The Busted Thumb Horse Ranch (6 page)

“Hush now an’ listen, okay?”

I nodded.

“As a ridin’ horse, you might better buy a goat
or some such. But as a pack animal, that boy is
damned near perfect. He’s put together jus’ right
to carry weight. He ain’t got a clumsy bone in his
body—the sumbitch could probably walk a tightrope
in a hurricane an’ not miss a step. He’s
good—an’ you ain’t gonna do no better. Hear?”

“Yeah—I hear. Like I said, I didn’t pick him
out—Arm did. So I can’t take no credit. But when
Arm’s busted thumb is healed enough to travel,
we’re gonna go an’ see if we can’t find that
herd—an’ maybe that fantasmo.”

“Don’t count on no fantasmo. But you’ll find
the herd, do you look hard enough. There could
might be a mare or two that you want.”

I’d put $500 together to give to Tiny. “Me an’
Arm, we gotta ask a favor of you. Here’s five hundred
dollars. If you come across or see a stud you
think is worth the money, you hand it on over.
If the horse ain’t what me an’ Arm need, you keep
the horse an’ you don’t owe us nothin’—an if
there’s money left over, it’s yours. ’Course if you
wanted
to set the three of us up for a night of cold
beer, why hell, that’d work.”

Tiny laughed. “I can do that. I can’t promise I’ll
find the horse you boys are looking for, but I’ll do
my best.”

“Good. That’s all we want.”

Tiny stood from his bale. “I think we oughta
try that beer right now—make sure it’s jus’
right.”

It sounded good, but I turned down Tiny’s offer.
“I gotta get back, see if Arm is lookin’ good.
I don’t like ridin’ in rain, but a man can’t always
get what he wants.”

On the ride back I saw that the rain was tapering
off. The day was bleak and the sky was a
thick blanket of gray, but the air smelled fresher
and less like the reek of constant rain.

Armando was downstairs, stretched out on the
couch. “You know,” he said in lieu of a greeting,
“we got no food ’cept pork. I’m damned near
starved to death.”

“Yeah. I know. I should have loaded up while I
was in town, but didn’t think of it. The rain’s
about stopped, though.”

Armando grumbled something I didn’t quite
catch.

“I spent some time with Tiny,” I said. “You ever
hear of a fantasmo horse?”

“Boolshit. Is kid’s talk. But sure, I’ve heard.”

“Probably. But Tiny told me there’s a herd of
about a hundred’s tangs out there, an’ that he’ll
keep his eyes an’ ears open for the both brood
mares an’ studs for us.”

“Ees. Good. Ya know, it might take us a long
time
to get the Busted Thumb up an’ running,
no?”

“Maybe.”

Arm straightened on the couch and got to his
feet. He attempted a step and then fell back on his
ass on the couch. “Dizzy,” he said. “I need maybe
una mas
day an’ then we go out after that herd,
no?”

“I guess that depends on whether or not you
can sit your horse without falling off. Tomorrow
I’ll take our packer in an’ load up on grub. Maybe
the day after we can go out.”

Arm swung his legs back up on the couch and
stretched out again.
“Sí,”
he said.

The next morning brought one of those blessed
dry days with sun, blue sky, and not an awful lot
of heat. Arm was sleeping when I went out to the
barn and I left him alone. I strapped on the packer’s
rig, saddled my horse, and rode to town. I
picked up what I needed at the mercantile quickly,
bought an extra sack of coffee and some tobacco
and rolling papers, and wandered over to Tiny’s.
He didn’t have much business; he was sitting on a
bale of hay looking off at nothing I could see.

“Looks like Arm and me are goin’ out to see
about that herd with the fantasmo horse,” I said.

“Figured you would. Thing is, from what I
heard, you’ll have to kill him to bring him in. He’s
a rank one, Jake.”

“I’ve handled rank ones before,” I said. “Hell,
when I was breakin’ horses I rode some that came
straight from hell.”

Tiny nodded but didn’t speak.

“Anyway,” I said, “I guess we’ll see.”

“Yep. How long you figure to be out?”

“I dunno. Until we find the herd an’ get a look
at this stud, I guess.”

“Might take a while. I’ll keep a watch over your
place while you’re gone.”

“ ’Preciate it, Tiny.”

There didn’t seem to be much of anything else
to say, so I mounted up, took the packer’s lead
rope, waved to Tiny, and rode on home to the
ranch.

Arm was as feisty as a bucket of scorpions a couple
days later when we figured he could travel all
right. He always got this way for some reason
when we were setting out on something big—and
he was just as friendly as a mountain cat with a
white-hot poker up its ass. He’d been out in the
barn before light, working under the flickering
light of ol’ man Ven Gelpwell’s ‘Sure Star’ lanterns.

