CHAPTER FIVE

LILY AND MOM LOOK AT each other across the table. Gramp loves Stogie. He’s ashamed that he bought a horse nobody can catch. He knows that Stogie is useless. But he’s beautiful, too. Gramp likes having him out there, looking so wild.

“They shouldn’t shoot him,” Lily says when Gramp comes back from the phone. “He’s afraid of people, really.”

“I know, Lily,” Gramp says. “But if he gets in with somebody’s horses or into their garden, what are we going to do? He could hurt people just trying to get away.”

Lily knows Gramp is right. She can see Stogie’s big black body crashing fences, shoving and shouldering people. She can see him kicking dogs and frightening children. Lily isn’t afraid of horses the way some people are. That’s because she knows how to tell them what to do. But no one can tell Stogie things because he won’t let people close. Maybe he doesn’t even remember the way people and horses talk to one another.

“But couldn’t we look?”

“Lily,” Gran says. She puts a sandwich in front of Gramp, and she opens him a bottle of homemade root beer.

“I’ve looked,” Gramp says. “I’ll keep on lookin’. But he could be anywhere, Lily. For all I know he’s out on that hillside hurt, and we walked right by him.”

Lily has never thought about Stogie being hurt. Stogie is fast and surefooted. His black legs are round and smooth, like iron bars.

“Maybe he’s caught in wire,” Mom says. She gets up suddenly. “I have to go to work now, but I’ll try to get out early.”

“I’ll go drive around a little,” Gramp says. “Maybe I’ll see him.”

In a minute they both are gone. “He hardly tasted this root beer!” Gran says.

Lily turns from the kitchen window. She and Gran look at each other. After a minute Gran sighs. She looks at the crumbs she is sweeping off the table.

“I was brought up to take care of the animals before I took care of myself,” she says. The corners of her mouth turn down.

Lily waits.

“Is that horse afraid of people?” Gran asks.

“Yes,” Lily says. She doesn’t know how afraid Stogie is. She knows that a frightened horse is a dangerous horse. But she says, “The only thing he wants is not to be caught.”

Gran pours the root beer into two small glasses. She gives one to Lily, and she takes a sip from the other. “There’s never been a more useless animal on this place,” she says after a moment. “But if he’s out there somewhere, suffering …”

It feels to Lily as if they are two grown-ups talking. Something serious has happened, and each of them must decide what to do.

Gran is waiting, and now Lily knows what to say. “I thought I’d ride up on the hill and look for him.”

Gran nods. Her eyes are wide and steady, and they meet Lily’s eyes straight on. “I know you’ll be very, very careful,” she says.

Lily rides Beware up Gramp’s wood road. The air is cool under the trees. High above, the leaves shift, and bright blue sky shows through. This is one of Lily’s favorite places to ride, but today she lets only a little part of herself enjoy the air and blue sky. The rest of her listens for Stogie, and watches the ground, and stays prepared. That is what Gran depends on her to do.

Beware trots strongly. The snap of the lead rope around Lily’s waist clicks in time to Beware’s steps. Nobody can catch Stogie, so nobody can lead him, but Lily brought a rope anyway. She brought the whip, too.

Partway up the hill Lily gets off to look for horse tracks. She bends close to the ground. Beware looks, too. She noses the dirt, and then she nudges Lily’s hand. Maybe Lily has found something. Maybe it’s good to eat.

“No, silly! I’m looking for tracks.”

There are no tracks. There are no sounds, except a blue jay calling. It’s so quiet nothing as big as a horse could be nearby.

But the cow was there, Lily remembers. It was just as quiet out in the swamp, and the cow was right there.

Lily rides on. She listens, but she can hear only the soft thud of Beware’s hooves. If Stogie were near, Beware could smell him. She could hear him, better than Lily could. But Beware doesn’t seem to sense anything. Her ears point gently up the road.

Where Gramp has cut wood there is more sky and more sunlight. Ferns grow in the bright shade between the stumps, and Beware keeps reaching down to snatch a bite. “Hey!” Lily says. “We aren’t on a picnic!”

She rides around the edge of the cleared spot. No tracks. No tracks. No tracks—wait! Here the ferns are bruised and broken. Clods of dirt are kicked up, and there are tracks, a big braid of them.

Lily dismounts. She holds the reins loosely and lets Beware eat ferns while she studies the ground. She finds Stogie’s track, notched and ragged, on top of all the others. When they came through here, Stogie was still chasing them.

Lily sits back on her heels. She tries to put herself inside Stogie’s mind and understand what he wants.

Stogie thinks he is a wild horse. He acts like the boss of a herd. Once he got his herd out of the pasture, where would he want to take them?

Away. Across the mountain.

Lily looks toward the uphill side of the clearing and up, and up, to where the edge of the mountain meets the sky. That’s where Stogie would go.

Lily can see him in her mind’s eye, weaving back and forth behind the others. The Girls want to go home. They keep looking back. But Stogie bites them. He throws himself at them like a black spear, and he drives them uphill. The Girls are big and slow. They can’t outrun Stogie. How did they get away to lead the others home?

Something happened to Stogie. That’s the only way it could have happened. Lily can see it different ways in her mind. Stogie steps in a hole and breaks his leg. He gets caught in wire. A bear comes out of the woods, and Stogie turns to protect his herd—

The reins pull in Lily’s hand. She looks up. “Hey!” Beware has stepped on one of the reins. Before Lily can move, Beware feels the pull. She tosses her head. The rein snaps.

“Oh, no!” Lily jumps up and catches Beware by the bridle. The rein is broken close to the bit ring. Beware rolls her eyes and snorts her breath out. It frightened her to feel herself suddenly caught like that.

“Stupid!” Lily tells herself. She should have watched Beware, not the horse herd in her head.

She tries to tie the broken rein around the bit ring. It makes a big knot that rubs the side of Beware’s cheek. When Lily pulls the rein even a little bit, the knot comes untied.

Now what? Lily doesn’t dare ride with only one rein. Even Beware isn’t good enough for that. She’ll have to walk back down the hill and see if she can find an old set of reins in the barn.

Or a lead rope. A lead rope would make a quick rein.…

And there’s a lead rope right here, tied around Lily’s waist.