Apache Tear

I have a horse story to share that my oldest sister Kandra has written, telling about her very first horse, Apache.  If you’ve read very many of my own horse memories, you’ll remember that my sister is the one who influenced my siblings and I to love horses, and I wanted to know the details of how she came to own her first horse, because it happened when I was just a toddler, and I don’t remember it so well.  I have always felt a strong gratefulness to the man who gave her the horse, as his generosity set off a wave of fondness for horses that encompassed my whole world, and changed all of our lives.  It is Kandra’s favorite horse memory, and this is how her story goes….

At age eleven, I was a straight, skinny girl with straight, skinny hair.  My days were filled with reading books while indoors and riding horses while outdoors.  Between those two activities, I’m sure I did a number of chores and miscellaneous annoying of my siblings, but the reading and the riding were my favorite pastimes.

In the books I loved, the main characters always had horses of their very own.  I kept thinking that surely, one of these years, I would somehow acquire a horse of my own, but so far it hadn’t happened yet.  I wasn’t sure how to go about making it happen, either.  In the meantime, I rode Ol’ Buck a lot.

Ol’ Buck still holds a special place in my heart as the horse that taught me how much fun horses could be.  He was the patient old gelding with few bad habits and limited spunk—the one that was “safe for kids.”  What good times we had all through my early years.  But the fact remained: he wasn’t really mine.

I began to wonder if I would ever have a horse that belonged to just me.  The very idea of it hung out above me like an impossible dream in a comic-strip bubble.  I didn’t see how it would ever happen.

Once I even entered an essay contest for which the prize was a yearling Arabian gelding.  I was so excited about the contest!  The assigned topic was “What I Would Do With My Arabian Gelding.”  I did my best writing and told all about our ranch and the good life this colt would have.  Mom typed the essay out on her old Smith-Corona, and we sent it in the mail.  Alas, we missed the due date by a few days, and my career in essay-writing came to naught.  Again I waited for my impossible dream to come true.

The kind neighbor who lived across the river on the other side of town would call my mom almost every day, it seemed.  Mom would be on the phone for a long time, discussing recipes, gardening, ranch work and who knows what.  We would see the long curly black cord of the old telephone, stretched across the kitchen, and we’d know we’d better keep the noise down and not start any fights when Mom was on the phone with June.  We all liked June a lot, because she was a great cook and she taught us how to make turtle butter in her river.  She was also Mom’s best friend, we guessed.

At this time in my life, I was really curious about June and her husband, Francis, because I had found out that they somehow had a whole lot of horses—a whole herd!  When we had gone to their river to go swimming, we had seen some of them along the road, and what a sight that was!  Mares and foals in all colors, with long manes and tails, looking wild-eyed at us. It was more horses than I had ever seen in one pasture!  Dad said their son Kevin was a cowboy and a horse trainer.  I was just dying to know how they ever got that many horses.

Then one spring day, the most unbelievable thing happened.  And who would have guessed—it happened during one of those telephone calls!  Yes, Mom was on the phone with June again, talking about recipes or tomatoes or canning or something.  I wasn’t even listening at all, until I heard my mom say something like, “Oh, she’d be thrilled.  Well, I’ll have to talk to Keith about it…” She didn’t usually need to talk to Dad about recipes or canning or stuff like that.  And who was the she that Mom was talking about?  Who would be thrilled?

All of my eleven-year-old curiosity was aroused, but Mom would not discuss it, not even a little.  The next day I found out the amazing secret.  Dad said that Francis and June actually had a little colt that they hadn’t planned on having.  This didn’t make any sense to me, but I stopped worrying about it when Dad went on to say that they were wondering if I might like to have that little colt.  I thought surely it wouldn’t work out, but Dad said we’d go over to their place the next night after church and take a look.  I was afraid to think about it too much.  I had learned that disappointment had a real ugly color to it, and I didn’t care to see any more of it.

After church on Wednesday night, there we went up the dirt road to June’s house, our station wagon headlights plunging up and down as we bumped over a few washboard bumps in their sandy road.  When we pulled up into the yard, they had set up some portable corral panels to form a pen, and Dad shone our headlights on the startled horse standing there.  It didn’t look like a colt.  It was something like a large pony or rather, a small horse, staring at us, eyes wild.  Then she shifted around, and beside her I saw the colt, a dark brown-and-white paint, trying to hide behind his mother!  I was so surprised that he was a paint!  None of Dad’s horses were paints.  None of them were even bright-colored at all.  This little guy was one of the first paint horses I had ever seen.

He was small and very wild, and we really couldn’t get a very good look.  But Francis came out of the house, with his stubble of whiskers and twinkling eyes, and he and Dad each propped a boot up on the lowest rail of the steel corral panel as we gazed at the mare and foal.  I tried to listen in to the manly conversation, but none of it was making very much sense to me.      

Later I understood more.  The mother of the paint colt wasn’t that great of a horse.  I never did know how long Francis had owned her or even why he had bought her in the first place.  He was ready to sell her earlier that spring when he realized she was looking very pregnant and was probably going to foal!  That explained their having a colt they hadn’t planned on acquiring!  They didn’t even know which horse had fathered the paint colt, but they knew it wasn’t either of their big registered Quarter Horse stallions.  That little mare was part pony, part Arabian, and part awful, really.  She wasn’t really breeding material, in other words.  But they thought she had gotten in with some other young stallions that weren’t gelded yet, and that’s how she came to be in foal.

