Temptation

When I and my sister Marie and our brother Grant were in grade school, Dad moved our family to a farm on the Price Bench (which is now a part of Bloomington). We lived there for about a year and attended school in St. George. Dad had a big gentle black mare named Betsy that we used on a buggy for the trips to school each day. A neighbor boy and girl rode with us and sometimes a couple of girls from Bloomington would come over to ride with us, too. I was generally the driver because Marie, even though she was a good hand with horses, would let me drive to avoid an argument.

We had to cross the Virgin River and sometimes the water would be quite high, but Betsy was big, strong and unafraid. Even though she was gentle she would jump into a fast trot with the slap of the rein on her side. Us kids dearly loved her and she was a real good friend. She was also good to ride bareback as her back was soft and her gait easy.

When she was eating grass we could straddle her head with our chest against her neck and when she raised her head we would be slid onto her back. Sometimes we would slide down and up and down for a long time and thought it was great fun.

During the month of April the water is especially high in the river. One afternoon as we were coming home from school, with me and Grant sitting on the buggy seat. Marie and two other girls were dangling their legs over the back edge of the buggy. An uncontrollable, devilish urge came over me. I fought it with all my willpower but was overcome. I slapped Betsy with the rein and she jumped forward with a mighty yank. As we went racing toward the river the girls were left sitting on air, then dropped with a thud to the road. They got up hurt and very angry.

I stopped Betsy on the far side of the river. At the waters edge I could see them threatening violence, then after awhile I could see they were imploring me to cross back over to get them. Guessing it was safe, I turned Betsy around and re-crossed the river to fetch them. I sure did catch heck when we got home.

Years later Jack Butler let me borrow a big red roan gelding for the summer. The kids, Cathy, Linda and Clay had a lot of fun with him. While he would be eating grass on the lawn they would slide down his neck to the top of his head and when he wanted to raise his head up they would slide onto his back. The Shelly kids came up to play often and sometimes there would be kids from his tail up onto his neck, as many as there was room for, about 7 or 8.