Colt (10 page)

A dove flew up from trailside with a sudden whistling of pointed wings. Bonita flinched and swerved. Automatically Colt's seat shifted to go with her, his hands signaled for her attention with the reins. Bonita straightened herself and gaited on before Rosie could touch the bridle, and Colt breathed deep with relief and joy. His horse had shied, and he had hardly known it happened before it was over. He would call Mrs. Reynolds that evening and tell her. If that was all there was to shying, it was nothing to be afraid of.

“Maybe we'd better slow down,” Rosie panted.

“All right,” said Colt regretfully, and he brought Bonita back to her slow walk. Breathing heavily, Rosie turned around and looked at her.

“Yazoo. You weren't kidding. She isn't even sweating yet.” Rosie walked backward, talking to Colt. “She's something else, you know that? She's really something. I bet you could even talk me into riding—”

“Watch the edge!”

It was too late. One of Rosie's large wayward feet had strayed too close to the drop at the side of the trail. Just as Colt spoke Rosie set his foot down half on nothing. The ground, damp from recent rains, melted away under the pressure. Ankle twisting, knee buckling, Rosie fell with a hoarse, startled yell. He thought (and so did Colt, pulling Bonita to a halt, watching, stiff with terror) that he was going to crash all the way down the forty-foot drop and into the lake. His hands flew out, clawing at air and saplings, his back dug a damp furrow in the loam, and like a runaway sled he headed straight for a large beech tree, feet first. With a jarring impact Rosie came to a stop a few yards below the trail.

Bonita looked down at him with blinky brown eyes. From her back Colt looked down with considerably more concern.

“Are you all right?”

Rosie groaned and glared by way of answer. On hands and knees he scrabbled his way up the slope and crawled onto the level surface of the trail. Colt wished he could get down and brush the leaves and pine needles and dirt off Rosie and help him get up. He could not, of course. He could only watch.

Rosie put his weight on one foot and tried to stand up. He winced, then tried the other. He looked up at Colt.

“Dammit,” he said. “I've wrecked up both of them.”

Colt felt his mind shy and swerve. He steadied it as if steadying a frightened horse. Calm down. Move forward one step at a time. First things first.

“Did you hit your head on anything?”

“Just the ground.”

“Did you do anything to your neck or back?”

“No. I don't think so. Just twisted my ankle going over the edge, and then rammed my feet into the tree.”

“So you're okay other than that?”

Rosie rolled his eyes. “Other than that? Sure. Other than that I'm just fine.”

Chapter Nine

Colt thought for a minute, then walked Bonita forward a few yards, turned her so that she faced toward home, then took her back to where Rosie sat. He tightened one knee just a hair, and Bonita side-passed a step toward Rosie.

“Hey!” Rosie protested from the ground. “What are you doing?”

“I'm going to stand her practically on top of you. Grab the girth and see if you can stand up.”

“Just what I've always wanted,” Rosie complained, “a horse in my lap.”

Colt positioned Bonita, and then halted her. “All right,” he told Rosie, “try it. I hope you cinched the saddle tight.”

Rosie had. He pulled himself up, hanging on first to the girth, then to the leather saddle skirt, crawling up Bonita as if scaling a wall, and the horse stood like a stone. “Good girl,” Colt told her. “Okay, Rosie, if she walks slow and you lean on her, do you think you can walk?”

“Guess I'm going to have to.” It was not likely that anyone else was going to come along and help. There were few people in the park so early in the year. Colt and Rosie had not seen anyone since they started down the lakeside trail.

“Okay. Hang on.” Colt eased Bonita into a slow walk.

Without much guidance from Colt the Paso Fino kept her pace very slow, very smooth. Bonita seemed to understand that something was wrong, that extra cooperation was required of her.

“How you doing, Rosie?”

“Not—too—good.” Clinging to the saddle near Colt's knee, Rosie was beginning to pant with pain. His face had gone white. Colt stopped the horse.

“You can't walk. Sit down before you fall down.”

Rosie stood where he was, hanging on hard. “Maybe—if I could get on her behind you …”

Colt considered. He had to help Rosie somehow.

