The next morning, the southwest wind built into a gale. Sand sung through the air. I decided not to go to church. Not with that yellow mare in my care, and, Lord willing, a foal on the way. My boyfriend, Mike, called and said he would come over to see the new horses. By the time he arrived, I had fixed up a 12x16-foot foaling stall in the greenhouse with deep straw, water and a pile of hay.
          The yellow mare was now standing in the lee of the west fence, head low, tail to the sandstorm. Mike and I agreed that it was urgent to get her into shelter.
          I haltered her and tried to lead her. She wouldn’t move. Mike got behind, waved his hands and clucked. She ignored him. In desperation, I picked up a front foot and put it back down a few inches ahead. Mike pushed her rear until she shifted her weight forward. I moved the diagonal hind foot forward and he shoved again. She shifted her weight forward just a bit more. It was some seventy feet to the entrance of the barn. We took near to an hour with this foot-by-foot shoving to get her there. I could hardly believe that my city-bred boyfriend was willing to spend all that time getting sand papered by the storm.
          Another thirty feet and fifteen minutes down the aisle of the greenhouse got her into the foaling stall. As soon as I took off the halter, she lay down on her chest, lowered her head and rested her chin in the straw.
          Mike and I went into the house and washed the grit off our faces and arms.
          He said, “How about my place for lunch?”
          I thought it over. I hadn’t seen the mare having contractions. Her udder hadn’t waxed. Mustangs usually foal in the pre-dawn hours. “Sure.”
          He replied, “I’ll check the mare first. Just in case.” He headed out the south door. Within seconds, he rushed back in. “Feet are sticking out.”
          I followed him out through the sandstorm and into the greenhouse. She was lying where we had left her, propped up on her chest, resting with her chin deep in the straw. Now two tan hooves were sticking out of her vulva, amniotic fluid dribbling around them. The soles pointed down. I figured that this meant they were the front feet, not the rear. I couldn’t see the nose. I hoped it was inside the mare’s vagina, on top of the legs, where it belonged. Lord willing, it would be a normal delivery.
          We went back into the house. I dug out towels and sterile gloves, cut my fingernails to the quick so they wouldn’t risk tearing the gloves, scrubbed down extra hard up to my elbows, and grabbed a stack of clean towels. Mike mixed a drink for the mare of warm water with electrolytes and molasses. As we returned to the greenhouse, I hoped to see her licking off her foal.
          Nothing had changed. I was relieved to see that the skin at the foal’s coronary bands hadn’t turned blue. I figured we had plenty of time. Mike lifted the mare’s head and placed her muzzle in the electrolyte drink. She ignored it, so he set it aside where she could drink when she felt like it.
          Some fifteen minutes went by without her having a contraction. The sandstorm thundered and hissed against the greenhouse, worse than ever. I turned to Mike. “Please call Mikki.” She was our nearest neighbor to the north.
          By the time Mikki arrived, still nothing had changed. The mare hadn’t had a contraction since we first saw feet sticking out. However, the skin above the foal’s hooves still hadn’t gone blue. We still had time. Or did we?
          I thought through my experiences as the local goat midwife. The first delivery, twenty years before, had been the worst. The first doe I ever owned was in labor, and then it stopped. I phoned a vet and he said he was too busy to come out. He told me to reach inside, arrange two front hooves with a nose between them, and pull like heck. When the kid’s hooves appeared, they looked fine to me. So there I was tugging and expecting victory. When the kid finally popped out, he was dead. He had been dead so long that his hair slipped off in great wads on my hands.
          I said, “Mikki, call the vet.”
          I slid a gloved hand up the mare’s vagina. The nose was where it belonged, between the legs. I grabbed the fetlocks and pulled downward just a little bit. The foal slid right out, with no resistance, dark and slimy. I lifted its white tail. “It’s a girl,” I said.