“ ’Bout goddamn time,” he growled as I walked
into the barn, building a smoke.

“Mornin’ to you, too, Arm.”

“You figure that packer’s gonna toss his rig on
all by hisself?” Arm snarled.

I saddled my horse first, just to put another
prickly pear under Arm. When he heard the glug
and tinkle of a couple of bottles in my saddlebag,
his face grew red with anger.”

“
Madre de Jesús,
this ain’t no barroom drinkin’
party, Jake. We go to fetch horses, no? An’ maybe
a fantasmo horse what probably don’t even exist,
case you forgot.”

I ignored Arm and we finished our preparations.
I
checked all twelve shoes for tightness.
“Ready?” I asked.

Armando smiled for the first time that day.
“Ready,” he said.

We rode in a roughly south-southeast direction.
It was scarcely full light and the scents and
sensations of the virgin dew sweet in the air
made a man feel fresh and good. Our horses’
shoes clinked every so often on a rock, seeming
to ring like a bell that’d carry all ’cross Texas.

The day heated up, but without the life-sapping
fire of full summer. We were at the end of August
according to the calendar in the mercantile, and
the weather ’round here changed real quickly.
September snow an’ ice storms weren’t terribly
rare.

We camped early but neither of us was awful
hungry. Thing is, we hit a little spring-fed watering
hole an’ just couldn’t pass it and the few desert
pines up. We ate jerky and drank coffee. About
dark, Arm cleared his throat. “Uhh…that booze
you brought along…”

I fetched the bottle and we each had a couple
snorts.

“We will hit tracks maybe two days, maybe
more,” Armando said. “A big herd like you say,
even a
Anglo
could follow.”

I let that pass.

Mustangs tend to cover a lot of ground in their
daily search for grass and water, but they tend to
stay in pretty much the same areas. If we rode
long enough, it was a pretty sure thing we’d come
upon the horses or their tracks, and Arm and I
both knew that, so there was no real hurry.

Arm’s horse picked up a shard of rock between
his shoe and hoof in his left front and by midday
began favoring it. I dug it out with my Barlow
knife and we packed it with mud and the horse
grunted in the way of thanks. We made camp
right there to make sure the hoof was okay.

I walked out to scrounge up a meal. Armando
won’t eat snake—some Mexican mumbo jumbo
forbids it—and I passed by a couple of fat rattlers
taking the sun on rocks. They’d have made a
good stew and broiling pieces on sticks over a fire
wouldn’t have been a bad meal, either.

There were plenty of jackrabbits around and I
bagged a pair of fine ones, one shot apiece from
a draw, which ain’t bad shootin’, if I do say so
myself.

Arm had a fire going by the time I got back to
our camp and I could smell the mesquite burning
from a good distance off. One of the few benefits
of being an aimless drifter or a cowpoke is that
smell—it’s fresh and almost sweet and jacks up a
man’s spirits every time.

We cooked the jacks about dusk and then
settled back with a sip of booze, contented, full of
stomach, enjoying the sunset.

“Soon, I theenk, we will come on them horses,”
Arm said.

“We haven’t seen a single track or a solitary
lump of horse apple, Arm. Could be a while yet.”

“Some theengs I jus’ know,” he said, ending
that conversation. Arguing with Armando makes
as much sense as arguing with a chicken.

“I’m wonderin’ how many we can drive,” I
said. “They’re bound to be as wild as hawks—
even
the mares—an’ might not take to bein’
pushed in one direction.”

“We take the stud, his ladies’ll follow,” Arm
said. A rope on either side an’ he got no choice,
Jake—the sumbitch’ll either come or we’ll drag
him along, no?”

“We’ll see, I guess.”

In the morning Arm’s horse was as fit as a four-month
old colt. We lit out early.

We saw no tracks that day and the sun was
flexing its end-of-summer muscles. We emptied
our canteens into our hats for our horses early on.
We hit some piss-poor water late in the day, but it
was better than nothing, an’ was safe to drink—
the tracks around the stingy little puddle proved
that. No prairie or desert critter is going to drink
water that’ll croak him. Somehow, they know
what’s okay an’ what isn’t.

Jerky and foul water doesn’t make much of a
meal, but we ate it anyway, figuring on taking
another couple of jacks or prairie hens toward the
end of the day.

It was too damned hot to ask our animals for
any speed, so we plodded along, dripping sweat.

“Prolly last day of the year we sweat,” Arm
said. “ ’Fore long, we be freezin’ our asses off.
Makes a man wonder why anyone, they’d decide
to live out here,” Arm said.

