H A R V E Y

[Forte]

Name: Harvey

Herd/Band: Army Captive... For now...

Gender: Stallion

Age: 7 years

Position: -

Owner: Jem Arrick (Like generic. But not quite.)

Physical Description: Harvey! <- Click, since I really don't feel like writing it out this time.
He's seriously almost a clone, but just a buckskin. Not as pretty as Spirit, though, nor nearly as talented or fast. He's basically a tank - very slow, but very impassable. Your run-of-the-mill soldier, with a scar in his neck that he SWEARS is from a Lokota arrow, although you never really know, he could have just had blood drawn or stumbled into a fence post at some point. Has two brands - one for the army, the other the ranch on which he was born.

Personality: Harvey is a solid old horse, although not actually that old. He's fairly easygoing in an almost too-armylike way, with the air of one who knows what war is like and laughs at the silly little colts and fillies still in training. He has the air of an officer, dignified but not unkind towards his own, and is a touch reserved, not liking to talk about himself or brag in the least. He is not a clever horse, nor particularly intelligent or strong or fast, but he is as solid and loyal and trustworthy as a rock, without a vice to his name as far as one can see except that he has a liking to buck on those fine spring mornings when the horse feels young in his bones and has a jig in his footsteps.

Extremely peaceable, it is hard to dislike them, although he's not all that interesting or exciting to have around. He is pretty much your average horse, not really wanting to hurt anybody or endanger his own comfort. He doesn't make close friends for the very good reason that he's known some fine old fellows died in battle or captured by the Lokotas, and even had to fight against some of the latter. To have friendships would be betraying his duty to the army, and he seems to hold that in high enough value. He is a truly broken and very tame fellow, although somewhere under that hard mold of a soldier's heart he remembers his early life...

He remembers frolicking across the grass, free and reigned by only himself, with no master but his own fancy. He remembers eating what and when he wants to, and galloping when he feels like it, not when he's told to. He remembers running from the rope in sheer jest, and even the little calves and herds of cows that used to live in the same area as his band.... But all that is gone now, replaced by monotonous days and sleepless nights.

History: He was bred and born for army service, one of those stolid old Quarter Horse mixes with a few strains of wild mustang in his blood. Born in the melting springtime on a free-range ranch, he spent the first two years of his life in the style of his wild ancestors, only owned by the brand on his hip and those cowboys that used to come out and bring the herd in every year, cutting those horses ready to be broken and either sent off to army bases or ridden in the round-up. His early life was not an unhappy one, and in those years he learned good common sense - to eat and forage as he would and to stay away from those things with claws and teeth sharper than his own. He grew to be good and strong and hardy as anything, unused to man except for when he was branded early on.

But when the round-up happened his second year, something unusual happened. There was a great call for horses for the troops fighting the Indian tribes and those to pull the train. All horses were to be sent, green-broken or not, on the next shipment. So it was time for Harvey to be broken. This was no large incident, handled by one of those hard and calloused men who breaks hundreds of colts in a day, he learned quickly and soon could be ridden as well as anything, and harnessed, too, although he was always more of a riding horse by build. So when the train came in him and about fourty other strong and solid colts and fillies were hooked up, those who had been pulling the train were given over as payment, and, loaded down with goods and other horses for the army, the train set out again.

Harvey was really only meant to pull the train there and back again, for it would stop over for a week close to the army base, but on the way he pulled a tendon in his ankle. Through a feat of endurance and out of his own loyal heart, he managed to make his way, limping and in pain but still taking weight in the collar, all the way to the stop. It was clear, though, that he would not be able to make the journey back, even after a week's rest. He would have been slaughtered if the officer sent out with the army to collect the new horses and goods hadn't seen him off in a side paddock, strong and willing to go on despite the pain he was in and making good recovery, only a little lame at week's end. The officer, a battered man called Jem Arrick, decided to take Harvey back to the army base even though he would slow the progress.

The colonel, of course, was not too thrilled about this, but didn't do anything except push Harvey on Jem for army training. As time went on, the still-young colt became a solid, bombproof war horse, and although not good for the high-speed chase, was quite capable of taking on a tribe of Lokotas, rushing on unfazed passed arrows whizzing past his ears and eerie war whoops. In the end, even the Colonel was forced to admit the worth of the horse, and even commend Jem for having seen that the "lame beast" had some worth after all, and was to be allowed to stay in the army for as long as he could serve, and not sent back or condemned like some of the barely-broke and worthless (as the Colonel called them) ranch half-bloods were.

Now, more than five years later, Harvey and Jem are still together and still warring against the Lokota. Harvey has become a hard old soldier, knowing little else but strict dicipline... With the army brand right next to that of the only tie he has to his young days of freedom on the ranch with his tame herd.

Other: HARVEY'S GUNNA EAT UR BABIES.

[[esperanza]]

O NU NOT MAH BABEHS. O.O

Accepted.