A Girl and Five Brave Horses Page 9

  Even with these favorable characteristics, however, Apollo was an unknown quantity. Was he shy? Was he stubborn? Was he loyal? Was he brave?

  No one knew and no one would know until we had begun his training. Horses are like people; they form likes and dislikes, experience anger, sorrow, joy, and loneliness, as well as cowardice and courage; and courage, the most important quality of all in a diving horse, cannot be taught. A person cannot whip a horse to courage any more than he can whip the fear out of him. In fact, whipping only increases the fear. Dr. Carver never owned a whip himself and never allowed his grooms to use one. “A whip-trained horse is a broken horse,” he always said. “Our horses aren’t whip-trained. Our horses are educated.”

  Al began Apollo’s training in California and found his progress slow but felt that, once we were situated where we could go into intensive training, he would quickly improve. On the contrary, by the time a practice tower was put up and a tank dug on Lorena’s farm, Apollo seemed to have forgotten everything he had learned. This was very strange, since experience had shown that a horse never retrogressed. Nevertheless, Apollo had retrogressed completely, and Al, to his supreme disgust, had to begin training from scratch.

  Training is a lengthy process, taking weeks and sometimes months, during which a horse progresses from the low tower to the high just as a rider does. In the beginning a lead rope is put on the horse, attached to his diving harness and long enough to reach out to the front of the tank. Here the trainer takes his position, coaxing the horse to come off the twelve-foot tower and dive into the tank. This he does by tugging gently and constantly urging in a calm, sure voice. Sometimes a horse simply refuses to be budged by the tugs or the voice, and if he continues to do so over a reasonable length of time all efforts are abandoned and he is sold.

  Usually, however, most animals can be talked into trying it at least once, and this was true of Apollo.’ Al soon had him to the point where he would come off the low tower, but from the very first he showed an appalling lack of style. This was bad, for if a horse didn’t have style he just didn’t have it and, like courage, style is impossible to teach. In Apollo’s case he came off the tower with all four feet spread as if he were trying to fly and invariably landed with a belly flop that sent water in all directions. He was awkward and ungainly by any standards, but Al kept working with him, hoping he would improve.

  In the meantime he kept the lead rope on him, as he did with all the horses, even after they had graduated to the high tower, in order to help them get their heads up out of the water and keep them from strangling. It also helped guide them out of the tank. After a while, of course, a horse learned to take care of these details for himself, even to keeping the water out of his nose by sucking in his nostrils, as I had noticed Lightning do the first night I watched her dive.

  Of course it was from the high tower that a horse really showed his spunk. From that height only the truly brave would dive and, as we were finding out more surely day by day, Apollo wasn’t one of them. It soon became apparent that he was a dud.

  The situation was actually very acute, since Al had signed more than the usual number of contracts for the coming season in the belief that by summer Apollo would be diving in form. Now in place of the mediocrity for which we would gladly have settled we had nothing at all.

  About this time another problem arose to complicate matters further. Although the doctors had given Lorena permission to ride and she had ridden for Al the past two seasons, she decided, after thinking it over, that it would be too great a strain for her to ride as well as manage the act. She would be completely alone except for a groom to see to the horse and would have no help with the supervision of the tanks and building of the towers or with the financial side of things, so she decided she would get someone to dive for her. This would be easier than trying to find someone to manage the act, for it took years to learn the business. This meant that we now had the problem of finding a rider, which could be almost as difficult as finding a horse. In this instance, however, Fate took a hand and was kind. About the time Lorena decided to act as manager instead of performer, I had a letter from my sister Arnette.

  Arnette was now fifteen years old. I was nine years older than she but more devoted to her than to the others because by the time she came along I was old enough to appreciate her. From the first there had been a bond between us and a closeness we were to continue to share for the rest of our lives.

  She had been an admirer of mine since she was very small, and I had no sooner become a rider of diving horses than she wanted to learn to ride too. Of course she was much too young at the time and I had ignored her pleas, but now she was a junior in high school and I no longer had an excuse. She could join us for the summer and still be back in time to enroll for her senior year. As for her qualifications, from the pictures she had sent me I could see that, physically at least, she seemed ideally suited for the job.

  Arnette was not as tall as I and somewhat heavier, but the heaviness was muscle, not fat. She also had a freshness about her that was very appealing. There was a radiance that struck everyone and prompted a friend of Mother’s to refer to her as “the beauty of the family.” I took the letter to Al, hoping he would agree to let her come. He said if I was willing it was all right with him.

  Now all I had to do was decide whether I could afford to let her take the chances I knew a rider must take.

  Ninety-five per cent of the time a horse’s dives are good, and if a rider has the proper training she can take care of the other five per cent; but there are accidents in everything, and they are more likely to happen to people who put themselves in dangerous positions than they are to those who do not. By allowing my little sister to come I would certainly be placing her in greater jeopardy than if she stayed at home.

