The Hex Witch of Seldom (5 page)

Grandpap glared, then shouted, “Jesus shit! Goddamn it, girl! Why not?”

She would not admit, even to herself, that she did not want the black mustang to hate her. Though she knew she could have walked up and taken him by the halter, and he would not have resisted her by even so much as turning his head away.

“He's my horse,” she said. It came out sounding bratty. Inwardly she groaned, for she could see Pap was boiling mad.

Rather than face him any longer, she turned away and jogged across the corral to where the big sliding door to the barn stood open, offering the mustangs shelter should they choose to accept it, though no escape. At the other end of it another door, closed and latched, blocked the way and the light. Stepping inside the shadowy aisle, Bobbi opened the door to the first stall. She did not have to look to see if the black horse was watching her; she felt sure that Shane was always aware of everything taking place around him, both because he was a wild stallion and because he was—himself. Without turning around and without raising her voice, she requested, “Shane, would you come and get into this stall, please?”

She could hear the black stud walking toward her across the corral. Without looking she could envision his catlike alertness, his desperado grace. She heard his steps steadily approach, then the slightest of hesitations; Shane was put off by her nearness. He thought perhaps she would try to touch him as he went past her into the stall. “Don't worry,” she said sourly to the wall. “I wouldn't think of it.”

He speeded his walk slightly, brushed past her, entered the stall and turned around so that he faced her as she closed the door. Bobbi felt a slight shock as her eyes met the eerie blue ones in the horse's strong, black face. Almost, she had expected a man's handsome, headstrong face, dark brows, straight nose.… Shane stood watching her intently.

“I won't latch it,” she told him quietly. “You can just push it open if you want. But please stay in until Grandpap is done. He's not a bad man. Even the temper you've got him in, you'll see he doesn't hurt the horse.”

She went outside, squinting in the brighter light of the corral. Grant Yandro was still standing where she had left him.

“The black devil's name is Shane,” she told him.

Pap looked at her oddly. “I see,” he said in a quiet, angry voice. “And when I want him in a stall I'm supposed to just hold the door open and ask him nicely, is that it?”

Bobbi said wearily, “Probably not. I think he just does it for me because I'm a girl.” She went into the house.

More often than not, Pap made supper, but since he was busy with his horse Bobbi started some sausage frying on the little bottle-gas stove. While it cooked, she watched the corral out the kitchen window. The sorrel was so worn out it was not hard to catch. Grandpap got his horse by the lead rope and maneuvered the animal to the hitching rail near the barn, where he snubbed the sorrel tightly to the strong post. Then, for an hour, standing on the opposite side of the post and rail, he methodically rubbed and patted the sorrel's head, first one side and then the other, starting at the cheeks and working his way up to the forehead, ears, poll and upper neck. Each time he moved his hand to a new place the sorrel struggled, wild-eyed. Each time, it found that struggling was of no use and ended it by standing still. Sometimes its ears came forward, its expression curious as well as scared as it listened to the sound of Grandpap's voice.

From the darkness of the barn, Bobbi knew, Shane was watching, or at least aware, his blue eyes ablaze with hatred in his black face. True, the sorrel was not being hurt. But it was being forced, pushed, shaped.

Bobbi sighed and started to mix pancakes.

It was almost dark before Grant Yandro came in for supper. “You didn't latch the black horse's stall,” he told Bobbi as he washed his hands. “He could have come out any time he wanted to.”

“I know,” she stated.

Pap stared at her with eyes as hard and gray as the stones long-ago glaciers had left in his horse pasture. But he said nothing more. He sat and ate in silence.

In spite of his gray hair, Grant Yandro had never seemed old to Bobbi. Stubborn, and set in his ways, but not old. Nor did he seem young. He simply was, like the mountains, and like them he weathered without seeming to change. Though Bobbi knew in her mind that he would someday be gone, in her heart she assumed he would always be there for her, like the hills, when she needed him.

“I called Doc Boser,” he said after he had eaten for a while. “He'll be out a week from Monday to cut them mustangs.”

