Emma and the Cutting Horse (8 page)

“Sure did,” Emma replied.

“I’ve got a question for you.”

He took the saddle from Emma and tossed it
across the top rail of the pipe fence, while she turned Ditto into
his pen. As soon as she took off his halter, Ditto walked over to
the middle of the pen where the dirt was soft and loose, lay down,
and rolled over on his back, squirming back and forth to get a good
scratch.

“What’s the question?” Emma asked.

For once in his life, Kyle seemed
serious.

“You said your dad was worried about paying
to have the society horse trained, so what do you think he’d say
about this idea? He pays me to work for a few hours four days a
week. Do you think he’d be willing to keep the money he pays me and
let you give me riding lessons instead? I’ve always wanted to learn
to ride, but my parents have never been around horses and they
won’t even discuss getting one. I’d promise to be a good student
and do exactly what you tell me.”

“I don’t know,” Emma said, an involuntary
grin pulling at the corners of her mouth. “I think it would be fun
to teach you to ride, but I’d have to talk to Mom and Dad about it.
Do you want to go with me to ask them now?”

“No, I want you to ask them when I’m not
around. That way I won’t have to listen to the screamin’ if they
get upset.”

Chapter
Seven

Emma waited for just the right moment to ask
her parents about the riding lessons. Secretly, she liked the idea
of teaching Kyle to ride. He lived in a different school district,
so Emma didn’t see him at school. Although he was older than Emma,
he didn’t treat her like a lesser being as some of the other kids
his age did. She wanted her parents to say “yes.”

When she finally found the right moment,
there wasn’t any screamin’. Her mom just said, “Oh, that’s
sweet!”

Her dad asked a question.

“Do
you
want to do it?”

“Sure,” Emma answered casually. “Do you think
I could start him out with Rosie?”

“I think she’d be the best choice for a
beginner,” her dad replied. “We didn’t breed her this year so you
won’t have to worry about a colt following her around later this
spring.”

Rosie was an older bay mare that Emma had
ridden before she got Ditto. Now she stood under the trees in the
pasture most of the time, in semi-retirement. She was quiet and not
too fast, and she was big enough for someone Kyle’s size.

“Ask him if he can come to ride on days when
he doesn’t usually work,” Emma’s dad said. “I like Kyle, and he
gets along well with the animals. Teaching him to ride will
probably make him even better at helping with the horses.”

“Okay,” Emma said, strolling as casually as
possible out of the room.

Two days passed before Emma saw Kyle again.
When she did see him, he was helping her dad spray weeds that were
growing up around the pens. Taking a halter, she walked down into
the back pasture to catch Rosie, who was napping in the shade of a
tree with the other broodmares. Rosie was friendly and easy to
catch, and when Emma shook out the halter and held it up, Rosie
pushed her nose into it. Emma buckled it on and looped the long
lead rope around the mare’s neck, tying it to the halter ring to
make a rein. She led Rosie to a fallen tree and stepped up on it to
hop on her bareback. Riding back to the house, she saw that her
father and Kyle were finished spraying weeds and were hitching her
dad’s pickup to a flatbed trailer. Her father got in and drove off
down the lane. Kyle looked around, spotted Emma, and started in her
direction. She rode Rosie up to one of the empty pens, slid off,
and led her inside. Kyle turned on the hose and began to rinse and
fill the water tub in the pen.

“Is this Rosie?” he asked.

“Yeah, she’s the one you’re going to learn to
ride on. My parents said it would be fine for me to teach you to
ride.”

“I know,” Kyle replied. “Your dad told
me.”

“Then come on in and get acquainted,” Emma
said.

Kyle came into the pen and patted Rosie
gently on the neck. She sniffed him curiously, but when she
determined that he had no feed for her at the moment she rested one
hind leg and enjoyed the attention as Kyle stroked her long, black
mane.

“So when do you want to start?” Emma asked
him.

“How’s tomorrow? I usually don’t work on
Thursdays, so you tell me what time and I’ll be here!”

“I guess you’d better come right after
school. It will take a while, and I’ll have to feed and water the
horses in the pens before it gets dark. Since you’ll be here, you
can help.”

