A Colt With Some Heart
In spite of the way it looks, I have not dropped off the face of the earth. However, the flow of current events (no pun intended) has reached epic proportions. In August of 2006 I took on the duties of Rural Principal for three remote rural schools in the empty desert of Humboldt County, in addition to teaching. Now I travel several hundred miles a week through ranch country to visit these schools, helping the new teachers get their feet on the ground, occasionally delivering border collie pups to kids in the high desert valleys. One of the teachers I work with also works on a ranch with her husband; she appears at the end of this story, proving once again how intertwined our lives at the edges of civilization truly are. "A Colt With come Heart" was adapted for the anthology Unbridled:the Western Horse in Fiction and Nonfiction in 2005.
Thunderheads drifted through the summer afternoon, their shadows darkening the ridges of the Pine Forest Range. Peggy sat at the kitchen counter, coffee and a cigarette in front of her. Two four-year-old boys, my son and her grandson, played in the shallow ditch just outside the window, building endless mud pies. I watched while Peggy folded laundry. We talked and talked the hours away, as she broke an egg into a bowl of flour, stirring up a batch of rolls for dinner. She set them on the pilot light to rise and put the laundry away. We had another cup of coffee. Merv was only a little late. It wasn’t near time to get worried. Still, her blue eyes scanned the ridge every few minutes.
Merv snaked the big bay colt down over the rocky, brush-choked trail, through the lightning-blackened pines rimming the cirque’s headwall ridge, slopes masked by mountain mahogany and aspen. The trail had led him from the headquarters west, up a rocky canyon, across a high meadow, a little soggy even this late in summer; and up again, out of the sagebrush and into the pines. He had a pretty good scatter on the cattle: fifty head each in the several basins on the eastern side, fifty head over the ridge. It was a good place to get a horse started, and he was happy with this one.
The glacial lake was dark green at midday, and mossy light brocaded the jumble of granite boulders beneath the surface. Merv stepped off in a grassy place near the icy water and cautiously slipped the hobbles around the colt’s hocks. He stood, and stretched. He walked to the shore through the skiff of long pine needles over fine sand.
Swifts skimmed the wavelets, hunting the afternoon hatch. The wind freshened. The grizzled cowboy breathed, lifting the terrible, old, used-to-be-white hat off his forehead.
A couple of fly fishermen eyed him curiously, a figure out of a Western novel riding into the Twentieth century. The fishing population here had changed since the government had declared this a wilderness. Not many locals chose to hike the jeep trail they’d driven in years past, and these men were from someplace else. One of them came over.
“How’s the fishin’?” Merv inquired politely, fishing his own can of Copenhagen out of a blue shirt pocket. They discussed the merits of angling in the middle of the day, dubious at best, and shot the breeze for a while. The fisherman said he’d better work his way around the backside.
He eyed the bay, half asleep in the warm sun as he passed by. “What’s your horses’s name?”
“Roller.”
Merv did not explain to this man how the horse had earned his name. The colt loved his life, loved his work. He loved to chase cows, and worked up a pretty good sweat doing it. When the saddle came off at the end of the day, he would roll and roll in the pasture, as many as six or seven times.
“Nice horse,” the fisherman commented, walked past, and smacked him on the rump.
Merv’s eyes widened as Roller—still hobbled—came out of his doze with a snort. He took one, then two sideways jumps toward the lake. Merv moved as carefully as he could toward the colt’s head, but Roller was panicked, and too quick. Every yank on those hobbles scared him worse. Next thing Merv knew, Roller had bucked himself, saddle, snaffle bit, hobbles and all, into the icy green water.
Glaciers carve a steep profile, and the water is deep close to shore. The terrified horse lunged, struggling for his life. The hobbles kept the colt’s front hocks close together: handcuffs. Waves surged from his shoulders as he heaved against the weight of the soaked saddle and blankets, the split reins tangling around his feet. Easy enough for him to tip over and drown. Merv could only stand helplessly on the shore, watching, “Goddammit, Roller…” he cursed--or perhaps it was closer to prayer.
The colt’s eyes showed white. He snorted and coughed, kicked and kicked at the hobbles. Finally, somehow, he broke free. Still hauling the heavy blankets, the soaking wet saddle, he lunged through the hidden underwater boulders toward shore. Power doubled, he clawed his way back up through the rocks until with one final desperate heave, he stood, dripping and quivering on the grass.
Merv reached out slowly, took the reins, eased off the cinch and slid the sopping saddle to the ground.
For a while he didn’t say anything. Then, “Well, hell, Roller. Might as well have a little siesta while these blankets dry, and then ease on home.” He looked at the trail leading up the headwall ridge, seeing the trip back across the big meadow, across the far side of the mountain toward home, and sighed. Roller shook his massive shoulders like a dog, and sighed too. He dropped his head to the grass. He was hungry.
The sun had left Peggy’s lawn, and the children played horses on the living room rug. Peggy took one deep breath as she saw Merv and the big bay colt emerge from the shadows of the rocky canyon. She poured out her cold coffee and turned the dough out to punch down into rolls for his dinner.
Merv shook his head as he finished telling his wife the story of his day. “That old Roller. I thought I was gonna lose him, by God. By God, colt’s got some heart to him, don’t he.”
Roller was still alive in 2001—he would have been twenty that year. He worked for Merv on high desert ranches for years, branding running mustangs, chasing cows, until Merv retired. Merv’s son Gary had him for awhile, then passed him to granddaughter Lacey. Last she had heard of him, he was traded to team penners from California.