Indiens

I got the job by chance. Petrus had seen me ride bareback – he’d accompanied me to test a young arab mare, out in the reserve. Two years later, I got a call, an emergency: specialist bareback riders needed for a film shoot, casting TOMORROW!

That afternoon I bridled Phantom (the most bombproof of my rides, with a deep back) and took him for a ten kilometre trip in the veld, bareback of course, with lots of trotting and transitions, to find my seat and rediscover some of those muscles…

Next morning I stepped out of my bakkie at the old Culemborg sidings where a police pony, immaculately schooled, had been hired to test the applicants. I put my name down and settled to watch. Take the reins, jump on unassisted, then walk, trot and canter back to the start and leap off in-canter before the camera tripod. The casting agent was a slight, fit, tanned gay guy who’d never smelt a horse before, but he’d approached Petrus for contacts. It was a synch, though I baulked at the jump off manoeuvre – simply because of my habit formed by training my own horses to stand like statues when dismounting.

After a month of waiting I got the call to an evening measuring gathering, and found pretty much those guys I’d earmarked myself at the casting, including Petrus himself. We were twenty five, and according to the storyboard, I was “Stunt Double for Indian Chief” which sounded propitious. It seemed we had to wear loincloths with bumflaps, moccasins, tasselly leggings, wigs and feathers. The loincloths were of leatherette vinyl and I pointed out to the scary costume chick that the vinyl piping meant to go between our legs (a great big thick g-string in essence) was going to cause considerable pain. I was ignored, though I was quite right, of course.

Then came the shoot. It was a big one, an advert for the French Lottery. We were lifted out to Worcester before dawn and delivered to a 2 Star hotel. We filled it. The first afternoon, we were taken to a remote part of Nuy farm, where a railway track ran straight to some rolling Karoo hills.

So far only the horses had arrived – tomorrow was the shoot itself, and in track suits we practiced a few dry runs. We lined up on the causeway bank next to the tracks, and at a signal turned left and took a controlled canter next to the metals, an easy procedure and after a couple of times we were bored. Next day there was a steam train and everything changed.

Well. It was winter. We’d been woken at 3 a.m. to kit up. The makeup chicks were cute but it was too early for flirting. The leading man, the Chief (alias Tony Caprari) loudly demanded coffee – the hotel staff panicked. Tony barely acknowledged me, he seemed an arrogant bastard but by the end of the day I was to like and respect him. Makeup – first a layer of sunblock then a red skin from head to toe. Then war paint – circles on the arms, stripes on the face, pretty cool really. Then the heavy pigtailed wig, held on with pins. My hair was short and one of the pins spent the whole day embedded in my scalp. But it was all so uncomfortable I could barely notice. Finally, stuff not seen before, and just off a plane - a trial of the Chief’s war bonnet, all four kilograms of it and beautifully made, plus a breastplate of carved bones and feathers, precise replicas of nineteenth century Sioux paraphernalia researched in the Royal Cultural History Museum, London. But I wasn’t to wear them continually – they passed between myself and Tony throughout the day. We were each then given a tracksuit, to keep.

Finally, the set… predawn, July, Karoo… about -5°C. That’s when the tracksuits were needed, and the warm horse fur beneath us. It dawned crystal clear, with the train building up steam a click or two up the track, facing us. It had been given a great red chimney trumpet and a red cow catcher. It looked the real thing. Along the tracks, on the left facing the train, the fence had been removed for about 300m and the scrub flattened. On the right, the fence remained. The concrete sleepers for this distance had been painted brown to imitate wood.

The set was now huge. Apart from the horse trucks and paddocks, there were pantechnikons full of who-knows-what; mobile toilets and change rooms; an open air restaurant (lunch was fresh seared swordfish); trailers; and a fair sized parking lot. There were about two hundred people, including a few local sightseers.

We were marshalled for the first take. The train coasted down the slight incline towards us so the driver could take instructions from the Director. Suddenly as it drew near it let off steam. In the chill dawn, still fairly quiet, this had a devastating effect on the horses. An atomic bomb would not have caused more reaction. The steam shot up like a mushroom cloud in the icy air, with the rising sun behind it – and remember, these things are quite big. The noise, too, was like the hiss of an RPG.

The horses, and riders, departed helter skelter all over the veld. The train reversed back to its start point, and we got our now-quivering horses back in front of the big camera boom. The director team were from London, and they gave us a quick lecture on what they wanted. Already we were starting to know better. We lined up, myself in regalia nearest the camera.

