Chapter 8 #2
Wind came first, gusting hard enough to bend the young trees along the roadside and set the older ones swaying. The temperature dropped fast enough that David felt it through his coat. The sky behind them had gone from dark gray to nearly black, the clouds building faster than David liked.
The horses noticed before he'd fully registered how close the storm had gotten — June's ears working constantly, swiveling toward every gust; Waylon lifting his head to study the tree line instead of the road; Willie losing the curious edge he carried through most of the day, walking tighter and more careful than usual.
Whiskey crowded closer to June's hindquarters.
Smokey quit ranging and stayed within a few feet of David's stirrup.
Thunder rolled somewhere behind the wind, distant but not distant enough.
"We need that barn," Curtis said.
"How far?"
"Man said three miles."
"That sounded a lot shorter ten minutes ago," Karen said.
They pushed the pace, though David refused to run horses blind down a road he didn't know, storm or no storm.
A stumble now would cost them worse than the weather could.
He kept June at a hard trot instead of a gallop, watching the road surface as much as he could manage while the light dropped and the wind kept building.
Rain started as big, scattered drops, spaced out enough at first that David thought they might beat the worst of it.
Then the drops closed together, and thunder cracked close enough to feel in his chest, and lightning lit the clouds from the inside.
The horses were nervous now, ears pinned, feet quicker than they needed to be. Not panicked. Not yet.
"How much farther?" Karen called, voice half-lost in the wind.
"Close," Curtis called back, though David doubted either of them knew for certain.
The old farm wasn't obvious from the road, and by the time they should have reached it, rain had closed visibility down to almost nothing, wind driving it sideways hard enough to sting.
A lightning strike cracked somewhere close, loud enough that Waylon jumped under Karen and she stayed seated through it.
Willie sidestepped hard, and Curtis brought him back with a firm hand and a low word.
Whiskey crowded June again, close enough that David felt the pressure of him against his leg.
David thought they'd reached the entrance. He couldn't see it. He started to push June past where he guessed it should be.
She didn't want to go.
She slowed, then balked outright — not a rear, nothing dramatic, just a flat refusal and her head turning hard toward the tree line to their right.
David had learned better than to fight her over something like that. He gave her her head instead.
She turned toward the trees, and through the driving rain David finally made out an old gate standing open and two muddy wheel tracks nearly buried in grass, easy to miss from the road even without a storm working against him.
"Good girl," David said, and turned her into the lane.
The ground here was slick, rutted, hard to read even from the saddle. Karen couldn't see the footing any better than David could, and Waylon slowed on his own, picking a line along firmer ground rather than following straight into a washed-out rut hidden under the water.
Karen tried to correct him back toward what looked like the center of the track.
"Let him pick it!" Curtis called over the wind.
Karen loosened the reins, and Waylon carried her through clean.
Willie followed Waylon's exact path without needing to be told. Whiskey followed June. Four horses solving a problem none of the riders could see clearly enough to solve themselves.
The lane ran another quarter mile before it opened into a wider farmyard, the barn's shape finally visible through the sheeting rain, close enough now that David let himself believe they'd make it.
They could see the barn clearly now, a dark shape maybe fifty yards ahead, when the lightning found something close — a tree at the field's edge, or a fence post, David never confirmed which. The crack of it was enormous, close enough that the air itself seemed to flinch.
Whiskey surged forward hard enough that the lead rope nearly tore from David's hand.
Willie jumped sideways, and Curtis fought him back under control with both hands and his whole weight.
Waylon braced and shied but held his ground.
June spun a half-step under David, bunching tight, and for a second Karen looked like she might come off Waylon entirely before she caught her balance low over his neck.
Smokey bolted several yards into the field, then turned and came straight back toward the horses instead of running further.
For a few seconds nothing about the group looked controlled.
Then Curtis got his voice above the wind. "Barn! Move!"
Nobody galloped. David wouldn't have allowed it even if the ground had been better, but he pushed June as fast as the footing let him trust her, Whiskey close behind on the shortened lead.
Curtis brought Willie and Waylon through the wide barn doorway first. David followed with June and Whiskey.
Karen came through right behind them, soaked and breathing hard but upright and steady.
Smokey came in alongside them, soaked through, shaking before he'd even fully cleared the doorway.
The rain turned torrential seconds after the last hoof cleared the threshold. They'd made it by less than a minute.
Inside, the barn held the smell of old hay and dust undisturbed for years, dark except for the gray light through gaps in the siding, rain hammering the roof hard enough to make talking require raising your voice.
Nobody was hurt. The horses stood blowing hard, sides heaving, water running off them in sheets.
David checked June first — legs, breathing, the whites of her eyes — and found nothing but a mare who'd had a bad few minutes and was already settling out of it.
Curtis moved between Willie and Waylon with the same routine, hands running down each leg, checking for anything that had gone wrong in the scramble to the doorway.
Karen ran a hand down her own front and laughed, short and startled, water dripping off the end of her nose. "I don't think I have a dry inch left."
Whiskey chose that moment to shake, spraying everybody within ten feet.
"Appreciate that," Curtis said, wiping his face.
"He waited until we were inside to do it," Karen said.
"Considerate," David said.
The barn held up sound enough to trust — old stalls along one wall, a hayloft mostly intact overhead, ancient hay below not worth feeding to anything but good enough bedding once they'd forked the worst of it aside.
They used their own feed instead, loosened tack, and let the horses stand and recover while the storm did its worst outside.
David walked the perimeter once tack was loosened, checking the walls and roof by what light came through the gaps. Solid enough. A few boards missing high up where the loft met the eave, letting in a thin curtain of blown rain that fell well clear of the stalls. Nothing that worried him.
"Roof's holding," Curtis said, following his eyes upward.
"For now."
"That's all we need it to do."
Smokey shook a second time, closer to Karen this time, and got her square in the side.
"Really?" she said.
Smokey looked pleased with himself, the way dogs manage without needing much of an expression at all.
Karen ran a hand along Waylon's neck once she'd caught her breath. "I wasn't riding him the last hundred yards."
"Nope," Curtis said.
"He was riding me."
"Pretty much."
David rubbed June's forehead, feeling the tension finally easing out of her. He'd have ridden past that gate in the rain and never known it was there. She'd known before he did.