Winter Run by Robert Ashcom Read Free Book Online Page B

with a long coat and rain, she would turn the vivid color of the soil and stay that way for months. In the beginning, Mr. Lewis tried to get Charlie to groom the little mare regularly. The idea was to keep her looking clean, not reddish brown or pink. The effort was, of course, a failure. Hot waterand soap wouldn’t have done it, let alone what Charlie’s daddy called elbow grease. She was indivisible from the land. Her name was Tricksey.
    Everyone agreed the name was awful. Charlie wanted to rename her Fleet Foot because it fit with his ideas about what he was going to do with her. But it didn’t stick. She came Tricksey and many years later she died Tricksey. Almost immediately Charlie began referring to her as “the pony.” And that is what she became in everyday use.
    The purchase of the pony was the result of the promise given during the summer. His father had meant it when he agreed that in the fall Charlie would get a pony, when horses and ponies were for sale at the right price because cold weather meant hay and feed and not everyone could carry livestock over the winter.
    Charlie had seen Jimmy Price riding her around the village and announced he thought she would do just fine. Jimmy had even let Charlie try her in the lot behind the store. Jimmy was an accepted authority on horses because he had that mare named Princess, who would lie down and roll over on command. Tricksey was no Princess, but Jimmy held out the vague hope that she might be taught to at least lie down. Tricksey did respond to Charlie by doing more or less what he wanted. She circled obediently around the lot, stopping and going forward on command. Also, she was short enough that he could climb on her from the ground. So Charlie fastened his desire on Tricksey.Matthew couldn’t see any reason why not. Everyone knew the Price family. Old Aaron Price was a blacksmith—mainly horseshoeing, not ironwork—whose family had been around nearly as long as the Jameses, so you knew who you were buying from.
    The negotiation for her purchase was complex. Messages were sent via Jimmy. In the beginning, Aaron didn’t really want to sell her. It wasn’t that he needed her. He didn’t, but he collected horses the way Luke Henry collected hounds. He must have had ten horses and ponies on the twenty-five-acre hardpan red-clay plot that he called a farm. In addition to shoeing, he was a part-time horse trader who didn’t really trade horses very often because he seemed to like them all and want to keep them.
    The Price’s house and barns were made of logs, the fences of field-pine poles. The place looked like something out of old times, like a little fortified compound. There was no plumbing, and water was dipped from the dug well right behind the kitchen. There were three cows and three steers and the usual hog pen over the hill behind the house. Add the money from Aaron’s shoeing, and they were self-sufficient.
    The lane into the compound was solid red clay, between banks that were nearly as high as the cab of Matthew’s old black pickup. Charles Lewis wondered aloud how the Prices got in and out in bad weather.
    “They leave their truck out to the hard road and walk,” said Matthew. “No way on earth you going to get a truck up this lane if it’s wet.”
    Aaron was trying to retire. That meant he wanted Jimmy to take up the slack of the shoeing so Aaron could sit on the porch and chew, take a pull at the jug every once in a while, and look out at the stock—and maybe buy and sell some horses. Jimmy didn’t necessarily mind the work. It was just that he liked all kinds of other things as well—horse shows in the spring and summer and livestock sales in the winter, and just plain wandering around the countryside visiting with people. But Jimmy had real talent. At sixteen, he was already a master horseshoer. His work was in demand.
    Aaron was sitting on the front porch. As Charles and Matthew and Charlie approached, he spat over the porch rail