One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (2 page)

“Good boys,” Peggy called. Their fat little yellow butts jiggled from side to side as they sped up. Halflingers are the size of large ponies, but they are classed as draft horses. That means they can be a handful to drive.

She’d driven in a couple of short non-rated marathons, but always in single harness with my Halflinger, Golden Boy. What he didn’t know about driving hadn’t been figured out yet. But Peggy’d never before driven a pair in a recognized event.

The mist lifted some as we neared the bottom of the hollow. Drivers not scheduled to go until later, grooms, spectators, and hangers-on straddled their ATVs or stood out of the track of the carriages where the teams made the turn, so they could watch the first carriages cross the bridge and plan their own runs.

I caught the odor of coffee from the big cups most of them held and wished I could swap places with them.

The sun now glittered off the lake so brightly that I wished I could fit Golden Boy and Ned with their own Polarized sunglasses, like Peggy’s and mine. Their golden coats and flowing white manes blazed nearly as bright as the sunlight.

“Easy,” she called.

“Half halt right,” I said. She gave a short tug on her reins and tapped her brakes to slow down the horses and set them up for the last part of the trot downhill.

In yesterday afternoon’s hazards class, where we threaded the carriage through the various hazards set barely wider than our tires, our boys—Golden Boy and his new teammate Ned—had performed as though they’d been working together all their lives. Golden Boy, actually
my
Halflinger, inherited from my father, was an old pro. As right hand horse, he kept the younger and less experienced Ned in line admirably. Ned was Peggy’s new acquisition—willing, but green. Green horses always worried me.

Peggy slowed and swung the team right onto the causeway. Perfect. Right down the center. Even though it was narrow, there was plenty of room between the banks.

“Horses are slaves. Free them now or die in their place!”
The voice was so loud it sounded as though God himself were issuing a new commandment. A second later, a garish banner flapped open across the bridge dead ahead of us and popped noisily in the morning breeze.

I yelped, levitated two feet straight up in the air, and almost fell off the carriage. Peggy hauled back hard on the reins and stomped the brakes. Even Golden Boy was startled. Of all the crazy . . .

Terrified, Ned reared and pulled hard to his left. His left hind hoof slipped in the mud at the edge of the causeway and slid down the bank toward the water, canting the carriage to the left. Peggy hauled right on the reins as I threw my weight to counterbalance the listing cart.

Too late.

We drove straight into the lake. The team’s momentum dragged us a dozen feet into the water. Both horses and carriage sank instantly. The horses thrashed, trying desperately to free themselves from their harness and keep their heads above the water.

Even in May the water hung on to its chill. All I could do was suck in a breath and pray. Choking and spitting, weighed down by clothes, boots and body protector that felt as heavy as chain mail, I fought my way to the surface. My eyes stung and then my hard hat spilled an icy waterfall down my face.

I dashed the water out of my eyes with one hand and grabbed the back of Peggy’s body protector with the other as she broke the surface. She choked, spat and twisted out of my grasp.

“Let go of me!” she screamed. “We have to get the horses loose!”

The carriage was submerged, but I could feel the top of the seat with my boot. I kicked off to swim forward to the horses. “Swim to the bank.” I shouted. “I’ll get ‘em.” I didn’t know whether Peggy could swim, but she was not young and the water was frigid. I didn’t want to have to rescue her too.

I heard splashes behind me, and a moment later, a couple of spectators I didn’t recognize swam past me to grab the horses’ bridles. Shouting, others jumped in after them until people and horses roiled the water like an interspecies feeding frenzy. If someone was kicked under water or hit by the heavy center pole of the carriage, or if one of the horses broke a leg, this could be a tragedy, not simply a disaster.

I had to trust Peggy would be all right. Surely someone on the bank would drag her out.

The horses’ heads broke the surface of the water ahead of me but immediately sank again. I sucked in a deep breath and dove. The water was murky, but those white manes floated ahead like ghosts. I swam to the pair of singletrees that attached the horses to the carriage. I could see someone doing the same thing on the far side of Golden.

The horses fought us, but their kicks had little force under the water. They were attached to the cart by quick release carabiners designed for just such emergencies. You couldn’t cut the horses out of their rig. It’s impossible to saw through either Biothane plastic—the newest material for harness—or thick leather, and certainly not under the water. Cutting them loose wasn’t an option.

We had to free them from the singletrees first, then from the strap that held them both to the long pole shaft between them.

I managed to get both carabiners on Ned’s side free, then surfaced to see men holding both horses’ heads above water, before I pulled myself forward by grabbing the nearest handful of pale mane. Someone had already unhooked the pole strap, which meant that although the horses were free of the carriage, they were still coupled together.

Releasing the coupling rein that held Ned to Golden meant they could swim forward on their own. A pale hand came out of the murk and unhooked Golden from the far side.

I grabbed Ned’s bridle. Once he was released from reins and carriage, Ned kicked forward. I felt his hoof brush my knee. Golden would be free by now as well. I trusted that whoever had unhooked him would aim him toward the shore.

Ned tossed his head, thereby lashing me across the bridge of my nose with about two feet of wet mane that felt like a cat o’ nine tails. “Ow!” I yelped and sucked in a mouthful of pond water. I swung my right leg over his back, startling him even more, and turned him toward the bank.

Where was Golden? I risked a glimpse behind me and saw him swimming close behind Ned. All around me people swam with the horses. I recognized Jack Renfro, the Tollivers’ huge groom, hauling Golden along like a barge towing a john boat.