Grandpap kept speaking, but Bobbi could not at first comprehend what he was saying. She heard only cut, mustangs, and the palms of her hands pressed against the table top to keep her upright; for the first time in her life she felt faint. “Cut” meant geld. Make the studs into geldings. Castrate them.

“He'll want to do it in the stalls,” Pap was saying. “We got to get them halter-broke and stall-broke by then.”

“You can't geld Shane!” Bobbi burst out.

She saw her grandfather's eyes widen in surprise, as well they might. Nearly every year of Bobbi's life there had been a horse gelded at the Yandro place, and she had never objected before. Nobody with any sense kept a stallion unless they intended to breed it, and had the special stalls and corrals meant for studs. Stallions were considered too unreliable and just plain dangerous to use as pleasure mounts around mares.

Bobbi knew these things. But—that was all before she knew Shane.…

Pap sat astonished by her outburst, but, oddly, he did not rear up and roar. Bobbi had spooked him with so many surprises in the past two days that perhaps, like a mustang snubbed to the hitching rail, he was growing tired of struggling. Or perhaps he was learning, out of necessity and quickly. He asked quietly, “Why not?”

He was really asking. He was really ready to listen. His tone touched Bobbi so that she nearly opened her mouth to tell him. But she couldn't … how could she share what she had so long kept secret, tell him about the weird things she saw? Her reasons were too strange for words. As crazy as her screwball mother. Suddenly doubt numbed her. Thinking what she did about Shane, was she—was she crazy? Ever since she could remember, ever since the first time she had visited her mother in the awful, screaming, urine-smelling psychiatric ward, she had been afraid of going ga-ga like Chantilly.

“You just can't,” she said to her grandfather, but all the fight had gone out of her.

“No reason?”

“Shane's …” But he would know she had gone off the deep end like her mother if she told him. And, anyway, how could she feel so sure? She faltered, “Shane's … different.”

Grandpap said, “I can see you and that horse got something special.”

It was a struggle for him to say it, she could see that, after he had been so set against her getting the black mustang. But fair was fair, and Grant Yandro was always fair. He added, “You planning to breed him, maybe?”

Pap was really trying to understand. Bobbi felt her eyes prickle with hidden tears.

“No,” she said, “I wasn't planning on it.” She had to be at least that honest with him. He was trying to be honest with her.

“I was going to say, ain't nobody going to breed to him, not with those walleyes. He's a real nice horse,” Grandpap added hastily, “aside from that. Real light on the forehand for the way he's built. Moves nice.” There was a grudging but genuine admiration in the old man's voice. He was recalling the way Shane had dodged his rope. “Faster on his feet than any horse I ever seen.”

Moves like a cat burgler, Bobbi thought. Or a gunfighter with Indian blood. Or a drunken gypsy, for the gypsies only danced better and with greater splendor and defiance as they became drunk. Or a swordsman—no, a Jedi knight.

“Flashy. Good flex to his neck.” Grandpap was still trying to be nice, but then the horseman in him took over. “It's plenty muscled up, Bobbi, maybe even a little too thick. You ought to get him cut if you're planning to show him. He might make you a real good barrel racer, quick as he is.”

“I ain't thinking about things like that,” Bobbi said.

For the first time her grandfather's voice rose. “Well, you ought to be! What the devil are you thinking about?”

Castration. Done at the proper time, it let a male horse's bones grow longer, his neck grow more supple and graceful, more yielding to the rider's pressure on the bit. And made him more docile, and let him share the same pasture with the mares. But what would it do to—a man?

That was crazy. Bobbi felt the craziness of it twitch at her face.

“What ails you, girl?” Grandpap asked impatiently.

There was no proper answer Bobbi could give. “It just don't feel right!” she burst out, and she lunged up from the table and blundered out into the springtime night, up the dark mountainside, staying away from the corral where the weird black horse might make pictures in his eyes for her, leaving Pap to clear off the supper dishes.

Chapter Four

The next day Bobbi's grandfather told her, much too patiently, as if speaking to someone whose mental balance he held in doubt, that he would not have a stallion on his farm with his horses. There would be no more arguing with him, Bobbi knew, patience or no patience. Shane must be gelded.

