Hold Your Horses

There are obstacles to the ordinary citizen starring in a Western movie of the type where the lean, taciturn stranger moves into town, reluctantly accepts the office of town sheriff out of his innate sense of justice, faces off against the bad guys either alone or with only a few scraggly compatriots, wins the day through a mixture of quick draw and sharpshooting skills, and then rides out of town, alone as ever, while the townspeople cheer him on and the quiet young schoolteacher silently weeps.

I can give you one concrete reason right off the bat.

This is the matter of parking your horse.

OK, it's not called parking your horse, but whatever it is they do call the business of riding into town and up to the saloon or general store or hotel, hopping down from your steed, taking the reins in hand, and then looping or draping those same reins along the hitching post.

Hitching, yes, that’s it. Or tethering.  Hitching or tethering.

This single action unfolds several dozen times in the course of your average Western, by hero and villain alike, and people accept it as the natural order of things.

This leaves open the question of why the horse doesn’t just walk away.

Those reins are never tied, or fixed, or locked with a knot, be that a half, sailor’s, or slip knot.

Even those of a trusting nature would be happier with something resembling a bicycle lock in this situation. As it is, it’s clear to anyone that a simple tug on the part of the horse is all that is needed to unloose those reins and allow it trot away in a state of complete freedom.

Such a horse might perhaps say to their friends, “that horse bound to the hitching post, frozen in old habits as if he didn’t have a mind of his own? That horse was the Old Me. Meet the New Me.”

You will say perhaps, as others have, that horses aren’t known for their soaring intelligence, in fact just the opposite, and they may simply not have the brainpower to back up and wander away down the street, a free horse.

Well, how much brainpower are we talking here?  A little trial, a little error, a little “hmm, I wonder what would happen if I backed up?” and the thing is solved from the horse’s point of view before the saloon doors have stopped swinging from the hero's entrance. 

If it were me, and I was an Old West sheriff or marshal, and I had ridden into town and up to the saloon where piano music was spilling out into the dusty street, and I had hopped down from my horse and loosely draped the reins over that post, and had swept back my coat back so that one and all could see the guns I was wearing, and then had strode boldly into that saloon, I would always have an uneasiness about the matter.

Say that Big Tom Calhoun, the evil cattle baron, is in the place that night, and everyone knows that there is bad blood between us. He’s sitting at one of the tables a bit off to one side of the bar.

It’s danged crowded in that room, and the place is full of noise and clamor, but a hush falls over the whole place when they see it’s me that just entered.

There’s a certain scraping of chairs as people push back from the table, and the piano player stops cold.

I stride on up to the bar and lay my hat down, and say to the bartender, “give me a shot of whiskey, and leave the bottle.”

This fellow is mighty nervous but he does as I ask.

There’s a big old mirror behind him and that’s where I’m watching Big Tom and the whole Devil’s Gulch Gang. I turn around, pretty as you please, place my elbows on the bar, lean back, and say, “Big Tom, there’s all sorts of people looking for you over in Yuma City. I’ve come to bring you in.”

Big Tom, who is one of those coldblooded killers who nonetheless commands respect from his underlings and the people around him, says in an offhand manner, “you reckon you can do that all by yourself against my veritable army of bloodthirsty rustlers and murderers and thieves? You might want to come back another day when you’ve got someone on your side, marshal.”

“Don’t need no one on my side, Tom,” I drawl, “I’ve got all I need right here,” and at this point I nod down to my guns.

This is a point in this narrative where I, the sheriff, need to be operating with a maximum of concentration and confidence.

I’ve got a lot of people looking at me right now, and they are likely to be swayed one way or the other based upon my words and manner in the next few minutes.

Problem is, it’s just about then that I would start to worry about that horse outside.

“Well, why doesn’t he just back up and walk away?” is the thought that is racing through my head, when by rights I ought to be gauging the placement of all my enemies so that when I ‘fan’ the trigger of my six-shooter once the havoc commences, I can gun them down with relative ease.

But no, I’m got this idea in my head that I can’t get rid of.

It’d be the simplest thing in the world for that horse to just swing his head this way or that, free the rein from the post, and go wandering down the street to see what interesting things there are to see.

Right now, Big Tom is himself getting ready to stand up, and people are really scattering, clearing the space between us. He says, “you’re a brave man, marshal, but a foolish one. If that’s how it has to be…” he leaves the rest of the sentence dangling.

And right when it’s my turn to say something cocky or brave or foolhardy or grimly humorous, I would say instead, “could you give me a minute, please? I just had the nuttiest idea about my horse and I have to go check something. Stay right there! Won’t be a sec! I just get the dangedest feeling he’s going to walk away. Excuse me.”

Well, Big Tom can’t believe this, nor can all the people, as I go clumping out in my boots and spurs across the wooden floor to the street, looking a bit or a maybe a lot foolish, with my ears burning, and a bit of a hangdog expression, and I peek out the door and there that horse is, just where I left him.

Satisfied, finally, I turn around, and clump all the way back to the bar, and lean back into it like I was before, but Big Tom has gone back to playing poker, and I’m having trouble getting anyone’s attention, and we just can’t seem to get that old back and forth patter going again, me and Big Tom.

The moment has passed, and it’s all because I was overtaken by my wonderment that that horse didn’t just walk away.

There’s a certain amount of romance in these movies too, and I for one would like to get my share.

It is not hard for me to picture the woman who owns the bar, and maybe the hotel too, a tough type, or so she would like you to think, but underneath that steely exterior it strikes me that there’s a heart of gold.

This is confirmed when she says something of the like, “it’s a big bold land, and I mean to break it, I don’t care what these evil cattle barons put in my way. I’m going to tame this land once I get out of the saloon business, and homestead over yonder, where the sky is as blue and wide as the ocean, and all a woman needs is one good man.”

She lowers her eyes here and looks at me shyly, for now that she has gotten to know me a little better she has to admit she likes what she sees. She repeats, “and all she needs is one good man.” She looks directly into my eyes at this point.

“Do you have a horse?” I ask.

She seems a bit surprised at the question but answers honestly. ‘Why, yes, yes, I do.”

“How do you tie it up at the hitching post?”

“Why, I just loosely loop the reins over it, like anyone does.”

“Doesn’t that seem a bit strange to you? What’s to keep the horse from simply backing up and walking away? Did you ever think of that?”

Remarks such as these have been known to take the magic out of previously magic moments.

She’s looking at me now with a whole other look than she had before, I would describe this new look as the way a person looks at you when you’re chatting with them at a cocktail party and they keep one eye out over your shoulder in the desperate hope that someone more interesting than you comes along, and any second now would be just fine with them.

In any event, the moment is past, and there’s no more talk of the big wide sky or the one good man or any of that business, which otherwise looked like it might be leading somewhere interesting.

So, count me among those who are not cut out for the Western hero life; I seem to have trouble staying in the moment, which is a dangerous thing to do in those circumstances.

Thing is, I blame it all on that danged horse.