“It was exactly the same place where that spotted mare bucked him off 35 years ago.”
Ambrose perked his ears abruptly to the southeast. We looked that way, initially thought it was two cedar trees at the corner, but then they moved. Our mount started sidestepping and taking ahold of the bit.
We are well aware of such warning, but quickly took another look across the pasture as two people were walking toward the barn. That was far from our immediate concern, as we attempted to calm the black gelding under us, so he didn’t make any fast maneuvers, that his rider would be incapable of matching.
Deciding the walkers were hunters with their truck parked at the gate, not there when we went by an hour-and-a-half earlier, it was now unimportant with all of our attention focused on Ambrose as by the split-second he became increasingly cantankerous.
Therefore, having fallen off this good horse, once earlier in the year when he sashayed from a robin flying out of a nest, we dismounted, talked softly to the gelding, and led him toward home.
Interestingly, when Ambrose first alerted us to the hunters, it was right by a small mud hole pond where Buchman’s Queen had bucked us off decades earlier. That time, we had her all decked out with shotgun in scabbard, lariat, saddle bags, perhaps other paraphernalia, when she came unglued, we hit the ground, and walked to the barn.
This time, attached to the saddle was our scabbard with long-handled weed nippers in it, and hooked over the saddle horn was a canvas satchel carrying a spray bottle of brush killer. A halter rope was wrapped around our mount’s neck and tied to the horn.
We’d been cutting small hedge trees that have sprouted from cut stumps along the pasture fence, and we tie our horse with the halter rope while working.
There are many who make fun of a wispy cowboy leading his horse home, but visions of a previous wreck, with too many similarities of horse and tack, assure us it was the right decision.
Reminds us of Philippians 3:1: “That’s about it, friends. Be glad in God. I don’t mind repeating what I have written in earlier letters, and I hope you don’t mind hearing it again. Better safe than sorry.”
+++ALLELUIA+++