San Domingo: The Medicine Hat Stallion Read online

  “Injun Gentled”

  DOMINGO! THAT little scrap of Injun royalty was a challenge, a nuisance, and a joy. In those first days with the orphaned colt Peter thought, “As long as he needs me for a mother and a teacher, I’ll be here. I’ll put up with Pa as something like mosquitoes or locusts or dust.”

  But gradually—so gradually that Peter wasn’t aware when it happened—the tables turned. It was Peter who needed Domingo! For the first time since he had come upon the hidden letter, he felt a sense of security in living under his father’s roof. He possessed a colt of promise, and without a word his father seemed to admit as much. Now the colt was twice his. First, given him by that outlaw Slade, and then by Red Cloud.

  Strangely, Mr. Lundy began to leave the boy alone. Of course, he made sure that Peter took care of doctoring the motley collection of animals, and that he did his house chores, too, but the between-times belonged to Peter. It was as though man and boy were glad to be freed of each other.

  Right from the start of bringing up Domingo, Peter couldn’t remember ever having been so happy. At first the foal would wobble with the wind—head up, nostrils and lips questing for his mother. He found Peter instead. Peter offering a finger dipped in milk and molasses. Peter letting him suck what flavor he could get. Then the finger submerged deep in the bowl, and the colt having to bury his muzzle in the milk to find it. Before the week was out, finger licking was colty foolishness. Now Domingo nearly upset the pan in his eagerness to slobber up the warm goodness. And so the transition from suckling to weanling took as naturally as night going into morning.

  After the meeting in Red Cloud’s tepee, Peter joined the Sioux Nation in his mind. He let his hair grow long, until he could wear it down his back in two braids.

  “Me albino Sioux,” he laughingly told his mother.

  And he copied their way of horse talk. He remembered how Red Cloud had uttered deep-chested sounds when he took hold of Lucia’s rope, and how she had stood very still, ears pricked toward him to listen. The words sounded like “Hoh, hoh, Chikala, hoh, hoh.”

  When Peter tried to mimic the deep pitch of Red Cloud’s voice, his “hoh-hohs” came out in thin whuffs. Yet Domingo listened intently, like some schoolboy hungry for learning. He seemed to regard Peter with respect, amounting to hero worship. If danger threatened—coyotes skulking close to the corral or wolves on the prowl for colt-meat—he bugled for Peter. Whatever the danger, it melted away with the boy’s nearness. And so the invisible tie-rope between them tightened and strengthened.

  Day by day, Peter touched Domingo—starting his fingers along the colt’s neck, touching the crest, feeling the straight line of the back where someday he would be sitting, and the belly where his legs would be held close, and the place where his heel would nudge Domingo when they both wanted to gallop. And with the flat of his hand he would touch the flanks, each red flower cluster. And his fingers would lift the forelock, tracing the bonnet of red hairs going up and over each ear.

  With combing fingers he separated the hairs of mane and tail. And when Domingo was sleepy, he would often cup the whiskery chin in his palm.

  As time wore on, he practiced sliding gentle hands down the forelegs, and later down the ticklish hind legs. And he peered into the colt’s mouth, his thumb resting on the bar of gum where there would never be teeth, where sometime a rope would lie, and sometime the bit.

  Weeks passed. And months. And then an arm slid over the colt’s back, coming down and around his barrel, tightening as if it were a cinch; and then one day the boy’s body hoisting itself up, draping itself across Domingo’s back like an inert thing, a rag doll, arms dangling down on one side, legs on the other; a rag doll lying there still while Domingo pranced about, testing whether the limp thing would slide off. But instead, strong hands were grabbing strands of mane, and the rag doll was up, legs forking apart, thighs tightening against his barrel. The rag doll: a horseman astride! And at last Peter riding around the corral. He was riding! Riding! Riding! And his voice bursting in his lungs: “He’s Injun gentled, Injun gentled! Oh, Ma! Come and look!”

  • • •

  Riding often and everywhere gave Peter a feeling of wild freedom, freedom from the critical eye of his father. It was a timeless time of pure joy. With no clock but the heat of the sun and the length of his shadow, Peter lived like an Indian boy with pony and dog for company. At nooning he swam in Rawhide Creek, sousing his head in the water, cooling and freshening himself, swimming and winking at solemn-eyed trogs who blinked back. Dice, who hated water, played with Domingo. One day Dice grabbed the lead rope in his teeth and ran the colt in circles.

