Horse of a Different Color by Ralph Moody Page B

to her mustang instinct, infinitely more reliable in a blizzard than a man’s reasoning power, I led her to the pasture gate, opened it, mounted, and let her have her head. As if the little mare knew my intention by telepathy, she struck off downwind at a jogging trot. After a few minutes she veered sharply to the left, my right leg brushed against fence wire, and a cow’s head loomed out of the whiteness at my left. I didn’t need sight to know that the cows and calves had drifted with the storm and were wedged tightly into the southeast fence corner.
    Stepping from the saddle I pushed my way among them, expecting to find several dead and trampled calves. There was only one down, and it was still alive, simply given out from cold and weakness. Kitten stood quietly while I lifted the limp, gangling calf across her withers. The moment I swung back into the saddle she began crowding the dazed and bewildered cattle out of the fence corner, nipping their rumps and driving them into the battering force of the storm. Probably by scent, she kept track of every cow and calf in the little band, headed off those that continually tried to turn back, and drove them to the gate as unerringly as if she could see through the blinding storm.
    After putting the exhausted calf into the barn and the rest of the cattle in the sheltered horse corral, I turned Kitten back to the pasture. But that time I had to depend upon my own reasoning, for mustangs have little instinct concerning hogs. I rode downwind to the corner where she’d found the cattle, back along the fence to the creek gorge, and let her pick her way down the steep bank. The ravine was about thirty feet deep, and below the rake of the wind the visibility lengthened to ten yards or more. The creek was frozen solidly, three feet of snow had sifted down onto the ice, and the bottom of the gorge looked like the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. The hogs had burrowed into the snow, and the smoke was steam from their breathing, rising through blowholes. They were as warm as if wrapped in blankets, and with plenty of fat over their ribs they wouldn’t need feeding for several days.
    When I went to the house for breakfast I found Bob lying on the parlor sofa, groaning pitiably as Marguerite put a bottle of hot water against his back. It was evident that he had her as fully convinced of his injury as I was unconvinced, but I couldn’t tell her it was all a fake, and he was smart enough to know it. “Daggone it, I hate to leave you do the whole job of feeding on a morning the likes of this,” he told me. “Them steers will need a load of corn along with their hay, but the way my back feels I don’t reckon I could handle a fork or a shovel to save my neck.”
    After breakfast the visibility improved a little, but the wind was still bitter cold, and icy snow crystals scoured my face like sandpaper. Alone, the feeding took me until after ten o’clock, then I saddled Kitten and rode through the gorge to be sure the hogs were still all right. When I came back I heard Bob’s voice from the feed lot, calling to the steers. From just outside his range of vision I watched him for several minutes; calling to the steers, looking them over, and breaking ears of corn on the edge of a feed bunk. He seemed as happy as a boy with a new toy, and showed no signs of backache.
    I started toward him angrily, intending to tell him that he’d either do his half of the work without any more faking or I’d quit him the minute the blizzard was over. But as I neared the feed bunk one of the steers picked up a three-inch piece of corn ear and began wallowing it around in his mouth. Instead of groaning about his backache as I expected, Bob looked up and told me, “You got to learn ’em to shell the corn off’n short pieces of cob first. Elseways they’ll lose fifteen or twenty pounds before ever they get onto the trick of takin’ a whole cob into their mouths and shelling it.”
    I realized instantly that