“Deal!” Kyle said, taking her hand and
shaking it with playful violence.

* * *

Kyle developed an instant rapport with Rosie
when his riding lessons began. Emma took him into the pen and
showed him how to fit the halter over her nose and around her
jaw.

“Be patient with me, Rosie,” he said rubbing
her gently under her tangled mane. “I’m a beginner.”

Although he teased Emma as usual, Kyle was
kind and gentle with Rosie. As he carefully combed the tangles out
of her mane, the mare’s eyelids drooped and she rested one hind
leg, on the verge of falling asleep. After Emma’s demonstration,
Kyle insisted on practicing putting the saddle and bridle on the
mare over and over again until he was sure he had it right. He used
Emma’s father’s saddle, which was big enough for him but a good bit
heavier than Emma’s.

“Don’t help me,” he warned Emma. “Just show
me if something’s not right.”

Emma demonstrated how to stand as close as
possible to Rosie’s left side and mount quickly, swinging her
weight up over the mare’s back without pulling the saddle sideways
any more than necessary. When Kyle mounted, he climbed on awkwardly
and sat slumped in the saddle. His weight had pulled the saddle off
center.

“Sit up straight and put your weight in the
stirrups with your heels lower than your toes. Then you can scoot
the saddle over in the middle of her back.”

Cautiously, Kyle scooted the saddle over and
sat up straighter, pushing his heels down.

“Wow, I have always wanted to see the view
from up here,” he said softly. He leaned over and patted Rosie
fondly on the shoulder.

Although it was getting dark, he practiced
getting on and off a few more times. Rosie seemed confused by all
the mounting and dismounting, but stood patiently waiting for a
signal to move forward. Emma saw headlights coming up the lane and
heard her mom calling her from the back porch. Her dad was coming
home from work, and it was already dark.

“You go!” Kyle told her. “I’ll put everything
away and feed and water the horses. Hurry, so they don’t get
worried!”

When she was halfway to the house, she heard
Kyle calling. Turning for a moment, she could barely make out his
shape in the near dark.

“Hey, Emma. Thanks!” he called after her.

She was going in the back door before she
realized that he had called her Emma.

* * *

The next Saturday dawned clear with a bright
blue sky and southerly breeze that hinted of spring. Emma fed the
horses and then turned Camaro into the arena to play. She bucked
and slid in the soft sand, and then lay down and rolled from side
to side to scratch her back, getting up with a coating of sand and
mud that obscured the golden patches showing beneath her loose
winter coat. In spring, Camaro turned a rich dark gold, and her
black mane sprouted a row of white hairs that lay atop the black,
an unusual color pattern for a buckskin. Within a couple of months
the summer sun would bleach her gold coat to a much lighter
shade.

“Color is a complicated thing in horses,” her
father had explained. Taffy, Camaro’s dam, was a dark, smutty
palomino whose rump shone with chocolate dapples in the early
spring. But Camaro’s sire was bay. From him she got her black mane
and tail.

Emma got the shedding blade and a halter and
went into the arena with Camaro, who hurried over in search of
attention. How different, Emma thought, from Miss Dellfene’s
reaction when someone entered her space. Pale gold winter hair flew
by the fistful beneath the blade, finding its way into Emma’s eyes
and mouth and sticking to her black hoodie until she looked like
she’d grown a coat of hair herself. Camaro loved grooming. If Emma
stopped for a moment the mare stepped closer to remind her to start
again.

When her right arm ached from wielding the
grooming tools, she snapped a lunge line onto the halter and led
Camaro to the center of the arena. Then she stepped back away from
her, positioning herself opposite the mare’s hindquarters and
flipped the end of the lunge line at her.

“Get up!” she said, using her most
authoritative voice.

Camaro turned her head and gazed at her with
questioning eyes. Emma flipped the line again and clicked her
tongue and Camaro took a few hesitant steps forward, but then
turned to face Emma. It occurred to Emma that teaching Camaro to
lunge might be a bigger challenge than she’d thought. The filly was
so gentle from years of handling, all she really wanted to do was
stand close to people and be petted. It took nearly an hour and
lots of patience on Emma’s part to get three or four full circles
accomplished going in each direction.

