Introduction
Beula came to live with us two days after my tenth birthday.
She was a dapple grey mare, already an old horse by the time Grandpa brought her home in that rusty stock trailer. We had less than three years left together. I didn’t know that yet, standing at the paddock gate waiting on the sound of his truck.
What follows is what we did with those years.
Meeting Beula
I woke up before the sun, before I usually did, my heart already going. Today was the day. Grandpa was bringing Beula home.
I slid out of bed and grabbed my boots and cap off the floor. The old boards creaked under me anyway, no matter how careful I was, so I gave up being quiet and just moved fast. Past my grandparents’ door. Out the front, into air that still had a bite of winter left in it.
I cut across the wet grass. The moon was still hanging low over the ridges. Sage and cold dirt. I kept an eye on the road, waiting for headlights.
I leaned on the paddock gate and got my hand around the cold latch. I’d been asking for a horse of my own for weeks.
“Peter,” Grandpa kept saying, “we’ve got enough chores around here already.”
I didn’t let up. Told him I’d take care of her myself, every bit of it. Eventually he gave in. More tired of hearing about it, probably, than actually convinced.
Waiting there, I thought back to the day we’d gone out to a trail outfit that was retiring some of its older horses. Beula turned her head and nuzzled my shoulder the second I got close, easy as anything.
“You’re the one, girl,” I told her.
I don’t know why I said it out loud. Nobody was around to hear it but her.
I heard my grandma stirring inside. Beula wasn’t even my horse to look after yet, and already I was picturing the two of us out on the trail.
Then I heard the truck before I saw it, the way sound carries early in the morning out here. I swung the gate open and ran for it, hollering, not caring what I looked like.
The old blue Chevy rounded the corner pulling the trailer. Grandpa climbed out, grinning.
“Morning, Pete. Ready to meet your new friend?”
He dropped the trailer gate. A speckled grey nose came out first, testing the air. Then Beula backed down the ramp, harness jingling, and I finally got a good look at her. Dark, calm eyes, not a lick of nerves in them.
I held my hand out slow and let her get my scent. She pushed her nose into my palm and blew out a breath, warm on my fingers. Then she turned and nuzzled my shoulder again, same as she had that first day.
Grandpa handed me the lead rope, laughing a little.
“I’d say she likes you already. Take her on over to the barn, let her settle in.”
I walked her to the paddock, listening to her tail swish and her hooves knock against the dirt. Gave her a flake of hay and filled her trough. She drank, then lifted her head and looked at me for a long second.
I stayed longer than I needed to. Brushed the dust out of her coat, picked a couple stones out of her hooves, talked to her about the ranch like she could follow along. Every so often she’d answer back with a low whinny.
When chores finally pulled me away, I gave her one last pat.
“See you soon, girl.”
She bobbed her head as I walked off.
We grew a bond
I was out mending fence one morning when I heard hooves behind me. Beula came trotting up, grabbed my hat right off my head, and took off with it.
“Hey, bring that back!”
She tossed her head and stayed just out of reach, pleased with herself. Took a chunk of carrot to get it out of her.
“You silly thing,” I said, patting her neck.
A few days later I was loading the hay elevator when she stuck her nose straight into a bale and sneezed loud enough to beat the machinery. Hay went everywhere. She shook her mane out looking half-insulted by her own nose. I about doubled over laughing.
“Itchy, huh, girl?”
I picked the hay out of her forelock. She bobbed her head like she was agreeing with me.
One afternoon my friends Mike, Cynch, and Billy came over and we got a game of hide-and-seek going in the pasture. I tucked myself behind an old hollow log, and Beula found me first. Started nudging me with her nose, whinnying, giving the whole thing away.
“Beula, stop,” I whispered.
Didn’t do a bit of good. My friends followed the noise straight to me.
“Found you!” Cynch said, laughing. “Good girl, Beula. Some scout, huh?”
“Some scout,” I told Beula, giving her a light swat.
