The Wild Mustang of Colorado

[Tsar]

My odyssey continued through the forest highlands, which finally led into the mountains. Somehow I sprained my foot, and I was slowed down. The route which I had planned on traveling would be too rocky and dangerous for my bad foot. I had to take another, which would delay my journey even more. My chances of making it before winter were low.

One thing I enjoyed about the route was the beautiful fall scenery. Red oaks and golden-orange maples were everywhere. Their leaves covered the stoney ground and floated in the mountain streams. The fresh, crisp air was filled with the smell of wild grapes. A soft breeze came and swept across the ground, creating a mini whirlwind of leaves. Squirrels chattered in the trees above, nibbling on pine cones and acorns. Robins flew from tree to tree, and woodpeckers could be heard in the oaks. As I strolled along at a slow pace, I heard a noise ahead. It sounded like thunder. I curiously followed the sound. After hiking up a hill I looked ahead and saw the most beautiful thing I had ever seen: a waterfall. The stream gushed down a plateau into a silver pool of water below. I stared at it for a long time, then decided to go down to it. I turned around and carefully made my way down a slope. When I reached level ground I walked towards the waterfall, which was only a couple yards forward. I stopped at the edge of the pool and took a long drink. Then I padded into the water. It was cold, and felt soothing to my sprained ankle. I waded into it deeper towards the waterfall. The fallen water swirled around my hooves and tickled. I reached down and swooshed the water with my muzzle. I struck a hoof forward and splashed it. Before I knew it I was playing like a young colt again. And it made me realize--I was actually free! I was a wild horse again! After all those years of being in captivity, I was finally a mustang again. I couldn't wait to see my herd.

I set out again. I never looked back, only forward. Beyond those mountain peaks, beyond the horizon, was home. When the moon rose, I stopped and laid down on a soft bed of moss underneath a tree. It was so quiet. Only the distant howl of a coyote and the intermittent hoot of an owl could be heard. I rolled over and laid my head down. Soon I was asleep. I slept until dawn, when the sun rose over the peak and the birds began to sing. I stood up and shook. I walked over to the pool and took a drink of water. I spotted a patch of grass. That will make a fine breakfast, I thought, as I walked over to it and started to eat it. When I was full, I started another day of traveling.

[Tsar]

On and on the months passes as I traveled. Now it was December, and I knew I wouldn't be able to make it through the mountains in the ice and snow. The trees were bare, the grass was dead, and the streams were frozen. The ground was frozen hard. I had no shelter, and the food supply was low. I didn't know what to do.

One chilly morning I was searching for food when I looked into the sky and saw smoke coming from...a chimney? That meant there was a house nearby! Maybe it was a farm that I could spend the winter at. I made a straight line for it.

After a couple miles I could see the place. It was a house very much like Mr. Greene's. There was a small barn, a shed, and a chicken coop. I saw someone come out of the house. She was a young woman, with light brown hair and an apron hanging over her gingham dress. I walked over near the yard where she could see me, and then I neighed. She turned and looked at me.

"Pa!" She yelled. "Pa! Come out here!"
A big, brawny man stepped out of the house. They both started to walk up to me. I stayed where I was at, standing still, like a soldier at attention.
"Well what in the world is a horse doing out here?" The old man said.
"I don't know." The young woman replied. "Maybe he belongs to someone."
They stopped in front of me.
"No, I don't think so, Jennifer. He don't have a halter on, and he ain't branded either." He circled around me, carefully looking over me. "But he's shod." For a minute I was glad that I had not been branded. I would have been, but I had refused to let anyone at Lunden's ranch do so. My shod feet gave it away though. Now they knew that I was, in fact, somebody's horse.
The girl started to pet my neck. I nickered to her.
"Can we keep him, Pa? Please? I mean, until someone shows up for him."
"Now Jennifer," her father quickly disagreed, but the look in his daughter's eyes changed his mind. "How are we gonna take care of a horse?" He asked.
"Well, we have plenty of hay, and he can stay in the back yard, and sleep in the barn with the cow." She responded. She seemed to have it all figured out, as if she had been expecting me.
He stroked his chin, pretending to be reluctant to the idea, even though he had already decided. "Fine." He consented.
Jennifer excitedly hugged her father, then came and hugged mine, which was a complete surprise. "Come on, boy," she lured. I followed her into the barn.

