Colt Read online

  Dear Colt,

  An old horseman has to like a kid with such a name. Also I have very much enjoyed your letters and the photos of you on Bonita. I am sorry not to have answered your letters sooner. But better late than never, and here is something I think you will like.

  I see from the photos that you are riding Bonita on an all-purpose English saddle and using a snaffle bit. The snaffle is fine. Stick with it. Any horse that needs a bit stronger than a snaffle is not the horse for you. But it seems to me that a horse of Spanish breeding such as Bonita looks nice under a Spanish saddle, and also that such a saddle, having a high pommel and cantle, would give you more support. So here is one. I would have sent it along in the first place except I knew that ornery critter, Brad, would want to pay me for it. Now it is just a gift from me to you, and he can forget about getting his wallet out. You can tell him I said so.

  You need a wool blanket under the saddle, and I’ve included one for you. It goes on the horse first. The leather pad goes over that, and then the saddle on top of the pad, which acts as a skirt to distribute your weight. The sheepskin goes on top of the saddle to give you a softer seat and keep the saddle leather unscratched. The stirrups, as you can see, are wooden and fasten onto the saddle by billets that can be shortened or lengthened.

  I have sent along a Spanish bridle also. Just use it with a plain snaffle bit.

  This saddle is probably fifty years old, but you can see it looks almost new. Keep it lubricated with neat’s-foot oil and it will stay that way. You can polish the silverwork with a soft rag. I hope you’ll send me another snapshot and let me know how the new saddle is working.

  Yrs, Tick.

  The saddle, with its rich dark leather and silver studding, and the bridle, exquisitely braided and tooled and decorated with buttons of silver, were so beautiful Colt could not stop looking at them. He could not believe Mr. Ticknor had sent him such wonderful things just out of the goodness of his heart. Yet when he thought about it he realized that all his life people had been doing things for him out of the goodness of their hearts: Horseback Riding for the Handicapped volunteers, teachers, therapists, Mrs. Reynolds, his mother.

  Colt did not know what Mr. Ticknor looked like. He decided to ask Mr. Ticknor for a photo of himself. He suspected that Mr. Ticknor, like Liverwurst, was a big, homely, very kind creature.

  The saddle worked beautifully. It had a cantle that stood up three or four inches and curved to enclose Colt almost like the back of a chair, but did not interfere with his lump. It did, indeed, give him a more secure seat on Bonita. Mrs. Reynolds was pleased to report after a couple of weeks that Colt was riding more strongly than ever. He could guide Bonita from walk to paso corto to paso largo and back again with ease. He could back her, side-pass her, and turn her on her haunches, no problem. He was more than ready to ride out on the trail.

  March came and turned Pennsylvania to mud. As soon as the ground dried in the warm spring wind, it would be time for Colt to get out of the ring and into the woodlands he remembered from that single trail ride the past summer.

  “I can’t wait,” he told his mother. She was washing the supper dishes, he was drying them, and Rosie was putting them away.

  “I bet,” said his mother. She had been along on that trail ride too, as one of Jay Gee’s side walkers, he remembered. And she actually seemed to sense something of what those hushed high-pine woodlands meant to her son. “If we had another horse as nice as Bonita, I’d take time off from work and come with you.”

  “You?! You would?”

  She gave him a smile. “Tell you a secret. I wasn’t sure about letting you have Bonita at first. So as soon as she came, Brad put me on her.”

  “You rode Bonita!”

  “Sure did. Several times. I figured if I could ride her and not get in trouble, anybody could.”

  “Anyway,” Brad called from the next room, “I didn’t want to ride her myself. She’s little. I was afraid I’d be too heavy for her.”

  “Sheesh!” Colt was grinning. “So how long were you two playing around with my horse before I got her?”

  “Long enough to know that she’s too fast for me to walk along beside,” said Audrey Flowers. “And you’re never to ride her by yourself, young man,” she added sternly.

  Colt knew that. He had already discussed trail riding with Mrs. Reynolds. Someday soon she was going to saddle up her own horse and ride out with him.

  “Heck, I could run along with you, Ozzie,” said Rosie, half joking.

  “Right, Frannie.”