That evening she walked me back to the house after my friends left, nickering the whole way. I made sure she had water and hay for the night before I went in. She nuzzled my shoulder once more, same as always, and I headed inside.
She watched over me
I caught the flu bad enough to keep me in bed for days, with a fever that wouldn’t break. Grandma sat with me most of it, propping pillows behind me, bringing up bowls of chicken soup.
The fever had my head foggy. One afternoon Grandma cracked the window to air the room out, and pine drifted in on the breeze. I was half-convinced I was camping. I thought I heard Beula nicker somewhere close, but I didn’t have the strength to answer her.
I woke up the next morning parched and shaky, and it took everything I had to turn my head toward that window.
Beula’s face was right there in it.
Nose pressed near the glass, eyes wide, watching me. She whinnied when she saw me stir.
Grandma came in with toast and tea, humming like she always did.
“She stayed out there all night,” she said. “Your grandpa only got her to leave long enough to eat. She’s been worried. We all have.”
I couldn’t say much back. I reached a hand out the window and stroked her nose.
“Thank you, girl.”
I don’t know that any medicine did more for me than she did that week.
We had many adventures
Beula and I put a lot of miles behind us over the next couple years, including more overnight trips than I could count. She carried our gear in light saddlebags, but I never once got on her back. Not even bareback, not even just to see.
She’d spent her whole life as a trail horse carrying strangers. Seemed to me she’d earned the right to walk the rest of her years without anybody on top of her.
I let her pick the pace and mostly the direction too. She’d stop to lip at wildflowers or nibble on whatever caught her eye, and if I fell behind she’d wait on the trail, watching until I caught up. We were never in a hurry to get anywhere.
At night we’d camp by a fire. I’d lay my sleeping bag out on the ground while she bedded down close by in the grass. Once the fire burned down to embers, she’d get up sometimes and stand over me a while as I slept.
More than once I’d wake up rolling over and get a start seeing a dark shape standing above me before I realized it was just her.
“Go on back to sleep,” I’d tell her.
She never listened. She kept watch on me more nights than I probably know about.
Cynch, Billy, Mike, and the rest would come along plenty, horses in tow. We’d camp near a meadow or a creek and let the horses graze while we sat around the fire. Come morning Beula was always up first, nosing everybody awake before we’d even started the coffee.
We’d turn the horses loose to run while we cooked breakfast, and they’d tear off across the wildflowers together, bucking, playing some game only horses understood. After we ate, Beula would follow me down to the stream to fill the water bags, the other horses crowding in and jostling us the whole way.
Every trip out with that many horses felt more like a parade than a hike.
Beula began to slow down
Beula and I kept at our trips through the next season. Somewhere in there I started noticing her gait wasn’t what it used to be.
On the mountain paths she needed more stops to catch her breath. Where she used to wait on me, now I waited on her. Some mornings I’d find her still dozing in the hay instead of up and watching for me at the gate.
She still wanted to go. But she’d stand at the edge and watch the other horses run instead of joining in, and at night she started lying down earlier, no longer standing guard till sunup.
I took over that job without either of us saying anything about it.
I spent more evenings just sitting with her in the barn, writing by lantern light while she dozed near me. Neither one of us was ready for it. I don’t think that changed how it went.
I’ll always remember my dear friend, Beula
Beula passed two weeks before my thirteenth birthday. Almost three years, all told. Not long, but we packed a lot into it. I had her cremated and spread her ashes in the places she liked best.
I went to the old place today and walked some of the same trails. Standing there, everything came back at once.
I went into the barn and sat down in the straw where she used to sleep. Closed my eyes. I could still half-hear her. Hooves on the dirt floor, that low whinny she’d give when I walked up.
Now it was just wind moving through the rafters.
I stood up and brushed the straw off my jeans. On my way out I could’ve sworn I felt her nuzzle my shoulder one more time, same as she always did.
I said thanks to an empty barn and headed home. The memories came with me either way.
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