The barn was filled with bales of hay and straw. There were two large stalls. One was empty; in the other was a brown-and-white cow. The girl fastened a leather halter around my head and lead me into the empty stall.
She shook out a flake of hay for me. I nickered my thanks. As I munched on the hay, she leaned over the gate of the stall and stroked my neck.
"I'm so glad Pa let you stay here. I hope nobody never comes for you. I had a pony once, but we had to sell him. I've lived here in the mountains all my life. There's a little town nearby, but that's all. Yep, it gets purdy lonely out here. But now I have you." She pat my neck and then went back into the cabin, closing the barn doors on the way out.

I thought about what she had said. 'I hope nobody never comes for you.' 'Now I have you.' She wanted me to stay so much, but when spring came, I would have to leave.

All day I was supplied with hay. The girl kept coming out and talking to me. She even told me her name: Jennifer Bradshaw. After dark she came into the barn and hung a lantern on a post. She gave me a pan of oats and more hay, followed by a bucket of warm water that was heated on the stove. After living off grass and foliage for months, I was grateful to have such a meal.

At midnight Jennifer came out to the barn for the last time that night. She was carrying a blanket. I watched her as she unfolded it and walked into my stall. She carefully laid it across my back and fastened it at my neck.
"There now," she said softly. "You should be nice and warm tonight. Pa said it's probably gonna snow, judging by those clouds."
She pet my forehead and walked back into the house.

It did snow during the night, making me all the more grateful that I had a shelter to sleep under and food in my belly.

[Tsar]

The next morning after breakfast, Mr. Bradshaw and his daughter took me outside from the barn. There were four inches of snow on the ground. The sun was shining on it, and everything looked sparkling white.

"Where are you gonna put him, Pa?" Jennifer asked as she walked alongside her father and I.
"I thought you had that already figured out?" He said. "I'm just gonna let him run loose around the yard. He shouldn't hurt nothing."
"But what if he runs off?"
"He's not gonna run off. Not in this snow, he ain't."
He unclipped my lead line. I walked a couple feet away from where they were standing, sniffed the ground, and pawed at the snow, then laid down and rolled. They laughed as they watched me. I stood back up and shook the ice crystals off of my back.
"Look at that. He made a snow horse," Jennifer funned, pointing at the imprint I had made on the snow-covered ground.

A couple hours later it had started to precipitate again, and I was taken into the barn and fed some hay. It continued to snow all day and all night, and by morning, the cow and I had been snowed in the barn. I let us out of our stalls, and we went over to the hay and ate to our heart's content. A couple days later, the snow had melted enough for Mr. Bradshaw to come in the barn to give us water and milk the cow. By the end of the week it was only a few inches deep again, and in another two weeks the ground was completely visible. When the mountains were safe enough to travel in, Mr. Bradshaw hitched the cow to a wooden cart, and he and Jennifer rode off. I voluntarily decided to go along with them, so I walked behind the cart they were riding in, curious to see what the town what was like.

We walked through a valley in the mountains, which led to a small mining town. The little stores and buildings were spread about. Some dirty clumps of remaining snow laid idly at the bottom of fence posts and rocks. The street was muddy, leaving foot prints and wagon wheel tracks in every direction.

The Bradshaws stopped at the General Merchandise store, where they bought a couple bales of hay and stacked them on the back of the cart.

While Jennifer went inside one of the shops and Mr. Bradshaw talked with his friends, I decided to take a stroll. I wandered to the back of the barn, where two little children stood. I reached down and playfully exhaled on the girl. She giggled and pet me. The boy reached in his pocket and pulled out a red-and-white stick. He held it up to me. I sniffed it. I figured out it was something to eat and took a bite of it. It was hard and crunchy and sweet. Just as the little boy was handing another one to me, Mr. Bradshaw showed up. "What are you youngsters up too? Giving candy to the horse. You're gone give him a sweet tooth. Scat!" He shooed the children away.
"And you!" He humorously scolded me. "What are you doing? I turn my back for one second, and you go pussyfooting off somewhere, stealing candy from little children!" He laughed and grabbed my halter, then led me back to the cart, where Jennifer waited.
"I don't think we can both sit in the cart," she stated. "We bought so much stuff, some of the sacks are gonna have to sit in the front seat."
"You're right Jennifer. You sit in the cart and I'll walk alongside the cow."
"You don't have to do that. How about if you sit in the cart, and I'll ride the horse?"
"Ride the horse?" He retorted. "We don't even know if he's broke."
"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out! Give me a boost." She put her hands on my withers. Mr. Bradshaw shook his head and helped her onto my back. Jennifer was a hard person to say no to. Seeing that I was well-behaved, he sat down in the cart, cued the cow to go, and we were off.

