A Good Horse Read Free Page A

and neck balanced. I had to remember to ask him to do these things by sitting up straight with my heels down and my shoulders and head relaxed but square and my seat deep in the saddle. It was a little like sledding down a big hill in one of those saucer sleds—you sat deep and felt the horse going down just a little in front of you.
    It was good for his muscles to go up hills—for that, you leaned forward and let him put his head down and climb, except that after a few weeks, Black George got pretty strong and made it clear to me that he wanted to trot or canter up, and I let him. It was fun. At any rate, as a result of this plus our other work, and also because he lived outside and ran around with the other geldings, he was muscular and fit. Daddy expected to get a lot of money for him, maybe five or six thousand dollars.
    The show we were taking him to was the key. Daddy had picked out a set of classes in the local hunter division. The fences would be three feet. Three feet was easy as pie for Black George, and only about three inches taller than the fences I had jumped with the pony, while Black George was eight inches taller than the pony and had much longer legs. We had jumpedall sorts of things over the summer, and Black George had liked it—the stacked hay bales, the kitchen chairs set in a row, a length of picket fence, a length of picket fence with a tablecloth hanging over it, a row of Mom’s potted geraniums (which were pretty tall) sitting on a bench, the bench itself with another bench on top of it. About the only thing we hadn’t jumped was regular poles between two standards, the very thing that you were supposed to jump at a horse show. But Daddy and Miss Slater had made a plan, and we were to go over to the stable a week before the show and try some of those.
    Now we walked, trotted, and cantered Lester and Black George around the arena, and I was reminded of lessons I had taken on Black George with Jem Jarrow. I made myself not be lazy and remember what it felt like to make him bend to the inside and balance himself around the turns, what it felt like to ask him to step under, what it felt like when he lifted his front end and relaxed his back. What it felt like was heaven. The really interesting part was that after he got used to it again (I had been lazy for what seemed like months), he was happier, too, and went along full of energy and quiet all at the same time.
    Earlier in the day, Daddy had ridden Happy, a new one he thought he could sell as a cow horse, so all we were left with were Sprinkles and Sunshine. We rode them until almost dark. Daddy had someone coming to look at Sprinkles over the weekend. Her best thing was her trot—she could trot all day and it was comfortable and smooth. “She would have made a great mailman’s horse,” he said, “back in the old days when they delivered mail on horseback. But there’s always a use for ahorse that can cover ground.” Sunshine hadn’t discovered her talents yet. I was beginning to think maybe she didn’t have anything special, but she was a kind, friendly horse and I liked her.
    When we went in for dinner, I saw that it was fried chicken and twice-baked potatoes, and there was a card at my plate from Danny, and Daddy didn’t say a word about it, even about the ten-dollar bill that fell out of the envelope. That was a letter in the mail that I hadn’t noticed.

Western Saddle

    English Stirrups

    English Saddle

Chapter 2
    I T WAS THE NEXT NIGHT, AFTER DINNER, THAT D ADDY SHOWED me the letter from Lovers’ Lane Circle. It read:
    Dear Mr. Lovitt,
    My name is Howard W. Brandt. I am a private investigator with the Brandt and Carson Agency, in Dallas, Texas. We have been engaged to look into the circumstances surrounding the transfer of ownership of a horse, to you, from a Mr. Robert Hogarth, of By Golly Horse Sales of Lawton, Oklahoma. It is our understanding that you purchased four horses from Mr. Hogarth on November 12 of last year and