MY OLD BROWN LEARNING HORSE
My old learning horse was from the famous Bullshoe relay racers in Heart Butte where the horses learn to run in gumbo. He was a tall brown partly-thoroughbred gelding that probably had some cavalry in his background. I bought him from Don MacRae who intended him for a pack horse into the Rockies. But he had a bad scabby area on his forehead that looked like mange but wasn’t. In the background was the ghost remuda of herds of Blackfeet horses that were killed by soldiers to stop a mange plague.
The vet gave me mange medicine which the horse hated, because it stung and it didn’t stop the flies picking at the lesions. I should have put a face mask on the beast, but none of us thought of that. We were brutal — using force to achieve goals. I had no idea I could be so brutal. The horse knew: he was also brutal, but then, he was a real brute. He had one idea: get back with the other horses out at Trombleys.
I also had one idea: to please Bob, whose one idea was to ride in the Moiese Bison Range Roundup. Just like cattle, the buff herd was driven down to the headquarters and through corrals for sorting, branding, sometimes weighing, and sales, both for new herds and for eating. This was treated with high romance, the belief that only these men knew how to do it and had the skills needed. There was truth in that.
This big brown learning horse had no romance in him. He was just low-rent, surviving. I kept him out at what was then (1961) the remnants of the fairgrounds, an ancient weathered stable barely strong enough to keep the horse in and the hay (sometimes moldy) dry. When I picketed him, coming back in an hour or so, he had turned and tugged until the rope was in knots and only six feet long. By then any grass was trampled beyond grazing. When I put hobbles on him instead, the next time I saw him he was rowing down the highway, headed for Trombleys. He had figured out that he could travel by keeping his front feet together and leaping them forward.
He was so tall and I was so unathletic that I needed a mounting block of some kind. If I put a bucket upside down next to the stirrup, he knew to reach out a back foot and kicked it ten feet. If I stood him next to the fence, he was patient until I reached out a foot, then quickly pivoted so the stirrup was unreachable. I had no help and no advice.
Sometimes it took a half hour to get mounted, but if I managed and lit out across the prairie, which was much less fenced then, the horse was pleased and slipped into a speedy rocking progress across the terrain. Not that I helped. I never gave up a death grip on the saddle horn, but I never fell off either, as I was sure it would mean sudden death. There was no need for a whip. This former racehorse was well-acquainted. All I had to do was show a twig out to the side, and he doubled his speed. Nevertheless, we could go for an hour in any direction and be back home in fifteen minutes.
When it was time to actually go to the roundup over in the Flathead, we loaded when it was still dark. The pickup was underpowered for two horses, but Bob ignored that and the danger it posed on the road. He baited the front of the truck bed with oats and stationed me behind the horses to drive them in. One lash with the rope must have hit my old brown horse in a tender place, because he lashed out with both hind feet, knocking my bangs up in the air. One quarter-inch closer and this essay would never have been written.
As we mobbed up at the beginning of the roundup day, the hands noticed that my old brown horse had one loose shoe. Neither Bob nor I had checked before we loaded. It may have been Benny Reynolds who quickly drove in a few new nails. The regular men (I was the only woman) were not happy about us being there. We were assigned to go out the farthest limit of the reserve and not to try to drive any buffs we saw. We spent a couple of hours taking photos of each other.
What distinguishes bison from cows is that they preserve their individual wildness, meaning independent decisions about where to go. They scatter and choose their own directions, which meant that eventually they headed straight for us. This old brown horse knew something besides racing — he’d been used to herd cattle and there was nothing I could do to discourage him from that. Off we went.
Bob and his horse galloped after the main pack which headed up a steep hill. Someone came to the brow of the hill and yelled to me, “Psldfasomewhakd” I deduced this meant, “Go around the side and head them off.” The brown horse agreed so we went around. Soon we heard thunder and in a few minutes the whole pack appeared ahead, coming straight for us. They paid no attention to us, roaring on by and out into the open reserve. In modern parlance, some of them gave us the “side-eye.”
It was decades later when I heard the bison handlers’ side of this. By this time the range had been returned to the Kooteney/Salish tribe and the men I had met had passed on from old age. Ernie Kraft was a little bitter about it and accused “Mr. Henry”. the manager, of being too focused on publicity — then allowing unqualified people to be involved. It challenged his sense of privilege.
But soon the romance of bison was folded into the romance of American indigenous people and the range, which was on a reservation anyway, was given back to them. To Ernie and his colleagues this was a brutal decision. They fought to reverse the decision, which was only made again — three times. If you like the idea, here’s a little movie for you. https://bisonrange.org. I’ll note that Bob Scriver was asked to mount “Big Medicine”, the white buffalo, when he died. Ancient and frail, though he was, Bob was asked to make him look like a potent young male because that was romantic.
As for my old brown learning horse, he taught me my limits and my lack of limits when it came to furthering my own imagined romance. I sold him to the horse dealer, who probably sold him for dog food. It was a practical and actually merciful thing to do.
