Every Living Thing (16 page)

“Well, what a dirty trick!” I said. “But please don’t worry about paying me. Any time will do. I’m really very sorry—this must have upset you terribly.” As I left the house it was difficult to believe that there were such people who would come into the homes of decent old folks and rob them of their precious few pounds. But sadly I had heard this story before. These two men had been going around Darrowby lately, getting into houses on any pretext and carrying out their despicable actions. They specialised in robbing elderly people. They weren’t very brave.

A few days later I was passing Mrs. Coates’s bungalow when I thought I had better check on Wolfie. The old lady let me in and I looked at the big dog lashing his tail vigorously and snarling at the same time.

“He’s champion,” Mrs. Coates said. “Never shuffles round on ’is bottom now.”

“Oh, that’s good,” I said. “It’s an unpleasant thing for a dog.”

She caught my arm. “Ah’ve got summat else to tell you. Ah’ve had the thieves in!”

“Oh no, those two men? Not you, too! I’m so sorry.”

“Aye, but listen!” she said excitedly. “One of them fellers was talkin’ to me and t’other was in the kitchen with Wolfie. I heard ’im saying, ‘Nice doggie, nice doggie,’ then there was a terrible yell and a scuffle and the feller went past the parlour door screamin’, with Wolfie hangin’ on to ’is backside. The other ’un ran out, too, but Wolfie caught ’im just as he was going through the door and he didn’t half holler out! Last thing I saw was the two of them runnin’ for their lives down t’street with Wolfie after them.”

She reached into the corner of the fireplace and handed me a jagged piece of blood-stained cloth, obviously from the seat of a man’s trousers. “Wolfie brought that back with ’im.”

I laughed so much that I had to lean against the mantelpiece. “Oh, what a lovely story. I bet we’ll never see those two around here again.”

“Nay, nay, that we won’t.” The old lady put her head in her hands and giggled. “Eee, I can’t help laughin’ when I think of that feller saying, ‘Nice doggie, nice doggie.’ ?

“Yes, it’s very funny,” I said. “He must have been looking at the wrong end.”

N
INETY PER CENT OF
horses’ lamenesses are in the feet. So the old saying goes and I could see it was true here.

The big Clydesdale was lifting his near hind leg, holding the quivering foot a few inches from the ground, then putting it down carefully. I had seen this sort of thing a hundred times before and it was diagnostic.

“He’s got gravel,” I said to the farmer. This was the local term for an infection of the foot. It happened when the horse bruised or cracked its sole, allowing the entrance of bacteria. An abscess formed and the only cure was to pare down the horn and evacuate the pus.

This involved lifting the hoof and either resting it on your knee in the case of a hind foot or between your legs in a fore and cutting through the sole with a hoof knife. Sometimes the horn could be as hard as marble and the exact spot difficult to find and I had spent many back-breaking sessions hacking away with the horse resting his full weight on me as the sweat ran down my nose and dripped onto the hoof.

“Right,” I said, “let’s have a look at it.” I ran my hand down the leg and was reaching for the foot when the horse whickered with anger, turned quickly and lashed out at me, catching me a glancing blow on the thigh.

“He can still kick with that bad foot, anyway,” I murmured.

The farmer took a firmer grip on the halter and braced his feet. “Aye, he’s a cheeky sod. Watch yourself. He’s given me a clout or two.”

I tried again with the same result and at the third attempt, after the flailing foot had narrowly missed me, the horse swung round and sent me crashing against the side of the box. As I got up and, grimly determined, had another go at reaching the foot, he reared round at me, brought a fore foot crashing on my shoulder, then tried to bite me.

The farmer was an elderly man, slightly built, and he didn’t look happy as he was dragged around by the plunging animal.

“Look,” I said, panting and rubbing my shoulder. “We’ve got a bit of a problem. I have to bring Denny Boynton out to another gravelled horse near here this afternoon. We’ll call in about two o’clock and treat this chap. He’s got a shoe on, anyway, and it’s a lot easier to do the job with a blacksmith.”

Farmer Hickson looked relieved. “Aye, that’ll be best. I could see we were goin’ to have a bit of a rodeo!”