  On the other hand, Arnette resembled me. She didn’t want life to be ordinary; she craved experience as I did and I wasn’t certain that by refusing to let her come I’d be doing her any favor. After all, the most and worst that had ever happened to me were friction burns on my legs, a sprained ankle once when Klatawah took off at an angle and twisted my foot between himself and the uprights, and a bang on the head I received one night when he turned over with me still on him and I hit the bottom of the tank. Still, there were girls who had been injured more seriously.

  One had had her front teeth knocked out and another had broken her nose. Another had fractured a cheekbone, which left a sunken place in her cheek. Worst of all, one man had actually been killed. Though it was true he had not been a member of the troupe, he had been a Hollywood stunt man and should have known how to handle himself. He begged Dr. Carver to let him ride so that he could have some publicity pictures made, and Dr. Carver finally agreed. He went in all right but he didn’t come up, and when rescuers dived in and dragged him out they found he had broken his neck.

  In spite of all the negative arguments, however, I felt that if Arnette had any real talent for riding I could teach her, and if I taught her as carefully as Dr. Carver had taught me she’d be safe.

  Having settled the mental debate to my satisfaction, I sat down and wrote her to come, and almost immediately got a reply saying that the school was going to let her take her exams early that year and that she would arrive sometime about the middle of May. May 15 was a month before Lorena’s season opened, which allowed enough time for training. Many girls learned to ride quickly, more quickly than I had. If she was in as excellent physical condition as she appeared to be in her pictures, I might be able to dispense with her ground training and start her off on the low platform.

  On the day Arnette arrived Al and I met her at the station. The first thing I noticed was that she had cut her hair. “Arnette,” I said darkly, “I wrote you not to cut it. We like our riders to look like girls, not like boys. You look perfectly terrible.”

  But beyond a meaningful look which said more than words, she ignored the remark. I realized then that Arnette had been old enough to remember full well the
time I had cut my own hair, and in view of the fact that I could recall clearly how it had looked lying on Mamie Lou’s floor, I could not very well go on scolding her. Besides, I was glad to see her.

  I kept her on ground training only a week because she was, as I had hoped, in excellent physical condition. Nevertheless, I was far more nervous than she when I sent her up to the low tower to make her first dive. She proved to me quickly, however, that I needn’t have worried. She came off like a pro and stayed with the horse all the way. We both knew that the real test was still ahead of her but were very encouraged. She continued to make such excellent practice dives that I could not shrug off her pleas when she began to beg to go off the high tower a week later.

  Time was creeping up on us, and the sooner I got her up there, the better, but even more persuasive was the memory of my own pleas and how they had been ignored. The week of waiting before making my first dive from the high tower had been a cruel and brutal one and I was determined to spare her that if I could. Therefore, in spite of a warning voice that told me not to rush things, I decided to let her try.

  The next morning when she got up on the tower I was literally holding my breath, but, to my great joy and the complete fulfillment of all my expectations, she made a perfect dive. Al and I were both jubilant, and so was Lorena.

  We had no sooner begun to congratulate one another, however, than things began to go wrong. One time Arnette’s timing would be off, another time she would lose control of the horse. I realized too late that I had done her an injustice by letting her cut short her training, for lack of technique can be serious. Danger is always increased when a rider is too inexperienced to analyze her faults and figure out how to correct them. Also, a horse is accustomed to having someone on his back who knows what she’s doing, and an unskilled rider can ruin a well-trained horse very quickly. But there was no turning back.

  I was diverted from my concern over my sister by our discouragement with Apollo. By now fair time was almost upon us and we had no horse but Klatawah. We couldn’t possibly expect him to make two or three dives a day seven days a week; he had to have some relief. All we could do was cancel some of our contracts.

  Al didn’t like this, but his back was to the wall. He wrote to three of his commitments saying we couldn’t come. Instead of replying by return mail, all three fair managers promptly appeared on Lorena’s doorstep. “We’ve been counting on you as our big drawing card,” each said. “There’s not time to get anyone else. We’ve advertised the act. You’ve got to come. You can’t back out.”

  Al tried to make them understand the situation, but all three remained adamant. There was nothing to do but agree to fulfill the contracts, which, as Al said later, was the most foolish promise he had ever made in his life. How could he possibly find and train a horse in the space of a few weeks? It always took months. Ridiculous though the search seemed, he had to try. Each morning he filled up the gas tank of the car and drove around the countryside. Within a radius of many miles he looked in every field and pasture for a potential diving horse—a pretty horse, an intelligent horse, a horse that would prove to have courage and pride—and the days passed, and still Al found no horse. Then one day when he was on his way home after another fruitless exploration, he came up over a hill and rolled along beside a pasture, and there, standing apart from a group of horses, was a beautiful paint.

  He slammed on the brakes, got out of the car, and walked closer. The paint turned and stared with frosty blue eyes and then kicked up his heels and ran off. Al went back to his car and followed a road that led to a farmhouse in the distance. A man was standing on the porch.

  “My name’s Al Carver,” Al said. “I want to buy that paint.”

  “Glad to know you, Mr. Carver. You’re not the first one.”

  “What will it take to buy him?”

  “Wouldn’t sell him to my worst enemy.”