Since Jennifer knew for a fact now that I was broke, she decided to ride me. She came outside to where I was standing, soaking up some winter sunshine. She wasn't wearing her usual white blouse tucked in her long-train skirt and apron tied around her waist. For this occasion, she was wearing her blouse tucked in a pair of jeans, which hung over her brown leather boots.
"Hey there, boy," Jennifer cooed, patting my neck. "We're gonna go for a ride today." She hooked a pair of reins to my halter and climbed onto my back. "Come on."
I walked off. She started to talk to me.
"You know, it looks like there's nothing around here for miles but just mountains and rock. This spring, when the snow's all melted and it's warm and wonderful, I'm gonna take you to the prettiest meadow you've ever seen in your life."
There she went again, talking like I was going to stay with her forever. She went on describing how beautiful the mountain meadows were, and how lovely the birds and the flowers and the creeks were. It would probably break her heart if I left. If only I could tell her!

[Tsar]

Jennifer rode me almost every day. We rode along the river trails and mountain paths. Once in a while the Bradshaws rode into town, with Jennifer on my back, and her father in the cart. She always rode bareback, with most of the time not even a blanket. She galloped me fast, and was an excellent horsewoman. Sometimes I forgot she was even there, and I ran for miles. She even named me Spirit because I was so fast and full of spunk.
Jennifer always talked to me. She told me her life story, her dreams, her failures, and her successes. She told me her father made a living as a father, and maintained hundreds of crops in the summer. I had bonded with Jennifer, and created such a friendship that when spring came, I decided to stay. Jennifer and I were best friends.

One day she rode me to a place she never did before.
"This is called Wild Cayuse Cliff. You'll see why in a minute." She slid off my back and led me to the edge of the cliff. Below was a grassy plain, which very much resembled what was once my home. After a few moments of complete silence, we heard a thundering noise. It wasn't thunder, and it wasn't a waterfall. In a few seconds, a dust-flying herd of wild horses swept across the plain below. I whinnied in delight. Bays, blacks, paints, palominos--horses of every color sprinted across the prairie. I whinnied again and reared. Then the horses vanished over the horizon, leaving only a cloud of dust behind.
"Aren't they just beautiful, Spirit?" Jennifer said. "For the past several years my Pa and me have been fighting to protect those mustangs from cowboys and ranchers. The herd decreased a lot in size, and if the men hadn't quit capturing them, there wouldn't be a herd right now." She looked over at me. I was still stricken from seeing my herd again, and my eyes still rested on the spot where I had seen them. Then I thought about what she had said. What if my family had all been captured? What if...Summer had been captured?

All night long I pondered on the thought. I had been trying to return to the wild my whole life, and now I was within only fifty miles of my herd. But I loved Jennifer, and I didn't want to leave her. I was forced to make the decision between my herd or my friend.

But one day the decision was made for me.

It was a windy April noon. Jennifer mounted me and rode me out of the yard as usual. But she wasn't her cheery, delightful self. She seemed solemn, and had nothing to say as we rode along.
We rode for a long time, on the same path we took to Cayuse Cliff. But instead of going up on the cliff, she took me to the plain itself. We stopped and she dismounted. She wrapped her arms around my neck, and in response, I nickered softly and nuzzled her gently.
"Oh Spirit." She whispered.
"It was a mystery, how you showed up at our house that day. But now I know. You're wild. You belong here, galloping with your companions, with not a care in the world. You've been the best horse I've ever had. And I love you so much, but I nor anyone else can deny you your freedom." She took my halter off and stepped back. I looked at her one last time, and then galloped away to fulfill my lifetime dream--to be free.

The End