Champion Horse (18 page)

But then there was a bark, and here came Rusty, arrowing along in the grass,
bark bark bark,
chasing those coyotes away. Blue bounced once in surprise, but he surely recognised Rusty and her activities, because once she had chased off the coyotes, she came and walked along beside us, her head down and her tail down as if she was tired, and he relaxed, too. I guess she had had a busy time. After she joined us, I was no longer afraid, though I don’t know why. Maybe I had read
Lassie Come Home
enough times to trust her, and anyway, Rusty came home every night from all sorts of adventures. I let Blue follow her, and soon we got to the first place that the road forked, then the flat area where we had started galloping, then the hillside where we went down to the left, and then, in the distance, I saw the gate.

We were all tired by this time. I got off to open and close the gate, and I didn’t get back on. I knew it would take longer to get home, but it was a relief to walk and stretch those muscles. It also kept me warmer. Blue and Rusty walked along with me. I guess it was pretty late when we got to the barn, and I knew one thing – that I was in trouble.

But, to be honest, I was too tired to care about much of anything. I untacked Blue and put him in the stall so that he could eat some hay by himself – I would put him out with Lincoln before I went to bed. There was no clock in the barn, so I didn’t know what time it was. I could have been gone for two hours or three; I had no idea. I supposed they would tell me.

On the porch, I took off my boots. Then I opened the door. The kitchen light was on, the dishes were done, my plate was on the table. The clock above the sink said a quarter to eight. That was pretty late, but it wasn’t midnight. I slammed the door. I figured they would want to know I was back.

It was Dad who appeared in the doorway. He said, ‘Go up to your room after you eat. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.’

Well, it was back to doing everything right – cleaning up, homework, reading, staring out the window at Lincoln, the only horse I could see, contemplating my sins. But really, whatever they were going to say, getting lost with Blue on the Jordan Ranch didn’t feel like a sin. It felt like an adventure. And I didn’t see how Dad was going to convince me otherwise.

I was already in bed, listening to the Mamas and the Papas and half asleep, when Mom knocked and came in. She sat on the bed. She said, ‘Did you run away?’

‘No. I just didn’t realise how late it was. I went for a ride on the Jordan Ranch and got a little lost. Is Dad really mad?’

‘He was sure something had happened to you.’

‘What about you?’

‘I thought you were fine. I mean, Blue was gone, Rusty was gone. I knew you were all together.’

‘How come you don’t worry all that much and Dad does?’

Mom leaned forward and whispered, ‘I believe a little more in grace and he believes a little more in sin.’ She hugged me. Then she looked me right in the face and said, ‘You should know, Abby, that your dad started crying when he thought you were, I don’t know, gone somehow. I can’t remember the last time I saw him cry. Maybe when we were kids. But he doesn’t want to lose you. He really doesn’t.’

Like he lost Danny, I thought.

I said, ‘Can you put Blue back out?’

‘Sure.’

It’s really not good to talk about these kinds of things before you go to bed, because you spend the whole night, both dreaming and waking, arguing with yourself. I mean, I even had a dream where I was writing a chart, which was yellow and looked like a crossword puzzle, where the words running down were why I was mad at Dad and the words running across were why he was mad at me. When I woke up after this dream, I was absolutely sure that the words running down outnumbered the words running across, but I couldn’t remember what any of them were, so I lay there half asleep and thought of Blue, the Carmichaels, Sophia. But of course Dad had nothing to do with Sophia. Yes, Sophia had my old horse, Black George, but now that I had Blue and had ridden Pie in the Sky, Black George – Onyx – seemed a little uninteresting to me. Blue was much more my friend, and Pie in the Sky was more of a challenge. I mean, you ride a horse and you have to think hard in order to solve the problem of him, and when you do, it is so exciting that other horses who never present problems don’t make you as happy.

But that was a lesson, too – when we sold Black George, I was really upset and thought that maybe I would never get over it, and here I was, over it. On the other hand, that’s what grown-ups always wanted you to think, that you would get over whatever you were upset about. Plus there was a part of me that knew I was right about my idea of taking Blue to Ralph Carmichael, and because I was right, I didn’t want to get over it. I had been doing as I was told for years and years – my whole life. All around me, there were kids not doing as they were told. Did I really want to be one of those kids?