“You weigh almost as much as your dad, right?” he asked slowly. Bonita was too small to carry Mr. Flowers. Bonita would be too small to carry Colt and Rosie without hurting herself.

“Right,” said Rosie. “I forgot.”

“But if worse comes to worst …” Colt felt his eyes stinging at the thought.

“No way,” Rosie told him. “Forget it. We're not going to hurt your horse. I'll crawl first.”

Colt knew he couldn't crawl all the way back to the stable, not really. He said, “Let's see if we can get you just a little farther, just down to where you can put your feet in the water.”

Rosie shifted his grip so that he held onto Bonita's silky mane, then hobbled on. Twice he had to stop. The last several yards he crawled. Already his feet had swollen so badly that he could not undo the knots of his running shoes. As Colt watched anxiously, Rosie sat on the lakeshore and swung his feet into the cold water, shoes and all. He bent over and splashed water on his knees.

“All right,” Colt told him, “stay there. I'm going to find us some help.” He sent Bonita toward the stable. If he was lucky, one of the other riders would be there. If not, he hoped at least he could reach the phone.

Hang on, Rosie
.

There really was no choice but for Colt to go off on his own, and Rosie knew it. “Be careful!” he called after him.

“Got to, man,” Colt called back cheerfully, but he meant it.

He walked Bonita most of the way back. It seemed to take forever. Thinking of Rosie sitting there hurt and alone in the middle of nowhere, once in a while he risked a cautious
paso corto
. He did not dare go faster, because now and then Bonita shied at something along the trail, and he felt worried, though not for himself—if he fell off and got himself hurt, nobody would know where to look for Rosie.

He met no one at all in the park, not a hiker on the trail, not a boat on the lake. Leaving the park, turning onto the roadside, he saw a car coming and lifted a hand to flag it down, but Bonita stiffened, ready to spook, and quickly Colt returned his hand to the reins. The man in the car waved at him and kept going.

Stupid! Can't that guy see I'm in trouble? What would a handicapped kid be doing …

And then Colt realized: The man did not know he was handicapped. He was so used to thinking of himself in a certain way that for a moment it was as if his world had flipped, had spun upside down, but it made sense. He wore no braces to ride horseback, no crutches, no wheelchair, and his helmet looked much like anyone else's riding helmet. Unless someone really paid attention to his thin, undeveloped legs, when he was on a horse he just looked like—

Jeez, I just look like a kid on a horse
.

A kid who was old enough to handle things on his own. And he was going to have to. Already Colt had a feeling what he was going to find at the stable.

Sure enough. Nobody.

No cars were parked in the stable lot but Rosie's. Mr. Reynolds was not back from wherever he had gone, and no other riders had arrived. Colt rode Bonita into the barn to be sure. No one was there to help Rosie.

Just inside the tack-room door hung the wall phone. He had to reach it.

He could not.

Whoever had put away the boxes of hard hats and the mounting block the autumn before had set them beside the door, exactly in the wrong place beside the door. Bonita could not stand close enough. Colt stretched, until he was afraid he would fall, and could not reach even the doorknob so that he could open the door and head Bonita into it. Another rider, someone who could lean his weight in a stirrup, might have been able to manage. But Colt could not quite do it.

He hated being handicapped, he hated it, he hated it! Anybody else could have just stepped inside the tack-room door, dialed 911 for help, and here he sat, couldn't do the simplest thing … Tears coming. Colt gulped them back.

Grow up, Osvaldo. Smarten up
.

Things went wrong for regular people sometimes too. Like, what if the phone was out of order? What would he do then? If he couldn't help Rosie one way, he'd have to help him another way. There had to be one. Handicapped people can do things too.

Like think. You gotta think
.

He backed Bonita out of the barn and rode her in a slow circle in front of the stable, considering the possibilities. The nearest houses were half a mile away, along the paved road. Ride Bonita out there, shout at doors, try to find someone home? Very risky, with cars whizzing past. Bonita would get used to cars probably in a few more rides, but for today she was going to spook at them, and if Colt got thrown, there would be nobody who knew where Rosie was. Try to flag down another slow-moving car along the dirt road? Same problem. Wait around the stable for somebody to come? Sure, but absolutely the last choice on his list, with Rosie sitting out there hurt.… The alternative was for Colt himself somehow to get Rosie out of the woods. All right, so for a long time he had been used to thinking of himself as pretty helpless, but sitting on top of his horse he knew: There had to be something he could do.…

Liverwurst stuck his head out over the paddock gate and whinnied at Bonita.

