Chapter 16 #2
Just over five minutes later, the volunteer waved them on, and they began, with the banner passing overhead. Jewel felt Sundancer step out energetically beneath her. Her horse clearly sensed they were headed on an adventure and was eager for it.
The first stretch was a sandy trail through a corridor of mixed hardwood, wide enough to ride two abreast. The morning shone through the canopy at a low angle, casting long gold bars across the trail ahead.
The air was cool enough that she could see both her and Sundancer’s breath, forming small clouds that dispersed as they moved, and it had that clean, brisk mountain air quality.
With one hand, she pulled her collar up and settled deeper into the saddle, letting the mare find her own rhythm on the path.
Emma and Richard rode ahead of her in easy companionship, their horses matching strides effortlessly with the smooth synchrony of animals who knew each other well.
Emma sat on her bay with a steady, quiet seat, her shoulders relaxed, her hands moving with her horse’s rhythm with such ease that it looked like she was doing nothing, yet was actually doing everything.
From behind her, at a varying distance depending on the trail, she could hear the young couple.
Mostly, it was laughter—easy and uninhibited—interrupted by the clink of cans and the occasional whoop when the trail opened up, and one of them felt the urge to announce themselves to the mountain.
She could also hear the bay plodding along patiently behind Sundancer, while the chestnut fizzed, sidled, and was dragged back in line each time with roughly the same technique—a jerk and a sharp word.
Sundancer flicked an ear back once to assess the situation, then returned her attention to the trail.
Jewel patted her neck. “Good girl.”
After half a mile, the path narrowed, and the trees began pressing in on either side until there was only enough room to ride single file, with the canopy closing overhead into something richer and more enclosed.
They were now surrounded by beech and birch trees, their leaves a pale, trembling gold, while behind them, the dark, large pines completely blocked the sky for fifty yards, dropping the temperature a few degrees before thinning out and allowing them back into the open.
She heard the young couple’s voices muffle and fall back along the trail, quiet now from distance and trees, and was genuinely quite happy with the silence.
In fact, she stopped thinking about them entirely.
She also stopped thinking about Ashley, Robert, Albany, Trevor Montgomery, and all the complicated, unresolved mysteries still waiting to be unraveled.
She even stopped thinking about Cole waiting for her in the kitchen this morning, her travel mug of coffee already made.
She stopped dwelling on all of it, letting the trail do what trails do best when you just let them—putting everything that wasn’t an immediate concern aside.
For right now, in this moment, there was only this.
The rhythm of Sundancer beneath her, with her four beats, steady and true.
The sound of hooves on packed earth. The smell of the woods, damp earth, fallen leaves, and somewhere ahead of her, the cold, bright scent of water.
The mountains were visible in glimpses through breaks in the canopy, the ridges turning blue and gold and distant in the morning light, and the sky above them had that particular shade of pale, clear blue that promised a beautiful day.
She took the time to notice it all.
Behind her, the cans clinked again. Someone laughed too loudly, and then it faded off. She let it all go.
After a while, she saw a flag near a long bend that marked an obstacle, and they reached a small clearing in the woods.
Off to one side of the trail, a volunteer sat on a folding chair, a thermos on the ground next to her, and a blue tarp lay flat across a twenty-foot section of the path.
It moved very slightly in the breeze, its surface catching and releasing the light, which was exactly the test that made horses question everything they thought they knew about the world.
The volunteer stayed in her seat but called out cheerfully, “Let’s see if those pretty ponies will cross the tarp. Just take your time. There’s no rush.”
Richard went first, his large gray mare walking confidently toward the edge of the tarp, dropping her nose to sniff the corner.
Then she stepped onto it with a steady, careful walk of a horse that had seen worse and survived.
Her hooves made a soft, crackling sound against the plastic, and she crossed without breaking stride, her ears pricked forward, completely unfazed.
Emma’s bay took a moment longer. He paused at the edge, shifted his weight back, nostrils flaring, and looked extremely skeptical.
Emma sat quietly, not doing anything dramatic, just keeping the reins loose and waiting.
