A Horse like Barney Read online

  “I’ll get it fixed,” Sarah said, making her voice more cheerful. Heaven forbid she should get Mom mad at her now!

  4

  Beau

  A few days later Sarah and Missy went to see their first horses: the two-year-old and the seen-it-all, done-it-all mare.

  The nearer they got to their destination, the more nervous Sarah felt. She’d spent days now buried in the classified sections of a dozen borrowed horse magazines or dreaming, finding incredible bargains, dickering and dealing. She’d been so absorbed and so contented that Mom felt her forehead once and asked if she was all right.

  But now that they were actually headed toward an appointment and it was too late to turn back, Sarah was remembering the less pleasant aspects of getting to know Barney. She’d loved him instantly, but the first thing he’d done was to chase her up onto her own barnyard gate. Next he’d bloated and made the saddle slip, and after that he’d given her a concussion.

  Most of these things had happened in private, and she’d been able to figure them out privately. Any mistakes she made today would be right in front of the horse owner and Missy.

  Missy was quiet, too, and when at long last they turned up the driveway of the farm, she was biting her lip. “Here goes,” she muttered.

  It was a long driveway, rough and rutted. An unpainted board fence, topped by electric wire, leaned toward them on old and rotting posts.

  At a turn in the driveway Sarah saw the horses: six big-barreled, short-legged chestnuts and a taller, narrower bay. The pasture was crowded with little groves of saplings. The grass was short and brown from drought and couldn’t hold the horses’ interest. They all lifted their heads to look at Old Paint, crawling up the drive.

  At the top a small A-frame house nestled against the hillside, next to a barn. Missy parked, and they got out.

  High above them on the A-frame’s deck, a door opened. A small woman with peroxide blond hair looked down at them.

  “Hi, are y’all the ones that called the other day?”

  “Yes,” said Missy.

  “Your timin’s great. This is the first time all mornin’ I haven’t been drivin’ horses or ridin’ ’em or shovelin’. Hold on, I’ll be right down.

  “Hi,” she said a moment later, coming out a lower-level door. “I’m MaryAnne. Which one of y’all did I talk with?”

  “Me,” said Missy. “But Sarah’s the one looking for a horse.”

  “And which one were you wantin’ to see?”

  “The Morgan/Standardbred,” said Sarah boldly. She knew that wasn’t the one Missy wanted to see, but it was going to be her horse after all.

  “Oh!” Beneath the teased and tormented blond hair, MaryAnne’s face looked older and harder than Sarah had expected. Blue eyes that had “seen it all, done it all” looked her over from head to toe. “Beau? He’s two years old. How much experience have you had, honey?”

  Sarah swallowed and barely kept herself from apologizing. Obviously no eighth grader had enough experience to cope with an unbroken two-year-old.…

  “Sarah’s had more experience than you might think,” said Missy coolly. “And with a pretty difficult horse. If Beau’s the kind of animal we want, I think we can handle him between us.”

  Between us! thought Sarah. With you off at college? But it was nice of Missy to back her up.

  MaryAnne appeared to shrug off her doubts. “Let me just run in and grab his halter.”

  “If you have other horses for sale, we’d like to see them, too,” Missy said. She met Sarah’s eyes, and Sarah smiled back at her gratefully.

  “Oh, they’re all down there,” said MaryAnne. She went into the barn and came back with a halter and rope.

  “Now, he hasn’t been handled a whole lot,” she said. “He’s an accident; my Morgan stud got in with the Standardbred mare. I haven’t put the work into him ’cause he isn’t worth it to me, but he’ll make somebody a real nice horse.”

  MaryAnne opened the single bar of the gate, ducked under the electric wire, and gave a piercing whistle. “That’ll fetch ’em—honey, don’t touch that wire! It’s hot!”

  Sarah had only leaned, gently and with respect for its great age, against the wooden part of the fence. She stepped back guiltily and then felt annoyed. Of course, she knew better than to touch an electric wire! It didn’t take too many years of experience to learn that!

  But hooves were drumming, and “Here they come,” said MaryAnne.