  “You think I’m kidding? I bet that pony of yours couldn’t keep up with me.”

  Colt flicked him with the dish towel.

  Chapter Eight

  Colt did not know until a few days afterward how grateful to be for Rosie’s offer.

  The phone call came in during supper. Colt, eating, heard only his mother’s end of the conversation. “Hello? No, that’s all right, Janet, we were just finishing … Oh, dear, I’m sorry to hear that. Colt will be sorry too … Well, I hope you’re feeling better real soon. If you need any help when you get home, please give us a call … now stop worrying, Colt will survive.”

  Survive WHAT?

  When Colt’s mother came back to the kitchen after a few more minutes of telling Mrs. Reynolds to take care of herself and concentrate on getting well, she found that her son had lost all interest in his spaghetti. Colt knew he was about to hear something he wouldn’t like.

  “Janet has to go into the hospital for some surgery,” Mrs. Flowers reported to the family. “No riding lessons for a while, Colt. Even after she gets out she’ll have to take it easy for several weeks.

  “Several weeks?” Colt knew now that he would not survive.

  “What kind of surgery?” asked Lauri at the same time. Colt’s outburst, being louder, got answered first.

  “Good grief, Colt, don’t yell. It’s not as if you can’t ride at all. You’re to ride whenever you can. Janet made quite a point of that. She said you will be fine on the horse. One of us is to be with you, that’s all.”

  “What kind of surgery?” asked Lauri.

  “But we were going on the trail soon!” wailed Colt.

  “Colt, stop sounding like a brat. We’ll see what we can do,” said his mother. Colt wanted to scream. The we’ll-see-what-we-can-do meant his mother felt hassled and didn’t want to be bothered. After all the time he had waited he was going to have to wait some more.…

  Lauri asked again, “What kind of surgery?”

  “What’s it to you?” Colt shouted at her. “Sheesh!”

  “I just wondered if maybe she had cancer or something.”

  “What makes you think it’s gotta be cancer!”

  “Colt, quiet down or go to your room,” his mother ordered. “I didn’t ask her what kind of surgery, Lauri. That’s personal.”

  “But didn’t she say?”

  “You’re sick, you know that?” Colt raged at Lauri. “Sick!”

  “Colt,” his mother told him, “that’s enough. I’m not going to even talk with you about riding until you calm down.”

  He did, gradually. It took him a few days. But by Saturday morning he was able to scooter-board calmly into his mother’s bedroom (she was combing her hair) and say to her in level and civil tones, “Mom, it’s beautiful outside. May I go riding?”

  “Colt, I have to go to work.” She worked alternate Saturdays. The next one, it would probably be raining. “Maybe tomorrow,” she added. Sunday. It always rained on Sundays, didn’t she know that?

  “Mom, please,” said Colt, carefully keeping his voice down. He knew he was being unreasonable. He could not really expect her to skip work. Brad was working too, overtime, he knew that. But there was one other person, who had probably been joking …

  He asked, “How about if Rosie takes me?”

  “Well, I don’t know …” Rosie had just gotten his driver’s license the week before. “He might not even want to take you, Colt. I think he w
as just kidding when he said he would.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Colt, even though he did. “Rosie!” He scooted off to find the lanky teenager.

  Rosie seemed to have grown six inches since fall, and it showed in the way he moved. His head, hands, and feet seemed always to be surprising him by being farther from the rest of him than he expected. When Colt found him, he was keeping himself out of trouble by daydreaming on his studio couch. His feet hung over the end, looking gigantic in new running shoes.

  “Rosie. Take me riding today? Before it starts to rain again?”

  “I got to go to the mall and meet a girl,” said Rosie without looking at Colt.

  “Aw! Pleeeze?”

  Then Rosie turned his head, and Colt saw his grin, and knew he had been teasing, and wanted to hit him.

  “Rosie—”

  “Okay, okay! I need to run anyway.” With a huge sigh Rosie heaved himself up from his bed.

  “You mean …” Colt scarcely dared to believe it. “You mean we’re going out on the trail?”

  “Sure, Ozzie. Where else?”

  However, neither of them mentioned that detail of their plan to Colt’s mother as they dropped her off at work. They didn’t want to worry her. Even as it was, she kept telling Rosie to drive safely and reminding Colt to wear his helmet.

