Read Ebook: Horses Nine Stories of Harness and Saddle by Ford Sewell

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Ebook has 337 lines and 23153 words, and 7 pages

y that they escaped by a miracle from a devil-possessed horse who, finding them beyond his reach, committed suicide.

But Blue Blazes had no thought of self-destruction. After swallowing as much lake water as was good for him he struck out boldly for the shore, which was not more than half a mile distant, swimming easily in the slight swell. Gaining the log-strewn beach, he found himself at the edge of one of those ghostly, fire-blasted tamarack forests which cover great sections of the upper end of Michigan's southern peninsula. At last he had escaped from the hateful bondage of man. Contentedly he fell to cropping the coarse beach-grass which grew at the forest's edge.

For many long days Blue Blazes revelled in his freedom, sometimes wandering for miles into the woods, sometimes ranging the beach in search of better pasturage. Water there was aplenty, but food was difficult to find. He even browsed bushes and tree-twigs. At first he expected momentarily to see appear one of his enemies, a man. He heard imaginary voices in the beat of the waves, the creaking of wind-tossed tree-tops, the caw of crows, or in the faint whistlings of distant steamers. He began to look suspiciously behind knolls and stumps. But for many miles up and down the coast was no port, and the only evidences he had of man were the sails of passing schooners, or the trailing smoke-plumes of steam-boats.

Not since he could remember had Blue Blazes been so long without feeling a whip laid over his back. Still, he was not wholly content. He felt a strange uneasiness, was conscious of a longing other than a desire for a good feed of oats. Although he knew it not, Blue Blazes, who hated men as few horses have ever hated them, was lonesome. He yearned for human society.

When at last a man did appear on the beach the horse whirled and dashed into the woods. But he ran only a short distance. Soon he picked his way back to the lake shore and gazed curiously at the intruder. The man was making a fire of driftwood. Blue Blazes approached him cautiously. The man was bending over the fire, fanning it with his hat. In a moment he looked up.

A half minute, perhaps more, horse and man gazed at each other. Probably it was a moment of great surprise for them both. Certainly it was for the man. Suddenly Blue Blazes pricked his ears forward and whinnied. It was an unmistakable whinny of friendliness if not of glad recognition. The man on the beach had red hair--hair of the homeliest red you could imagine. Also he had eyes of the color of ripe gooseberries.

"You see," said Lafe, in explaining the matter afterward, "I was hunting for burls. I had seen 'em first when I was about sixteen. It was once when a lot of us went up on the steamer from Saginaw after black bass. We landed somewhere and went up a river into Mullet Lake. Well, one day I got after a deer, and he led me off so far I couldn't find my way back to camp. I walked through the woods for more'n a week before I came out on the lake shore. It was while I was tramping around that I got into a hardwood swamp where I saw them burls, not knowing what they were at the time.

"When I showed up at home my stepfather was tearing mad. He licked me good and had me sent to the reform school. I ran away from there after a while and struck the Perkins farm. That's where I got to know Blue Blazes. After my row with Perkins I drifted about a lot until I got work in this very furniture factory," whereupon Lafe swept a comprehensive hand about, indicating the sumptuously appointed office.

"Well, I worked here until I saw them take off the cars a lot of those knots just like the ones I'd seen on the trees up in that swamp. 'What are them things?' says I to the foreman.

"'Burls,' says he.

"'Are they?' says he. 'They're the most expensive pieces of wood you can find anywhere in this country. Them's what we saw up into veneers.'

"That was enough for me. I had a talk with the president of the company. 'If you can locate that swamp, young man,' says he, 'and it's got in it what you say it has, I'll help you to make your fortune."

"So I started up the lake to find the swamp. That's how I come to run across Blue Blazes again. How he came to be there I couldn't guess and didn't find out for months. He was as glad to see me as I was to see him. They told me afterward that he was a man-killer. Man-killer nothing! Why, I rode that horse for over a hundred miles down the lake-shore with not a sign of a bridle on him.

"Of course, he don't seem to like other men much, and he did lay up one or two of my hostlers before I understood him. You see"--here Mr. Lafe, furniture magnate, flushed consciously--"I can't have any but red-headed men--red-headed like me, you know--about my stable, on account of Blue Blazes. Course, it's foolish, but I guess the old fellow had a tough time of it when he was young, same as I did; and now--well, he just suits me, Blue Blazes does. I'd rather ride or drive him than any thoroughbred in this country; and, by jinks, I'm bound he gets whatever he wants, even if I have to lug in a lot of red-headed men from other States."

