Girl and Five Brave Horses, A by Sonora Carver Read Free Book Online Page B

had to stay on him, come up from the water on him, and ride him out of the tank. If I failed to do any of these things I would have failed as a rider—and I wanted to be a good rider more than anything else.
    I was anxious to be off and get it over with, but Klatawah was not. He was a fast enough diver during practice sessions, but tonight he had an audience and he reacted to it.
    Klatawah had been one of Dr. Carver’s first diving horses. In the early years the horses had carried no riders, so in order to build up audience interest Dr. Carver had taught Klatawah to count out his age at the edge of the platform by pawing his hoof a number of times. Dr. Carver had long since wearied of this act (as had Al, since the pawing tore up the padding), but Klatawah had not; in fact, he thought it was splendid. He proceeded to count now by bringing first one foot and then the other high under his chin and letting them drop down with a whack that shook the very uprights.
    The motion of his body as he went through these gymnastics jerked me backward and forward as if stricken with a violent case of hiccups. Klatawah was a fraud. He never actually counted his age; he simply pawed as many times as he thought the audience deserved, which could be a great number. Finally, however, he gave the audience one last look, then he clattered down onto the kickoff board with an almost running motion and immediately kicked off.
    I felt his muscles tense as his big body sprang out and down, and then had an entirely new feeling. It was a wild, almost primitive thrill that comes only with complete freedom of contact with the earth. Then I saw the water rushing up at me, and the next moment we were in the tank.
    We went in so smoothly that wetness seemed the only proof of landing. Klatawah’s feet touched bottom and he began to nose up. I sensed a pull; the water parted; we came to the surface.
    “I did it! I did it! I did it!” That was all I could think, and I was so excited when I dismounted that I forgot to bow to the audience. I simply turned and waved both arms, not once, but twice; it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
    Then I turned to get Klatawah’s sugar from the groom, but it wasn’t the groom who was standing there. It was Dr. Carver, and he was smiling and said, “That’s Daddy’s girl.”

Five
    It was the first time he had ever called me “Daddy’s girl,” but I hardly heard him. I was too excited and full of myself. I went back to my dressing room, and in the mirror I saw I was grinning like a Cheshire cat. “What a pity,” I thought, “there’s no one to help me celebrate. I never felt so wonderful!”
    The fact was that I hadn’t a single friend in Durham. There might have been several reasons for this, but Dr. Carver was the overwhelming one. He didn’t approve of my associating with people in the park; a top performer must maintain an air of mystery, he said. He was probably right, but just then I would have gladly traded mystery for some shared jubilation.
    It wasn’t until after I got back to the hotel that what he said really penetrated my mind. “That’s Daddy’s girl!” The only creatures who received this accolade were his beloved horses. If he had put me in the same category, our private war was over.
    I was right in thinking that the title evidenced affection and pride, for he called me that in all the remaining years of our acquaintanceship, and because he liked it and because it seemed appropriate I called him “Daddy Carver.” Many people took me for his daughter and I never bothered to correct them, for I became a daughter to him through devotion, if not by right of blood.
    He had held off approval until I met the final test, afraid I might disappoint him somewhere along the way. I became convinced of this during the course of the next week when he started training a new girl for Al.
    When Al left, Dr. Carver promised to send him a trained rider in time for his opening in Texas, and to