The Village Horse Doctor

West of the Pecos 

by Ben K. Green

     This one was plenty interesting and got a few chuckles from me as well. Has a lot of similar subject material to The Time It Never Rained, but it's more lighthearted in tone and feels like you're listening to someone sitting telling you tales. Some of the stories are very brief, others draw out over several chapters. It's also about ranching in a dry area of Texas, but in this case the author is relating his own experiences, working as a veterinarian. He travelled vast distances to treat and care for rancher's livestock- namely sheep but also horses, cattle and sometimes pet dogs and cats. He tells of his early years trying to get a foothold in the region and gain the trust of the local people, and of his ongoing efforts to diagnose illnesses caused by animals eating toxic desert plants- especially during times of drought. He ran a small laboratory and describes his methods of inquiry- doing postmortems on dead livestock, taking samples of plants, stomach contents, etc and extracting the toxins, even how in a few cases he developed medicine specific to plant issues in the region- and the great difficulties in getting the medicines made so he could distribute them. In many cases his efforts to find out what had caused animals to sicken or die took a lot of thought and sleuthing, which is engaging to read about. Sometimes when all the adults were at a loss, it would be some keen observations made by children on the ranch that helped him figure it out. He's also pretty good at drawing character studies and pointing out failings of human nature around him, admiring jobs well done and fine animals, watching shady deals happen, being somewhat involved in local horse racing, and so on. At one point he has to deal with a rabies scare, during another time a serious outbreak of sleeping sickness among horses. The strangest case was when he saved a horse's eye by extracting a foreign object that somehow got into the eye socket behind the eyeball- it was a glass marble. I'm still scratching my head over that one. Overall a rather a different slant from the other Ben K. Green books I've read before, and quite enjoyable.

Rating: 4/5                306 pages, 1971

The Time It Never Rained

by Elmer Kelton 

     Liked this one much better than I had remembered. I've read it at least twice before, though not in over a decade. Set in West Texas, it's about a rancher struggling to hold onto his land and his livestock through a drought that lasts seven years. His love is cattle, but it's sheep that pays the bills- so quite a bit of this is about sheepherding and shearing time. When things start to get tough, he has to face the bitter choice of selling off some of his livestock, eventually even his sheep herd dwindles and he's forced to make some hard choices. Ranchers around him accept government assistance but Charlie Flagg resents the idea of "taking handouts" and refuses to sign up for the relief program, sticking it out on his own, whittling away his outfit, letting go his hired help. Tries to get his son, who is into rodeo and sees no value in the dried-up land, to come back and help him keep the ranch going, but that doesn't work out. Watches how others around him attempt to keep things afloat- some of their decisions turn out poorly, and others just barely help them squeak by. Like burning the spines off prickly pear to use it as livestock feed. I had forgotten entirely about the angora goats, so the ending was a surprise all over again to me, even though I did remember it had a hint of coming hope in the final pages. More about the land use and animal husbandry, it's also about the local politics in a small town, the financial issues in running the ranch, the uneasy relationship between landowners, Mexicans, and those recently come from across the border- frightened of being caught but desperate for work. I had also forgotten how much of this story is about the younger people, some chapters entirely told form the viewpoint of Charlie's son, his neighbor's daughter, or his foreman's oldest boy. It gave a good perspective changes as things shifted from the hands of the older generation into the new. The book gets a bit preachy sometimes with long ranting conversations, but I didn't mind, I was in the mood for a slow read. It was worth keeping around all these years, I think.

