West with the Night

by Beryl Markham

Balmy had seen zebra before and zebra had often seen Balmy, but I had never observed that any gestures of mutual respect had been made by either side. I think Balmy was aware of the dictum, noblesse oblige, but, for all her mud-rolling, she never got very close to a zebra or even oxen without distending her nostrils in the manner of an eighteenth-century grande dame forced to wade through the fringes of a Paris mob. As for the zebra, they replied in kind, moving out of her path with the ponderous dignity of righteous proletariat, fortified in their contempt by the weight of their number. The old dam we interrupted at her feeding on the Green Hill swept Balmy with a cold glance, kicked up her heels, and trotted toward the centre of the herd flinging over her shoulder at her spindly-legged foal a command to follow. But the foal never moved. I once saw a London street urchin stand enraptured almost to the point of tears at the sight of a lovely lady swathed in sables stepping from her car to the curb. There was the same pathos and the same wistfulness in the eyes of the zebra foal as it hesitated chest deep in the long grass and stared upward at the Thoroughbred filly. It was altogether a pretty picture even as observed from the saddle on Balmy’s back, but I had left the farm with the specific warning to keep her calm at any cost. A race-horse, trained to the edge, can undo weeks of patient work merely by having a nervous tantrum at the wrong time. Balmy was trained to the ed...