  “What do you mean, you wouldn’t sell him to your worst enemy?”

  “I mean the fellow’s an outlaw. You can’t ride him, you can’t put him to the plow, you can’t even be nice to him. Little bit more, I tell you, and that horse would be a killer.”

  “I still want him,” said Al. “How much will he cost?”

  “Sold him three times already. Folks always bring him back.”

  “I won’t bring him back,” promised Al. “Come on now. How much?”

  “Been using him as a kind of decoy. Put him out there in the pasture. Folks stop to look at him and I end up selling them one of the others.”

  “I can’t use any of the others,” Al said. “I’ve got to have that one.”

  As Al told us, the argument went on and on, and finally the man agreed to sell the outlaw, but Al had to promise to bring him back if he didn’t work out. “You understand how it is,” the farmer said. “I don’t like to lose my decoy.”

  That afternoon I heard Al’s car coming and could tell by the sound of it that it was pulling a loaded trailer. I dashed out to the entrance gate just as he pulled in.

  “Oh, Al,” I exclaimed, “he’s beautiful!”

  “Yeah,” Al said.

  “What do you mean, yeah’? You don’t sound too happy.”

  “I’m a little skittish about him. The man I bought him from says he’s an outlaw.”

  “Outlaw?” I looked at the horse incredulously. He didn’t look like an outlaw to me.

  The groom let him down out of the trailer, and our new horse looked around with the curiosity most animals show in a strange location.

  He was, I saw, a stockily built white horse with bay markings, blue eyes, and a black tail. He was beautiful and sleek and, though obviously spirited, did not look like a villain. I walked up to him and patted him on the neck, speaking to him soothingly at the same time, and was pleased when he nudged me gently as if to confirm my belief in him. Then he suddenly caught hold of a ruffle at the neck of my dress and tore the dress off me!

  For a moment I stood there in my slip, shocked to my bones. He hadn’t been nudging me out of friendship but in order to get hold of the ruffle! I turned and ran toward the house, feeling a terrible fool.

  From such a beginning it might have been expected that Red Lips (as Al’s discovery was named) and I would have our troubles, but the fact was that as time went by I came to love him as I loved no other animal. I discovered that his tearing my dress off had not been done out of animosity. He simply liked to tear things by pulling them to pieces with his teeth. If the groom wasn’t careful to remove his blanket after drying him, he would pull it off his back and, holding it down with his front feet, rip it to shreds. But that was only a minor idiosyncrasy. He was so beautiful and so vital that I got a thrill out of just watching him, and it wasn’t long before I began to refer to him as “mine.”

  Ten

  The new horse showed his true colors on the following morning when Al began his training. Contrary to what we had expected, he did not display the slightest resentment toward the halter or lead rope when they were put on him. What was more, he went up the ramp to the low platform as if he had been doing it all his Me. When he got to the front he stood there for a moment and then, with only the suggestion of a pull on the rope from Al, slid his feet down on the kickoff board and dived.

  Very possibly there have never been two more astonished people in the world. Then, in mortal fear that the first dive was a fluke, Al sent him up again. But again he came off as smoothly as a veteran. Furthermore, he had style, grace, fire, and form and worked with the greatest enthusiasm. Within a few weeks’ time he was doing as well as horses that had been diving for months.

  Ordinarily it takes about two years to train a horse fully. I do not mean that a horse cannot be diving from the forty-foot tower before that time, but it usually takes that long for him to become a consistently good performer in his particular style. Some horses are never successful, even though they have plenty of nerve, because they can’t get the knack of the take-off. Others seem unable to control their leg mo
vements while in the air, and still others prove to be poor swimmers. (The latter begin to stroke with their forelegs only when they start up from the bottom of the tank, letting their back legs drag as weights. They usually try to overcome this error by stroking harder with their forefeet and, as a consequence, bring themselves up too high out of the water, lose their balance, and roll over.)

  Happily, Red had none of these faults. He was not only a graceful diver but a good swimmer and quickly became so proficient that we decided we could put a rider on him well ahead of the customary period in a horse’s training. Thus his training could be speeded up; we would not only be teaching him to dive but to carry a rider as well.

  To understand what this meant in relation to Red, it must be remembered that he reportedly had never allowed anyone on his back. We hadn’t the least idea what kind of fit he might throw when I mounted, and Al told me beforehand that if he showed any signs of misbehaving I should get off immediately and let him dive alone. But aside from one frosty look, everything went smoothly. I patted Red on the neck and talked to him in a quiet, reassuring voice, and after a few minutes he went over to the edge of the tower and dived.

  From then on I went out every morning and rode him in his training dives until it was time for us to leave for the fairs, the first of which was in upstate New York. There I worked him every morning and also rode him during the afternoon performance to accustom him to the crowd. He continued to behave beautifully from the low tower. We were sufficiently encouraged for Al to instruct our advance man (who went on ahead to supervise the building of the towers at the next three fairs we were to work) to cut down slightly on the height of the tower because we intended to try Red from the top as soon as possible.