“We got ‘em!” A gray-haired man I’d met at Friday night’s exhibitors’ meeting tilted his head back and let out a rebel yell. From the bank I heard shouts and applause. The horses shook their heads to free their ears of water, but otherwise, didn’t react. They were used to spectators and just wanted out.

I saw Peggy sloshing along the shore still wearing her driving gloves, hardhat, and back protector as she attempted to climb down the bank toward us.

“Whoa! We don’t need to rescue you too,” Peggy’s Gentleman Caller Dick Fitzgibbons said, grabbed her around the waist and swung her up the bank.

Horses are excellent swimmers, and our two were no exceptions. Hands reached down to grab bridles and help the horses find their footing on the bank. I dropped off. Dick hauled me up and reached down to grab Golden’s bridle from Jack.

Peggy shook Dick off and ran to embrace the horses and me. “So much for getting around the course safely.” I said and steadied myself with an arm on Peggy. “You okay?”

“I am now.” Peggy stood between the two horses with an arm around each neck as they nuzzled her. Their white manes were green from pond algae. Their long outside reins and shorter inside coupling reins were still attached to their bridles. Ortega, Dick’s groom, hooked lead lines to both bridles. Peggy and I unhooked the reins and dragged them out of the water. They felt as slimy as wet leather shoes.

“Could ‘a been a damn sight worse,” Dick said. He dropped his dry windbreaker over my shoulders. Someone had already draped a driving apron around Peggy, and I saw our other rescuers being tended to as well.

“But your poor carriage . . .” Peggy wailed.

“Screw the carriage,” Dick said. “We’ll drive the tractor down here as soon as the others get past the bridge. We’ll winch it out in no time.”

“But . . .”

“It’s steel, Miss Peggy,” said Jack Renfro. He patted her shoulder. “Water can’t hurt it.”

“The harness . . .”

“It’ll be good as new after a powerwash.”

Dick turned Peggy to face him. “We need to fix
you
? How are you?”

“I’m
mortified
is how I am.” Peggy looked past Dick at the bedraggled group that had saved the horses. “You’re soaked. I am so sorry.”

Now that the danger was past, everyone around us, wet or dry, was laughing and clapping. “Thank you so much,” she shouted. A chorus of ‘glad to do it’s’ and the like came back to us.

Catherine Harris, the official technical delegate to the show, walked up behind Dick Fitzgibbons with her hands on her hips and an expression on her face that would have melted lead. “Those horses could have drowned.”

I’m sure Catherine realized intellectually that Peggy was not to blame, but in the final analysis, it’s the reinsman’s job to keep his team under control, even in the event of a nuclear disaster. A horseman’s initial reaction in any accident is anger that horses have been put at risk. And we tend to take out that anger on whichever human being is closest.

Catherine took a deep breath. “Sorry, Peggy, Merry. Not your fault, but when I find whoever set this up, I intend to flay them alive.”

She turned to her young assistant. “Troy,” she said, “Go bring me that ludicrous banner.” She stormed off toward the bridge. “I’ll teach the moron who did this to put horses in jeopardy.”

Peggy caught my eyes and essayed a shaky smile. “At least she’s got her priorities straight.”

I found the trip wire for the banner almost at once. The wire was stretched just above fetlock level on a horse. Thank God it was thin enough to break easily when the horses hit it, although once they were cleaned up, we’d have to check for cuts around their ankles.

“Dick, come look at this,” I said. The two broken ends of the trip wire lay on the damp grass and glinted in the sunshine. Each end was twisted around a stout twig driven into the soft ground on either side of the causeway. I knelt and spotted some kind of spring arrangement on the bridge. Break the wire and the banner would be released from the bridge rails on either side. Sort of like a horizontal Jack-in-the-box. I assumed there was some connection to synchronize the noise of the bullhorn as well, but somebody else could find that. Possibly someone was standing back in the shadows of the pines to cue the bullhorn. In today’s world, they probably used a cell phone app.

Not my problem. I gave up shinnying up trees when I was a teenager and before I had a grown daughter.

Dick hunkered down beside me and looked at the wire without touching it.

“Peggy and I weren’t supposed to be in the first carriage, but I suppose this wire thingie would have been triggered by whichever carriage was first,” I told him. “An equal opportunity trap.”

“The order of go was posted yesterday afternoon,” Dick said. “Makes you wonder.”

Dick pulled me to my feet. Peggy had stayed with the horses. I didn’t think she could hear us, but she’d definitely know we’d found something.

“Anybody who triggered that banner and the noise would probably have wound up in the lake,” I said. “The calmest horse would have spooked. And a pair would be that much harder to keep on dry land. Once Ned’s foot slipped in the mud, we were toast.”

One good-sized horse might have been relatively easy to release from a submerged carriage, but Halflingers, although they qualify as a draft breed, are the size of large ponies, and with two of them to free—I didn’t want to think what could have happened to them.

“I’m not certain we could have saved a four-in-hand of short Welsh ponies,” Dick said. “No matter how many people were holding their heads up, four horses wear a lot of harness, and it’s not easy to find the carabiners under water. Those heads would have stayed under, and there would have been nothing we could have done for them.”

He was right. Horses can snort, and they can close their nostrils for a short period of time. I suppose that’s from when they were faced with snow or sandstorms in their wild days. But they can’t keep the water out of their lungs for long, and Ned and Golden had been dragged under again and again. An eighteen-hand draft horse might have been able to stand on the bottom and keep his head above water without assistance, but not these little guys.