The Strawberry Roan

By Darragh Metzger

Black Bess can whip King Kong with a willow switch.  She can chew up railroad ties and spit out nails.  But she can't figure out how to turn the scrawny, funny-looking, strawberry roan colt she's stuck with into a proper stock-wrangling, plow-pulling, cow-punching Rover's horse.  And that's making it mighty tough for a gal to earn an honest living, even a gal like Black Bess.  Whoever heard of a horse with a horn growing out of his forehead, anyway?  Why do strange things keep happening when Buddy's around?  And why in tarnation would anyone try to destroy half the danged world and kill the legendary Black Bess to get him?  

Inspired by the Tall Tales of the Wild West, this humorous fantasy is approximately 570 pages long and full of twists and turns that will keep you glued to the saddle whether you love horses or just love a good time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TFA Press
• Release date: May 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393719311

Darragh Metzger

I make my living in the world's two lowest-paying professions: acting and writing. While my resume includes stage and screen credits, I've spent the last several years wearing armor, riding horses, and swinging swords with The Seattle Knights, a stage combat and jousting theatrical troupe. My publishing credits include plays, non-fiction articles, and short stories, one of which made The StorySouth Millions Writers Award Notable Stories of 2005. I've written two short story collections and ten novels to date, sold three of them in 2002, and have now re-released them under my own imprint, TFA Press. My first non-fiction project, Alaska Over Israel: Operation Magic Carpet, the Men and Women Who Made it Fly, and the Little Airline That Could, came out in 2018. I also sing and write songs for A Little Knight Music and The Badb. If I had free time (which I don't), I'd spend it with horses. I'm married to artist/fight director Dameon Willich.

Book preview

Prologue

Ibecame a storyteller on account of a simple truth I learned early on: folks love a good story.

Naturally, they also appreciate a good storyteller, and I happen to prefer being appreciated to buying my own drinks, but that’s not the whole reason.  Truth to tell, there’s not much to do most places but sit around the evening fire and swap tall tales.  It’s something to look forward to at the end of a hard day’s work, for the grown-ups as much as their young’uns.

So, come evening, from the North Range to the southern coast, farmers relax around the supper table after the eating’s done, merchants and townsfolk take a chair by the hearth, caravan drivers settle down by the light of the campfire, and somebody—if I’m around, it’s me—starts spinning yarns.

Most nights, it won’t be long before one of the children pipes up and asks for a rover story, unless one of their parents beats them to it.  Rovers aren’t like other folk, you see.

You could say a rover is sort of a cross between a cowboy, a wrangler, gypsy, a soldier-of-fortune, and what-have-you.  Rovers travel with their horses from place to place, offering their services wherever they’re needed.  They ride into town, work for a time, then ride out when the wind changes.

It’s rovers that lead the caravans along their routes, guide travelers over the passes, herd the stock, haul wagons to market, run messages that have to get somewhere fast, carry the mail, plow the odd field, and just about everything else someone needs a horse for.

They’re generally a rough bunch, not the kind of people you want to butt heads with.  But there’s a strict code of honor amongst rovers that keeps them honest with outsiders.  And amongst themselves, generally speaking.

To most people, they’re a whole ‘nother breed, bigger than life with just a hint of mystery.  Part of it’s ‘cause of the horses, being as most folks don’t deal with them much.  Also, not too many people ever get more than a day away from the place they were born, so over the next hill can seem as remote as a star, a dangerous and wild place where only the bravest and boldest roam.  And far away, wild places are where rovers always seem to be when they’re not in your town.

There’s lots of rover tales to choose from.  I can tell you the one about Topper and the Big Bear, or Red Harley and Wolfman’s wrestling match.  Other favorites are the Three Mountain Stampede, the Duke and Iron Myk’s bet, Long Tall Sally and the Cheatin’ Rancher, or the one I call Hairy Ned’s Annual Bath.

Of course, at some point in any given evening, someone always asks for a Black Bess story.  Tell us about Black Bess, they say.  How about Black Bess and Ruffian’s first round up?  How Black Bess outfoxed the bandits?  Or the one about Black Bess and the wild horses?

But it seems like everyone’s favorite is Black Bess and the Strawberry Roan, which makes sense, being as that’s the one about when everything changed.

Of course, it’s better if you’d heard it from Black Bess herself.

Like I did.

Chapter 1

Ididn’t like the colt at first, you understand.

For one thing, I didn’t want a colt at all.  I prefer mares.  A stallion’s brains tend to concentrate elsewhere than in his head, and geldings are usually dull as dishwater and useless to boot once their legs are gone.  Mares have a bit more temperament and I like it that way; being a woman myself, I reckon I understand these things.  Besides, they can drop a living, breathing, spider-legged little replacement every year if need be and still do a gelding’s work.  Anyway, I needed a trained, grown-up, sensible beast I could work with, not a fuzzy-headed, green-broke young fool.

