10

A New Trail

It didn’t make sense to tell Mom what she’d been up to until she wasn’t up to it anymore, Sarah decided. That gave her a target of Sunday or Monday—four more days.

They crept by in a haze, warming up again from “high of eighty-eight” to “high of ninety-five.” If it hadn’t been for the trail ride, only one week away now, Sarah would never have dreamed of riding. Herky didn’t mind, though. He was fit and frisky and hardly seemed to notice it.

“He needs a break,” Albert’s note said on Friday. “Go somewhere different—a couple of hours walk and trot.”

Somewhere different! Sarah had spent the whole summer pounding over the same two measured loops until now she could hardly think of somewhere different to go. She went down the road, turned into a field at random, and rode along the edge, where the shade of trees was trying to cool things down a little.

On the back side of the field, a rutted dirt track led into the woods. It looked cool and shady and, above all, unfamiliar.

As they entered the woods, the deerflies zoomed in like a squadron of fighter-bombers. They bored into Herky’s neck and shoulders and occasionally, for a refreshing change, into Sarah’s bare arms. It was like a being stabbed with red-hot darning needles. Bug repellent meant nothing to them.

Back when he was fat and sluggish, Herky would only have tossed his head. Now he pranced, jigged, sidled, stopped abruptly to bang his head against his forelegs, and once almost unseated Sarah trying to scratch his ear with his hind foot. Sarah broke off a maple twig to brush away the flies and stuck another in the top of his bridle, so the leaves sheltered the backs of his ears. “And you just—ow!—you just tough it out a little, Herk!”

It was weird, she thought, how none of this scared her, though Herky could easily dump her with all his wiggling. She thought this, she even imagined getting hurt, but that didn’t awaken the feeling in her chest that Roy had caused and that she’d even felt on Barney.

Was she getting over it? Cautiously she let herself picture not Roy and the flower barrel but the log, the little Morgan. A week ago that had given her a soaring feeling. Now she only felt pinched. She tried thinking about Beau and saw not his beautiful straight profile but the chain over his nose, the way he’d nipped at MaryAnne.

Think about Herky. The trail led straight back through the woods with no steep hills or washouts, so Sarah was able to keep him to a steady jog. His neck darkened with sweat, but he remained eager and bouncy.

After a while the trail made a sharp V uphill. By now the sun was nearly setting. Sarah looked at her watch. Three-quarters of an hour had passed.

If she turned back now, that would be almost enough time—and she probably should turn back. The trail up the embankment was steep and rough, littered with stumps and tree trunks.

But as she sat there considering, Sarah suddenly heard a car somewhere on the hillside above her.

A car? Out here? Maybe she had a touch of sunstroke!

Then she realized that not very far away someone was mowing a lawn, and a dog was barking.

“We must be near a road!”

A fly bit Herky on the belly. He kicked at it violently and surged uphill.

“Okay, let’s!” It would be a lot more interesting to get to that road and make a loop back.

The trail got rapidly rougher. There were heaps of brush and big snags of larger wood. The ferns grew as high as Herky’s chest, so Sarah couldn’t see the ground. Herky couldn’t see it either, but he wasn’t in a mood to be slowed down. He plowed on through the ferns. Branches crackled beneath his feet.

Suddenly he plunged, branches snapped, and there was a horrid, sucking sound. He snorted, like a gasp of fright, and scrambled up onto a small grassy hummock. Sarah felt his legs trembling.

Quickly she swung out of the saddle. There was no room for her on Herky’s hummock, and she had to stand down in the mud. It didn’t seem deep to her, but it had shocked Herky terribly. He showed the whites of his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Easy, Herk,” Sarah said. Herky turned as if just noticing her presence and gave her an urgent poke with his nose. Help! he said, as plain as could be.

“All right, all right, but I can’t carry you.” Sarah looked ahead, picking out a path between the downed trees and the slippery, moss-covered rocks. “Come with me—and take it easy! We’re almost there!”

The open-looking space where the road must be was not far, and Sarah picked her way toward it, scrambling to keep her feet out from under Herky’s. Now there was a stone wall ahead, low and tumbledown. She paused to wipe the sweat from her eyes and looked for a place to cross it.

Then, for the first time, Sarah saw the three strands of barbed wire.

Unbelieving, she scrambled closer. It must be the sweat in her eyes.… It had to be an old fence, and somewhere nearby it would be down. Or the wires would be weak and rusted and not fencing anything in.…

But no, they were silvery and tight, and beyond them several pot-bellied Jersey heifers spooked and ran.

Now Sarah knew where they were. Looking across the pasture, she could see the dirt road, and she could even tell which road it was. It came out on the main road about a mile from Albert’s—a short ride home, but they couldn’t get there. The fence was high and strong, and there was no sense looking for a gate. No one would put a gate in the back side of a pasture, just leading off into the woods.

Sarah sat down on the stone wall and cried.

If she hadn’t been alone, she would have been brave. But she’d been wanting to cry for days now, because of the heat and for other reasons. And she was stuck, and it was getting darker. She saw herself standing here all night, holding Herky’s bridle and listening to noises. Somehow it made it all seem worse, to know how easily she herself could slip through the wire and cross the pasture to the road. But she couldn’t leave Herky, to wander and break the reins and hurt himself. So she would stand here, while headlights swept by: her own parents, searching, and Albert waiting anxiously only a mile away.… Sarah let herself sob aloud.

At last a heavy sigh made her look up. Herky’s head hung near her shoulder. His ears pointed limply out to the sides, and there were worried wrinkles above his eyes. He, too, felt very sorry for himself.

“Oh, boy!” Sarah stroked his nose and with a loud sniff stood up and wiped her face on her shirtfront. “Okay, let’s walk along the fence. It has to turn a corner somewhere, and then we’ll just follow it to the road.” She said this mostly to cheer herself up, but she didn’t quite believe it. It couldn’t be that easy.