I closed my eyes and started counting backward from a thousand in order to go to sleep without answering this question. I did go to sleep. The last number I remember thinking was thirty-two.

When I woke up in the morning, the first thing I thought about was being out in the nighttime with Blue. Things I hadn’t realised that I’d noticed came into my mind – the first stars brightening to the east, only a few scattered across the sky above the blackness of the mountains; the pale grass, which in some places looked flat white and in other places looked shadowed and deep; Blue’s neck, almost luminous, splattered with dark spots, his ears glinting somehow as they flicked back and forth; his breathing, which I could feel between my calves and hear, too; the sound of the crickets, which at first seemed like
silence
and then became a chorus of tiny noises; Rusty aiming for the coyotes, and their dark figures skittering away. When I got up to put on my clothes, yawning and thinking of these things, I was in a pretty good mood. But then I saw that my books and papers were still spread over my desk, and I knew I would have to hurry up in order to get ready for school.

I stumbled down the stairs, pushing my hair out of my face, and went out the back door. Sometime soon Daylight Saving Time would end, and it would be light in the morning again. I would be happy about that.

Well, there was Dad, in the dark barn, throwing flakes of hay into the wheelbarrow. He turned when I stepped through the door, and right then and there I said, ‘Dad, I am sorry that I went off and got kind of lost last night. I was mad about something, but I really wasn’t intending to keep Blue out after dark. I know that was dumb. I’m sorry.’

Why did I say this when I had just been thinking how strange and enjoyable the whole experience had been? Well, he looked at me. He looked right at me, and I felt bad that he had worried about me and that he had cried. I just did. He said, ‘Apology accepted.’ And then he didn’t say anything more. If he had been Mr Rosebury, he would have gone on and on about it, but he was Dad, and whatever was true about me and Blue getting lost in the night, it was over now.

He pushed the wheelbarrow and I threw the hay to the horses, first the mares and then the two geldings, and when we went in the house, Mom had made toast and oatmeal. As we ate, Dad said, ‘Joe Tacker bought a five-year-old at a sale in Modesto and wants to send him over here to be retrained. Purebred Quarter-horse out of Quo Vadis.’

‘You’re kidding!’ said Mom. ‘She was—’

‘I’m sure he spent a pile on this one,’ said Dad. ‘I guess we’ll be staring at him all the time, just to see what he’s got.’

‘How much are you going to charge him?’

‘Seventy-five dollars board, seventy-five training.’

I said, ‘Does that mean we don’t have to sell Oh My yet?’

Mom smiled. Dad nodded.

The only other thing that happened was that when I came down the stairs after changing my clothes and getting my books, he stopped me and kissed me on the top of the head as I went out the door. I gave him a hug around the waist.

The clinic, such as it was, had to be done in a hurry, because the Carmichaels were leaving for Southern California in two weeks. I spent the next four days not looking forward to it. It was going to take place out at the stables on Saturday and Sunday. Mr Rosebury persuaded Dad to let me take Pie in the Sky both days. Even at short notice, Jane had rounded up five more participants, including someone from Santa Rosa. Andy was going to bring Barry Boy, and Daphne was going to ride Curly. So that would be eight, and how they were going to divide us up I had no idea. That was the mystery of Ralph Carmichael: he did things his own way. Sophia said nothing about it at school, and I didn’t ask her. Once or twice I thought I might, but when I looked at her and opened my mouth, instead I asked her about the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
, since on Friday we were having our test on the Greeks.

Friday night, I cleaned my boots. Mom had already washed my breeches. I had a nice sweater and a jacket in case it was cold. That was all I had to do. Rodney would do the rest, which was fine with me. Mr Rosebury was even paying for the clinic, so my bank account would remain untouched. As for Melinda and Ellen, Jane thought it would do them a world of good to watch, and so she called their moms and invited them. Melinda said she didn’t know, and Ellen said she would bring her riding clothes. I had to laugh at that.

