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The Horsecatcher
Mari Sandoz

Statistics:
Copyright 1986
182 pages
ISBN: 0803241666
Young Adult

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Horse connection:
A young Cheyenne is a horse catcher.

Description:
Unable to kill, a young Cheyenne is scorned by his tribe when he chooses to become a horse catcher rather than a warrior.

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minimal or background   [login to vote]   horsey

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Unusual, by ponydom on December 12, 2006

This is an unusual novel with an unusual setting. It is very matter of fact about the life of Young Elk, our Horsecatcher-to-be, a member of the Cheyenne tribe. People and horses die for no good reason. Life is challenging. Elk, as he grows, finds that he doesn't want to follow the path of his father and older brother, to be warriors and collect scalps. He wants to find and catch and tame horses. Even so, this is not without death and destruction - to capture a particular colt he runs several into the ground where they die of exhaustion. He kills other warriors when attacked. There is always the risk of ambush. And, of course, he sometimes must hunt small game to eat. And yet, several times he allows a scout to escape or risks his life to unhobble his captured horses when there is risk from the enemy, such that his hidden horses would not die in vain.

Finally one morning while Yellow Wolf and two others watched from a knoll, the warrior cut out the best of the horses and started homeward with them. Young Elk was left with the men holding the rest until the selected ones were safely gone, before they sent their herd flying off over the wild prairies again. It was while they were whooping these castoffs westward, to get the stallions far from the young mares Yellow Wolf was taking home, that Elk saw the golden horse. He came from the west somewhere and was suddenly standing on a ridge, his mane and tail gleaming like Zuñi silver. He looked curiously toward the dust and commotion, and after the mares of Yellow Wolf's herd. The horse was bold, but after a while he pivoted on his hind legs and was gone to join his own little herd, waiting quietly far off, and then running.
"He was a fine one, that yellow stallion," Long Bow said afterward, when they rode to overtake the Wolf. "Fine, but nothing like the White One I saw down in the Commanche territory a winter ago, the horse that no one will catch. He was like a mist animal, a white cloud horse standing on a hill with the wind blowing his mane."