A Good Horse Read Free

own?”
    “No.”
    “Well, practice a little with your Daddy’s rope, and we cantry this sometime. I worked with a horse on the ranch a couple of years ago, just like this. ’Bout six months later, I had that fella in a pipe pen with some other horses. I fed the three of them and then went off to do some other work. When I came back an hour later, that one was lying down flat on his side, and he had his front ankle wedged under the pipe pen. He was just lying there. And he just lay there quietly until I managed to get his foot out of there, which took me ten minutes, anyway. Horse who’s caught has got to let himself be caught and be patient about it. It’s not second nature for them.”
    The whole time, we were snaking the rope around under Jack’s feet, and he was standing there like it was nothing, just staring at Jem and then at me. Jem stopped and patted Jack in a long stroke down his neck. I couldn’t help myself, I kissed him on the nose.
    Jem took a piece of chocolate cake away with him, and then, after he was gone, since it was still light and a nice day, I got on Black George and Daddy got on his favorite, one I had named Lester. We took them to the arena while Mom went in the house to cook something mysterious that was probably fried chicken, since that was my favorite.
    Lester was a buckskin, really golden with a black mane and tail, about five years old, and a horse Daddy might have kept for himself if Daddy did that sort of thing, which I had never seen him do. Daddy had gotten Lester from a man up by Hollister, who was leaving town very suddenly and wasn’t saying why. Daddy guessed that he owed a lot of money to someone and he didn’t want Lester to have to be part of that payment. Daddy and Mom talked about this for a couple of nights—I could hearthem from my room, since the windows were open—and Mom didn’t like it, but Daddy said that the man had just gotten in over his head and however we felt about him walking away from his debts, it was not right for a good horse like Lester to have to pay the price, since once the bank got ahold of him, there was no telling where he would end up. So we got Lester. He had been with us for about three months, and I knew Daddy would sell him, but only, as he said, “If the right party comes along.”
    Black George, in the meantime, was as good as gold and had been all summer, and we had him entered in the October show over on the coast. I was to ride in two classes, and Miss Slater was to help us with Black George for three classes “gratis,” which meant “for free.” Daddy said that “gratis” was all very well, but when she saw Black George jump, she would be quick as a bunny finding him a new owner, and she would get her commission, which was worth gratis any day.
    I hadn’t seen Miss Slater, who taught English-style riding out at a big, fancy barn on the coast, for months, though we talked once in a while on the phone about the pony we’d sold to her client, which she named Gallant Man after a famous racehorse. The girl we’d sold the pony to, Melinda, had spent the summer down south, wherever they lived, maybe it was Hollywood, or maybe it was Brentwood—one of the woods—and then stayed there to go to school “because of the divorce.” I can’t say that I missed Melinda, but I can’t say that I didn’t, either. I
thought
about her and
wondered
about her. Missing someone is more about wanting to be with them. I missed Danny.
    Black George wasn’t terribly black anymore—he had been standing out in the sunshine all summer, so across his back he was a little faded and red. But other than that, he was fine-looking and in excellent condition—all summer long, two days a week, I had ridden him up and down hills for at least an hour. It had been a little scary at first, because he was young and didn’t know how to go down a hill with a rider on him. He had to learn to bend his hocks and stifles and relax his back while keeping his head