There he was pulled to a stop, unhooked, led to the manger, and tied. The stable door was closed with a bang, and after a while the old horse, still wanting to cling to life regardless of what came, stuck his nose in the manger to nibble on some of what was in it. He reached for a mouthful of what he’d naturally took for hay, and chewed for a spell, but he didn’t chew on it long. There was a musty taste about the long dirty brown stems that didn’t at all fit in with any hay he’d ever et. The kind that’d been put in the manger for him to eat was the same that the livery stable man had used to put in the stalls and bed the horses down with. It was straw, only this was musty straw and wouldn’t even make good bedding for horses.
Cloudy felt hungry long before the next morning came, and often thru the night he’d nosed into the musty straw with the hopes of finding a few stems that’d do to fill an empty space, but there wasn’t any to be found. The old rack of bones that’d been there before him had looked for some too, and with no better luck. Cloudy’s new owner figgered it cheaper to swap horses with the “chicken man” and give him a few dollars to boot whenever any horse of his give out; he wasn’t going to buy no high-priced hay for no horse. The straw was given to him for the getting and would keep any horse alive and working for at least six months, and then, or whenever the horse would be too weak to go any more, he’d trade him for another. Any kind of a horse, fat or thin, could always be used by the chicken man, and in trade, he’d always take one of the fattest to take the place of the one he’d just starved near to death. That way, year in year out, he’d keep a draining the last of the life of every horse he’d get his claws onto.
His property, and where he starved the horses into making a living for him, took in a couple of acres. Half of that land was rocks, mostly, and where he kept a few chickens. He bought, or stole a little grain for them; but they well repaid him. Every time he went to town there was a basket of eggs in his wagon and which he sold well. The other half of this land was cultivated, and where vegetables of all kinds had been made to grow. There’s where the help of a horse was needed, to pull the cultivator or the plow, then the hauling of the vegetables to town, and once there, any odd job that could be got and which would bring a few dollars for the use of the horse and wagon.
It was bright and early the next morning when the work begin for Cloudy. The man showed his teeth in a grin as he looked in the manger while putting the harness on the horse, and noticing the straw in there hadn’t hardly been touched, remarked:
“You’ll be eating some of that before you get thru.”
Cloudy was made acquainted with many different kinds of implements and work that day. All was mighty strange and plum against the ways of working which he’d been broke to do. It was pull, and pull, one contraption and then another, back and forth thru furrows, turn at the end and then back again. If he slowed down, or hesitated, wondering what to do, there was the whip always on hand to make him decide and mighty quick.
His muscles, having developed under the saddle, used to pack weight, and set that way, wasn’t for getting next to the change very easy. Looking thru a collar and pulling steady was so different to heading off and turning a wild eyed critter. It wasn’t at all like coming out of the chute in front of a grandstand and seeing how many jumps could be put into one; nor didn’t compare even with packing equestrians around. He’d felt some free under the saddle, and even though all of it had been real work, there’d always been something that fitted in and which made him feel natural.
But now, with all these straps a hanging onto him, there was a feeling that he was tied down—them straps even seemed to wrap around his heart at times and keep it from beating. And taking all, the strange hard work, the sting of the whiplash on his ribs, nothing fit to eat after he was tired out and the day was over, it was no wonder that the old pony’s heart begin to shrivel up on him.
As the long days run into weeks and the work in the field and in the town got to bearing down on him, the old pony even got so he couldn’t hate no more; abuse or kindness had both got to be the same, and one brought out no more results or show of interest than the other. He went to the jerk of the lines like without realizing; and when he was finally led into the stable when night come the feeling was the same. There he et the musty straw because it was under his nose. He didn’t mind the taste of it, he didn’t mind anything, any more.
Of the odd jobs that Cloudy’s owner would get to do around town and whenever he could get away from his truck and chicken farm, there was one
