Life in a Nutshell

The Names of Horses

They called him the Black Phantom, and he was.

All black and nothing but a figment. A suggestion of a horse on the horizon when any of the Oregon ranch buckaroos wanted to catch him to work.

He was too smart for that nonsense. The more they tried to trick him or catch him, the more he disappeared. Which meant they hated him with all the fire and righteous indignation of small men with big egos.

My phantom was a Mustang. Wild until he was rounded up, probably in one of the Oregon Warm Springs Wild Horse Roundups from Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. Sold at auction and gelded, he was broken for ranch work, which he really did enjoy. He was a smart and attentive cow horse, but not as nimble or athletic as the Quarter Horses.

Docile and gentle as a puppy with my mother and me. But he hated men. He was bitey, buckey and kicky with most of them. A bad combination for a cowboy trying to work cattle.

I assumed he'd been abused, and also perhaps he'd been a daddy at some point, because he loved children. But in particular he loved girl children, of which I was one.

The ranch where my father worked was bringing in some new stock that fall. Quarter Horses, well trained, papered, used to being ridden for cows and long drives.

Phantom was an afterthought, an old one and just taking up space in the pasture. The owner was going to "dog food" him, that meant she was going to sell him to a kill house. He was sixteen during the year I was fifteen.

My mother loved the orphans, the abused and outcasts. She begged the owner not to can him, but offered to buy him for me. I didn't have an animal of my own, and was an only child out in the Oregon High desert

So, they gifted him to us instead. He was our responsibility to feed, and care for, but he could stay on the ranch as long as we did.

The first time I met him, I remember standing out in the middle of the pasture. When I say pasture, it was probably ninety acres of alfalfa field. A pittance compared to the ten thousand deeded acres this ranch had in its possession. However, it was the smallest fenced area that wasn't a corral.

I stood out there, without a hint of horse around me. I yelled my lungs out. whistling and calling, holding a handful of alfalfa cubes in one fist and a halter in the other. I heard him before I saw him.

Galloping hooves pounded the mowed down stubble, as a sturdy black horse came to a halt twenty feet from me. Ears forward, nostrils flared. Huffing to get a better sense of me.

"Hi, big fella. What's that on your nose?"

I smiled at him and was calm, like my dad taught me. I chewed some alfalfa to make sure my breath didn't smell like a predator, like my mom taught me.

That morning she said, "Don't be fearful, don't be excited. Just let your mind rest. Stay right where you are, and he'll come to you."

Now I talked to him, the black horse, and he listened.

"That's awfully cute, that little white snip on your nose. Want a snack?"

I held out the cubes, he sniffed and then made a decision. Head lowered, he licked and chewed his submission and came to get the cubes from my palm. I ran my hands all over him, around his neck, down his sides, over his rump and back up the other side. No halter, no bridle, just a little snack and some attention. He could have left if he had wanted.

He was still and looked me in the eye. His soft brown ones met mine with so much perceptive intelligence. I blew my alfalfa breath in his nose. A horsey greeting and hugged his thick neck.