Village Horse Doctor (14 page)

Juan was a hard-workin’ young man with a large family of small children. He was a good citizen and fair in his thinking and didn’t intend to do anything to win the race except to do the best job of training and caring for his colt that he could. According to my acquaintance with brush-track
racemen, his intentions were far more honorable than most, and I was glad to be helping him develop a race horse that was sired by my stallion.

In the next few weeks, I saw Old Stutter several times and he would barely grunt as he passed me. I would’ve asked him if he was training his two-year-old, but if I had he would have lied, so I didn’t mention it.

I was in Crane several times and they were training the splay-footed filly. When I saw her in late June, it looked like they were about to make a dummy out of me because she was training good and musclin’ up as much as a two-year-old can, and that crooked leg hadn’t given her any trouble.

Then I saw the bad-hocked horse up at Orla one time, and the man told me that the liniment as a rub had quit doing enough good and he had finally put a blister on the horse’s hocks and wrapped them under bandages. When I watched the colt move, it seemed there was no pain in his hind legs.

I hadn’t had an occasion to see the pigeon-toed horse that I told the owner corrective shoeing would probably help. Anywhere that race-horse men gathered, the conversation would soon turn to the race for two-year-olds the Fourth of July.

I went by Juan’s on an average of once a week to see how he was comin’ along with his colt, which he had named Pronto. One time when I was there he was feeding Pronto a little corn in his feed, and I told him to take the corn out and to feed him clean dried oats and be sure that he got his strong medicine. As he trained the colt and gave him the best of care, I continued to emphasize that Pronto shouldn’t get his medicine until he finished the day’s training.

On another visit Juan was so anxious to get some more
“big” on Pronto that he had bought some horse sweet feeds, and I had to explain to him that this might cause Pronto to not want to take his medicine and to put him back on dry clean oats and good hay. Juan was always grateful and very obedient in carryin’ out my instructions. He trained Pronto late every afternoon when he had finished his ranch work, and his whole family was counting the days until the big race.

The Fourth of July is celebrated by various patriotic festivities and ceremonies across the United States, but in the West there are two great patriotic forms of entertainment—rodeos and horse races—and the flag-waving is done by the winners.

There is just one kind of weather on the Fourth of July in the West—hot, dry, and windy. The natives and the horses thrive on it. Being wet with sweat and covered with dust is not out of style at a rodeo or horse race and anyone that complains is a tourist, a newcomer, or a weakling. High-heeled boots, tight-legged duckin’ britches, loud shirts, and big hats were the most stylish attire for kids just older than cradle size all the way to the grandpas and grandmas. Anybody wearin’ low quarters or a white shirt and was bare-headed was bound to be a stranger.

There were to be other races during the day for horses of various ages, colors, and sizes, but the race for two-year-olds caused more conversation than all the rest. The crowd gathered at the track early in the morning and there was a fair amount of racin’, bettin’, winnin’, and losin’ by noon.

A brush racetrack is usually the product of local race-horse owners and some small-town Chamber of Commerce or other civic organization. The track will be graded out of an open spot in somebody’s pasture and usually not over three fourths of a mile long. A committee of local citizens sets up rules that are supposed to be abided by, but there
is actually no legal supervision of the conduct of racing conditions that are enforceable at a brush racetrack. There may be a few stalls and other buildings and in some cases a small grandstand, but, for the most part, the race-horse fans line the fence of the track and most onlookers would like to be as close to the finish line as possible.

There’s just one kind of grub at a Western outdoor festivity: namely, barbecued beef, beans, ’taters, and bread with black coffee and other strong drink. It usually takes about two hours of this part of the day for the kids to get their clothes nasty and the grown folks to stretch out in the shade and try to get over the mórnin’s doin’s.

Juan brought his whole family and all of his horses in his pickup truck and stopped just beyond the finish line. Close to two thirty the first race of the afternoon called was for the two-year-olds. As Juan led Pronto away from the pickup, the smaller children were rubbin’ and talkin’ to him and the old mare was standing tied to the pickup and the little colt was wanderin’ around with the kids. As Juan’s son, Pedro, rode Pronto and Juan led him away from the pickup, the old mare and Pronto carried on a lot of conversation in high nickerin’ horse tones.

The two-year-olds were brought out into a fenced-off spot and the race committee went over them to see if they were all eligible to run. There were eight entered in the race and as the committee went through and inspected them, they found Old Stutter’s two-year-old colt to be a three-year-old horse and began to explain and later try to convince him that his three-year-old horse could not be entered in a two-year-old race. There was a hell of an argument and a fair cuss fight but no blood was shed, and I doubt seriously from the toughness of the characters that anybody’s feelings were hurt. The rest of the two-year-olds were declared
eligible and were being saddled and gettin’ ready for the start of the race.

This was a race of five hundred yards, which is just a little over a quarter of a mile. The pigeon-toed two-year-old from Midland had been drawn down into good racing flesh and condition and her feet had been improved a whole lot by shoein’. The splay-footed two-year-old was still splay-footed, and the bad-hocked chestnut had been blistered until the hair was all off of his hocks, but he traveled and showed no pain. There were three others I had never seen before that all appeared to be in racing condition, and Pronto was as ready for a race as any little horse could ever be.

The jockeys were quite an assortment of ages and sizes. Juan’s thirteen-year-old son, Pedro, was a small boy and an ideal jockey for Pronto. There was a little bitty dried-up old Indian who would have had to have been over seventy jockeying the pigeon-toed horse. The rest were in-between ages and sizes. One boy, who was ridin’ the splay-footed filly, looked like he would weigh one hundred and fifty pounds, which was awful heavy for a jockey and especially for a two-year-old.

