CHAPTER FOUR

THE COW SHAKES HER EARS and slings her head at the flies. Sunlight glistens on her broad pink muzzle. She blinks her white eyelashes at Lily and Beware. Then she nudges the calf.

The calf gets up slowly. She stretches, arching her back and curling her tail. Then she reaches under her mother’s belly and begins to nurse. The cow stares at Lily.

Now what? Lily wonders. If she rides Beware close, she’ll drive the cow deeper into the swamp. If they stay where they are, they will block her from going back the way she came.

“We need to get behind her,” Lily tells Beware. She rides off the path, looking for a safe way to get around the cow.

The minute Beware moves out of the way, the cow gives a low bawl. She trots back along her own path. The calf trots behind, and Beware follows, without Lily having to urge her.

The cow goes fast. She disappears behind bushes and tall stands of grass. The calf skitters after. Beware trots hard to keep up, but she doesn’t have to do any herding. The cow leads her calf straight back the way she came, toward home.

“Then why did you come in here?” Lily yells after them. She is hot, and her bug bites itch. She thought it would be fun to herd the cow. She thought it would be interesting. It isn’t interesting to scramble back through the swamp, getting spattered with mud from Beware’s hooves and still being bitten. “You stupid cow!” Lily yells.

The little brown birds flutter up from the grass. Check! their father cries, and swoops down. He’s too late for the cow, too late for the calf, but Lily feels the breeze from his wings on her face. She ducks and makes Beware go faster. The ground beneath them squelches and sucks. Then with a grunt Beware heaves up the bank. She pauses, breathing hard. Across the field Lily sees the cow and calf galloping. Their tails kink in the air. They head straight for the fallen tree.

But Gramp put the wire back! They can’t get in!

The cow doesn’t pause. Lily hears a skreek! of wire, and then the cow is inside the pasture. The calf skims along beside her.

Check! The blackbird dives.

“Trot, Beware!”

Gramp stapled two strands of barbed wire right into the fallen tree trunk. They are still up, and Lily doesn’t see how the cow could fit between them. But a tuft of red hair is caught in the top strand, and a tuft of white belly hair is caught in the bottom strand, and there is the cow in the middle of the pasture. She must have pushed the wires up and down, and if it hurt a little, she didn’t care.

The cow looks back at Lily and Beware. Her head is high, and her eyes are narrow. Lily makes a face at her. She tries to turn Beware toward the barn.

But Beware is gazing into the pasture. Lily looks where Beware’s ears point. There in the shade are the Girls, scratching each other’s backs. All around them are the other horses, dozing and grazing and swishing flies.

“Oh,” Lily says. “That was easy!”

At the barn she unsaddles Beware, and walks her cool, and puts her in a stall with water and a little grain.

Then Lily walks up to the house. Sunlight flashes off the windshields of Gramp’s truck and Mom’s car. Good! They’re still here. Lily can tell them how she caught the cow.

But Gran is alone. The kitchen is full of steam and the smell of cooked tomatoes. The pressure cooker rattles on the stove.

“Where are Mom and Gramp?” Lily asks.

Gran turns from the sink. “I have no idea.”

“Well, did they have trouble with the horses?”

“They didn’t catch the horses,” Gran says. She slips the boiled skin off” a big tomato. “I did.”

“You did! How?” Gran never touches a horse if she can help it. She doesn’t like horses.

“Easiest thing in the world,” Gran says. Her voice is sharp, but Lily sees her cheek dent as she holds in a smile. “Half an hour after you all left, I looked out the window, and there they were. I just opened the gate and let them in.”

“Oh, poor Gramp!” Lily says. “Poor Mom! It’s too bad we can’t tell them.”

“I did beep the truck horn,” Gran says, “but no one heard.”

Lily remembers hearing the horn. It sounded as if it were out on the road.

“It’s just as well they didn’t come,” Gran says after a minute. “That Stogie didn’t come back with the rest. He’s still out there.”

Lily has a big glass of milk and a sandwich. She helps Gran with the tomatoes. Then she sits on the porch and watches until Mom and Gramp come out of the woods.

She sees Gramp stop, take off his floppy green hat, and rub the top of his head. He says something to Mom, and his glasses flash as he laughs.

Then he looks harder. He walks over to the fence. The Girls come to him, and he strokes their noses. But he looks past at the other horses. Mom looks, too, and they both shake their heads. They walk slowly up the hill.

“Came back on their own, didn’t they?” Gramp says when he comes in. “Gracie, you win again!”

“Lily got the cow,” Gran says.

“All we got is tired,” says Mom, sitting down at the table. “You’d think it would be easy to track nine horses, wouldn’t you? But the tracks just disappeared under the pines.”

“Like Stogie,” Lily says.

Gramp stands frowning out the window. “Something must have happened to him.”

“Maybe he just ran off,” Gran says. “A wild animal like that—”

“That horse is no wilder than I am!” Gramp says. “I saw him ridden the day I bought him. He’s just smart, and the feller I bought him from was pretty smart, too! No, Gracie, horses like to be with other horses. He’d stay with the bunch if he could.”

“Maybe he’s broken into somebody’s pasture,” Mom says.

“Then why didn’t the rest of ’em?”

“If he got separated from the others … if he got lost …” Lily can tell that Mom doesn’t believe that happened. Not really.

Gramp scratches his cheek. He didn’t take time to shave this morning, and Lily can hear his bristles rasp. His eyes look far away, the way they do when he thinks about Stogie. Gramp has always wanted a good Morgan, since he was a little boy. He wanted to take Stogie to the show at Tunbridge and pull logs with him, drive him in races, and have Mom or Lily ride him. He has spent the past two years watching Stogie graze in the summer, tossing him hay in the winter, and trying to catch him. Now just seeing Stogie would be enough, just knowing where he is.

“Well,” Gramp says finally, “guess I’d better call the sheriff.”

He goes to the telephone. “Hi, Ken. Woody Griffin here. Got a black horse loose somewhere in this county.… Yup, he’s got a halter on, but the fact is, I can’t catch the son of a gun when he’s in my own pasture, so I don’t have much hope of catchin’ him now.” The sheriff says something. Lily sees Gramp hesitate. Then he says, “Yes, Ken, if he’s making trouble, you’ve got my permission to shoot him.”