CHAPTER SEVEN

LILY CAN’T THINK WHAT TO DO.

She could yell at Stogie and try to make him move. But if he’s hurt, moving might hurt him even more.

She could ride up closer and try to see what’s the matter. Will he turn then and bite Beware?

She could tie Beware to a tree and walk up to Stogie. Beware is wearing her bridle, though, and it isn’t right to tie a horse by the bridle. If Beware pulled back, the bit could hurt her mouth.

Stogie shifts his back legs. Lily hears his breath rattle in and groan out.

“All right!” Lily gets off Beware. She unsnaps the lead rope from the bit, and she snaps it into the narrow leather strap of Beware’s noseband. Then she ties the lead rope rein around a small sapling. Now if Beware pulls back, she won’t be pulling against the bit. She’ll probably break the bridle, but she won’t hurt herself.

“You stand, Beware!” Lily says. She grips the whip tightly, and she walks toward Stogie.

“Whoa, boy,” she says. “Easy.” Stogie’s hindquarters fill the path. Lily doesn’t want to get close enough to be kicked.

The saplings beside the trail grow close together like a wall. A horse couldn’t fit between them, but Lily can, just barely. She turns herself sideways. She squeezes between trees and bends branches and pushes little saplings down until she is right up beside Stogie’s shoulders. Only a thin screen of saplings comes between them, like the bars on a jailhouse window.

Still Stogie doesn’t move. Lily looks at his ragged feet and his strong, round legs. They seem perfectly normal.

She looks at his broad chest and his arching neck. His hair sticks out in little spikes, as if he has been sweating. But Lily can’t see anything wrong.

She looks at his head. His eye rolls to look back at her. The white of his eye is bloodshot. His old leather halter is twisted on his head, so the side strap is right up under his eye. Lily can see something dark beneath his jaw.

Beware snorts, and Stogie groans back at her. He shifts his legs, but his head stays perfectly still. Lily pokes her head out between the last row of saplings.

“Oh, I see!” The dark thing under Stogie’s jaw is a branch, one that Lily trimmed this summer, a strong, springy branch. The jaw strap of Stogie’s halter is twisted tight around it. That’s what is holding him still. He can’t break the branch off the tree, and he can’t pull loose from it.

“Stogie, you wait!” Lily says. She pushes back through the saplings and hurries to Beware. She’ll ride up the trail to the clearing, and quickly down the wood road, and get Gramp. Gramp will cut the branch, and then Stogie will be free.

But when Lily turns Beware up the path, Stogie whinnies after her. He sounds breathless. Lily hears his feet crash in the dry sticks and leaves. She looks back.

Stogie is trying to twist around to see them. As Lily watches, his back feet slip on the path. They slide underneath his body, and then he is hanging from the branch. It bends with his weight, but it doesn’t break.

Lily presses one hand to her mouth. There is nothing she can do. She watches Stogie thrash and flail and struggle until at last he finds his footing again.

He stands still on the path, the way he was when Lily found him. His breath is loud and harsh. His black sides heave. Lily can see the red of his nostrils and smell the hot new sweat that has broken out on his body. How long has Stogie been here? How many times has he slipped like that and struggled?

Stogie jerks his head against the halter and the branch. He’s still trying to see Beware. “She’s right here,” Lily says. “I won’t take her away.” She rides down closer.

Now what can she do? Stogie must be freed soon. He’s getting weak and tired. He could hang himself if he slipped again. He could get colic from having no water. He could go into shock.

Tie Beware here and run home? That will take a long time, and what if Beware gets loose? She would probably go home, and Stogie would go crazy.

Wait here? Gramp will come looking if Lily doesn’t get back soon. But that could be a long time, too, and when he comes, he won’t have a saw to cut the branch with.

If only Lily dared go right up to Stogie! Maybe she could get his halter off.

“What should I do?” she asks Beware. Beware blows softly through her nostrils. She can’t answer Lily the way a person would. All Beware wants is to go home.

Gramp would dare walk up to Stogie. Probably Mom would, too. Gran would tell them to be careful, but she would think they ought to do it.

What would she want Lily to do?

Stogie needs help. There is no one else to do it. Gran would want Lily to try—and be very, very careful.

Lily dismounts and ties Beware. She pushes back through the saplings. “Easy, Stogie,” she says. “Easy.” Her voice sounds scared to her. It sounds shaky. But when she gets to the last saplings, she pushes right through them and steps onto the path beside Stogie.

His black shoulder is hot, like the side of the wood stove. Lily can feel it without even touching him. There’s foamy sweat on his neck where the branch has rubbed.

“Whoa, Stogie,” Lily says. Stogie’s bloodshot eye rolls. He shifts his front hooves. Lily has seen him strike with those hooves. They are as hard as hammers. She knows she had better not get in front, where they could reach her.

She looks hard at the halter. The leather is old and stiff. The buckle is sunken down into the strap. With all that stiffness, and all Stogie’s weight on it, that buckle will never come undone.

But high up next to Stogie’s eye is the throat snap. If Lily can unclip that, the halter will slide right off over his head.

Can she reach it? Lily leans the whip against a tree, where she can get it quickly. She edges closer. “Easy,” she says, and she puts her hand firmly on Stogie’s shoulder.

Stogie’s skin shudders. His breath rattles more quickly. Lily is the first person to touch him in two years. His ungroomed shoulder is hot beneath her hand, and Lily can feel that he is afraid of her.

All at once she loves Stogie. He’s so big and dangerous and in so much trouble, and he is afraid of her.

“It’s okay,” she tells him. “It’s okay, you silly boy.” She rubs her hand up his neck, making circles the way a mare does with her tongue as she licks her foal.

“There, does that hurt? You know, if you let people touch you, we could have taken this halter off a long time ago, and you wouldn’t be in trouble now.”

Lily stands on tiptoe. She can’t quite reach. She’s standing too far back, near Stogie’s shoulder. To reach, she’ll have to step in front of him.

“You could hurt me,” she tells him. “But if you do, you won’t get loose. Whoa now, Stogie. Stand.” She steps right in front of Stogie’s black, dangerous front feet. She reaches for the halter just as if he were Beware, and she unsnaps the snap.

The halter slides, all by itself. Stogie pulls back, and the branch springs up into the air with the old leather halter wrapped around it.