  The horses came up through a sapling grove, the tall bay trotting strongly in the lead. Leaf shadows slid over his bright back, and then he emerged into sunlight, tossing his mane.

  “That’s Beau,” said MaryAnne.

  Beau circled. His trot was enormous, powered by long, strong, free-striding hindquarters. Coming out of the trees behind him, the Morgans seemed to wallow.

  “Here, Beau!” MaryAnne walked toward him, and he turned to face her. He stood perfectly still, but his nostrils widened, widened, widened, with his excited breath.

  MaryAnne reached way up and slipped the halter on. Then she attached the lead shank, threading the chain through the side rings of the halter and over Beau’s nose. “He’s not hard to handle, but I don’t want him gettin’ ideas. Hey, back off, you guys!” She pushed a curious Morgan out of the way. It nipped at another, setting off a chain reaction of bites and dodges and laid-back ears.

  “Come on in,” MaryAnne called. Reluctantly Sarah ducked under the fence and went into the milling crowd of horses.

  “They just want to see who y’all are,” said MaryAnne. Sarah stood still and held out both hands, palms up. On both sides young Morgans came up to sniff and were chased away by older animals wanting a turn. Finally the biggest mare had Sarah all to herself and blew hot, aggressive breath on her.

  “Emmy! Just give her a slap there, honey, and come on by.”

  Give her a slap! It would be like slapping the principal of your school. Sarah slipped past as politely as possible and at last was within touching distance of Beau.

  He was much taller than Barney. He was lean, and his hooves were ragged, as if they hadn’t been trimmed in a long time.

  But his head was wonderful: long and straight and sensitive, with large dark eyes. He reached out to Sarah’s hand in a friendly way. She felt firm, muscular lips, the prickle of whiskers.

  “Oh, he’s beautiful!”

  “His head’s kinda plain,” said MaryAnne. “His dad’s got a gorgeous head. Here, I’ll walk him out so you can see him move.”

  MaryAnne led Beau back and forth, walk and trot, while Sarah watched his legs and tried to remember what she was supposed to look for.

  Missy came to stand beside her. “Looks straight enough,” she murmured. Beau, trotting, shook his head playfully and tried to nip MaryAnne.

  “You want to lead him, honey?”

  “Um … okay.” Sarah took the lead shank. She had to reach her hand way up to have it properly near Beau’s head—like leading a giraffe.

  Now what was she supposed to be learning from this? That Beau made her nervous? She already knew that, and she walked him in small, smooth circles, trying to keep him calm.

  Still, he was wonderful. It wasn’t his fault that MaryAnne didn’t have time for him. Sarah stopped him and scratched his neck, in the spot where Barney liked it. He seemed surprised, as if nobody had ever scratched him before. Then he leaned into her hand, making her scratch hard.

  “… make a better horse for a girl her age,” MaryAnne was saying. She pointed at one of the Morgans. “She’s broke and bombproof. Ride her alongside a cement mixer and she never turns a hair. She’s had two nice colts, settles easy, foals easy.… Honey, you kin turn him loose now.”

  Reluctantly Sarah slipped off Beau’s halter and watched him trot away, shaking his head. MaryAnne caught one of the chestnuts. She looks like a cement mixer, Sarah thought, but MaryAnne assured them that the mare was bred in the purple. “I’ve bred ’em back to the old type as much as I could, and after
twenty years I finally got it. You won’t find horses like this at a Morgan show, honey. This is the last of ’em.”

  Back and forth the mare trotted, and Sarah tried to clear Beau from her mind. Still, the mare seemed heavy and short-legged; lumber and thud.

  “You want to ride her, honey? Hold on, I’ll open the gate.”

  Sarah looked desperately at Missy. But Missy smiled encouragingly, and it was too late. Sarah found herself following the mare’s broad behind up the hill, and a few minutes later she was in the saddle.

  It was a western saddle, for which Sarah was grateful. She didn’t ride western, and any faults must be forgiven her.

  “Take her down the drive, honey,” said MaryAnne, “and gallop her up. Don’t be afraid to give her a good kick.”