But the colt was all I could find.  A rover has to have a horse, and my mare Ruffian was getting on.  For twenty-some years she was sassy-eyed and glossy-coated, with gaits so smooth they wouldn’t turn cream to butter.  We were a pretty well-known pair in the rover circuit: Black Bess and Ruffian, the best stock workers, drovers, caravan guides, escorts, messengers and mail carriers there were.

But the spring she turned twenty-four all those long years and hard miles started catching up to her.  It took a few miles to walk the kinks out of her joints every morning.  Her winter coat didn’t want to come out either, and when it finally did, the summer hair underneath looked a mite patchy instead of its usual rich bay.  I decided to give us both the summer off, and headed for home.

By the time we arrived in Green Vale, where I grew up and where I like to spend a summer now and then when I can afford it, I was already thinking about the fall ahead.  For years we’d stayed up in the north country mostly, guiding the merchant caravans back and forth over the passes.  But that’s hard work on old legs.  We’d be better off heading down to the Flatlands to work the fall drives, maybe do the old rover circuit one last time, and I knew Ruffian’d need some help getting over the mountains this year.

That brings me to the colt.  I wanted one of Ruffian’s get. She’d dropped a foal darned near every other year since she was five, neat as you please and never a bad one.  All of them had her silky gaits and sweet temper.  But like a fool I’d always sold them off; when you’re moving around as much as I am, you don’t want to be tied down with a lot of responsibilities, and I always figured I couldn’t do better than Ruffian anyway.  Besides, unlike a lot of rovers I don’t do much peddling, so I never needed a pack horse.

Well, I spent the whole spring looking, then most of the summer, and there wasn’t a one to be had anywhere.  Of the four I’d left in the Vale, one had died of colic and one of putting his foot down a rabbit hole, the third had just dropped a foal of her own, and the fourth was a fat old cart horse, set in his ways and spoiled rotten by his adoring owners.  I did track down one or two in the direct line of descent, but they’d been ruined by rough handling and weren’t worth the time it would take to retrain them in any case.  Horses aren’t all that common in these parts, and good ones are scarcer still.

Can’t say as I blamed my old neighbors, but I was just a mite peeved that my generosity was not being properly reciprocated.  How was I to make my living without a good horse?  Most rovers have at least two.  And hadn’t I brought enough prosperity to Green Vale over the years in my humble fashion, what with the business I’d helped direct over the passes?

It was getting closer to fall, the time when I needed to get over the mountains to get hired for the big drives in the Flatlands.  I guess I was getting just this side of desperate, when Maisie the Herbwife told me that old Chalky had a Ruffian grandson or some such he might be willing to let go of.

Chalky had a bad year, Maisie told me as she leaned on her gate.  Green Vale doesn’t boast anything you can really call a town, but Maisie lives in one of the cluster of houses and whatnot that sprang up around the mill and the smithy, which is as close as you can get.  Everything that happens in these parts seems to find its way to Maisie sooner or later.  When it does, she ambles on out to her fence and leans on the gate; it’s a signal that she’s got something really juicy to impart to anyone who cares to stop and hear.

Today that anyone was me.  I did say I was growing a mite desperate.

Bad harvest last year, so no one was giving him a lot of work, she continued, nothing for that ol’ mule of his to pull, and his oxen both took some kind of foot rot.  I tried about everything on it before I figured out it’d help if he’d clean their stalls once in a while.  Durn fool.  She was chewing on a big ol’ grass stem, like always.  I swear that thing’s actually growing out of her mouth; I’ve never seen her without it.

Now, this puzzles me, Maisie, it surely does, I said, aiming to keep the conversation on track because I really didn’t give an old road apple about Chalky’s oxen’s feet, because Chalky’s strictly a mule and ox man, as near as I can recollect. What’s he doing with a horse, especially of my Ruffian’s line?

Chalky had a bad year, she said again, and I feared I was about to get another lesson on ox feet, but she surprised me.  So he can’t feed this colt through the winter—not that he’d want to anyway, since he don’t know what to do with a crazy, green-broke colt, him being, as you say, strictly a mule and ox man, but he took the colt in trade from Niv the Baker when Niv couldn’t come up with what he owed Chalky.  Niv had a bad year, too.  His wife just popped out two more, twin boys this time, and—

What do you mean, the colt’s crazy?  There something wrong with him?

Maisie spat around her grass stem and watched the spittle puff in the dust of the road.  I never seen the colt but once, when Chalky’s middle son led him off from Niv right past here.  He looked sound enough to me, and the boy wasn’t having no trouble with him then.  I hear that’s changed, though.  Chalky never knew spit about horses or women.  His wife just—

I frowned.  You sure he’s Ruffian’s line?  She never threw a bad one.

Maisie blinked.  Chalky?

No, the colt.  Is he Ruffian’s line for sure?

