One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (15 page)

More likely they wanted to do
me
damage. If so, I’d avoid staying late by myself if possible. If it couldn’t be avoided, I’d be well armed.

“If we’d hit the SUV in the rear, they’d have gone off the road too and probably smashed worse than us. Dumb way to kill someone.” I dumped another full bucket. “There, that’s it. Clean stalls for one more day.”

“Whoever was in the van took off before we could hit them. They weren’t in danger. We were.” She leaned her fork against the side of the stall. “Can I drive the tractor?”

Peggy had become a tractor-driving fool since I’d shown her how the front loader dumped. She hauled herself aboard and turned the key. The tractor grumbled to life. She lifted the front loader and trundled out, dumped the manure and headed back.

She parked the tractor behind the stable, climbed down, and took up the argument. “That driver stabbed his brakes just long enough to bring on his brake lights and force us to brake behind him. He had plenty of time to speed up before we connected with his rear end.”

“We can’t identify the driver.” I counted off on my fingers. “Nor the color of the van. The glass was tinted. We don’t know how many people were inside. No license plate number. No make or model on the SUV. I’d feel better if we had more to give Geoff. But you’re right. He needs to know.”

We spent the rest of the morning doing chores, then ate a scrappy picnic lunch. The day was glorious. Cool with a breeze but not a wind, clouds that ambled across the sky rather than scudded.

After we put our feet up on some hay bales in the aisle for an hour or so, I stood up and said, “It’s time.”

“Oh, Lord, are you sure?”

“No time like the present.”

“Shall we bring Heinzie up to keep him company?” Heinzie was Don Qui’s Friesian sidekick, a black giant with the soul of a kitten. While Don Qui no longer brayed non-stop whenever they were separated, he preferred to keep the big horse in sight. He’d finally accepted knowing Heinzie was in his stall or in pasture, but not for long.

In the year I’d had him under my care—if not my command—I had taught Don Qui to wear a halter and a lead rope without fussing. I had even taught him to accept a driving bridle with a bit, so long as I gave him a sugar cube along with it, but he might get a tad antsy when I put the full driving harness I’d borrowed from the Tollivers on his back. He wouldn’t much enjoy having the crupper buckled under his tail either. I had to be extra careful not to get any tail hairs caught in it. Like getting a human pony tail caught in a scrunchie, catching tail hairs in the crupper hurt.

Today Don Qui stood calmly cross-tied on the wash rack with Heinzie in his stall across the way. In the months we’d been working him, the little donkey had finally learned to enjoy being groomed and petted.

The first step in training a horse to drive is to ground drive him. That is, to walk far enough behind him so that if he kicks he can’t connect with any portion of your anatomy, with the reins in your hands and the ends connected to the bit, and with another person to the side holding a long line snapped to his halter to stop him if he attempts to bolt. That would be Peggy’s job.

In a driving harness the saddle lies across the horse’s back, buckles under his belly, and has loops that carry the carriage shafts along the horse’s sides. The saddle also attaches to the breeching, which goes over and down the horse’s rump to give his rear end something to push against while he’s in draft.

The horse sits back against his breeching going down a hill, making a turn, or backing up. A horse doesn’t only pull with his shoulders. The harness allows him to use his whole body to spread the weight of carriage and passengers.

The language of driving can run from complex to silly. For example. Driving people say the horse is being ‘put to.’ They assume you know put to
what
. When he’s in harness, they say he’s
in draft,
whether he’s a Welsh pony or a Clydesdale.

Don Qui jerked awake when I tightened the girth around his middle. He turned his head as far as the cross-tie allowed, glared and me and let forth a resounding bray in my ear. He made as much noise as the steamboat Robert E. Lee announcing its arrival in port.

“Keep feeding,” I whispered to Peggy as I continued to buckle the harness.

“Should I bring Heinzie?” Peggy asked.

“Leave him in his stall for the moment, until we see how Don Qui reacts. This may be the shortest lesson in history.”

Amazing that such a little guy could be such a handful. Despite a ragged ear heroically gained in saving our lives, he was beautiful as miniature donkeys go. He had a sleek mouse-colored pelt with the cross of dark hair across his withers. Legend says that one of his ancestors carried Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt, for which service his descendants have forever borne the sign of the cross.

