2. "The Problem of Ebony"

Written by Tom Hebert

Prologue

Being with horses is like swimming with porpoises, as close to the wild, to the nature of God, as most of us are likely to get.

This chapter, written back in 1995, explores my growing relationship with a horse I earlier met on a horse ranch I lived on in western Washington. The Spanish Mustang Ebony is out of old Choctaw Spanish horse stock who survived the Trail of Tears from Alabama to Oklahoma in the late 1830s. Built like a dark avenging 18-wheeler, 14 hands high, 850 pounds of self-reliance and no-nonsense, he would be draft horse drear if it wasn't for the look in his eyes and the savvy way he judges me and parts-out his world.

After meeting Ebony, I came to appreciate Jonathan Swift's comment that my horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day; they live in great amity with me; and friendship to each other. Old-time range men in this country understood that you should talk much to your Spanish cow pony if you wanted his best. Ebony and I rode and talked a lot. Riding the black Ebony down a suburban street or mountain trail people will say, Friend, that's a handsome horse you have there. And I'll say, And, you Madam, are a person who knows horseflesh! Because Ebony is living proof that beautiful Spanish Mustangs remain.

About Ebony

Registered as SMR No. 1688, Llamativo Ebano (stable name of Ebony) a Spanish Mustang of my acquaintance, is a rare coal-black pure-blood out of the Kamawi line of old Choctaw Indian Mustangs from the Cayuse Ranch, Oshoto, Wyoming. I can't yet say that I understand much with him, although I know well his moves and moods. He has me stumped.

For 10 months in 1994–1995 I lived with friends near Seattle just by old Squak Mountain and looked after seven Spanish horses: six Paso Fino horses and this Ebony character. There were simple home pleasures in this work, but overly challenged by chaos as I am, I'm still a pencil-box kind of person who must organize his pencils with ferrules to ferrules, lead tips to lead tips. Thus, besides the daily horse feeding and the mucking, I plunged my host into deep anxiety by beginning a winter-long project of organizing his entire farm. And since ignorance is ultimate disorder and because these Spanish horses were a mystery to me, I set out to get to know them. Clearly, I had stumbled into a wonderful equine observatory and training institute where I could, by immersion, learn some horse talk. But first, organizing my night school studies, I poured over horse books, Spanish horse magazines, and my host's rather complete Spanish Mustang files. But my book learning was only part of it.

I was in the early Peace Corps. To get to know a new kind of horse is like traveling overseas; it takes time and cross-cultural study. With Spanish horses I've just begun to learn their local ways, where they hang out, how they vote. They are very different creatures from what I had expected from my earlier life with those two off-the-track Thoroughbreds. The noble Thoroughbreds are all competitive rank and file; and they outrank us. Spanish horses can be highly emotional, sometimes hot-blooded, but like Arabians they are still people-oriented.

In Spain, these friendly horses have always been kept in stables very close to the house, and visitors are always taken first for an introduction to the family's horses. An article about Spain in National Geographic notes that Spaniards from Andalusia are, exuberant, philosophical. Good at getting the most with the least strain. That surely describes the horses bred from that old Andalusian stock of the conquistadors. Remember that the world famous Lipizanner horses of Vienna's Spanish Riding School carry the same old Andalusian blood.

Trying to assay the innards of Ebony, this Spanish Mustang, isn't going to be easy. Horses in general are harder to get to emotionally than are dogs, for example. Dogs will often lick you to death on your first encounter. Not horses. Because you are entering a dangerous work/performance relationship with them, there are tryouts and you have to pass character tests. You have to earn closeness with horses. Luckily, horses do need touching, from each other and from you, if you're willing. They are great talkers and listeners. And touchers. After food, touching is what matters most to horses. They nuzzle one another, nip, poke and prod, all the time. All horses will do it to you if you let them.

Horses communicate with strikingly beautiful and intricate body, neck and head postures and gestures; various territorial, threat and dominance displays like air-cushion fights; and advertising, herding, calling and contagion behaviors. Few people know why horses roll on the ground. (Basically it says, Hey, I'm home!)

Beyond horse courtesy and these equine linguistics, I am learning the basics of horse conversation: we actually talk a lot. Research shows that horse owners confide in their horses more than dog owners do.

I understand this now. It was the best part of my year, standing around with a bunch of Spanish horses, shooting the shit.

