She was teaching school in DeSoto, Texas about 50 miles away, just south of Dallas. We were busy in the house, so we didn't go out with her when she went to saddle her roane, who had recently become a mother to a colt, Patches. Strawberry had always been a little contrary, but we saw her trot by in front of the house, Neila sitting solidly in the saddle, Patches following them like a small horse puppy, her legs still rubbery looking. Jan, Nilene(a friend of mine), and I ran to the picture window to watch them.
"Look at Patches," Jan said animatedly. "Isn't she cute? Look how she runs on those wobbly legs."
"Neila's not afraid of horses like we are. I like them, but I'm always afraid of what they're going to do," I said, like admitting my fear would change anything.
"Aw, horses are so nice. They won't do anything." Nilene said almost simultaneously to Strawberry's apparent decision to throw Neila off her back. Suddenly, she started bucking, one, two, three times. The third time Neila sailed off to the side and fell on the hard dry ground.
The three of us almost ran over each other getting out the front door. We sailed off the front porch, through the gate, and ran across the gravel driveway to the pasture where Neila had already pulled herself to a sitting position. Strawberry was running for the barn, reins dragging in the sand, Patches following with her awkward gait.
"Are you okay?" three voices chimed breathlessly.
"Yeah. I'm okay. I guess she's a little nervous because of the colt. I have to get back on her though."
"Why?" one of us asked--the city girl. Jan and I knew. Cardinal rule of our dad and as far as we knew of all horseriders. Never let the horse have the last say. Get back on.
We followed Neila to the corral this time. She was irritated with Strawberry, but understood why she might be acting the way she was. Still, she had to let her know who was boss.
Neila's sister-in-law Jean was also visiting today and she was 22 years old, two years younger than Neila. Jean had witnessed the disturbance and followed the horse to the barn. Her very quiet nature had allowed her to approach the horse and eventually get control of the reins. She was talking to Strawberry in a much kinder way than we thought the mare deserved after what she did to our beloved sister.
Neila took the reins from Jean, and Strawberry immediately backed up fast, almost tearing the reins from Neila's hand. Then she tried to rear up, but she was under the edge of a low shed near the corral that was used for storage of fencing materials, so when she reared up, she hit her head. The whites of her eyes were showing, and we three were looking at each other with unvoiced questions. We kept a respectful distance between the horse and us.
Neila spoke quietly but firmly to Strawberry. She led her a little way out into the dry brittle brown grass of the pasture. After petting her for a while, she put her left foot tentatively into the stirrup. Strawberry seemed skittish, but Neila kept talking to her, stroking her neck, and as she did so, she swung her right leg over the horses's back and sat in the saddle.
Strawberry reluctanly took about ten steps, then we saw her tense, her back rising up in the middle like the scooched up back of a caterpillar, and with that movement, she jumped straight up, then started bucking and running in a circle, both designed to get Neila off her back. She was successful, and as we three ran to Neila and Jean ran to the horse, we noticed that Neila didn't sit up this time.
When we arrived at her side, she groaned quietly, as though holding back. My heart sank. I'd never seen her any way except upbeat, happy and healthy. I had no idea what injury Strawberry had inflicted.
"Ooooh, " she breathed out the pain, an understatement, I was sure, for the injury. "I'm hurt. I think my collar bone is broken."
I glanced behind us. Jean had Strawberry taking her toward the corral and barn. The colt was meandering along behind. She would see to them, but we had to take care of Neila.
"Um, what should we do?" I asked her, still looking to her for guidance, unable to grasp the role I needed to assume.
"You need to get me to the emergency room," she said calmly, gritting her teeth.
With that, we sprang into action. We had turned 15 that summer, and unbelievably been driving for nearly a year. Nilene was the only one who could drive a stickshift with any fluidity, and we had to drive the white Chevy pickup, which was a standard. Nilene ran back toward the house across the tank dam, opened the door of the truck, jumped in and spun out, throwing sand and gravel in the air as she gunned the motor moving the truck rapidly toward us. She slammed to a stop ten feet from where Neila lay in the dirt, her head held gently in Jan and my hands.
