn't be two horses look that much alike and I know how he ought to feel under me.”

I told him to help himself. He rode off down toward the feed mill and was gone a long time. The reason he was gone
so long was that he had ridden down there and tied him and got off of him and he told me that he even slapped him in the face with his hat and he couldn't get him to set back, but he did know it was the same horse.

I said, “You ought not to slap a nice horse in the face with your hat. You might teach him bad habits.”

We had lots of conversation and ate supper together and I never let on that I knew anything had ever been wrong with the horse. The next morning before I left town, Tom came by the wagonyard and, finally, after an awful lot of palaver, gave me $165 for the red roan horse and nobody until now ever knew about the water treatment and the sore-tailed bronc.

O
ne hot July afternoon I was sittin' in one of the town drugstores with Dr. Chandler, a good old-fashioned family doctor with lots of common sense who always had his patients' welfare at heart, when Cindy, a crippled little girl about eight years old, came into the drugstore on crutches to get an ice-cream cone. Dr. Chandler had something nice to say to Cindy, the same as he did to everybody else, and as she left the store, the old doctor straightened the little black bowtie that was around his stiff winged-point white collar and shook his head and said, “What a shame.”

I was a rough young cowboy and wasn't too much worried about the ills of the world and so I said, “What do you mean, ‘What a shame'?”

Without being malicious, Dr. Chandler said that if Cindy hadn't been so well cared for after her rheumatic fever that her feet would not have drawn the way they had. Her family was a little too well fixed and had taken too much care of her. Well, I knew this to be true because they had hired private teachers so she wouldn't have to go to school on crippled feet and there was always domestic help around the house to wait on Cindy. The doctor continued and said that if there was some way she could be made to take exercise, her feet might be saved even this late. In a very idle, lighthearted way I said, “I have a mare with feet crippled like her. If you find out how, we'll save 'em both.”

The old doctor just shook his head and said, “Ben, you'll never do.”

Our backyard was just across the alley from Cindy's and I had a little horse pasture running from the barn down to the creek where I kept an extra horse or two besides the one I would be riding. The pony I had mentioned to Dr. Chandler was a little red roan, bald-faced, stocking-legged Indian pony a little larger than a Shetland, but not horse size, that had been foundered from too much feed.

Ponies are inclined to be more subject to founder from eating too much rich protein feed than big horses, and this little mare that I had named Pocahontas had foundered several times. Founder is a supersaturation of protein that settles around the joints of the legs of horses and causes the feet to fever, and as the foot grows out it wrinkles and contracts at the heel unless the horse is kept shod and the hooves are treated to keep them soft.

Well, this little mare wasn't exactly worthless because I sometimes would turn her into a pasture to use as a decoy for wilder horses to take up with and make them easier to drive or get out of the pasture. And, too, Pocahontas had been a good baby sitter with colts when they were weaned off of their mother. I could put them with Pocahontas and she seemed to keep them from getting in the fence and trying to get back to their mothers.

I had brought Pocahontas into town and was keeping her in the small pasture and her feet were in extremely bad shape because she had run out all winter and spring and I had not cut the extra growth off that was turning the ends of her hooves up. They had grown out until her front feet stuck up a little at the toes and she was walking on the outside of her foot and her heel about like little Cindy. I began thinking that if I got Pocahontas and little Cindy together, they might help each other, so I put the little mare in the corral right behind Cindy's house and cut the water off from the water trough in the corral.

I didn't see what went on that day, but sometime during the afternoon Cindy was out in her backyard where she
could hold on to an ornamental iron fence and walk and Pocahontas nickered at her. Cindy held on to the iron fence and made her way back to the alley between the corral that Pocahontas was in and the iron fence of her backyard. When I rode in late that afternoon Cindy came down that iron fence pretty fast and said in a straight forward manner, “That sweet little horse has been nickerin' all afternoon, and I think it's because she doesn't have any water.”

I said, “Well, Miss Cindy, I have to lead Pocahontas.”

She laughed real quick and thought that the name Pocahontas was cute. I explained to her that she was an Indian pony and said, “I'll lead her to the creek and water her now.”

Cindy started a little argument that I should bring Pocahontas water because the horse's feet were crippled just like hers. As I started leading the little mare to the creek, I said in a very casual way, “Well, walking on them might do her some good.”

Cindy had coal-black hair about shoulder length and big dark eyes that made her bleached skin from the lack of sunshine look even whiter than it was. I looked back and Cindy had come across the alley and was trying to follow me and Pocahontas but she didn't have her crutches with her and it was easy to see that walking was difficult no matter what. I stopped and waited for her to catch up with us. As she rubbed the little mare's neck and ran her hands through her mane, I handed her the lead rope and said, “Miss Cindy, why don't you take Pocahontas to water.”

As she took the rope in one hand, there was a pleased expression on her face that I had seldom seen before. Well, they were pretty well gaited together since neither of them could walk very fast, and Miss Cindy, without knowing it, was holding to Pocahontas's neck as they braced each other and started on to the water.

