Side Trail
Hotshot
Leslie Johnson
The rage around gaited horse shows was mule racing, and it was a serious sport to those involved. A mule can run, despite rumors to the contrary, but being a sensible creature they don’t bother with it unless absolutely necessary.
Like a quarter horse race, the course was fairly short, usually three laps around the show ring (depending on it’s size, of course), with barrels marking the penalty zone to keep the thundering pack from cutting across, or cutting into a turn to shallow to be fair. It was a lot harder than it sounds, mules don’t have a problem with shouldering or ramming another mule if they get in the way, and they are running flat out and hot. Long ears peeled straight back, neck stretched, teeth bared and eyes glaring, they were a thrilling, though sometime comic sight to see.
As with any competition, everybody had his or her own ideas about what cross made a faster racing mule, and how one prepared the mule for the event. A lot of thoroughbred mares were bred to jacks, only to have those colts beaten by some wiry little mule of unknown parentage. It was a crap shoot, pure and simple, you just didn’t know until you raced ‘em if they had the right stuff. The training ideas weren’t anymore standardized than the breeding programs, but everyone had The Sure Fire method for winning. If the mule didn’t win, he just flat wasn’t getting with the Program.
Hervie was convinced the start off was the key. Since mules didn’t lunge out of gates, they had to jump into a run from a standstill, more or less lined up at a starting point. He was sure the mule that broke first would probably hold the lead, for several reasons. It was far less likely to be fouled, caught in a pack on a turn and shoved out into the penalty zone, or walled out by slower but closer clustered running mates. Made sense. That fact established, at least in his own mind, he set about looking for the right mule to prove it on.
An established running mule went for astounding amounts of money, and I do mean hair raising. They were the Porsche of the mule world, and no doubt about it. So, he was going to find a good prospect and go from there. That meant going through the killer pens at every sale he could get to, where you could get really good buys if you could see past the sad state most of them were in and know there was a diamond under that crust of coal. He found a skinny, cherry red four year old, most likely out of a quarter horse mare, about fourteen hands and maybe six hundred pounds. The gelding had good shoulders, a bunchy hip, and straight, sound legs. His ears were long, his muzzle dark, and the stiff Mohawk of a mule’s mane already roached flush with his neck. Hervie hazed him a little in the corral, mostly to see how he turned and set his feet, and found him quick and agile. Better and better. He would be pretty enough to be a trail mule for one of the hunter seat types who didn’t mind bobbing up and down for two to twenty miles, a plus just in case he didn’t work out as a racehorse. Er, mule.
He called him Copper, for the color, brought him home and set up a training and conditioning routine, which comprised mostly of feeding him on a regular basis, making sure he had fresh water, and light jogging exercise. He put on muscle, got froggy with the good feed, and bloomed into a really beautiful deep chestnut sorrel. His coat was almost red gold in the sunlight. With his better health came a little more riding and teaching him to neck rien, then cantering, and finally short bursts of running. Hervie had some younger nephews and cousins who did the grunt work of exercising and training to be bridle wise, while he sat in a lawn chair in the middle of the corral and bawled instructions, as befitting The Trainer.
Despite his willingness to work, and pretty quick transition to a run, he lacked what Hervie decided was the right take off. He just took to long to get going. None of the boys who were working him wanted to hurt him, and refused to take a whip to him for more than a quick pop or two to get the ball rolling. So Hervie tried standing behind him and cracking him with a lunging whip when the starter yelled “Go!” That failed for obvious reasons after the first run, no self respecting mule was going to allow that to happen again.. What to do, what to do?
This took some serious thought, so he popped a beer and pondered his options. A sip or two later, and he had it! Why didn’t he think of it sooner? A grin we had all learned to dread broke across his face, and he disappeared in the barn for a few noisy minutes, then re-emerged with a bulky pistol shaped item. It was a hand held hot-shot unit, with two stubby prongs coming right out of the box instead of at the end of a long rod.
“When I yell Go!, you hit him with this!” he announced.
Val, the rider and Hervie’s cousin, as well as being the only one with real experience with mules, looked at me, the hotshot, and the mule, and with that rare spark of wisdom teenage boys seldom ever display, shook his head no. “I ain’t gonna hit him with no hotshot, Uncle Hervie,” he said, “I just don’t think he’s gonna like it. Mules don’t handle that well.”
“My gawd! Get off that mule!” he roared in disgust, “I’LL show you how to teach a mule to jump!” Grumbling loudly about everybody acting like a bunch of little girls, he swung up in the saddle and gathered his reins. He crouched over in his stirrups, preparing for the surging leap forward, laid his hand with the reins high on Copper’s neck, and held the hotshot in his other hand just a few inches over the withers. Copper watched him calmly, he had no idea what a hotshot was, so he wasn’t alarmed at the sight of it. Val waved his arm to get his attention, then yelled “GO!” at the top of his lungs.