We all wanted to cry, but we couldn't. Too much depended on us right now. Portia, Neila and Tom's giant German shepherd had run over to get in on the commotion, and she sat silently as close to Neila's face as she could get and panted, dripping saliva on her occasionally while we tried to shoo her away. She had been busy chasing and "cracking" the shells of the abundant armadillo population when Neila was bucked off.
With great effort, Neila got to her feet, holding her left hand over her right collar bone as if to hold it in place. She looked pale when she stood up and we were afraid she was going to faint. We somehow all got in the truck except Jan , and Neila lay down with her head in my lap. Jan ran to the house to call Mother and Daddy and Neila's husband Tom, who was at work in Dallas.
"Slow down," I told Nilene. "She's going to be okay. We need to get her there in one piece."
"I know, I know," she said, staring straight ahead at the highway. "I can't let myself look at her or I'll just drive faster and faster."
I can hardly remember anything more except that we got to the ER at Memorial Hospital in Corsicana, and I felt a big sense of relief once the nurses and doctors took over. An even bigger weight was off my shoulders once Mother and Daddy arrived. The collar bone was broken, and Neila had to have surgery the next day. Tom got there a few hours after we called him, so he took over staying with her.
"Why did the horse throw her?" my dad asked later as we sat in the hospital waiting room, like I could read a horse's mind.
"I don't know why," I said a little sarcastically, "but it threw her twice, and it was the second fall that hurt her."
"Twice?", he asked, seeming puzzled.
"Yeah, you know you always told us to get back up on a horse that threw us, to have the last say."
It was hard to interpret the look that crossed his face then, wistful, sad, regretful, I wasn't sure. "Oh," is all he said. With that, he looked away, reached in his shirt pocket for a cigarette, and started puffing slowly on it, staring into space.
I think Neila fed Strawberry for several months after she recuperated from the surgery, but the relationship was never the same and eventually she sold her to someone else, along with her bumbling colt.
My experience with horses with fractious personalities is that they don't stay anywhere too long. They move around because initially the owner thinks they can correct the problem, make friends with them, be kinder to them, understand them better than the former owner. But in the end, the horse isn't going to change much, so they wear out their welcome and have to move on. We had several like that.
Once, my dad had all but sealed the deal on the sale of a horse he had raised from a colt that ended up being one of those "difficult" horses, when my mother breezed into the den.
The potential buyer looked at her, tipped his cowboy hat, and drawled, "How 'bout that horse, Miz Skiner? Can I ride 'im?"
"Oh, yeah, he's great to ride," my mother effused. "You'll just probably have to use a twist to get him to stand still for you to get in the saddle, then he's great! And isn't he pretty?"
My dad shriveled in size; the man looked at him with eyebrows raised, snorted, and stood up. "Waaal, Mr. Skinner. I reckon I better think 'bout buyin' that geldin' a little longer. I'm not sure I know how to handle a twist." We watched him walk down the sidewalk, his shoulders shaking just the slightest bit, head down. My father's face was beet red, but when Mother turned and he started his recrimination, she just looked at him, confused.
"I just told the truth," she said in her own defense. "Don't say any more about it."
My dad apparently found a buyer who wasn't afraid to use a twist (a rope that is placed around the horse's nose and twisted to control him), and one more animal with a troubled personality left the property.
There seemed to be no end to them, aberrant horses, dogs, cats. Finally Daddy stopped having Sugar, our mare, bred, to stop the procession of ill behaved colts, and we just lived with a sweet and lazy horse who lived a good, long, life. Occasionally she humored us by allowing us to ride even if we had to keep prodding her with our feet just to keep her at a slow walk.
She never failed to come to the fence to be petted though, and that won her points with all of us as sometimes that's all someone visiting wanted--to pet a horse. She outlived my dad as it turned out, and when she died, at age 28, a kind man from my mother's little church came and dug a big hole with a backhoe and buried her. Mother had a small headstone made for her and placed it behind the tank dam where she was placed for burial.
And that was the end of her pets. After years of animals hanging around, the only ones left were cows. It seemed a little sad, the ghosts of all those animals still hovering around in my memory, trying to correct history and somehow make themselves seem normal.
"Comic relief," I thought. "Who wants perfect animals who always do what's acceptable and expected? Not us. No good stories in that! And how would we ever have learned to deal with the unusual people in life?"
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