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Sands of Sedona
Copyright 1982-2003 TrixiePixGraphics
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Sands of Sedona -- Western Fiction
Approx. 67962 Words
Chapter Two
John Hannal trotted Chowder into the stable at the end of the street next to the undertaker's. He dismounted and paid a plain, stringy hair'd girl named Kelly for the stall and some grain. The girl glanced at the white mascara which the night rain had caused to run from the corners of Chowder's eyes, down his face like tears. Then she glanced at John, but said nothing.
Two geldings in an adjacent stall managed to crane their heads over the rail in an attempt to get a closer look at John's horse, but Chowder was a cool customer. He never socialized with ponies that he considered to be of common blood, and that included almost every domestic horse he had ever met, no matter their pedigree. He was always first to turn away indignantly when some curious bronc tried to introduce himself by rubbing noses or sniffing breath. John often noted this behavior and wondered why his horse was so blamed antisocial. He couldn't remember the stallion ever making friends with another domestic horse-- only other mustangs, and he was so picky about his mares that it was a wonder the bloodline ever got passed along. Perhaps, John thought, he didn't really know he was a horse. There was no doubt the beast was certainly part Ass.
John felt a warmth and a kinship with this horse as he stood listening to the cold spring wind whistle around the drafty barn. He recalled how the animal came into his life.
John had found himself in a bad situation fourteen years before. Some enterprising Utes had jumped him down in the Four Corners area, a couple of days out of Durango, and his spooky mare had run off. Grass and water in that high country had seemed to the mare as abundant as the herds of wild, bachelor studs in the region, and she found no incentive to let herself be caught by a human again. John lost his horse, his outfit, and most of his money to the Indians.
He didn't begrudge them their acquisitions-- he had been on their range, after all. He'd played the odds at taking a shortcut and lost. He considered the Indians to be most polite for having spared his life.
Days later, hungry and cold, John stumbled into a stock yard out back of a modest trading post. It was built on the edge of Navajo territory near Shiprock. He'd planned to offer work for a meal, and then maybe more work for a new outfit and horse. But he discovered that he was too weak to work at all, and after he collapsed on the steps of the post he had simply begged for food. It was a humbling experience, and one he never forgot.
The stockman took him in and fed him and brought him back to life. John traded his knowledge of horses over the next few weeks in payment.
The Indians brought a steady supply of rank broncs in off the range, for possible sale to the small trading post. Most were of no value at all except to the killers, and a few of those types always hung around the place like vultures. But occasionally, horses with potential were inadvertently brought in.
Slim, who owned the post, culled those out as best he could and they were then broke and trained and sold for a good profit to travelers or to locals-- sometimes even traded back to the Indians.
John's keen eye and calm hand with the mustangs increased the profits of the proprietor, and the man was eager to have him stay on permanently. The friendly, buck-tooth young daughter of the stock yard owner was an added incentive to Slim's offers, but John had a spread of his own, and a somewhat steady girl of his own. Feeling healed and rested after a month of good feed, John was eager to be on his way.
John saved a few dollars while working for the post. He convinced the owner that he was good for a few more, once he got home. He was allowed to cut out a strong, half broke Zuni mare that had come in recently. He made his deal and began to work the horse to bring her to a point where he could at least stay on her back long enough to get home. He was working the mare quietly in a pen one afternoon when a Colorado Ute pushed a string of the most sorrowful ponies John had ever seen into the corral.
All were starving, and if a man knew what to look for he could see death in their dull, sunken eyes. Many would die within a few days. Most were lame. Most had suffered such damage to their digestive tracts that even with proper care and good feed from that moment on, they would be miserable until they finally passed on in a few weeks or months.
Much of the Navajo range to the south was poor and could barely support a mangy rabbit, let alone a herd of horses. Still, it occurred to John more than once that some Indians, and some Whites, did not seem to understand that every animal is a living, thinking being, with dreams of a sort, and aspirations after a fashion, and at least the God given right to a life that was if not prosperous, then free, and that if a man asked something of an animal in terms of work or performance or loyalty, he was obliged to give something in return. To John's way of thinking, a man was obliged to give more than he got.
Wherever these horses came from, they'd not been cared for. Some tribes delighted in claiming their worth as "so many horses"-- yet it didn't seem to matter how close to death those horses were. They were counted as wealth if they were technically alive. The Indians often fenced the animals off in a blind canyon for convenience and then left them for months. If they claimed ownership of the animals, John thought, then they also had a responsibility at least to push them to better ranges when the grass was gone. These ponies had simply been left to starve. Now they were to be killed for their hides and their hooves; they hadn't enough flesh to satisfy a coyote.
The Ute had rounded the ponies up from obscure, weedy corners of the range and he'd driven them hard to get them to market. He would get only a few dollars for the entire herd of twenty-three beasts. But with the herd in this condition, even a few dollars would serve the man's family better than the horses.
