"Unbreakable"

Once upon a time, there was a Stallion named Simony. Simony was the toughest bronco around and had never been successfully broken. Not that the cowboys didn’t try, mind you! But Simony was smart, determined and violently unpredictable. No cowboy lasted for more than a few seconds on his back before the Stallion gave them an exciting flight into the dirt!
One day, a new cowboy came to the Circle-Bar ranch. Just a tenderfoot, really, named Jeremy. A real greenhorn from back East. All the older cowboys snorted when he announced that he would undertake the breaking of the stubborn Stallion.
“Yeah, that’s right kid!” said Slim. “Yew go right ahead and break the Stallion. Show us how they do it back East!” ‘East’ was said with such a tone of mocking derision that Jeremy’s face turned white and then red. But he said nothing, and settled into the life of the ranch, mending fencing, riding the range, and studying the Stallion.
Jeremy may have been a neophyte but he was given to an intense capacity for understanding and probing. He realized without any instruction that the choice in breaking a horse came down to fear and control or something that was a lot like love. None of the other cowboys could conceive of such a choice. For them, it was breaking a horse not patting it or giving it hugs. They would have laughed such an idea to scorn.
So Jeremy set himself the task of befriending the Stallion. He would come to Simony with bunches of sweet grass and speak softly to the horse. Simony, unsure of this approach, did what he always did: he flattened his ears and showed his teeth at the young cowboy. Jeremy was patient and unafraid. This confused the Stallion, who was accustomed to swearing, whipping and fearful cowboys. A calm cowboy with whistling lips and a smile was a vexation and bedevilment. What was the lad up to?
The other perplexing thing about the young cowboy was that he spoke to the Stallion as a friend. He would come over to the corral with sugar or apples and tell the horse how a city-slicker wound up in Montana. He would tell the Stallion how much he admired his ornery streak and his sense of independence. In short, he removed himself as a threat while presenting himself as a possible accomplice. It was enough to make the Stallion’s ears flinch.
Simony decided to discuss the matter with his only friend, the disreputable Shadow, a dog of low cunning and expressive ears, a cur with a heart of gold to belie his questionable looks.
Simony found Shadow at his usual post snoozing in the hay loft.
“Hey Shad, you got a minute?”
The dog pulled himself to his feet and stretched languidly. “Yeah sure, Simon….just give me a se-e-econd (one more stretch).”
“What do you think of that new slicker?” asked the Stallion.
“What, you mean that kid with the bad facial hair and them coke bottle specs?” yawned the dog.
“Yeah, that’s the one…what do you think of him?”
“Geez, I don’t know…seems to be a nice enough sort. Why do you ask?”
“Cause he’s not acting like he’s supposed to.”
“How you mean?”
Simony explained the suspicious behavior of the tenderfoot, underlining how underhanded his actions seemed to be. The dog tried to understand the Stallion but he was confused.
“So this dude treats you well, and you think he’s not trustworthy?”
“Yeah, that’s about the size of it…”
“You are a moron, you know that?”
The Stallion showed his teeth and stomped his left hoof into the floor.
“No, I mean it, Simon,” said the dog carefully. “You’re looking a gift horse in the mouth, if you’ll excuse the expression.”
“It’s easy for you to talk,” sneered Simony. “All you have to do is lick a human’s hand, and he’s your friend for life. But me? All they can do is whip me, stab me with spurs, and almost break my neck trying to ride me. And you know what they call it? They call it ‘Breaking’! I just don’t trust humans!”
“Okay, okay,” said the dog in what he hoped was a placating manner. “But this human just might be different.”
“That’s a mighty big might.”
“How you gonna know, if you don’t try?”
“Oh shut up, Shad, you’re not helping at all.”
“Have it your way, Simo, but I think you might be making a mistake…”
The Stallion tossed his head and went in search of oats. There was Jeremy waiting by the feed trough with a goofy grin on his face and a big carrot.
“Hey, there you are big fella,” said Jeremy holding out the root. What was the Stallion to do. He gently removed the carrot and munched it. Then Jeremy touched his fingers to his hat brim in a salute and left the Stallion to feed. Simony shook his head. He did not understand this human at all.
