Phantom Horse 1: Phantom Horse

by Christine Pullein-Thompson

  I felt Angus looking at me. It was the first time we had heard of anyone hunting on Christmas Day, or of the Millers visiting New York.

  “Are they going to meet very early? I mean, how does breakfast fit in?” Angus asked.

  I felt disappointed. I had been looking forward to hunting with Pete and Phil. Now it seemed that they would be leaving for New York almost as soon as they arrived.

  “After the hunt of course. They meet about ten,” Wendy replied.

  It sounded more like a hunt lunch or tea to me. I wondered what everyone ate for breakfast. I giggled and imagined all of us eating bowls of cereal.

  “Everyone still comes in their hunting kit. It's very colourful,” Mr Miller said.

  I imagined muddy hunting boots trampling across the Millers' polished floors, the clink of spurs, the pink coats. “They send their horses home first of course,” Mr Miller said.

  I thought of tired horses climbing into vans and trucks jogging home, of grooms and second horsemen.

  “They don't stay out long. Everyone's too darned keen to get back to their Christmas dinners,” Mr Miller told us.

  “It's just a kind of tradition. We have our traditions too, you see,” Wendy said.

  “It won't be a big affair. The last time we had a hunt breakfast there were ninety-five guests. Do you remember, Wendy?” Mr Miller asked.

  “Sure,” she replied.

  “What are you going to New York for? Or is that being too nosey?” Angus asked.

  “To visit the theatres, the movies and the galleries. We go every year,” Wendy replied. By now we had reached our school.

  “Be good,” Mr Miller said, as we stepped out of the car and saw that we were late, and that the other children were all inside.

  After school I was given a lecture by the headmaster. I had been reported three times for lack of attention. I tried to explain about the round-up and how important it was to me, but I don't think he understood. I didn't really listen to his lecture. I was longing to hear whether the wild horse was free or captive, nothing else seemed to matter. I heard that I was to stay in during break for the next five days, and I was only pleased that I wasn't to stay after school. I rushed out to the car where the others were waiting. Mrs Miller had come to fetch us.

  “What news?” I cried. “Have they caught him?”

  “They hadn't by lunch time. I haven't heard anything since,” Mrs Miller replied.

  “Isn't it awful? We still don't know,” cried Angus in tones of exasperation.

  “What did Mr Beeton say?” Wendy asked.

  “Nothing much. Just that I'm to stay in during break for the next five days,” I replied.

  “Gee, tough luck,” Wendy said.

  There were no horse vans or trucks on the road. They must be still driving him, I thought, they must all be terribly tired.

  “How can we find out? We must find out,” Angus asked.

  “Find out what?” Mrs Miller asked. “Oh, about that crazy horse. You're real obsessed about him, aren't you? It's not healthy, you know,” she said.

  We were nearly home now. I hoped that Mum would have news. Someone must know whether they had caught the wild horse or not. There was a feeling of rain in the air. The sky was grey. There was no one riding across the valley. There wasn't a dog in sight. The Hereford cattle grazed undisturbed.

  Angus and I found Mum in the kitchen unpacking groceries.

  “Is he caught?” cried Angus.

  “Have you heard anything?” I asked.

  Mum knew what we were talking about. “I haven't heard a sound since early morning. I inquired at the post office just now and they said they hadn't seen any horsemen since lunch time,” she replied.

  Then the telephone rang. Angus answered. It was Wendy. I could hear her voice quite clearly from across the hall.

  “We've just heard they haven't caught him. They're starting to go home now,” she said.

  I felt quite weak with relief. I leaned against the kitchen door and heard Wendy say, “They nearly caught him at eleven o'clock this morning down by the Hodges' farm, but after that they never had a chance. They got the mares all right, though.”

  “Well. Are you happy now?” asked Mum, who had heard the conversation from the kitchen. “You really mustn't let it become an obsession with you,” she continued. “After all, he's not your horse.” I wondered then whether Angus and I were really letting the wild horse become an obsession. It seemed odd that Mum and Mrs Miller should both say the same thing. Perhaps we are going nuts, I thought, and remembering how foolish I had been at school, I resolved to think less about the wild horse in future.

