Promontory
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Admiral Biscuit
He was born on a small cherry orchard, improbably sited on the edge of the desert. Everypony agreed that it was a terrible place to plant an orchard. The soil was too sandy and too dry for anything to thrive. Even the cacti struggled there. It mattered not one whit to his parents; they believed that a pony could do anything she set her mind to. They built their first house out of sun-dried mud, and it was there he was born. His parents—as was the tradition back then—called him ‘son.’ One day, he would earn his cutie mark, and then they would see what he was meant to be. Until then, he would enjoy the innocence of foalhood.
Of course, there is no respite on a farm. As soon as he was old enough, he was put in harness, tugging the plow across the fields from dawn till dusk. He didn't like it, but he did it, because if he did not there would be no food to eat.
Sisters came as regular as clockwork, each born within a week of the other. The first was called “Jubilee,” the second “Berry.” They, too, worked the farm as soon as they were able, bucking trees and weeding the miserly garden. They settled into their lives, but he did not. Every night when he was done working, he would seat himself upon a great prominence of rock that jutted out from the desert floor, watching the land. The desert stretched forth like a great sea, and he wanted nothing more than to explore it.
The cherry orchard grew and thrived. Whether it was his mother’s special talent or the irrigation ditches his father dug was immaterial; soon enough other ponies began to move in, too. They came in families, towing their Conestoga wagons. Equestria was expanding, testing her borders. It was a fine time to be alive.
Soon enough, Cloudsdale was sending regular rainstorms. The land blossomed and the orchard grew. He pulled the plow. He pulled the wagon to market. And he rested on his rock, taking comfort in the sun-warmed sandstone giving off its heat as the sun descended below the horizon. It was there that he finally got his cutie mark.
One day, he was in town and a stagecoach arrived. He had never seen such a thing before. It was a high-wheeled contraption, built of gleaming wood. He looked back at the wagon he towed with a guilty expression. This new thing was the pinnacle of pony technology, he was sure. He followed it all the way to the center of the town, galloping to keep up.
He dared not approach it too closely, so he watched from a block away as the passengers disembarked, and the team went for beans. He would have loved to stay longer, but he needed to get back to the orchard before sundown.
After that day, he hurried to finish his chores so that he could sit upon his rock and watch the coach move across the desert. His family’s fields held no love for him, and when his younger brother became strong enough to tow the plow, he left the farm with his few belongs tucked safely in his hand-me-down saddlebags.
He stood patiently at the small depot. It was not his first visit there; whenever time permitted he haunted the rough wooden sidewalk or pressed the stationmaster for information. She was a kindly old mare, and more than willing to bend his ear with tales. She’d provided him with countless details about the company and—his most treasured possession—an old timetable of all the southern routes. Even now it was seated snugly in his saddlebags, the pages worn from hours of study. He'd taught himself to read the names of the towns where the coaches went.
The arrival of the stage always had a ritualistic feel to it, and this time was no different. The team galloped across the hardpan, only slowing when they reached the first cluster of buildings. The wheel team slowed the wagon, while the lead team matched their pace. He could tell whenever there was a replacement pony in the traces: the harness lines would jerk as the wagon slowed, and the veterans would shake their heads in dismay. Not this time. No words were exchanged, yet the team kept up a smooth pace, proudly stopping the coach exactly in line with the station door.
The stationmaster had a stepping-stool ready, and set it at the foot of the door. Three ponies stepped out—a bored-looking stallion, a wary mare, and a filly with an excited look in her eyes. She began speaking even before setting hoof on the stool, but he paid her no mind. He watched instead as the luggage compartment was opened. Their possessions were stacked neatly, and then the vitally important mail sack was removed and another was put in its place.
As the stationmaster and postmaster worked, the team unfastened themselves from the shafts and eveners. All four trotted off together to the base of the town’s water tower, where a public hose was neatly coiled. They took turns rinsing the sweat off themselves, with never a wasted motion. This was a place where the pegasi rarely brought rainclouds; water was hard-won and hoarded. Yet, nopony begrudged them their refreshment, for it was they who brought the mail and craftworks.
