Prelude
When last we saw them, John and Larry had arrived at the dude ranch with The Box. They had 60 head of horses to shoe, some of whom had a very poor attitude towards horseshoers. Very poor indeed.
Check out Part 1 by clicking on the link.
The wranglers swung a gate open for us and we drove downhill to the creek bottom. There was a small patch of grass next to the creek and what looked like the skeleton of an old wooden loading ramp that was mostly railroad ties now set in the ground as posts. I could see a barn and corrals on the other side of the creek. The two track road we were on curved away from the loading ramp area and headed downstream. It must lead to a bridge to get across the creek I thought. I was surprised when we stopped, and Larry took a careful look at the water.
“It’s really high.” He said. “I don’t think we want to risk trying to get across to get to the barn. The trailer will probably float away. We’ll just set up here. I have some old towels to dry off the horses legs.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “There’s no bridge?”
“Sure there is but its only a foot bridge. The horses have to come across the creek using the ford and they’ll get wet. I’ll have the boys bring four over. That way we will always have two in the hole waiting. They’ll dry off by the time we get to them.”
Larry had been right earlier. This was not shoeing on the show circuit where almost all the horses were clean and shiny, as were the barns and concrete floors. I needed to remember to bring an extra T-shirt with me tomorrow in case I got wet and muddy.
Larry swung around to put The Box and its trailer in the right spot. The wranglers got the trailer off its hitch and Larry parked the truck close enough so we could set up our anvils and lay out tools and inventory. With all of us, it was easy enough to manhandle The Box into just the right position, stake it in with some re-bar and rig up a line from the top of the box to one of the railroad tie posts. I assumed this was so it couldn’t tip over. Then another thought occurred to me. What sort of horse would have the ability to tip this very heavy thing over? I did not dwell on it. I would find out soon enough.
“All right boys!” Larry yelled. “Bring us our first four victims. Let’s make them some easy ones to get warmed up, OK?”
While the wranglers were off getting the horses, Larry and I talked strategy. A normal workday for us would be five horses. So, we were going to shoot for 12 horses a day between us. That would include two horses that needed The Box. Those we could split. I would do two feet on one side and Larry the other side. The simplest way was for one of us to start on a front foot on one side of the horse while the other started on a hind on the opposite side. That way the horse has two feet to stand on and can use the ropes in The Box to balance itself. Hopefully, we would both finish at the same time and then switch feet. It works because, thank goodness, horses usually can only think about one thing at a time. Being double teamed would confuse them into compliance. At least I hoped so.
Normally, if the horse cooperates, we could shoe a horse cold, meaning shaping a shoe without the benefit of a forge, in about 45 minutes. In the box, we could get one done in 25 minutes or less.
“You’ll be surprised how fast we can go.” Larry said while sharpening his hoof knife. “But pace yourself. If we need an extra day to finish up it’s no big deal.”
It was an uneventful day. Larry and I buzzed right along. Having wranglers to catch and hold horses for us was a huge help. In a few cases wranglers would hand us tools and nails which made things even faster. I had been a little nervous, anticipating a rodeo sort of day but, as usual in life, it was worry over nothing. We had 8 horses done between us by lunch without any sign of trouble.
After lunch we picked up where we left off.
Larry said, “I’m going to work on a marginal horse that we weaned off the box last year. You can just keep working on what we have tied up here. Just keep an eye out for trouble.”
A wrangler showed up with a large black who was snorting worriedly before he even got close to us. The bay I was working on seemed sweet and gentle so it was easy to keep one eye on Larry while working.
As I was trimming, I swore I could hear someone speaking German. Now I don’t speak German, but I know it when I hear it. I straightened up and looked around. Nobody was there but Larry, me, the wranglers, and the four horses. Then I heard it again. It was coming from above us on the road. There were two gentlemen there, I assumed they were guests, sitting in lawn chairs watching us. That’s not all that unusual. People like to watch someone shoe horses mostly because its not something you see much any more. They apparently were from Germany. They noticed I was looking at them and waved. I waved back.
“Don’t look now Larry but we have an audience!” I said nodding my head up towards the Germans.
“Well, we might end up giving them a show!” Larrry laughed. I went back to work.
Then I heard another sound. It was a buzzing like a fly but very loud. Loud enough to hear over the creek. The horse I was under stiffened and tried to pull its foot away from me. Then it relaxed. I noticed the buzzing had gone away.
I looked up and the wrangler holding my horse said, “It was a big horsefly, I think. These guys really hate ’em.”
I wasn’t very fond of them myself so I could understand the horse’s feelings. I went back to nailing on a shoe when I heard Larry say, “Watch out!” and a loud snort from his horse.
The biggest horse fly I had ever seen was biting Larrys horse right on its rump. The horse was furiously swishing its tail trying to get rid of the blood sucking pest but couldn’t reach it . Larry was trying to help but the horse kept moving away from him despite the wranglers best efforts to keep the animal still.