“Well, hell. Free grazin’, for one thing. Some
of the valleys are the prettiest places on earth, an’
the soil ain’t ever been turned. It’ll grow anything.
Plus,” I added, “it ain’t all jammed up with
people like bankers an’ lawmen an’ churches an’
such.”

“Ees true. Hard men roamin’ about though,
no? The crazies from after the war, them ones
who hangs
los negros,
Quantrill an’ his gang, all
them’re thicker’n fleas on a dog’s ass.”

“Maybe so. Sure, they’re out an’ around. But we
ain’t seen much of them, an’ we’re tougher than
they are. They hate Mexes, too—an’ how many
you think it’d take to kill you, Arm?”

“Me? Sheet. One crazy maybe half a mile off
with one of them Sharps, is all,” he answered
cryptically.

We’d had enough by late afternoon. We came
on a small oasis an’ hauled in for the night. There
was some scruffy buffalo grass for the horses to
gnaw at and a few desert pines and a rocky little
pool maybe a couple of feet across and about that
in depth of the sweetest water God ever made.

As we were settling in and gathering up some
firewood, Armando pointed to the east. “Look,”
he said.

I looked. There was a stringy, barely discernable
line in the sky way beyond us.

“The herd,” I said. “It’s gotta be the herd.”

There was no reason to hustle. Those horses
weren’t going anywhere we couldn’t find or track
them. It was possible, too, that the grit we saw
raised was put in the air by another group of
roaming mustangs—not the ones we were after.
Nevertheless, we were like a pair of kids on the
night before Christmas. It didn’t hurt that Arm
had shot three prairie hens while he was gathering
firewood, and they were all cleaned up and
ready to be skewered on sticks over the fire.

Our final bottle of whiskey took a significant
hit that night.

Neither of us mentioned that we may be chasing
something that doesn’t exist—this fantasmo
stallion—although that cruel little thought was
tucked away in the backs of our minds. We’d
know what was what as soon as we saw the herd,
so there was no sense in worrying over it.

Our packer was loaded and we were in our
saddles a tad before first light. The false dawn—
that line of soft, almost pastel light that sneaks up
over the horizon before the sun makes its appearance
was enough for us to see by. Hell, either of
us could saddle up in full dark if it was necessary
and,
in fact, we’d done so more than a couple of
times.

The skimpy cloud in the sky told us the herd
was still headed mostly east.

“Mus’ be valleys that way,” Arm said. “Them
horses are already thinkin’ of winter, no?”

“Must be,” I agreed.

The day was a decent one for riding—hot but
not stifling. We’d let our animals drink their fill
and we topped off our canteens. Other than the
water we carried, we were going to have to count
on the mustangs to lead us to water during the
day. If they went thirsty, so did we.

It’s difficult to gauge distance out there; the
only landmarks we had were foothills that
seemed way the hell ahead of us—maybe forty or
fifty miles—so we did the only thing we could,
which was to follow the brownish cloud raised
by the herd.

About noon we rested our horses and gnawed
at jerky, which had all the flavor of dogwood.

It was almost nightfall when we began seeing
relatively fresh piles of droppings from the herd.
“
Bueno.
We come closer,” Arm said, grinning.
“Tomorrow we see them.”

We saw them the next afternoon.

There was a shallow valley with a ribbon of
water snaking through it, and some sparse grass
that was a whole lot better than nothing to a mustang
herd. We were at the lip, maybe a hundred
yards away. We dismounted and ground-tied our
horses behind us a good bit to make us less visible.
We had a perfect vantage point for observing
the herd.

There were seventy-five or so mares, a bunch of
which had foals at their sides. The entire herd
was scrawny compared to how guys like me an’
Arm like to see horses. Many—most—were ribby,
and many of the mares showed painful-looking
reddish places about the size of a fist at the base
of their tails, meaning they had parasites and that
they’d rubbed their asses against trees or boulders
or whatever they came across to alleviate the
itching. The breeze was from them to us, which
was greatly to our advantage.

The stallion was something else again. It’s
probably fair to say that every saddlebum and
cowhand knows a good horse when he sees
one—just as my partner and I do. This horse was
a rare one, a full sixteen hands tall and maybe a
hair more, and his muscles were perfectly defined.
His chest was wide and powerful. His head
was classic, ears fairly small, muzzle as straight
as the barrel of a .45, and his eyes placed perfectly.
He was a blood bay and his coat looked
like polished copper when the sun hit it right.

He was in motion all the time, his muzzle testing
the air, his eyes never still, sweeping over his
harem and offspring, moving his body to get a
better view of whatever he was looking at.

