A Good Horse (9 page)

Daddy said, “That’s better.”

Jack turned in toward me again, lowered his head again. I stepped up to him, facing him, and lifted both my hands and waved my forefingers at him. He dropped his head just a little more and took a step backward. He was ready to consider further suggestions. I snapped the lead rope back onto his halter and then asked him to step over to the right and then to the left. He did what he was asked. Then I walked the lead rope around behind him and placed myself on his other side and pulled, just a little. He turned his head, turned it more, turned it more, until he was practically bent in two, and then he stepped under and turned his body all the way around until he was looking at me. I did this again, and then wrapped him
the other direction, so that he had to turn all the way around. Then I petted him. His head was down and his ears were flopped. He was a good boy at last. I scratched him lightly all along the roots of his feathery mane, and he leaned into the scratching just a little bit. He gave a groan.

Daddy said, “You do a good job with him, but it’s a good thing we gelded him.”

I nodded.

“Well, I’ve got work to do. You want to ride Effie first or Happy?”

I chose Happy. He got on Lincoln. Ten minutes later, we were climbing the big hill behind the gelding pasture, toward the Jordan ranch. What with the heat and then everything else we were doing, I hadn’t been up the hill in two weeks. Happy was a small mare, muscular and strong. She climbed the hill as if she had been waiting just to do that very thing for days. Lincoln had a harder time. But the weather was good, and about halfway up there was a breeze. It smelled sweet.

The surprise was the calves, six of them with their moms, up under the oak trees. They had long, dangly ears and triangular heads. Their skin hung in wrinkled folds, and they were blue, the color of smoke. I had seen plenty of calves over the years, both brown Herefords with white faces and black Angus. Calves were always cute. But these Brahmas were really cute. The one nearest the fence had a dark-colored crown on his head and a tuft the same dark color on the end of his tail. While we were watching, he started nursing the cow. I could see that she had a big hump where the withers would be on a horse, and he had a hump, too, though tiny. Herefords and Angus are flat
across the top, head to tail. Brahmas are kind of surprising-looking if you aren’t used to them. The cows and calves were noisy—there was a lot of mooing.

We walked the horses along the fence and tried to get a look at all of the calves. Two were lying down, but the four that were standing had big knees and a fold of skin that dangled between their front legs. One of them was much more speckled with dark dots than the others—almost as if a drift of soot had fallen on him. The calves looked at us as we rode by, but it seemed like the cows couldn’t be bothered with something as unimportant as a couple of horses. Happy was interested in the cows, though. As we walked along, she stared at them, her ears pricked. She was much more interested than Lincoln. I remembered what Jem Jarrow said, and thought that Happy really, really wanted to play.

Daddy said, “Good cattle for a dry area, and these look healthy enough, even the calves. I’d stick with Herefords, though, out here in California. Best flavor.”

One of the calves watched us as we made our way along the fence and then suddenly mooed at us. Happy flicked her ears. The calf mooed again, and Happy whinnied. I laughed.

“I think she’s saying, ‘Let’s have some fun!’ ” said Daddy.

“You never see this kind at the rodeo,” I said.

“Too fast,” said Daddy. “Brahmas can run when they want to. Jump, too.”

“I love the color.”

“These are beauties, no doubt about it,” said Daddy. “I’ll be interested in the bull when they turn him out in a couple of months. I haven’t seen him yet.”

We turned and began to make our way down the hill. I let
Happy pick her own trail—she was good at it and went diagonally, first to the left and then to the right. She moved right along. Lincoln wasn’t as good at it, and Daddy had to sit back with his heels way down, reminding Lincoln how to shift his weight backward. I never saw a horse tumble down a hillside, but every so often I was surprised when one didn’t. That was the way it was with Lincoln.

We could see our ranch from above—the house, the barn, the pen, the arena, and part of the gelding pasture, and most of the mare pasture. The valley was golden and rolling, and Mom’s flowers looked bright against the broad expanse of grass. There was something else, too: off to the left, sitting on the hillside—that dog. We hadn’t seen him in maybe a week, and I had sort of forgotten him, thinking he had moved on or something like that. He was sitting up straight, his back legs square and his front paws together, ears up. Every moment or two, he lifted his muzzle and sniffed the wind. He also watched us. But he didn’t move. Daddy said, “Looks like he thinks he owns the place, doesn’t he?”

We walked on down the hill. When we were about halfway down, the dog got to his feet and walked after us, step by step, watching what we did. When we got to the barn and dismounted, the dog stopped where he was, maybe a third of the way up the hill on the other side of the gelding pasture, and sat down again. He still looked like he owned the place. Daddy watched him for a long moment before walking Lincoln over to the gelding pasture and putting him away, but he didn’t say anything.

By the time we were on our last horses of the day, Sprinkles and Sunshine, the dog was gone.