It must have hurt something awful. Desperate to get rid of the fly, the black started bucking. An honest to God, two-footed, snorting and blowing, buck. The horse was going in a circle with the wrangler as the pivot point desperately hanging on the lead rope. Larry grabbed his toolbox and got out of the way. That black started dragging the poor wrangler all over the shoeing ground.
Wham! Both hind feet kicked over Larry’s anvil stand. Bang!! Mine too! I had grabbed my toolbox and ran out of the way and darn near got run over by the horse I was working on. Apparently, he thought I knew where to go to get away from all the destruction.
The two horses we had “in the hole” were both tied to a post that was part of the old loading chute. They managed to be on opposites sides of the post and both panicked, pulling back on their lead ropes. The first one gained the advantage, and the post leaned their way. Then the other got the advantage pulling the post the opposite way. Back and forth, back and forth. That post was not going to stay in the ground for very long.
I was hiding behind my horse in the bushes with my wrangler who was watching everything, mouth agape.
“We aren’t in Kansas anymore are we Nate?” I said with a chuckle.
“No sir, we are not. Watch out!” Nate replied as the black had dragged his wrangler closer to us and fired off a couple good kicks. Our poor horse was bent in a U shape. He was trying not to squish me farther into the bushes while staying out of the way of those flying hooves.
That’s when Larry’s booming laugh rang out. He was standing there, red-faced with veins sticking out of his neck. Sweat poured off his face as he laughed and laughed. He was sort of like the ringmaster of a circus with chaos going on all around him. This was ludicrous but, I had to admit, very funny.
Larry’s laughing must have distracted the black who had stopped bucking. The fly was gone but had left a trickle of blood on the black’s skin. The two horses that were tied to the railroad ties were also interested in Larry but not because of his laugh. They had managed to pull the railroad tie out of the ground. It lay there, lead ropes still tied to it, holding their heads close to the ground. Their expressions seem to say, “Um, a little help?”
It seemed like everything was calm, so we all gathered together to straighten out our mess when laughter showered down from the road. Our German guests were in hysterics at the rodeo we just had. When we all looked at them the two men stopped laughing and one said in broken English, “Sorry! Are you hurt? We don’t want to laugh if you are hurt.”
“We are fine! Go ahead and laugh!” Larry replied.
“Will you be here tomorrow? We want to bring the … kinder…ah, children to watch!”
“Sure!” I yelled. “Bring the wives and kids. We will be here all week!”
“We should charge admission.” Larry said under his breath.
“No kidding!”
“I forgot to tell you, we have another black horse that is so nuts we thought it best to have a vet come and tranquilize it in the box. He should be showing up here pretty soon, so we better get this beast done.”
I think the bucking episode tired the horse out so much he couldn’t get up the strength to fight anymore. Larry buzzed right through him. We were just finishing up our two “In the Hole” horses when Doctor Holloway DVM arrived in his little Toyota pickup.
Doc Holloway was an older gentleman with a face permanently red and aged from too much sun and wind. He was bowlegged, a little bent over and his fingers were arthritic, all from working as a large animal vet I imagined.
“Howdy boys!” He greeted us as he opened his door and lit a cigarette. “What do we have today?”
“Hey Doc” Larry said while shaking his hand. “Your patient is coming right now.” Larry pointed over the vet’s shoulder and both Doc and I looked with trepidation.
Doc’s patient was huge and unhappy. She kept trying to turn back to the barn, but the wranglers had two lead ropes attached to her halter and did a good job of keeping her moving forward. Her feet were large, and she had feathers on her legs. This had to be a draft horse. She tried to rear up a bit but finally the boys got her to us.
“So, we are going to sedate her?” Doc asked as he pawed through his box of medicine.
“Yup,” said Larry. “Do you want to try outside the stocks or do this once we have her tied in?”
Doc walked toward the big black and you would have thought the horse saw him as a grizzly bear. Her eyes grew wide. She started snorting and blowing. Then she went flying backwards dragging the wranglers along for the ride.
“I think she knows a vet when she sees one.” Doc laughed. “Let’s try it in the stocks, if you can get her in there.”
Now I knew what sort of horse could tip The Box over and why we stabilized it so well.
Larry was in charge and had us all lined out. First, we took a long line and ran it from a loop around the horses neck. We figured the halter would break if we used it to keep the black from roaring backwards. The line went from the horse into The Box where a wrangler would take one wrap around the stout cross brace. Then we had the lead line attached to the halter.
