The Winter Pony (4 page)

“Why?” asked the Englishman.

“Just look at him,” said the doctor. “He’s got glanders, for starters. He’ll give it to the rest, and likely to you as well.”

So the pony stayed behind. On a hot and rainy day, nineteen of us were loaded onto an old steamer that was stained with rust. One by one we were hoisted in a wooden box that swayed at the end of a rope.

I was scared to get into that box and swing up through the air. I didn’t know where the ship would take me. I wanted to go back to the forests, even back to the lumber camps if I could. The stallion was more frightened than me. When the men came to take him, he bolted. He pulled away, smashed through the fence, and went galloping down the dock.

Another pony followed, the two of them racing through a crowd of people who scattered like locusts. But they were soon caught and dragged back, soon loaded on the ship.

It was my turn next, and I trembled in the box. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see the water underneath me, and when the box thumped down on the deck, I thought the bottom had fallen open. I was taken out and put into a very narrow stall. It didn’t seem so bad, really—until the dogs came aboard.

They were big and vicious things, with enormous teeth and narrow eyes. They seemed wild as wolves, or even wilder, and bared their teeth at men, at ponies, at each other. They
were chained to railings and boxes and machines until the ship seemed covered with dogs. Every one of them howled and barked without stopping.

Like every pony, I feared dogs more than anything else. I didn’t feel safe with them all around me, but all I could do was close my eyes and pretend they weren’t there.

Then the ship headed out to sea, and I went toward a new life. I didn’t expect anything but misery.

These things I’d learned when I was young: Life is short and men are cruel, and ponies are born to suffer. I decided that I would work as hard as I could at whatever job I was given, believing that I would earn my reward in the end and live forever in the ponies’ place.

In the ponies’ place, men would serve the animals. In the ponies’ place, the stables would be warm, well padded with straw, and the blankets would come straight from the stove, still hot and soft and smoky-smelling. My scars would heal at the ponies’ place. And not once in ten thousand years would I feel the sting of whip or lash.

THE
voyage on the old steamer was a misery, for the most part. I was not used to a floor that moved underneath me, and the roll of the ship made me terribly sick. The sun was too hot, the sea too bright. The stench from the dogs was unbearable.

I wanted water all the time but got it only twice a day, when the Russian boy came around with a bucket. I always leaned toward it over the top of my stall, my lips fluttering at the lovely smell of water. But every time, just as I started to drink, the Russian whipped away the bucket.

My legs ached because I couldn’t lie down. My back itched from the soot that fell from the funnel, a black rain that covered almost everything except the wretched dogs. They watched me endlessly, their savage little eyes just slits in their fur.

Sometimes Mr. Meares came by and petted me, but not very often. He cared more about the dogs than he did about the ponies. It was the same with his dog driver, a Russian I seldom saw and never grew to like. And the boy—a jockey—was so excited by the journey that he sometimes forgot about the ponies.

We sailed south forever, right through the winter without even seeing it. We left in summer and finished in spring, with a fiery sun growing hotter every day.

We landed on an island where the grass grew green and thick, where the trees were wide and shady. There was a sandy beach to run along, and we raced through the shallows, kicking up foam.

This wasn’t at all what I’d expected. Some of the ponies, especially the older ones, would have lived happily there forever. The heat was good for their bones, while the sun made them sleepy and lazy, and there were often three or four sprawled on the grass at once. I had to stand in the shade, swatting insects with my tail. I was a winter pony, with a thick mane and shaggy hair. I liked crisp mornings when I breathed white steam, rivers of ice-cold water, and mountains with snow on their tops.

But for the moment, I was very happy. The whip and the lash were as scarce as icicles. The men seemed to have no meanness in them. Yet I couldn’t believe I would never be hit, and so I flinched whenever a man raised a hand to scratch his hair or trim his hat. “Easy, lad,” I heard a hundred times a day. “Easy, lad. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Mr. Meares put on short trousers and soon turned his legs to the same fiery shade as his face. He grew enormous stains of
sweat on the back and the arms of his shirt, and he wore a handkerchief underneath his hat to shield himself twice from the sun.

