Also Known As
Little'Un, Shorty (to other horses), Somme (to his owners and other humans)

Name Meaning
Gaelic for 'Little dark'

Gender
Stallion

Markings (Unnatural)
Brand mark of a blackfooted ferret on rump/right hip (mark of 'Blackfoot Ranch)

(Adult) - Confident and sound, fussy about certain things (like harness work) and quite clever; not so easily ruffled

History

Blackfoot Ranch was a respectable place; they treated their horses well. Besides the rather strenuous ordeal of being branded (when first arriving at the ranch) and some initial homesickness, Keme suffered no real hardship. Keme was called 'Somme' by the ranch hands, and they broke him in for riding as well as driving.

Mr Coldred the ranch owner was a kind but firm man. He soon found that young Keme preffered working in harness to being under a saddle. But Keme was deaf; this posed a problem for Mr Coldred who usually taught his carriage horses to obey their driver's voice. However he devised a way to communicate with his new young horse easily. While somebody else drove, Mr Coldred stayed close to Keme's head; he would voice commands loudly, and each command ('stop', 'walk', 'trot', etc.) would be accompanied with a tap of the whip on a certain point of Keme's body (e.g. a tap on the rump = stop; a tap to the withers = trot). Soon Mr Coldred left out the voice commands, and Keme needed only the whip tapping to understand what his driver wanted.

Keme/Somme was ready to be sold within a year. But his new home was as a loan horse, with the Morris Brothers. Although the brothers were kind enough owners (they had learnt their lesson long ago about treating horses badly), the people they loaned their many horses out to, were not all as considerate. Keme was leased to the local mill, to work alongside the horse they already owned as they had lost one to an illness. Keme was paired with a horse that matched his size: Canopy.

Canopy was a monster. The ringleader of the McLee Milling Company horses, he treated Keme liked dirt and his followers did the same. They were all perfectly well-behaved towards humans and towards eachother - but not towards 'outsider' horses. And Keme was an outsider.

A proper gang, Canopy and his horses bullied Keme - bit, kicked and taunted him, teasing his deafness. Keme bore the cruelty at first, although it puzzled him. The bullying went on until finally he had to start fighting back. The milling company blindly thought Keme was the root of the animosity and they punished him with flogging with the whip whenever a fight broke out. For Keme, the whip was no longer the bridge to understanding his driver - it was an enemy. Struggling to hear his drivers' commands, he blundered often; and the miller horses taunted him all the more . . .

To Be Continued . . .

Relation to the Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron Universe
Born into the Panthera Herd led by Spirit and Rain's son,