Jon and Chief

The other day I saw a bright chestnut Quarter Horse gelding with 3 white stockings who reminded me of Jon Martine's horse, Chief. I haven't thought about Jon and Chief for a long time; they were part of a free and wild and adolescent life I left behind in Southern California for a more sober, reflective adulthood in northern Idaho, made poignant by the return, after 17 years, to three distinct seasons with all their attendant emotions.

Jon was part of our Black Mountain Road group of riders, all women except for him, who feared no steep climb or descent, no dimming evening, no weather, and seemed then possessed of infinite time to spend with our horses. We might start out on a morning, ride all day and see no one. Our canyon, Penasquitos - which means "The Little Cliffs" - was for the most part empy then of everything except deer, coyote, rabbit, bobcat, rattlesnake, lizard, vole, field mouse, a few stray cattle, and the ghosts haunting the adobe ruin of the ranch house that first housed the Spanish lords of the land grant.

Some days, our laughter and the hoofbeats were the only sounds save a whisper in the eucalyptus leaves. Our horses caught our spirit, and loved to run. Sometimes we were bucked off in the general ruckus and riot, but we got back on. When we returned to the stables, we'd cool our horses, bathe and curry them, check their hoofs for stones, turn them out to take their dust-bath, then loiter in the shade by the creek and talk.

Jon's wife didn't ride, didn't care for horses. We saw her once in awhile at a barn cook-out, but I remember not knowing her well, for she seemed to prefer not being known by us. We were Jon's friends, and Chief was his best friend - a tall gelding with a mane and tail almost gold, and a sweet yet feisty disposition. Chief would carry Jon anywhere Jon asked. Jon loved that gelding. Hindsight being the bugger it is, I think now that perhaps he loved Chief as much as he loved his wife, and yearned for the life he had with the horse and his horse companions to somehow magically meld with the domestic life his wife wanted him both to have.

Our wild bunch signed on for the annual week-long Penasquitos trek from the canyon up to Mount Palomar. The trail had once been called "Nigger Nate Grade" after the man who had called himself the "first white man on the mountain," though he was a black Westerner. As I was riding with the trekkers, and as I was (and to my best knowledge, remain) a black person, the trail's name was hastily restructured to "Nate Harrison Grade." Our bunch snickered about it, but pretended we knew no other name, political correctness not being our forte long before the term had come into such tiresome use as a way to make people keep their bloody mouth shut.

I still remember Jon and Chief crossing one of the shallow, wide waterways on the journey up. The day was California-hot, we were just out of the avocado groves around noon, and thinking about laying up for a half-hour or so. Everyone had conditioned their horses all summer in preparation, so I daresay we were more in need of a blow and rest than they were. The group would stop after crossing the water.

"Jon, Chief's gonna roll!" we cried, as the chestnut stopped midway and began to paw the water, sending spray everywhere. Jon did not believe us, until Chief's front legs buckled and down he went, Jon and saddle and saddle-bags and all, on his side in the cool, cool water. Jon looked comical, sitting on the dry topside of his basking horse - we all laughed till the tears came, Jon included. A slight-built, thin man with a slight, thin black moustache, he had a wonderful smile that changed a habitually rather anxious face to a handsome one.

As long as we'd been horsing together, we didn't know Jon was hypoglycemic until half through the descent back toward home, after a couple of days spent horse-camping on Palomar. He began to sway in the saddle, Chief doing his best to stay under him, as a good horse will when it feels the load on board shifting in an unusual way, but Chief was starting to be frightened.

I stopped my reliable Appaloosa in front of Chief to present an obstacle to any forward sliding, and two of the other gals pulled up on either side to catch a rein each and steady Jon in the saddle. With Chief stopped, we got him on the ground. He explained weakly about his hypoglycemia; he just needed something to eat. Candy bars, granola, oranges, and I don't know what all else, appeared all around from the other riders. Horse people do tend to look out for one another, at least rough riders outside the over-heated ego festival you may find at some high-end, high-stakes horse shows.

I guess there was more than hypoglycemia that we didn't know about Jon. Less than a year later, he shot himself to death at home, timing it to be sure his wife would be the one to walk in on the horror. The shock to our riding bunch was such that we could barely speak of it to each other. We could say his name, and nothing else.

And there was Chief. Bereft. Grieving. There was Chief, in the permanent care of one of our group - Jon's wife wanted nothing to do with him, made it clear she had no interest in what happened to him. She never came around the stable to talk to any of us. We, including poor Chief, must have represented to her all that had been wrong, missing, broken, between Jon and her. If she would just have spent more time here, someone said, she would have understood it was only about the love of horses, not about other women trying to lure her husband away. It was only about the horses.

But I guess Jon thought he had to choose. And he could not.

So when I saw that bright chestnut gelding the other day, I thought about Jon and Chief, and the tyranny of having to choose.