Rating: 4/5                      373 pages, 1973

Sam Chance

by Banjamin Capps 

     Story of a man who helped build the West. As a young man he was a sergeant in the Confederate Army in Georgia, saw nothing there for himself when it was over. Left his girlfriend in Tennessee and traveled West with a buddy to see if he could make a success of something. Ended up in the vast land of Texas (at least, it seemed endless at the time). Started out catching wild cattle and taming them for use, selling some, eventually hiring a crew of men and breeding cattle. Follows his endeavors through the years as he gradually took ownership of more land, improved his cattle stock (quite a few breeding experiments, one with imported beef cattle and another with bison) and eventually brought his sweetheart out to live with him. Must have been a rough life for her (not much from her perspective). Eventually Chance became known around the region as a cattle baron- but he always felt indignant at those who challenged his use of the land, owing to all the work he'd done to build his ranch up from absolute nothing. As the book closes he's an old man, having watched the world change, a town grow up around him, the native americans and bison disappear. He's not apologetic for his part in that, either. There's some rough and brutal parts, a lot about the hard choices he has to make as a rancher, always trying to decide what's best for his animals and the land, even if others don't see it that way. 

Rating: 3/5                 261 pages, 1965

A Thousand Miles of Mustangin'

by Ben K. Green

This is one of the books I got at Powell's. It's not quite as lively and funny as Horse Tradin', but I still found it plenty interesting. The author needed work during the winter so he travelled south -horseback of course- to Big Bend country in Texas, across the border into Mexico, and later on to Arizona. All to try and catch wild horses he'd heard of but nobody seemed sure they were even in the area. Used his smarts to find the mustangs, several different methods to catch them, with the help of some Mexicans in one area, and members of the Yaqui tribe in another, usually individuals who just wandered into his camp and offered to help (for a bit of pay, of course). In some cases he chased down and roped the wild horses, in another instance a local set snares for them, and in a third place Yaqui runners (mostly young girls on foot it turns out) would follow the horses for days until the worn-out animals gladly integrated themselves into Green's herd when gently driven towards them. The story rounds out by telling how he moved his growing herd of horses back towards home, dealt with Mexican bandits along the way who tried to extort money out of him, and then ranchers who didn't necessarily like him crossing their land. Gradually taming and breaking to ride some of the wild horses as they travelled, traded off a few along the way, and sold the main bunch to a man he knew who supplied them to the government. All through the story, the dependability and skill of his main horse Beauty really stands out. And more than anything, I was intrigued to read of some cures that he came across when in remote areas of the desert- in one case a Mexican treated a horse of snakebite using yucca (called dagger plant in the story), and in another instance an old woman used flour and yeast to grow mold- penicillin!- to treat an infected wound in Green's hand (where a mare had bit him). (Interestingly, there's another account of someone using yucca to cure a dog of snakebite on this page of a 1920's Dog Fancier publication). Oh, there's also a few encounters with cougars- he called them 'panther cats'. Green would kill a young burro to distract the cougars from his horses, which incensed some of the Mexicans with him, who valued the burros just as much as horses, if not more. He actually lost a few helpers over their disagreement on this point.

Rating: 3/5                   145 pages, 1972

Indian Saddle-Up

by Glenn Balch

Two young Native Americans from the Comanche tribe are out hunting pronghorn and bison when surprised by enemies from the Ute tribe. As one youth runs back to warn their tribe, the other decoys the enemy. When he finally evades the Utes and makes it back to camp, all his people are gone except for an elderly man they call Old Man Crazy, because he speaks of things no one believes- people with white skin who wear armor and travel on the backs of animals. At this time none of the Comanches had ever seen a white man and horses were unknown to them. So the youth and the crazy old man travel alone together, and they come across a small band of horses, (escaped from the Spanish Conquistadors). At first they find the strange animals frightening, then are eager to learn how to possess and ride the horses themselves, so they can take these new valuable animals back to the tribe. It isn't easy, particularly as the natives don't have any idea how to approach or control the horses, but they are smart in the ways of wild animals, and quickly learn by observing how different horses are from wild game (being domesticated, and already accustomed to humans). The younger Comanche is particular invested in the attempt to use horses because he has a lame foot which always slowed him down; this will give him an advantage among his people. But he has to face a lot of unexpected challenges, and looses the guidance of the old man too, ending up on his own to figure out how to ride the horse and then find his own people again.

This was a really well-told story, with good descriptions, realistic animal behaviors, engaging writing style and an interesting plot that surprised me a few times. I suppose its quality really stood out to me following close on a just-okay book, but it reminded me why Glenn Balch is still one of my favorite authors.