As I drove away, I mused on my relationship with Denny. He and I were old friends. He was a bit younger than I and accompanied me regularly on horse visits. In the fifties, the tractor had more or less taken over on the farms, but some farmers still liked to keep a cart-horse and took a pride in them. Most of them were big, docile animals and I had always had a strong empathy with them as they plodded patiently through their daily tasks, but that one back there was an exception.

Normally I would have taken the shoe off without much trouble before exploring the foot. All vets had courses in shoeing early in their education and I carried the tools with me, but I would have had some fun trying to do that with Hickson’s animal. It was a job for Denny.

The Boynton smithy stood right at the end of Rolford village, and as I drove up to the squat building with its clustering trees and backdrop of green hillside I felt as I often did that I was looking at one of the last relics of the past. When I first came to Yorkshire every village had its blacksmith’s shop and Darrowby itself had several. But with the disappearance of the draught horse they had just melted away. The men who had spent their lives in them for generations had gone and their work places, which had echoed to the clatter of horses’ feet and the clang of iron, were deserted and silent.

Denny’s shop was one of the few that had survived, mainly because he was an expert farrier, skilled in the often specialised shoeing that riding horses required. As I walked in he was bent over the foot of a strapping hunter, laughing and joking with the attractive young owner who stood nearby.

“Now then, Mr. Herriot,” he cried as he saw me. “Be with you in a few minutes.” He was holding the hot shoe against the foot and the smell of the smoke rising from the seared horn, the glow of the forge and the ringing bang-bang as his still sprightly father hammered the glowing metal on the anvil evoked a hundred memories of a richer past.

Denny wasn’t very big but he was lean and hard, the muscles on his forearms bulging and tensing as he worked. He had the broad, strong back essential to his trade, but apart from that he projected the same image of stringy durability as the Dales farm workers who worked alongside me every day.

Now he was tapping the nails into the shoe, and after a couple of minutes he straightened up and slapped the horse’s rump. “Right, Angela, you can take this awd screw away, now,” he said, flashing the girl a white-toothed grin.

She giggled and it struck me that it was a typical scene. Denny with his impish eyes and the hint of recklessness in his craggy features was undoubtedly attractive to the many young county ladies who brought their horses to him, and I had never seen him working without a running badinage. A visit to the Boynton smith was in some ways a social event.

As horse and rider left he reached for his bag of tools. “Right, Mr. Herriot. At your service!”

“Will you have time to do another gravel job on the way, Denny?” I asked.

He laughed. “We’ll mek time. Anything to oblige a gentleman!”

As we drove away I felt I ought to put him in the picture about Hickson’s horse. I knew he had been dealing with skittish, often dangerous horses since childhood, and I had seen him again and again pushing big, explosive animals around effortlessly as though they were kittens, but it was only right to warn him.

“Denny,” I said, “this horse at Hickson’s could be difficult. He’s a wild beggar and I could hardly get near him.”

“Oh, aye?” The young man, tool-bag on knee, cigarette dangling from his lips, was lazily observing the passing countryside. He didn’t seem to be listening.

I tried again. “He had a few goes at me with his hind foot, then started to wave his forefeet about….”

He dragged his eyes unwillingly from the window. “It’ll be right, Mr. Herriot, it’ll be right,” he murmured absently, stifling a yawn.

“He’s a biter, too. Damn nearly got me on the shoulder just as I was trying to get away from—”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Denny shouted as we passed a roadside farmhouse. “That’s George Harrison in the yard. Just slow down a second, will you, Mr. Herriot?” He wound the window down quickly. “Nah then, George, how ista?” he yelled at the young farmer, who was shouldering a straw bale. “Have ye sobered up yet? Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

The two men exchanged a few shouted pleasantries before we took off. Denny turned to me. “By gaw, George had a skinful last night at the Licenced Victuallers’ Ball. Still looks a bit green—heh-heh!”

I decided to give up my attempts at warning him. He clearly wasn’t interested.

He kept filling me in with some uproarious details of the previous evening, but as we drew up in Hickson’s yard he fell silent. His face was suddenly drawn and serious as he peered this way and that through the car windows. I knew what was coming next.

“Any savage dogs here, Mr. Herriot?”

I suppressed a smile. Through all the years I had known him he had always said this.

“No, none at all, Denny,” I replied.

He stared suspiciously at an elderly sheep-dog enjoying a drink of milk at the kitchen door. “How about that ’un?”