Another wrangler would lead the horse up to the box while the long lines slack was taken up at the same time. There was another big soft rope tied to one upright and when the horse was close enough we would wrap the rope behind the horse, just below his rump. I could pull on that to encourage the horse to go forward while Larry got ready to tie the butt bands on to keep the horse from retreating. I had used this same technique to load a recalcitrant horse into a trailer. Kerry had taught me how to do it when we were on one of our “interesting” dates. The problem was that The Box was not as wide as a horse trailer. This horse could overpower us and turn our clever plan into a wreck.
But it worked as planned. Larry told us all that we need to work as a team and once we start, don’t stop! The lead wrangler brought the horse up at a trot and we all pulled on our ropes. The wrangler ducked under the cross beam. The horse, following the wrangler almost slammed into the cross brace but she stopped, realizing she was trapped, and tried to back up. The lead line wrangler had a firm wrap on the cross beam and Larry had the butt bands on in a hurry.
Larry showed me how to put the rest of the ropes on and soon we had an immobilized horse all ready for the vet. Doc stepped in and injected the horse in the neck with a sedative and a few minutes later our killer horse was dozing off.
Larry and I didn’t waste any time. He taught me how to pick a foot up and tie it into position and off we went, shoeing two feet at a time. This horse required draft horseshoes and nails. Bending these shoes without the benefit of heat was way too difficult so I fired up my forge and began to heat shoes up as I trimmed.
We both kept checking on the horse but she was out. So out as a matter of fact, that she sagged onto the belly bands and wasn’t even holding her own weight up. I was smiling as I worked. This was going to be easy!
We were both working on the last two feet when the black made a noise. I had never heard a horse make a noise like this. It was almost a growl. Horses dont make sound like this. They whinney, snort, blow, squeal, knicker and even roar (hard to describe. They only do it when they are mad) but this sound was other worldly. I stopped and looked up at the horse’s head. She seemed like she was still asleep but then an eye opened up. In that eye I saw nothing but fury. She made that noise again only this time it was louder and now it sounded like a cross between the roar of a bear with the sound the T-Rex makes in Jurassic Park. I looked at Larry over the horse’s back and he looked at me, eyebrows raised. We then both looked at Doc who was backing up slowly to his pickup while lighting a cigarette.
“I think she is waking up. You boys better hurry,” he said, opening his door.
“Why don’t you shoot her up with more?” I asked plaintively.
“I’m not going near any animal that makes a noise like that.” Doc said and locked himself in his vehicle.
“Go John go!” Larry yelled and I nailed and clinched faster than I had ever done before.
The horse was coming alive. The oak timbers creaked and groaned as the very angry horse stretched and strained at the ropes holding her down. It was like Frankenstein’s monster waking up in the laboratory.
The wranglers all kept stepping back nervously.
“If you guys run and I live through this, I swear I’ll hunt you down one by one!” Larry threatened.
“I’m done!” I said, breathing a sigh of relief and untied the horse’s foot.
“Me too.” Larry said, “Someone grab that long line and be ready.”
Once a wrangler was in place, we started to take off all the ropes. I swear, steam was coming out of that horse’s ears. She was standing there grinding her teeth. The threat implied was probably something like this: “Wait until I get out of here. Just you wait.”
“Larry. Should we have a gun ready in case she tries to kill us?” I joked.
“Nope.” Larry replied quietly. “It’s the same thing with bears. You just have to be faster running away than the slowest member of the group.”
I looked at everyone there.
“I’m pretty sure I can outrun Doc but he is in his truck already.”
“Get his keys before we let her go.”
Larry is a funny guy.
“Ready?” Larry asked us all. “here we go.” And he took off the butt bands.
The black roared backwards out of the box with a wrangler running to keep up. The horse turned and trotted away towards the barn dragging her wranglers behind her.
Larry and I stood there shaking our heads. Doc started his outfit and with a merry wave goodbye he headed back up the road to the gate.
“Larry, do they actually put live people on that horse?” I wondered.
“Yes they do, my friend. They say that if you put her in the right spot in line on the trail, she does well carrying the big people.”
“Big people?”
“Like you and me. Regular horses can’t carry us.”
“They can’t?
“That’s what they say.”
“I’ll be darned,” I said. “John Wayne movies have been lying to me all this time.”
Larry looked at his watch.
“How about one more Box horse before we head home?”
“Sounds good to me. Think we could steal some cookies from the kitchen first? Being scared makes me hungry.”
“Me too, pard. Me too.”
End of Part 2
That’s right! A first for The Anvil’s Ring. There is a Part Three coming soon. A trilogy ! Who would have thought it possible?
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I have to go. I’m going with The Head Dog Trainer to pick up pigeons for training. Bella and Maggie are very excited about the whole thing. Wish us luck!
Read it to Dad and he enjoyed it. Suggests you get an illustrator - wants to see steam coming out of the horse's ears! Great, great story!
It was just over of 100 horses my friend. I wish I had email address for Barbie Vancleave so I could forward these to her!
Larry