Rating: 4/5            210 pages, 1953

Horse Tradin'

by Ben K. Green

I know I read this book long ago as a teen, found at the public library. So when I came across it recently in a discard sale, snatched it up eager to see how it compared to my fond memory. It was a good read- enjoyed all over again.

It's a collection of short stories written by a man who traded horses and mules for a living, back when they were the major form of transportation and power in America (although a few stories feature early cars, or tractors first coming into use). The stories are mostly with a little twist- where the man thought he made a good trade but found out the horse had a hidden fault or behavior problem, sometimes thought he had sneakily played a poor horse off on a better trade, only to discover the animal he'd acquired wasn't as advertised, either.

There were mules painted to look like young, grey dapple, a gypsy mare trained to lie down and groan when saddled, a spoiled lady's riding horse that wouldn't go more than a few yards from the barn. Many times the author showed how he could make the best of a poor situation, due to his understanding of equine behavior- train them out of their bad habits, or cleverly corral a bunch of wild mules that he'd been given in trade because the prior owner assumed he would never be able to catch them. Most of the tales take place in Texas, a few further south- he traveled a lot in his work. There's one story of a match race on a native American reservation. Sometimes, Green couldn't make good on a bad trade, and foisted the poor quality mule or horse off on another unsuspecting person. But there are good, honest transactions in here too, where both parties were well satisfied and respected each other.

I was kind of shocked to read an instance of wasted, sickly horses fed arsenic to fatten them up (and have since read online that inorganic arsenic is commonly used in animal feed to make hogs and chickens grow faster). And the last story surprised me with a little detail that made sense of a totally unrelated book I also read and loved as a kid, An Edge of the Forest. In that one, a herd of deer feeds in a valley that makes them all sleep like death. I always puzzled over that. Here in one of Green's stories, some wild unbroken horses were put to graze in a valley of "sleepy grass" so they could be pawned off as tamed and gentle. There was something in the grass that made the animals lethargic. I've looked it up, and it's a real thing. In some ways, this book also reminded me of Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour.

Rating: 3/5             304 pages, 1963

Midnight

Wild Stallion of the West
by Rutherford Montgomery

An older book I picked up secondhand somewhere. It's about horses that live on a cattle range in the southwest. In particular, one fine black mare owned by the ranch but allowed to run free on the range and an old squatter living in a cabin in the high country who admires her. The mare sometimes mixes with a band of wild horses. When she goes missing the squatter is accused of stealing her. Things happen, the mare goes off on her own and raises a colt in seclusion. Later the mare dies and the young horse grows up on his own, eventually challenging the stallion of the wild band, drawing attention of a ranch hand who recognizes he must be the offspring of the missing mare. This guy determines that catching the young stallion and showing it to the ranch owner will exonerate the squatter- plus acquiring himself a fine horse. His plan to catch the wild black horse does not turn out so easily.

I was skeptical of this story at first, but it turned out to be pretty good in the end. While it has a lot of vivid descriptions of the scenery, weather and interactions of various wildlife, much of the animal behavior is exaggerated or downright inaccurate and had me rolling my eyes. For example, wolves don't hamstring their prey, and the mating behavior of bears described in here made me laugh outright, it was so ludicrous. It's obviously written to be exciting for young readers, with a lot of vicious battles between wild animals for survival, and sensational scenes. The young black horse fights off (at different times) wolves, cougars and a bald eagle, survives an encounter with a bear, and battles another stallion on the edge of a cliff. But then many depictions of how the wild horses live, elk in the rutting season, mule deer interacting with the mare and her colt, are very nicely done. I really found the final third of the book more interesting, when the young stallion had taken over the band but obviously did not know how to lead the mares, and had to face his human opponent.

I happened to like the ending, particularly because it had some unexpected outcomes.