CHIEFTAIN

A STORY OF THE HEAVY DRAUGHT SERVICE

He was a three-quarter blood Norman, was Chieftain. You would have known that by his deep, powerful chest, his chunky neck, his substantial, shaggy-fetlocked legs. He had a family tree, registered sires, you know, and, had he wished, could have read you a pedigree reaching back to Sir Navarre .

Despite all this, Chieftain was guilty of no undue pride. Eight years in the trucking business takes out of one all such nonsense. True, as a three-year-old he had given himself some airs. There was small wonder in that. He had been the boast of Keokuk County for a whole year. "We'll show 'em what we can do in Indiana," the stockmaster had said as Chieftain, his silver-white tail carefully done up in red flannel, was led aboard the cars for shipment East.

They are not unused to ton-weight horses in the neighborhood of the Bull's Head, where the great sales-stables are. Still, when Chieftain was brought out, his fine dappled coat shining like frosted steel in the sunlight, and his splendid tail, which had been done up in straw crimps over night, rippling and waving behind him, there was a great craning of necks among the buyers of heavy draughts.

"Gentlemen," the red-faced auctioneer had shouted, "here's a buster; one of the kind you read about, wide as a wagon, with a leg on each corner. There's a ton of him, a whole ton. Who'll start him at three hundred? Why, he's as good as money in the bank."

That had been Chieftain's introduction to the metropolis. But the triple-hitch is a great leveller. In single harness, even though one does pull a load, there is chance for individuality. One may toss one's head; aye, prance a bit on a nipping morning. But get between the poles of a breast-team, with a horse on either side, and a twelve-ton load at the trace-ends, and--well, one soon forgets such vanities as pride of champion sires, and one learns not to prance.

In his eight years as inside horse of breast-team No. 47, Chieftain had forgotten much about pedigree, but he had learned many other things. He had come to know the precise moment when, in easing a heavy load down an incline, it was safe to slacken away on the breeching and trot gently. He could tell, merely by glancing at a rise in the roadway, whether a slow, steady pull was needed, or if the time had come to stick in his toe-calks and throw all of his two thousand pounds on the collar. He had learned not to fret himself into a lather about strange noises, and not to be over-particular as to the kind of company in which he found himself working. Even though hitched up with a vicious Missouri Modoc on one side and a raw, half collar-broken Kanuck on the other, he would do his best to steady them down to the work. He had learned to stop at crossings when a six-foot Broadway-squad officer held up one finger, and to give way for no one else. He knew by heart all the road rules of the crowded way, and he stood for his rights.

So, in stress of storm or quivering summer heat, did Chieftain toil between the poles, hauling the piled-up truck, year in and year out, up and down and across the city streets. And in time he had forgotten his Norman blood, had forgotten that he was the great-grandson of Sir Navarre.

Some things there were, however, which Chieftain could not wholly forget. These memories were not exactly clear, but, vague as they were, they stuck. They had to do with fields of new grass, with the elastic feel of dew-moistened turf under one's hoofs, with the enticing smell of sweet clover in one's nostrils, the sound of gently moving leaves in one's ears, and the sense that before, as well as behind, were long hours of delicious leisure.

It was only in the afternoons that these memories troubled Chieftain. In the morning one feels fresh and strong and contented, and, when one has time for any thought at all, there are comforting reflections that in the nose-bags, swung under the truck-seat, are eight quarts of good oats, and that noon must come some time or other.

But along about three o'clock of a July day, with stabling time too far away to be thought of, when there was nothing to do but to stand patiently in the glare of the sun-baked freight-yard, while Tim and his helper loaded on case after case and barrel after barrel, then it was that Chieftain could not help thinking about the fields of new grass, and other things connected with his colt days.

Sometimes, when he was plodding doggedly over the hard pavements, with every foot-fall jarring tired muscles, he would think how nice it would be, just for a week or so, to tread again that yielding turf he had known such a long, long time ago. Then, perhaps, he would slacken just a bit on the traces, and Tim would give that queer, shrill chirrup of his, adding, sympathetically: "Come, me bye, come ahn!" Then Chieftain would tighten the traces in an instant, giving his whole attention to the business of keeping them taut and of placing each iron-shod hoof just where was the surest footing.

