Fire and Ice

In 1995 our summer monsoons failed for the third year in a row. The winter of 1995-96, it didn't snow much. All we got was a few dustings. Those rare times it did snow, gales screamed out of the northwest, lifted the snow into tendrils and whirled it into nothingness amid the stark blue sky. Spring came with winds that never ceased. Sand drifted along the fence lines and snaked across the dirt roads of New Mexico’s Estancia Valley where I live.

April 26,1996, I was hauling a mare to a buyer who lived down a dusty road in the Rio Grande Valley.

I paused at an intersection to get my bearings. I blew my nose to get rid of the dust, and saw blood on the tissue. That means the air is too dry, I thought. Ahead, to the west, the Jemez volcano loomed. Above ranks of pink cliffs, a ponderosa forest stretched to the summit. Tentacles of mist rose from a patch of forest to a lone cloud that looked like a poisonous jellyfish. A plane circled. Must be a forest fire, I htought.

Next morning, back home, I woke to the sound of the Navajo globe willows outside the window. As usual they were rattling in the wind. I went outside and to the northwest saw a mushroom cloud towering into the stratosphere. The Jemez volcano lay fifty miles that direction. For an instant I wondered, had it erupted? No, I thought, I would have felt earthquakes. As it turned out, it was the Dome Fire, exploding into the worst conflagration of the season.

Despite this omen of death, that morning I drove to the Cattlemen’s Livestock auction in Belen. I was a regular there, buying underweight horses by the pound to fatten, train, and resell.

Because of the drought, as usual there were lots of skinny horses. The sleek ones, I knew, were usually lame, used up by their owners after one too many dashes down the racetrack, crippled from barrel racing or going over jumps. By contrast, the thin ones were usually brought in by folks who couldn’t afford to wait out the drought by hauling hay any more. Some pretty good horses came in that way.

At the southwest corner of the stockyard, two double-decker cattle semis waited. The auction’s wranglers would run many of the horses straight from the sale ring into the semis. The ones with ribs showing usually would go to a feedlot first. Sooner or later, all those that rode the semis would end up at the Bel-Tex slaughterhouse in Ft. Worth.

I climbed up on the catwalk that ran along the length of the welded pipe corrals where horses awaited the sale. Below I noticed a mustang mare sagging like the Indian pony of the “End of the Trail” sculpture. Her eyes were as dull as her coat,. It may have once been gold, but now was dirty yellow. Matted hair failed to hide a protruding backbone. Her ribs and pelvis stood out. Despite her emaciated condition, her belly hung wide and low and her udder was full.

What really caught my attention was her scars. Beginning at her throat latch, four parallel scars ended in a puckered hollow on the underside of her neck. It looked as if a cougar had ripped out her throat. It seemed a miracle that she had survived.

Today she needed another miracle. Not me, I thought. I wasn’t here to rescue horses. Certainly not one that could run up a vet bill. Like most New Mexico horse dealers, I wasn’t exactly rolling in money.

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