“Well, you sure pegged that human right,” laughed Shadow. “Purely suspicious, offering you carrots and such, and did you notice that he didn’t even try to ride you?”
“I don’t trust him!” snorted the horse. “He’s got some kind of ulterior motive.”
“What’s an onion motor?” asked the dog.
“It means, he’s up to something, I just don’t know what.”
“Have it your own way, Simo. If you need me, I’ll just be with the humans just a-loving ‘em and maybe getting a hand-out from Cookie,” said the incorrigible mutt, heading for the cooktent.
It was the day of the big cattle drive and all of the hands were on horse urging the longhorns into an orderly procession east. Simony, the unbreakable, was left in his stall and Jeremy as the tenderest foot was stuck behind to make sure that the ranch was still there when the drive was over.
Finally, all of the steers were rounded up and the drive was underway. Long columns raised a huge cloud of dust. Jeremy sighed and looked for something useful to do. He picked up a broken flintlock and started taking it apart. His attitude was, if it’s broken, find out why and fix it. It didn’t matter if he’d never seen a mechanism before; he had a feel for how things were meant to work. He wiped the sweat off of his brow (giving him a nice smudge across the bridge of his nose) and he muttered: “Uh, let’s see…the flint looks okay…”Steadily, he broke the gun into its constituent parts, occasionally stopping to clean and oil and ponder. Working with the gun caused him to think of the big unbroken stallion again.
He didn’t tell anyone why he wanted to tame Simony in the first place. The truth was that the stallion reminded him of himself: wild and unloved. If he could get the horse to trust him and even (dare he hope?) love him, maybe he could believe that he was lovable himself.
There was this girl back in New Bedford that he’d trusted with his heart. He shook his head angrily, he would not think about her.
He sighed. What would it take for the big horse to trust him? He lifted the flintlock and it shone in the morning sun. It was as good as new. Mechanisms were easy: find the broken part and fix it. Hearts were more difficult by far. “You gotta be patient, boy,” he counseled himself. “One step at a time, just one careful step at a time.” It was becoming his new mantra for the horse as well as his own heart.
He sat on the split rail fence and pondered. What was holding up the horse? He had shown him nothing but kindness, asking nothing in return, but the stallion still greeted him with suspicion. Where was the reciprocity, the warmth that he hungered for?
“One little step, one careful step,” he reminded himself. Wasn’t that the way it was with Lucy? He had courted her with gentleness and infinite patience, recognizing a look in her eyes that made him think of a deer suddenly aware of danger.
He thought he’d done everything right but at the penultimate moment, as he stood waiting in the front of the little white church, she’d not come at all. Instead, it was her father who came in her stead to try and explain. The old man had stammered and mumbled that she just wasn’t ready. The subtext was plain to him, perhaps she never would be ready.
So Jeremy had fled in bind rage and grief, running as far west as his meager funds would take him. The rage blew out of him like a prairie rainstorm, leaving an emptiness that demanded filling, something new and untried to wash the flavor of rejection out of his mouth. He would stay in Montana, a territory of new beginnings and re-invention.
When he first saw Simony, he asked a cowhand why nobody ever rode the Stallion. The hand, a taciturn man just grinned and said, “Help yourself.” He soon found himself pounding the dust out of his clothes as he unsteadily rose to his feet again. He’d lasted only a heartbeat in the saddle before the horse went berserk and pitched him off. He was intrigued, to say the least. The thought shaped itself in his mind, perhaps taming the stallion could be a first step in reclaiming his sense of who he was.
So he talked to the other hands, discovering how he would not approach Simony, he would not use the tactics of fear and punishment; he would not try to crush the horse’s spirit, he would try to win his trust. He was in no rush, he decided. He had all the time in the world. He would see if love would accomplish what fear could not.