  “Isn't it brilliant?” cried Angus, bursting into the kitchen. “He's defeated them all. He's still free.”

  “I know. We heard,” I said. He does sound rather obsessed, I thought, looking at my brother.

  The next three weeks passed slowly. Nothing happened. The wild horse seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. I received a long letter from Pete, full of questions about the cattle which I couldn't answer. The days grew shorter. The Millers started to feed hay and corn to the cattle. Mum began to mention Christmas.

  We spent two evenings doing up parcels for England and writing in Christmas cards. At last everything for England was posted and we started to think of each other's presents and what we could give the Millers.

  December came and with it the first frost. There was still no sign of the wild horse in the mountains. People didn't talk about it any more. It was as though the palomino had suddenly ceased to exist. Angus and I clipped the bay mare and Frances with the help of Joe and Wendy. Mr Miller lent us horse rugs. Mum, Angus and I made a Christmas pudding.

  We received an invitation to the hunt breakfast, which we all accepted. The Millers were busy ordering food and polishing the house. Normally they hired extra staff and waiters for parties, but this time they couldn't because of it being Christmas.

  At last, term ended. We drove home singing loudly. There were only five days left till Christmas. Late that evening Pete and Phil returned from the academy. They came down to see us at Mountain Farm. Phil seemed to have grown taller. He towered above us all. Pete seemed older and more serious. Dad gave them each a glass of beer and I found them some cake.

  “So you haven't caught the wild horse,” Pete said.

  “I hear he's been bumped off,” Phil told us.

  “That's the first we've heard of it,” Angus replied.

  “He can't have been,” I cried. I must have sounded desperate because suddenly everyone seemed to be looking at me.

  “Don't take him seriously, Jean. He doesn't know a doggone thing,” Pete told me.

  “It's only what I heard at the drugstore when I stopped by for a Coke,” Phil said.

  At last we went to bed and, trying to sleep, I remembered the first time I had seen the wild horse, and my first glimpse of a Virginian moon, and the valley in the summer, warm and sunlit, and filled with the chorus of frogs in the lowlands.

  We didn't see the Millers again till Christmas Day. Wendy had asked to have Frances back and we delivered her to Joe on Christmas Eve. “It's not going to be much fun having just one horse. We'll never catch the palomino now,” Angus said.

  I looked across the valley to the mountains faintly blue beneath the blue sky. “I wonder where he is. No one ever seems to see him now,” I said. It seemed strange to talk about the wild horse again. Afraid of seeming obsessed, we had hardly mentioned him for weeks.

  “Perhaps Phil was right – perhaps he's been bumped off,” Angus replied.

  “Maybe he's moved to another valley,” I said.

  “Somehow I've stopped thinking he'll ever be ours. Everything seems so difficult,” Angus said.

  I woke early on Christmas Day. My stocking was full and I seized it from the bottom of my bed before rushing into Angus's room. It was traditional that we should open our stockings together. There were all the usual things, even the tangerines in the toes of
our stockings. The bay mare was neighing because she was on her own. We sat on Angus's bed and ate chocolate, nuts and tangerines. Outside it was snowing.

  “I agree with Dad. I don't think Christmas Day and hunting go together,” I said.

  “You know that's only wishful thinking. If we'd been invited you would think quite differently,” Angus replied with a grin. We got dressed, had breakfast of eggs and ham, and opened our presents.

  I suddenly didn't want to go to the hunt breakfast. I never liked parties much and this was going to be a very grown-up sort of one. When we reached the Millers' the house was full of people. I avoided dancing and went with Pete to see his chestnut. He wanted to call it after me, but I managed to persuade him to call it Firefly. We stood and talked and talked, and in this way missed the rest of the hunt breakfast.

  There were fourteen of us for dinner. There was wine in elegant glasses, turkey and sweet potato, asparagus, corn, bread sauce, and hot rolls in front of each of us. The meal seemed to go on and on. I began to feel sleepy and Angus was gazing at me with a worried look on his face.

  Some time much later Dad appeared and said, “Come on, we must go home. It's long past midnight.”

  “Well, did you enjoy yourselves?” Mum asked.