John strolled through the pen where the herd had been placed. Though they were straight off the high plateau and had likely never seen a human being except for the drive to Slim's post, most didn't even move away from him. There were the usual misfits, the mostly starved, half dead ponies, the mean broncos that no one would ever want, and the hopelessly lame horses. There were the few who were unfortunate enough to be too ugly or too obviously rough gaited to find a permanent home for those reasons alone. There were the ancient beasts with two feet in the grave already. They all milled about the pen engaging in little scuffles or just trying to find a place to be left alone.
John found himself wondering if any of them knew. Could they sense they were sentenced to die?
His gaze moved around the pen until it settled on one particular animal. He was off in the corner by himself, a bag of bones, a homely albino with a great, bony, primeval head, a long, too-slender reptilian neck, and a conformation that looked like a four year old's first attempt at finger paints. His pink eyelids were scorched and grossly sunburned, raw and bleeding and oozing pus from the flies and infection. His white wall-eyes reflected back only a broken spirit. His great, pink, hairless nose was cracked and swollen from a lifetime on the range with no protection from the sun. His feet were split and broken; his hide was scarred and cut and torn and bleeding. The horse looked to be a hundred years old.
The white horse stood stock still in that sweltering midday heat, not even bothering to swat the flies off his butt with his raggedy tail. Broncos moved around him, jockeying for more space of their own, bumping him, jostling him-- yet he never looked up, never moved, never shuffled a foot. His head hung all the way to the ground; his eyes were half open, seeing but not caring. And it suddenly hit John that this horse knew. He knew what awaited him tomorrow, or the next day. He knew and he didn't care. John believed he welcomed it. The wild stallion's soul had already crossed over. He was merely trying to endure what few remaining indignities awaited him in this life until his body could follow.
John Hannal looked at the horse for five minutes. The horse didn't look back-- but it seemed as though their hearts were connected in that brief time. John had all the horses he could use back at his ranch-- good animals too. They were strong and sound and useful. Only a few months before, he had shipped his own rejects off to the killers.
One of the hands from the trading post rode up, casually swinging a lariat and whistling a salty tune. He was the fattest Mexican John had ever seen, astride the smallest wild mare. The Mexican sidled the mare to the gate and opened it and rode in. He was about to flush the broncs through a chute and down to the killing pen.
"Hey, what are you doin'?" Asked John, a little surprised to hear his own voice. "You want me to sort these for you?"
"Naw", the rider answered. "Slim says they ain't none of them worth keepin'. Save ya the trouble. They'll be in greener pastures by sundown." The cowboy spat a long tendril of tobacco juice onto the ground. His pony moved deftly while he closed the gate. Then he moved her slowly toward the back of the herd. His rolls of fat jostled from side to side as the mare walked.
John sat back on the rail, his emotions a broiling cauldron of confusion. He felt a little panicky. What was the matter with him, he wondered? What was he feeling?
The rider moved into the pen, eased up behind the herd, then let out a whoop and a "giddup". The horses jumped a little at the new sound. All except the albino. He never even swished his tail. He almost seemed to be softly crying.
The horses moved reluctantly toward the chute that would be their last walk on earth. They were sluggish. It hurt most of them to move at all. The rider raised his coiled rope to swat one of the broncs on the butt, and he drew a breath for another whoop. This, John knew, would send them out of the pen. He knew it was now or never. He raised a hand and jumped into the pen.
John paid ninety-five dollars for that albino, much of which he had to borrow from Slim and a little more from Slim's daughter. He'd only bargained to pay twenty-five for the good Zuni mare he'd picked-- But once the Ute got wind of the fact that John had taken a liking to the albino, he announced that there had been a terrible mistake. That horse wasn't even supposed to be in with that herd, the Indian said. That was his prize horse, of only the most regal bloodlines. Why, a famous Cavalry General had even ridden the horse once, said the Ute. The Indian seemed to remember that that very animal was the sire of the fine animal the Great White Leader now rode in parades in Washington...
The pathetic albino had never seen a fence let alone a saddle, but John had been buying Indian horses all his life. He knew when he was licked.
The Mexican cowboy was peeved at the inconvenience of having to extract that old pink eye'd critter from the herd in the pen, and he thought John had lost his mind to boot.
Chowder, as the mustang came to be known, stood still in his own pen for a week before he realized that something had intercepted and redirected his gruesome fate. Then he began to eat.
John finally pony'ed him home-- he was still too weak and unbroke to ride. John was still weak as well. Once on his own range again he turned the horse out to pasture to regain his strength and his self respect, both of which John now understood more intimately than he had before his ride to Durango.
In six months Chowder filled out a striking physique. He was strong and muscular and imposing. He showed John that he was a calm and kind and intelligent beast. And willing. John broke him before he became too independent, and trained him as he gained a foothold on life.