Shadow came up to him sitting on the fence and nuzzled him with his generous muzzle. “Hey boy,” Jeremy responded, scratching him around his ears. “Let me ask you for your advice.” The dog looked up at him worshipfully. “I mean, how would a scholar like yourself, go about taming that big horse?” Shadow just wagged his tail and settled his disheveled head onto Jeremy’s lap for more delightful scratching. What could he tell him? Shadow doubted that Simo would ever submit to a human, even to one as nice as this one. He nosed Jeremy’s pocket where he usually keep little treats. Jeremy smiled and pulled out a scrap of jerky.
It was shaping up to be the hottest day of an already hellish Montana summer. Jeremy felt like he was swimming in his own sweat as he pounded a new post into the ground. Shadow watched mournfully from his patch of shade and pitied the young man. Imagine having to do hard physical work in such an inferno! Shadow shuddered and then fell asleep.
“Come on boy. It’s quitting time!” said Jeremy. Shadow’s eyes opened a crack and he yawned ponderously. The sun was already touching the edges of the Bitteroots. It was time to eat! They headed for the mess tent and Jeremy fried a sizable steak. Shadow fixed his food-sharing beam on the young man and cranked it to ten. Jeremy laughed at the guilelessness of the mongrel and gave him a hunk of fat.
After dinner, he checked on the stallion making sure that he had enough oats. He pulled a lump of sugar out of his pocket and held it out to Simony. The stallion sniffed it and pulled it in with a delicate tongue. “Goodnight, you noble steed, you glorious beast,” he whispered. Simony’s ears did not go flat which Jeremy saw as a good sign.
The sky was a deep black full of stars. Jeremy sighed with contentment; it really was a big sky he was under. He leaned up against a withered pine and tried to identify the constellations. There was Orion’s belt and the Dippers, big and small, but where was Pleiades? He breathed deeply in the relative cool of the night taking in the aromas of sage and ponderosa pine. It was rich like turkey stuffing in his Ma’s Christmas turkey. He sniffed deeply but here was a different smell, something oily and smoky.
He got to his feet, something was burning. He ran to the hill just south of the ranchhouse his own private look-out. To the east he could see a running tongue of brightness running along the plain: a grassfire! To his horror, the grassfire flew into the forest at the base of the mountains and the pines exploded into flame.
He had to get back to the Circle-Bar and get Simony out of his stall! He raced back to the barn and threw open the door. “Quick!” he yelled to the dog. “We’ve got to get out of here!” He ran to the stallion’s stall and wrenched open the door. Simony, panicked by the smoke he smelt drove his hooves into the door and knocked Jeremy off of his feet. He fell in a heap.
“You knocked him out, you big fool!” barked Shadow, who ran to Jeremy and tried to pull him out of the smoldering barn. The stallion knelt down beside the dog. “Here, pull him onto my back, I’ll get him out of here. Shadow pulled the unconscious man onto the horse’s back and then they ran out of the barn.
“The canyon! We can shelter there!” barked the dog.
“Where is it?”
“Follow me!”
They pelted across the ranchland and into the narrow entrance of the box canyon. Down to the creek they ran, Simony carefully running so as not to lose the unconscious human on his back. They were not alone in the water. Every manner of animal was already there or arriving quickly: deer, rabbits, and even a couple of black bears. They all hunkered down in the quickly flowing water and waited.
When Jeremy came to, he was dazed and disoriented. Where was he? Why was he wet? Was he on a horse? He could see Simony’s heaving flank right in his face. He tried to pull himself up but he was too weak. He felt boneless.
“What are you doing with that human?” asked a buck.
“Mind your own beeswax!” growled Simony.
“Forget him!” yelped Shadow. “Come on, let’s get further into the canyon, we’re still too close to the flames!”
The canyon was mostly rock with cliffs towering over their heads. There was a creek that was still running in mid-summer and all of the animals were crowded in its safe embrace.
______________
The oldest hand, a wizened reprobate named Slim was chewing tobacco and sending a steady stream of juice into the makeshift spittoon of an old boot beside the fence. He and Jeremy were whittling companionably now that the work of branding was done and there was a lull in the work. Slim was creating an entirely unconvincing model of a horse, while Jeremy was trying to make a recorder or at least a whistle.
“Say, dija ever actually git on that Stallion’s back, junior?” drawled Slim.
“Nah, that stallion’s unbreakable!” said Jeremy.