That was the strange thing both Arm and I
picked up on. The stallion seemed to shift his
hind end to change positions rather than take the
easy step with his front feet that would bring him
around.

“He has injured leg,” Armando said. “Maybe
bad hoof—maybe the bone, she is busted.”

“Still, he looks real good. If he ain’t purely
crazy,
he could maybe make a good stud horse
for us,” I said. “Injuries don’t make any difference
’less he’d been born with them an’ passed them
on to his get.”

“Ees true.” Arm waited a long moment. “Now
what?”

“Hell, I dunno. This little valley isn’t a bad
place to try to get ropes on the stud, but then
we’re buying a pig in a poke. I think we should
watch a couple three-three days, see how that boy
handles himself.”

“What peeg? Ees no
gordo.
You talk funny
sometimes, Jake.”

I sighed. “Forget it, okay? It’s jus’ something
Americans say.”

“But, I…”

I sighed again. “Let it go for God’s sake,” I said,
speaking louder than I should have.

Arm grumbled something but shut up. We
hunkered down and watched the herd drink and
crop grass. Arm nudged me and pointed. A young
stud—he looked like a two-year-old—stood off to
the side of the mares, posturing, snorting, dropping
his head and kicking out with his heels. The
mares pretty much ignored him, although several
heads turned toward his “tough guy” act.

The young stallion was a good-looking horse.
He stood fifteen hands or so, was nicely muscled,
and moved well. His coat was called “sooty,” a
color that isn’t seen often in mustangs—or other
horses, for that matter. What it amounts to is a
kind of layer of black, dullish hairs over a deeper,
darker black.

As I said, the mares weren’t paying him much
attention,
but the blood-bay stallion was watching
him closely.

Armando chuckled. “That youngster, his blood
runs hot. He wishes to take some brides, no?”

“Or some
putas
—I don’t think it matters to
him.”

Sooty worked his way around the group of
mares toward the bay, showing off like a schoolboy
in front of the girls all the way. The bay
turned to face him and snorted, the sound loud
and sharp and angry.

When Sooty was fifty feet from the leader of
the herd he stopped his shenanigans and stood
square, glaring at the bay. Other than a slight digging
motion of his right forefoot, he was statue
still. The bay took a step toward the youngster
and as he did so his left shoulder dropped farther
than it should have—whatever injury he had was
in his left front leg or hoof.

Sooty, impetuous like all youth, charged, running
full out, head extended, teeth exposed, his
hooves raising little explosions of dust. The bay
rose to meet him, shifted his bulk slightly to the
side, and tore a dinner-plate size of hide and hair
off his challenger, leaving a raw, bleeding patch
on Sooty’s side, just behind his withers.

Sooty squealed in pain but whirled about to
attack again—with essentially the same result.
This time he ignored the pain and reared, striking
out at the bay with front hooves that were
faster than a rattler’s assault—and more deadly.
A well-directed hoof could crush the forehead of
another horse like an overripe melon.

The bay reared and that’s when Armando and
I
got a clear view of the horse’s left front hoof:
it was twisted grotesquely inwardly, making a
forty-five-degree angle with his leg. He struck
with his right hoof, catching Sooty in the throat,
and knocking him off his feet.

That was the bay’s strategy, and it worked well.
As the younger horse floundered to get to his feet
the bay closed his teeth around his right rear leg,
just below the hock. We could see the muscles in
the bay’s neck tighten, become thick strands of
steel. Froth dripped from his jaws and he made a
slight back-and-forth sawing movement with his
entire head.

Sooty flailed his other legs and reached back,
mouth gaping, to tear into the bay’s neck and
throat. He had little strength; the pain from his
captured leg all but incapacitated him.

There was a loud snap and Sooty screeched in
pain. The lower leg had been almost severed; it
was attached only by stands of muscle and flesh.
Whitish red, jagged ends of bone appeared but
were obscured in seconds by gushets of blood.
It poured onto the sandy soil like water from a
good well, at first soaking in and then forming
a large puddle that grew as we watched it. The
young stud’s squeals of pain became less strident,
fading to what wasn’t far from the moan of a seriously
injured human. Then, the horse was quiet.
A shudder ran through his entire body and that
was it. He’d never again challenge another horse.

The scent of the blood frightened the mares.
They huddled closer together, eyes wide, their
sides touching those of the others, bodies shivering
as if with cold.

The bay stood back and watched his opponent
bleed out. It didn’t take long. Then he turned
away and hobbled back to his lookout spot. His
gait was strange but not necessarily clumsy; I figured
he’d been born with that twisted foot and
had become acclimated to it. There’d never be any
speed to him, but the size of his harem indicated
he was tough and smart.