He stretched his neck toward the tarp, sniffed it with great concern, then sniffed again.
Satisfied it wouldn’t harm him, he stepped onto it with exaggerated caution, placing each foot with theatrical deliberateness, clearly doing it under protest.
Emma smiled and said nothing, letting him have his dignity.
Then it was Sundancer’s turn. Jewel’s mare approached the tarp and crossed it in nine even strides, ears pricked forward with curiosity rather than alarm, as if this were just an interesting new variation on the trail.
Under each footfall, she could feel the slight give of the plastic beneath her feet and kept her legs soft and her hands light, allowing her mare to go through on her own terms.
Once they reached the other side, she patted Sundancer fondly and turned to watch the other two horses.
As she’d expected, the bay moved onto the tarp without any fuss or drama, crossing it with the same long-suffering patience it seemed to bring to most things, then stood on the far side looking slightly bored.
The chestnut, however, was a completely different matter.
He approached the edge of the tarp in small, nervous steps, then stopped suddenly.
His stop was anything but the measured, thoughtful pause of a horse working something out in his mind.
It was quick and complete, with all four feet planted and his whole body stiff with an objection that reached right to the bone.
His head lifted, his eyes widened and white-rimmed at the corners, and when the man pushed him forward with his heels, the horse responded by moving sideways instead of forward, swinging his quarters away from the tarp with a violent, twisting burst of energy that almost unseated his rider.
“Quit it!” The man’s voice was flat and harsh.
He slapped the chestnut on the neck, then spun him back toward the tarp and pushed him at it again.
The horse stopped once more, this time even more suddenly, planting so abruptly that the man lurched forward onto his neck and had to grab his mane to stay mounted.
By now, the volunteer had risen from her chair.
The man straightened himself, set his face, and tightened his reins until the chestnut’s head was pulled up and in. Then he pressed both heels with enough force to make her own hands tighten involuntarily on Sundancer’s reins.
The chestnut backed up in three rapid steps, shaking his head against the contact, his front feet lifting in short, frustrated hops.
“I said quit!” It was much louder this time.
Nobody said anything. The volunteer stood with her thermos forgotten at her feet, watching. Emma had turned her bay and was also watching, her expression still pleasant and completely unreadable, as if she hadn’t yet decided whether to say anything, while Richard’s face remained unchanged.
Jewel also remained quiet, watching the chestnut’s eye, with the white rim showing, the sweat already darkening the hair on his shoulders, and felt the helpless frustration of seeing an animal being asked the wrong questions in the wrong language and then being blamed for not understanding.
The man tried three more times. The chestnut refused three more times, each refusal more agitated than the last, until finally, in the tense, exhausted manner of a horse that has used up all its objections without resolving them, it lurched forward and scrambled across the tarp at a half-trot, its hooves scrabbling against the plastic, coming off on the other side with its head high and sides heaving.
The man said nothing. He rode past them without looking at anyone, his face set.
His date followed him on the bay, pulled a fresh can from her saddle bag, and proclaimed brightly, to no one in particular, “Well, that was fun.”
The volunteer gave them a half-smile, sat back down, and picked up her thermos.
They all moved on without a comment.
Shortly after the tarp station, the trail widened again. The sun had now risen high enough to start softening the morning, its light shifting from gold to white, and Jewel felt the warmth slowly rise through the saddle and the animal beneath her.
Behind her, the sounds of drinking had resumed, and then the man’s voice, which until now had been muttering quietly, carried clearly forward on the quiet trail. “I’m just saying he’d better shape up on the next one, or I’ll make him wish he had.”
Emma and Richard tilted their heads, but neither responded, while the girl laughed a little uncertainly, and then there was the sound of a can opening.
Jewel kept her eyes on the trail.
A short time later, from right behind her, his voice lifted again, aimed at her back without any particular ceremony. “Hey. Hold up. I need to make a pit stop.”
She brought Sundancer to a halt and looked back over her shoulder. He was already sliding down from the chestnut, landing heavily, and holding out the reins to the girl. “Here. Hold him while I pee.”