I try really hard to write the ESN on Sunday nights, but sometimes I am just too busy on Sunday so I have to write it on Monday nights.  Such was the case this last Sunday, as we were moving yearlings to summer pasture.

While we were moving yearlings Sunday, a funny thing happened to everyone else.  We were nearing the end of our journey, which had been long enough to exhaust the yearlings, so that they were plodding along at an excruciatingly slow pace, and stopping when no one was looking.

There had also been a steady high wind out of the northwest, which required everyone to keep a hand near their headgear at all times.  The combination of the fast wind and slow yearlings might have made me a little irritable.

So I was riding along humming a pleasant little cowboy tune under my breath, when I noticed that my sister Carl’s horse had rubbed his headstall halfway off.  You may be wondering why I call my youngest sister, whose name is Celine, “Carl” and maybe someday I’ll get around to that one.

Anyway, I had her stop, got off my horse, took the reins from her, wrapped them around Cisco’s neck, and began adjusting the headstall.  Except that Cisco kept leaning into me.  The third time he did that, I swatted him on the nose.  I maybe shouldn’t have done that.

The content of this next paragraph all happened in the blink of an eye, but I can’t write a story in the blink of an eye and you couldn’t read it, so we’ll have to do it the long way.

When I swatted Cisco on the nose, he reared up and lept forward, pulling the bridle from my hands and throwing me off balance.  As I was falling I thought “Oh no, Carl’s going through the fence and into the wild blue yonder on a bridleless horse.”  I was falling and feeling bad about all that when Carl, who simply fell off the back, landed on my outstretched right calf.  I felt something pop inside my cowboy boot.

I lay there for quite a while making up new verses to that little cowboy tune, until my brother Austin gently took my cowboy boot off.  While we had a confab in the road ditch, Julie caught Cisco.  We finally decided that we hoped I had just sprained my ankle and maybe I could ride the rest of the way, which I did, leaning way off to the left and going very slowly.

The rest of the trip went better.  The yearlings seemed to be refreshed by the breather I had created, and walked along nicely the last two miles.

So it worked out real nice for everybody but me.  But hell, I started it.