Twenty-Six

Leading Sally

Over the past few weeks I’ve been turning the garden shed into Sally’s tack shed. Comet’s too. I’ve bought my own halters for both of them, a caddy, my own brushes and oat dishes. I buy wooden letters that spell sally’s shak and nail them to the door. I’ve bought enough to say “and Comet’s too,” but I haven’t had the nerve to put them up. I have been thinking about it, though, of telling Wayne that Comet’s mine.

The other day Emilie drove over and I put a halter on Sally and we walked her back to Emilie’s. We did this so that Sally and I could get used to the route. We travelled west across the road from my house, over the golden stubble of a harvested wheat field, then into the next quarter of land where swaths of canola were drying—we walked along the edge so we wouldn’t damage the crop. We walked over clods of dirt that had been worked up in the spring but not seeded, along a windbreak of poplars and pine trees, then through the brush and out into another field, then across the Rolla Road where vehicles roared along, then into the next quarter section with its swaths of wheat. The whole time Emilie was instructing me on how to lead Sally.

“You need to walk right beside her head,” she’d say. “Don’t let her get ahead of you.” On the trail, the horses know to follow behind. Sally seemed only to want to be ahead of me, and I was constantly trying to stop her, turning her in a circle, and then starting again, the day hot as we continued through the field where we negotiated over and between swaths of grain. To my left I could see the pub and the store, the houses of Rolla and beyond them, to the west, Sweetwater Road and in its distance, Emilie’s ranch. At one point, tired of listening to Emilie’s constant instructions and Sally’s refusal to comply, I flung the lead rope at Emilie and told her to do it herself. It wasn’t my finest moment.

After I’d calmed myself down, apologized, taken Sally back, Emilie swatting me on the shoulder and laughing, we carried on, but this time Emilie held back. And I slowed down too. I’d been trying to keep up a pace that I thought would help me stay in sync with Sally. I thought Sally was comfortable with walking fast, and I wanted her to be comfortable. But it wasn’t working. A resolve took hold. At the very least, I had to have a pace that was comfortable to me. And then, while I was focusing on that and trying to keep the speed consistent, Sally fell into line, slightly ahead of me, so that I was parallel to her shoulder. I let her. And once that position was established, she kept to it. She didn’t pull on the lead rope; she began to respond to the ebb and flow of my steps.

“You two look good together,” Emilie said, joining us again. Then the three of us, together, walked the rest of the way to her ranch in sync, Sally on one side of me, Emilie on the other.