Horses

Horses are indispensable working animals in the novel’s rural world, carrying people across long distances, powering ranch operations, and providing a measure of practical skill and status. Their roles range from the old horse pulling Edward Nappo and his son toward their ancestral homeland to Phil Burbank’s capable sorrel and the gentle bay horse he gives Peter. The horses are not merely scenery: their age, gait, training, and usefulness shape what people can do, while the journey of Edward’s family shows how a horse can carry the memory of a homeland even when return is denied.

Work, Mobility, and the Ranch

The ranch depends on horses for both routine labor and movement across a large spread. Phil oversees haying, roundups, ranch work, and the trailing of herds to the railroad, while George Burbank manages finances and business. The division of labor places Phil among the physical tasks and the working cowboys, and horses are central to that practical domain. They are used for riding, running other horses, and trailing cattle; cowboys also wear gloves for these tasks, though Phil rejects protective gloves and takes pride in his unprotected, strong hands.

The seasonal work of haying makes the scale of horse-powered labor especially clear. Before the work begins, Phil arranges equipment and provisions: eight mowing machines, six buck rakes, six sulky rakes, two derricks, and the movable cookshack and dining shack are readied, along with twelve large canvas tents. He directs the diversion of creek water for irrigation and sets haying to begin as soon as possible after the Fourth of July. The laborers’ machines depend on teams of horses, including animals that may be only partly broken. The mowing machine’s long cutter bar makes the work dangerous, and its operators receive extra pay and special standing among the hands in recognition of their skill and risk. Horses therefore belong to an organized labor system: their strength enables production, while the workers’ ability to manage them helps determine authority and reward.

Gait, Training, and Practical Knowledge

The novel distinguishes sharply between a trot and a pace. A trotting horse moves its legs in diagonal pairs, producing a rough ride that requires the rider to rise in the stirrups and absorb the motion through the knees. A pacing horse moves its legs in lateral pairs, creating a smoother, faster gait that a rider can follow by moving with the horse. Phil’s sorrel is a notably smooth pacer, and he rides it swiftly down a canyon. His ease in the saddle reflects familiarity not only with horses but with the physical details of their movement.

That knowledge is also something Phil passes on. He teaches Peter to ride and gives him a gentle bay horse. The two ride down into the fields, where Peter helps build pole fences around haystacks; over lunch, Phil tells him stories about Bronco Henry. Riding becomes part of a new working companionship, giving Peter a place in ranch activity that differs from his earlier isolation. The horse makes that participation concrete: Peter is not only listening to instruction but learning to handle an animal and travel beside Phil.

Phil’s admiration for Bronco Henry is bound up with learning through practice. He recalls that Bronco Henry began with little knowledge of riding and roping but acquired skill through determination and patience. Phil applies that lesson to Peter, praising his improving seat on a horse and linking competence to persistence. In this account, horsemanship is neither an effortless birthright nor simply a display of masculine bravado. It is acquired knowledge, tested through repeated physical work and attention to an animal’s movement.

Edward Nappo’s Journey and the Ancestral Landscape

Horses also make possible a journey whose stakes exceed ordinary travel. Edward Nappo and his son set out toward the mountains associated with Edward’s father, traveling in a cart drawn by an old horse. They walk much of the way, but when an automobile appears in the distance Edward considers it fitting to ride in the cart. The boy’s school shoes go into the cart’s box, and his loose, repeatedly washed overalls and oversized cap mark the material plainness of the expedition. Their progress depends on a worn vehicle and an animal whose strength is uncertain.

At one point Edward estimates that the mountains are still several days away, speaking to the horse as they continue. Then they reach a gate he cannot remember. The landscape is not open to them simply because they have traveled toward it: the gate marks an obstacle in a journey already shaped by the removal of Indigenous people from their land. The broader history is explicit. After the valley’s Indigenous people are forced onto the reservation, the government no longer treats treaties as meaningful restraints; white voters and the value of land outweigh the possibility of negotiated accommodation. Edward had seen the people being driven away from the valley in his Model-T, and his thoughts followed them toward the harsh conditions of the reservation.

The restrictions imposed there reinforce the distance between ancestral belonging and legal permission. Residents are not allowed to leave without a permit, which is granted only for pressing reasons; liquor is also prohibited. These controls make the return journey more than a private excursion. Edward and his son travel back toward a place held in family memory, but the rules and boundaries governing Indigenous movement remain in force. When Phil orders them to leave, Edward turns the horse and cart toward the reservation, two hundred miles away. He worries whether the horse can make the return and what will happen to the cart if it dies. Still, he tells the boy that they have seen the mountains belonging to his father. The journey ends in retreat, but the sight of the mountains survives as a limited, hard-won connection to inherited place.

Horses as Signs of Unequal Freedom

The contrast between Edward’s old horse and the ranch’s working animals gives equine movement a political dimension. On the ranch, horses carry cowboys through daily tasks and support a livelihood organized around access to land. Edward’s horse, by contrast, draws a family toward land from which Indigenous people have been displaced, only to turn back toward the reservation under pressure. Its physical capacity is not enough to overcome the gate, the order to leave, or the long distance home. The same broad landscape offers different possibilities of movement depending on who controls it.

The return is also framed by a recurring sight: Rose notices the Indian cart again during a storm. Her recognition makes the cart part of the household’s view of the landscape, while its repeated passage points beyond the ranch to the family’s constrained attempt to reach home. The horse and cart register both persistence and exclusion. They keep moving, but they do not restore the land or freedom taken from Edward’s people.

Human Identity and Animal Labor

Across these episodes, horses connect masculine identity to useful competence without making that identity uniform. Phil’s horsemanship and his oversight of ranch work support the authority he holds among the cowboys; his smooth-pacing sorrel is suited to his speed and control. The ranch hands’ work, meanwhile, involves managing teams and machinery under dangerous conditions, and their expertise earns them additional pay and deference. The horse is part of a practical relationship between skill, labor, and status rather than a decorative emblem of the West.

Yet the novel also attends to dependence and limitation. Edward’s old horse is not an instrument of triumph; it is a vulnerable companion whose ability to complete the return journey is uncertain. Peter’s gentle bay helps him enter ranch life through instruction and shared work. These distinct relationships prevent the animal from carrying a single fixed meaning. Horses can sustain an enterprise, teach a young rider, or bear a family toward an ancestral landscape, but they cannot by themselves undo social barriers. Their movement makes human purposes possible while revealing the unequal conditions under which those purposes are pursued.