It was a disappointment to some of the ponies when he brought out harnesses and traces. But I liked to work, so I didn’t mind, though I couldn’t understand our job. We dragged logs up and down the beach, logs so heavy that they didn’t even float. We pulled them to the end of the beach, then turned around and pulled them back. There was no sense to the work, but we learned the English way to pull and haul. It was a gentler way, with a guiding hand on the halter and a biscuit when we finished. I was soon throwing myself gladly at the harness, eager to please Mr. Meares.

I wished that the stallion and some of the others would settle down and lose their fears. To them, every man in the world was a fearsome figure.

One day a gentleman came wandering down from his house, white haired and stiff backed, with a lady clinging to his arm. He stopped to admire the stallion, and asked the jockey, “How old is that one there?” The jockey only shrugged; he didn’t know. So the gentleman went closer to have a look.

The stallion tried to warn the man away. He pinned his ears back; he put his head low to the ground and swung it back and forth. But the man didn’t notice—or didn’t understand—and only went closer. So the stallion charged him.

The old man just stood there, maybe too surprised to run. In an instant, the stallion was right in front of him, rearing up to strike him down.

At the last moment, the gentleman raised one skinny little arm, trying to ward off the pony with his walking stick. Then the stallion struck out and the man went flying backward onto the grass. With a shriek, the stallion reared again and plunged with his hooves.

It took four big men to pull the pony away. He bucked and kicked and struggled. The men were scared, but awed as well. He was such a vicious fighter that he earned the name Hackenschmidt, after the famous Russian wrestler who had never lost a fight.

I saw his eyes that day, all wild and crazy, and I wondered again what had happened to him in his life among men. He was so angry, so bitter, that he frightened other ponies. There was just one with no fear of him—another stallion a little younger, every bit as wild himself. The men called that one Christopher, which I thought was too nice a name for such a horrible pony.

They were like a pair of bullies, Hackenschmidt and Christopher, staying friends only to keep themselves from killing each other. Both were stubborn and still untamed. As soon as the halters and traces were brought out, the two ponies made it clear they didn’t want to work. But the men were even more stubborn, and though it sometimes took four or five of them to do it, they always got those ponies harnessed. They always got them working, and they did it without a stick or whip.

I decided that they were training us for a special task, because no men—not even Englishmen—worked just for the pleasure of working. I wondered endlessly what it might be, and watched for clues in everything.

The first hint came in November, when a strange ship arrived at our island. It was Captain Scott’s
Terra Nova
, but I didn’t know it then. All I noticed was a funnel that spewed black smoke, and an old smell of death covered over with paint and tar.

The ship was still moving along the jetty when men began to come ashore. They were like fleas leaping from a dog, bounding from the side of it.

One of those men had a pipe in his teeth. He walked for a while in a funny way, as if the land was moving underneath him, though it wasn’t. He went up and down the jetty, then turned and came straight for the ponies.

He walked quickly, in long strides. He marched across the ground to the field where we were grazing, and he put his elbows on the fence and leaned there, puffing his pipe.

Hackenschmidt and Christopher snorted anxiously. They cantered away to the far side of the field, and some of the other ponies followed. But I stood where I was, not three yards away from the man. I liked him right away, because he smiled when he looked at me.

Over his shoulder, I could see Mr. Meares walking toward us, his pink legs flashing in the sunlight. He called out, “What do you think of them, Titus?”

The new man took the pipe from his mouth. He talked loudly, without turning his head. “They look first class.”

He had the kindliest voice I’d ever heard, and a feeling of compassion that hovered around him like his pipe smoke. I
wanted to greet him properly, with a good sniff and a rub, but I went cautiously, with my head down and my hooves scuffing through the grass. I snorted softly to show him I wouldn’t be any trouble.

He didn’t move a muscle. He kept leaning on the fence, now holding the pipe in his hand, watching me with bright, sea-colored eyes.

I stopped in front of him, near enough that he could touch me if he wanted to. For a long time we looked at each other. Then he suddenly leaned forward.

He was quick as a snake. Before I knew it, he had grabbed hold of my halter. I tried to pull away.

“Easy, lad,” he said, seeing how I shivered. “You’re safe as houses, son.”

I moved closer. I nudged against him, and he smiled again at that. Then his eyes shifted away, and he looked at the scars on my shoulders. He touched them, and I didn’t even flinch.

This man was Lawrence Oates, a soldier, a captain in the cavalry. No one ever called him by his real name. To the men, he was Titus or the Soldier. But to me he seemed so much unlike a fighting man that he was only
Mister
Oates.