Emma and the Cutting Horse by Martha Deeringer Read Free Book Online Page B

it?”
    Emma was horrified to discover that her eyes
were brimming with tears. A single stray spilled over and slid down
the side of her nose. She remembered the photographs of Mrs.
Killen’s children decorating her desk, a son and daughter now
mostly grown. It would be so easy to tell Mrs. Killen about Candi.
A teacher with a daughter would understand. But, for some reason,
the words refused to form in her mouth.
    “I’ve got to go,” Emma blurted, brushing the
tear away. “I’ll miss my bus.”
    “Wait right here just a moment,” Mrs. Killen
said, hurrying into her classroom. She returned in a moment with a
yellow hall pass. Emma’s name was on it and it was signed but not
dated. She pushed it into Emma’s hand.
    “I’m off fifth period, and I’m nearly always
in my classroom alone grading papers. The teasing may reach a point
where you can’t tolerate it anymore. You shouldn’t have to tolerate
it at all. It makes me furious when this kind of bullying goes on
in school. Fill out the pass and come to see me. I’d really like to
help, and no one needs to know that you talked to me.”
    Emma nodded, but words were still stuck
behind a huge lump in her throat.
    “Now scoot, before you miss your bus.”
    Emma took out that yellow pass and looked at
it many times over the next few days, but could never quite work up
the courage to use it.
    * * *
    At the end of two weeks, Gary called and
spoke to Emma’s dad on the phone.
    “He said he wants us to come and watch the
mare work again,” Emma’s dad explained. “Then he has someone who
wants to talk to us about her.”
    “If someone wants to buy her, are you going
to sell?” Emma asked on the way to Gary’s the following Saturday
morning.
    “We haven’t decided yet,” her dad replied.
“We need to see how she’s doing first; and, of course, how much
they offer is a big factor, too. We have quite a bit of money
invested in her already what with feed and training.”
    When they pulled up at the trainer’s barn,
Miss Dellfene was in her usual place, tied to the trailer. Gary and
a lanky man in a cowboy hat were standing nearby looking at her and
talking. Emma thought the little mare looked better than she had
before. Her coat was clean and shining, and her mane was freshly
trimmed. She had gained some weight, but she looked strong rather
than fat.
    “This is John Brown,” Gary said waving in the
direction of the man standing near Miss Dellfene. “John trains a
few horses just down the road from here, and he’s watched your mare
work a couple of times.” John nodded to them but kept his
distance.
    Then Gary saddled the mare and got on her
next to the trailer. He rode her across the gravel to the arena
gate, leaned over, unlatched it, and pushed it open. The mare
walked calmly through and turned beside the gate so that Gary could
reach down and latch it from the inside. Emma watched in surprised
silence.
    “She seems much more relaxed.” Emma’s dad
said.
    Gary walked and trotted her using a very
loose rein. Then he loped her slowly across the arena and brought
her to a sliding stop. He spun her to the right and back to the
left, then lifted the reins and backed her up. Emma noticed that
John Brown was leaning on the fence, watching intently. She
wondered why he seemed so interested in a hardheaded little mare
with crooked knees.
    Gary rode over to the fence next to Emma and
her parents.
    “Once she started coming my way, she made a
lot of progress,” he told them. “She has a tremendous amount of
balance and athletic ability, but she also has something else...I
guess you could call it toughness. I told John about her, and he
came over to watch her work. John is a cutting horse trainer and
he’s looking for a two-year-old to train for the 1977 National
Cutting Horse Association Futurity next year. After he watched one
of her training sessions he asked me if he could talk to you when
you came to see her work.”
    John walked toward them as Gary