“That stallion,” Arm said admiringly, “he is
one hard sonofabitch.”

“Yeah. He is. Getting him back to the ranch
won’t be easy. I don’t think there’s but one way,
Arm. We ride on opposite sides and get loops
over his neck. When he tries to attack one of us
the other drags him off and the same thing works
from both sides. You saw what those jaws can do.
If he gets close enough to either of us to get a hold
on us or our horses, we’ll end up like that sooty
over there drawing flies.”

“
Es verdad.
But we ride good, stout horses and
we done this before.” He paused. “I jus’ wonder
what we’ll do with him when we get him
home—he ain’t gonna like the ranch.”

“All we gotta do is get him into the corral with
the snubbing post, tie him good, and feed and
water him for a few days without pesterin’ him.
Then, I’ll see what I can do to get some manners
into him.”

“Even after your work he’ll always be dangerous,
Jake.”

“No doubt about it. No bronc man in the world
can take a five-or six-year-old like him an’ make
a cart pony outta him.”

“The mares, they will follow.”

“Yeah. We’ll put them into the north pasture,
out of the stallion’s sight. There’s better grazing
there than they’re used to, and good water. We’ll
jus’ let ’em get fat while we work with their boss.”

“You gon’ ride him?”

“I’ll get him to accept a blanket an’ saddle an’ a
bit in his mouth, but riding him seems like it’d
bust down that tanglefoot even worse.”

Armando nodded. “After we get him bred to
some good mares, it’ll be a long ’leven months
to see what comes from the womb. We ain’t good
at waitin’, Jake.”

“Yeah. But no horse ranch can run with one
stud. We gotta buy or find another two or so after
the one we calm is safe to leave alone.”

We watched the herd for the rest of the day.

They moved about in the dish of land, avoiding
Sooty’s corpse but otherwise paying it no attention.
Yearlings ran and played, striking at enemies
only they could see, snorting, ramming
around for the sheer hell of it. It was good to
watch—Arm and I both reveled in it, watching
these big creatures wild and free in nature.

The bay stallion took his position, dropping his
head every so often to graze or drink, but as vigilant
as an ea gle seeking prey.

“A drink would be nice, no?” Arm said.

“It just so happens,” I said, “I was thinking the
same thing. An’ I can fix us up in short order.” I
walked back down the rise to our horses. I had a
metal flask I’d picked up in the mercantile tucked
in among my winter long johns an’ extra socks. It
didn’t hold much more than a pint, but it was
better’n nothing.”

We spent the balance of the day sipping and
watching the horses. We made camp shortly before
dark, but didn’t dare to start a fire. A horse’s
vision is none too good, his sense of smell is excellent,
and smoke would drive them off. We ate
jerky and each had a can of peaches and turned
in. Sleep came quickly and easily to me. The more
I saw that blood bay in my mind, the better he
looked.

The herd had moved down the valley during the
night, which we’d pretty much expected them to
do. They’d cleared the buffalo grass, grazing it
to the dirt, and had to continue on to find food.

We left our packer on a long rope tied off to a
rock where the mustangs had been the day before.
He could scruff at what was left of the grass
and he could reach the water. Then, we lit out after
the herd.

We didn’t attempt to be quiet about it. That
stud would hear and smell us pretty much no
matter what we did, since the breeze was now
blowing from our backs. After a half day we came
upon them. The stud was keeping the mares in a
tighter group and he nipped at the colts that decided
they’d rather play than jog along at mama’s
side. Each youngster who bought himself a nip
shrieked in pain and got back to the herd in a
hurry. The boss hoss was out ahead a short distance
in front of the mares, sweeping back and
forth, stopping only to stick his muzzle into the
air to see what news the wind would bring.

“Lookit the set of his ears,” Arm said. “He’s
good an’ mad. He don’ like this bein’ chased shit.”

“I noticed. He’s gonna be hard to take.”

“We’d bes’ pick up sticks or something to whack
the sumbitch when he comes chargin’. Shaking
reins at him won’t make no difference.”

“Sticks probably won’t, either, but you’re right.
Damn. We shoulda brought heavy quirts. A good
cut across the nostrils will stop any horse.”

“Mos’ horses,” Armando corrected.

We followed behind the herd for a couple of
hours. They weren’t moving fast but they were
moving steadily. The stud let them stop at a water
hole and drink, but shagged them out a few minutes
later. There were a couple of young desert
pines near the water; we each selected a whippy
branch, stripped it, and followed the herd.