The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss

Author:Molly Gloss [Gloss, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical, Romance, Adult, War, Western
ISBN: 9780618799909
Publisher: Ulverscroft
Published: 2007-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

18

W.G. BOYD'S WIFE had died in 1910 after an illness. Then in 1913, as if a terrible family inheritance had been passed down, his son, Clyde, lost his wife in a train derailment as she was returning home from a visit to her parents in Chicago. For the next few years, Clyde and his young son, Joe, went on living in a rented house in Pendleton, where Clyde worked as a telephone lineman, but when he was called to Kansas in the summer of 1917 to teach soldiers how to string telephone line, the boy came to live with his grandfather.

W.G. owned about ten acres of land at the edge of Bingham and got his living primarily from a small planer mill in the summer and from making butcher knives and pocket knives from old saw blades in the winter. He had another line of work as well, although it gave him little in the way of income. People up and down the valley of the Little Bird Woman River brought him sick or mistreated animals for rehabilitation—horses, milk cows, goats, dogs, rabbits, pigs, as well as wounded owls and orphaned fawns and once a coyote pup whose foot had been mauled in a leg-hold trap. Sometimes he was paid for his veterinary work in cash or barter but more often people simply dropped off sick or dying animals, conferring not only ownership but the trouble of disposing of the carcass if the animal failed to thrive. W.G. never turned away an animal, and although he was unschooled he had a natural gift for seeing what was troubling these creatures; fairly often he was able to help them to a recovery. Two or three times a year he took to auction a few head of livestock he had seen through to health and in that way managed to recoup his costs for feed and assorted healing agents. Several dogs, including one with three legs, lived at the Boyd place, as well as numerous cats and an assortment of scarred and aged or otherwise unwanted livestock. It was a paradise, more or less, for a ten-year-old boy.

Among the animals W.G. was feeding that winter was the young black gelding, Skip, who had been left with him after being badly scared and hurt by dragging a loose pole behind him. W.G. was working in his shop on a cold day in the middle of January, showing his grandson how to whet the burr off a finished knife, when Martha rode Skip into the yard. They had shut the dogs into the cowshed to keep them from causing a ruckus if Martha rode in while they were working, and when they heard the dogs barking and scratching at the door Joe looked out and said, "Grandpa, she's got Skip."

There were fourteen horses on the circle, and seven stops, which meant the horses got ridden every other day, and it took a horse a couple of weeks to make it clear around to his home corral; the Boyds had seen Skip only one other time since Martha had started the horses.

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