Fire Pony

by Rodman Philbrick

  “I saw it,” says Rick.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” says Mr. Jessup.

  “I expect so,” says Rick.

  “Yep,” says Mr. Jessup, nodding to himself. “This little filly might have the makings of a quarter-mile racer.”

  Soon as he says that I get this sick feeling inside, because I figure that means he’ll want her back. So at first it don’t sink in when he says, “What do you think, Roy? You want to race your pony in the rodeo?”

  I find Joe Dilly in a stall with Showdown, fussing at him, and the big stallion don’t move so much as an eyelid while Joe licks his hooves with that rasp file. As much time as Joe seems to spend with the horse, which nobody else can touch, he don’t show no interest in riding him. Like it’s enough to just handle his feet and make him comfortable.

  “You look like you been up to no good,” he says, right off the bat. “Am I right?”

  “Not exactly,” I say. “Except I almost died, and it sure was fun.”

  So I tell Joe about the back country and the rattlesnake and the way Lady took off quick as lightning, and how she finally stopped on her own.

  “You stuck on that saddle like glue, did you?” he says. “I might have known.”

  “You’re the one taught me how to keep my balance,” I say.

  “Ah, you had it from the get go.” He lights up a cigarette and coughs a little and says, “Is this pony really as fast as they think she is?”

  I shrug and go, “I’m still kind of blurred from it all,” which gets a laugh out of Joe Dilly. “You’re a lucky kid, you know that, Roy? Situation could be a whole lot worse, you think about it.”

  He means that crummy foster home, before he come in like a storm and sprung me free, and as soon as he says that, it kind of crashes together inside me, that maybe we shouldn’t be here at the Bar None at all, not with Sally Red Dawn sniffing around and getting official come the fall. The law finds out about how Joe sprung me without bothering to get legal custody, or that stuff in Montana, and we’ll both of us end up in bad places.

  “Hey, don’t worry,” Joe says. “You gotta take this life one day at a time. You got the whole summer ahead of you, right?”

  “You mean it?” I ask.

  “Sure I do,” he says.

  But a while later I catch him when he don’t know I’m looking, and he’s got his forehead all wrinkled up and you can see he’s worried, and all that happy talk about the summer was just to make me feel good.

  * * *

  I put it out of my mind, though, when Mr. Jessup comes into the stables the next morning and asks how do I feel about putting Lady up against the clock?

  He wants to know how fast she runs, and when I saddle her up and bring her out, he and Rick have measured the distance they want her to run. They got a sawhorse for a starting gate and another one set up for the finish.

  Lady looks it over and gets a little nervous. I know because she’s prancing and pulling on the halter. “Easy there, girl,” I say. “Those ain’t rattlesnakes, they’re just old sawhorses is all.”

  “You ever seen a quarter-mile race, Roy?” Mr. Jessup wants to know.

  “No, sir,” I say. “Joe took me to a rodeo once, but I was too small to see over the side. I could hear all the people cheering, though, and see the hats flying by.”

  Mr. Jessup crouches down and starts drawing lines in the dirt with a little stick. “It’s pretty simple. The bell goes off, the gate opens, and you get your horse to the end of the track as fast as you know how.”

  Rick has got a stopwatch hanging on a string around his neck. He says, “A Thoroughbred wouldn’t know how to run as short a distance as four hundred and forty yards, which is the same as a quarter mile. That’s where a smaller horse has the advantage, if it gets up to top speed clean off the start. Is that about right, Nick?”

  “Yes, sir, it is,” says Mr. Jessup. “You ready to give it a go, Roy?”

  “I’m ready,” I say, hoisting myself up into the saddle and picking up the reins. “What do I do?”

  Mr. Jessup squints into the sun until all I can see is blue slits looking at me. “Try not to slow her down too much,” he says. “Try not to fall off.”

  Well, you never really know what a horse is going to do before it does it, and Lady don’t seem to be in the mood to run. I get her back behind the first sawhorse and give her the giddyap nudge with my heels, but all she does is amble along like she’s in the mood for a long slow walk.

