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Bob Darby came down his driveway in a truck, jumped out and began to wave his arms to push the horses towards me, where a tractor-trailer had come to stop in front of a gate to the Darby pasture.
“Sir,” I yelled to the truck driver. “I need to get those horses through this gate. Could you back up and block the road behind me?”
And so the horses made it into the Darby cow pastime. I pumped the Darbys’ hands to thank them and said idiotically, “How was dinner?”
A semi-circle of people gathered around as I wracked my head for solutions. j
Mr. Bonser suggested getting the sheriffs office to block the highway while we ran the horses back the way they came. But it was nearly dusk, and we had already held up half the county from getting home in time for a warm meal. Besides, what if the horses veered off the highway into one of the unfenced properties between here and there? And, finally, I had no idea where the horses were at the moment—they had disappeared into the far distance of the Darby’s massive pasture.
“Would you like the horses to stay here and calm down overnight while you think of how to move them?” asked Mr. Darby.
Would I ever!
Back at the Price house (I think Dad had dined on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich by then), I reached Moody Aylor, who has handled horses professionally for more than 30 years.
“Can you bring a horse trailer tomorrow morning and help me get these horses back into my uncle’s pasture?” I pleaded.
It wasn’t an easy job, even for this veteran, with an assistant and me helping him. The two fillies had never been halter-broken, much less loaded in a horse trailer.
“Generally speaking, this is not the preferred way to train a horse,” Mr. Aylor said wryly.
Never mind the details. Mr. Aylor rose to the challenge, but it took four hours and a lot of grunting. On the last of four trips pulling his two-horse trailer, Mr. Aylor assured me that he had seen worse situations: “At least none of these horses fell and got wedged between the walls of the trailer.”
I thought that sunny tidbit would make Uncle Buck feel a whole lot better about me and his horses, so I passed it along. His reaction? Let’s just say that it's a good thing we’re blood kin.
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