Haven’t had time to update my blog recently, so I thought I would share a comic episode that I have been working on in the meantime. The scenario is self-explanatory, i.e. Cory and his crew of cowhands are relaxing around the campfire swapping tales, and this is one of them.
That evening the cowhands got to feast on grouse and savoury rabbit stew before they bedded-down the herd for the night. The cattle seemed to be under the soothing spell of the valley as well, for they settled down as soon as they reached the bedding ground; chewing their cuds and grunting contentedly. A token watch was then assigned, and after that the cowhands lounged round the campfire to relax and swap tall tales.
“Speaking ‘bout horses,” one of them began, even though no one was. “My pappy first settled over near William’s Lake when the nearest neighbour was still ten miles from his gate. Well, when Billy Barker started the gold rush back in sixty-three a lot of newcomers came to stay, but my daddy and his cronies stuck pretty much t’gether. After a while they got up in years, too, and it happened that one of them died over near Quesnel. Him and my father went back nearly forty years, so my pappy felt he had to go to his funeral or bust a gut tryin’.“Now, as some of you boys might know the soil over that way is gumbo clay, and in the spring o’ the year it can bung the wheels on a wagon, solid. So that year it was nigh impossible to go anywhere by the road, and my pappy had t’ make the trip by horse or not at all.
“When it came t’ horses my pappy raised some of the best—brought the stock all the way from Tennessee, so he did. He liked a spirited horse too, but he was dead set agin racin’ on account o’ his religion … Methodist, ya know. That didn’t seem t’ matter much to my two older brothers, though, and so they took a real delight in trying out every colt we raised t’ see what speed it could do … On the sly, mind you. So, at the time they had a real crackerjack. A five-year-old chestnut-sorrel that could show his heels to any horse in The Cariboo. Not only that, but he’d race his own shadow if it got ahead o’ him.
“Well, come the day of the funeral my poor ole pappy was in a quandary as to which horse to ride, and my brothers suggested the best on the ranch … Which just happened to be the chestnut-sorrel. Not having sat a horse in years, pa was a bit leery of testing out such a spirited specimen, but the boys assured him that after a few miles o’ heavy mud he’d settle down. He did too, and pappy arrived at the dearly-departed’s ranch just in time to take his place at the back of the procession. Mind you the horse wasn’t particularly happy to be lagging at the back of the field, and when some late-comers came galloping up he naturally figured the race had started without him.”
At this point in the story everyone was leaning forward to hear the outcome, and so after he re-lit his pipe, the storyteller went on.
“Well sir, that hot-blooded chestnut laid his ears back and tore past the procession as though it was a free-for-all sweepstakes. Meanwhile, the ole man’s beard was a-whippin’ in the breeze as he tried to hold that determined gelding back, but there was no checkin’ him until he had passed every horse in that procession, including the undertaker’s pair of high-steppin’ Hackneys. Mind you they was pulling the hearse at the time, so they was under a bit of a handicap,” he added somewhat philosophically.
“When old pappy got home that night he was fit t’ be tied and called for a family conference straight off. Of course my brothers denied ever having raced the horse, but the old gent knew a thing or two about horses, and shortly afterwards he taught them both a lesson by selling that chestnut. Broke my brothers’ hearts right proper, so it did,” he concluded.
Catch-up to y’all later.
Much luv,
Ger
