Chapter 20

I left everyone else to settle things out and walked to the temporary horse pen. They didn't even seem to notice when I approached, since they were surely tired and somewhat sore. Probably they wanted a drink of water pretty badly too. I went back to camp for a good lead rope. I had one about twelve feet long for just this type of thing.

Back at the pen I entered and went to the first one I'd caught, the big stallion. He snorted and tensed up a few times as I came close but he was too tired and thirsty to keep up the front very long. I talked softly and low in my throat to him as I came up and finally got a hand on him.

As I gently stroked his neck and down his back and sides he gave up the ghost completely and relaxed to enjoy the attention. I kept it up and waited for someone I might trust to come and watch what was going on. Caysha and her twins showed up about ten minutes later.

"Caysha, come to me please. Move slowly and keep your hands to your side. Speak slowly and low while you are walking," I said.

"But what will I say?" she asked.

"What you say doesn't matter because the horse can not understand anyway. Just tell us how to bake biscuits in the oven at home," I said.

Thankfully she didn't ask why we should tell the horse how to make biscuits. She just stepped through the fence and came to me slowly.

"Now, walk past the horse's rump about twelve feet. I'm going to teach him to follow when I pull on the rope. Be sure to stay back and keep talking lowly as we try to start. If he doesn't move when I start, just speak a little louder. Don't wave your hands around or make any sudden movements," I said.

"If you wish, but I don't understand," she said.

Since understanding was easier to give than medical attention to a kicked mate I explained that she was only back there to get the horse moving, and that he would rather move away from her than have her come up behind him. I went over keeping her distance again and warned her that his hooves were hard.

When she was ready I stepped out and only had to tug gently to get the horse moving. I stopped twice and started again and he was doing fine. I walked him to the fence and had Caysha get back outside it.

Thirty minutes of walking, stopping, starting again, and turning left and right had the stallion following in my wake without complaint. I could hardly believe how well he was doing, but I decided to see if he'd like to follow me to the stream for a drink. I figured he do fine with that but expected some trouble when I tried to lead him away from it later.

Caysha, Cayla, and Carla didn't have any trouble opening the front gate when I asked them to, and the stallion followed me out of it with no problems. As I started for the stream he realized where we were going and tried to go faster. We had a small tiff for a minute but it was obvious he didn't want to put much more strain on his neck and so he fell back in step without more trouble.

Letting him drink was a little bothersome since I knew he'd drink too much if I let him have his way. I'd let him take a good drink and then pull him back. He resisted the first time but seemed to catch on to the plan when I let him drink more five minutes later. Damned if it didn't seem like he understood what I was doing. It took half an hour of fucking around at the stream until he decided he'd had enough.

Thirty more minutes of leading him around and teaching him to Get up, Whoa, Gee, and Haw had me thinking that the ancient horses were a hell of a lot smarter than modern ones. He didn't even give me a bit of trouble when I hitched him back to the post.

There was a hell of an audience by now but it was time for intermission. It was mid-afternoon already and I was hungry. As I left the pen I announced that I'd be right back after lunch.

When I showed up near the cook fire Taachachi had a plate ready for me as soon as my ass hit the rock. Nagat was back too, though he'd already eaten.

"I could hardly believe it when you made the horse follow you on the rope. It looked very exciting," he said.

"I guess it might have but it will seem commonplace before long. We are going to camp here until I have them all following on the rope just that way. In fact, I'm going to teach them to pull the travois for us, and I might even teach a few of them to let me ride on their backs," I said, and he was astounded.

"Will they let others ride on their backs too?" he asked.

"Eventually, but I will have to teach the others how to ride them. People have to learn the correct way to ride just as the horses have to learn to let them."

"Will you teach me to ride one?" he asked.

"Of course I will. You are my son. You must pay attention though and try your hardest to do what I tell you instead of what seems right to you," I said.

"I will. I promise I will. I will show you," he said.

"I never doubted it. You will find your life much better when you have learned to ride a horse," I said.

Nagat had dozens of questions after that and I tried to be as patient as I could while I answered them. Some of them were completely out of the blue and had nothing to do with the actual way horses were ridden. Mostly I tried to get over to him that you couldn't make a horse do something but had to train it to do what you wanted. I'm not sure that part stuck.

When we got back to the pen I saw that Biltee had a ringside seat this time. I was glad because I was going to need some help with our nascent herd before long. We'd be here a month if I had to do it all myself.

My next candidate was the lead mare. Of course she'd come in with the stallion. She was a big mare too. Not quite as large as the stallion but large enough to give me trouble if she wanted to. All of them were larger than I'd expected though. I didn't realize that any horses had reached this size in this time. It was all speculation on my part of course, but I hadn't featured them being this large.

The mare was a bay. Not only was she large, she was fat and slick too, and her coat practically shone with her health. I wondered if their obviously low parasite load was because they had so much range to run free. I was already hoping for the greenies to get back so I could try talking them out of some anthelmintics. There was no sense in letting parasites get a hold on the stock now that we were going to have to hold them closer.

The big bay mare turned out to be a big pain in the ass almost right away. It took me three times as long to get my hands on her to just give her a good petting. The whole process went that way with her. She even tried to kick at Biltee when I asked him to do Caysha's old job.

She finally settled down after about two hours of work and a good drink of water. I didn't put her back to her post though. I asked Biltee to just keep leading her all around the big section between the pen and the fence we'd built two days ago. She needed the work.

With time for maybe one and a half more if the next two were somewhere in between the herd stallion and the lead mare's performances I went to a really classy looking strawberry roan mare. She was only about fourteen hands but she had two white socks on her forefeet and white stockings on her hind legs. A star and strip on her head finished off her chrome and she was muscled up and nearly as stocky looking as a quarter horse.

The mare nearly cried out that she was just the one for Nagat and I was even more careful approaching her than I'd been in a long time. It seemed to be needless caution. She was even more willing to get along than the stallion had been. Still, I didn't rush her and spent plenty of time petting and stroking and telling her how pretty she was.