Horses.

Liverwurst.

Half a minute later Colt had Bonita back inside the barn, where the halters and lead ropes hung from a harness hook just inside the big sliding door. Liverwurst's bridle was safe in the tack room, he couldn't get it, but a halter would be better than nothing. He selected the largest one, and a long lead rope. After a moment's thought he took
two
lead ropes and clipped them one onto each side of the halter, like reins. Then he laid the things across the saddle in front of him and headed Bonita toward the paddock gate.

Liverwurst had ambled away. Of course. Horses were like that, Mrs. Reynolds said. Never handy when you wanted them. “Liverwurst!” Colt called.

The Appaloosa raised his big hammer head from his grazing and gave Colt an owlish stare.

“Liverwurst!”

The new spring grass was more important. The gelding lowered his nose to the ground again.

“Aw,
Liverwurst
!” Everything was going wrong—

Wait. Calm down. That's no way to think
.

It was not such a big deal after all, just a matter of getting the gate open and going in to catch him. And Colt would need to get the gate open anyway, to get Liverwurst out.

He maneuvered Bonita until she stood close alongside the gate, then backed her up until he could reach the sliding metal latch. “
Good
girl,” he murmured to her. Maybe she was a little nervous about cars at this point, but she did at once what most horses for some reason would not do at all: She stood by the gate where he wanted her, and then stayed there while he struggled with the latch.

Which I can't seem to get open …

The latch was stiff. All the weight of the gate pulled down on it, making it bind. Mrs. Reynolds, when she opened it, lifted the gate with one hand and muscled the latch with the other, but Colt couldn't do that, not while keeping his balance on Bonita, who had to stand sideways to the gate in order for him to reach it at all. Colt set his teeth and grimaced, tugging on the latch handle as hard as he could without pulling himself out of the saddle. “You butthead!” he yelled at the latch, but it did not care. It would not move.

“Aw,
crud
!”

Once again he sat blinking back tears and trying to think. A person with legs that worked could walk right up to that gate and lift it and slide the latch open.… So what? Being handicapped just meant he had to do things differently—his way.

Under him Bonita stood patiently waiting.

Colt smiled. He lifted one of the lead ropes from his saddle and put a loop of it around the latch handle. The other end of it, halter and all, he hooked around the high pommel of his Spanish saddle. “Walk, Bonita,” he ordered, signaling her with his seat.

The little horse was puzzled, feeling no contact on her reins. Hesitantly she took a few steps forward. The lead rope tightened, metal screeched against metal, the gate latch shot open, and the gate swung wide.

Liverwurst looked up and came trotting over, eager and interested.

“Good boy! C'mere, atta boy …” From Bonita's back Colt slipped the halter onto Liverwurst, snapped its throatlatch in place, and gathered the lead ropes into his right hand. “Good old Liverwurst. Come on, big guy. Let's go get Rosie.”

Eagerly he sent Bonita up the farm lane.

He had to ride with only one hand on the reins, the left hand at that. No problem. Bonita did not seem to mind. Colt sent her into a medium-fast gait along the dirt road, because he wanted to get that stretch over with as quickly as possible. With Liverwurst's sizable body out almost in the middle of the road, he did not want to meet a car. So Bonita did a quick
paso corto
, and Liverwurst jogged along beside the little mare, apparently thrilled to be along for the ride.… Once he turned onto the state-park trail, Colt slowed the gait. No use taking unnecessary risks. Also, he wanted Liverwurst to calm down. It was going to be trouble enough getting Rosie on top of the gelding if Liverwurst behaved himself. If Liverwurst got happy and full of himself and acted like a jerk, it was going to be impossible.

Years later Colt still remembered that ride back to where he had left Rosie as the longest one ever. It seemed that way because he had to walk, it was safer to walk, helped the horses to be cool, calm, but it took so
long
.… There, ages later, finally, far ahead, was Rosie, still with his feet in the lake.