“I moved in closer and bent down. ‘How do you make them breathe?’ I asked.
“Mr. Henderson sighed as heavy as a lonely bull cow, not that Mr. Henderson is a bull cow. I just meant that it was the same low pitched bellow sound. Both the bull cow and Mr. Henderson sounded like they were grieving.
“Anyway, he showed me how to breathe into the foal’s mouth and nostrils. I started doing that, and he started pumping the foal’s heart. We kept doing that for about ten or fifteen minutes, and finally we saw a sign that the foal had started breathing on his own. It was like a miracle.”
“We kept working on the foal, making sure he was going to live. I was happy to do that. At that moment, the most important thing in all the world was for that foal to live.”
“And the foal kept right on breathing, but the mare, his mother, was looking worse. In fact, she was dying. I don’t really understand what happened. I bet Mr. Henderson could tell you, but I was still keeping my eyes on the foal. That baby horse was the only thing that mattered to me at that moment. I knew Mr. Henderson loved his mare. I was really sad about that, but happy about the foal being alive.
“But then, Mr. Henderson said something horrible. It was the worst thing I’d ever heard. Well, one of them, anyway. He said that a foal without its mother always dies.
“You can’t imagine that moment. We’d just made the baby live, and Mr. Henderson was sending the baby to his doom. “How do you keep a foal from dying, Mr. Henderson? Tell me, please. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll make him live,” I’d said.
“Just give it up, Shama. There’s no hope.”
“I could tell Mr. Henderson was already resigned to the foal dying. When someone loses hope like that, they stop believing all things are possible. I knew I had to get that foal away from his dead mother and Mr. Henderson’s lack of faith, so, I asked Mr. Henderson if I could take the foal and keep him, and Mr. Henderson said, yes.”
“He told me later that he was in shock, or he’d never have let me to take that dying foal to my little lean to. But I did ask him a second time, and then he said, ‘Yes. Take him. Do whatever you want with the carcass. Now get, Shama.’”