CHAPTER THREE

ALL BY HERSELF Lily rides across the hayfield. The morning sun is hot on her cheek. It makes bright curves along the top of Beware’s neck and sparkles on the wet grass. Lily can hear Gramp’s hammer ringing on the fence post. She tries to listen past it for the sound of hoofbeats. But the only hooves she hears are Beware’s.

At the swamp’s edge a red-winged blackbird cries check! check! from high in a poplar tree. Lily stops Beware where the land dips down. She looks carefully at the ground ahead. She doesn’t want to ride Beware through deep mud or water.

The cow’s tracks make a dotted line through the grass. Under the grass the ground is very wet. The tracks are big and muddy. Farther ahead the tracks look smaller and lighter-colored. The ground is drier there.

“Easy,” Lily says to Beware. She shortens the reins, and she squeezes softly with her legs. “Walk.”

Beware slides down the slope and lurches as she hits the mud. She tosses her nose, pulling the reins through Lily’s hands.

“Hey!” Lily says. Beware isn’t supposed to pull like that. But Beware doesn’t try to go faster. She just puts her head down to watch the footing. Her hooves make loud squelches going into the mud and loud sucking noises coming out. Mud splats on Lily’s cheek.

Then Beware’s back rises up, and she scrambles onto drier land. Her breath comes in big puffs. “Whoa,” Lily says. “Good girl!” Beware was bossy, pulling the reins like that, but she disobeyed only so she could do her job better.

Beware rests for a moment. Lily leaves the reins long and loose and lets Beware decide when she’s ready to go on.

When Beware does start, she seems to know that she’s supposed to follow the cow’s tracks. She walks along quickly, with her nose close to the ground. Lily leans to one side so she can see the tracks, too.

All at once Beware stops and snorts. Lily grabs at Beware’s neck to keep from tipping forward. “What’s the matter? I don’t see anything.”

Beware doesn’t seem to see anything either. She’s looking into the grass, but not at any one spot. “Is it a snake?” Lily isn’t afraid of snakes, way up here on Beware’s back. “Come on, walk!”

Beware takes another step. Lily hears the blackbird, loud and close.

Suddenly a lot of little brown birds are in the air, flying just above the tops of the grass stems. They flutter in front of Beware and disappear into the grass on the other side of the cow’s trail. Check! the blackbird calls, swooping to a lower branch.

“We won’t hurt them,” Lily tells him, and she makes Beware trot on quickly. Red-winged blackbirds sometimes dive-bomb people to protect their babies.

For a second the cow’s tracks disappear, and then Lily sees them up ahead, making a dotted line straight toward the middle of the swamp. Why did the cow come in here? Lily wonders. Where did she think she was going?

Beware puts her ears back and shakes her head. A big deerfly, like a yellow-brown arrowhead, is biting her neck. Lily squashes it. Blood stains her fingers. Then something like a hot needle stabs into the back of her arm.

“Ow!” She slaps at it, but that fly gets away. “I hope you bit that stupid cow, too!” Lily says.

Here in the swamp some of the hot hurricane air still lingers. The sun draws up dampness from the ground. The air is hazy, and mosquitoes swirl and whine. They land on Beware, but when they smell fly spray, they rise and land on Lily instead. Lily holds the reins in one hand and slaps with the other. The morning seems long, and the swamp seems big and empty.

An airplane makes a white trail overhead. After a while Lily can hear the sound it makes. Far away a truck growls along the road, and a horn beeps. Somewhere between the road and the swamp, or on the dark pine-covered hill, the horses and the cow are running free. But it doesn’t seem possible they can be near. Nothing is near, except woodpeckers, and mosquitoes, and frogs.…

Beware stops.

“What?” Lily looks at the ground. It seems almost dry here, but horses can sense things people can’t. Maybe beneath the dry-looking surface the mud is deep, like quicksand.

But the cow’s tracks go straight across it, with the calf’s tracks scampering alongside. Lily follows with her eyes. The tracks curve away, into a brushy thicket.

That’s where Beware is looking, too. She bobs her head, the way horses do when they can’t quite tell what they’re seeing.

In the thicket something moves.

Stogie! Lily jerks the reins without meaning to. She clutches the whip. She can picture Stogie hiding there, his ears flat back, his strong yellow teeth ready to bite. His long mane hangs like ropes. His ragged hooves paw the ground.

But Beware steps lightly forward with her neck arched. That’s the way she steps when she sees a deer and wants to follow it. Lily’s heart beats hard. She should get off—

And then she is close enough to see, and it is the cow, standing in a cloud of mosquitoes with the calf at her feet.

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