The Last Ride (This is fiction, it is a chapter of a work in progress)

The barn at Marigon Farms was filled with the quiet munching of hay. The setting sun turned the Western sky shades of pink, orange and blue. There were five horses and a bay yearling named Arrow safely stabled for the night. Arrow was a curious youngster, and he had discovered that Miss Lala Laroo, the oldest horse in the barn, had many stories to tell about her life. Arrow loved to hear about her adventures.

“Miss Lala Laroo, have you ever gone riding in the dark?” He asked, as he leaned on the stall door and peered down the breezeway to gaze at the darkness gathering around the barn.

“Nestor Baca,” she said. Laroo pricked up her long teardrop shaped ears at the thought of the old man. She lifted her dished head, “He was the nicest man I ever met. He took me on the only midnight ride I have ever gone on. It was back many years ago when a woman named Tina bought me at an auction in Albuquerque. She brought me to a corral that had everything a mare could want. Like fresh water, clean hay, a new salt lick that was all my own, it even had a row of Russian olive trees that I could use as protection when the wind blew. I thought the corral was perfect, and that I would live there a long time. That is until I tried to crib the fence. That was when I realized that I was inside a Wire Corral!”

“Is wire bad?”

“Terrible bad,” she said. She lifted her left rear leg. “That’s how I got my scars.”
Arrow knew Laroo had a three-inch scar across the bulbs of her right front hoof and a four- inch scar running down the front of her left hock, but he had never asked her about them. His dame had told him that there had been an accident and that the accident had gotten Laroo sold out of the best Arabian farm in the United States to a man who changed her beautiful name of Lily Of Glory to Miss Lala Laroo.

Laroo, like any well-bred show horse, was heartbroken, and no one in the barn wanted to upset her by talking about the accident.

“How does a wire fence put scars on you?” Arrow asked.

“When I was a yearling, like you, all of us yearlings where separated from our dames and put into a pasture. It was a big pasture. Big enough for us to run as fast as we could, and I was the fastest filly. Everyday before we were turned out our dames warned us to stay away from the wire fence. Well, one sunny afternoon a stud colt named Sinbad, who had always boasted that he was the fastest in the field, dared me to race him. All of the foals gathered at the south end of the pasture to watch us. We were to race to an old sycamore tree at the corner of the field, turn and race back to our friends. I ran my fastest and passed Sinbad, but I was going so fast that I didn’t see the wire fence and in one second I was down on the ground with the wire fence wrapped tightly around my hock and pasterns. The wire hurt so bad and the more I struggled to get up and get away from the wire the more it clamped down, harder and harder until I was bleeding. That wire fencing is terrible bad, and when I realized that my new corral at Tina’s was made of wire, I knew that I must always stay away from that fence. As far away as possible.”

“Shut-up, you two,” yelled Skipper, the Palomino Quarter Horse, from his stall at the end of the barn. “Some of us are trying to sleep!”

Arrow was yawning, so Laroo promised to tell him the story of Nestor Baca over breakfast.

Laroo closed her eyes and thought back to the first day at Tina’s corral. Tina had shown up dragging a brand new barrel racing saddle. The fenders were so stiff and short that they jutted out like boards and the oxbow stirrups dangled like hoop earrings from them.

Tina outfitted Laroo with a hackamore and a tie-down. Laroo smiled to herself as she remembered how she had pranced about in the new tack like her legs were well-oiled springs.

She had never had her head tied down. When she had tried to lift her head she was so astonished and panicked that she almost flipped over backward.

Tina lost hold on the reins when it happened, but she quickly had caught hold of them and led Laroo to the gate. Laroo shivered as she remembered the gate lightly slapping her on the side as Tina tried to walk her out of the corral. Laroo reared back once again whipping the reins out of Tina’s hand. Laroo giggled to herself, now, as she replayed the image of herself in her mind. She was galloping pell-mell around the corral with the stirrups whacking at her sides until she fell with a thud in the middle of the corral. Tina had gone screaming for her husband, leaving Laroo lying in the swirling dust.

That was the first time Laroo had heard Nestor Baca laugh. She had opened her eyes, and seen the old man across the street, leaning back in the shade of an elm tree.
He was dressed in coveralls and wearing a sweat-stained fedora on his head.
Laroo got to her feet and shook the familiar feeling of a saddle on her back. She began to look for the laughing man, but she did not have time to find him. Tina had returned –hysterical– and even more determined to ride Laroo. Tina tried to drag Laroo out of the corral, but Laroo planted her hooves into the ground and balked. Tina broke down into tears. After that, She gave up on tugging on Laroo and resorted to riding her around and around the corral.

Every day for hours the pair made circles and figure eights and western riding patterns. Laroo was always happy when Tina would leave, so she could spend her afternoons searching for the laughing old man.