I turned and unsaddled the horse I was riding and put her in the corral and watched and waited for the two to come back up the hill. They were a long time because Pocahontas
would graze and Cindy wouldn't make her move except when Pocahontas wanted to, but after a while they made it back to the barn. Cindy seemed to be walking without being so conscious of her own crippled feet.

I kept the water cut off at the corral and Cindy was taking Pocahontas to the creek two or three times a day without her folks knowing about it, so nobody was scolding her for walking too much. I noticed in a week's time that she had rubbed all the rough spots of hair on Pocahontas down to a fine gloss and that Cindy's pale little face had begun to show some color.

I decided I had better tell Dr. Chandler what I had done, so I went by his office right after dinner. He was rared back against his rolltop desk in an old high-back swivel chair sound asleep. I didn't disturb him and sat down to wait. Finally he raised up and asked how long I had been there. I told him that I had a confession to make and he said he was a doctor not a preacher, but he would listen to whatever sins I had committed.

I went into detail about my mare, Pocahontas, and his patient, Cindy. The old doctor thought the story was real good and he laughed heartily about it and commented that Cindy and Pocahontas were putting something over on her parents. He said he would find some excuse to drop by and visit and take a look at Cindy's feet and for me to come back tomorrow.

The next day about the same time I came in and roused him from his nap and he sat there, looked at me and smiled and said, “Ben, I don't know whether I want to take you in as a partner or just trade for that Indian pony, but I sure need her in my practice. Cindy's better in several ways. She's eating better, sleeping better, and her ankles and feet show a little bit of improvement and I would say that she is much lighter hearted from being in the company of one Indian pony than she had been with her family and all the help
around the house. I sure hope nothing can happen that would fix that water line in your corral.”

In a little while Cindy was getting too proud of Pocahontas to be sneakin' over in my pasture and she began to take her over in her yard to graze and play. Her grandfather and father both came to me to ask if it was all right for her to have the pony for her own as company and to tell me how much care they would give the pony. I told them right quick to leave Cindy and the pony alone—that she could keep her and play with her as much as she saw fit, but that the pony had been foundered and I didn't want them buying any feed to feed her to make her worse or taking too good of care of her as they had Cindy.

I decided I ought to work on Pocahontas's feet and straighten them up as much as I could, so with Cindy watchin', I sawed the dead long ends of her feet off with a saw and pared around inside of the hooves to where the frog of the hoof would get a little pressure from the ground when Pocahontas walked. Cindy watched all this and talked about it and patted Pocahontas and told her that we were doing it to help her and it would make her feet better.

Dr. Chandler told me in a few days that Cindy had asked him if he couldn't straighten her feet the way I had fixed Pocahontas's and he had given Cindy some special shoes to wear. The old family doctor hadn't missed a trick; he had had the local bootmaker fix Cindy some little sandals that would support her big toes and the insides of her feet in such a way that she would get more even weight on her instep of her foot and wouldn't walk so much on the sides and on her little toes. They were just sandals and were light and comfortable to wear in the hot weather.

Pocahontas never had a bridle on and rarely ever a lead rope. I had fixed a strong leather strap with a buckle on it that Cindy had Pocahontas wear loosely around her neck and when you saw them out for a stroll, they were always walking
side by side with Cindy holding on to Pocahontas's neck. Cindy and Pocahontas became a familiar sight up and down the street from her house to the community grocery store and people would ask her why she didn't ride her pony. I don't know what her standard answer was, but they walked side by side as she held on to Pocahontas and as Pocahontas leaned some toward her.

By late fall, Dr. Chandler had changed Cindy's sandals to shoes several times and they were doing her far more good. Cindy had grown up and out and gained weight and her color was good and her dark eyes flashed as she smiled and talked about Pocahontas. Of course, the little mare had fallen in love with Cindy and nickered to her every time she went to the house and whenever she heard her voice. I had no real use for Pocahontas that would have justified taking her away from Cindy, and as winter came on, Cindy's folks built a little shed behind the garage at their house so Pocahontas could be in the warm and dry during the winter.

That fall Cindy started to public school for the first time. After school she and Pocahontas would walk together either to town or just around the neighborhood and everybody had learned to pat and brag on Pocahontas, which made Cindy beam. Cindy outgrew the physical need for Pocahontas by another summer, but she never outgrew her love for the little mare. She was constantly having a horseshoer or a veterinarian see what they could do for Pocahontas's feet and kept her until she passed away about the same time that Cindy was a teenage young lady taking dancing lessons.

 

E
arly one fall I had a lot of cattle in the feed lot that I intended to feed until the following spring, which would be at least five or six months. I was mixin' feed on the floor of the feed barn with a scoop and seed fork and then loadin' it onto a one-horse wagon and working my saddle mare, Beauty, to the wagon to put the feed out in the troughs. She wasn't likin' pullin' that wagon and I wasn't likin' for her to have to.