Redemption - Leon Uris [186]
“Certainly, and please consider this to be informal chitchat.”
“We are horse cavalry?”
“Indeed, horse cavalry,” Jeremy lied. “Appears that we may be fighting in some dicey terrain and command feels that mules will be better suited to pack in our supplies. Although the Seventh Light Horse are all magnificent riders, I understand, it seems there is a total lack of experience with mules. So, it’s a gaffer squad problem to set it up properly. Don’t worry, Landers, with any luck you may have several horses shot out from under you.”
The Captain picked up Rory’s questionnaire. “You say here you’ve had three years’ experience with mules.”
“That was a long time back. My da has a fair-sized sheep station on the South Island. He bought a large adjoining parcel of woodland, not ripe for sheep grazing or farming, so I talked him into importing a flock of deer for breeding and market.”
“Now, how did that go?”
“Too well,” Rory answered. “Trouble was, the deer raised hell with the forage and kicked up some fairly fragile topsoil. They needed a lot more space or we’d have to feed them entirely from stores. It raises the risk when you have to buy all their feed. We sold them out, at a very tidy profit. Sorry, I’m rambling on.”
“Actually quite interesting,” Ellsworth said, “carry on.”
“The section wasn’t ready for either planting or pasture, so I came up with another scheme. I thought we ought to breed mules.”
“What was behind your reasoning, Landers?”
Rory shrugged. “Seemed logical. There are hundreds of small farms, and common sense tells me that a mule can do half again the work of the best draft horse on the same amount of feed. The mule is even more economical in hilly terrain. In addition to agriculture, there are a lot of mining and timber operations which could be better served by mules.”
Seeing that Rory was on the new side of twenty, Captain Ellsworth asked, “How old were you when this took place?”
“I was eleven when I got the idea of importing reindeer and fourteen when I started breeding mules.”
“Your father must have had a great deal of confidence in you.”
Rory thought about that. Yes, the Squire gave him free reign when it came to anything about the farm. Maybe that was because Liam had trained him well.
“I know Squire, er…Landers,” Johnny Tarbox said. “He was the smartest farmer I ever met. He could look at a virgin piece of land and sense the winds, read the contours and smell and taste the soil and tell you within the bushel of what it would yield.”
“That’s right,” Rory whispered.
“What happened with the mule operation?” Captain Ellsworth asked.
“When you lose, there are all kinds of excuses. The reindeer bred naturally, too damned naturally,” Rory said. “Putting a stud donkey up to a mare is a real mess. We didn’t have a tradition of mule breeding so everything was trial and error. I’m not passing the blame, but I think the rock bottom cause of the failure was that the farmers and prospectors had formed notions about mules and didn’t know how to handle them.”
“You mean their stubbornness?”
“No, stubborn is the wrong label. Mules are very smart and when they appear to be stubborn it is usually from bad handling. Then, the owner gets the idea he can whip the work out of them, but a mule never forgets his whipping.”
“Well,” Ellsworth challenged, “if that isn’t stubborn, I don’t know what is.”
“It’s like this, Captain,” Rory said, not having the slightest notion he was speaking to a veterinarian of nearly twenty years, “there are stubborn mules and there are wild mules. These mules are born wild, can be very dangerous, and you have no more chance of domesticating them than taming a hyena. There’s no choice but to destroy them. It turns out we were breeding a pretty high percentage of wild ones.”
“I see,” Ellsworth said. “So you shot them in the forehead, right between the eyes.”
Rory grimaced. “No, their skulls are very thick and sometimes you don’t kill them. They can be in agony for hours. The sure way to destroy a wild mule is shoot through the eye, pointing up to the brain. They die instantly