Cimarron Rose

Cimarron Rose is a registered bay mare that I have raised from a foal. Born in 2000, I had high hopes for her as a riding horse, but she started out as a hard luck filly just like her momma, Shiloh. This little mare is affectionate, willful and smart.

She was born here on the ranch in west central New Mexico Territory. She is the smallest horse on the place, going at 900-1000 pounds. Her momma was a Doc Bar granddaughter from Texas, and her daddy is a registered Paint and American Quarter Horse out of Arizona.

One late summer evening when she was a long yearling I went out to let the horses in for their evening feed. I found her standing at the gate bleeding badly with terrible tears on one of her hind legs. Tendons, muscle and tissue were exposed. I cleaned and wrapped her leg, administered 20ccs of penicillin and isolated her in a holding pen for the night. The nearest veterinarian at the time was 60 miles away (now veterinary help is 75 - 115 miles away).

Here is where the story gets "interesting", for lack of a better word.

At the time, I had a fellow working on the place that can best be described as a troll. He was physically very strong, short and built like Quasimodo without the hump. He was also so dyslexic that I had to replace an analogue watch I had given him with a digital one as he could not tell time. He was mentally and emotionally challenged but functional most of the time. He was also extremely talented with wood and was a very hard worker when he was stable.

I am a former professor of criminology and forensics and currently semi-retired as a homicide forensics and reconstruction consultant so my skill sets in this beautiful but backward country are not the norm. Of course, I cannot do what most of the competent folks around here know how to do such as fix cars, run chainsaws, etc. In fact, if I get out tools, women, kids and small animals are best kept away. I looked at the wound on the little mare and it was obviously a barbed wire injury. I was in the process of replacing all internal cross fencing on the nearly 3000 acres that comprises the ranch with smooth wire for the safety of the horses but had not yet been able to do the Shiloh Pasture. This historic old ranch was a working cattle outfit since the early 1900s and barbed wire is a necessary evil when trying to contain the obstreperous bovine.

I asked the Troll if he knew anything about the incident. He had been working that day cutting cedar in that particular pasture. He was an inveterate liar - usually harmless tales of an errant and simplistic imagination. His self-image was of a mountain man and he patterned himself after a historic local character named Ben Lilly that made a career of slaughtering mountain lions. He denied knowing anything, but his body language was questionable during his responses.

I hauled Cimarron to my veterinarian the following day and he sewed her up. He said there was considerable damage to tendons, muscle and ligaments, but nothing had been completely severed. All we could do was haul her home, keep her as quiet as possible and hope for the best. Upon arriving at home, I saddled Stormy, and patrolled every inch of the pasture looking for the site of the incident. No hair or blood was found in loose or damaged wire on the pasture perimeter. No scuff marks where she might have slipped or rolled into the wire. I did eventually find blood near tire tracks and boot prints matching the Troll's out where he had been cutting cedar. Circumstantial evidence to be sure but insufficient for proof or even enough to confront him with an accusation.

I have spent a significant part of my life in law enforcement in one way or another and am very sensitive to the use of unsubstantiated accusations on the part of cops and prosecutors. I find the willingness and desire on the part of agents of the state to accuse, arrest and convict someone without genuine proof objectionable in the extreme. I am often accused of helping the guilty to go free, but my retort is that, like Hammurabi, thus will also the innocent go free - a concept not particularly important in the quantitatively driven bureaucracies of the contemporary legal system.

Cimarron never fully recovered from the wound and her days as a riding mare were over. This past spring, I started her out learning to be a pack horse - a mutual learning experience for us both and the topic of another post.

In 2003, after I had fired the Troll for theft, lying and sexual perversion, I was able to help prosecute him for animal abuse. He had a burro that had lived in a shed for several years that had never seen the light of day and when the animal was finally confiscated it was standing in years of poop near the roof of the old shed. He also had an emu in a cage that was so low the great bird could not stand up. When confronted about it during the prosecution of the case, he cut the bird's head off and stated that now it would fit in the enclosure. The final straw was his taking a beautiful young horse that he had somehow acquired and tying it to a tree out in the woods leaving it to starve to death. After his jail term - which was not nearly long enough - he was ordered out of the county never to be allowed to return.

This fellow came from a genetic toxic waste background. According to reports, his father was extremely abusive. His mother was nearly illiterate and was physically challenged in shape and size. His brother was a drug addict. The bunch of them reminded me of the depictions of the inbreds in the movie 'Deliverance" with Burt Reynolds. A case for eugenics if I ever saw one.

Based upon the animal cruelty committed by the Troll, the evidence at the scene in the pasture, his response to my questioning and my own intuition, I am convinced that he took a piece of barbed wire and deliberately wrapped it around Cimarron's leg and sawed away. He walked on this crime and my mare pays the price to this day.

I have done my share of killing as a special operations soldier in various ugly places around the world and I have no problem with it. But, I cannot abide suffering -- one of the many reasons for my absolute hatred of the Islamists we are currently at war with. Suffering of any sentient being produces wrath in me like nothing else. In a perfect world, the justice for the Troll would have been delivered with barbed wire in a manner consistent with what he did to my loving and trusting little mare. Absent that possibility, he and all those like him should be summarily shot and left for the coyotes.

As a teenager, I attempted to intervene in an incident where a Mexican fellow was beating his dog. This particular Mexican, as it turned out, was a Golden Gloves boxer and he left off beating the dog and beat the living day lights out of me. It was a valuable lesson that was eloquently confirmed in a passage by Camu I believe where he noted that in this world, having courage and being right are not nearly enough.

As we have become more "civilized", we have acquired a penchant for excusing all manner of aberrant behavior and have lost the moral certitude necessary for the application of meaningful justice. Every time, I halter Cimarron and take her out I think about the Troll and am reminded of how little real justice there is in this world.

Far Rider

See to your weapons and stand to your horses