Their shower was quick and efficient, like all their movements. There was far less tomfoolery than when he bathed with his brothers and sisters. Once they'd all had their turn and shaken themselves off, they trotted across the street to the tavern for a quick dinner.
Somepony else in his situation might have been impatient, but he was not. He walked around the coach, examining its every detail. It was lovingly built and lovingly maintained. It showed signs of age—there were grease-stains around the hubs that could never be cleaned off, and the pivots in the harnesses were slightly oblong. On the left door, mismatched enamel showed where a hinge had been replaced, and the hatch to the baggage compartment closed slightly askew. A thin film of dust covered the whole coach, all except the bright wheel treads, which were constantly polished by the hard desert floor.
He’d examined the stage from every possible angle when they returned from their quick dinner. The lead stallion—a towering mountain of horseflesh—nodded at him.
“I’d like to go to Canterlot,” he said, holding a small bag of bits out.
The stallion looked at him thoughtfully. He trembled under the scrutiny: it was a wonder he’d spoken without stuttering. Finally satisfied, the stallion took the bits, carefully counting them out. “All right. Stopover in Appleoosa. You c’n stay in the hostel, or if you’ve enough bits, at the hotel. Coach’ll leave at ten a.m. sharp.” He looked back to where his team was fastening their harnesses. “You c’n ride atop, if you want.”
He looked at the broad seat across the front of the wagon. It was rarely used; occasionally a guard would ride there, keeping an eye out for distant threats. He’d heard some pegasi preferred that seat, too: many of them detested being indoors. Not that he’d ever seen one up close; Dodge Junction was an earth pony enclave and the pegasi stayed in the sky where they belonged.
He nodded eagerly, and the stallion boosted him up. “What’s your name, son?”
“Promontory,” He pointed a hoof off to a distant rock, aglow in the setting sun. “I was named after that rock.”
“It’s good to be named after the land,” the stallion said. He walked forward and slipped into his position, yanking the straps tight with his teeth. The other three were stepping in place, ready to do their duty.
With a simple nod from the lead stallion, the four began pulling. He alternated between watching them work, and watching the world he’d known disappear in the trail of dust behind the stage.
The coach arrived in Canterlot as the sun was setting the next day. His first destination was not the castle, nor the gardens which surrounded it. The museums and plays were of no interest to him; instead, he walked down the platform and across the street to a nondescript clapboard building.
He boldly waltzed in, opening the most ornate door in the place. A balding grey pony looked up in surprise.
“I want to pull a coach,” he said. He’d rehearsed the line for weeks, and he’d never considered what he would do if he wasn’t hired.
“You do, huh?” The stallion pushed his glasses down to get a better look at Promontory. “Well, you’ve got the build for it.” He shifted around some papers on his desk. “All right. I’ll hire you, but you won’t start out pulling a coach. You’re gonna start out hauling delivery wagons around Canterlot. Can you do that without screwing up too bad?”
“Yessir.”
“Five a.m.,” he said simply. “You can stay in the company hostel. There’s a group room on the top floor. Might have to share a bed. Is that gonna be a problem?”
He thought back to his home. He’d never had a bed of his own. It might be a little weird sleeping with a stranger, but he supposed if that was what it took to achieve his goal, he would do it and he would not complain. “No, sir. Not a problem.”
“Good.” The grey stallion looked back down at his desk, the conversation finished.
He nervously stepped up the stairs to his new home. On the main floor, there was a small dining room and kitchen; on the other end, the senior teams had their rooms. The next floor up was crowded with regular deliveryponies, while the third floor was open. Beds were scattered haphazardly around the room, some occupied, some not. He thought about claiming one for himself, but did not. He went to a corner and curled up, watching the ebb and flow of ponies who came and went. He dozed off a few times, but the excitement of a new job and meeting new ponies mostly kept him awake.
The next few years flew by in a blur. He graduated from a local delivery team to a long-distance delivery route. He took the jobs nopony else wanted, ranging as far afield as Baltimare and Ponyville. Sometimes he pulled alone; other times he was part of a team. He was friendly to everypony, and pressed the old heads for every bit of advice he could get.