Niv told me he was out of that red-roan filly you sold Rye the Fletcher.  That Rye, now I hear he’s starting in on wife number three come harvest time.  Young Kallie, Bart’s second daughter.  And from the way it’s been hurried up, I’d guess she’s bringing a little guest to the wedding....

I remembered that filly, one of Ruffian’s best.  She’d been sired on the other side of the mountains by a mercenary’s warhorse who wouldn’t take no for an answer, unlike his master.  The foal turned out near as big as her sire, with the best of both parents in looks, brains, and disposition.  I’d named her Foxfire and almost kept her myself, but ended up selling her to Rye because he used to be a rover before he lost his leg, and knew how to treat a good horse.  That was a few years ago, though.  Who’s the sire?

Maisie busted up laughing.  Well, Rye thinks he is!

I mean the colt.  Chalky’s colt.  Who’s the sire?

Now, how should I know that?  Do I keep horses?  Go look at the colt yourself and ask Chalky!  Maisie flounced back inside her hut and slammed her door.

I reckoned I was a disappointment to her, but I figured I could make it up later.  I headed straight out to Chalky’s place, a few miles upland.  Being as I was on foot, letting Ruffian have the morning off, it took me a couple of hours.

As soon as he learned what I was there for, Chalky draped one of his thick, hairy arms companionably around my shoulders and steered me to the corral.  This here is the colt.  He’s got your old girl’s disposition, nothing you can complain about there.  Why, my three littlest can shinny up his legs like tree trunks when they want a ride, and he just stands there.

I noticed that Chalky himself stopped a foot or two short of the fence.  I started to lean over it, then stopped because it looked ready to fall down if I sneezed hard.  Chalky never did keep his place up.

Then I ignored the fence, because the horse inside it took all my attention.  It occurred to me that maybe he let Chalky’s brats climb all over him because he didn’t have the strength to move away.

The colt had seen us approach, and at first he kind of bowed his head, arching his neck so the tops of his ears would have pointed right at us, except they were flattened against his skull.  But when he heard my voice along with Chalky’s, he raised his head to look us over, listening to us talk.  His face would have been white if it had been clean, which I personally consider a fault in a horse, as it distorts the lines of their heads.

He was just three, according to Chalky, and still with that gawky, teenage look, all knees and elbows and a big, lunky head he hadn’t grown into yet.  For all his long-legged height, he wasn’t a big horse.  He had bird-bones, so light and thin it looked like a strong breeze could blow him away.  Ribs showed through the wooly, mud-patched and mud-colored winter coat he’d grown ‘way too early in the season.  Chalky hadn’t taken any more care of the colt than he did of his fences.

He have worms? I asked, finally.

I don’t know.  Chalky sounded like it had never occurred to him to think of that.  He gets the same as my mule and my ox team, but he never seems to gain any weight.  It’s just that he’s a growing colt—he’s gotten bigger since I got him, I swear.

I sighed.  What a mule or ox can live on will kill a horse from starvation.  Chalky wasn’t being mean; he really didn’t know the difference, and it’s not like he ever over-fed his animals as is.  Chalky, I can’t use this horse.  He’s not grown up enough, and judging from the way he looks right now, I’d be that surprised if he’s ever going to be.

I admit he’s not much to look at now, but he’s just getting his growth.  The Ruffian blood will show, in time.  You know Rye wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.  Chalky looked like if he was a different sort of man he’d be wailing and ringing his hands.  I wondered what made him so all-fired desperate to sell the colt.  He’s what you’re looking for, Bess.  Just needs some feeding up and some growing time.

He leaned closer to me and smiled in a conspiratorial kind of way.  He’s fast, this bugge—this boy is.  You should have seen him the first time my Ivy rode him.  Never seen a horse could run like that, but so smooth she didn’t fall off, even though her legs don’t reach half down his sides yet.  The smile faded under a sudden, worried frown.  Gonna have to find her a husband next year.

I watched the colt’s ears twitch from Chalky’s voice to mine, following the speaker.  I generally take that kind of alertness in a horse as a sign of some real brains lurking down in there somewhere, but what I noticed at the moment was the ears themselves.  Too long, almost mulish, though more slender, and they curved in at the tips so they almost met in the middle when he lifted them. 

His neck was so long you’d have sworn a llama had snuck into the barn somewhere down the line, and it didn’t have any more meat than the rest of him.  The good news was that it and the white face made his head look more coarse than it really was.  If that’s saying much.

Mange or lice or something had eaten most of the hair off his tail, leaving it naked as a rat’s, with a clump of mats and burrs hanging off the end of it.  I couldn’t see his feet for the mud.  His mane was a solid mass of tangles and dirt, sticking up in every direction like a haystack.

Then big, dark eyes looked right at me through a mop of forelock, and something about them made me decide to give it another go.  Besides, I’d come all this way, I at least had to have a good look before I told Chalky to find another sucker.  You say he’s a gelding?

