The Mount
Chapter Two
Sometimes my new Little Master loves me so much he licks me all over my cheeks and ears. Nibbles, too. The big one tells him, “We don’t do that.” But my little one does it anyway.
They train us, me and my little one, at the same time. “Tight but light,” the big one says to him. “Remember your hand strength.”
Our trainer sits on a high stool and watches. He carries a pole long enough to reach the whole round pen. Then he starts to yell—at my Little Master, even though he’s His Excellent Excellency About-To-Be-The-Ruler-Of-Us-All.
“Look! Look! Remember every Sam can tell which way to turn by your own head movements. Poke him! Poke! Poke! Far side! If you got poked in one side, which way would you move? Give him a pat. He’s done well. But never pat for no good reason.”
I get tired of hearing the exact same thing every day, but my Little Master has to learn. They yell at him a lot more than they yell at me. They always say if the rider is good then the mount is good.
My Little Master, The-Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All, His Excellent Excellency, is still too young to be masterful. He’s so young and little he doesn’t understand big words, and he can’t say much more than, “Go, go, go,” and, “Bad boy. Good boy.”
He almost falls off lots of times and sometimes does. He’s so awkward, pulls on me and pricks me. Young as he is, they let him wear needles. “Don’t you realize how that hurts?” our trainer says. Then he pricks His Excellent Excellency really hard with his own needles. (They don’t cry like we do, they just droop their ears and tails.)
Sometimes The-Future-Master pulls my head around hard and leans the wrong way by mistake and makes me fall, too. I’m supposed to not fall, no matter that it’s his fault. When I fall, I get a poling.
“See what you made me do?” our trainer says. To me. “Now you’ll have another scar. We’ll have to paint over that when we show you.”
But every now and then we, His Excellent Excellency and I, get a playtime together. We play guess where and guess again where, and I run up and down and lean low so he can see where a thing might be. I hear his ears flap right next to mine. That’s his giggle. Sometimes I do a kind of lope that bounces him. Sometimes I twist us around until we’re both dizzy. He flaps and flaps. Then we get to sit on the grassy bank and rest together and he pats me. I’m not allowed to pat him back or I would. Except they prefer strokes. It’s us primates that pat and like pats.
I don’t want to hurt His Excellent Excellency, Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All. I would save him from harm. I keep wondering how I can prove that to them. I’m so tired at quit-time I don’t read much anymore. What I do is daydream about how I might find a way to rescue him some day to prove to them how I feel.
Even though my mom isn’t here, there’s nice things about this new place. We’re out in the country—because of fresh, clean air for The-Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All, and they say it’s just as much for me. I need good clean air, too. The mount of The-Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All is just as important as The-Future-Master himself.
I can see the mountains and the forest from my paddock. Some pretty close. I wonder if they’ll ever let us go there. Excellent Excellency would like it, too. I don’t dare ask them, but at playtime I dare ask him if he wants to go and he says, “Oh yes, go, go, go,” and flaps his ears like anything.
“We’ll go,” I say.
“There!” he says, and points with his fingers all spread out as if to grab hold of the forest. I pretend to bite them and then he pretends to choke me.
Then I say, “Guess what?”
“What?”
“My real person name is Charley. Isn’t that funny? And guess what? We call all of you Hoots. I suppose because of that big ho you do, so I’m a Sam and you’re a Hoot.”
He flaps his ears and gives a ho, which we can’t begin to imitate even when we try but that their babies can do from when they’re first born. He’s so close I have to hold my ears until it’s over.
I didn’t think they bothered listening to us at playtime. And we didn’t mean anything real, but they take a pole to both of us. We look at each other because neither of us knows what it’s about. Is it because I called him a Hoot and he let me? Or because I said we’d go to the forest and he wanted to, which how could we without a grownup of one of them with us? Or is it because he’s not supposed to give a ho unless there’s a good reason for it and it’s half my fault that he did it?