	"The wild horse is a highly social animal. This fact helps to explain how he came to be domesticated some four thousand years ago. Like the wolf, whose quality of loyal devotion to his own pack made it possible for man to breed him into the dog, the wild horse forms strong bonds with members of his own band. Man had only to exploit this trait and redirect it toward himself in order to make the horse a willing partner in labor, war, and pleasure." —Hope Ryden. Mustangs: A Return to the Wild, Viking, 1972.

Pureblooded Spanish Mustangs are wild as wolves and do not typically inter-breed with other horses that have been cut loose onto their ranges. The real thing, a few thousand of these horses remained free in desert canyons and mountain fastnesses in Oregon, Utah, Nevada, California, Wyoming and Arizona. Cunning survivors of the vast herds that once ranged in the millions along with the buffalo and Spanish Longhorns.

That these spirited horses come from powerful old blood lines is also clear from their classic heads and very long manes and tails, emblematic of all Spanish Horses. As Texas historian and folklorist J. Frank Dobie described them,

"These horses were not jug-headed; they were neither Roman-nosed nor dish-faced. Their faces, inclining to flatness, were wide, especially between the eyes. Short, sensitive ears topped well-set heads. They were barrel-bellied, had thick shoulders and hind quarters. The toughest cow horse I have ever known was a rusty black with the map of Mexico on his left thigh.... There is just one word besides bottom to apply to Spanish cow ponies. That is gamy."

But the problem of Ebony hung with me late into the fall even as I left the place. There was a savvy knowingness, a sense that he had seen things that I would never know. That I might or might not have measured up. Like the bad Ennuit in the bad saloon in Kotzebue, Alaska demanded of me: Who are you? No, Who-are-you? I wasn't sure. Who is Ebony? I'm not really sure. More history.

According to recent genetic blood typing at the University of Kentucky's vet school, Ebony's blood, like that of all pureblooded Spanish Mustangs goes straight back, uncontaminated, to the Golden Age of Spain and a few Corps horses.

But knowing Ebony's history doesn't yet help me deal fully with him and his kind. So, as old conquistador Bernal Diz would say, let us leave off this talk and return to the story of what else happened to us.


My Day Book

August 16: Today Ebony reached out and flipped my hat on the ground. And then, before I could retrieve it, Artie picked it up and trotted away with it, dropping it about fifty feet away. Kind of like kids aimlessly rock-skipping.

August 22: Last night at dinner call, the horses came up and Yerba, as is his practice now, placed himself athwart the stalls so that none could enter their stall until the food came down and he could get his first. Tonight, I beckoned Ebony in, Hey guy, move around the old fart. Come on, you old thing! But Ebony wouldn't move against Yerba. But when I showed him a flake of hay he abruptly climbed around Yerba's butt to get to his dinner. Yerbas sovereignty couldn't hold against the call of Ebony's sweet alfalfa. Do not stand between a feral animal and his feed.

September 3: Yesterday, Aviador provoked a stall squall when, I think, he sensed that a sparrow fell in Kuala Lumpur. I sure as hell couldn't tell what it was. The Paso Fino horses instantly flipped around, head to butt, and leapt from the open stalls like it was Hialeah, no head starting ahead of the other. But, just in case the earth outside was swallowing horses right then, Ebony reluctantly left his feed, but, of course, was the first to return. His so-called contagion behavior is much under control.

September 11: More of the same on Friday when I was whanging away on the tin roof, trying to fix a leak. While they saw me climb the ladder to the roof, the guys still stormed out when they heard my hammer fall. Ebony, again, was the last out. He got out and looked up at me and with a slightly disgusted air, returned to his eats. No big deal. He then stuck it out in the stall throughout my several forays up the ladder with tarpaper and nails. Give me a Mustang any day.

October 4: I am proprietary to Ebony, he owns me. When we groom each other, he is easy. But when the other horses come up for their fair share of giving, Ebony lays back his ears and attempts to interpose himself. If I make it clear that Artie, say, gets to groom me, Ebony allows it, but doesn't approve of this crossing of lines. He must wonder if I yet know the rules of social grooming horses go by. (I suppose my pidgin horse Spanish is a bit of a trial for him.)

If Ebony ain't playful, he is kind and one hell of a mover. And more. When he runs at tail-high liberty in the arena, then suddenly slows into his long suspended trot, it is Goyesca, a Spanish harmony of classical beauty and composure.

