Old Kate-Ritchie County, WV 1976

The toothless old horse trader told us down at the stock sale, “She’s a good working mule, not a day over 14 years.”

Well, we knew better than to believe that, but she looked fine to us anyway. We hemmed and hawed awhile, asked about throwing in the harness, maybe a single tree, her halter. We managed to get him down to $300 for the whole mess, and got her delivered to our place for free besides. It wasn’t our first time dealing with the cranky old so and so. The stock pens were right next to the feed store where we spent a fair amount of time hanging out talking to Brooks Fleming, the owner. He was full of useful information about farming, weather, putting food by, training border collies and such. Brooks was up in his eighties then and didn’t seem to mind sharing his experience with us newbie’s at all. Eck worked there part time unloading train cars of feed when they came in and we bought all our feed from him.

We tried not to wander on down to the stock pens too much because we always felt sorry for the horses down there. Some of them had welts from being whipped and most of them were underfed and skittish. They got them cheap at farm and stock auctions and sold them for whatever profit they could get. We had already bought Barney, the donkey, and Daniel, the pinto pony from them the year before. Let’s just say they were much better off with us. Barney and Daniel weren’t all that useful but they weren’t much trouble either. We had plenty of grass and it didn’t take much of a fence to keep them in.

I rode Daniel bareback all through the woods and over the hill to visit

friends even though I don’t think he was ever really trained for riding. He had a harness, and was supposed to be a work pony, but he wasn’t all that big so he couldn’t haul a lot of weight. He was very good at hauling one log at a time down from the top of the hill though. We would walk him up, back him up to the log, hook the chain to the single tree, and I would walk him down for the first trip. Once we got down to the bottom and unhooked him, all I had to do was get him headed in the right direction, smack his rump and tell him to go on back up for another, and he’d go plodding off up the hill. Then he’d get another log hooked on and come on back on his own. It didn’t take long to wear him out though. It was a pretty steep hill and the logs were heavy. Then he’d just quit.

So we decided to buy a work mule when we saw Kate down at the stock pens. She was a whole lot bigger than Daniel and had a history of pulling logs. So he said, anyway. She was a good tempered mare mule, about 15 hands tall and 1200 pounds, and got along with Barney and Daniel just fine. Her harness was beautiful, with brass knobs, red and white trimmings, in decent shape. Eck could ride her without worrying about her running off with him, and she was more comfortable bareback than Barney, who was kind of small anyway.

During the next few months Kate worked out pretty well, hauling

logs for us and letting us ride her. One day, we rode her and Daniel up to our new house site and tethered them loosely to some trees nearby while we were working. The dogs, Geshen and Possum, came up with us, always staying about forty feet ahead, and looking back to see we were still coming along. They got bored when we stopped, so they kept on up the hill and ran into some deer, which they commenced to chase back down the hill, right into the horses. Kate and Daniel startled and yanked back on their ties, which gave way, and they headed off downhill, cross country.  Daniel knew where he was going and he moved a lot faster than Kate and was soon out of sight. Kate was trying to follow him but didn’t keep up too well. We tried to head them off but Daniel was gone and headed home. We saw him at a distance, cross the creek at the neighbor’s car crossing, and head down the county road to the barn. Then we saw Kate. She didn’t see where Daniel crossed and she tried to take a shortcut. It was a really bad choice. Over on Tessie’s place the oil well sits right at a bend in the creek, with a low marshy area on the far side and a steep clay bank about four foot high on the other. She hesitated, we were shouting at her to WHOA, but she jumped anyway. Her front legs made it but her back legs got stuck in the mud and, in slow motion, she fell over backward in the creek. We finally got caught up to her and she was thrashing around trying to get herself upright. Panic was in her eyes, with the whites showing all around, breathing hard. We tried to calm her down, talking and patting her down. She finally got her legs under her but they all four sunk in deep mud. There seemed to be no bottom to it. It was like quicksand. Every time she moved she got deeper. Then it started to rain. Hard.

Bunnels Run is a creek famous for flooding very fast, and it had been raining a lot lately. The red clay ground was totally saturated. Any more rain was going to just run right off into the creek. There was seven miles of creek above us and it came through town first. That means a lot of rooftop and parking lot runoff water headed our way. We got down in the creek and were pulling and pushing and digging trying to get Kate loose. She would thrash around, panic, go still, thrash some more. She just kept getting deeper in. Eck finally ran off to call for help, get a rope and bring the tractor to pull with. He managed to get a few neighbors to help, too. We scrambled back down in the mud to get the rope around her middle and tied off to the tractor and started pulling with that. Kate freaked out when the rope started to pull and rub on her and we tried padding it with shirts. Somebody was beating on her but to get her moving, while we were cajoling her with pleas to try, but she finally just rolled her eyes up in her head and gave up entirely. The rain was coming down hard all this time and creek was starting to rise. Her head was stretched far out on the mud, not moving. We got shovels and started digging frantically; trying to make a hole in the mud and get the suction broke, pulling with the tractor, digging some more, pushing from behind, lifting her legs. Nothing was working. Another neighbor showed up with a second tractor, got it rigged up and both were pulling at once, slipping in the mud. The rain continued to pour down. Finally she started to break loose from the mud with a sucking noise and we all jumped in and worked together to bring her out. We got her pulled a little ways to a solid spot but Kate was not able to stand. We started rubbing her legs down, feeling for broken bones, and realizing she had lost her circulation in them, massaged the blood flow back into them. She started to try and stand up and with all of us helping she finally was standing again. Her head was hanging down low, though, and she seemed to have lost her will to fight. We got her moving, walking real slow, and looking back, could see the water was already up about a foot and rising fast. She would have drowned in another few minutes. It took us almost half an hour to get her back to the barn and rubbed down. We tried to feed her and gave her water but she didn’t want it. The goats and Daniel and Barney all stood close by looking worried and did not leave her side for days.

Poor old Kate never did fully recover from that ordeal. She wouldn’t eat, didn’t pay anyone any attention, and just started to waste away. I think she aged 15 years in one day and she lost the will to live. Her hooves developed a soft depression ring and started to peel. It hurt her to even stand.  We didn’t know what to do to help her. We found a guy who thought he could nurse her back to health and we gave her to him about a month later. When he loaded her up in the truck, she swung her head down low, back and forth, like a vision of Dumbo the Elephant going to slaughter. It made us cry. We felt terrible. She bellowed as he pulled away and we went inside and sobbed. We heard she died not long after.

Wendy lee , writing at edgewisewoods.com