He Trots THE Air

Her horse had stayed by her side for 25 years. Now it was time to let him go

- Pam Houston

IN THE SUMMER OF 2019, I put my old roan horse in the ground. But there’s way more to the story than that. Thirty-nine years on the planet, 25 of those with me.

The first thing I noticed about Roany was that he had a kind eye; the second was his size—just under 17 hands (five foot eight) at the shoulder. The cowboy from Santa Fe, New Mexico, who sold him didn’t tell me much apart from his age, which likely had a year or two shaved off. Within days, I came to understand Roany’s intensely good nature. Each morning when I went out to feed him, he greeted me with a just-happy-tobe-here chortle.

He was as solid a trail horse as I’ve ever ridden, never flinching in strong winds, or while crossing water, or when mule deer twins who’d been stashed by their mother in some willows leaped in front of him. He was so bombproof that the county searchand-rescue team enlisted his help a few times a year to find and deliver a wayward hiker.

I bought Roany the same year I moved to a ranch in Creede, Colorado, because Deseo, my other horse, was deciding that Colorado was the scariest place he’d ever been. First off, there was snow—a whole lot of it. The predator-to-livestock ratio was not to his liking, and the pasture was surrounded by 100-foot spruce trees that often sang in the wind.

I grew up in an unpredictably violent household, so my temperament ran a little closer to Deseo’s. I counted on Roany to keep the whole barnyard calm, not just Deseo and the mini donkeys but also the ewes and lambs, the recalcitrant rams, the ageing chickens and me.

ROANY BLEW BUBBLES IN HIS WATER BUCKET BECAUSE HE KNEW IT MADE ME LAUGH.