That telephone call that I had overheard was dear, sweet June asking Mom if I would like to raise the colt on a bottle, because they were going to go ahead and sell the mare.  However, by the time I found out that that was the offer, Dad had already thought ahead a little bit.  He knew my eleven-year-old self wasn’t really responsible enough to take good care of a colt, and maybe he wasn’t sure how effective milk replacer would be.  I guess he knew full well how long I had been craving a horse of my own!

So just like the incredible Dad that he was, he asked Francis how much he was hoping to get for the mare at the auction.  Francis said she would probably just go to a “killer” buyer since she wasn’t broke and didn’t have papers.  They agreed upon some average price, probably per pound, and the next day we went back with the trailer to try to load them up.

I was on pins and needles with excitement!  My dream was coming true!  I remember jumping up and down like a three-year-old; I really could not contain myself.  Dad and Mom tried to prepare me and help me understand that the mare and foal were pretty wild—I wouldn’t be able to even lay hands on my wonderful horse until he was weaned, for sure.

When we went to load them and bring them home, we couldn’t even catch the mare.  We ended up opening a place in the corral panels and running them into the trailer without halter or anything, just like they were cattle!  I’m sure Dad was wondering what he had gotten into.

All through the summer and fall, they grazed far out in one of the biggest pastures.  I knew my colt was growing wilder and wilder, and I hated the fact that I wasn’t yet experiencing the euphoria of horse ownership.  Finally Dad said it was time to wean.  He had bred his big bay mare to a quality stallion the previous year, and the result was a really nice sorrel filly about the same age as my colt.  There the similarity ended, though.  She was graceful and leggy; he was spindly and small.  She was bright sorrel, and he was dark brown-and-white paint, with black mane and tail.  The biggest difference of all was behavior.  The filly had been handled several times since birth, and had the advantage of a gentle mother.  My paint colt replicated his mother in every way he could—they both would run until cornered, and then they would kick!

Dad and Mom and I talked about names for my colt, even though I didn’t know him very well yet.  Dad said maybe I should name him Crackerjack, and then he would grow up to be a crackerjack horse, meaning a really good horse.  It seemed like such a long name, though, and I didn’t like the name Jack for a horse, really.  Grandpa had given me a polished rock he brought back from Arizona or somewhere he’d been on vacation.  He said it was called an Apache Tear.  I thought that was a cool name.  It was a dark, almost-black rock and sort of reminded me of my colt, so I decided to name him Apache.  He was certainly wild and rebellious enough to merit the name, I thought.

We weaned in a big, stout corral, with the mares in an adjoining pen, and soon Dad threw a lariat rope on my little colt and wrestled a halter on him.  While I watched with my heart in my throat, he held onto the halter rope and leaned back upon it as my colt reared high in the air, threw himself over backward, struck and fought in every way to free himself.  Eventually he did settle down and even learned to be led.  I was so happy to see him follow Dad quietly around the pen.  But I was even happier when Dad said, “He’s really smart, I can tell.  And he’ll really like you, when you lead him, because you’ve always been nice to him.”

And that’s exactly the way it was.  I will never forget those days.  I’ll always remember that glow that started deep inside and spread throughout my whole being, as I saw my colt become tamer and gentler.  I eventually realized that my colt did, indeed, like me.  Very soon, my colt was much tamer than the sorrel filly—tamer even than any of our other horses.  He would come trotting up when I called.  He would follow me anywhere, would stand to be tied, and would pick up all four feet for me to hold.  He was the joy of my life.

Thus began one of the very happiest times of my life, as I tried new things with Apache.  Before he was even two, I was riding him bareback with just a halter on his head.  Even though he had no pedigree, he fulfilled my every dream.  From time to time, Francis or June would ask how I was getting along with him, and I always told them the latest milestone we had passed in his training.  Apache became a cow horse and then a barrel racing horse and remained my dearest companion.  Among the best memories are the quick rides around the pasture without saddle or bridle, finding out how well Apache would listen to leg pressure and how fast I could ride him and still guide him.  When we tried herding an ornery cow that way, it was all I could do to stay with him, and I decided I’d best saddle up, at least!

I’ve often thought about Francis and June and wondered if they had any idea of the contribution they had made to my happy teenage years.  Did they have any knowledge of the part they had played in giving me my dream?  How many other little girls have been given horses for their own?

Just recently, I’ve learned that Francis has passed away; he’s gone on ahead of us to Heaven.  Maybe now he knows.  I hope he knows that that simple little paint colt made a world of difference to a barefoot country girl.  Some gifts can never be repaid.

Kandra's first ride on Apache in January 1982

Riding Apache at a Church Picnic Trail Ride

Apache heading home at sunset.

Apache grazing with the other young colts on our ranch. From left: Sunday, Gunpoudre, Johannes (behind Apache), Apache, and Kokomo

Apache eating grain with the other horses, December 1984. From left: Tasha, Apache, Smokey, and Chigger

Apache as a 3 Year Old, December 1983

Tagged as: horse memories, Horse Stories, my first horse, training colts