          The mare ignored us all. Her head sagged deeper into the straw. It seemed like she was dozing. Was she dying? Blood wasn’t running out of her vulva, so I figured we’d best concentrate on the filly. I squeezed her chest. Amniotic fluid dribbled out of her nostrils. I expected her to sneeze any moment, but she didn’t. She wasn’t moving at all.
          I stared at her chest. No motion. I looked at the hairs in her nostrils. Not a quiver. “She’s dying,” I said. Was she already dead? I grabbed a towel and rubbed. Her hair didn’t slip. Maybe there was still life in her.
          Just then, Mikki returned. “I left a message with the answering service.”
          “She’s dying. Everyone rub her.”
          The three of us roughed up the filly with towels, shook her, pumped her chest, and everything stayed the same. We paused a moment while I looked up a nostril. I couldn’t see even one hair quivering. Tears streamed down my cheeks. “Wait,” I said. “I think I saw a hair move.” We rubbed her some more. The hairs in her nostrils fluttered. Soon we could see her chest moving. She opened her eyes, then lifted her head. Soon she lurched to her feet. Only then did I realize a star marked her forehead.
          “We should name her Miracle,” said Mikki. We laughed and hugged each other.
          The mare still lay on her chest, resting nose down in the straw, ignoring us all. Mike lifted her head and again placed her muzzle in the electrolyte drink. After a moment she wiggled her nose, then began gulping it. She drank almost two gallons.
          We decided to go inside and give the mare and filly some peace, and just check in on them from time to time.
          Near sunset, Mike and I were getting concerned again. The mare still lay in exactly the same position. It looked like she hadn’t stood up yet, and that meant that Miracle hadn’t nursed yet. She had to get colostrum, which is a mother’s first milk, soon. If a foal doesn’t get colostrum within the first day, it will die of a paralyzed digestive tract. I kept goat colostrum in the freezer for emergencies, but her dam’s would be better. Mike and I got on each side of the mare, reached under her and tugged. With our help, she finally heaved to her feet.
          Miracle began nosing around her dam’s flank. Within minutes, she found a nipple and began nursing. Her mother turned and sniffed her, then licked her, then seemed to come fully awake, murmuring and licking eagerly.
          When we checked an hour or so later, the mare had expelled the placenta. I brought it inside, laid it out in the bathtub, and washed off the straw that was gummed up all over it with old amniotic fluid. It was the usual butterfly shape with a tear at one end where the filly had come out. The edges of the tear fit together perfectly, meaning that nothing was left inside the uterus. Good sign.
          That night we left the greenhouse and the yellow mare’s stall open to the quarantine corral so they were free to join the others.

          At sunrise the next morning, I walked out the south living room door into the corral. I called out “Horses,” like I always do when entering a corral. The new filly galloped out of the greenhouse to me. Her coat reflected the sun like a new copper penny. She cuddled, whickering as I petted her.
          Fine, except now her dam was shrieking from inside her stall. I began herding the filly toward the greenhouse. I heard hoof beats, and then her dam poked her head out the door. When she saw me, she bared her teeth and charged. I ran like heck, and barely beat her to the living room door.

          That’s how Dragon Lady got her name. As it turned out, when I had bought her, she seemed tame only because she was too near death to flee or fight. It soon became evident that she had been entirely wild.
          Like most any wild horse, she calmed down within a few days. Soon she was peaceably sharing Miracle with Mike, Mikki and me. A few days later, while I was grooming off the greasy thatch of hair from her back, she began leaning into the currycomb, showing exactly where she wanted me to rub. From then on, she came when I called and begged me to pet her.
          Dragon Lady is now an old woman’s pet. She races her owner’s car along their driveway, eager as a dog to play.
          Mikki bought Miracle and registered her as a palomino. Miracle became a star of sorts when a gag photo of her hanging out in my living room ran on page 101 of the Sept. 28, 1998 issue of Time magazine.
          Also, a few less cans of dog food – or perhaps pounds of protein meal – got made at the Bel-Tex plant.
          All this pivoted on a $60 whim that got lucky. A miracle, perhaps.