“That’s old Zak. He’s twelve! Quiet as a sheep.”

“Aye, mebbe, but that doesn’t mean you can trust ’im. Get ’im inside, any road.”

I walked across the yard, waited until the old dog had licked out his bowl, then ushered him, white muzzle upturned and tail waving at the attention, into the house. I had done this so many times, but still Denny wasn’t keen to leave the car. After a final inspection in all directions he got out and stood warily on the cobbles for a few moments, then he hurried to the loose box where the horse was waiting.

The farmer, gripping the halter tightly, smiled uncertainly at Denny as he came in. “Watch ’im, lad. He’s a funny sod.”

“Funny, is he?” The young man, hammer dangling from his hand, grinned and stepped close to the horse, and the animal, as though determined to prove the words, laid back his ears and lashed out.

Denny avoided the flying foot with practised ease and gave a demon king’s laugh, throwing back his head. “Aha! You’re like that, are ye? Right, ya bugger, we’ll see!” Then he moved in again. I don’t know how he kept clear of the horse’s repeated attempts to injure him, but within a minute he caught the claw of his hammer in the iron shoe in full flight and pulled it towards him. “Okay, ya big bugger, I’ve got ye now, haven’t I, eh?”

The horse, on three legs, made a few half-hearted attempts to pull his foot away as Denny hung on and chat-tered at him, but it was clear that he realised that this new man was an entirely different proposition. Denny, with the foot on his knee, reached for his tools, muttering threats all the time, and as I watched unbelievingly he knocked up the clenches, drew out the nails with his pincers and removed the shoe. The horse, motionless except for a quivering of the flanks, was totally subjugated.

Denny displayed the sole for my inspection. “Now, where d’you want me, Mr. Herriot?” he asked.

I tapped along the sole until I found a place that seemed tender. To make sure, I squeezed at the place with the pincers and the animal flinched.

“That’s the spot, Denny,” I said. “There’s a crack there.”

The young farrier began to cut away the horn with expert sweeps of his sharp knife. This was a job I had done so often by myself, but it was a joy to see an expert doing it. In no time at all he had followed the crack down and there was a hiss, then a trickle of pus as he reached the site of the infection. It was one of the most satisfactory things in veterinary practice, because if the abscess is not evacuated it causes the most acute agony for the animal. Sometimes the pus can work up under the wall of the hoof till it bursts out at the coronet after a long period of pain, and in other cases I have seen horses having to be put down when all attempts to relieve the infection have failed and the poor animal was laid groaning with a hugely swollen foot. Such memories from the old cart-horse days always haunted me.

Nothing of that sort was going to happen this time and my relief was as strong as always. “Thanks, Denny, that’s great.” I administered antibiotic and antitetanus injections and said to the farmer, “He’ll soon be sound now, Mr. Hickson.”

Then Denny and I set off for our next appointment. As we drew out of the yard I looked at Denny. “Well, you certainly dealt with that wild horse. It was amazing how you quietened him.”

He leaned back in his seat, lit another cigarette and spoke lazily. “Nobbut a bit daft, ’e was. It was nowt. There’s lots like ’im—silly big bugger.”

He resumed his account of the previous evening, chuckling softly at times, and as I glanced round at him, totally relaxed, cap on the back of his head, smiling his carefree smile, he looked as though nothing could ever upset him. However, as I stopped the car at the farm where we had to see the other horse his insouciant air fell away from him as though snatched by an unseen hand. Clutching his tool-bag, he anxiously scanned every corner of the farmyard. I waited confidently for his next words.

“Any savage dogs here, Mr. Herriot?”

“W
HAT IS IT?” “
W
HAT
the devil is that?” “A badger? Never!”

Pandemonium broke out in the Drovers’ Arms. Calum and I had been returning from a communal visit and when I suggested a beer he got out of the car, slung Marilyn over his shoulder and strode into the bar.

The eyes of the regulars popped, they spluttered into their beer and in a few seconds we were the centre of an excited crowd. I detached myself and sat quietly with my beer as the young man held court, answering the volleys of questions calmly and with a quiet satisfaction. It was clear that he loved to display his adored pet to anybody who was interested, and with most people it wasn’t just a case of interest; he created a sensation wherever he went.