  Rick looks up from his stopwatch and when he sees Lady taking her own sweet time, he kind of grins and shakes his head.

  Mr. Jessup, he don’t wait around, he heads into the barn without looking back.

  I’m going, “Come on, Lady! Go! Go!” but don’t you know, that pony acts like she can’t hear me, and she’s wandering around sniffing at the sawhorses and generally making herself at home. I might as well not even be there, as far as she’s concerned.

  “Lady, please? Don’t you want to be a racehorse?”

  Nothing.

  I feel like such a fool I’m about ready to start bawling like a baby when Mr. Jessup comes back out of the stable holding something shiny in his hands. I can’t tell what he’s thinking from the look on his face. Could be he’s laughing at me, or he might even be angry, you never know with him.

  But when he gets a little closer I see what he’s holding. A small pair of spurs.

  “Wasn’t sure if we had anything your size,” he says. “But I found these in an old milk crate. I do believe these were my first pair of spurs.”

  They’re the kind of spurs clip right on the heel of your boots. Mr. Jessup sticks them on for me and then he pats me on the knee and says, “You know the trick with spurs, do you?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “The trick is you don’t use ’em much. And you don’t dig them in and hurt the horse, like you see those cowboys do on TV. All you want to do, give this pony a signal she can’t ignore. That rattlesnake surprised her, and so she took off, but the thing of it is, after she got running she ran because she loved it. Some animals will get intoxicated with speed, and they make the best racers. So once you get her moving, I’m pretty sure she’ll go fast because she wants to.”

  “What do I do?” I ask.

  “Get her behind the line again and stop her. I mean hold back on the reins and tense up, so she knows something is about to happen. Then all at once you relax your legs, nudge your heels into her side, slap the reins, and yell ‘Geronimo!’”

  “You mean it?”

  “Yell anything you like, just so you make a lot of noise.”

  I get her back behind the starting line okay, and she starts to fight me when I pull back on the reins.

  “Good, good!” says Mr. Jessup. “That’ll make her want to go.”

  He says “tense up” and that part is easy, since I already feel like a watch that got wound too tight. Anyhow, I hold her back and count three to myself and then I kick with the spurs and slap her with the reins and shout “Geronimo!” at the top of my lungs.

  Next thing I know, Lady has took off like a scalded cat, only she’s not heading for the finish line like she’s supposed to. She’s headed off down the trail, like she thinks we’re going for the back country.

  She’s moving so fast I can’t think quick enough to keep up, and it’s all I can do to hold on.

  I get her steered back, but Lady never does cross the finish line. She’s too busy spooking herself with those sawhorses. She acts like they’re alive, like she wants to charge right at them and scare them off.

  When I finally get her stopped she’s all lathered up and shiny with sweat and she’s pitching her head around and looking back at me as if to say, What do you think of that, sports fans?

  Rick and Mr. Jessup come over and Rick is looking at his stopwatch and shaking his head. “What do you make of it?” he asks.

  Mr. Jessup looks at the watch and shrugs. “I’m not exactly sure,” he says. “Of cour
se if this had been a race, she’d have been disqualified for leaving the track.”

  Rick goes, “Heck, Nick, you saw the clock, she’s a natural.”

  “Maybe,” says Mr. Jessup. “She’s fast, I’ll grant you that.” Then he looks at me and says, “Well, did you like it?”

  “We’ll go faster next time,” I say.

  Rick and Mr. Jessup look at each other and Mr. Jessup smiles and says, “That’s what I wanted to hear. You feel good?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  It’s the truth. I feel good about everything. Lady and Joe Dilly and summer at the Bar None. But the thing is, you never really know what’s going to happen next. Because anything can happen. Good things, bad things. And scary, crazy things, when the world starts going all to pieces just when you least expect it.

  I’m sound asleep when the horses scream. Dreaming I’m at this rodeo and I’m too small to look over the side, and there’s just these big cowboy hats flying by, and I really want to see what’s going on, and that’s when all hell breaks loose.