Don Qui’s
ancestor
may have been a saint. Somehow those genes got diluted through the generations before they got to him.

He allowed Peggy to lead him into the enclosed dressage arena, although he looked around several times for Heinzie. I could already feel the tension in him. This was the first time we’d ground-driven him when Heinzie was out of sight.

I gathered the reins and sauntered casually behind him as I stayed well out of range of his fast little hind hooves.

“If he freaks, just let him go,” I said.

“You sure?”

“And get out of kicking and biting distance. Fast.”

“It’s a deal.”

“Walk on,” I said quietly. He didn’t move.

“Don Qui, walk on.”

If anything, he planted all four feet even deeper in the arena sand. No Heinzie, no forward movement.

I shook the reins. “Walk on. Peggy, grab his halter and see if you can urge him forward.”

She gave me an uncertain look, but she grasped the halter and tugged. He tugged back. Then he sat down.

“Stand up!” she snapped.

“Wiggle his bridle. Hold out a piece of carrot so that he has to reach for it,” I suggested.

That ploy was met with pure donkey disdain. “Should I get Heinzie?” Peggy asked.

“No way.”

After ten minutes of cajoling, Peggy was losing her temper. I wasn’t. I’d handled worse. But once battle is joined with an equine, the human being is committed to win or to lose forever. So, even if we were still right here tomorrow morning, Don Qui would move forward before we quit. One or two steps would be plenty, but he
would
move.

Non-drivers hear the word ‘whip’ and freak out. A driving whip is not for punishment, however. Horses don’t mind the slight touch—more of a tickle—of the whip on shoulder or croup. Sitting behind the horse, drivers don’t have the luxury of giving the horse signals with legs and seat the way a rider does. The whip acts as our means of communication. And Don Qui definitely needed to learn to speak carriage horse.

“Bring me a dressage whip,” I told Peggy. Most of our whips were long enough to reach a much larger animal’s shoulder from a carriage. If I tried one of those on Don Qui, the end would land somewhere north of his nose.

The look she gave me and the moan she made reminded me of Lurch, the butler in the Addams family television series. She did as I asked, however.

“Now get outside the arena and shut the gate,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. “I may join you in about thirty seconds.” I touched the soft lash of the whip to Don Qui’s fat little butt. “Don Qui, walk on.”

His ears wiggled, but nothing else moved.

“Okay, Don Qui, walk on.” And I popped him. Not hard, but enough to shock him out of his sulk.

He levitated. In one movement he came off his rump and into the air with all four legs, then kicked out with his hind end higher than my head and took off.

One would think that a woman as big and strong as I am could stop a little, bitty donkey. Don Qui, however, must have mastodon genes hidden somewhere inside his DNA. He did an excellent imitation of a ski boat at full throttle, and I skidded along behind him braced back at a forty-five degree angle like a skier.

But I didn’t let go.

He ran and bucked and snorted and kicked and ran some more. “Don Qui, whoa!” I shouted. I was running out of breath trying to stay on my feet.

“Doggone it, whoa!”

He had bucked in a relatively straight line down the center of the arena, and because his legs were so short, he didn’t cover any great distance. I knew that as he came up to the far end of the arena, he’d have to turn, or jump out of the arena and run straight into the fence beyond.

Or stop. Which is what he did. I damned near ran into his rear end, not a wise thing to do under the circumstances. We stood there huffing and puffing. “Whoa. Good boy,” I wheezed, and put my hands on my knees, leaned over and dragged a few breaths into my lungs. “Stand.” He might not need to stand, but I sure did.

I’d long since dropped the whip. It lay in the dirt somewhere along our line of travel. I tugged on his left rein to turn him, clucked to him, and asked him quietly to walk on.

Amazingly enough, he did. He’d made his point.

Peggy came into the ring, walked to his head, clipped on the lead line, and held his halter while I took the driving reins off. We petted him and loved on him, told him what a beautiful, intelligent boy he was, and fed him sugar cubes until he was on the edge of a sugar-induced coma, then walked him between us back to the barn. We were both dripping with sweat.