It had begun to snow those dry, ashen white flakes by the time he got himself moving out to fetch up the mare. Through the trees he saw her, some distance off, kicking a hind leg, then whipping her head around to nuzzle at her belly. At the edge of the clearing he stopped, watching, frightened at what he saw. When she began to stretch her neck out before bringing her head around again to nuzzle at her stomach, he was finally convinced.
“Damn, if you don’t likely have the colic,” he grumbled as he approached and untied the long lead rope from a tree. She was hard to lead at first, bobbing her head, pulling back from him, near yanking him off his feet when she did, then stopping suddenly to blindly kick one hind leg or the other.
“That’s it, girl,” He tried to soothe best he could, knowing how a horse with the colic sensed the growing pain in its belly, suffered the bloating swell and the unre-ieved pressure, kicking their legs, stretching out their necks, nosing their own bellies in some frantic, dull-witted desire to release that pent-up pressure.
“Troost always walked the colic off,” he told her as he tried to draw close to her head.
But she stretched out her neck again, then nearly knocked him to the ground as she suddenly whipped around to try nuzzling her belly once more.
“C’mon—we’re gonna walk it off,” he told her with a tug on the rope that got her moving slowly. “Always worked before.”
And he hoped it would work again.
Hysham Troost had called it the sand colic: what a horse got when it ate a bunch of sand mixed in with its feed, so much sand that it collected in every one of those low bends and twists of the horse’s gut until it was nearly impossible for any of the animal’s feed to make it on through their system. That’s when the real trouble with sand colic started—when the mare got bloated up with all that unrelieved pressure that would have to be eased or else.
Or else.
For more than an hour he led the mare around and around that small clearing, with the horse meandering more and more slowly each time they made the circle. Finally he admitted that with the way she was acting so poorly, they would not be venturing out that morning to set more traps. If nothing else, it was a relief just to get the mare back to camp, where he could water her and keep her close at hand while the colic worked itself out of her system.
Tossing some more limbs onto his fire, Bass slid the coffeepot over to the edge of the flames to rewarm what was left from two heatings. Then he turned to grab up one of the big, heavy woolen blankets he intended to wrap around himself as he sat by the fire … when he heard her go down.
As Titus wheeled around, a big part of him was already praying that he hadn’t heard the animal collapse. Any horseman knew the chances were somewhere between slim and damn poor for a horse that went down. If you could keep them on their feet, you had yourself a chance. But once an animal went down …
He felt like swearing as he flung the blanket off his shoulders among the rest and lunged toward her as, the big neck and head were the last to hit the forest floor covered with a thick carpet of pine needles. But swearing wouldn’t help—as much as he wanted to curse someone, some thing … to keep from cursing his own self.
Down on his knees Titus slid the last few feet to slowly reach under her head, bringing it gently into his lap. Her eyes were wild, glazed with pain, her sides heaving as she thrashed that upper hind leg. Something noxious and foul gushed from her hind end … then she seemed to lie still, nostrils flaring, eyes still rolling. From time to time they even seemed to come to a rest looking at him—pleading, perhaps—then moved on.
“Maybe that means you got it on outta your system,” he pleaded with the mare quietly, figuring the gush had been just that, the way a man might get himself the green-apple quickstep and with all that pressure built up inside him from the unripe fruit might well make himself feel right pert once he had himself a decent shit.
“Let’s hope that’ll fix you—”
Then she thrashed her head a little as he held her, vainly trying to raise it enough to reach back to nuzzle her belly, at the same time that top rear leg began to fling about again. And he knew she hadn’t found any relief by ridding herself of whatever foul substance had gushed from her hind end.
He didn’t know how long he stayed there cradling the mare’s head that morning but realized the coffeepot boiled again—smelling it, downwind of the fire as he was. Over time his fire burned down to nothing but thin wisps of smoke, then slowly went out as he watched. And waited. And tried to think of what more Hysham Troost would be doing for a horse suffering the sand colic.
He didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep right there with the mare’s head in his lap the way it was until he came awake with something tapping on the sole of his boot and a voice booming in his ears.
“I’ll be go to hell!” the deep voice cried. “It be a white nigger for sure!”
Bass jerked up, his eyes squinting, blinking, straining to see through the veil of trees and gently falling snow as the dark form moved back from him and brought up a rifle to point at his belly.
Bass sat frozen, his bowels run cold—come awake suddenly to stare up, then down the immense figure before him. The man was dressed in a blanket coat, hood pulled over his head, with a black beard that reached to midchest and a belt around his waist where several long black scalps hung near his knife scabbard. From the greasy, muddy bottom of his coat extended his legs, stuffed within two faded, red-wool blanket tubes, fringe gently swaying at their outer seam above thick winter moccasins.
How Titus wished now that he’d brought the rifle close. “What … just who the hell are you—”
“Injuns! By damn, we’re Injuns!” a new voice shrieked from the timber, drawing Bass’s attention as another figure leaped into the camp clearing—dressed completely as an Indian like the first, the fringe on his leather war shirt whirling round and round as he danced toward Titus: whooping and hollering, rhythmically clapping his hand over his mouth, woo-wooing and stomping round and round in some ungainly imitation of a scalp dance.
Suddenly that figure whirled up beside the first man and stopped, asking, “What you figger him to be doin’ just a’squatting there by that horse, Silas?”
Titus set fus eyes again on the tall, dimly lit figure in the hooded coat standing over him in that gentle fall of early snow, his face hidden in shadow.
The tall figure said, “Shit—stupid son of a bitch appears to be rockin’ that god-danged horse to sleep, don’t he, Billy?”
Then a third voice laughed along with the two standing there in front of Bass. From the shadows that new voice shouted.
“Injuns!”
And a third long-haired Indian-look-alike came stomping and whirling and woo-woo-woo-wooing into the clearing, shrill and sounding every bit like a savage warrior bent on taking a scalp.
Damn! Titus swallowed hard, watching the third hairy, bearded man dance up, watched how the second joined in the dance and chanting, watched with growing uneasiness the way the first figure continued to stare right down at him—his face hidden within the hood of his blanket coat.
No, Bass told himself—I don’t wanna fear no man, red nor white.
“You’re wolf bait now for sure, pilgrim!” cried the second man; then he let out a bloodcurdling scream, dragging his knife from its scabbard and shaking it in Bass’s face.