  The horses scream and Joe Dilly’s feet hit the floor and he’s standing over my bunk and shaking me. “Come on, Roy, there’s something wrong!”

  Them horses aren’t in my dream at all. They really are going wild in the middle of the night.

  Soon as I sit up there’s a loud crack of thunder, sounds like a tree splitting. No lightning yet, but you can tell there’s a storm coming fast across the sky.

  Joe’s pulling on his pants and boots and he’s saying, “Where’d you leave that pony? In the barn or the corral?”

  “The corral,” I say, and that’s when it hits me — all the noise is coming from the corral.

  I’m at the door when Joe stops me and goes, “Better put on your pants.”

  So I do, only I get the legs crossed and I have to start over, and every time a horse screams it sounds like Lady, like she’s dying, or being scared to death.

  Which as it turns out is pretty close to the truth.

  At first I can’t see much of anything. Because the night is soaking up the lights from the bunkhouse, and the air is hot and thick and syrupy and hard to see through, and the noise from the scared horses comes from all around. Like I’m still asleep and sleepwalking or something.

  Joe’s there beside me and he goes, “It ain’t just a storm coming, make them go crazy like this. Something else has got ’em riled. Maybe you better get back inside and let me handle it.”

  I pretend like I don’t hear him, and then I scoot sideways around the corner of the building so he can’t make me go back. Not with Lady in trouble.

  I’m almost to the corral before I notice the cool dirt under my feet. Forgot my boots. So I’m barefoot like a fool. And that’s when I wonder: Was it another snake that has Lady and the horses in such a panic? Which makes me feel like each of my toes is a magnet for rattlers, and when I look at the ground my eyes play tricks and make me see snakey shapes slipping through the shadows, coming right at me.

  I’m so scared I can’t feel nothing, not even my feet.

  The moon comes out of a storm cloud and there they are, all the horses in the corral reared up and going wild. Their eyes are dead white and crazy-mad and they’re kicking their forelegs high in the air, like they want to scrape away the darkness and make it daytime.

  Lady Luck is racing around in circles, going as fast as she can, and every few seconds she gives the rail a butt with her head. She’s trying to bust out of that corral and she don’t care what it takes.

  I’m right there at the rail, watching her streak by but she don’t see me, and there’s no way I can think to stop her. Any second she might break a leg, or crash herself to death.

  “Lady!” I’m shouting. “Stop! Please stop!”

  Something sucks the air out of my lungs and the sky all at once goes crack-crack-crack like it’s breaking all to pieces and the barns and the stables and the corrals and all the panic-crazy horses go frozen white for just a heartbeat as that first stroke of lightning takes the color out of everything.

  It ain’t just rain comes down. More like a wave breaking from the sky, with water so thick in the air I still can’t breathe, and the horses swimming in the dark, where all the color has gone back into what you can’t see.

  There’s mud everywhere and it sucks at my feet so I can’t pick them up, but it don’t slow Lady down — she’s running like she wants to disappear. Which I would like to do except I can’t move. Or maybe I’m not moving because my head is empty, like the crack of thunder erased my brain or something, and I can’t seem to get thinking again.

  What gets me moving is this: Something big jumps over the fence rail, into the corral. At first I think it must be one of the horses, but it ain’t as big as a horse, and then there’s another flash of lightning turns everything white and I see there’s a white tiger in with the horses.

  A white tiger in there with Lady.

  The lightning switches off and when I can see again, that tiger is still in the corral, shrieking and spitting at the horses.

  Then Joe Dilly is beside me and he’s pulling at me and saying, “That’s a big old mountain lion! Keep out of there!”

  That’s when I see the tiger stripes are just streaks of mud and it really is a mountain lion. There’s nothing else it could be, and it wants to kill the horses.

  Joe’s hands are all slippery with the rain and I manage to get away from him and run around to the other side of the corral. Because I want to open the gate and let Lady out, so she don’t bust herself up or get eaten. I’m not really thinking about me or even about that big cat, all I’m thinking about is the pony.

