The Busted Thumb Horse Ranch by Paul Bagdon

see if Tiny had heard anything and we put
up some posters seeking good, solid, young but
broke-to-handling mares. We had time and a
bundle of money. We weren’t worrying about it.
    Teresa and Blanca were working out beautifully.
Breakfast, for instance consisted of a dozen
or so eggs for us to split up, a pile of fried potatoes,
and slabs of hog side meat. Lunch was just
as good, but wider in scope. We even had soup
one day. Supper they went all out for: steaks as
big as saddle blankets, fluffy mashed spuds, fresh
baked bread, and all the coffee we could drink.
At supper they always put our bottle of tequila on
the table, too. They kept the place spotless. The
house always had that clean, fresh aroma of wood
polish floating through it. Blanca drifted through
the kitchen one morning to ask when we were
next going to town.
    “We were thinking ’bout goin’ in today,” I said.
“Why?”
    “There are tings we need. I make a leest, okay?”
    “Sure—that’ll be fine.”
    Teresa looked around the corner. “You take the
peckhorse, too, no?”
    Arm sighed. “How much things do you need?”he
asked. “We both have saddlebags that’ll carry
plenty.”
    “Too small,” Blanca said.
    “You need peckhorse,” Teresa added.
    We saddled up and then put the rig on the
packhorse. He was frisky and getting fat—he
hadn’t been used for a while. He got a little too
cute with Arm’s black and lost a mouthful of hair
and hide. That calmed him down.
    There was a wind that had a bite to it, and the
temperature was low and dropping.
    “Ain’t summer no more,” Arm said. He had the
collar up on his heavy jacket, as did I.
    We let our horses run a bit, holding them in so
the pack animal could keep up. When we reined
in after a mile or so, Arm said, “The stallion, he is
coming good.”
    “Yeah. He is. He’s still as wild as a hawk, but
I can get next to him without him charging me or
even laying his ears back.”
    “Would you breed him now?”
    “Might be a little dicey, but yeah, I would—if
it’s the right mare an’ she’s in season. I’m sure our
ol’ boy would climb right on, but whether or not
he’d do any biting that’d hurt the mare, I dunno.”
    “What means ‘in season’?”
    “Same thing as ‘horsing’—or ‘horny’ for that
matter. All ready for a stud.”
    “I know ‘horny.’ This ‘season’ thing is silly.”
He
paused for a moment. “Maybe we need to tease
him with a mare, see how he takes the scent, no?”
    “Good idea.” I didn’t bother to tell my partner
that was precisely what I intended to do.
    We dropped off our packhorse at the mercantile,
along with the list the ladies had prepared. I
hadn’t bothered to look at it—what they needed
was what they need. I asked the clerk to wrap
four quarts of good whiskey real careful-like and
include those with the supplies, too. As I was
leaving, I stopped at the door. “Put one of those
quarts at the top of a load,” I said. “We might give
it a trial on the way home.”
    The wind was whipping bits of ice that stung
our faces like bees as we rode down to Tiny’s
shop. He was hammering a fracture in a steel
wheel rim as we tied our horses. His sale corral
was full—he’d obviously made a sizable purchase
lately. Arm and I stood at the fence, looking over
the stock. Our eyes came to rest on the same
horse: a buckskin mare that was the prettiest
damned thing a man could ever see. Buckskins
are eye-catchers anyway, but this gal was perfect.
She stood square, looking about—curious, not
frightened. Her coat was the color of homemade
taffy and the dorsal line of black down her spine
was straight and true. She had a good chest for a
mare and her black mane and tail were long,
without tangles. Her withers were prominent but
not overly so, and her legs were picture-perfect,
with gently sloping pasterns.
    “Madre de Dios,” Arm said.
    “Yeah—she’s somethin’.”
    Tiny set aside his wheel rim and greeted us.
“You saw the buckskin, I