Side Trail
Cabesa de Muerte
Leslie Johnson
In the part of the country I’m from, they don’t like bald faced horses, especially ones with a blue eye, or two. They call them Cabesa de Muertes, or “Deaths Heads”, and they are bad luck and bad news. No vaquero or his American counter part will pick one in a remuda, no matter how trained it is supposed to be, and to do so is to court sure disaster. No wrangler kept such a horse around, and the wise ranch owner didn’t insist on it. If he or she did, it would always be the horse they got, and nobody wanted to ride with them. Just superstition, but it was a firmly grounded as any other, such as throwing a hat on a bed, or breaking a mirror. It was just better not to do such things, that was all.
My Yankee husband wasn’t aware of such wisdom as this, so when a big, strapping four year old red-roan mare with a totally bald face and one blue eye came thundering into the ring, he bid on her right away. She was sixteen hands if she was an inch, bold and eye catching, and she made my blood run cold. He was on it hot and heavy, so although he was standing in the ring with the other, well established traders who were allowed this privilege, he wasn’t watching her much more after he began bidding. As the bids dwindled down and the auctioneer began the “Going once……Going twice….”, I saw her back up to kick one of the men standing along the inside of the rail. He wasn’t bothering her, none of them were, so she was deliberately trying to kick some one, and he was handy. I was eight or nine rows up, and yelled, ”NO!” as loud as I could, just as the “Going three times!” came out and the gavel rapped on the desk. It startled the mare just long enough to deflect her aim, so the cow kick missed her intended target, who jumped back with a curse. Everyone was laughing at me, because it was Hervie who had bought the monster.
Down in the pens, I told him about her kicking, but he laughed it off as more of my Tex-Mex silliness, and proudly loaded her up on the stock racks. She leveled that glaring blue eye at me, and I shuddered, actually shuddered. You read about it in stories, but I never actually felt it until then.
Once we got her home, it was no better. You couldn’t turn her loose with anyone, and she’d try to savage another horse in a stall next to her. She’d lunge at me when I tried to feed and water her, and I was forced to put a leash on her. I’d leave a lead tied to her halter while she was in the stall, when I had to go in there with her, I would snake the end of the lead toward me with a stock pole, then raise it up over the door and front of the stall, leading her back to the other side. I would snub her there to the corner post and slip in the door to put fresh food and water in. I could pick the stall out only on that side, unless Hervie was there, and he could take her out for me.
Something was terribly wrong with her, but we couldn’t figure it out. She’d scream at a male horse, snake her head down and at him, like another stallion, but display all the signs of a mare in heat as well. Hervie could ride her, but it was a fight and no fun for either, she was just getting nuttier and nuttier as the weeks wore on.
PG, Hervie’s buddy who raised mules, told him he’d buy her for a brood mare, and although we took a loss, it was worth it to get rid of her. He took her, and for a few weeks, we didn’t hear anything about her. Then one Saturday he called, and told Hervie that was the “damndest mare” he’d ever fooled with.
He’d turned her out with one of the mammoth jacks and his small band of mares, and the fight was on. She attacked the jack, fought him until he chased her off, then circled back around trying to herd his mares. The jack fought her again, and this time PG managed to get her out of there before the fight turned fatal. He put her up to heal for a few days, noticed she was in heat, and led her to where one of the other jacks was stalled. She displayed the classic signs of heat, squatting, “winking”, flipping her tail over, acting very interested in him, so he turned the two out in a dry lot behind the barn to make mules. No sooner did the jack woo and win her, attempting to finish the courtship, when she “changed” again. She leaped on the jack, mauled him with her teeth, kicked him, knocked him down twice, and did her dead level best to kill him. Now anyone who’s ever fooled with jacks of any size will you tell you, they are darn near impossible to kill, but she was giving it her best shot. She had him by the throat, striking and pawing him, and they tumbled to the ground. This poor jack was losing the fight.
PG had already run back to the house and got a rifle, he had way more in that mammoth jack than he did in that mare, and he wasn’t losing him. He shot the mare twice, killing her, and then helped the jack back up to his feet. If she’d been left alone, she would have killed him for sure.
It just so happened, his Vet was at the farm next to his, so he called him and asked him to stop in and sew the jack up on his way out. He agreed, and when he arrived to treat the jack, he saw the dead mare and asked what in the world had happened. PG told him, and when the jack was sewn up, anesthetized and lying wearily back in his stall, the Vet performed an impromptu field dissection.
She had both male and female organs in her. There were two perfectly formed testicles in her lower body cavity, and the usual female equipment as well, although the uterus was impossibly small and poorly formed. No wonder she was crazy! It must have been a nightmare for her, all these different emotions raging inside of her.
It turned out worse for PG though; madder than a wet hen, he called Hervie awhile later and told him he owed him another jack. The young jack that she’d mauled refused, flat out refused, ran away from, and declined to even sniff a mare of the horse persuasion. Nossir! He’d had all of that he’d ever wanted from her. He’d stick to ladies of his own ilk and to heck with getting beaten within an inch of your life to romance a mare.
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