The seven head were standing on a line drawn across the track and were to run to the finish line, where the crowd gathered. When Pronto was lined up with the rest of the starting line, he nickered plaintively and the old mare answered him in very strong motherly tones. It was easy to see that he was younger and much smaller than the other horses. However, he was to a horseman the best made, the soundest, and in the most perfect racing condition with good manners and proud of his little jockey.

When the starting judge fired the pistol and the race was on, Pronto broke out of the pack neck in neck with the
pigeon-toed horse from Midland. Since nobody had thought the little horse had a chance to win, the crowd went wild. When Pronto remembered the strong medicine that he got at the end of every race, the closer he got, the faster he went, and he left the Midland horse behind. At the finish line, he was four lengths ahead.

About the time he stuck his nose over the finish line, a loud noise was heard down the track that sounded like a shot; the splay-footed filly had broke a leg. The other horses were scattered out between the Midland horse and the crippled filly. Pronto nickered real loud and Pedro didn’t try to hold him back as he rushed up to the old mare and went to nursin’ that
STRONG MEDICINE
that I had been prescribing all during trainin’.

All my life my first interest has been and still is horses. For a number of years I had been interested in the color of horses. Horses do not breed true to color—a mare and a stallion may produce a foal much lighter or much darker than themselves. During mankind’s efforts to improve horses by selection, there have been very few cases where any stability of color has been possible in a breed, and there has never been a breed of horses that run true to a definite color without exception. This fact and other oddities about horse color caused me to develop an interest in the research on the color of horses.

The West had thousands of brood mares and other range horses in herds owned by individuals with as few as forty or fifty head and one of the largest horse ranches in the Trans-Pecos Region had four thousand head as late as the early fifties. Many of the horses in the Far Southwest had good blood infused in them, and there was quite an array of colors and shades available, which made the research
of color interesting to “play” with when I had the time to spare away from my general practice.

Sometimes I would find a horse of a good solid color and clip hair from different parts of his body and take a sample from his mane and tail. I would run these various specimens through my laboratory tests and by various chemical methods and techniques, I would attempt to extract the pigmentation. Information could be gathered by this process; however, it actually took the fresh hide from a dead horse to extract the purest pigments in quantities from the dermis tissue. The more I worked on this project as a hobby, the more I became interested in the fascinating subject of a horse’s color.

A number of the cowboys in the territory were watching this research because nearly every horseman has a preference in the color of his horses, and very likely without any logical explanation other than he just likes them—dun, bay, grey, or so forth. I would put out the word that I was looking for the hide of a horse a certain color. When range horses were being rounded up either for brandin’, weanin,’ or breakin’ young horses and a horse got a leg broke or killed accidentally, if he was the color I had told somebody about, they’d call me to come and get the hide or in some cases, they would bring it to me.

For several years I gathered horse-color specimens and isolated the pigments in my laboratory and made very extensive explanatory notes about each color and filed this information. There are reasons now that I am glad I did this work, even though it was time-consuming and to a degree expensive because there never again will be the assortment of colors or the opportunity to gather the hides of horses for a research project on this subject, and I have in my files the extracted knowledge from the hair, hide, mane, and tail of over one hundred head of horses.

I had gone over close to El Dorado late one afternoon to get the hide of a rare-colored horse that a cowboy had called me about. They had roped this horse in a corral and when he reared and fell to the ground, he fell with his head under his neck and his body lunged forward and broke his neck. It was late when I drove away from the ranch so I spent the night in El Dorado.

I woke up a little before daylight, which was my habit, so I could get back to my practice in the early hours of the morning. I thought I would eat breakfast before I left town so I drove over to Royster’s Café. Old Royster ran a good country café, and of course in the ranch country the name Royster had been revised, and he was commonly referred to as Raw Oyster.

Raw Oyster was a good kind of a fellow past middle age whose voice was very broken and rattly and sounded older than he really was. I sat down at the counter and there was only one other customer there at this early hour. Raw Oyster and I had our morning greeting and he told me what little news there was about friends of mine and his that had happened since I was there last. Then in his cracky voice he asked, “What’s you gonna eat, Doc?”

“Ham and eggs. I don’t guess you’ve got anything else.”

As he wiped his hands on his apron he said, “I’ve got a few other things like that feller’s eatin’ over there.”

I glanced at the other customer’s plate and he had it about cleaned up, so I couldn’t tell what else Raw Oyster was serving that morning for breakfast. About that time this fellow got up and left. Raw Oyster turned to his grill and put my breakfast on to cook and started tellin’ me about his first customer.

“That feller came in here as soon as I turned on the lights. I set him out a glass of water and as I poured ’im a cup of coffee, I asked ’im, ‘What’s it for ya?’

“He said, ‘I don’t know. What you got?’

“Now, Doc, you know that a country café ain’t got nothin’ but bacon and eggs and ham and eggs and sausage and eggs and cereals and hot cakes for breakfast, so I set in and named all that stuff and it never looked like that I caused him to have no pangs of hunger, so then I said, ‘Hot cakes stripped with bacon.’

“His eyes never changed so then I said, ‘Hot cakes stripped with ham,’ and that never seemed to arouse his taste buds none, and I just thought how ridiculous it would be and I said, ‘Hot cakes stripped with chili,’ and I’ll be damned if he didn’t order it and I had to heat up the chili. You heerd me when he offered to pay me and I told him that I’d been tryin’ to sell that order for thirty years and he was the first damn fool that ever had nerve enough to try to eat it and he never owed me nothin’.”