  Feeling like a puppet, Sarah rode down the driveway. The other horses followed on their side of the fence, jostling and threatening one another. Beau was low in the pecking order, but he was so alert and athletic that he was never bitten. He simply floated away from the bossy mares with that incredible trot.

  “All right, piglet,” Sarah muttered, turning the mare at the last bend of the driveway. “Let’s see this so-called gallop!” And she kicked the mare in the ribs.

  Gravel sprayed up behind as the mare took off, with a terrific lunge that made Sarah grab for the saddle horn. It happened too quickly for her to gain control. Dimly, through wind-whipped tears, she saw the other horses racing alongside. But even carrying a rider, the mare made it up the hill first, even ahead of Beau.

  They swept into the yard, heading straight for the low overhang of the barn. MaryAnne calmly stepped into the doorway and said, “Whoa.”

  The mare whoaed, in two hard bounces. She snorted once, shook her head, and looked greedily into the barn, where the grain came from.

  “She’s got what it takes, dudn’t she?” said MaryAnne. Sarah nodded weakly. She felt like a fool, but that didn’t matter. She was alive!

  “But from what your friend says,” MaryAnne went on, “she’s prob’ly out of your price range. Here, hop down and y’all step inside a minute. I’ll put you on the phone with somebody that’s got a horse you can afford.”

  Missy’s eyes met Sarah’s in a moment of anguished communication, and then they were swept inside.

  “Excuse this house,” said MaryAnne, dialing. “I’m a horsewoman, not a housewife—hello, good-lookin’!”

  “MaryAnne, you sweet thang!” The man’s voice was perfectly clear to Sarah, even several feet away.

  “I got a little girl here who’s lookin’ for a nice broke horse at a nice price. You got one, huh?”

  The words were blurred now, but the tone was affirmative.

  “Hank, honey, I just don’t know. You’ll have to ask her yourself.” She held the phone out to Sarah.

  “Um … hullo?”

  “Hi there, sweetheart, what’s your name?”

  “Sarah.”

  “I’m Hank. So, what’re you lookin’ for?”

  Sarah’s mouth opened, and she stood blankly. She couldn’t think of a single word to say. “Um …” Her face heated, and she broke out in a light sweat. She turned away from Missy and MaryAnne. “What is your horse like?” she asked, one distinct word at a time.

  “Well, he’s coal black—real pretty horse. Sound and sane, an’ he’s got a lick o’ speed. Don’t know where he came from, but he’s a quarter horse all right.”

  “I was kind of looking for a Morgan.”

  “Well, now, he could be part Morgan. I wouldn’t be a darned bit surprised. Don’t find that pretty head on a lot of quarter horses. Why don’t you come on down and take a look?”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “I’m only five miles down the road. You let MaryAnne give you directions. She sent a lady to me yesterday, found the place just like a bird!”

  A few minutes later they were bouncing down the driveway. Sarah had the directions, scribbled on the back of an envelope. She watched out the window as they passed the horses, Beau flashing through the bunch of fat Morgans like a knife blade.

  Missy stopped at the bottom of the drive. “Which way?”

  Sarah didn’t answer.

  Missy glanced at her. “Sarah? You want to skip it?”

  “We can’t do that,” said Sarah miserably.

  “Sure we can! We can drive away and never come back!”

  “But MaryAnne—”

  “So what, MaryAnne? She was muscling you! The two of them must work this game all the time. Let’s just kiss MaryAnne and good-lookin’ Hank good-bye!”

  “No,” said Sarah. “I might—I mean, I should look at this horse. If the price is okay.”

  She was going to keep in good with MaryAnne, and she didn’t want to tell Missy why. “You don’t want him,” Missy had said of Beau.

  But Sarah did.

  5

  Juggling Act

  It was hard to see what MaryAnne might have been talking about when she called Hank “good-lookin’.” He was a middle-aged man with a large belly flowing out over his silver belt buckle and a two-day growth of grizzled whiskers. A signboard over the gate proclaimed his place to be the Eldorado Ranch—more rickety fences and brown pastures.

  The horse Hank led out of the barn was perfectly okay. Not coal black, of course, but a nice seal brown; not noticably quarter horse or Morgan; the head not really pretty but certainly not plain. He had nice, straight, average-looking legs.

