The Busted Thumb Horse Ranch by Paul Bagdon

Author:Paul Bagdon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

Arm had picked up a pack of playing cards on his last trip to the mercantile. Neither of us were big on gambling, but we decided we could play “21” for matchsticks. The first time Blanca came through the kitchen as we sat holding cards, she swept the deck from the table, jerked the cards out of our hands, gathered up the whole mess, and tossed it in the trash. She hollered at us in Spanish, which Arm later translated for me. “Cards,” she said, “are tickets to hell! Satan loves to see men holding them because then he knows that those men will roast and scream in the eternal fire for all eternity. Teresa and me will not stay in a house where cards are played!”

That ended our pastime quite effectively. If we had to go back to our own cooking, we’d probably rather be in hell.

Winter drags on forever in West Texas. The sun we cursed during the summer rarely showed its face, and each day was a gray, dreary, and arctically cold repeat of the one that came before it, interspersed with storms.

I spent lots of time with the bay stallion. I’d let him off the rope holding him to the snubbing post and he danced and bucked and carried on like a colt at his freedom. He still often skittered away when I approached him. On good days, though, he’d follow me a step behind as I carried out his grain and hay. Nevertheless, any loud, unexpected noise scared hell out of him. A heap of snow sliding down from the barn’s roof with a long whoooosh frightened him, so he took off in his awkward run and damned near slammed into the corral fence. Then he turned, nostrils flared, pawing the ground in front of him, challenging the sound. It took him a full day to come down from that little episode.

The thing is, there’s always noise around a working ranch. Arm and I talked it over and decided that on an irregular schedule, we’d clatter pots an’ pans or fire our rifles or pistols, or yell as loud as we could at least once a day. That was tough on the stud. His nature told him to either fight or haul ass when something threatened him. For a few days he ate his grain and drank water but left his hay to blow around in the corral. It took about ten days to bring him to a point where he’d tighten at a strange sound, but wouldn’t bolt or rear.

The mare was getting prettier by the day. I swear if she were a woman, I’d have married her. The Appy was growing out of coltishness and beginning to grow into a horse. He put some muscle on his legs, his chest broadened and filled out, and his ass went from lean slabs of muscle to the semirounded rump we were looking for. He had a hell of a personality, too. Armando was his obvious

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