Six Old Horses Ahead of the Fire

Duke walked up into that trailer like he had been waiting all day for me to ask.

Dolly balked once at the ramp, and I backed her a step and asked again, and she went. I swung the center gate and latched the back.

When I climbed in the cab, Mom had her hands folded on her knees. Her lips were moving. I knew she was praying, and I let her, and I put the truck in gear.

The county fairgrounds sit on the east edge of town, a set of white barns and pipe pens and an old wooden grandstand.

In August it is all 4-H kids and funnel cakes. The rest of the year it is mostly quiet.

The sheriff’s office had put out word that the fairgrounds were open for livestock. I had heard it on the radio.

I did not know what I would find when I got there, maybe just empty pens and no water.

What I found was Elroy Swanhorst.

Elroy is 69 and ranches cattle north of town. He bought two colts from me years back and still sends me a Christmas card with a photo of them.

He was standing by the pipe pens with a pitchfork, and behind him three stalls in the barn were already bedded with fresh straw.

“Heard you were coming,” he said. I had not called him. I still do not know who did. “Buckets are full. Hay’s in the corner. Unload them in this row.”

Another ranch family had pulled in behind him with a pickup full of square bales. A woman with her hair in a braid was already filling a second water tank off the hydrant.

I led Duke off and handed him to Elroy, then Dolly. Elroy took both ropes in one hand like it was nothing, the way a man does who has handled stock his whole life.

“Go get the rest,” he said. “We’ve got these.”

I walked Mom to a wooden bench by the pipe pens, out of the way of the trailers.

She sat down slow, one hand on her back, and gripped the edge of the bench with both hands.

“Stay on this bench, Mom. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “You go on.”

The woman with the braid came over and sat down next to her and put a bottle of water in her hands.

Her name was Hettie, and she stayed on that bench with my mother until the last horse came in.

It was Elroy who told me, on that first trip, while I was latching the empty trailer. He said it low, the way men out here say things they would rather not say at all.

“Lyndon was here about ten to twelve,” he said. “Unloaded his three in the far pens and left again. Said he had to get home and wet down his house.”

“Did he say anything about Mom’s?”