  Rosie drove safely, but he and Colt joked all the way out to the stable. Something giddy was in the air. It was just what Colt had said: a beautiful day. More than beautiful—it was magnificent, glorious, exciting in the way that only an early-spring day of sunshine and warm breeze can be after a long winter’s drear. It was a day that promised good things to come forever.

  There was nobody home at Deep Meadows Farm when they arrived except, of course, the horses in their paddocks and pastures. Mr. Reynolds might have been at the hospital visiting his wife. None of the other boarders happened to be there to ride so early in the day.

  Rosie helped Colt out of the car and into his wheelchair, then led Bonita in from the pasture by a big soft rope around her neck. Colt had to tell him what to do to get her ready to ride, and he looked very out of place in his sweats, gym shorts, and running shoes as he brushed off Bonita’s back. He moved stiffly around the little mare, keeping an eye on her even though she was doing nothing but standing placidly, her pretty head nodding.

  “Pick up her feet and get the crud out of them,” Colt directed.

  “Are you kidding? What if she kicks me?”

  “Oh, for crying out loud. Give me the hoof pick. I’ll do it.” Colt took care of the feet from his wheelchair. He did the bridling too, because Rosie did not want to put his hand near Bonita’s teeth. Colt could not have bridled a head-tossing horse from his wheelchair, but Bonita put her nose down to where Colt sat and opened her mouth to receive the bit.

  “Shut the tack-room door, keep the cats out,” ordered Colt. Mrs. Reynolds had told him that stable cats love nothing better than to perch on saddles and scratch the leather with their sharp claws.

  “Yes, O Master.” Apparently Rosie had not liked Colt’s tone. Or perhaps he did not like having so many strange jobs to do.

  It was a relief to both Rosie and Colt when the saddle was on Bonita and Colt on the saddle.

  “Okay,” said Colt when he had checked to make sure the girth was tight, “let’s just walk until we get to the park.”

  “Am I supposed to walk behind you, or in front of you, or what?”

  “Mrs. Reynolds said she might spook, because everything will be strange to her. There’s no such thing as a totally spook-proof horse. So you’re supposed to walk beside her head and grab the bridle if she spooks.”

  “Great. What if she bites me?”

  “Rosie…” Colt remembered he had once been frightened of Liverwurst and softened his voice. “Rosie. Would you look at her, for gosh sake? She’s not going to bite you.”

  Bonita stood with her big dark eyes half-shut, shaded by long silver lashes. Her forelock reached nearly to her soft toast-colored nose. Her fuzzy, gold fox-pricked ears pointed sideward.

  “That’s the kind you got to watch,” Rosie grumbled. “The quiet ones.”

  “Just walk, Francis.”

  They walked up the farm lane to the country road and along it to the park. From his paddock Liverwurst whinnied after them. Bonita did not reply, but nodded along, swishing her silver tail. In his chest Colt felt happiness gathering like helium. In a moment he and Bonita would lift off and soar among the tall pines, up, up, away.

  Rosie nodded cautious approval. “Neat,” he remarked, his deep voice hushed. “I can see why you like this place, Ozvaldo.”

  Warm tangy light poured down through the pine boughs, catching on pale dogwoods in bud, on red-tipped maples, on papaw. Squirrels crossed the trail, their tails floating like shadows along the arcs of their leaps. Looking up, Colt saw blue sky; looking down into one damp hollow he saw a mushroom nearly as blue squatting between vivid green fiddle-heads of fern. Brown butterflies with a yellow fringe fluttered over the moist ground—it surprised Colt to see them so early in the year. Then deep in the trees, underbrush crashed as a deer leapt. Bonita pricked her ears toward the sound, nothing more. Like Colt, she took in everything wide-eyed, her small hooves eager on the soft springtime earth.

  The trail dipped steeply downward, then leveled again to a broad, grassy path along the lakeshore. Bonita had never seen so much water in one place before. She flared her nostrils and snorted at the strange, shining expanse, then listened to Colt’s hands on the reins.

  “Ready for a run?” Colt asked Rosie.

  “Sure.”