  “It was okay. I liked the turkey,” my brother answered.

  “It went on too long,” I said. It seemed ages since we had left home. It was very light in the valley. I looked across to the mountains now capped with snow. I thought of the wild horse roaming alone in a white world.

  “Phil and Pete want me to go shooting with them tomorrow. They don't go to New York until the evening,” Angus said.

  “Oh lord,” exclaimed Mum. “Do you think you're safe?”

  “I've been shooting before,” Angus replied.

  “You must be sensible,” Mum said anxiously.

  The mountains looked cold and remorseless beneath the snow. I wondered what the wild horse would find to eat in his cold white world. He might be starving, I thought, gazing beyond the mountains to the cold grey sky.

  “Everyone goes shooting, only they call it hunting, on Boxing Day. All the men, anyway,” Angus said.

  He may be hung up by his headcollar or trapped in a ravine, I decided, and suddenly I knew that, come what may, tomorrow I would search again for the wild horse.

  “All right, you can go. But don't be foolish,” Dad said to Angus. “Remember that a gun is a lethal weapon.”

  I dreamed all night about the wild horse: I was driving him down mountain passes blocked with snow and ice; I was schooling in the paddock at home in England; I was jumping him at Wembley.

  I wakened to a white world and a cold pale sun. The sky was blue. The snow had stopped falling.

  11

  “You're shooting today,” I told Angus the next day, Boxing Day, because he can't remember things early in the morning, and I knew he would be furious if he slept till ten o'clock by mistake.

  Dad called, “Why are you up so early?” from the bedroom.

  I couldn't stop to explain. I felt in a tremendous hurry. I wanted to be riding alone in the mountains, seeking the wild horse. “It's a quarter past eight,” I answered, as I left the room and rushed downstairs. I mucked out the bay mare's box in ten minutes. Then I started to make toast for breakfast.

  “What's the hurry?” Angus asked, yawning as he appeared in the kitchen. “It's not you who's shooting.”

  “I know. But I'm going to find the wild horse,” I answered. “He may be starving.”

  “What, in this weather? Do you think you'll be allowed to go?” Angus asked. He sounded as though he didn't think it was very likely.

  “I'm going, whatever anybody says. We can't leave him to starve. It's cruelty to animals,” I replied.

  “Be careful we don't shoot you. Anyway, I don't believe he's around here at all. Everybody thinks he's moved on,” Angus said.

  “Well, I'm just going to make sure,” I replied. “And look what you've made me do,” I shouted, as I spilt some milk.

  “It's nothing to do with me. You've simply filled it too full,” Angus said.

  I felt all on edge, and I was terrified that my parents would forbid an expedition into the mountains.

  “Why don't you come shooting? Wendy is,” Angus said.

  “No, thank you. I don't feel like killing things,” I replied.

  “Do you think Mum and Dad are ever going to get up? Shall we start without them?” I asked.

  “Why don't you have breakfast and then get going before anyone comes down to say no? That's what I would do,” Angus advised.

  I knew that it was a bad suggestion but I couldn't bear the thought of not going. “Won't you get the blame then? I don't want you to be stopped shooting,” I answered, making coffee.

  “That doesn't matter. It's your expedition which matters,” my brother said. “Here, you go,” he added, seizing a jug out of my hand. “I'll make the coffee.”

  I said “Thanks” and I snatched a hunk of bread, spread it with butter, and rushed out to the stable munching. I filled my pockets with oats and fetched a halter and the bay mare's tack.

  Two minutes later I was mounting in the yard, “Good luck,” Angus called softly from the back door.

  I shouted “Thank you” and “Goodbye” but he had already returned to the kitchen. I hoped he wouldn't get into trouble.

  I rode out of the yard into the white world. The snow was just crisp enough to avoid balling. The bay mare was fresh and wouldn't walk. I trotted briskly across the sparkling snow feeling as though I belonged to the distant past, before the advent of cars and the machine age.

  The Hereford cattle were clustered around the Millers' farm waiting to be fed. Groundhogs and deer had left prints in the snow. The valley seemed empty and quite devoid of sound. It wasn't the valley I knew any more – just a vast white wilderness.