John taught him to lie down on cue, to bow, to count, to spin and to obey voice commands while John's hammy German Shepherd, Fi Fi, rode on his back. Chowder learned to rear when asked, as well as all sorts of other meaningless tricks.
John taught him to hug-- it was Chowder's favorite stunt of all. He hugged for treats at first, but after a while he hugged for no reason whatever, and without being cued. He hugged when he was lonely and happy to see John, and he hugged when he was scared. He hugged when he was hungry and when he was bored. He hugged because he liked to and often for no other reason whatever.
He was as fast as the wind and, John swore, with every passing month, he got younger. Chowder was fearless and stout; he carried John for days on end in the back country, and even though he was nearly blind in bright sunlight he never faltered on the rough trails, always trusting John's every cue and suggestion. He was alert and knowing and aware, and he learned to be proud once more. Chowder became known as "Chowder the Wonder Horse". John jokingly told friends that he wondered why he fed him. Privately, he wondered how he could live without him.
John coated his great, bulbous nose with lady's make up every time the horse went out in the sun, and he smeared a thick coat onto his pink eyelids as well, which looked strangely like too much mascara on a Halloween monster. It kept the bronc from sun burning. The storekeeper's wife was sure John was keeping a herd of whores on the back forty, for all the face paint he bought and carted home for that horse.
As John stood in the stable that cold spring morning in the town of Paydirt, waiting for the girl to prepare a stall, his mind filled with sweet memories of the open ranges, the deserts, the lush northern forests and the high central mountains afork old Chowder.
He remembered the time he came upon a huge mountain rattler up near the Canadian border. A pack string was behind him-- a five hundred foot cliff to their left and a rock wall to the right. John figured they were in for a wreck. Despite his insistence that he not do so, old Chowder put his head down to say hello to that snake. The snake raised his head to see what manner of foolish creature this was-- and they gently touched noses. Having been greeted so amiably, the snake slithered harmlessly away, and the string continued down the trail.
John remembered all the little kids who got their first ride on Chowder in the quiet, peaceful days before the death of his wife, and all the city folks Chowder dazzled with his tricks.
John recollected the fun he and Chowder had when they camped for five months on the Mogollon Rim, near Sedona. He was baby-sitting a herd of beeves. He thought of all the fine and not so fine people they met there, and the good times they had.
Old Chowder never needed hobbles at night as long as there was enough activity in the camp to keep the local mustangs away. He was content to graze around the campfire and listen to the cowboys sing. One evening he got to rooting in the fresh cooked biscuits. They were sitting on the fold-out shelf of the chuck wagon to cool. He caught his tail ablaze in the campfire when no one was looking. He stood right there, just wondering what thet smell was-- and they got him put out in short order, with only that raggedy tail any worse for the wear. Chowder looked even sillier than normal sporting that charred stump of a tail. It took nearly a year to grow it back, and John had obligingly tried to swat Chowder's flies during that time, seeing that the horse could not really do it himself. In time Chowder had learned to shove his great bulbous butt at John when the flies were biting. In time, John came to find this somewhat offensive.
John remembered the first bear Chowder saw in Oregon territory, when one got into the barn and went swatting at the broncs in their stalls. The horse in the stall next to Chowder had dropped stone dead from fright. John had been sleeping nearby in the straw. He killed the bear with four shots from his Walker. Chowder had stood looking at the bear after the smoke settled, then at John. It seemed that he almost.....understood. From then on Chowder never trusted any dark colored stump.
John remembered when the foolish bronc learned to knock on the door of his little house in New Mexico. Chowder had the run of the grounds. John would open the door, give the horse a treat, and he'd saunter smugly away. A minute later he'd be back, pounding on that door again with his great beastly snout. Chowder thought that was one of the greatest tricks he had ever learned and he performed it to the point of extreme annoyance. No one else would have put up with it. Most would have unlearned that trick from that horse in short order, but John spoiled him purely rotten.
John remembered cooking dinner one hot afternoon in that same house, and looking up from the kitchen stove to see the mustang finishing off the last of the tossed green salad on the counter. A back door had been left open, and he'd just quietly helped himself. Chowder clomped through the house and jumped clean over the bed when John yelled at him. Five minutes later he came and thumped on the front door again, to see if they were still friends.
John thought of the rustlers old Chowder helped him chase in South Dakota, and of the eerie ghost towns they explored in central Utah, and of the drunken hillbillies who tried to draw down on them in the Idaho Panhandle. Chowder stood still for him until they got that situation sorted out. For that alone John probably owed him his life.
He thought of little Bubba, the orphaned stud colt Chowder adopted in Colorado. He never knew the stallion had so much mare blood in him.
