Horses in Love, continued
...
What made me feel good was to save as many
Spanish mustangs as I could. The soaring price of horse meat
and a deepening drought was dooming entire herds of Spanish mustangs
to the slaughterhouses of Ft. Worth.
The mustangs' ribs and hip bones protruded.
This didn't surprise me. The drought was in its third year.
Looking for crooked backs, hipbones
out of kilter... Photo courtesy Carolyn Bertin.
These mustangs looked almost identical,
the same animal repeated with only ages, sexes and stages of
pregnancy varying. They had big eyes, wide foreheads and small,
almost too-cute noses. Their narrow chests and sloping rumps
looked like what you see on a Spanish type horse. I estimated
they were the size of large ponies. The adults stood only some
13.2 hands (four and a half feet) at their withers.
Each one's body was harvest moon gold,
with brown manes and tails. Darker brown tiger stripes snaked
across their legs and shoulders. A dark stripe ran along each
back and down the middle of each tail. Cream or brown spots marked
their rumps.
These primitive markings hide them from
those predators who are less resourceful than the killer buyers.
Some people pay good money for striped
horses, I thought. To a killer buyer,
however, they would be worth just $20, maybe $30 per hundred
weight (per hundred pounds, live on the hoof).
Each of these ponies bore a double underlined
N brand on the right rump. This meant they were at least accustomed
to a yearly roundup. Judging from their flinching movements,
however, they had little experience with humans beyond being
roped and branded.
Where did this herd come from? I climbed
down from the catwalk, circled the auction building past a line
of stock trailers waiting to unload, and strode into to the Cattlemen's
Livestock Auction front office. I asked a big-haired blonde for
the brand book.
As she handed it to me, a tall, lean man
with short grey hair stode over. It was auction owner Charlie
Meyer. "You are the biggest pain customer I have ever had.
I mean pain, not paying, understand!"
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