In this last you may imagine there is no knack. Perhaps you think it is done off-hand. Well, it isn't. Ask any experienced draught-horse used to city trucking. He will tell you that wet cobble-stones, smoothed by much wear and greased with street slime, cannot be travelled heedlessly. Either the heel or the toe calks must find a crevice somewhere. If they do not, you are apt to go on your knees or slide on your haunches. Flat-rail car-tracks give you unexpected side slips. So do the raised rims of man-hole covers. But when it comes to wet asphalt--your calks will not help you there. It's just a case of nice balancing and trusting to luck.

Much, of course, depends on the man at the other end of the lines. In this particular Chieftain was fortunate, for a better driver than Tim Doyle did not handle leather for the company. Even "the old man"--the stable-boss--had been known to say as much.

Chieftain had taken a liking to Tim the first day they turned out together, when Chieftain was new to the city and to trucking. Driver Doyle's fondness for Chieftain was of slower growth. In those days there were other claimants for Tim's affections than his horses. There was a Mrs. Doyle, for instance. Sometimes Chieftain saw her when Tim drove the truck anywhere in the vicinity of the flat-house in which he lived. She would come out and look at the team, and Tim would tell what fine horses he had. There was a young Tim, too, a big, growing boy, who would now and then ride on the truck with his father.

One day--it was during Chieftain's fifth year in the service--something had happened to Mrs. Doyle. Tim had not driven for three days that time, and when he did come back he was a very sober Tim. He told Chieftain all about it, because he had no one else to tell. Soon after this young Tim, who had grown up, went away somewhere, and from that time on the friendship between old Tim and Chieftain became closer than ever. Tim spent more and more of his time at the stable, until at the end, he fixed himself a bunk in the night watchman's office and made it his home.

So, for three years or more Chieftain had always had a good-night pat on the flank from Tim, and in the morning, after the currying and rubbing, they had a little friendly banter, in the way of love-slaps from Tim and good-natured nosings from Chieftain. Perhaps many of Tim's confidences were given half in jest, and perhaps Chieftain sometimes thought that Tim was a bit slow in perception, but, all in all, each understood the other, even better than either realized.

Of course, Chieftain could not tell Tim of all those vague longings which had to do with new grass and springy turf, nor could he know that Tim had similar longings. These thoughts each kept to himself. But if Chieftain was of Norman blood, a horse whose noble sires had ranged pasture and paddock free from rein or trace, Tim was a Doyle whose father and grandfather had lived close to the good green sod, and had done their toil in the open, with the cool and calm of the country to soothe and revive them.

Of such delights as these both Chieftain and Tim had tasted scantily, hurriedly, in youth; and for them, in the lapses of the daily grind, both yearned, each after his own fashion.

And, each in his way, Tim and Chieftain were philosophers. As the years had come and gone, toil-filled and uneventful, the character of the man had ripened and mellowed, the disposition of the horse had settled and sweetened.

In his earlier days Tim had been ready to smash a wheel or lose one, to demand right of way with profane unction, and to back his word with whip, fist, or bale-hook. But he had learned to yield an inch on occasion and to use the soft word.

Chieftain, too, in his first years between the poles, had sometimes been impatient with the untrained mates who from time to time joined the team. He had taken part in mane-biting and trace-kicking, especially on days when the loads were heavy and the flies thick, conditions which try the best of horse tempers. But he had steadied down into a pole-horse who could set an example that was worth more than all the six-foot lashes ever tied to a whip-stock.

It was during the spring of Chieftain's eighth year with the company that things really began to happen. First there came rheumatism to Tim. Trucking uses up men as well as horses, you know. While it is the hard work and the heavy feeding of oats which burn out the animal, it is generally the exposure and the hard drinking which do for the men. Tim, however, was always moderate in his use of liquor, so he lasted longer than most drivers. But at one-and-forty the wearing of rain-soaked clothes called for reprisal. One wet May morning, after vainly trying to hobble about the stable, Tim, with a bottle of horse liniment under his arm, gave it up and went back to his bunk.

Team No. 47 went out that day with a new driver, a cousin of the stable-boss, who had never handled anything better than common, light-weight express horses. How Chieftain did miss Tim those next few days! The new man was slow at loading, and, to make up the time, he cut short their dinner-hour. Now it is not the wise thing to hurry horses who have just eaten eight quarts of oats. The team finished the day well blown, and in a condition generally bad. Next day the new man let the off horse stumble, and there was a pair of barked knees to be doctored.

Matters went from bad to worse, until on the fourth day came the climax. Sludge acid is an innocent-appearing liquid which sometimes stands in pools near gas-works. Good drivers know enough to avoid it. It is bad for the hoofs. The new man still had many things to learn, and this happened to be one of them. In the morning Team 47 was disabled. The company's veterinary looked at the spongy hoofs and remarked to the stable-boss: "About three weeks on the farm will fix 'em all right, I guess; but I should advise you to chuck that new driver out of the window; he's too expensive for us."