Chalky looked offended.  Would I let my own children, the fruit of my loins, the light of my eyes, my hope for personal immortality, play with an unpredictable, dangerous animal like a stallion?

I looked at him.  His expression wavered and fell away, and he sighed.  My wife would kill me.

I forbore to comment, and returned my attention to the colt. What’s his name?

Well, I don’t know what Rye called him, and Niv said he just called him ‘the horse’, but my Ivy named him ‘Rosebud’.

I’d been about to duck under the rail.  I stopped and looked at Chalky.  Rosebud?

Chalky reddened.  Ivy’s at that age.  Mostly we just call him Bud.  Sometimes Buddy.

Buddy.  I sighed again, ducked under the peeling rail and into the corral.  Behind me, Chalky made a noise like he was about to say something.  I turned to look at him and he smiled, showing all his teeth.  I beg your pardon, Chalky? I asked, giving him a chance.

Nothing.  Not a thing.  He was holding onto that smile like it was his hope of salvation.  Just got a frog in my throat, I’m that sorry to think of losing him.

I turned back to the colt, who was giving me his whole attention.  I spoke to him real quiet so as not to alarm him, but he didn’t look scared so much as interested.  I walked on up beside him and held my hand out so he could give it a sniff.  He ignored my hand and curved his neck around, blowing warm, hay-scented breath into my face.  Then he sniffed his way down the rest of me, stopping at my pants.

Well, not quite stopping there, but he was a gentleman about it.  I never had much use for men, and I don’t care for even dogs getting too personal when we’re introduced, but the colt just took a whiff and raised his head back up to where it belonged.  His nostrils fluttered and he gave me one of those deep whickers you feel more than hear.  I patted him on the neck and told him I was pleased to meet him, too, though I reminded myself to check how long ago he’d been gelded.

Chalky made another strangled chicken noise, and when I looked over, he’d lost his split-railed smile and his jaw was hanging somewhere around the region of his belt.  When he saw I’d noticed, he pulled everything back into place.  Why, look at how much he likes you already, Bess, he said heartily. Seems to me the two of you were just made for each other.

I gave him a real long look.  Chalky, I said, nice and steady, I have known you since you were a little boy.  I know that you would never in all your life think to bamboozle me in any way.  I know that, in the name of honesty and general neighborly concern, you would never try to do anything with the intention of endangering my health and welfare.  I know this, just as surely as you know I would never burn your rat-infested hovel around your ears, sell your children over the mountains, and leave your family jewels out front on a post as a warning to others.  So why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind and unburden your conscience.

They don’t call me Black Bess just for my hair.

Chalky’s lips quivered for a minute.  Then his little eyes filled up with tears, and his confession came busting out.  All right, Bess, you’re just too sharp for me—that horse has been nothing but a grief to me since the day my boy brought him home.  He hates me, Bess!  I have never laid a hard hand on him, and that’s the truth, but I can’t get near him without risking life and limb.

I looked from him to the starved, sad-eyed colt.  Buddy nuzzled my hand.

It’s true, Bess, I swear, Chalky cried.  Any of my children, all the way down to the youngest, can play with him like a puppy, but the minute the missus or I come near—you’re the first adult I’ve seen him take to, and if you won’t have him I just don’t know what I’m going to do.  I can’t keep him through the winter.  He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, smearing the dirt on both.  I’m a poor man, Bess.  I can’t keep him as a pet.  You know I can’t.

I’m not exactly rich either, I said.  But you were willing to take my hard-earned pay for a horse that you expected to clog-dance on my head as soon as I got near it?  That’s a mighty poor return for all the years we’ve been friends and neighbors, Chalky.

If he’d been a dog, Chalky would have been wagging his tail fit to start a windstorm.  But you’ve got a way with horses, everybody knows that.  I figured you’d know how to handle him.  And think how useful he’d be in your work—why, you’d never have to worry about somebody stealing him, now would you?

True enough, though the chances of Buddy getting himself stolen were small even if he followed strangers home.  And a horse only kids could handle was no use to anybody in these parts.  I scratched my head, feeling more than a little put out; I didn’t want the colt.

Seeing my dilemma, Chalky played his best card.  Well, Bess, I can see he’s no use to you either.  I can’t say as I blame you any.  He sighed heavily, his whole body collapsing in on itself where he stood.  Guess I can sell him to Tub and his boys to bait his trap lines with.

I bristled and almost laid into him right then and there—one of my Ruffian’s blood for bait?  Never!—but I stopped myself.  It was only right; a man has to make a living.  I glared at him, pretty certain he’d just said that to force my hand.  It worked.  All right, I’ll take the colt.  Maybe I can use him for a pack horse until he finishes growing up, provided he doesn’t fall over dead on the way home.

Chalky was almost embarrassingly grateful, and even threw in an old rope halter so filthy I wouldn’t have put it on the colt, if he hadn’t been worse himself.  Chalky stayed well behind the fence until I had the colt in hand and was leading him out the gate.