  The trail leading into the mountains looked smaller and quite different beneath the snow. The snow coating the trees had thawed a little before it froze, so that now weird, fantastic icicles encased the branches like thick glass. The bay mare's hoofs made fresh prints in the snow, and it was obvious she and I were the first beings to tread the trail since Christmas night. There was the tiniest breeze which faintly stirred the encrusted leaves and made the trees creak uneasily; otherwise there was no sound and we might have been travelling through a dead world.

  I thought of my parents eating breakfast at home; cracking the tops of boiled eggs, spreading toast with butter and marmalade. I hoped they weren't too angry at my behaviour, for though I was certain that I was on an errand of mercy, I was afraid they wouldn't see my expedition in the same light.

  It was hard work following the trail; soon the bay mare was sweating and I was watching her ears to avoid the glare from the snow. I came to a fork and turned left for no particular reason. Here deer had left tracks in the virgin snow. My hands were cold in my bright new gloves and my feet were cold inside my boots. The sky had turned a miraculous blue, the sort of blue which belongs to the French Riviera, and the sun was melting the snow on the tree-tops. It was the sort of day and setting one dreams about.

  I don't know how long I rode nor how far before I saw the first hoofprints in the snow, and knew that my hunch was right and that somewhere not far away the wild horse walked alone through the mountains. I began to feel excited because I knew that my journey was justified and that there was hope again on the horizon. I hurried the bay mare and I think she knew that we were near our goal, for she seemed to take new heart.

  Soon I heard the distant sound of firing and, in my imagination, I saw the Millers and Angus ploughing through the snow with guns. Then the hoofprints left the trail and we were plodding through undergrowth and under trees and over half-buried rocks. I think the bay mare could smell the palomino, for she seemed to follow the hoofprints with great eagerness and once or twice she stopped to smell the air.

  I started to wonder what would happen when the wild horse saw us. I
dreaded an exciting chase. Where the snow was melting in the sunshine it formed into hard balls in the bay mare's hoofs and several times she stumbled and almost fell. Once she seemed to be walking on stilts, and I was about to dismount when the ball fell out and lay a dirty grey lump on the white snow.

  I had been lost for some time when we reached a tiny clearing and saw, standing alone beneath a tree, a horse coated with snow and ice. It was the palomino, but he looked quite different. He seemed half asleep and icicles hung from his mane and fetlocks, his ribs showed through the snow on his sides, and his eyes were partly closed and dull as though life didn't interest him any more. In spite of his awful appearance, my heart gave a leap of joy, for at last I had found him, at least he was still alive.

  He raised his head a little as we approached, and the bay mare whinnied softly. A tattered headcollar hung on his tired head. I'd never seen a horse look so weary before. I was nearly crying as I dismounted from the bay mare. I felt no triumph at all.

  I said, “Hello, whoa little horse,” as I approached the palomino, and though his tired eyes watched me warily, he didn't move. I knew then that he was very sick. I reached out a hand and took a piece of rope which dangled from his headcollar and still he didn't move. I saw that his eyes were almost yellow and so were his nostrils and his mouth. I wondered whether he was strong enough to make the journey home. I tied the halter I had brought on to his headcollar and brushed the snow off his thin, drooping neck. The bay mare rubbed her head against him, but he gave no response.

  He wouldn't eat the oats out of my pockets. I rubbed his cold, half-frozen ears and I could feel him falling to sleep again. Somehow I had to get him home, he would never stand another night in the mountains. I guessed that he had come to the clearing in the small hours and that he hadn't moved since; it looked as though it had been his home for some time.

  I stood and wished that I had Angus with me and that I was in England and could reach a telephone in a few minutes and get hold of a horse box. I wished that Pete was with me because I was sure he would know how to handle the situation. I felt very helpless alone in the mountains with the two horses. My hands were numb and snow from the few thawing trees had dripped down my neck. At that moment I hated Virginia and the Blue Ridge Mountains more than anywhere else in the world. I hated the icicles and the snow and the endless trails which all looked just alike. I hated the sky, the sun and the remoteness, and the few birds hovering in the air looking for dying animals to eat.