  Colt settled his seat even deeper in the Spanish saddle, gathered the reins, and smoothly Bonita single-footed into the paso corto. Her tawny neck arched and her mane lifted and flowed as her hooves tapped out a rapid, even 1-2-3-4 rhythm on the grassy trail. Wood ducks glided on the lake; Bonita and Colt glided along the shoreline just as easily. Rosie jogged beside the horse’s head, no longer afraid of the small, softly clattering hooves flashing near his ankles.

  “Faster?” Colt inquired happily.

  “Sure!”

  Colt signaled Bonita, and with a catlike, reaching motion she lengthened stride into the paso largo. Rosie was running now, arms pumping, his long legs outstretched. Bonita was skimming along as fast as most pleasure horses can canter, and in the saddle Colt sat as if in an easy chair.

  “All right!” Rosie approved. “She’s doing a six-minute mile for sure. Maybe five. How long can she keep this up?”

  “I don’t know! I guess we’ll find out.”

  Horse and rider and runner whirled along the shoreline. Within a few minutes, before they really noticed, the land steepened. No longer down near the water, the trail now ran along a hillside, and the blue-green lake water lapped thirty feet below.

  “She getting tired yet?” Rosie puffed as the trail continued to slope upward.

  “Rosie,” Colt teased, “she’s not even sweating!” Which was true. Bonita’s flexed neck remained dry, her ears pricked calmly forward.

  A dove flew up from trailside with a sudden whistling of pointed wings. Bonita flinched and swerved. Automatically Colt’s seat shifted to go with her, his hands signaled for her attention with the reins. Bonita straightened herself and gaited on before Rosie could touch the bridle, and Colt breathed deep with relief and joy. His horse had shied, and he had hardly known it happened before it was over. He would call Mrs. Reynolds that evening and tell her. If that was all there was to shying, it was nothing to be afraid of.

  “Maybe we’d better slow down,” Rosie panted.

  “All right,” said Colt regretfully, and he brought Bonita back to her slow walk. Breathing heavily, Rosie turned around and looked at her.

  “Yazoo. You weren’t kidding. She isn’t even sweating yet.” Rosie walked backward, talking to Colt. “She’s something else, you know that? She’s really something. I bet you could even talk me into riding—”

  “Watch th
e edge!”

  It was too late. One of Rosie’s large wayward feet had strayed too close to the drop at the side of the trail. Just as Colt spoke Rosie set his foot down half on nothing. The ground, damp from recent rains, melted away under the pressure. Ankle twisting, knee buckling, Rosie fell with a hoarse, startled yell. He thought (and so did Colt, pulling Bonita to a halt, watching, stiff with terror) that he was going to crash all the way down the forty-foot drop and into the lake. His hands flew out, clawing at air and saplings, his back dug a damp furrow in the loam, and like a runaway sled he headed straight for a large beech tree, feet first. With a jarring impact Rosie came to a stop a few yards below the trail.

  Bonita looked down at him with blinky brown eyes. From her back Colt looked down with considerably more concern.

  “Are you all right?”

  Rosie groaned and glared by way of answer. On hands and knees he scrabbled his way up the slope and crawled onto the level surface of the trail. Colt wished he could get down and brush the leaves and pine needles and dirt off Rosie and help him get up. He could not, of course. He could only watch.

  Rosie put his weight on one foot and tried to stand up. He winced, then tried the other. He looked up at Colt.

  “Dammit,” he said. “I’ve wrecked up both of them.”

  Colt felt his mind shy and swerve. He steadied it as if steadying a frightened horse. Calm down. Move forward one step at a time. First things first.

  “Did you hit your head on anything?”

  “Just the ground.”

  “Did you do anything to your neck or back?”

  “No. I don’t think so. Just twisted my ankle going over the edge, and then rammed my feet into the tree.”

  “So you’re okay other than that?”

  Rosie rolled his eyes. “Other than that? Sure. Other than that I’m just fine.”

  Chapter Nine

  Colt thought for a minute, then walked Bonita forward a few yards, turned her so that she faced toward home, then took her back to where Rosie sat. He tightened one knee just a hair, and Bonita side-passed a step toward Rosie.