Buddy shook his head and rolled his eyes in a menacing glare as Chalky got near, pinning his mule ears back.  But I spoke to him and he settled right down and followed along beside me, docile as an old milk cow, all the way back to my place.

Ruffian called a greeting to me from the front pasture, then stopped and stared at what I’d brought home.  The look she turned on me was so affronted I blushed for shame.  Then she turned tail and flounced off to the far end of the pasture to sulk.

I spent the rest of the morning and a good part of the afternoon cleaning him up.  For a horse with a reputed personality problem, he put up with all of my fussing like he was plumb grateful for the attention.  He nuzzled me whenever I worked within range of that turkey neck, and stood quiet as a rock while I scrubbed, clipped, and trimmed.  What I found underneath all that dirt made me want to go back and have a nice talk with Chalky from, say, the meathook in his smokehouse, but I restrained myself, as I’d paid next to nothing and you get what you pay for in this life.

For one thing, Buddy was not a gelding, contrary to what Chalky had led me to believe; the collected filth and thickness of his winter coat had disguised his condition, and I confess I’d been careless about looking.  It was too late in the year to geld him and still have him fit for travel by fall, as bad a shape as he was in.  The thought of trying to work with a young stallion in company with a mare made me grit my teeth, but there was no help for it, so I decided to count on Ruffian’s good sense and maybe a nice pine club.

He had neat white stockings all the way around, which looks real flashy at a trot, I guess.  His mane turned out to be mostly flax-gold, so pale it was just short of white, and curly as a foal’s, but it was shot through here and there with streaks of bright, almost candy-apple red.  His forelock was split right down the middle between the two colors.  It was the oddest looking thing I’d ever seen.

From the shade of his markings, I’d wondered if there was a nice dappled grey waiting under the dirty, brown winter fuzz.  Now, I’m partial to bays, but once they grow out of that baby brown, a dappled grey is as pretty as you like.  No such luck with Buddy.  Cleaned up, the muddy brown turned to muddy roan, frost-dappled at knee and haunch.  What I’d get come springtime was most likely a strawberry roan.  A dappled strawberry.  Some people think they’re pretty too.  Mostly pre-adolescent girls who’ve heard too many romances and still play with dolls.

You’re pink, I told him in disgust.  I just hope you’re hiding some virtue powerful enough to help me overlook that.

My disapproval didn’t seem to bother him.  Either he was too busy being grateful for my rescuing him or he was out to butter me up.  He gazed at me adoringly, batting eyelashes that were long and curly enough to shame a courtesan, and nickered softly. It sounded like someone had stuck a mouth harp down his throat.

I scowled back at him.  Don’t try to be cute, I said.  I hate cute.

He laid his muzzle on my shoulder and sighed against my cheek in reply.

I put him in the saddling pen to finish drying and dropped in water and feed.  Then I saddled up Ruffian and rode off to have a talk with Rye, who still had Buddy’s dam, Foxfire.

Rye wasn’t a lot of help, even after I explained I wasn’t trying to give the colt back.

I don’t rightly know who the sire is, to tell the truth, he told me while we leaned on the pasture fence watching Foxfire with her new foal, a little chestnut beauty.  It happened while I was making a business trip to Southport.  I didn’t want to be on the road long—I was still married to Pansy then, rest her soul—so I decided to take a shortcut through the Old Forest.  He glanced sideways at me to see if I was impressed.

Gosh, Rye, I am plumb awed by the sheer strength of your intestinal fortitude, I truly am.  My hat’s off to you.

He replied with a touch of defensiveness, perhaps sensing my lack of perfect sincerity.  Most folks would sooner go over the mountains and take a boat back up the coast than spend time in those woods.  It does have a reputation for strangeness, if you believe the old wives’ tales.

I snorted.  "I’m not an old wife, and neither are you, Rye. Hell, you can’t even keep an old wife."

It took him a second, but he laughed.  Rye knows better than to pull my leg.  I’ve known Rye nearly all my life.  My dad and he rode together a lot back when they were both rovers.

"Well, it was a mite strange, he said, and shrugged.  We reached the other side just at nightfall one day and camped at the edge of an open field.  I woke up to find Foxfire wasn’t tied up where I’d left her.  There was a heavy fog; I couldn’t see much farther than the hand in front of my face.  I whistled for her, and she answered me all right, so I followed the sound.  I caught a glimpse of her and a smaller horse, grey or white, at the other end of the field.  When I called again, the other horse ran off, and Foxfire came back.  He spread his hands.  Next spring, she had your Buddy.  That’s the best I can tell you."

You can guess I was overjoyed to hear that my new horse was half mustang on top of everything else, but at least that explained some of his flaws.  Mustangs are tough little survivors, but there’s not a whole lot of them anyone with eyes would call pretty.  I thanked Rye and headed back home, fed Buddy again, and called it a day.