  Peter shot out of the water, intending to rescue Domingo. But he stopped short. Domingo was following Dice in high spirits. Even with the rope gone slack, he was rounding the curves, galloping the straightaways, playing follow-the-leader as if this were an old, familiar game. It was Dice who wore out first. With fine discipline he brought Domingo back to the starting point and ground-tied him. Then he trotted over, grinning, to Peter with a see-what-I-did look.

  After his swim, Peter fell down on the bank, letting wind and sun blow and bake him dry. It was fun lying on his back, listening to a magpie chattering, and seeing for the first time that the white belly of Domingo was not white, but green, reflecting light from the grass into the white shadow. Someday he would paint a picture of Domingo with a greenish belly, and only Ma would believe it. On these carefree afternoons boy and pony, too, often fell asleep listening to the murmur of the creek while Dice whiskered around for rabbits or prairie chickens.

  There was no need for worry. The whole Sioux Nation seemed to know that Yellow Hair rode a white stallion who wore a natural red war bonnet. Whenever Peter and Domingo met a lone Indian, or a party, teeth flashed in recognition and hands raised in “How!” Even the Arapahos and the Cheyennes let the boy and his horse alone. And so the days and weeks ran together.

  One early evening when Peter returned to the house, his braids still wet with the day’s swim, his mother said, “I’m sending off a letter to your uncle today.”

  A look of startlement crossed Peter’s face. Did Ma suspect that he had found and read her long-ago letter? He turned his face away from her and tried to make his tone casual. “To my Uncle Peter in Syracuse?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, coming to poke the fire and sending up a shower of sparks. She spun Peter around, smiling at him, puzzled. “Peter! Don’t you want to know what I told him?”

  Peter was not sure. Maybe what happened to Pa long ago was best forgotten. Or maybe this was a new letter, all fresh and different. “Yes, I want to know,” he said, trying to put confidence into his words.

  His mother melted a dab of beeswax for sealing her letter. She watched it cool and set before answering. Then she said, “I wrote him that little Domingo had grown as important to you as you and Aileen are to me. Yes,” she said, “I went so far as to say that life might never be so happy for you again.”

  Peter felt a truth in Ma’s words. Sometimes his happiness with San Domingo almost frightened him. It seemed too great to keep.

  Part II. The TRANSIT

  The Whirling Sky

  HIS NAME is Peter Lundy and he is fourteen, and he and his stallion are familiar sights on the plains as far west as Fort Laramie, and even beyond. Homesteaders and cattlemen emigrating to the fertile valleys of the Northwest were constantly on the alert for boys like Peter to help round up lost stragglers, or save horses and cattle made crazy by a buffalo stampede. Wagon bosses counted themselves lucky when Peter and Domingo pitched in with their own herders, riding hell-bent to turn the pounding tide of buffalo away from the line of travel.

  After a day of eating dust and not much else, Peter was often rewarded with nothing more than a hand laid kindly on his shoulder and a heartfelt thank-you. But sometimes the pay was a shiny gold piece, or a steer to keep; and on that day Peter could face his father.

  Around campfires at night mountain men and miners, bu
llwhackers and mule skinners, freighters and trappers spoke of the skinny kid with yellow braids and the odd-marked young stallion who flew over the land at the speed of an antelope. “Seems like,” they said, “neither one ain’t afeared of nothing.”

  But on the sultry afternoon of July 14, 1859, Peter and Domingo both felt fear. The day began with the sun rising in a flood of crimson. Peter had been sent early by his father to find a team of oxen that had strayed in the night. By the time he had rounded them up, the sun was hot and brassy overhead.

  On impulse, he angled Domingo away from the trading post, up Rawhide Creek, toward his swimming hole. He felt a twinge of guilt at not stopping for Dice; but the dog was busy at the shop hypnotizing, one by one, a string of fresh-broke Army horses getting their first set of shoes. Resolutely Peter went on, pulled by the thought of slithering into the cool water, paddling among the chub and sauger fish.

  His swimming hole seemed especially friendly today, the willows dipping their fingers in and out of the water, beckoning him to “come on in—the water’s fine.”

