The Gun Horse

The Gun Horse

It all began with the bad smell.

The sun was setting golden behind the trees and I was in my pasture, enjoying the dry, late-summer grass and noting the tang of the first fall of autumn's leaves, when I smelled it. At first I thought I had nosed my way into a pile of raccoon scat, but I raised my head the bad smell was still there. It clung to the insides of my flared nostrils like a vile pollen. I wrinkled my nose and huffed out a mighty breath.

The smell was like the death stink that came from the butchering shed after my human killed a deer. Only there was something else under it this time. Deer, or fish, or even turkeys have their own unique dead-smells and alive-smells. This wasn't like any of those. It was more like the entrails that my human discarded after he was finished.

The more I breathed, the more the bad smell filled my nose and my mind. I swiveled my ears around and raised my tail. I trotted around the pasture, searching the dense tree cover, the path down the long driveway. I eyed the human's truck, in case it was somehow the source of the badness. That noisy box on wheels was known to produce some noxious fumes from time to time. Today, however, it sat cold and unused. My human had been inside all day, only coming out to let Macy and Buddy urinate (which is apparently not allowed in the house) and to feed me my breakfast.

Before I could make a second circuit of my pasture I was stalled by several decidedly unnatural sounds coming from the house. I snapped my head up, cupping both keen ears towards the building. My skin quivered as if a thousand flies had all landed on me at once. I wasn't afraid of the rattle of wind in the trees, or the hiss of the long grass in my pasture. I had learned that a tarp on the ground wasn't a threat, even thought it crackled and fluttered unpredictably. My human worked long and hard to ease each and every one of my fears. I was even used to the cracking explosion of gunfire. None of those sounds were anything to twitch an ear at compared to what I heard from the house that day.

The report of a gun joined the cacophony, (so unnatural coming from my human's home). The splintered shattering of glass, the barking of two dogs. I couldn't see what was happening. The widows reflected the trees that shifted as uneasily as I did in a breeze infected with that vile smell. I was about to start my trotting again when one of the dogs let out an unnatural cry that set every nerve in my body afire. Once, I had heard a coyote killing a rabbit in the night and the scream that little animal had made in the end... this sound was worse. That terrible, twisted, pain sound that made me dart to the farthest reach of my pasture and stare back at the house hoping that this time the staring pools of glass would offer me an answer.

I needed my human. Where was he?

The front door crashed open and Macy shot out as though someone had lit her stump of a tail on fire. She careened across the yard and ran all the way to the treeline before turning, her ears pinned down and her fur raised.

I snorted, just to let the spooked cattle dog know that I was there and I was watching. I wanted to call to her, to ask her where my human was, but I hesitated. Macy and I had learned to speak to one another both verbally, and with body language over our years as friends. Buddy, the golden retriever, was a bit slower, and sometimes we still had trouble, but not me and Macy. Now though, she wasn't looking at me. She was staring at the house with eyes as wide as two moons.

Another cry came from the house, this one human. It wasn't as tortured as the one a dog had made, but my skin still twitched. Fire ants of panic were crawling across me and, like Macy, I couldn't take my eyes from the now open front door.

My human was there at last! He was wearing one of the flannel shirts he wore to relax and gripping his hunting rifle. When he carried the gun he normally decked himself and me out in special hunting colors and reflectors. I had come to think perhaps the gun didn't work unless we both fairly glowed like twin fireflies.