The next couple of weeks confirmed in me the belief that I had been had.  Oh, frequent baths and constant dosing with every remedy I could think of did clear up most of his skin conditions and got rid of the worms, but nothing I did put much meat on him. He wasn’t just a hard keeper.  Looked to me like he’d always have to stand twice to cast a shadow.

I was distinctly apprehensive in regards to my reputation among the other rovers.  How would I live down showing up with a scraggly, pink, rat-tailed, turkey-necked horse?

I decided not to tell anybody he was related to Ruffian.

The day after I brought him home, I took him to the round pen.  Rye generally did a good job starting horses, and I figured to see how far he’d gotten with the colt.  Buddy stared at me from the other end of the longe line with an expression of good-natured idiocy, waiting for me to explain the rules of the game.

I tried basic spoken commands first.  Walk, I said in a kindly but authoritative tone.  His ears strained forward and he stared at me intently.  Walk, I said again with a helpful hand cue, and tugged at the line, gently coaxing his head in the direction I wanted him to go.

He blinked in surprise, thought about this odd behavior on my part, and carefully stretched his neck out until the rope went slack.  Thank you for your consideration, I said, but I am aware of how much tension this line can take before it breaks, and it’s in no danger.  Kindly move up to where you’re supposed to be.  Walk, Buddy, walk.  I stepped behind the girth line and pointing my free hand at his haunches to push him forward.  He listened to me carefully, with the sort of polite bewilderment of a guest at a fancy dinner who doesn’t quite know what to do with all those strange utensils spread out beside his plate.

Since plain speaking obviously meant nothing to the colt, I gave the usual array of get moving sounds a try; clicking my tongue, whistling, trilling and so on.  He seemed fascinated by my vocal skills.  Those long ears flickered like dragonfly wings as he stared at me all round-eyed, frozen in place with astonishment without a flicker of comprehension.

Well, it was clear he wasn’t voice trained.  Belatedly reminding myself to replace my missing training whip, I went all the way back to basics and tried again, the sort of body-talk that gets any horse listening and moving, since its sort of singing their song.

Except Buddy turned out to be tone deaf.  Near as I could tell, there wasn’t a proper prey animal instinct anywhere in him. Finally I popped the end of the line at him like a whip.  Git up there, you!

The colt flinched, and began to worry that I was getting angry at him.  His ears drooped, then his head sagged toward the ground, and finally I feared he was about to embarrass us both by bursting into tears.  Now cut that out, I said.  I just want you to walk around at the end of this here rope.  What’s so all-fired difficult about that?

He squeezed his eyes shut and resigned himself to whatever dreadful punishment I was getting ready to deal out, like he was convinced he deserved death for his unworthiness.

I was starting to feel like a tax-collector or something.  It’s not easy for anyone to make me feel guilty, especially when I haven’t done anything painful to them yet, but the colt was doing it.  I took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.  Then I reeled myself up to him and took him by the halter.  It’s all right, I told him.  Just let me show you what I’m talking about.  Like this.

He pried open his eyes, realized I was giving him another chance, and raised his head.  I pulled at his halter and started walking.  He stepped out briskly, and after a few strides I broke into a trot.  He copied me, and we went around the ring a time or two.

When I figured he had the idea, I let the line trail through my hands and gradually worked my way toward the center, while he kept pace with me at the end of the increasing length of rope.  When I reached my goal, I stopped running and turned slowly in place to watch him, keeping even tension in the line. 

He promptly decided it was lonely on the other end of that rope and followed it back to me.

After several more false starts, I finally got him moving, and almost wished I hadn’t.  You would swear the boy was just learning to walk.  All his gaits were a shambles of gangly limbs moving in no particular order or rhythm, as if he were moving forward only to prevent himself from falling on his face.  I watched that caricature of a horse stumble his way around the ring, counted up the number of days I had left to get him ready for travel, and realized that I just might have taken on more of a challenge than I was prepared for.

In the days that followed, I all but gave up more than once.  Oh, he was eager to please, and tried as hard as any horse I’ve ever worked with, I’ve no complaint there.  By the end of each day, I’d have him moving with a little coordination and balance. But next morning he’d come into the ring like it was his first time, full of enthusiasm and with no memory whatsoever of what we worked on the day before.  I began to despair of him even becoming a passable packhorse.

I finally tried working him in tandem with Ruffian, and got some improvement.  Ruffian wouldn’t take that coltish nonsense, and made him fall in line.  He hadn’t the muscle to push her around, even though he was taller.  With me up on her back and him tied in close beside her so that my leg was squeezed between them, he was finally able to get his sense of rhythm and keep his balance, while getting a feel for what my legs meant.  After a few days, the two of them moved more like a team, and I felt a tad more optimistic about the coming season.

