The Horse Whisperer Read Free Page A

purge was now almost over, however, and Annie and Farlow had recently become skillful at constructing payoff deals which bought the silence of those departing. She thought they had done just that with Fenimore Fiske, the magazine’s aging and insufferable movie critic who was now badmouthing her in the
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. The rat. But asAnnie waited for Farlow to answer the phone, she took comfort from the fact that Fiske had made a big mistake in calling her increased circulation figures a sham. They weren’t and she could prove it.
    Farlow was not only up, he had seen the
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piece too. They agreed to meet in two hours’ time in her office. They would sue the old bastard for every penny they’d bought him off with.
    Annie called her husband in Chatham and got her own voice on the answering machine. She left a message telling Robert it was time he was up, that she would be catching the later train and not to go to the supermarket before she got there. Then she took the elevator down and went out into the snow to join the joggers. Except, of course, Annie Graves didn’t jog. She ran. And although this distinction was not immediately obvious from either her speed or her technique, to Annie it was as clear and vital as the cold morning air into which she now plunged.
       The interstate was fine, as Wayne Tanner had expected. There wasn’t too much else on the road what with it being a Saturday and he reckoned he’d be better keeping on up 87 till it hit 90, cross the Hudson River there and head on down to Chatham from the north. He’d studied the map and figured that though it wasn’t the most direct route, less of it would be on smaller roads that might not have been cleared. With no chains, he only hoped this access road to the mill they’d told him about wasn’t just some dirt track or something.
    By the time he picked up the signs for 90 and swung east, he was starting to feel better. The countryside looked like a Christmas card and with Garth Brooks on the tape machine and the sun bouncing off the Kenworth’smighty nose, things didn’t seem so bad as they had last night. Hell, if it came to the worst and he lost his license, he could always go back and be a mechanic like he was trained to be. It wouldn’t be so much money, for sure. It was a goddamn insult how little they paid a guy who’d done years of training and had to buy himself ten thousand dollars’ worth of tools. But sometimes lately he’d been getting tired of being on the road so much. Maybe it would be nice to spend more time at home with his wife and kids. Well, maybe. Spend more time fishing, anyway.
    With a jolt, Wayne spotted the exit for Chatham coming up and he got to work, pumping the brakes and taking the truck down through its nine gears, making the big four-twenty-five horsepower Cummins engine roar in complaint. As he forked away from the interstate he flipped the four-wheel-drive switch, locking in the cab’s front axle. From here, he calculated, it was maybe just five or six miles to the mill.
       High in the woods that morning there was a stillness, as if life itself had been suspended. Neither bird nor animal spoke and the only sound was the sporadic soft thud of snow from overladen boughs. Up into this waiting vacuum, through maple and birch, rose the distant laughter of the girls.
    They were making their way slowly up the winding trail that led to the ridge, letting the horses choose the pace. Judith was in front and she was twisted around, propped with one hand on the cantle of Gulliver’s saddle, looking back at Pilgrim and laughing.
    “You should put him in a circus,” she said. “The guy’s a natural clown.”
    Grace was laughing too much to reply. Pilgrim waswalking with his head down, pushing his nose through the snow like a shovel. Then he would toss a load of it into the air with a sneeze and break into a little trot, pretending to be frightened of it as it scattered.
    “Hey, come on now you, that’s enough,” said