Rating: 3/5                 274 pages, 1940

One Good Horse

by Tom Groneberg

I'm disappointed I didn't like this book more. Maybe I was just too tired when I read it- I do remember its predecessor better. It's a quiet book, about everyday life for a ranch hand, about accepting that things don't always turn out how you imagine, and making the best of it all. Four stories are woven together- mainly the author's desire to find a young, untrained horse he can teach himself and his family's efforts to adjust when they find out their newborn son -one of twins- has down syndrome. There are also brief segments told from the horse's point of view, and an alternate storyline from another book set a century earlier, where a cowboy describes working a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. In all the stories there is a sense of finding one's self, of growing into life, of coming to appreciate what you end up with. But it jumped around a bit too much for me between the various threads, I could never settle down and get immersed in the story. I assumed from the title that it was mostly about the relationship between this man and his new horse, about the work it took to teach the horse to be ridden- but really that's only a small part of the book. And the horse is calm, accepting, fairly easy to train so there's nothing very exciting there. Not even a lot of insight or strong description. It kind of just all washed over me.

My experience was an anomaly- all the other reviews I see of this book rate it highly. I am sorry I didn't feel the same way about it. I'm sure it's a good book on its own, and one of those instances where I just read it at the wrong time for me.

Rating 2/5        227 pages, 2006  

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Give a Man a Horse

by Charles J. Finger

I've been slogging through this book lately, finally decided to just close it. It's an older juvenile fiction, one I must have once found at a library sale or free table. An adventure story about a young man named Bob, bored and restless working in an office, who gets sent by his company to oversee the delivery of two valuable horses to a prosperous South American ranch. Of course thing go wrong, starting with horse thieves. He sets off after the thieves with some local volunteers and borrowed horses. Many adventures follow, including a shipwreck, and Bob gets stranded in an area he thinks is uninhabited. He meets up with some natives, goes off travelling with them, finds gold, catches and tames wild horses and so on. Runs into other white men who have made settlements. I did like how the integrity of the characters was shown, but unfortunately never felt invested in any of them as a reader.There was an interesting part where Bob learns how to live among the natives, acquiring skills and realizing that he has much to learn from them. Later (I flipped ahead) one of his native companions ends up in New York City with just as much culture shock on his part - but even that did not interest me enough to finish reading the book. Transitions were abrupt throughout the storyline, and it often switched between character viewpoints as well. I also found the illustrations rather disturbing, although tried to ignore this. Nice linework, but the people and animals sometimes had odd proportions with necks and waists too long. It reminded me of Mannerism.

Oh, and SPOILER both the original horses intended for shipment die early on in the book. I was surprised and disappointed at this, although I guess it was realistic for the circumstances.

Abandoned      340 pages, 1938

Stallions at Burnt Rock

by Paul Bagdon

I was surprised to find myself leaving this book behind. It started out well enough. Once again, the story of a strong woman doing a job commonly thought of as man's work, in a bygone era. Lee Morgan runs a horse ranch- breeding, raising and selling horses. She's got a dream to create a better strain of stock horses. Jointly with a ranching friend, she comes up with a plan to get attention from buyers by staging a horse race at the upcoming country fair. The fair has always been a quiet, joyful event, but word of the horse race brings gamblers and other unsavory characters into town, trouble brewing.

That's when I lost interest. At first I was enjoying this book even more than The Hearts of Horses. It has some beautifully written descriptions of the landscape and the animals themselves. There were some intriguing characters, including a newly-hired horse trainer that Lee takes on (against the better judgement of her colleagues). This guy is good with the horses but something of a loner with a wicked temper that has lost him several jobs... I kept expecting a stereotypical ending here, particularly because the ranch lady, Lee, is a staunch christian (incidentally, organizing a horse race goes against her conscience because of the prospective gambling). So I suspected that Lee was going to convert the horse trainer, and turn his life into roses. Or he was going to step in and rescue the fair from danger and chaos (this thought came up after I read the scene where he rides a horse into the desert and expertly shoots holes in cacti with his cherished gun). Or maybe even he falls in love with Lee and the outcome is something different altogether (she has an apparent love interest in someone else, at the beginning of the novel).

