Horses

In In Cold Blood, horses move between work, recreation, affection, and loss. At River Valley Farm they belong to the practical life of a livestock operation, but particular animals also become part of the Clutter family’s intimate history: Kenyon Clutter’s beloved Skeeter, and Babe, the old mare who carried Nancy Clutter and her friends to the river. After the family is killed, Babe’s sale at the farm auction gives that history a visible, final parting.

Farm Work and Family Life

Horses are part of the working landscape of River Valley Farm, a large operation whose prosperity rests on crops as well as livestock. The farm’s corral holds a few milking cows and ailing steers, but Babe, an old, fat workhorse, is singled out as a family favorite. Children can ride three or four at a time on her broad back, turning an animal associated with farm labor into a shared source of pleasure across generations.

Babe’s presence is woven into ordinary routines. One Saturday, Nancy returns from a bath in the river on Babe, accompanied by the family dog; horse and rider are wet and bright from the outing. The scene joins the mare to the family’s open-air life, where a river ride can lead back to gardening and conversation. Babe is not merely a possession at the edge of the farm: she participates in the recurring patterns of care and recreation that make the place feel inhabited.

Horses also connect the family’s domestic world to the work of the land. The Clutters keep a herd of several hundred Hereford cattle, while the corral serves as a practical space for animals needing attention. Against that scale of husbandry, Babe’s affectionate place in the family stands out. Her value cannot be measured solely by what she can do as a workhorse, even though her age and usefulness will matter when the estate is later sold.

Kenyon’s Attachment to Skeeter

Kenyon’s relationship with Skeeter reveals a more individual bond. Skeeter was a beautiful strawberry stallion whom Kenyon had raised from a foal. His father warned him not to work the horse too hard, but Kenyon continued to ride him. While Skeeter was running down a road with Kenyon astride, the horse’s heart failed; he stumbled and died.

The loss remains with Kenyon a year later. His grief gives the episode its weight: Skeeter is not an interchangeable farm animal, but a particular horse whose death marks Kenyon’s experience of responsibility and bereavement. Mr. Clutter responds by promising that Kenyon may choose from the following spring’s foals. The promise offers a future attachment, but it does not erase the loss of the horse he had raised. The episode also sets care against use: Kenyon’s father’s warning recognizes the limits of the animal’s endurance, while Kenyon’s continued riding ends in a consequence he mourns.

Babe, Nancy, and the River

Babe carries a different history, one shared with Nancy and Susan Kidwell. The girls often rode together on the mare’s wide back through the wheat fields on summer evenings, heading down to the river and into the water. Their rides made Babe part of a friendship practiced outdoors, in motion, and in company. Nancy loved the river, and the mare helped bring her there.

After the murders, the loss of those habits becomes visible in the altered farm. The hired man’s family has moved away, the house is locked, and Babe waits in a field. When Bobby Rupp visits the property, he hears the mare and approaches her, clutching her mane and rubbing his cheek against her neck in a gesture Nancy used to make. The encounter connects Bobby’s bereavement to the horse through a remembered act of affection: Babe remains present, while the person whose gesture gave that act its meaning is gone.

Babe also persists in the memories of Nancy’s friends. Susan Kidwell recalls the summer rides and the mare wading through the river while the girls played music and sang. After Nancy’s death, Susan has taken in another of Nancy’s orphaned pets, but she has no place to keep a horse. Her concern that Babe may be sold is therefore not abstract sympathy; she knows the mare as part of the life she shared with Nancy and wishes she could give her a home.

The Estate Sale and the Final Parting

At the River Valley Farm auction, Babe is among the last things sold. The sale draws a large crowd, and the auctioneer calls out a broad range of ranch equipment and animals. As the family’s property is dispersed, the old employees who help handle the goods are performing their final service at the farm. Paul Helm describes the auction as like a second funeral, a comparison that reflects how the gradual removal of possessions repeats the family’s earlier loss in another form.

Bidding for Babe is slow. Though Susan is among the spectators and would like to keep the mare, she cannot provide a place for her. A Mennonite farmer buys Babe for seventy-five dollars, saying he might use her for plowing. As he leads her out of the corral, Susan raises a hand as if to wave, then covers her mouth instead. That interrupted farewell makes the sale more than a transaction: Babe leaves the farm where she had carried Nancy and Susan, and the girl who remembers those rides can only watch.

The auction gives Babe’s story a practical ending without making her affection for the family disappear. Her age and possible future use help determine her sale price, while the memories attached to her cannot be bought or kept by the people who remain. In the novel’s account of the farm after the killings, the horse is both an animal with a material fate and a living link to ordinary life before the crime. Her departure makes the estate’s dispersal personal: the place loses not only its equipment and livestock, but also one of the figures through which Nancy’s presence is still remembered.