“Grandpa, STOP!” I hollered.
My grandfather hit the brakes, and the truck slid to a grinding stop on the muddy road.
“What’s the matter? Did the tractor come loose?” Grandpa craned his neck to see out the back window of the truck. We were towing in an old tractor that had coughed and died in the fields more than two weeks earlier. Grandpa had a friend who could fix it for a lot less money than a regular mechanic, but he lived on a farm southeast of Calgary. I was spending Saturday afternoon with Grandpa, so we had driven out to the field, hitched the tractor to the back of the truck and were now towing it on a trailer.
“No, look!” I pointed off into the distance. Along the ridge a group of horses was running. The late afternoon sun glinted off their backs, almost silhouetting them against the empty sky. “How cool is that?” I breathed in awe.
“Those might be the wild horses. The ones that are causing so much trouble on the military land.”
I looked at him. “What wild horses?”
“Haven’t you heard about them? That band of horses has been running wild for years now. Most of ‘em used to be owned, but they got away somehow and they’ve been breeding and living on the grasslands for a few generations. The military’s got some bee in its bonnet about the horses damaging the ecosystem, and there’s talk about rounding them up.”
“What will they do with them?” I asked.
Grandpa shrugged. “I don’t know. Sell them maybe.”
I watched the horses turn away from the ridge and start heading toward us. “Can we walk to the fence? Get a better look at them?” I asked.
“Reese, I want to get this tractor dropped off so we can get back to the ranch before supper.”
“Please?”
Grandpa sighed. “Oh, all right. Let’s go.” He pulled over onto the grassy roadside, opened the door of the truck with a creak and stepped out into mud. “Watch out,” he warned as I opened my own door and nearly fell into a bush.
We traipsed through the grass, the autumn sunlight the only warmth. The wind was cold, the ground slick and icy from the rains that had turned to sleet overnight. The horses couldn’t smell us; we were walking into the wind, so they didn’t turn and run when we reached the fence.
The horses slowed to a trot. Then, finding a new patch of grass, most stopped to graze. I watched them with interest. There were a few that looked like yearlings, and several were foals that stayed by their mothers. The rest looked fully grown, shaggy with their new growth of winter coat. I could see a young mare dancing sideways, playing with another horse that nipped at her. She was a deep red chestnut; her coat had a burnished look in the sun. She lifted her head, and for one moment she stared right at me. Her overgrown mane whipped in the wind, but otherwise she was perfectly still. I didn’t move, didn’t even breathe, but the wind veered, the horses caught our scent, and they began to trot away. The mare cantered ahead, jumped a pile of logs and bracken, then coaxed her playmate to race her, thundering ahead of the band.
“Did you see that?” I said to Grandpa. “That mare jumped those logs like they were nothing!” I knew untrained horses almost never jump—they’d rather go around obstacles if they can.
“She’s a natural, all right,” Grandpa agreed. His seamed face relaxed in a smile. “Now you just have to catch her.”
There was a soft thrum of hooves, and several more horses burst over the ridge. Something was wrong. This was no playful gallop but a flat-out run. The other horses pricked their ears, immediately on edge, ready to run.
Far away, I heard a chugging, metallic sound. The two groups of horses joined, and the herd streaked across the prairie toward us, away from that noise. Panic was etched in their every movement, from the frightened eyes to the straining limbs. They thundered past, near the fence line, nearly close enough for me to touch. I could smell sweat and dust as they passed.
The red chestnut trailed the band. She didn’t look as frightened as some of the mustangs, but she ran behind them in a resigned sort of way. She skimmed by the fence. Without thinking, I put out my hand. She shied and summoned a burst of speed—in less than a second she caught up with the herd, fighting her way in among the ranks. Man, she was fast. I watched them go.
“Sounded like tanks. The soldiers are out here training, after all.”
“Would they shoot them?” The thought horrified me.
“No. But those horses are probably a bit of a nuisance. I imagine that the military would like to be well rid of them.”
“Is that why they’re going to round them up?”
“No. Apparently the land is getting damaged by the bands of horses roaming out here,” Grandpa said.
I stared after the horses as they grew smaller in the distance. “They sure are beautiful though, running free like that. I wonder what it would be like to ride one of them.”
Grandpa looked at his watch. “Come on, Reese. If I’m ever going to get that tractor fixed, we’d better get going.”
“Okay.” I turned back toward the truck, stepping carefully over the sludge and tangled grass, but I couldn’t get my mind off that chestnut mare. As Grandpa let out the clutch on the truck and we bumped carefully back onto the road, I kept turning the same thoughts over in my mind.
If I could catch her, could I break her? And more importantly, could I train her to jump?