Every Living Thing Read online

  Chapter 17

  NINETY 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 farm