Bobbi spent the next week floundering in a mental whirlpool she could not seem to escape.

If Shane was just a horse, then it was reasonable and customary that he should be gelded. And it was crazy to think that Shane was anything other than a horse. And no matter what she had seen and what she knew, she did not want to be crazy. Grandpap would get a court order and have her put away like her mother. She had to make sure nobody ever knew she had thought crazy thoughts. Shane had to be just a horse.

And yet, there was the form beyond the form.…

She had seen it only once, at the wild horse distribution center, and she did not want to see it again. She looked at Shane as little as she could, and when she did look, she made sure she saw black hooves, black hide, a tail swishing flies. A horse. A mustang. She made her eyes tell her mind that Shane was a mustang, and she would not allow words to the protesting part inside her that was going crazy. Grandpap was right. Of course the horse had to be gelded. She did not want to go against Grandpap. She had no good reason to go against Grandpap. He was right, and she knew it.

Why, then, did she feel so wrong?

Grant Yandro watched her as if waiting for the next shoe to drop. There was nothing he could put his finger on about her—maybe she was a little too quiet, but a person is entitled to be quiet—there was nothing, really, but just a feeling he had, that she was not done surprising him. She wasn't spending much time with her horse, he noted. “When are you going to halter-break that Shane?” he asked her cautiously over Monday morning's breakfast.

“What does it matter,” Bobbi said right back, “as long as he'll go in the stall for me?” He could tell she had the answer ready. She had been giving it some thought.

“I'll have to hold him by the halter for the vet.” Grant had arranged for Dr. Boser to come the following Monday while Bobbi was in school. He was old-fashioned enough so that he always did that when he needed to have a horse gelded. Bobbi had seen almost every other kind of vetting, but she had never seen a castration.

“Can't you just muscle him for a couple minutes? Won't Doc give him a sedative right away?”

“It's my body you're talking about here, girl!” Grant studied Bobbi closely, not really angry despite his tone. He knew he could manage the horse in the close confines of the stall. There would be a little excitement—he was almost looking forward to it, especially after the way the horse had made a fool of him. He would not mind putting a twitch on the black mustang's nose and making the animal stand still. But he couldn't understand Bobbi. He would have thought, as moony as she had been about her mustang, she would have wanted to prepare Shane and make the operation as easy as she could for him.

“Are you hoping he'll get away from me?” he demanded.

“Not really.”

That was the truth. Bobbi knew her grandfather, and she knew better than to hope a horse could best him. Or even—something more, in a horse's body. The thought made her eyes wince and shift, and the way her glance slid away from his convinced her grandfather that he had hit on the truth.

“Well, he ain't getting away from me,” he said in a hard voice. And because he felt a dare, he did not order her to gentle the horse. He only told her, “You put that mustang in the stall on Sunday night, and you make sure the door is latched, and you leave him there.”

Bobbi nodded, got up and went out to tend to her chores. She didn't look at Shane or speak to him.

All that week Travis Dodd stopped by the Yandro place morning and evening, before and after school. The struggle inside Bobbi was wearing her out so that she did not have the energy to be rude to him. And because she did not want to be near the black horse for any longer than she had to—because she might see crazy things in those weird blue eyes again, or the mist-thin form hovering like a nimbus around the black shoulders, in the air—because of her problem, she nearly welcomed Travis. She let the neighbor boy help her carry hay and water to the mustangs in the corral. The water had to be hauled from the spring, bucket by bucket, and dumped into the wooden trough. Once the mustangs were tame enough to go out to pasture, they could drink from the run like the other horses, but as long as they stayed in the corral it was Bobbi's job to provide them with water. With other mustangs in the past she had enjoyed it, pausing between trips to talk to the wild horses, coaxing them to come nearer to her. But as things were with Shane, she hurried through the job as quickly and silently as she could, actually grateful for Travis's help, though of course she did not tell him so. She was so moody all week long that Travis sensed something wrong, and every day with clumsy questions he asked what it was, though he knew she would not answer.