Mother Nature was sending out all the signs of it being a hard winter ahead—birds breaking speed records as they headed south weeks early, the horses getting coats so thick you could sink your fingers in them up to the knuckles, spiders spinning like madwomen everywhere—but I held out from leaving at my usual time.  I wanted a few more pounds on Buddy for one thing, and for another, Solaster’s caravan was late getting to town.  I make a good profit every year taking the mail packets from the autumn caravans over the mountains with me, so I waited.

They finally arrived, more than two weeks past their usual schedule.  Sol was riding the front wagon this year instead of his mule, due to a broken leg—his, not the mule’s.  He passed over several saddle bags worth of cargo to me, and the information that bad weather was already settling in farther north, which was why he was so late.

I knew I couldn’t wait any longer, not and hope to get safely over the passes.  I wouldn’t have dared try the trip back, even if I’d planned to.  I sent word to Tub and his boys to come take over the house (which they do most winters, it being closer to the hills and their trap lines than their own holdings), packed everything up, and set out riding Ruffian and leading Buddy.

There are only a few passable routes through the Northern Range.  Ruffian and I knew all of them, but most times we’d stuck to the ones you can take wagons over.  With just me and two horses to look out for, I decided to take another route, one I hadn’t gone over in years.  It was rougher, but it would also cut several days off our travel time, and I figured better safe than sorry.

I had a pretty good haul this year; seems everyone had a letter or such they wanted taken over the mountains, and Sol had given me a good bit of business.  I felt optimistic about the season ahead, and began thinking about maybe buying another horse if I could find a good one in the Flatlands.  We made good time passing through the foothills and into the mountains.  By the time we cleared Chickenshot and headed up the Snorting Elk, I even began to wonder if we should take things a little easier, for the colt’s sake.

Then, halfway up the Widowmaker, our luck ran out.  I woke up one morning with snow falling on my face.  For a minute I just stared up into it, half-hoping I was still dreaming.  Even with the delays, it was still too early for snow.  But there it was, falling fat and soft and silent as cat feet all over me, the horses, and the gear.

I had to make a quick decision.  We’d passed one of the emergency shelters scattered along the passes a day’s ride back, and I felt pretty sure we could reach it by nightfall.  But going back now meant a real probability of never getting over the mountains at all.

There was another shelter up ahead, as I recalled, within riding distance if we pushed it.  The air didn’t have a storm smell to it.  Surely the snow would let up soon.

I broke camp, tacked up the horses in record time, and we set out.  For the first time I was really glad of Buddy.  Widowmaker is the highest and ugliest of the passes, giving Ruffian enough to do just lugging me up those slopes, and although it never got thick, the snow didn’t let up all day.

By late afternoon, we got to where the other shelter was, but it had vanished as surely as if it picked up legs and walked away.  I dismounted and checked around to be sure I’d got the right place, and found where a nearby cliff face had crumbled away, leaving a trail of loose rock and broken trees.  It must have carried enough of the level along with it that the shelter collapsed, and travelers salvaged everything but the stones.

By now it was too late to turn back.  I had no choice but to try for the next shelter—providing it was still there.  With the snow drifting down to powder my hat and the horses’ coats, I returned to Ruffian and remounted.  I did not have to explain the situation to her; she knew trouble when she smelled it.  She shook her head and turned to move up the narrow trail along the edge of the cliff that led to where we needed to go.  She had to brush right by Buddy, who had snuck up onto her tail, like he had a bad habit of doing.

This time, it spooked him.  He jumped back and stepped over the edge with a hind foot.  Buddy!  Whoa! I ordered—too late.  Feeling that drop behind him, he leaped forward, slamming into the side of the cliff.  The pack he carried bounced him off the rock and into us.  Ruffian was ready for it—she grunted, gave back a step, no more, but Buddy bounced off us and over the cliff edge.

Things happened fast.  Ruffian pivoted on the narrow ledge, bracing herself as he hit the end of the lead line tied to her saddle.  The fool colt screamed like a hill cat, scrabbling with his front feet for purchase, but the snow-dusted earth gave beneath him.  I wrapped the end of the lead around the pommel of the saddle to secure it, swung Ruffian around so our backs were to level ground.

Ruffian wasn’t a big horse, but there was a lot of power hidden under that smooth bay hide.  She dug in with a grunt, settled her strength back into her haunches, and hauled step-by-step against Buddy’s weight.

Buddy, sensing salvation at hand, seemed to steady himself. Still snorting like a wild bull, he started actually thinking about where his feet were going, testing places for stability before putting his weight on them.  As Ruffian continued her steady pull, the colt swung sideways along the ledge, neck stretched to its full length.

A tangle of dead branches left over from the trees that the rock fall had swept away jutted out over the edge of the cliff a few feet away.  His attention wholly on getting to level ground, Buddy was working his way toward them, oblivious to this new obstacle, but I saw it.  I jumped off Ruffian and raced for him, drawing my knife.

