Posted on July 22, 2008 - by Hubba

At the Docs, Part 2 continued

We went to the saddle barn, where I got the opportunity to inspect my mount more closely.  He was a red roan, and his name was Rusty.

I am sure that in the history of the West, there have been a hundred thousand red roan horses named Rusty.  This particular horse’s name could just as easily have been “Dusty,” because he looked like he’d spent the last hundred years in someone’s attic.

We brushed him off, and I was disgusted to find that, save for his black mane, tail and socks he was the exact same color as the Hail Mary Swather.  Physically, he was long, tall and gaunt, with spindly crooked legs, and a long wolfy head.

It was clear the moment my butt hit the saddle that I had absolutely no control over Rusty.  I was astraddle of a thunderbolt, and I am not one bit ashamed to admit that I wanted off.

We started down a section-line trail, at a fast trot.  Rusty was setting the pace.  I had the reins fiddle-string tight, and he was fighting the bit, trying to go faster.  The good Doctor rode off to the right of me on his mule, and the dog trailed behind us.

“Sit back in your saddle,” said the Voice of God “you’re making him nervous.”

You’re making him nervous,  I thought to myself, hahaha.  I’m no Pat Parelli, but by this point in my life I had ridden a horse or two, and I didn’t think I could do any better than I was doing.

We rode in silence for a while.  I tried various postures, tried to relax, scooted my butt all over the saddle, and Rusty kept running.  “You don’t want to run him too fast,” cut in the Voice of God, “he stumbles.”  He had no sooner got done saying that when Rusty missed a step.  “You mean like that?,” I asked, with a very brave smile on my face.

The question was hardly out of my mouth when Rusty went to his nose in the road.  It was like riding an earthquake.  He swayed violently side to side, and my chin nearly hit the horn when he slammed down on the road.

“No, more like that,” said the Voice of God from somewhere behind me.

I am running out of hyperbole, but I was scared shitless.  I was saying Hail Marys two at a time.

He picked himself up, and we started off again at the same pace.  My intelligent mind took full stock of my situation.  I was on a horse who stumbled violently when he ran.  He made me nervous, and I in turn apparently made him nervous, so we were going to run and stumble all damn day.

It didn’t take us very much longer to get to the pasture, where the good Doctor intended to sort off two bulls.

I have forgotten some of the particulars, but at one point the Voice of God instructed me to stay in a particular location.  I reined Rusty the Hail Mary Horse up while the good Doctor continued into the pasture.  We went ’round in circles, we went forwards and backwards, but for several minutes we managed to stay within 200 yards of the particular location.  When the several minutes were up, Rusty took the bit and cut a hole in the breeze.  In addition to the Hail Mary’s, by this time I was praying to Buddha for extra good measure.

Rusty, of course, carried me right to the good Doctor, who was quietly sorting a bull out of the herd.  My arrival sent the cows and the bull to the four winds.

“Didn’t you tell me to stay over there?,” I asked, in a very early attempt at comedy.  I got nothing.  The good Doctor was a very tough audience.  Note to self, I might have thought, need to work on the comedy routine.

At this point, I was working on something else which has served me well through the years- going to my mental Happy Place.  In my mind, I was alternately at a tea party with my sisters or running through a field full of tulips, anywhere but where I actually was.  I had already resigned myself to the fact that I was going to die; I just didn’t want to experience it.

Most of us accepted the fact that I was going to go where the good Doctor went, so we rode back to the herd in a very strained silence.  The herd happened to be against the back fence, and the neighbors happened to be sorting bulls on the other side of the fence.  They rode up to the fence and began to visit with Dr. Kovarik.  Rusty agreed to stand more or less still while we all chatted, and I was grateful for the respite.

But the visit was over all too soon, and the good Doctor sorted one of the bulls off and we trailed him more or less to the Particular Location.  “Hold this one here,” said the Voice of God, “I’ll get the other one.”  His tone and the look he gave me suggested that he didn’t think I could, and I had given him no reason to believe otherwise.

He rode away, and I sat there facing the bull.  Rusty was a cowhorse. He had understood the Voice of God as clearly as I had.  We were supposed to watch the bull and keep him where he was, which Rusty was doing.  Please stand still, Mr. Bull, I thought.

He stood still for quite a while. Then he got restless.  He began trying to fake me and Rusty.  My whole Happy Place experiment began to falter at the same time.  The teacups and tulips kept disappearing, and I was left to face reality.

Pretty soon he bolted down the fence, with Rusty hot after him.  Rusty had wheels, and we gained on the bull fast.  I knew what was going to happen next.  The bull was going to cut back, and Rusty would try to swap ends.

It was one of the few times in my life when my worst fears came true.  We were a nose ahead of the bull when he cut back.  Rusty swapped ends and stumbled all at the same time.  It made the first episode pale in comparison, it was so violent.  I saw the ground and the sky and all four directions in half a second.

I believe a few of the Hail Mary’s finally kicked in at that point, because there is no way that I stayed in that saddle on my own.  When Rusty got to his feet, and the dust cloud passed, the bull was standing still along the fence, a few feet from the gate to the section-line trail.  Even better, the good Doctor finally arrived with the other bull.

I didn’t even mind the dirty looks I got.  I had begun to believe that I might live through the day.  We put the bulls through the gate, the good Doctor shut it, and we started for the house.  With something to follow, Rusty even settled down a bit.

We were almost to the corrals when the bulls waded out into a dam.  My peaceful easy feeling left me in a rush.  Once again, I was going to be given the opportunity to display my incompetence.  They were clear out in the middle, and weren’t coming out.

I had never seen the dog in action, which is the only truly beautiful part of this story.  The dog was a mixed breed, but he looked more or less like a Golden Retriever.  I could not help but notice that he acted more like Dr. Kovarik’s brother than his dog.  If the good Doctor could have taught him to read numbers, he could have gotten the 9/16 wrench.

But Golden Retrievers didn’t know a thing about cows.  He just went with us because he had nowhere else to go.

I wasn’t even done thinking this all through when the dog swam unbidden into the dam, bit one of the bulls on the butt, and  chased them both out.  We picked them up on the other side of the dam, trailed them to the corral, shut the gate behind them.

I thanked God, Mary, Buddha, the Great Spirit, Confucius, Apollo, and the dog that I was safe and sound on my own two feet again.

I don’t remember what we did the rest of the day.