Black Horse Named Johnny Poe

A Black Horse Named Johnny Poe by Janet Chester Bly

Fictional black horse Johnny Poe plays a big part in the novel I’m writing. He seems so real to me. If I don’t catch myself, I’m ready to head out to the corrals in the morning to feed him. Or wonder if he’s jumped my neighbor’s fence again.

Johnny Poe’s not an easy black horse to ride. For one thing, he’s terrified of barbed wire. There’s lots of that in the small town of Road’s End, Idaho where his owner Reba Cahill lives. Each rancher has his or her own gauge and shape. She often has to talk him into jumping a barbed fence when a cow gets loose from the Cahill Ranch. She has hit the ground more than once.

He has a good reason to be afraid. His mother died before his eyes, gashed and twisted from withers to poll in a barbed wire fence.

Grandma Pearl Cahill doesn’t like him at all. Yet Reba refuses to get rid of her favorite horse. He’s the only thing besides her old pickup and trailer she can call her own.

Johnny Poe gets in lots of trouble. For instance, he hurrahed the citizens of Road’s End in the middle of downtown on Main Street. But he also helped find grandma when she went missing and solved the mystery of a carjacking.

When elderly Seth Stroud nudges her to go with him on a Model T sentimental journey to a the gold mining town of Goldfield, Nevada, she insists, “I won’t go without Johnny Poe.”

That’s when he announced, “I knew him, you know. I met the real Johnny Poe.”

How Reba Heard About Johnny Poe

Reba first heard of Johnny Poe from her Grandpa Cole. To him it was an epithet learned from his father. For instance, if Reba sloshed most of the milk out of the pail while coming from the barn, he’d say, “Well, that’s a Johnny Poe deal.”

Now Seth claimed such a man had existed.

“He told us he was a relative of writer Edgar Allan Poe. He played on that line fierce to get himself in and out of scrapes. We were in Goldfield, Nevada during the rush. He was lookin’ for adventure without doin’ the work. His luggage was fifty-two pieces: a deck of cards. But he had his good side. When a customer in one of the saloons ripped an American flag from the wall, Johnny Poe raged till that fella and the saloon was a total wreck.”

Breaking her black horse Johnny Poe was Reba’s biggest achievement. An act that proved she could be a cowgirl. But Grandma Pearl complained she treated him more like a show horse than a ranch animal.

Reba did her best thinking perched on him. It helped sort out the debris of her soul and this one rode real nice on his good days. She loved storming the hill, flying with the breeze. Besides that, Johnny Poe thrived on speed. At eight-years-old this black horse was still fleet and agile. He could prance like a hyper kid off his Ritalin.

Her grandfather once told her, “Black horse beauties steal away innocent girls and make them children forever.”

At age twenty-four, Reba’s no child, but in many ways innocent. “Naïve innocent,” she says. Painfully ignorant innocent, she believes by the end of the story.

Copyright©2014

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Learn more background on how horses play important roles in the Trails of Reba Cahill Series. At Debbie Lynne Costello’s Sword and Spirit blog: HORSES & TrailsOfRebaCahillSeries

Are there horses in heaven? Oh, yeah. The heavenly stallions are anxious, chomping at the bit, getting ready for their great future but soon rides through the sky. Paints, appaloosas, a black horse or two also. (See Revelation 19:11-14.) Can you imagine what that will be like?
HEAVENLY HORSES – Pinterest

Wind in the Wires, Book 1 of The Reba Cahill Series is now available. Find it here: WIND IN THE WIRES

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Here’s some Janet Chester Bly books available now: Janet Bly Books

Love what these folks do for horses and kids! Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch exists to enable broken and discarded horses and hurting children to help each other heal. They rescue horses, mentor kids, and offer hope for families. Here’s a sample video clip.

Here’s the story behind Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch:  Crystal Peaks Story