But I didn't read far enough to find out, and I was already just skimming pages when the story started to get more wrapped up in the trouble caused by outsiders coming into town, the sheriff trying to keep order, gunfights in the local saloon, etc. Maybe you'll be intrigued enough to pick up this book someday and find out what happens. Then you can come back and tell me!

Abandoned     191 pages, 2013

The Hearts of Horses

by Molly Gloss

After the compelling read that was Conversations with a Prince, I was in the mood to read more about horses, so pulled all the books I could find off my TBR shelves. Unfortunately, The Hearts of Horses couldn't stand up to the previous read, but it was a good story regardless. Just not as in-depth as I wanted, not as much about horses as I wanted, so rather pale in comparison.

It's the story of a solitary woman who lives during WWI era, filling in a ranch job left vacant by men gone to war. She rides from farm to farm breaking young and untamed horses to saddle. I was intrigued by the premise and wanted to read more about the psychology, physical work and human-animal communication involved in teaching horses, particularly since the woman in this story, Martha, stood out for more than just doing what was then considered a man's job. She also had unconventional methods, gentling the horses via communication with body language rather than forcing them into submission. Reminded me a lot of The Man Who Listens to Horses by Monty Roberts (which I can't believe I haven't written about yet).

What I got instead was very much a story about community, and how people work together. Martha is not much of a "people person," she prefers the company of the horses. But her job entails riding daily between several ranches in order to work with a string of unbroken horses, one after another (to fit the most work into a day). So gradually she becomes involved with those around her; the struggling ranch owners, lonely wives, hired hands all come to know and respect her. Some are bitter, some cruel to the animals, others want to confide in her. She helps out when she feels it is needed- several times rescuing animals that have fallen over roadsides towards rushing water, helping to find lost stock, riding at a moment's notice for the doctor. A certain level of human suffering rose out of the book into my consciousness; medical care was primitive and limited; one character was dying of cancer and there was literally no treatment available (aside from the option of a crude, costly and ultimately ineffective surgery). In another ironic situation, a drunkard's family fell suddenly ill after eating improperly home-canned food. Martha drove the woman and children to the hospital, then rode off the find the husband and inform him what had happened to his family. She did find him, but he was drunk and found sport in frightening her horse off the road. She and her horse were injured, she had no chance (or desire I imagine) to speak to him, and he arrived home, ate the same canned food and died alone, all unknowing. I could not get that scene out of my head for a long time.

That's just a little bit of what was in this book. There are a lot more interesting stories about the small community. Stories of women, young and old, filling in for their missing men. Of newcomers hoping to work the land and finding disappointment. Of mismanagement and greed, of sacrifice and charity. There's a slowly-growing romance between Martha and one of the hired hands she meets, that was satisfactory. There's also the effects of the war and its news on everyone, and the persecution against a certain ranching family of German descent. But overall I wanted more about the horses, so it was just a good read to me, nothing more.

Rating: 3/5    289 pages, 2007

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The Secret Life of Cowboys

by Tom Groneberg

This book is one that grew on me. Don't judge The Secret Life of Cowboys by its cover or its title, because neither seem a good fit to me. It's a thoughtful, frank memoir of a man searching for a new life, trying to live his dream. Groneberg has always wanted to be a cowboy, to live close to cattle and horses, to love the land. He gets a job leading trail rides for tourists, then works as a hired hand on a ranch, and finally gets his dream- a ranch of his very own. But all along he struggles to fit in, to learn skills kids around him have mastered, to understand simple things that no one bothers to explain because they assume it's common knowledge. He struggles at managing the ranch. The ending surprised me. It's not all happy. Love for the big open skies, wide fields and animals shines through the pages, but so does the heartache at difficulties and failings. I kept thinking of Jenna as I read this book; she's another person who had a dream to live a life different than the one she was raised with, and just went for it. In some ways their stories are quite similar.

rated: 3/5 ........ 257 pages, 2003

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Christmas Horse

by Glenn Balch

Another old but good horse story from Glenn Balch (but still doesn't live up to my favorite.) This one is about a teenage boy on a ranch who admires the wild horses that run in the hills. He feels certain there's some good blood in those wild horses, and has his eye on a particular black colt. But his father adamantly claims none of them are worth the effort to catch and train- they're just loco, or their spirits would break at being caught and tamed. Ben gets his wish however, when one Christmas he returns home from school (boarding in the city with his aunt to attend high school) and finds that the black colt was caught just for him and "green-broke" by the ranch hand.

