We had a remount stallion in the late 1930s. His name was Stevenson II. Foaled in France in 1925, he was a Thoroughbred, registered with the Jockey Club. His color was true black. A cracked sesamoid bone in a front foot ended his polo career.
Dad bred him to a lot of range mares. Some of those mares were of pretty poor quality. We had a bay mare we called "Fertilizer." Those half-Thoroughbred colts improved the quality of the ranch horses in the area, but most of them were bad to buck.
We used one of Steve's colts, a chestnut we called Mike, until he was an old horse. I still have a blue ribbon he won at the Gila County Fair in Pine, Arizona, in 1939, as a foal. As far as I know, he never bucked off a single rider. For years, he bucked every morning as he left the home corral, and every evening when he returned. If he was tired after a hard day, his bucking might be mostly a crow hop/lope, but he always went through the motions.
He was a great rope horse and hunting horse. We brought home bear and deer behind the saddle without incident. You could sit right under his nose and hold the reins while you emptied a high-powered rifle. I think one of the reasons he stayed sound and unspoiled was that, because he bucked, kids and dudes were never allowed to ride him.
I rode Mike out across Hardscrabble Mesa once to pick up a deer that a hunter had hung in a tree. He was a pretty old horse at that time. It was almost dark when I finally located the deer. The night was very dark. This horse kept trying to head farther to the east than my sense of direction told me we should be going. He kept moving slow, with his head low, like horses travel sometimes when they smell rattlesnakes, especially if they have experienced a rattlesnake bite. I finally gave up and let him have his head.
He headed eastward until he came to the trail we came in on. Then he turned, and I knew we were on the right track. He still traveled with his head low. I figured out after awhile that he was night blind, and was finding his way home by the scent of his own tracks.
It was almost morning when we got to the ranch, but we made it okay. I think that was the first time I came home on him that he didn't buck. That was my first experience with a horse that could not see in the dark.
Dad bred a lot of range mares to Steve, especially around northern Gila County. We had him for four years. The stud fee was $15. Money was scarce before World War II. It was hard to collect a $15 stud fee. A lot of two-year-olds could be had for $25. Sometimes the deal was made for us to breed the mare twice, and keep one of the colts.
One of our neighbors raised several of these half-Thoroughbred horses. He had two brown geldings that had been turned out for eight or ten years. I am not sure how old Spider and Geronimo were when I was riding them. Albert Lufkin's young grandsons had handled them some as foals and as two-year-olds. Under saddle, they bucked so hard and so often they had just turned them out.
We ran across these horses when I was helping Mr. Lufkin gather his cows one spring. I made a deal with Mr. Lufkin to take them to my grandfather's ranch and see if I could make usable horses out of them. I was one of those teenage cowboys "who thought he was good."
Geronimo had good legs and good conformation except his head was shaped like a shoeing hammer. He gave the description "Roman-nosed" a whole new dimension. This horse had a lot of run in him. He bucked every time he was saddled. He was not hard to ride, and he came to respond to the hackamore in a short time. He ended up as a usable cow horse. The last I knew of him, he had not quit bucking.
Spider was another matter. I think Al named him Spider because his hind legs were bowed. It made him look a little odd, when he moved, but he moved okay and was athletic enough.
Spider might buck a hundred times during a day's ride. We had a lot of screw worms that summer, so we rode a lot. He didn't buck hard or long, just often, and about anything. He might start bucking if you shifted your weight in the saddle.
I had been riding him every other day or so for almost a month before I noticed that he had a delayed response to everything. I first noticed that he would spook and then walk two or three steps before he started bucking. He seemed to ignore a bump on the hackamore rein, then after two or three seconds, he would spin like a reining horse.
I had not ever heard of any horses with this sort of a disconnect in their nervous system. It resulted in time lapse between stimulation and response. Every time. I have never seen another horse with this kind of a short circuit or met anyone who has had this kind of experience with a horse.
When I confirmed my suspicion that he had a time delay in his response system, I was sure that he would never make a cow horse, even if he did quit bucking. It was a blow to my ego that it took me so long to recognize Spider's disability. I hope that if I ever happen to run across another like him, I would recognize it right away. If anyone has knowledge of a horse like this, I would like to hear about it.
