Emma and the Cutting Horse Read Free

the curtain back and saw that Kyle had arrived
to help with the chores. Kyle lived just down the road and helped
with feeding and watering livestock, and sometimes with building
fences, although her father said privately that when it came to
fence building, Kyle was only worth about half of what he got paid.
He was sixteen, two years older than Emma, and had sandy blond hair
with cowlicks in his hairline that defied combing. She had known
him so long he was almost like an older brother.
    Emma pulled on old jeans and a sweatshirt and
hurried out to see how the new mare had survived the night. Her
parents and Kyle were already down at the horse pens leaning on the
fence. Six welded pipe pens stood in a long row a hundred yards
below the house, each with a small shed built into a back corner
for protection from the sun and inclement weather. The towering old
hay barn, which had once held horse stalls, stood off to the
north.
    The mare was standing in the far corner of
her pen watching them suspiciously. When Emma leaned on the fence
beside Kyle, he nudged her with his elbow and said, “Hi, Linda!”
Since Emma was a scrawny ten-year-old, Kyle had teased her by
calling her the wrong name. The first few times she had corrected
him politely, but now she just punched him on the arm when he did
it.
    “That sure looks like a high society horse
you brought home,” he said. “Course, I don’t know much about
horses.”
    Emma looked at the mare carefully for the
first time. She was a plain red sorrel, with no white markings
anywhere. She had a small, pretty head and finely shaped pointed
ears, but her eyes weren’t soft and friendly like Ditto’s. Her legs
were slender and her feet small, but now Emma could see what her
parents had been saying about the mare’s knees. They were a tiny
bit out of alignment when viewed from the front; although the
defect was so slight it was hardly noticeable. Emma wouldn’t have
seen it if her parents hadn’t mentioned it at the sale.
    “Are you going to ride her today?” Emma asked
her father.
    “Not today. The man who talked to me about
her at the sale said she had been saddled but not ridden yet. We’ll
give her a few more days to settle down and then we’ll see how she
does when we handle her. She’s not a very big two-year-old. It
wouldn’t hurt her to grow a little more before she carries much
weight.”
    “Emma will get on her,” Kyle volunteered.
“She doesn’t weigh much.”
    “I don’t know about that,” Emma’s dad
replied. “Whoever gets on her first might need to have a parachute
attached.”
    “What are we going to call her?” Emma
asked.
    “Her registered name is Miss Dellfene, so I
guess we’ll just call her that unless something else occurs to us.
When we get to know her better, she may earn herself a new name. I
just hope it isn’t profane!”
    When Miss Dellfene got close to Ditto, she
still laced her ears back and squealed at him. Ditto had given up
trying to be the welcoming committee and ignored her now for the
most part.
    In the thin afternoon sunlight, Emma took
Ditto out of his pen. When she patted him on the shoulder, a puff
of dust rose in the air from his shaggy winter coat. She brushed
him and combed his mane, but he still didn’t achieve the classy
look of the heartbreaking palomino mare at the sale. She put her
arms around his neck and pulled his whiskery head against her. He
might not have a gleaming golden coat, but he was a handsome, good
natured, honest horse. Throwing her saddle on, she cinched it up
and slid the bit in his mouth. Emma’s saddle was worn and stained
by sweat and it lacked the silver ornaments that had decorated
every piece of horse equipment she had seen yesterday at the sale.
When she swung on and started him out into the back pasture, Ditto
walked quickly with his ears pricked forward, reminding her again
of how much she liked his cheerful, willing disposition. Some
horses needed constant correction and were hard work