Fields of Home by Ralph Moody Read Free Book Online Page B

and climbed the mow to pitch down hay for the horses. Then I cleaned the mare’s stall, bedded it with loose chaff from the barn floor, and fed her, but I didn’t go near the buckskin. The night before, Millie had told me to give the horses bran, but that morning I gave the bay mare whole corn. I wanted to be sure the buckskin would hear her chewing it. I currycombed and brushed her while she ate, and listened to him stamping, snorting, and raking his teeth across the timbers of his stall.
    When the mare was almost finished with her corn, and when the old buckskin was nearly frantic, I slipped out of her stall with the currycomb in my hand, took his bridle down from its spike, and went toward his stall door. As his head came shooting out over the half-door, it looked like the pictures of a Chinese dragon. I swung the bridle in front of my face, just the way Grandfather had but, with the other hand, I slipped the currycomb up in front of the blinder. The buckskin bit it so hard that he turned down a whole row of the sharp teeth, then snorted, and snapped three times more in quick succession. I didn’t swing the currycomb at him, but each time I was careful to see that it was where he’d bump his lips or teeth against it. After the third bump, he whirled, crowded his head into the far corner of the stall, and stood dancing.
    I’d expected him to act just the way he had with Grandfather, and was inside the stall door by the time he had his head in the corner. Then I was lucky. With Grandfather, he’d gone into the corner with his head high and his back straight. With me, he went with his head low and his back humped. When I was only eight years old Father had taught me to look out for flying heels when a horse got into that position. And he’d taught me that the closer I was to them when they flew, the less I’d get hurt. Without ever stopping to figure it out, I jumped to the side of the buckskin’s rump, and swung the currycomb up hard from my knee. It caught him on the near hock as his leg flew past my hip, and it caught him hard. He snorted, swung his rump toward me, and kicked again. That time I didn’t try to hide the currycomb, but smashed it hard against his hock as the legs came up.
    If I’d misguessed him, and he was really a bad horse, I could be in plenty of trouble, and I knew it. I had to keep telling myself so, as I crowded in against him with the currycomb ready to swing. If he ever found out he could scare me I’d never be able to handle him, and I knew he had his mind made up to find out. His head swung toward me, with his nostrils opened to the size of coffee cups, his ears back, and white showing around his eyes. Then he began to crowd. The solid wall was only two feet from my back. If I tried to dodge out, his heels would certainly catch me before I could get to the door, and I could only use the currycomb if I was in close. If I went toward his head, no currycomb could stop him from tearing me to pieces with his teeth. There was only one thing I could do: I had to scare him before he knew he’d scared me.
    If it had taken me a tenth as long to think it as to tell it, I might have been killed, but it didn’t. I stayed tight against his rump and, the second he began crowding me toward the wall, I started beating a tattoo on his belly with the sharp teeth of the currycomb. His back hunched against the bite of the comb, every muscle in his body was pulled as tight as a fiddlestring, and he kept crowding until I could see the wall just behind my shoulder. Then, with a half snort, half groan, the wind went out of him—just as it does with a toy balloon that has had a hole poked in it. He didn’t dance, but moved over against the far wall and stood, sulking and watching me out of the corner of his eye.

    I felt a little trembly all over as I moved up to the buckskin’s head. He flung it high, with his nose poked nearly to the ceiling. I could have jumped and made a grab for his under lip but, if I