Rite of Passage

Herskovitz was a little surprised to be tagged quite that easily. “If horses are that lousy, why do we have to go to the trouble of learning how to ride them? Thatз’s what I want to know.”

Even more slowly than usual, Mr. Marechal said, “Well, I could give you reasons, I suppose, but what it all boils down to is that you have to pass a test. The test goes by certain rules and one of those rules is that you have to be able to ride a horse. But don’t let it bother you too much, son. You may find that you like horses after a while.”

He swung over the fence and landed inside. “Now I’m going to show you the first thing about riding. The first thing about riding is getting a saddle on your animal.”

One of the boys said, “Excuse me, but I already know how to ride. Do I have to stick around for this?”

Mr. Marechal said, “No, you don’t, Farmer. You can skip anything you want to. Only one thing, though. Before you walk out on anything you’d best be mighty sure you know every blessed thing I’m going to show, ’cause if it’s something you walked out on I’ll be damned if I’ll do it again for you. If you can’t help missing I might be generous — if I’m in the right mood. If you fall behind of your own doing, you’ll have to catch up on your own, too.”

Farmer said that in that case he thought he’d stick around today just to see how things went.

Mr. Marechal caught up one of the three horses in the corral, the red roan mare, and put a bridle on her, showing us what he was doing as he did it. Then he put on the blanket and the double-cinch saddle. He took them off, and then he showed us again from the beginning. When he was done, he said, “All right. Now you people will have to try it. Go collect your tack and lead out your horses.”

There was a scramble then to find and get acquainted with your horse, locate your gear, and get both into a position where the second might be strapped onto the first. Nincompoop turned out to be brown — what they call a chestnut — and not terribly large. He was more of a pony than a horse, a pony being less than 56 inches high at the shoulder. It seems to be an arbitrary cutoff point. His size pleased me, since a larger animal would probably have intimidated me more than this one did. As it was, I hardly had time to be intimidated, just time to get in line with everybody else, our animals more or less in a row with gear on the left side. Mr. Marechal stood out in front and told us what to do.

The first time went badly. I got everything where I thought it should go, but when I stood back, the saddle didn’t stay in place. It seemed to be in place for a moment and I looked up feeling pleased, but when I looked back, it was tipped. It seemed to be on tightly, but it was tipped.

I figured I’d better try again. I undid the cinch, the strap that goes under the belly of the horse to tie the saddle on, straightened the saddle, and restrapped it.

Mr. Marechal was walking down the line inspecting and offering advice. He got to me as I was hauling the cinch tight.

“Let me show you something,” he said. He walked up to Nincompoop, lifted his knee and rammed him a hard one in the belly. The horse gave a whoof of expelled air, and he yanked the cinch tight. The horse looked at him reproachfully as he notched it.

“This one will swell up on you every time if you let him,” he said. “You’ve got to let him know you’re sharper than he is.”

We spent about an hour with saddling and unsaddling before we quit for the day. On the way home, I asked Jimmy what he thought. We were sharing our shuttle car with half-a-dozen others from our group.

“I like Marechal,” he said. “I think he’s going to be okay.”

One of the girls said, “He doesn’t seem to stand still for any nonsense. I like that. It means we won’t waste any of our time.”

The Farmer boy was in our car. He was the one who already knew how to ride. “My time was wasted,” he said. “He didn’t go over anything I didn’t know already today. That’s what I call nonsense.”

“It may be nonsense for you,” Jimmy said, “but most of the rest of us learned something. If you know everything already, don’t come. Just like he said.”

The boy shrugged. “Maybe I won’t.”

On the cross-level shuttle to Geo Quad, I said to Jimmy, “I was a little disappointed, myself.”

“With Marechal?”

“No. With the whole afternoon. I expected something more.”

“Well, what exactly?”

I shot him a look. “You always like to pin me down, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “I just like to know what you mean, or if you mean anything.”

“Well, Mr. Smarty, what I meant is that it all seemed so businesslike and ordinary. There’s got to be a better word… undramatic.”

“Well, they say Sixth Class is likely to be pretty dull. In three months or so when we’ve got some of the basic stuff down, it should be more exciting.”

We rode silently for a minute while I thought it over. Then I said, “I don’t think so. I’ll bet things stay the same whether we’re Sixth Class, Fourth Class or whatever. It’ll be all the same, businesslike.”

“What’s the matter with you?” Jimmy asked.