Hervie yelled “BZZZZZZTTTTTTTT!” in Copper’s ears and stabbed that hotshot in his shoulder. The shock paralyzed the mule for half a breath, maybe less, then he shrieked, jumped straight up in the air as high as my head, and bucked. Before his front feet hit the ground, he had swapped ends and leaped again, sideways, coming down with his head between his forelegs and rear end nearly hitting Hervie in the back of the head. The whole time shrieking like some steam whistle, it was the loudest, most terrifying noise I had ever heard!
To give the devil his due, for a man completely off balance and not suspecting this would be the result, Hervie hung with him until the third leaping buck. This threw him off the saddle and onto the hips, where he clamped his legs tight , driving his spurs into Copper’s flanks. One more high dive and Hervie flipped backward over the croup and between the flashing heels to land face first in the dirt.
To fall off a horse is no fun, but at least when you come off, it’s over, right? So Hervie took his time crawling up to his hands and knees, shaking his head. He heard us yelling at him, but didn’t understand what we were saying. He glanced back to see Copper charging him, teeth bared, ears flat back, and tried to scrabble to his feet a lot faster. Copper leaped at him like a cat, and started stomping him like a man killing mice.
Hervie started yelling now, rolling back and forth to keep the enraged mule from landing squarely on him. All of his help was laughing helplessly from the sidelines, (yes, I admit it), so he was on his own. He rolled frantically for the corral planks, which were about two feet up from the ground so you could slide feed buckets under them when you were in a hurry, and just managed to slide under them before Copper came down again.
Copper still wasn’t done. With another scream, he dropped to his knees and snaked his head under the fence, teeth snapping like canastas as he tried to bite Hervie’s retreating back. He dropped his hind end and shoved his shoulders as far under the fence as he could force them, snapping and squalling, the maddest mule I have ever seen before or since. With a string of choice opinions about his loving spouse and kin, Hervie wobbled shakily for the house. The lesson was evidently over. That was also the last time Hervie rode the mule.
Copper, who’s name was changed to Hotshot, went on to race fairly successfully for the rest of the year, ridden by Val or Kieth, Hervie’s oldest nephew. Hervie couldn’t go within heel or teeth range of Hotshot from that day on. This took a lot of the fun out of wins, as he couldn’t stand next to the mule for pictures, couldn’t ride him in any, and took a lot of serious teasing from fellow mule owners. He decided he was done with mule racing and sold Hotshot, along with the warning never to say, “Bzzzzzzzzztttttt”, around him. Not even in jest….
A few years later we ran into Hotshot at a state park that offered trail riding and camping for horses; he was fat, slick and groomed within an inch of his life. He positively glowed with good health, there were ribbons braided in his tail whisk, and he was ridden by a fairly large woman in English attire, complete with helmet. He carried the weight easily, and she posted sedately down the trail on her hunt seat saddle, justifiably proud of her well mannered English mount. You would never know to look at him that he had ever worn a western saddle in a free for all mule race, never suspect he’d crawled along a fence line trying to bite his “trainer”. He gazed at the world with complacent ease, he was where he belonged.
Our group looked like a mob of Mongols compared to her elegant attire, and she didn’t bother to hide the distain she felt. We pulled aside to let her pass, and Hervie hailed her from a safe distance, telling her he had once owned that mule, and complimenting her on how good he looked. You’d have thought he’d proposed some lewd suggestion to her, the temperature on that warm autumn day dropped forty degrees in a few seconds.
“I hardly think that was possible.” She sneered, guiding him carefully on the far side of the trail path, actually brushing trees.
That stung Keith to the heart, Uncle Hervie didn’t often bother with the truth, but when he did, it deserved a better response than that.
“Oh yeah?” he asked indignantly, “Well, I can prove it!” Leaning over his stallion’s shaggy, uncombed mane, he bared his teeth and hissed, “BBBBZZZZZZTTTTTTT!”
Any quarter horse boiling out of a gate in Ruidoso, New Mexico would have envied that start. Hotshot squalled, squatted, and leaped nearly ten feet before hitting the ground in a dead run. She hung with him, you had to give her that, but any pretense of cultured equestrian poise was gone. She was grabbing leather and wallering all over her hunt seat as he thundered around the bend. I was staring in shocked surprise, visions of sheriffs and lawsuits danced in my head; all the rest were laughing hysterically, except maybe Hervie, who looked mad.
“Now why couldn’t he do that when I had him?”
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