  “I’ll just saddle him up for you, honey,” said Hank, though Sarah hadn’t asked him to. She looked to Missy, hoping for an excuse, but Missy stuck to the background.

  Hank had a little riding ring—the rang, he called it—and there Sarah rode the dark horse in a few circles. At Hank’s insistence she hit the horse once with the whip—the bat, he called it—and discovered that its lick of speed was nothing, compared with that of MaryAnne’s Morgan.

  She dismounted and, after several minutes of listening to Hank talk, managed to squeeze in the words “I’ll let you know.” Shortly thereafter Old Paint rattled out beneath the Eldorado Ranch sign, and they were on their way again.

  For a couple of miles they rode in silence. Sarah sat looking out the window, remembering things she’d said to MaryAnne or Hank, remembering the awful moment when she couldn’t say anything. She had never dreamed that looking for a horse would be like this.

  Bump-bump. Missy had pulled off at a roadside icecream stand. “Grab a picnic table,” she said. “You want chocolate or vanilla? My treat.” She went off to stand in line at the counter. After a moment Sarah realized she’d never decided on a flavor. But Missy was already coming with two giant half-and-halfs.

  Sarah licked and blurred the rickrack edge where the two colors came together. She’d picked a table at the edge of the picnic ground, under a willow tree. Below them a river ran. They licked their cones in silence, looking off through the shifting green and yellow light, toward the glint of sun on the water.

  A dog came up and sat watching their cones. Missy ate to the bottom of hers, where ice cream filled the wafer grid, and gave that part to the dog. “Boy,” she said, “this sure makes you feel like you don’t know anything, doesn’t it?”

  “Mm,” said Sarah. It was nice that Missy felt the same, but not very helpful.

  “You’d probably be just as well off waiting for your mother,” Missy said.

  She might be right. Nobody could steamroll Mom, the way MaryAnne and Hank had just done to them. Mom was really an adult, and Missy, Sarah thought, was still just pretending.

  But would Mom be any more confident inside than they were? Would she know any more? Mom had owned only one horse in her life, and that was a long time ago.…

  “Anyway,” Sarah said, “we’re better off in one way. If you were Mom, they’d have expected us to buy a horse.”

  Missy brightened. “That’s right. All we have to say is—”

  “‘I’ll let you know!’” That had seemed mean to Sarah a few minutes ago because
she knew she was never going to get back in touch with Handsome Hank. Now it seemed sensible and funny.

  “So,” Missy said, “keep going? I mean, I’d love to. I’m the only one out of all my friends who hasn’t, quote, outgrown horses, and I don’t have anybody to do things with anymore. But we can stop now if you want—”

  “No,” Sarah said. All around the picnic area were families, kids here just because their parents were, kids who looked as if they’d rather be someplace else. She and Missy were free and independent. They had Old Paint, and they had plans, and there was a river just down the bank, flowing coolly.… “Is there a swimming hole near here?”

  “Yes,” Missy said. “Grab the suits. We can change in the bathroom here.”

  By the time they finished swimming, Sarah barely had time to squeeze in six miles on Herky. It was dark by the time she had him unsaddled and cooled down. She put him in his stall with some hay and went into the cow barn to use the phone.

  Milking was still in full swing, and the disk jockey on the radio was talking cheerfully about the heat wave.

  Albert came out of the milk room. “Hi. Are you guys going to buy hay from us?”

  “I guess so!” Sarah was amazed; this was practically the first thing Albert had said to her all summer that didn’t have to do with Herky and his conditioning.

  “’Cause we’ve got some cut that’d make great horse hay, and I can guarantee it won’t get rained on! There isn’t a drop of rain on the whole continent!”

  “I know!” Albert’s father had a special radio that gave only National Weather Service forecasts all day long. Sarah went into the milk room every afternoon before her ride and turned it on. She heard other forecasts from the radio beside her hammock, and she watched the guy with the sculptured hair and computer charts on the six o’clock news. She knew it wouldn’t make cool weather or rain come any sooner, and sometimes it was so discouraging she could have cried. But a desperate, smothered feeling overcame her every time she tried not to listen.