  Almost instantly Peter forgot the heat and dust. He dived in, making so big a splash that minnows darted in all directions. For a long time he wallowed in the water. He was like a person desert-dried, thirsting and parched, every pore crying out for water. He sousled his head in the wetness, making fierce noises, then bounced out, trying, unsuccessfully, to balance on a bobbing log. And then right back in again, until laughing in exhaustion he lay on his back, floating quietly with the small current, watching white clouds floating too. The clouds looked good enough to spoon up and let melt in his mouth—like Ma’s snow pudding or her whipped syllabub. He could hear Domingo tearing the bunchgrass and sneezing bugs away. Deep in content, Peter closed his eyes and dozed.

  When next he looked up, the clouds were smaller, darker, closer to earth, and racing along in a topsy-turvy wind that couldn’t make up its mind which way to blow. Lightning tore through the clouds, and thunder grumbled low in the distance. Big, far-apart drops of rain beat down on his face and chest. Wet as a beaver, he scrambled up the bank and yanked on his clothes, while Domingo offered deep rumblings of his own.

  Peter thought, “If Dice had been here, he’d have barked and scolded us home at the first spit of rain.” That would have spoiled all the fun. He leaped on Domingo’s back while lightning forked cloud to cloud and earth-quaking thunder exploded.

  Now Peter thought of nothing at all. He and Domingo loved the rush of wind with a wild and passionate love. There was nothing to stop them. They needled through the rain, sailing the dips and rises.

  But of a sudden the whole world turned a ghastly greenish yellow. The wind hushed. Not a bird cheeped, nor a cricket. Peter felt fear pushing against his stomach, felt his heart beat noisy in his ears, and Domingo’s heart thudding against his legs. They halted in the stillness, watching the thunderheads in the north spin into a crazy corkscrew. Clusters of little boiling black clouds bulged downward. And out of the tumbling mass came wisps of vapor like delicate garter snakes at play.

  In but a few moments a big cloud dropped down into their midst. Peter had once seen a king snake spread its jaws for gorging. The big cloud was like that, now drawing into its mouth all the little ones. Victorious, the king now lashed his tail across the sky in a sinuous, twisting, skipping motion, and wherever it touched earth it sucked up strips of sod and spit them skyward in slivered fragments.

  To Peter’s dread, the lashing, hissing snake was coming straight at them. A tornado! They had to veer away, outrace the flying monster. Lightning leaped toward an approaching wagon train. In the vivid glare, Peter saw a blue bolt lace along the chain of four yoked oxen, saw it tail off in sulphurous fumes, leaving the four oxen standing, chained together, dead.

  Domingo now became a fire-breathing dragon himself. Breath sucked out of lungs, legs pounding, he set the pace—swerving, spinning on his hocks, galloping seconds ahead of the roaring, rattling tail. Was the race hours long? Minutes? Or only seconds until the cloud-snake dissolved into nothing, and the sky laughed down at the earth and flung a rainbow over the wetness?

  Peter could never tell how long Domingo had outrun the tornado. But as they jogged slowly for home, he knew unmistakably that the speed of San Domingo was as awesome as the forces of Nature.

  Sodding Day

  SUMMER WORE on, and every day the bond of union between Peter and Domingo tightened as together they explored the living, singing prairie.

  Peter wished Time would stop still. Instead, autumn set in. Nights and mornings crackly cold. Days warm and hazy. Wildlife fully aware and winding up their own time clocks—bears lumbering off to caves, prairie dogs deepening their tunnels, beavers shoring up their dams, grackles ganging up in willow thickets, crickets clinging together in a solid ball. And Mrs. Lundy quietly reminding Mr. Lundy of the need for a new sod roof.

  “Jethro?” she began one morning as she poured molasses over his pancakes. Hopefully she waited for recognition, but none came. The quiet was disturbed only by the coffee bubbling in its pot and the metallic ticking of the clock.

  Peter waited, too. The silence made him jumpy, sent his mind flashing back to the letter in the treasure chest. Everywhere he looked—on the wall, on the blanket divider, on the checkered tablecloth—he saw his mother’s handwriting:

  . . . Jethro, as you know, has never been the same since that terrifying experience . . . Someday, when Peter is old enough, I shall tell him the whole hideous story . . .