Some days she would spot him right away because he would be sitting under the elm tree, but on other days she could only catch a glimpse of his shadow as he moved in and out of the shade.

One day a lady rode up on a gelding named Pez. The lady said she would help get Laroo out of the corral. But when they started through the gate the wire bent in toward Laroo and she reared back, jerking the lead from the lady’s hand. Laroo spun around and ended up on the outside of the corral. She ran backwards as fast as she could and took off galloping down the street.

“There ain’t no horses that away, Miss Laroo,” Pez whinnied out. “I reckon you ought to head back this away.”

Laroo heard him and came to a sliding halt on the pavement. Seeking the wisp of a herd, she sniffed the air with a snort. Smelling none, she trotted back to Pez. The lady caught her, and she helped Lisa saddle her up.

Even tonight, in the warmth of the barn, with the last four years of her life spent giving riding lessons to green horns, Laroo believed that ride on that day was the scariest ride of her life. She remembered walking along the trail as close to Pez as she could get. Tina kept squashing her legs into Laroo’s sides like she wanted Laroo to trot, but when she would break into a trot; Tina would yank on the reins to slow her down.

Laroo wondered, now, as she pushed the wood shavings around and picked stems of alfalfa out of it with her lips, just what it was Tina had wanted her to do.
Laroo thought about how this evening was very much like the evening Nestor had come into her corral and introduced himself. She had been nibbling on the last of her hay when she heard his footsteps. They had been slow and deliberate.
“Hello, mi hija,” he said in a low even voice.

She had lifted her head from eating to smell the peppermint gum he was chewing. She stepped forward and stretched her neck out to get her nostrils closer to his lips.
“Ha, ha! You like this old gum, no?” He said, and he stroked her long grey mane. “Have to chew somethin’, the daughter-in-law won’t let me have no tobacco no more.” His hands moved up, and caressed her ears. “Won’t let me have no fun. No more. Nope.” He told her of how when he was younger he had ridden many fine horse horses across the mesa rounding up cattle for an old rancher named Levi. “Many horses, many years, but none so fine as you.” He rubbed her neck. Off in the distance a young woman’s shrill voice called out his name. “Later, we ride,” he said, and he was gone.

The memory seemed like a dream to Laroo now as it filtered into her dozing mind. It was just as it had been all those years ago, when the crickets sounded out like violins and the glister of the moon swept a cast of lustrous highlights across the dusky outline of the houses and olive trees. Nestor appeared.

He pulled the gate to her corral open as wide as it would go and walked up to Laroo. Nestor stroked her neck and used his hand like a brush to smooth her coat. He slipped a curtain tieback around her neck and led her out into the street.

“Mira,” he said as he led her to the back of Tina’s truck. He climbed on to the bumper and swung his leg over her back. He was so light that she barely felt him as he urged her to go.

At first, she was scared, but as he gently cued her, she relaxed into a slow trotting gait. They floated down the road to a ditch bank that led to the Rio Grande. When they were on the riverbed he loosened his hold on the tieback, pushed his legs into her sides and off they galloped weaving in and out of the cottonwoods, salt cedars and coyote willows.

She had felt his frail weight shift off the nearside, and quickly she moved under him before he could fall. He hugged her neck, and they slowed to a walk. The cool autumn air made her feel strong and the crunch of leaves on the trail under her bare hooves felt like new wood shavings as Nestor guided her to the edge of the water.

“Drink, mi hija,” he said. Laroo could remember the long slow sips of the cold crisp water and the way it lapped at her fetlocks when she stepped into the river.

The sunrise began to luminesce over the Sandia Mountains making the ripples of water in the river glow like ribbons of polished glass.

“Let’s go,” Nestor had whispered into her ear.

They cantered back through the maze of trail. The canopy of branches above them began to sway like the wind was blowing through them. Laroo felt uneasy. Then she looked up and saw six glowing yellow eyes with wings flying toward her and Nestor. She started to spin.

“No worries about them birds,” he said. “I knew they were coming for us.” The three owls swooped past their heads so close that they could feel the air parting for the birds. Nestor held tight to her mane. His words had comforted Laroo, and she slowed into an even trot that carried them back to their street. Nestor slowed her to a walk. He slid off her back at the gate and put her back into the corral.

Laroo could still see the image of Nestor walking back home with the tieback in his hand, waving good-bye to her. That was the last time Laroo saw Nester.

The next morning Laroo looked for him, but all she saw was a stream of people walking in and out of the Baca house. Later that morning, Tina’s husband came out and caught Laroo. A horse trailer had come to pick her up and take her back to the sale barn. As she was loaded into the trailer, no one noticed the faint sweat marks Nestor’s legs had left on her back.