On the steep trail up Squak there is no obstacle he won't attempt. When he comes to a deadfall he simply rocks back on his hind quarters and lifts himself over in the smoothest, most efficient move you can imagine. We like to clear trail together, me tearing down saplings around us and pitching limbs, logs, and rocks from our path, Ebony scarfing tidbits to eat. Nothing bothers him. I depend upon his agility on dangerous roots and rocks when descending back to the farm. I would go anywhere with him. A real Mustang, he is a survivor. While he wants to please, he carefully thinks things through. Ebony won't move if it's not clear in his head.

Compare the Mustang's taciturn nature with the personality of an Arabian: if a grouse flies up under an Arabian, he is already in motion before he begins to think. Most Spanish Mustangs will first take a two-count, not moving until he understands what's happening. Hell take a licking first. A Mustang with training worries not about the grouse out of his sight, but about doing right what he has been trained to do. A Spanish Mustang is a stand-up, show-me kind of guy.

I want to describe Ebony's way of waiting for me to feed him. It's hard to explain. He just stands there short-backed, fat, and black, four-square in his stall, looking dead-on at me with those big, round, secure Spanish eyes. A steady gaze, such concentration. Like he could wait there forever. No-nonsense. But I still haven't pin-pointed his aspect, what he is about in this (aside from waiting for dinner). Yet it gives me comfort to watch him at this business. The look is so frank, so bone-dry. Not noble, but efficient. In part, he is like Quixote's Sancho Panza and his donkey Dapple, who are said to represent the practical, when do we eat? side of our personalities.

The problem of Ebony with the other Spanish horses, Ebony is just his horse self. But when it is just he and I, it's another transaction. He holds my gaze longer than any animal I have known. All animals will eventually blink first, look away (such is the superior animal power of the human eye), but he returns my look, one-on-one, for several long seconds. Tough bugger. But there is something else.

Plenty-Coups, the most respected chief of the Crows, told his biographers how he and his fellow warriors felt when they went out on a war party:

"To be alone with our war-horses at such a time teaches them to understand us, and us to understand them. My horse fights with me and fasts with me, because if he is to carry me in battle he must know my heart and I must know his or we shall never become brothers. I have been told that the white man, who is almost a god, and yet a great fool, does not believe that the horse has a spirit. This cannot be true. I have many time seen my horse's soul in his eyes."

And this day on that knoll I knew my horse understood. I saw his soul in his eyes.Yes, just that. Looping about in Ebony's DNA are antique warrior cerements passed down from his old Indian war horse soul and before. They show up in his eyes. And he cuts me no slack. I weary of having to live up to certain horses.

Wind-drinkers, buffalo runners, and Cortez's battle horses, in particular.


2002 Epilogue

That is how in 1994 I began my life with Spanish horses with one of the most memorable characters in my horse life: good old Ebony. I rode him a bunch on and off Squak Mountain back then and he was the guide who took me up into the lost world of Colonial Spanish Horses. I owe him a lot.

Anyway, I recently learned that his breeder, Irl Green had passed back in October of a fast-moving cancer. So last week I called Carolyn to check in. Of course I asked about Ebony. Well, she said funny you should ask. I just heard a great story about him.

Seems that the lady the Greens had sold him to had a problem with a big herd of a hundred protected Canadian geese wintering in her pasture near Arlington, Washington where she keeps Ebony.

Seems she doesn't have that problem now.

One day a few weeks ago she was out in the pasture, surrounded by all these damn fool geese, when she stepped in a big goopy goose-pie. Fed up, madder'n hell, and happening to have a shovel with her, she took after the nearest goose and chased it til it flew, then reversing field she headed for the rest of the til-then somnolent beasts who suddenly bestirred themselves to panicked flight as she ranged into striking distance. Finally, with the entire flock wheeling above and her passion and wind exhausted, the lady went back to the house still muttering generalized death threats. Ebony was watching.

The next day when she went out to feed him, the field was different, eerily quiet and no geese. Baffled, she was looking around when she stumbled upon the ultimate scare crow..... a dead goose, clearly stomped to feathers by none other than our old black friend. Appreciating the need to clear out the squatters, Ebony is up there now in Arlington creating a more livable world while taking no prisoners; where there were goose piles there are none and Canadian Geese, they are gone. Pure Ebony.

I can report that Carolyn, who authorized the telling of this story, is doing fine, along with her family of a dozen Spanish Mustangs who surely miss Irl as much as Carolyn.