He spent a year behind coaches on the tricky mountain roads that descended from Canterlot. He was tied to the back of the coach to provide additional braking. It was hardly a glamorous job, but it was an indication of their trust in his abilities. If he failed, the coach, its passengers, and the team would all be yanked over the edge. It was a sobering thought.
Another year passed; spring to summer to fall to winter, just as always. Regular as clockwork, and regular as his route. He’d learned the trouble spots on the roads, and he’d learned the seasons’ particular challenges. Spring meant mud, and mud meant wagons got stuck. Thawing ground pushed up cobblestones. Summer meant heat, and he had to be careful not to overwork himself. Hosing himself off at the end of a run was more than a luxury, it was a survival technique. Once upon a time, when he was but a foal, he hated getting his coat wet, but no more. Fall was unpredictable, and wet leaves were as slick as ice underhoof. Winter was the most challenging season of all, because the roads were sloppy and snow hid obstacles, but the crystal-clear nights and sharp scents made it all worthwhile.
The next spring he finally got promoted to lead on a coach route. He began as the left-front pony—responsible for calling the starts and stops of the coach—but as the seasons changed, so did his position. He was promoted to right-front, and when the senior-most stallion retired, right-rear. His new position was the cause for weeks of ribbing and good-natured jibes, most of them centered around the fact that’s he’d spend all of his time staring at John Bull’s tail. He took it in stride; it was the second-most superior position. Here he was responsible for half the braking, as well as keeping stride and course with the lead team. It seemed the less-glorious position to those who were not in harness, but to him it was a mark of how much they trusted him.
The only burr under his harness was a new competitor: the iron team. He’d seen one in Baltimare, and hadn’t been impressed. It made hissing noises all the time that were grating to his ears. The whole thing reeked of hot metal and smoke—which it belched forth in quantities rivaling a dragon. It couldn’t keep pace with a team of ponies, it couldn’t travel where a road had not been laid for it, and he’d even heard that if it ran out of water it would explode. Such a thing was clearly impractical . . . yet as the months turned into years, he found himself running alongside more and more of its paths. He would watch it lumber up the mountain with a train of coaches in tow, and he often debated whether he should cheer it on or wish for it to break.
He and his fellows even had to haul one—complete with its train—all the way to Appleoosa after it broke. Worse, they got attacked by buffalo on their way. Promontory cursed the thing as he knocked a buffalo away from the tracks—had they been towing a proper coach, they could have avoided the tribe entirely, but this thing was trapped by its rails, and so was he.
Many seasons pass. There’s a new pony at the head of the company, and she’s merciless. She sees the writing on the wall: the tracks now extend to every Equestrian settlement. With no respect for tradition, she closes the hostels and way stations, putting hundreds of ponies out of jobs. Local deliveries boom, but there’s an axe hanging over the heads of the stagecoach teams. Everypony knows they’re hemorrhaging red ink, and it’s only the mail contracts that are keeping them afloat—and every year the iron team is faster and more reliable. One by one the coaches are being replaced by simpler, smaller wagons that a team of two can manage. They have an open bench on top, thus fulfilling the requirement that they provide passenger service, but nopony uses it. The train is faster and cheaper. True, it belches foul smoke, but that’s a small price to pay for progress.
His team huddles around a table in the tavern across the street from the Canterlot station. They know it’s only a matter of time before they’re broken up. John Bull has a brother who repairs wagons; he has a damaged coach that he can repair and sell them cheap. They agree to pool their meager savings and buy it. Their only hope is to run an express route between Dodge Junction and Appleoosa—the train tracks don’t run between the towns directly, and there’s little traffic, but maybe—maybe—just enough for them to make a go of it.
He sighs, his glass of beer mostly untouched. Through the flyblown windows of the tavern he can see the old hostel. It’s a warehouse now; the gilt sign above the door is long gone and the once-proud limed plaster is chipping and faded. The formerly vibrant dining room is now stacked with crates, the kitchen has become a bathroom, and the coach team’s rooms are now offices. His head seems heavier at the thought.
He finishes his beer in one long swallow, and heads out the door.
Author's Note
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