The Bones of Plenty Read Free

leg, she would in the next few minutes—if she didn’t die of fright first.
    He squatted at the edge of the hole. The thawing and freezing of the last few days had buckled the top crust of earth covering an old, poorly filled well. His trips with the stoneboat over that spot had further weakened the ground. He could not even guess how deep the well was, but he knew there could be other gaps in the shaft. Another six-foot drop of the ground beneath her and Kate would be beyond all help.
    She was head down, lying on her side, craning her neck up against the wall of the shaft, with her hindquarters twisted and jammed up above the rest of her body in such a way that none of her terrible struggles could possibly bring her to her feet.
    “What on
earth!
What on
earth
happened?”
    Rachel was running to him, with the fool dog bouncing and barking beside her.
    “Why it’s an old well, of course!” he shouted. “Now go fetch King while I get some planks.”
    George dragged some timbers up from the granary and slid them into the hole behind the mare. He hooked her traces and King’s into a heavy ring.
    “Now lead him straight back,” he told Rachel, “and when I tell you, hit him a good one on the rump so’s he’ll start out fast.”
    “How can I hit him on the rump if I’m up in front leading him?” Rachel said.
    “Oh, Rachel! For God’s sake, haven’t you got any imagination at all?”
    Rachel hauled on King’s bridle. The horse made her pull his head and stretch out his neck as far as it would go before he moved his feet. He laid his ears back and bugged out his eyes, trying to look around his blinders and see what George had hitched him up to.
    When the slack was out of the traces, George yelled, “Get up, King! Back, Kate, back!”
    The mare wrenched and hurled herself dangerously and uselessly. The traces pulled from the wrong angle. Then the ring broke and leather snakes whipped back around King’s legs.
    “Hold
him!” George cried. “For the love of Mike, what did you let him go for? My God!”
    He sprinted after the horse. King did not stop till he reached the barnyard fence. George grabbed his bridle and ran up the hill with the gelding snorting and side-stepping behind him.
    “Now
hold
him here!” He thrust the bit into Rachel’s hands. She bent a cold fist around the cold steel at the horse’s jaw. The gelding tossed his head roughly, yanking her arm up as far as she could reach. She had always been afraid of him.
    “Oh, he’s just
bluffing
you!” George said. “He knows he can get away with it, and he’ll try it again. Now hang on to him!”
    George ran to the porch and returned with a clanking pile of chain. He reached down into the hole and raised up Kate’s thick black tail. He tied the tail to the chain with a knot that took the whole length of the tail.
    “Oh, George!” Rachel was appalled. “That will
kill
her!”
    “Oh pshaw!” he yelled. “Women!”
    George snapped the gelding’s traces into the chain. “Now make him
pull!”
he ordered.
“Wallop
him one!”
    “Get up!” Rachel cried.
    George let himself down into the hole, squatted with his legs braced wide apart, cupped his hand around the curve of the mare’s thigh, and shoved from his shoulder. Coupled with King’s pulling, the shove steered her leg on to the planks.
    “Dammit!” he shouted.
“Smack
him one! Keep him going!”
    Kate was lifted and righted enough to get her front legs under her. Then her hind feet were digging and sliding on the boards.
    King leaned into his collar. George vaulted out of the well, grabbed the chain, and set himself as anchor man at the edge of the hole.
    Between heaves he shouted, “Back up, Kate! Whoa back!
That’s
a girl!”
    In a monstrous, sickening, leg-breaking scramble, the mare wrestled herself up out of the hole, nearly trampling George and causing King to plunge ahead in an access of released power. Rachel lost her hold on him again and stood, numb and shaking,