Ecstatic at owning the black colt, Ben's joy soon turns to dismay when he realizes he won't be able to train the horse himself when he's away at school. Eventually he finds a solution in boarding his horse at a nearby riding stable in town, but that doesn't quite solve his problem. Ben has to work in the stables to pay for his horse's keep, and with schoolwork as well, there's little time left to ride his horse. Compounding the issue is his embarrassment when a girl he admires at school finds out he works mucking out stalls. At first she doesn't believe he has a wild horse, then she doesn't believe Ben can ride it. He's determined to prove himself to her as a horseman, and finally gets his chance in a spectacular way.

This book was a slow start. Nice enough, but not very interesting until it got to the part where he was trying to juggle school, work and horse-training, as well as impress the girl. Later in the story Ben takes his horse back to the ranch for the summer, where he moves on from just teaching it to be obedient to commands and introduces the horse to ropes and cattle, intending to make it a skilled cow pony. All the while he's anxious to show his father that this wild horse amounted to something good.

It's a pretty good story, if you like horses. I got a chuckle out of the horse's name: Inkpot. Ben's sister named it after it was caught, before he came home for Christmas and had a chance to name it himself. He didn't like the name at first, but it stuck. I thought it was funny.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 252 pages, 1949

The Wild Mare

by Glenn Balch

A cream-colored filly is born to a wild mare in the Idaho scrub, and on her very first day of life, looses her mother. Luckily Jim, a young ranch hand comes along and rescues her, raising her on cattle milk at the ranch station. When the filly is only five months old, an accident separates her from the only man she knows and trusts, and she ends up running off with the wild horses. The next time she meets mankind, they're strangers who see her as just another beautiful wild horse, one to be caught and broken in for profit. "Flax" spends several years evading cowboys and mingling with other wild horses, until finally she crosses paths with Jim once more. He recognizes her immediately, but she's only learned to fear men in the meantime. Can Jim win her trust again?

This book was first published with the title The Flaxy Mare. I got it from Book Mooch, because I was curious to read more stories by Glenn Balch. But this one didn't hold my interest as well. For that I had to give it just a 2; simply because I didn't enjoy it much, and often found my mind wandering. It's a nice enough story, though.

Rating: 2/5........ 153 pages, 1967

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Horse of Two Colors

by Glen Balch

I traded for this book on Book Mooch because I have long loved another by the same author, Buck Wild and wanted to read more of his work. They're not easy to find, even though Balch wrote about thirty horse stories for young readers. Most are no longer in print.

Horse of Two Colors is an imaginative story about how Appaloosa horses were first introduced to Native Americans. When the book opens, two young men from different tribes are making their escape from a Spanish settlement where they've been held captive. In a bold daring move, they steal two horses to take home to their respective people, one a striking two-colored stallion, its hindquarters white with black spots. The boys have never seen a horse like him before. They don't know much about horses, as their people have just recently started to use them, and only for pack animals. Together the boys face difficulties of the long journey home: how to handle the horses, doubts about whether they can be ridden, eluding the pursuing Spaniards and finding enough food as they pass through some desolate country. More problems arise when Indians from an enemy tribe show up, fiercely determined to catch the horses for themselves. The journey is not without tragedy, and in the end one of the boys returns home to people who have almost forgotten him, feeling something of a failure. But the ending has a pleasant surprise that makes his hardships and losses worthwhile.

My rating scale isn't fine enough to differentiate, but I found this book a better read than the recent Wild Horse Running, it was more creative and the writing more enjoyable. I am even more determined now to find all the books I can written by Glenn Balch. He really is a great storyteller.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 170 pages, 1969

Wild Horse Running

by Sam Savitt

I picked this book up (from a thrift shop) because of the illustrations. I recognized the lively, sketchy style immediately and wondered if it was the same illustrator who had made drawings for an old childhood favorite of mine, Summer Pony by Jean Slaughter Doty. So I brought it home. It was. In this case, the illustrator is also the author. After finishing The World According to Horses, I was in the mood to read another horsey book, and this was it.

