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DECEMBER 2003 OPEN BREED ISSUE |
CONTENTS Baxter
Black - Cripple Creek Calvin &
The Snakey Mare
UPCOMING
ISSUES |
BY BAXTER BLACK Calvin said he wasn't that good at getting' hurt. Of course, some would say he didn't have to try that hard. He's still ridin' bronky horses even though his deductible is up to $45,000. Some would have thought he should have waited more than two months after the knee surgery to try out the snakey mare; at least he started in the round corral. Some would say that naming his North Carolina ranch the Cripple Creek Livestock Company became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It explained his perpetual lameness. The snakey mare was eight years old. Calvin knew her well. In anticipation he had asked the doctor to leave him some medial movement in his knee so he wouldn't always be jabbin' his horse with a spur. Good thinkin'. He had made several circles inside the round pen when his grandson came out to watch. "Hi, Pawpaw!" Calvin stopped the mare in front of the boy. `My bloodline,' thought Calvin. `He'll be out here someday and I'll be leanin' on the fence.' "Make him wun, Pawpaw!" "Naw, I..." He started to say as he shifted in the saddle to pat the boy on the back. Sensing his vulnerability, the mare bogged her head and commenced to bucking! She'd been savin' up and had plenty. Calvin never really got in rhythm with her. The grandson was heard to remark afterwards that Pawpaw looked like a slinky goin' down the stairs. It had been a long time since Calvin had heard a bronc bawl like that. It's an eerie sound; a cross between an elk bugle and a lion's roar with a twang of tortured mule in there somewhere. She crashed to her knees, pitching Calvin forward over her neck. Then she reared back and rose up. Calvin would have mercifully fallen off except that his belt hooked over the saddlehorn! Some would say the next few seconds were reminiscent of a frenzied mating ritual involving a sea otter and a fire hose. Calvin, in the re-telling of his final descent, remarked of a Zen-like experience where everything became slow motion. He flashed back on the memory of his friend Monica, a barrel racer. She, too, had gotten out over the top of her horse on the last barrel and hooked the front of her bra over the saddle horn. Calvin remembered thinking that, surely those puny hooks would break, not thinking it through that Monica was a full figured woman and had industrial strength hardware six inches wide across her back. She crossed the finish line lying on the horse like a surfboard. The memory of Monica faded... Calvin's
meteor-like impact was slowed only by the fact that he tangled an arm
in the coils of his rope on the way down which flipped him over, allowing
him to land feet first...on his bad knee. He did the splits, injuring
a groin muscle. The grandson clapped. |
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