First, I want to
apologize for going AWOL last month. I’d like to say Yankee and I were out on a
long search and rescue mission with the horse Patrol. I’d like to say that, but
the truth is the second Thursday of April snuck up and got by me before I even
realized it.
I’m going to start
off this month, as usual, with a quiz. First person who comes up with the
correct answer will win a signed copy of my Jim Blawcyzk novel Death Stalks
the Rangers.
We all, or most of
us, know that to cowboys in the frontier West coffee meant Arbuckle’s. My
question is what was packed in every container of Arbuckle’s which had cowboys
on a trail drive clamoring to be first to answer Cookie’s call “Who wants to
grind the coffee?”
Now, let’s mosey on
to more horse factoids. I’m going to pass along some nuggets that will help
anyone who writes Westerns be more accurate in their horse descriptions. A lot
of little things that can make a difference. Those of you who have read my
books know that the horses are every much characters as the human protagonists
in my stories. A lot of writers don’t recognize that, but a man on horseback
for days or weeks at a time forged a strong bond with his horse. Both human and
equine depended on each other, in many cases for survival itself. A western
where the horses aren’t part of the story is just missing something.
We’ll start with
horse colors. There are lots of variations of horse colors, but the basic ones
are black, bay, chestnut, gray, and white. Even today, debate still goes on
about whether there are true black horses, or just very dark bays, and true
white horses. (Not counting albinos, which usually don’t survive). I tend to
believe there are true blacks. Then we have duns and buckskins, palominos,
grullas, roans, and all manner of color terms.
Bay horses are
varying shades of dark brown, with black points, mane and tail.
Chestnuts are
reddish-brown horses with red points, and red or flaxen mane and tail.
It can be difficult
on occasion to tell a bay from a chestnut. Always keep in mind the points- legs
and ears - and the mane and tail. A bay will have black points, mane and tail,
a chestnut red or flaxen.
A sorrel is a
variety of chestnut, usually more reddish. The term sorrel is more commonly
used for Western horses than European.
Palominos are
golden-colored horses, with light or white manes and tails.
Duns and buckskins
look very similar, but a buckskin tends to have a more uniform color. Grullas
are mouse-colored.
A gray is, of
course, gray. Gray is the color which most often appears as “dapple”, or
spotted.
Roans are horses
whose coat is sprinkled with white hairs. A strawberry roan is a horse with
brown or red hair for its main coat color, a blue roan is a horse with gray for
its main coat color.
Paints and pintos,
terms which were used interchangeably in the west, are horses splotched with
white. They were sometimes called “calico”.
Piebald and skewbald
were terms used to distinguish paint colors, although not used commonly in the
West. They are pretty much in disuse today, although still used in Europe. A
piebald is a black and white paint. A skewbald is a paint of any color but
black.
And of course
Appaloosas have their own distinct spotting patterns, which I discussed last
time.
White markings:
If a horse has a
diamond shaped mark on its forehead, that’s a star. A diamond shaped marking
with a narrow strip going downward from the star is a star and strip. A short
white, narrow mark on the muzzle is a snip. So, a horse can have a star, strip,
and snip. (Yankee does).
A broad white mark
down the face is a blaze. A horse whose blaze goes over both cheeks so that
almost the entire face is white is called a bald-faced horse.
Socks are white
markings on the hoof to the fetlocks. White markings from the hoof above the
fetlocks to as high as the knees are stockings.
Blue-eyed horses
were often called “glass-eyed”.
Enough about horse
colors. Entire books have been written about them. Time for some other tidbits.
When a horse drinks,
he doesn’t lap up water like a dog or cat. He sucks it in, much like a person
sipping soda through a straw. Never describe a horse lapping up water. It doesn’t
happen.
Horses also can’t
pant, which I have seen written. Horses cannot breath through their mouths,
only their nostrils, so it is physically impossible for a horse to pant. They
can and do breath heavily, but they don’t pant.
Most of a horse’s
head consists of nasal passages. A horse can have a hole shot through its long
nasal passages, or one caused by injury, and still be able to breath.
Horses also cannot
vomit. Their neck, throat, and esophageal muscles are too strong to let food
come back up. That’s the reason colic is so dangerous, usually
life-threatening, for a horse. It a horse gets a bowel obstruction, and can’t
pass manure, if the condition isn’t treated quickly the horse’s intestines or
stomach could twist, which is always fatal. The gas buildup from colic is
extremely painful, and can cause the stomach or intestines to literally
explode. In the old West, there was little to be done for colic, except for
trying to walk the horse until the gut starts moving again. That’s still done
today, until the vet arrives.
A horse who twists a
shoe, but where the shoe doesn’t come off, will usually not want to step on the
bent shoe at all, making him appear extremely lame. Once the bent shoe is
removed, the horse will walk just fine, allowing for the unevenness of one shod
foot and one not.
“Biscuit-eater” and “pie-biter”
were terms cowboys used to describe horses spoiled by their owners, and which
hung around camp begging for treats.
There were and are
one-man horses, although they are extremely rare.
Most working cowboys
didn’t own horses. They were assigned a string of mounts by the ranch which
employed them. And, just like humans, some horses were specialists… some were
roping horses, others cutters, and still other loved to “pop brush”, that is,
chase out cows hiding in the thorny vegetation of the southwest.
And it is true that
a lot of cowboys didn’t like paints or pintos, often referring to them
disdainfully as “Indian ponies”. However, quite a few cowboys and Texas Rangers
did favor pintos.
Finally, unlike
today, there were no official “breeds” of horses. The various Western horse
breed registries, such as American Quarter Horse, Pinto Horse Association,
American Paint Horse, Appaloosa, and so on weren’t even established until the
mid-1900s. So, when writing about a specific type of horse in a Western, you
can write quarter horse, pinto, mustang, and so forth, but only as a type.
Never capitalize Quarter Horse, Paint, Appaloosa, etc., as none of these
animals existed as distinctive breeds in the old West era.
I hope I’ve provided
at least a bit of useful information. Next time up, more Texas Ranger lore. How
many bullets could a man take and survive in frontier Texas? One Ranger took
eighteen while trying to stop a riot. Even more amazingly, he survived, stopped
the riot and arrested several of the participants, then died… many years later,
in bed, of old age.
Jim Griffin