Wild Horse Running is the story of a gray mustang stallion. Like a lot of other horse books I read as a kid, it starts out with the horse being born free on the range, growing up learning how to survive the elements and avoid predators. But when man comes along, there is no escape. Our gray hero, Cloud, is eventually captured and because he fights so hard, becomes a rodeo horse. A thunderstorm helps him escape the rodeo and he runs back to the range, only to be caught again, this time by a rancher's son who finds him injured on the ground after being chased by helicopters. This time Cloud is easily tamed by the boy, as he can't fight while injured, and is already used to rope and halter from being in the rodeos. But he still longs for his freedom...

I couldn't help noticing elements that were really similar in this book to other horse stories I've read. The wild horse gentling after being cared for while injured and sick brought back scenes from My Friend Flicka. The simple storyline showing a wild horse growing up, being captured, and always wanting his freedom again was very like Buck, Wild. And the rodeo elements reminded me a lot of parts of When the Legends Die. This book wasn't quite as well-written as any of those, but I still enjoyed it as a quick read. I also appreciated the historical elements; parts of the story address how wild horses in the Pryor Mountains were being rounded up and auctioned off to dog-food factories, until people rallied to save them.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 126 pages, 1973

Buck, Wild

by Glenn Balch

This is one of those books I read over and over again from the elementary school library when I was a kid. I even remember to this day which shelf it was kept on. It's the story of a wild mustang, beginning at his birth and following various adventures as he scrapes out a life with his wild band in the scub county of Idaho around the Snake River. The little horse looses his mother early, but gets partly adopted by another mare with a young foal, and grows up strong and free. He has to learn his place among the wild horses- which mares are friendly, how much he can pester the stallion, how far he can wander, etc. The dynamics change as he grows older until as a yearling he is ousted by the stallion and must make his way alone with a few other young bachelors. He dodges coyotes and cowhands, lives alongside antelope and wild burros. Eventually a rancher notices the wild horse, now a young stallion, and determines to catch him in order to use for stud to improve his own stockhorses. Shut up in a corral, for the first time in his life the wild horse knows what it is to be free of danger and well-fed. But our equine hero will never submit to man's hand, he has a strong will and burning desire to be free... Buck, Wild is a wonderful story for any young horse lover. The author has written a number of books about horses, but this is the only one I've read so far. I mean to remedy that someday.

Rating: 4/5 ........ 136 pages, 1976

Fire on the Mountain

by Edward Abbey

Back in June I read two books by Edward Abbey, one I really liked and the other was kinda lame. Here again in Fire on the Mountain I've found a book I really enjoyed. It's the story of an old man and his ranch in New Mexico, hard country where the cattle barely find enough to stay alive. But the old man loves the wild desert country, and the book is full of beautiful descriptions of fiery sunsets, heat-shimmering vistas, close encounters with rattlesnakes and glimpses of the mountain lion. His ranch isn't too prosperous, but he is content to live there in the solitude and open spaces until he dies. Until the government shoulders in, moving ranchers off the land to add it to the White Sands Missile Range, where rockets and bombs are tested. One by one neighboring ranchers cave in or are bought out, but the old man digs in his heels and refuses to leave, against all persuasion by the law and threats from jeeps of soldiers. What makes things more interesting is that it's all told from the viewpoint of the visiting grandson, a feisty kid who's soaked up all his grandpa's opinions and eager to be part of a siege in the old man's cabin. It's based on true incidents; I read another book a while back about horses that were abandoned on the land and got fenced into the missile range. I liked the contrast of reading about the same events in a fictional novel, a quickly-moving story with some suspense, fractious characters and vivid nature writing.

