RIDERS ON THE STORM

She asked them to come to the school to talk to the kids. Hoot got a phone number and I contacted the school. They envisioned an assembly of all seventy-five first graders inside the school, then we would take them outside to meet a couple of our animals.

I substituted one day in a first grade classroom.

I almost lost my mind.

I envisioned a day longer than the one we spent getting into Steamboat Springs.

"It sounds like fun," I told the principal. My mother always taught me little white lies were okay now and then.

I dressed up in my reproduction split skirt. Hoot rode Reckon, Mark rode Tiny and Bull came along wearing his pack saddle. We tied the animals to trees and prayed they’d behave while we were inside. Seventy-five children waited inside and three equine children waited outside.

The kids trooped in with their teachers, all wide-eyed at the sight of Hoot and Mark. They grouped around us in a semi-circle, sitting on the floor. Hoot strode into the middle, in his element. Mark and I hung back a bit.

The principal introduced us and Hoot said to the kids, "Good mornin’..."

When only shy murmurs greeted him in return, he cupped one ear and hollered, "I can’t hear you...Good mornin’!"

"Good morning," they shouted back and from there on he had them wherever he wanted them.

He told them about the ride, where we’d been and where we were going. He talked about riding in snow and in rain. He told them about mud and horses and mules.

"What are those?" one little girl asked, pointing at his spurs.

"You probably call them ‘spurs’," he said, then pointed to his leg. "And you call these ‘chaps’. In Texas, we call them ‘hooks’ and ‘leggin’s’."

"What do you do with them?" she asked again, pointing at the spurs.

"I don’t ever hurt my horse with them," he explained, "but I use them to tell him what to do. It’s like talking to him with my legs."

Hands shot up all around us. The kids were bursting with questions and Hoot started working his way around the circle.

"He’s never going to be able to get to all of them," I whispered to Mark. "We have to help him."

Mark is nowhere near as outgoing as Hoot. As I started in the middle of the circle, however, I saw him take the left side of the room. Within seconds, he was squatting down with the kids, having fun with them.

Those kids were wonderful. Polite and fascinated, they had a million questions and we answered as many as we could. Much too soon, the principal said it was time to go outside.

Reckon, Bull and Tiny were still tied. Other than tasting a few leaves off the trees, they hadn’t done any damage. We got them in hand and moved them back as the children came out.

Hoot introduced the kids to the animals and animals to the kids. Both sides looked at each other with interest and some consternation. Seventy-five little bodies are a lot and the animals must have looked huge to them, particularly Bull and Tiny.

One little boy raised his hand and asked, "Can I ride one?"

There were a lot of kids and not a lot of time. "I don’t think we can get all seventy-five of them on," Hoot said in a low voice to one of the teachers. "It wouldn’t be fair to the ones who didn’t get a chance."

Mark Andrews had other ideas. While Hoot was making apologies, Mark started loading four and five kids at a time on Bull. When Hoot saw what Mark was doing, he started hoisting kids on and off Reckon.

While the kids giggled and grinned, those two animals stood calm and patient. Little hands patted their necks, noses, whatever they could reach and Bull and Reckon reveled in the attention.

I stood to one side with Tiny, and watched the mutual admiration playing out in front of us. Tiny watched, too.

Not as seasoned or settled as the other two animals, he was behaving, but he wasn’t as sure about the whole scene as Bull and Reckon. Before I had a chance to react, a teacher approached with two kids in wheelchairs.

"Could they pet the horse?" she asked.

Tiny’s eyes showed a little white and his ears flicked at the sight and sound of the chairs. This was way out of his league and I felt him tensing under my hand on his neck. I was trying to figure out how to say, "No", when one of the kids reached out and touched him.

He went very still and I said, "Whoa, buddy, easy," and that massive, black horse lowered his head and looked right in that child’s eyes. An attendant moved the other child in and while they admired Tiny, he admired them.

Animals never cease to amaze me with instinctive emotional intelligence. Tiny was still not at all sure about those wheelchairs, but he never moved. The same horse who just three months earlier tossed Hoot and Mark aside and ran off, stood with extraordinary tolerance while two kids in wheelchairs tickled him.

When it was time to leave, the kids, the animals and we were all reluctant to give up the lovefest. I suppose it sounds silly to hear three adults gush about an hour spent with some kids at an elementary school. Maybe calling it "the best day of the Eye Reckon Freedom Ride" sounds excessive.

To three adults who just two nights earlier huddled between two of these same animals while icicles melted off them and us, the time at Sunset Elementary warmed us to the core. That day carried us through a lot of tough days - and nights.

One of the worst was coming up.

On the way back to camp, a producer of a local TV show caught up with us and asked to do an interview. We never turned down interview requests and agreed to this one. The reporter did a stand up interview with Hoot and Mark and even rode Bull back to camp, perched on the pack saddle.

So far, so good.