  Peter glanced sidelong at his father. He saw the fork poised an instant, thought some words might escape the bearded bunghole of a mouth. But none came. Instead, fork and knife went to work, severing the stack of pancakes into equal pie-piece quarters.

  Peter looked down at his own plate—at the golden molasses oozing over his cakes. But he could not taste them until the silence broke.

  Red in the face, his mother went on with the business of the morning. She ladled Aileen’s oatmeal into her porringer. She poured the coffee from the heavy blue granite pot—Mr. Lundy’s first, then Grandma’s, and for Peter a half cup with cream added. Peter watched the cream eddy and swirl, but he could not drink.

  The room remained silent, except for Grandma’s spoon stirring and Mr. Lundy swishing the coffee in his mouth, cleaning his teeth.

  Mrs. Lundy tried again. “Even Adam,” she said, “noticed the sunflower growing out of our roof. And, Jethro, its roots are poking through, causing a sift of dust on my rag rug.”

  “So!” Mr. Lundy broke the silence with a grunt of mockery. “So Adam noticed that, too?”

  “No, Jethro. Not that.”

  Meticulously, Mr. Lundy blotted up the last drop of molasses with the last morsel of pancake before he spoke again. He pushed his plate aside and stood up, tall as God.

  “I’ll fetch you a dustpan,” he said. “Got one only yesterday from an emigrant, along with all their cooking utensils.”

  “But what will his family do, Jethro, if they can’t cook?”

  Mr. Lundy’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Their numbers dwindled, so they joined up with another train. Simple as that.”

  Grandma Lundy came out of one of her lapses. “Some of ’em sicken and die, eh?”

  The toneless voice again: “We all got to die sometime. The weak and the scared first.”

  Mrs. Lundy shuddered, but her resolve suddenly strengthened. “We’ll all sicken,” she cried out, “unless you and Peter repair the roof before November rains chill us in our beds.”

  Grandma Lundy spoke up. “Big man! Big man!” she said, emphasizing the words with her spoon. “I abominate rain wettin’ my blanket. It’s bad enough if’n I do it my own self, but ain’t no livin’ excuse for a leaky roof.”

  Mr. Lundy snatched his hat from the wall peg just as a clump of straw from the ceiling fell onto his head and stuck in his hair. “What I abominate,” he said, his voice icy, “is women’s piddlin’ prattle when I got a store to mind.” Angrily he brushed the straw out o
f his hair, clamped his hat on his head, and banged out of the house, sending more straw falling.

  Grandma cackled in delight. “Didn’t that big man look funny with a straw tail hangin’ onto his hair?” She hobbled over to her rocker and fell into it, shaking in laughter. “Tee-hee-hee . . . I wanted to thank Old Soddy for comin’ to our rescue. ’Twas a right propishus moment, weren’t it, for the sky to fall? Eh?” And she set to rocking wildly, laughing until the tears came.

  Peter couldn’t help joining in. But his laughter wasn’t free like Grandma’s. She had no fear of the big man who once was her little boy.

  Two nights later, the rain came slogging down on the soddy. From bedtime to dawn it gurgled between the grassgrown bricks, widening cracks into rifts.

  In his sleep Peter dreamed Rawhide Creek was spilling over its banks and he and Domingo were caught in the current, trying to swim free, and an old cottonwood tree wrenched loose. And just when the tree came toppling on their heads, Grandma’s wailing shook him awake.

  “Help! Help! I’m a-drownding! Help me!”

  For the rest of that night and all of the next, the family slept with papers over their heads and oilcloth over their blankets; and by day Grandma Lundy rocked underneath an open umbrella.

  But before the week was out, the drip-drop from the roof stopped. Pots and pans were returned to their shelves, quilts and clothes aired to freshness, and the sky was a cloudless blue. No longer was there any excuse to put off repairing the roof.

  One early morning Mr. Lundy stepped into Peter’s path as the boy was on his way to the corral. “Come with me,” he said abruptly.

  Peter did not question. Two steps to one, he followed along to a draw-bottom where the buffalo grass grew thick and strong. Mr. Lundy plucked at his beard, pacing up and down, testing with his boots, appraising the spot. “It will do!” he said to the earth. Then to Peter: “Fetch me string.”