Thank you from me, too, Adrian. I saw the horse and knife at the Castro on the 12th. I wanted to touch them, but my fingers were all buttery from the popcorn I'd been sharing with Abe, so I held off. It was so cool to see them both up close, though.
The first time I saw the movie, it wrecked me when Ennis saw and picked up the horse and cowboy. It just struck me as poignant that maybe Ennis was discovering something he didn't know about Jack - that Jack liked to whittle, too. I just assumed Jack had carved the figurine, and saw it as a commonality between the two of them. Just like when I later read Jeff's "Some Sweet Life" and started weeping at my desk at work at the thought of Ennis looking at Jack's grave at the "grieving plain," never having known that Jack was just a nickname and that his given name was actually John C. Twist, Jr.
But I'm just assuming Jack carved it. It could have been a gift from any number of people along the way, I suppose. The idea that Ennis might have carved it is very romantic in its own way, too.