* * *

Kyle progressed quickly from saddling and
mounting to riding Rosie in slow circles in the arena. The first
time he loped her, his face broke out in a huge grin. He still
didn’t seem very relaxed, and sometimes he forgot to push his heels
down and put his weight of the balls of his feet, but Emma was sure
she was seeing progress. He rarely reached for the saddle horn
anymore as he had in the beginning.

“You’ve got Kyle looking pretty good in the
saddle,” her father remarked one evening. “He has refused to accept
any money from me since you started the riding lessons.”

“Well, that was the deal,” Emma said.

* * *

When school let out for Spring Break, Emma
began taking Kyle for rides in the pasture. They crossed the creek
and rode through the big oak trees around the spring in the far
back corner of the ranch. They talked about horses and school and
movies, but sometimes they just rode together in comfortable
silence.

During one of these rides, Emma told Kyle
about Candi Haynes and the messages on the bathroom wall.

“When I pass her or one of her hotshot
friends in the hall, they say, ‘Howdy, hayseed’ or ‘Hey, farm
girl,’ or some other put-down.”

“What do
you
say?” Kyle asked.

“I usually don’t say anything; I just keep on
walking and act like I didn’t hear it. Then I’m mad at myself for
being such a coward.”

“It doesn’t make you a coward just because
you refuse to be as nasty as she is,” Kyle said.

One late afternoon Emma and Kyle walked the
horses slowly through the cattle that were scattered across the
back pasture searching out the new growth that pushed up through
the dry, dead grass of winter. The cattle were used to horses and
looked up for a moment from their grazing, then went back to
eating. In a small grove of trees, they stopped to watch a newborn
calf trying to get to its feet. The cow was worried about the
nearness of the horses and moved between them and her new baby.
Emma and Kyle sat in silence, watching as the calf finally got his
feet under him and staggered around for a minute or two, his legs
splayed wide for balance. Then, as though drawn by a magnet, he
made his way to the cow’s udder and began to suck. His tail waggled
as the first drops of milk filled his mouth. It was getting late,
but Emma didn’t want to break the spell cast by the setting sun and
the quiet moment. The pinkish sunlight streamed through the trees,
dappling the horses and the cow and calf. Emma noticed that a bank
of clouds was building to the north. Rosie’s head drooped, and she
looked like she might be dozing, but Ditto was impatient to be
moving again. He had an internal clock that knew when it was
suppertime.

“We’d better start back before it rains,”
Emma said

“All right, Madeline, if you insist,” Kyle
said, reining Rosie toward the house.

The sky had darkened, the wind picked up, and
a few raindrops were starting to fall before they made it home.

Emma’s dad waved at them from the front porch
as they rode past.

“Come in for a minute when you’re finished
with the horses, Kyle,” he called out.

“Uh, oh,” Kyle grimaced. “Do you think he’s
upset with me for keeping you out too long?”

“You didn’t keep me out. I wanted to watch
that calf as much as you did. Anyway, he didn’t look upset to me.
When he gets upset, you’ll know it!”

Emma’s dad had removed his gun belt and was
searching the bowels of the refrigerator for the mustard when they
came in.

“Want to stay and have a hamburger, Kyle?” he
asked. The glorious scent of frying hamburgers filled the
kitchen.

“I’d better not. My mom will be expecting me
for supper. But thanks.”

“I asked you to come in because we’re going
over to watch Miss Dellfene work tomorrow, and I thought you might
like to come along.”

“Sure. I’d love to!” Kyle answered.

“Be here by one o’clock then,” he said, and
turned back to the refrigerator to continue his search.

Chapter
Eight

Emma hurried through a light fog the next
morning to put in some time with Camaro before they went to watch
Miss Dellfene’s workout. As usual, her father had already been to
the horse pens and fed the horses. Camaro searched her feed tub for
any stray oats she might have missed while Emma got a currycomb and
brush and went to work on her coat. Despite their similar ages,
Camaro was already considerably taller than Miss Dellfene, probably
close to 15 hands. Her sire was over 16 hands, so she likely wasn’t
through growing yet. Emma made a mental note to bring a tape
measure down and measure her from the top of her withers to the
ground. Four inches was a hand in horse measurement.