He remembered the time he saw a young girl fall off her horse and lay motionless in the Texas desert, a quarter mile away. He had a river to cross to get to her, and Chowder hit the water at a dead gallop. The horse stumbled and fell into a deep hole though, and went end over end. All John's camp gear, heavy saddle and rifle dragged him down and they ended up on the bottom of the river, upside down, with the saddle horn jamming John into the mud. He stayed right in the saddle, thinking the horse would get himself right side up and they could swim out of it, but Chowder had been knocked out. John waited and waited, his breath getting short. Finally he began pounding on Chowder's neck, so deep in that black, swirling muck. That brought the mustang around. Chowder scrambled upright again and pulled John to shore, gagging and coughing all the way. Then he carried John and the injured girl to help.
John was ashamed to remember the time he decided to sell the horse. Sometimes a man's priorities can get confused. He sold Chowder to a kind enough retired rancher in Denver, at the end of a long cattle drive. John wanted to ride the train home and there was no facility for his horse.
After the sale, John led Chowder out through the cross pens and put him in a stall. He stripped his saddle off and told Chowder good bye. The horse just stood there, acting as if he didn't comprehend a thing. You know the way horses do.
John got a little teary eyed for a second but then caught himself-- It was only a horse, after all.
John saw the new owners heading his way and didn't want to talk to them. He opened the gate and slipped through, thinking that was the end of it.
As John turned around to latch the gate behind him he locked eyes with Chowder across the stall. In that one instant, he again knew that Chowder knew. The bronc's eyes grew wide and John saw the instant apprehension in his face. Chowder knew John was leaving. He knew he would never see the man again, and he bolted for the gate. He had never done that in all his life, yet he now became as a crazy horse.
He was halfway through the gate before John could close it. John dropped his saddle and gear and tried to push the animal back through the gate and into the stall, but the Chowder would have none of it. He whinnied and stared at John wild eyed, shocked and betrayed. Chowder gave John hug after heart rending hug while he struggled to push the horse back through the gate. Chowder wanted only to please John, to do something he had been rewarded for doing in the past. He wanted John to like him again. The wild horse nickered and reared and shook his head and pushed on that gate. John couldn't stand it.
The new owners showed up about then, just as John was finally able to force the gate closed. They couldn't believe what they saw. John latched the gate and Chowder reared and put his front legs over it, trying to get to him. He extended his head to John, trying to give him more hugs, whinnying wildly.
A teenage girl, the daughter of the new owners, cried openly. Tears ran from John's eyes. He couldn't speak. He picked up his saddle and walked away, refusing to answer the voices behind him.
From the far side of the pens he got up the nerve to look back. The new owners were not in sight. Old Chowder stood in the far corner of his stall with his head on the ground. His eyes were half closed. He was not moving, not bothering to swish his tail at the flies.
John looked at him for several minutes. Once the mustang started to raise his head. He knew where John was, but before Chowder looked fully at him, his head slumped back down to the ground. He saw no point in expending the energy.
Chowder seemed to shrink before John's eyes; his frame sagged and his will to live slipped out of him and drifted away on the wind...
John paid nearly all the money he'd made on the drive to buy back that horse. He figured the education was cheap, and he never regretted a dollar of it.
In the space of four minutes, standing in the cold stable in Paydirt, New Mexico, John relived his relationship with that homely white horse. Doing so always made him smile.
Kelly returned from clearing a stall to show John where to put his mount. She'd selected a seldom used stall back in the corner of the barn, for John looked to her as though he could not walk to the hotel. The stall would afford some quiet, away from the commotion of business that was about to begin for the day. She glanced at the rider and started to tell him which stall to use, but stopped. There was something about his eyes at that moment. Few people would have seen it. Perhaps no one else but she could have seen it. After a moment she only motioned to the empty stall.
John scooped another bowl of grain from the bin, led Chowder into the fresh straw, and silently changed his plans of checking in to the hotel.
He arranged four bales of grass to make a bed next to Chowder's stall, and upon them he spread his blankets.
He thought for a moment about Joe Hillary, and how his corpse had looked when the lightning flashed up on the razorback the night before. He wondered for a moment if the birds were on the body yet. But he'd thought about the man for five months before the fact, and saw little point in thinking about him much at all, after the fact.
He pounded a depression into the grass bales for his hips, and to Chowder's contented crunching of oats a few feet away, John fell asleep.
Next Chapter
Sands of Sedona, Chap 1
Sands of Sedona, Chap 2
Sands of Sedona, Chap 3
Sands of Sedona, Chap 4
Sands of Sedona, Chap 5
Sands of Sedona, Chap 6
Sands of Sedona, Chap 7
Sands of Sedona, Chap 8
Sands of Sedona, Chap 9
Sands of Sedona, Chap 10
Sands of Sedona, Chap 11
Sands of Sedona, Chap 12