Seeing me coming, he made a fresh effort to reach me.  With a lurch, he threw his upper body onto level ground.  Ruffian scrambled to take up the slack, but there was no time; without the lead line’s pull, Buddy lost his balance and fell sideways into the wreckage of the tree.

I reached him just in time to keep him from going back over, grabbed his halter and held fast.  Whoa boy, easy son, I crooned, trying to calm him, but he was past hearing me, and I can’t say as I blamed him.  Wild-eyed, he fought to regain his footing and free himself, hooves thrashing against crumbling rock and cracking wood.

One flailing hoof tagged me; searing pain shot up my left leg.  I risked a glance, saw a wide tear in the leather of my boot.  I couldn’t see the flesh underneath, but I felt warm wetness trickling down inside what was left of the boot.

It hurt plenty; I thought maybe the leg was broken, but there was no time to check.  Cursing, I tightened my grip on Buddy’s halter and slashed at the branches with my knife.  He was too far gone in panic to do anything but make things worse.  He half-reared and I heard something snap.  With a squeal, he slipped backward and I felt the wrench in my shoulder as I braced against the impact.  I craned my neck to look back at Ruffian.  Pull!

With a snort, the old girl dug in like a champ, shivying backward with all the power she could muster.  I hauled on Buddy’s halter, scrambling with my one good leg for better purchase, and the two of us got him headed upward again.  Somehow he got his front legs up onto the level ground, stuck his head out between his splayed legs, and tried to lift himself up, like he was doing push-ups while the rest of him still dangling uselessly in space.

Behind me, I heard Ruffian’s breath coming in snorting gasps of effort.  Poor Buddy’s breath wheezed through his stretched windpipe, spraying my face with hot, wet blasts.  Snow and sweat mingled in a stinging assault on my eyes and my hands were slick with sweat inside my gloves.  My left leg stabbed me I tried to use it to help brace myself.

Come on, I thought, rise already.

I heard the dry crackling and snapping of the wood wrapped around the pack on Buddy’s back, but the branches refused to release their hold.

No use, I realized.  The pack was too badly tangled in the remains of the dead tree.  We could only keep this up so long; eventually, either Buddy would strangle, the lead line would break, or Ruffian’s heart would, and he would fall and die.  Quite possibly, I might too, if I didn’t let go soon enough.

I tried to see around him to find the right branches to cut, but there was just no way.  That tree was doing its damndest to see us in Hell.

About the only thing in Ruffian’s saddlebags was what we’d been given to carry over the mountains.  Almost everything I owned was in the pack Buddy bore.  If I cut the pack off and saved Buddy, we’d lose all our gear.

I could cut the lead line and snagged the pack, Ruffian could haul it up and we could go on alone.

It was the fool colt’s own fault we were in this fix, after all, the useless, ugly, stump-stupid....

I grabbed hold and started sawing.  There was a tug, a snap, and the pack went tumbling away over the cliff.

As soon as she felt the change of weight, Ruffian threw herself backward, digging in the deepening snow like a fox after a rabbit.  The line tightened again and Buddy almost shot upward, his upper body flopping into the snow like a fish in the bottom of a boat.

I scrambled backward and repositioned myself.  With a snort that almost blasted my eardrums, Ruffian gave one last heave, Buddy lunged, and I hauled with all my might.  His hind hooves groped up over the edge, found purchase, and he launched himself all the way up onto the level ground.

The relief proved too much for him: he lost his head, tried to bolt.  I held him; right at that moment, I was mad enough to grab him by the scruff of his beard and slam his head against a rock a few times with one hand.  I stared into white-rimmed eyes inches from mine and barked, Stand!

It penetrated.  Buddy froze.  I held him like that while he stared back at me until the terror in his eyes was replaced by a growing look of contrition.  His ears drooped.  When I could stop panting long enough, I gave his head a shake.  A lot of help it is to be sorry now, I growled.  "If you’d have taken us with you over that cliff, I wouldn’t have let you survive the trip down, I promise you."  I let go of his halter, and we picked our way over to Ruffian so I could check the damage to both of them.

Neither horse was injured, though I almost changed that when I thought of the heavy weather gear in the pack we’d lost.  Poor Ruffian was lathered and blowing, but more worried about me.  I gave her a pat and told her she was going to have to wait while I checked my leg.

I tied the colt to a rock and let him stand steaming in the cold, while I sat down on another to unlace my shredded boot and pull it off.  This was not something I could do in any sort of a hurry, as it turned out, since my leg was, in fact, broken.

Once I got my breath back, I set the bone, cleaned the wound with a few handfuls of snow and some brandy, and wrapped it with a strip of oil cloth from my saddlebags.  I used a chunk of tree branch for a splint and tied the remains of my boot back on over the whole mess.

I had to rest up a bit before I called Ruffian over to the rock.  She’d been staying out of my way but giving me worried looks, and I could