‘Chief, shout something motivational to your men, it doesn’t matter what, then all turn left and canter next to the track towards the train. Those with revolvers fire them into the air. We want to see the smoke.’

That sounds easy, but I nearly panicked while thinking of something to say. After all, many eyes were now on us. No one had told me I would actually have to act.

The train in the distance started its run. At 500m, the director, loudly, shouted,

‘Action!’ Cameras were rolling. I paused, looked left, stiffened melodramatically. I punched my spear skywards, stood straight up with my knees, and bellowed,

‘Skiet hom in die hol!’

My horse reared, tried on its hind legs to walk backwards down the steep causeway slope, and fell on its back. The other horses ran helter skelter all over the veld. But now the train was coming down fast on me, and I was right next to the track. Having thrown my spear away I held onto his neck with my right hand, and twisted sideways to make him fall on his side, so we fell close together with only one of my legs under him, without my losing the reins. So in all this funny leather and yards of feathers I had to run with horse right behind me over bushes away from the track – I wanted at least 50m between us and the train when it arrived, or the horse would do something bad to itself. It ran over me twice, and twice I went down, getting my foot stood on quite badly. I remember passing Petrus lying on his back. He was laughing uncontrollably at the sky.

Take 2. I was given a light snaffle instead of the mediaeval thing my horse had arrived in, and things started to go better. He, by the way, was a handsome skewbald by the name of Apache, and he moved like the wind. He really fucked off.

We did twenty-one takes. If this doesn’t sound like a big deal, you’d better read on carefully. I took all day, ten hours in the – sorry, bareback. The vinyl ground into our arses. I had sneaked a tanga onto the set and in a toilet break I surreptitiously changed. That was much better. The horses could never be controlled again, and they soon learned the word ‘Action.’ To them, it meant, fly from standing into a flat out gallop. When we passed the train and it roared above us, they went faster still. The Director couldn’t believe his luck – here was an unprecedented bit of wild riding such as only the Sioux themselves ever attempted.

After each ride, which took less than a minute, we walked our horses back from wherever we had managed to stop them, blown and bruised, wranglers running out to retrieve some of the more difficult ones in hand. Before each ride, we felt real fear. It took courage to face the next charge. The horses ran in a tight pack; there was no leadership, it was a wild herd. Our legs bashed against other legs, and against horses, promising to throw us off. We knew that if we fell, we would die quickly among thrashing legs and hoofs. Sometimes we sat so lightly we were flying, and the horses jerked and sidestepped unexpectedly.

On one memorable take, the press of the herd forced me up the causeway slope and between the tracks. I was galloping across the concrete sleepers with stones in between. Below me on my left was the herd, an impenetrable pack. I couldn’t go there without the horse collapsing and probably causing a pile up. On my right was the fence, and there I would be caught between the train and the fence – certain death as I saw it. My only option was to overtake. I screamed and kicked at the horse and we pelted straight at the front end of the train, riding high above the causeway. I threw the horse left into the leading horse heads with less than 50m to spare: a sideways jump down at full gallop.

Apache in a gallop led with the right leg. My left foot in its light suede took the full knock of his powerful elbow with every stride. Next day my foot was so contused I limped with difficulty.

I know now, in a small way, why cavalrymen were considered courageous. A charge is an immense thing, something that once started cannot be stopped, or changed, or opted out of. It is incredibly dangerous. Even without live weapons going off, you can be killed instantly, every single time, violently; and this in spite of all the skill in the world.

In our burned out exhaustion we felt a glorious glow of achievement in a way no one watching or anyone else could understand. After the last take of the day, we rode back into the low orange sun, me standing straight, the horse jogging. Then a wind came up from behind and the great red and white war bonnet flapped open with a crack! and the power of a sail, and I knew we looked magnificent.

During the day I had several chats with Tony. He was no Arrogant Bastard – I soon saw he was a Real Man. A dedicated professional actor, he had mastered most things, and I watched him mastering the hands-free Indian leap onto a horse’s back, which he did expertly. He had first approached me in the midmorning coffee break to say,

‘Hey Evan that’s incredible riding, we’ve never seen anything like it. Thank you SO much for making me look so good.’

And then the day was over, redskins in Combis being gawked at in the Worcester rush hour at traffic lights, and a long drive home in the dark, winding down into reality.