PRINCESS loved summer—the warm sun, the green grass, the unpredictable show schedule, even the girls, unreliable as they were. But the old man continued to weaken, so slowly it was hardly noticeable.
Then one morning, he didn’t come. An ambulance came instead. The trainer followed it downhill in his truck and came back hours later, wide-eyed.
“This is the big one,” he told his wife. “He’s not coming back.”
She stood up. “Time to execute Plan B.”
The next day, Princess listened for the old man’s footsteps. He’d always come back before, and while he was gone, things carried on as usual.
Now nothing was as usual. Morning came but breakfast didn’t, not for hours. Eventually the trainer dumped a flake of hay in Princess’s rack and glanced at her water bucket. Dust floated on the surface, but he didn’t change the water and he didn’t clean the stall, just rushed away on business of his own.
Days passed. Princess was never once brushed. She began to feel sweaty and itchy under her stable blanket. The back door of the stall was left open, day and night. Princess went indoors when darkness fell, but she didn’t sleep. She watched and listened. This wasn’t right. The door should be closed at night, the blanket should come off by day, she should have a good brushing, and the old man should come.
The trainer hurried up and down the aisle, carrying things, packing them in boxes—saddles and bridles, halters, braided lead lines, training equipment, blankets and bandages and veterinary supplies. Everything was the best and most expensive of its kind. Everything was in excellent condition. The trainer and his wife had spent many spare moments polishing this tack. “Now our hard work’s going to pay off!” Darlene said.
She packed boxes in the small house and made trips to the large house. Princess could hear her moving around in upstairs rooms. Each time she came back carrying a basket full of small, fragile items, which she wrapped with care and packed in one of her boxes.
One afternoon she paused outside Princess’s stall. Princess moved toward the open back door.
“You know what burns me?” the woman said. With the old man gone, she no longer bothered to be careful how she spoke. “That we can’t turn a dollar on this pony! The work we’ve put into her over the years! The offers he’s turned down! Are you sure we can’t make some kind of a deal?”
“Impossible,” the trainer said. “She’s valuable because of who she is. She’s got papers and a show record, and she’s his. We aren’t him, and we can’t sell her.”
“Papers can be faked. I could do a lot to this animal with a few bottles of hair product. Not everybody in this business is honest, Charlie!”
“It can’t be done—no, Darlene.” He stepped between her and the stall door. The air tingled the way it did before a storm. “It’s not the pony’s fault,” he said. “Don’t take it out on her. I’ll go a long way for you—look how far I’ve gone already!—but I won’t go there.”
“No?” The wife looked him in the face. As they locked eyes, Princess slipped out the back door of the stall and trotted to the farthest corner of her paddock. It wasn’t far enough. The high, tight fence confined her as it always had. But out here she had room to run. If she had to, she could make herself very difficult to catch.
Apparently, there was no need. “You know how it is with me,” she heard the wife say. “Growing up hungry, and that ‘princess’ thing…” He immediately began to soothe and cheer her, as their voices faded toward the tack room.
The strange new life went on—three days, five, a week. Flies buzzed in Princess’s stall, attracted by the dirt. No one groomed her, and certainly no one visited morning and night. Asking “How’s my Princess?” Holding out sugar lumps on his palm. Even the cat stayed away. Always distrustful of the trainer and his wife, he found this a good time to hunt elsewhere.
Meanwhile, phones rang and rang in the two houses. Occasionally the trainer answered. “Any improvement?” he’d ask. “Ah. Too bad! Yes, all under control here. Nothing to worry about.”
“And as long as she believes that,” he said when he hung up, “she’ll stay away and give us the time we need.”
“Who is she?” Darlene asked.
“A niece. She lives somewhere in the city. A bit of luck, really, that he isn’t more of a family man.”
The next day the feed store truck brought sacks of grain and many bales of hay. The driver had heard about the old man’s illness and wanted to know how he was doing. The trainer just shook his head.
“Big delivery,” the driver commented. “Didn’t think he had that many ponies left.”
“A few,” the trainer said. “Under the circumstances, I want to be sure we have enough feed to carry them into the fall.”
“Glad they’ve got somebody to look after them,” the driver said, and drove away.
“And that takes care of the feed store,” the trainer said. “They won’t expect to hear from us for a while.”
“Then it’s time,” said his wife.
The next morning, they brought two rental trucks and loaded them with everything they’d packed and more—the hay, the grain, even the bales of straw for bedding. They didn’t take the ribbons, which were of no value, though they were made of silk. The wife wanted to take the silver platters, bowls, and cups, but her husband said, “Too easily traced. Half of them have his name engraved on them.”
“And half don’t.”
“Still—too risky, Darlene. They could be traced back to us.”
“You know best,” she said.
Similarly, they didn’t take any halters with nameplates, or Princess’s green wool sheet with her name embroidered in one corner. They took only what could be easily sold.
Early the next morning, before the sun was up, the trainer came into the stall. Princess wasn’t exactly afraid of him and not exactly unafraid. She hesitated, and before she could make a decision, he clipped a lead rope to her halter and walked her outdoors into a chilly mist.
Princess expected to be put in the trailer. But they went past the trailer, down the driveway to the field gate. The trainer took her blanket off. A shiver swept over Princess. It wasn’t a cold morning, but she’d worn the blanket for a week now, and the change was sudden.
The trainer opened the gate, and the field came alive with ponies, galloping toward them, hooves rumbling, manes tossing like tall grass in the wind. They were the remnants of the old man’s herd—retired broodmares, unattractive geldings, a few young animals that hadn’t gone into training. Never groomed, rarely handled, tough as nails, they were half-wild, but with a well-learned optimism about people and grain pails.
Princess’s heart lifted. Alone in the barn with the trainer and his wife, she’d almost forgotten there were still ponies on the farm. They swirled around the gate. The trainer’s wife kept them back with a whip.
The trainer led Princess into the field. “You’ll be fine,” he told her. “Plenty of room, plenty of grass—and in a couple of weeks somebody will wonder why they haven’t heard from us and come up to check.”
“A couple of weeks?” his wife said. “A couple of months would be safer. We don’t want to take any chances.”
The trainer looked at the field measuringly. “A month at most,” he said. “The grass will barely last that long.”
His wife looked at the field too. She didn’t smile—she rarely did—but one corner of her mouth sharpened briefly. She only said, “I’m sure you’re right, Charlie. Come on. We’d better get going.”
The trainer let go of Princess’s halter and stepped back. Instantly she was surrounded by ponies, sniffing, squealing, pushing against each other.
Alone in the center of the milling throng, Princess stood rigidly still, breathing in their breath, controlling her own reactions as Olive and Frankie had taught her. She knew none of these ponies, though she’d heard their neighs, seen them in the distance, smelled their scent as it drifted across the hillside. Blinded by their nearness, distracted by stamping hooves and swishing tails, overpowered by scents and small pointed ears pricking and flattening, she paid no attention as the trainer closed the gate, as he and his wife walked away, as two yellow rental trucks glided quietly down the long driveway.
Only the cat, in the empty barn doorway, watched them go.