The Department does not ordinarily take an interest in property. Property passes; its passage is unremarkable. The Department takes note when a specific object appears at the moment of multiple deaths, not because the Department believes the object to be responsible, but because the object constitutes a record, and the Department records records.

Three entries submitted in the past two years share a common element: a saddle of Pueblo manufacture, identified as a significant or noted object by the submitting party or by the circumstances of the entry itself. The Department presents them together.

Entry 1 — Harlan Moss, Pueblo, October 1912

Harlan Moss, age sixty-seven, was a rancher who had worked the same land north of Pueblo since the early 1880s. He had owned a saddle of Frazier manufacture — a work saddle, heavier than average, with a distinctive radial arc pattern on the skirt — for most of that period. In 1910, he sold the saddle to a buyer in Canon City. The transaction was recorded by Moss in his account book with a notation that the sale had been, in his words, a mistake. He did not elaborate.

Moss was found in his barn on the morning of October 14, 1912. The cause of death was recorded as heart failure. The Frazier saddle was on the rack beside him. The buyer in Canon City confirmed, when contacted the following month, that the saddle had left his possession in the autumn of 1911 in a trade he described as having occurred under unusual pressure — a man had arrived, the price had been fair, the man had departed. The Canon City buyer could not describe the man with consistency. The saddle had traveled back to Pueblo without Moss having been involved in its return, as best the Department can determine. Moss had not remarked on its presence to his wife. She said he appeared to have been expecting it.

Entry 2 — Gideon Pruett, Trinidad, March 1888

Gideon Pruett, age fifty-one, was a leather craftsman who worked in Trinidad and occasionally in Pueblo. He was not a principal maker; he worked as a journeyman, finishing pieces under contract for the established shops and occasionally producing saddles independently for sale through the stock dealer. In late 1887 he began work on a saddle that, by his own account to at least two witnesses, was intended to be his finest piece. He tooled the skirt, the fender, the cantle, the seat. He had completed the tooling on three quarters of the skirt when he stopped.

The witnesses report that Pruett refused to continue on the grounds that the tooling pattern was running toward something he did not wish to finish. He could not or would not specify what he meant. The saddle was set aside unfinished. It was never placed in service. Pruett died in March 1888 of a lung complaint. The saddle was sold at the dispersal of his estate. Its subsequent ownership history has been partially documented. The pattern on the finished three quarters of the skirt runs to a clean edge. The remaining quarter is bare leather. The edge is not a mistake or a degradation. It is a decision.

Entry 3 — Caleb Ord, Walsenburg, September 1905

Caleb Ord, age forty-four, was found in a field on his property in Huerfano County on the morning of September 9, 1905. He was alive but severely disoriented and could not, for a period of several hours, account for his location or the time of day. He recovered and lived for three more years without significant incident. The Department includes him here because of what was found at the point in the field approximately a quarter mile from where Ord was located: his saddle. It had been placed upright, leaning against a fence post, as if set there deliberately. The horse was found at the property's water trough. No one on the property could account for how the saddle had arrived at the fence post, and Ord, when he recovered sufficient coherence to answer questions, said he had no memory of the morning beyond leaving the barn.

The saddle itself was a Frazier second-generation piece, from the mid-1890s. It was sold after Ord's death in 1908 to an estate buyer. The Department has no further entry for the saddle after that date. It has not, as of the filing of this entry, returned to anyone's notice. The Department considers this unremarkable. Most objects simply stop.

Department Notation

The Department notes the following correspondence across the three entries: each involves a Pueblo-made saddle of documented quality; each saddle is present at or adjacent to an event of final or significant character; in each case the saddle continues after the entry closes, either by returning to an owner who did not retrieve it, by outlasting a craftsman who refused to complete it, or by arriving at a location no one can explain.

The Department does not conclude from this that saddles are agents. The Department concludes only that these particular saddles share a quality of persistence that exceeds their material composition. This is noted without interpretation.

The person’s record ends. The saddle’s record does not.

— D.M.

The Department has a fourth entry pending: a saddle produced by an apprentice who tooled arc patterns on every surface, completed the work without collecting payment, and departed without leaving a name. The saddle has changed hands three times. No buyer has kept it longer than two years.