Tally

I followed the flick of my horse's ear and saw him standing at the gate. My boss was a tall lanky man with wind toughened dark red skin and long artistic fingers knotted and bent by the beginnings of arthritis. His arms rested criss-cross on the second to top rail of the gate. His whiskers were white and stiff with frost. His stillness ran so deep I wondered how long he had been standing there.

"Have you got time to come up to the house?" The boss asked me.

I was trotting a 2-year-old around the indoor arena. Steam rose off her shoulders and flanks, and my breath blew white, puffing up and down in a steady rhythm with my posting trot.

"Sure, what's up?"

It wasn't going to take much to lure me up to a hot cup of coffee and a place by the fire. I hadn't been able to feel my finger-tips for the last twenty minutes and I was only two rides into my day. My toes had gone half a horse ago.

"We got a video of some brood mare prospects from Burman's. I was hoping you'd take a look," the Boss answered.

I stopped my little filly and looked at him over my shoulder. This was a first. Since I had become the official "trainer" at Pine Ridge Stables I had learned my opinion was rarely welcome. My job was to ride what they asked me to and teach who showed up. That was about it.

When it came to breeding their buckskin stud, River, the Rameiker family had their own vision. They wanted to raise buckskins, duns and grullas. They wanted to win at the IBHA shows and make an impression at the World Show. Their stud spent most of his time with another trainer. He was learning all the events, from halter to reining.

"Sure, let me throw a cooler on this one and I'll be up directly," I told him.

I walked into the kitchen of the log house and carefully closed the door. The chinking was coming loose around the door frame and nobody had gotten around to fixing it. A needle point of light and cold air cut into golden warmth from the stove in the front room.

The boss's wife Caroline greeted me with a smile and a cup of coffee.

"Are we going to have a lesson tonight?" She asked.

"We should have time, my last lesson will be gone around 5:30," I told her.

The boss had the video ready to go. My little dog looked up at him and cocked her head. He smiled at her and handed me his bowl of popcorn.

"Well come on up then," he said and Dinah was curled in his lap with one smooth leap.

We sat back and he turned on his video.

A large group of mares were gathered around a water tank. My first quick glance told me they were a fairly motley assortment.

"Are they all registered?" I asked.

"He told me to pick out what I wanted and he'd check for papers," the boss said.

"You know you don't want a grade mare now, there's no point here unless they have papers," I told him.

"Well if we buy color we can register them IBHA," Caroline came back.

"You're looking at too small a buying pool, you need to be breeding AQHA horses if you're going to breed at all," I insisted.

I tried not to look pained. I didn't know much about breeding but I knew breeding for color was a bad idea. But the boss would get stubborn if I pushed.

"The Burmans breed good horses," the boss said, "we bought DixieAnn from them."

"Boss, come on, DixieAnn paces and she can't lope."

"She throws color though," a thread of irritation had entered his voice.

I sighed.

We turned back to the video.

After about five minutes I said, "I like the little bay mare and the sorrel."

"Why do you like them?" He asked.

"The bay has a great hip and a pretty neck. So does the sorrel. The sorrel looks a little younger..."

"She is," the boss broke in, reading from a list in his hand," The sorrel is two and the bay's four, don't you think they're a little hammer headed?"

"Yes, but they're the best of the bunch. I've always kinda liked hammer heads anyway," I told him, "are they broke?"

The boss paused the video and ran it back.

"Halter broke," he told me, "how about the dun?"

"She's cow-hocked," I told him

"How about this one?" He showed me a dark, short-necked, big headed grulla mare.

"Ewe-necked, bad-legged, ugly."

"Don't hold back Janet," the boss cocked one shaggy eyebrow at me.

And so it went. When the boss realized I was sticking to my non-dun choices he clicked off the video and turned to other things.

A few weeks later a truck and stock trailer drove onto the place. I popped my head out of the indoor and watched as the driver carefully backed to the gate of the broodmare pen. A short, bent man in his sixties hopped out of the truck and pulled the gate alongside of his trailer to create a chute.

"You there," he called around a mouthful of chew, "get me sumfin' to tie up this gate!"

Normally I would have ignored the rude old fart and gone back to my rides but I was curious to see what the boss had decided to buy.

I brought out a handful of bright orange baling twine and walked to the trailer. I peered between the slats at two dark mares. Halterless and loose they snorted at me. I recognized the little fox ears of the bay.

"Hello you," I told her.

The old guy opened the trailer door and the two horses blew past us. Their black, burr laden manes and tails flowed behind them as they ran towards the broodmares.

The ugly grulla stopped before she got to the mares. She extended her nose and made a baby mouth as the matriarchs descended on her.

The bright bay kept running. She ran with her head high, not looking to the left or right until she was almost into the hotwire. She sat and slid a good five feet in the rocky ground before she spun off and headed down the creek.

Her muscular hindquarters dug in and shot her past the broodmares and off to the other side of the pen. She ran straight to the other fence and skidded to a stop just inches from the wire. I could see the calculation in her eyes. I wasn't sure whether she wanted to jump or run through but something was there. The pretty bay took off again. She ran the fence line hard, her feet were sure and quick and she ran across the steep hillside with ease. The broodmares gave up on trying to beat on her and turned their attentions to the grulla.

The boss, Caroline and I stood and watched the broodmares play soccer with the grulla and the bay continue her crazy race around the pen.

"I see you decided against the sorrel," I said.

"You can't get buckskin out of a sorrel," the boss answered.