The Carmichaels weren’t like Peter Finneran, expecting us to be there on the dot and saluting at 9.00 a.m. Ten o’clock was fine, and whoever was there would get started; the others could take their time. We were given not the big arena right out front but a smaller one back near the trees. When I led Pie in the Sky around the barns and back there, at first I didn’t see anyone; then I saw Ralph, a cup of coffee in his hand, leaning against the fence and looking into the woods. When we came through the gate, he pointed out a woodpecker, then sipped his coffee, then strolled around Pie in the Sky taking a look at him. He smoothed his moustache, turned, and strolled back the other way. About then, Andy brought Barry Boy in. Ralph said to me, ‘Why don’tcha take the tack off that horse. Give him a chance to run around a bit.’

I said, ‘He may not have done that since he was a colt.’

‘’Bout time, then,’ said Ralph.

The first thing that Pie in the Sky did was lie down in the sand and roll. He rolled, stood up, lay down, rolled on the other side, stood up, trotted across the arena to an especially wet spot, and lay down and rolled over and back, grunting as he did it. When he stood up, Ralph said, ‘Back’s a little suppler now.’ Pie in the Sky then trotted along the far fence line, staring at horses in one of the other arenas, and then he leapt in the air, kicked up, and took off snorting. I said, ‘What if he hurts himself?’

‘Ah, he’s not that type. Look at him. He’s agile and he knows what he’s doing. Now, you can have two horses run down a hill, and one of them judges wrong and runs into the fence, and the other one, even if the ground is slippery, he shifts his weight and slides, and he stops about a foot before the fence. Never touches it. This horse is like that.’

I said, ‘He’s a good jumper.’

‘That’s what they say.’

Now Barry Boy came trotting over. He snuffled noses with Pie in the Sky, and then Pie in the Sky arched his neck, lifted his tail, and trotted away from him, which meant that Pie in the Sky was saying, ‘I’m the boss,’ and when Barry Boy lifted his tail, Ralph lifted the flag he had next to him (which was really just a whip with a scarf attached to the tip) and moved them out – better to make them go than let them argue.

They started galloping and romping, and even when Pie in the Sky kicked out, he just stretched his leg towards Barry Boy, and Barry Boy moved aside. After that, they cantered about, then Pie in the Sky trotted away to look at the other horses who were coming towards the arena, and Barry Boy got down and rolled in the sand. Ralph said, ‘Well, they like this sand, and I don’t blame them. Got to scratch where it itches.’

Now everyone was here – Daphne and Curly, Nancy with Parisienne, and three other girls that I had seen around the barn. Everyone’s horses were neatly brushed and tacked up. When Andy came along and said, ‘Okay, let’s get the tack off these animals and let them play for ten minutes,’ all the girls except Daphne looked at each other, but one by one they turned their horses loose. Ralph went into the centre of the arena with his flag, and Andy went over by the gate. Daphne and I took the other girls out of the arena and over to where Jane, Dad, Mr Rosebury, Rodney, and a couple of other people I didn’t know were leaning on the fence. One of the girls said, ‘I don’t know about having mares and geldings together,’ but Ralph didn’t let the horses pause – they had to start moving around. At first they did so sort of chaotically, not really bumping into one another but coming close, throwing their heads, stopping suddenly, rearing a bit. But then, after not even five minutes, they coordinated themselves into a little herd. They started going around the arena, avoiding the jumps and easing through the corners but staying fairly close together, almost like a school of fish.
Ralph
and Andy kept them moving, and the more they moved, the more they seemed to sense what the others were doing. Along the fence, we were all staring at them.

Finally, one of the horses jumped a jump – it was Barry Boy, I saw by his blaze. Once he had done that, then the herd seemed to loosen up. The next horse to jump rather than go around was Curly, and then Curly jumped up onto the bank in the middle of the arena and jumped down. The bank now became rather popular – several of them jumped up and down. At one point two jumped on and then went down together, like a hunt pair abreast. I saw Andy move to guard the jump that was built into the fence at the end of the arena, an inviting coop. He didn’t want adventurous horses to jump out.

What surprised me was how simultaneously relaxed and graceful all the horses were. One reason we were staring was that we thought they might hurt each other, but they organised themselves. Since
Ralph
and Andy didn’t drive them, only directed them, the horses, I suppose, did not feel pushed and nervous. They were turned tactfully in big looping turns so that they would gallop in both directions. There was a kind of sinuousness to the way the herd moved, especially after certain horses began seeing jumping as easier than going around. And every time a horse jumped a fence on his own, all of us watching went ‘Oooh!’ A voice beside me said, ‘They look so free.’