That was how Chieftain's yearnings happened to be gratified at last. The company, it seems, has a big farm, somewhere "up State," to which disabled horses are sent for rest and recuperation. Invalided drivers must look out for themselves. You can get a hundred truck drivers by hanging out a sign: good draught horses are to be had only for a price.

Chieftain and Tim parted with mutual misgivings. To a younger horse the long ride in the partly open stock-car might have been a novelty, but to Chieftain, accustomed to ferries and the sight of all manner of wheeled things, it was without new sensations.

At the end of the ride--ah, that was different. There were the sweet, fresh fields, the springy green turf, the trees--all just as he had dreamed a hundred times. Halterless and shoe-freed, Chieftain pranced about the pasture for all the world like a two-year-old. With head and tail up he ranged the field. He even tried a roll on the grass. Then, when he was tired, he wandered about, nibbling now and then at a tempting bunch of grass, but mainly exulting in his freedom. There were other company horses in the field, but most of them were busy grazing. Each was disabled in some way. One was half foundered, one had a leg-sprain, another swollen joints; but hoof complaints, such as toe-cracks, quarter-cracks, brittle feet, and the like, were the most frequent ills. They were not a cheerful lot, and they were unsociable.

Chieftain went ambling off by himself, and in due time made acquaintance with a rather gaunt, weather-beaten sorrel who hung his head lonesomely over the fence from an adjoining pasture. He seemed grateful for the notice taken of him by the big Norman, and soon they were the best of friends. For hours they stood with their muzzles close together or their necks crossed in fraternal fashion, swapping horse gossip after the manner of their kind.

The sorrel, it appeared, was farm-bred and farm-reared. He knew little or nothing of pavements and city hauling. All his years had been spent in the country. In spite of his bulging ribs and unkempt coat Chieftain almost envied him. What a fine thing it must be to live as the sorrel lived, to crop the new grass, to feel the turf under your feet, and to drink, instead of the hard stuff one gets from the hydrant, the soft sweet brook water, to drink it standing fetlock deep in the hoof-soothing mud! But the sorrel was lacking in enthusiasm for country life.

About the fifth day of his rustication the sharp edge of Chieftain's appreciation became dulled. He discovered that pasture life was wanting in variety. Also he missed his oats. When one has been accustomed to twenty-four quarts a day, and hay besides, grass seems a mild substitute. Graze industriously as he would, it was hard to get enough. The sorrel, however, was sure Chieftain would get used to all that.

In time, of course, the talk turned to the pulling of heavy loads. The sorrel mentioned the yanking of a hay-rick, laden with two tons of clover, from the far meadow lot to the barn. Two tons! Chieftain snorted in mild disdain. Had not his team often swung down Broadway with sixteen tons on the truck? To be sure, narrow tires and soft-going made a difference.

The country horse suggested that dragging a breaking plough through old sod was strenuous employment. Yes, it might be, but had the sorrel ever tightened the traces for a dash up a ferry bridgeway when the tide was out? No, the sorrel had done his hauling on land. He had never ridden on boats. He had heard them, though. They were noisy things, almost as noisy as an old Buckeye mower going over a stony field.

Noise! Would the sorrel like to know what noise really was? Then let him be hooked into a triple Boston backing hitch and snake a truck down West Street, with the whiffle-trees slatting in front of him, the spreader-bar rapping jig time on the poles, and the gongs of street-cars and automobiles and fire-engines and ambulances all going at once. Noise? Let him mix in a Canal Street jam or back up for a load on a North River pier!

And as Chieftain recalled these things the contrast of the pasture's oppressive stillness to the lively roar of the familiar streets came home to him. Who was taking his place between the poles of Team 47? Had they put one of those cheeky Clydes in his old stall? He would not care to lose that stall. It was the best on the second floor. It had a window in it, and Sundays he could see everything that went on in the street below. He could even look into the front rooms of the tenements across the way. There was a little girl over there who interested Chieftain greatly. She was trying to raise some sort of a flower in a tin can which she kept on the window-ledge. She often waved her hand at Chieftain.

But just here Chieftain heard a shrill, familiar whistle, and in a moment, with as much speed as his heavy build allowed, he was making his way across the field to where a short, stocky man with a broad grin cleaving his face, was climbing the pasture-fence. It was Tim Doyle himself.

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