Rating: 3/5                     181 pages, 1962

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Sand

by Will James

I was surprised at being disappointed in this book. It wasn't nearly as good as Smoky. As Smoky tells the education of a wild horse into a cow pony, Sand tells about a spoiled rich city kid who learns to be a cowboy. Gilbert Tilden is on his way across the country to visit his father, when he accidentally gets off the train in the middle of the Great Plains, and being drunk, fails to get back on. He wanders about the wide expanse of prarie, gets scared by some cattle, and stumbles into a cowboy camp. At first the cowboys are just watching out for him until they have the chance to dump him back at the train depot, but pretty soon Tilden is interested in the doings of the camp, and wants to make something of himself. He fixes on the idea of learning how to be a "useful hand", to prove something to his father. Then he falls in love with a local rancher's daughter, and sets himself the nearly impossible goal of catching a wild stallion in order to win her favor. Many other men have tried to catch the stallion before, so he not only has to learn the ways of wild horses, and make careful plans, but also avoid the competition.

This had all the makings of a great story, but there were some things that seriously hindered my enjoyment of it. First of all, the main thread of the narrative is relating Tilden's thoughts, musings, and plans- over and over. It would have been more interesting to read more details of his training and the work he had to do to catch the wild horse, which were often skipped over. Sometimes it was hard to puzzle out what was being talked about, as I'm not really familiar with cowboy lingo (some of the words here). And the whole book is written in slang. Rather like Huckleberry Finn, which I was able to get used to. Here, I couldn't. It was particularly annoying that the words Tilden or the girl spoke were in near-perfect English, and the rest of the text in cowboy slang, misspellings and all. It would have been far easier to read if the narrative was proper, and slang only used when the cowboys talked. I thought this book would be a lot like Captains Courageous, which has a similiar theme- spoiled rich kid forced to work and build character- but here, I did not get much sense of Tilden's character growth, even though it was discussed all the time. By the end of the book it was all feeling rather dull. Even the end of the story where Tilden finally gets close to the wild horse wasn't nearly as interesting as I'd hoped.

I read this book for the 9 for '09 Challenge.

Rating: 2/5                       364 pages, 1929

Anyone written a blog post about this book? Let me know and I'll add your link.

Smoky

the Cowhorse
by Will James

This book is about the life of a ranch horse. Smoky was born free on the range in the wild west, and wandered about just living his life amongst the wide open spaces and half-wild range cattle, until at the age of four he was caught by a cowboy named Clint. The cowboy broke him to ride, and trained him to be a cutting horse, working cattle. They became an excellent, skilled team with deep affection for each other. Halfway through the book drama ensues (beyond the everyday excitement of rounding up cattle) when Smoky is stolen from the outfit by an outlaw. This man continually mistreats the horse, until he becomes mistrusting of and vicious towards people. He becomes a famous bronco in the rodeos, then when that nearly wears him out, is sold again to be hired out from a livery stable, and finally winds up as a plow horse on a farm. By the end of the book, Smoky has been treated so badly by humans that his health is ruined and his life almost over- when in the nick of time he gets rescued by a familiar face from his days back on the ranch.

In many ways this book reminded me a lot of Black Beauty. It had very similar themes- showing how the horse grew up relatively free, his experiences being broken in and trained to work, several relatively happy years being properly cared for, and then going through a string of ignorant or cruel people who mistreat him, until at the end he is found by a friend and nursed back to health. It shows in great detail how the horse feels and perceives his situations, and how he can excel at a skill working in harmony with humans, or suffer terribly at their hands. The section of the book that describes his life as a rodeo horse made me think of When the Legends Die (although in that case it was the man who became broken and bitter towards men). The one thing I found difficult about Smoky is its language. Will James lived and worked as a cowboy for much of his life, and the grammar and spelling in his book, while adding some authentic flavor of cowboy dialect and culture, was at first very awkward to read. It took me some time to get used to it. I haven't read many books about the "wild west", but this one certainly brings it alive for me- especially the vivid descriptions of the scenery. You can almost taste the dust in your mouth.

Rating: 4/5          263 pages, 1926

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The Newbery Project
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