  “Lady!” I’m yelling. “This way! Over here!”

  I lean under the rail and jerk up on my shoulder and sure enough the latch comes free and the gate swings open.

  Somebody is yelling my name, it might be Rick, but I don’t pay no attention. The only important thing is getting Lady away from that cat.

  The horses get wind of me, or the gate being open, and all of a sudden they stampede for the opening. This crazy mess of hooves and heads and wild eyes and bone and muscle, all of it coming my way.

  I throw myself back between the gate and the rail as the thunder goes by, and I can feel the air shaking with how scared they are, and I know they’d kill me if they could, because I’m not one of them, and right now they’re scared to death of anything that isn’t horse.

  As those horses bust through the gate, breaking it to pieces, I end up face first in that sucking-down mud with the rain pouring all over me. But I don’t care, because I figure Lady must have got away. Nothing can get her if she’s running free.

  But when I pry myself up from that mud and have a look, the cougar’s still there, in the corral. He’s got Lady cornered. She’s trying to kick down the rail, but it won’t go. The cougar knows what he’s doing — he’s got her so crazy with fear she can’t think her way around him.

  “Jump!” I scream. “Jump out of there!”

  I know she could do it if she only knew how, but before she can move, the cougar is on her. He kind of slinks under her belly, keeping away from her feet. He reaches up and gets his claw into her flank and Lady cries out so bad it makes me weep.

  Next thing I know I’m running into the corral with a piece of broken gate in my hand. Don’t ask me what I’m going to do with that silly piece of wood because I don’t know, I only want something in my hands.

  The rain is streaking down and blurring everything and the cougar, it seems like he’s part of the mud, the way he comes up out of the ground. Like the rain made him, or the lightning. He smacks Lady again with his paw and she goes down and I can see her wild eyes looking at me.

  She wants me to do something, only I don’t know what. So I’m screaming like a wild horse and kicking my hooves and swinging that little broken stick and making such a crazy fool of myself that the cougar finally notices.

  He backs off of Lady where she’s down in the mud, and he kin
d of slinks into himself and I can see his yellow eyes glowing in the rain. He’s thinking what to do.

  I’m going, “Get away from her! Go on, get out of here!”

  Then I’m swearing like Joe Dilly, but the cougar don’t care. His ears go back on his head and his lips pull back and he shows me all of his shiny teeth, and all of a sudden my throat feels like I swallowed a hot rock.

  Next thing, somebody is shouting my name. It might be Joe, but I can’t tell because I’m watching that cougar so hard.

  I want to turn and run, but the mud won’t let me, and so I have to keep cussing at the cougar, because if I stop I’ll just fall down and give up. I can see how he’s winding up and getting ready to jump at me. It’s like he’s getting thicker and more solid and his eyes are bigger and brighter, and I can smell how much he hates me. Hates me because I’m afraid, and because he’s afraid, too.

  He goes to jump and there’s another crack, only this time it ain’t thunder. The cat screams so hurt it makes my blood freeze up, and I don’t want to look.

  I can smell the gunpowder and when I open my eyes there’s a dead thing in the mud and Mr. Jessup is on the other side of the corral, waving his rifle and calling my name.

  “Get away from there, Roy! Go to your horse! Go to Lady!”

  So I do it, I go to Lady. She’s down in the mud, too, and bleeding from her flank, but she’s alive, and she knows me, and that’s all that matters.

  Mr. Jessup thinks the cougar was sick in the head.

  “No mountain cat in its right mind would do what it did,” he says.

  We’re all of us in the stable, me and Joe and Rick and Mr. Jessup, and Miss Lottie Davis, the horse doctor, she’s come out in the middle of the night to tend to Lady.

  That pony is hurting so much I can’t help it, I’m crying as Dr. Davis sews up the claw marks the cougar left in her flank. “It might have had a brain disease,” Dr. Davis says. She’s stitching away like she’s making a dress or something, except there’s blood on her fingers. “Or it might be just plain crazy. That happens with big cats just like with people.”