I
GUESS
I
THOUGHT THAT NO TIME WOULD HAVE GONE BY SINCE
I showed Gallant Man in his pony classes in the spring, and nothing would have changed, including me, because I was actually amazed when I tried on my show clothes the night before we were to take Black George over to the show and discovered that the sleeves of my jacket were too short, and Mom had to stand in front of where I was sitting in a chair and pull and pull on the bottoms of my jodhpurs to get them down over the tops of my jodhpur boots. As for the waist snap, well, we didn’t even try to make that stick together—I just put a safety pin at the top of the zipper and covered the whole thing with a belt. At least my hard hat fit, but I knew that, because I had worn it when I schooled Black George, and my
boots fit, because they were new. But I could feel the fronts of them if I spread my toes—they weren’t going to fit for long. When I moved around in the front seat of the truck as we were driving Black George over there, I could feel my shirt popping out in back, too. I felt truly stupid.

And, of course, the first person I saw when I got there was Sophia Rosebury. Sophia Rosebury was exactly my age, and she was a big star around that barn—her instructor was not Miss Slater but Colonel Hawkins himself. Colonel Hawkins ran the whole barn (Miss Slater worked for him), and he had been on an Olympic team sometime, though I could never remember which team or when.

Sophia Rosebury was built like a pencil—maybe an inch or two taller than I was and about half as big around. She wore very large braces on her teeth—bigger than any I had seen in school—and she had blond braids down to the middle of her back. She was not what Stella would have called “so attractive!” but Sophia Rosebury was a good rider—anyone could see that—and her horses were nice, though not especially nicer than Gallant Man and Black George. What Sophia Rosebury had was perfect equipment. Her saddle was still tan—almost new, but rosy and supple. Her bridle matched her saddle. Her jacket fit as though it had been made for her, and she wore high boots—shining black ones. Nothing Sophia Rosebury was wearing was poking out where it shouldn’t be. Her stock sat neatly underneath her jacket collar; her breeches went smoothly into the tops of her high boots. Her sleeves met her gloves and covered their edges. The same could not be said about me.

We were at the show grounds for about fifteen minutes
before Daddy managed to find Miss Slater—long enough for me to unload Black George and tie him to the trailer and watch Sophia Rosebury be given a leg up onto her perfectly cleaned and braided horse, then have her boots wiped by someone who must have been the groom. When she was absolutely clean in every possible way, Colonel Hawkins looked her over, and they walked toward the warm-up ring.

When Miss Slater saw me, I could see that she agreed with my feelings about my outfit, because she took one look at me and said, “Oh dear.”

I looked down. The cuffs of my jodhpurs had ridden up and were about halfway up my legs. Well, that’s what it seemed like. They were not that short, but they were too short.

Black George looked good, though. Between us, Daddy, Mom, and I had spent all day the day before trimming him and bathing him and combing out his tail hair by hair. His tail, in fact, looked spectacular—black and shiny and almost brushing the ground, so full at the bottom that it seemed to float. And, of course, the saddle and bridle were clean. Daddy knew how to get things clean.

Miss Slater looked at her watch, then she said, “We have twenty minutes before we have to warm up. Abby, come with me. I’ll take you to the storeroom.”

I followed her into the regular barn, where she crossed the courtyard to a door without a window, painted green with white trim. She pulled out a bunch of keys and unlocked the door. Inside it was dark. She pulled the string on an overhead light. The shelves were stacked with all sorts of things—not only clothes but bits and spurs and pieces of tack. She said,
“Some of these things have been here since the twenties. Someone should write an article.” She waved her hand. “A few of those bits are positively terrifying.” She picked up a roweled spur that looked like six nails set into a roller. “Not to mention this. There’s only one of these, though. It’s pure silver, so we haven’t thrown it out.”

She rummaged on one of the shelves and pulled out a pair of jodhpurs, then held them up to my waist. They were a little long, but she said, “These will do for now.” Then she said, “Actually, dear, you are too old for jodhpurs. I should have realized that. You need to be wearing breeches and tall boots.”

I said, “Daddy will not want to buy those. Are they, like, twenty dollars?”

“They are, like, forty-five dollars, new. But we can find some used ones, I’m sure.”

If Sophia Rosebury had ever worn anything used, well.

Miss Slater handed me the jodhpurs and went to the door to keep watch while I changed. They fit okay. They were long enough, and the waistband buttoned. So what if they were extra-wide in the leg. After I put my boots back on, Miss Slater said, “Well, those are right out of the Second World War. But
very
durable goods. Pure wool twill.”

I could tell that when we got outside. But they were loose and comfortable. Then she looked at my sleeves and pulled my shirt out a little more. She said, “It’s always proper to show a little cuff. No one minds that.”

Back at the trailer, Daddy had Black George saddled up, his mane combed again. As soon as I got on, Black George started tossing his head toward the arenas. At first, I thought there was
something wrong with him, but then I realized that he just wanted to get going, and he was letting me know where to.