Emma and the Cutting Horse (4 page)

“Good girl!” he said firmly.

A few minutes later, he loosened the cinch
and slid the saddle off.

“My father always said to quit while you’re
ahead!” he told Emma, laughing. “I guess we’re ahead; she didn’t
get the saddle off or trample anybody.”

He brought the saddle and blanket out the
gate and then leaned on the fence beside Emma.

“Well, if she
was
saddled before
today, I sure wouldn’t want to have witnessed it,” he said.

“I think I’ll just wait ‘til tomorrow to get
on her,” Emma joked.

“Good idea! We don’t want to move too fast
with her training.” Then, more seriously he said, “I hope she
doesn’t turn out to be an outlaw. She’s rough around the edges, but
there’s something I really like about the way she moves.”

“She sure doesn’t like people much,” Emma
observed.

* * *

The following Saturday everyone helped put
calves through the chute so they could be vaccinated and have ear
tags put in their ears. Kyle worked the head gate, which imprisoned
the calf’s head, while Emma filled syringes with vaccine for her
mom to inject in each calf’s neck.

“Be careful with those needles,” her mom
admonished. “The calves need to be vaccinated for blackleg, but you
don’t!”

Her dad wrote numbers on the ear tags and
attached them with a clamp that made a small hole in the calf’s
ear. The calves were not fond of this procedure and bawled loudly
when the clamp was closed.

“Let’s take a break,” Emma’s mom said when
they finished the first group of calves. “I need to get another
bottle of vaccine from the refrigerator, and I’ll bring us some
sodas from the house.”

Kyle jumped up on the tailgate of the truck
next to Emma and smiled his lopsided smile at her.

“How’s the society horse?” he asked.

“She had a wall-eyed fit the other day when
Dad saddled her. She’s almost impossible to catch even in a small
pen, and she acts like she might turn around and kick your head off
if you get her in a corner. But he still says he likes her.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kyle said. “He told me she
moves like a gazelle.”

When they finished the vaccinations, Emma and
Kyle walked to Miss Dellfene’s pen. The mare dozed in a corner, a
wisp of hay hanging comically from her lips.

“Come here, Little Miss,” Emma said
softly.

The mare raised her head and looked at Emma,
who pulled an apple from the pocket of her sweatshirt and let
herself through the gate into the mare’s pen. She walked toward the
mare holding the apple in her outstretched palm.

“Come on, girl. You’ll like this,” Emma
crooned.

The mare raised her head higher, her little
ears pointed at Emma.

“Okay, this is as far as I go,” Emma said,
stopping a short distance from the mare. “If you want it, you’re
going to have to come and get it.”

Minutes passed and neither Emma nor the mare
moved, a silent contest of wills. At last the mare looked away,
blew softly through her nose and took a step toward Emma and then
another. Stretching her neck out as far as she could, she sniffed
the apple suspiciously. Again she looked away. Emma remained frozen
in place. At last the mare reached out again and took the apple.
Emma still didn’t move. When the mare backed up and began crunching
the apple, Emma turned and walked back out the gate.

“I think she’ll come around, but she sure
doesn’t act like she’s had a lot of good experiences with people,”
she told Kyle.

“And you’re about to change that, aren’t
you?” Kyle said.

Chapter
Four

Emma got off the school bus the following
Monday afternoon to discover the truck and trailer parked by the
horse pens with Scout already loaded and wearing her dad’s saddle,
his bridle hanging from the saddle horn. The day was overcast and
blustery and it was way too early for Emma’s dad to be home from
the sheriff’s office. As she hurried up the lane to the house, her
father came out the back door in his uniform carrying a small,
canvas bag.

“What’s going on?” Emma shouted as she broke
into a run to intercept him.

“A kid from the elementary school is
missing,” he said. “She was probably gone all night, but her
parents didn’t discover it until this morning. We’re gathering a
group to search the woods behind her house on horseback, just in
case she wandered in there and got lost. I hope that’s what
happened and not something worse, but it was pretty cold last night
and we need to find her.”

“Can I help?” Emma asked. “I could take Ditto
and keep you in sight all the time. I have a good pair of
eyes.”

Her father got that “don’t bother me with
this now” look on his face and opened his mouth to answer. But then
he paused and looked thoughtfully at Emma.

“You know, maybe you could help. Put on some
warm clothes and a jacket and fill one of your mother’s plastic
bottles with water. There’s no telling how long this will take.
I’ll load Ditto.”

Emma dashed for the house.

“And leave a note for your mother,” he called
after her.

Emma had seen her father go out on search and
rescue missions before. Sometimes, the outcome was heartbreaking.
He had finally located an old gentleman who had gone fishing on a
deserted part of the Leon River, but not soon enough to save him
from the heart attack that had overtaken him on the riverbank.
Usually, though, the searchers returned empty handed and the
missing person turned up somewhere else entirely. The thought of a
child alone in the woods all night gave Emma a slightly queasy
feeling that spurred her to move faster. She grabbed her old hooded
jacket and a pair of gloves, pulled on her boots, and scribbled a
note to her mother. As she filled the water bottle she heard the
truck start and pull up beside the house.

“We’ve only got a couple of hours of daylight
left,” her father said, turning on to the highway. Ditto stood
beside Scout, his mane still tangled and mud on his chest. He was
wearing Emma’s saddle.

“I have to be able to count on you to stay
close to me. Looking for one kid in five hundred acres of thick
trees and brush will be hard enough without having to search for
you, too.”

“Yes, sir,” Emma promised. “I won’t let you
out of my sight.”

Just before they got to the edge of town,
Emma’s dad turned off on a narrow blacktop road that wound through
thick stands of live oak and pecan trees.

“This is the Leon River bottom,” he
explained. “The river itself is a couple of miles to the west as
the crow flies. I can’t imagine a kid wandering in there, but her
parents can’t come up with any other explanation.”

Above the tops of the trees, Emma saw a
sprawling white limestone house on a hill. Her father turned into
the drive and parked near two other horse trailers with saddled
horses tied to them. Another deputy, a game warden in uniform, and
a woman Emma had never seen before were tightening cinches and
bridling the horses.

“Can you unload and cinch them up while I
find out what the plan is?” her father asked.

Emma untied Ditto and backed him out first,
then went back for Scout. Both horses nickered to the others
nearby. Before her father returned from the small crowd gathered
beside the house, she had put on the bridles and climbed aboard
Ditto, holding Scout’s reins. From the top of her horse, she could
see a blonde woman sobbing into her hands. A bulky man in a suit
stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders. The riders swung
onto their horses, and Emma noticed the sun peeking out from a
break in the clouds low above the trees. A walkie-talkie crackled
in her father’s hand, making Scout skitter sideways as though a big
bee was after him. Her dad hung it on the saddle horn, patting the
big spotted horse reassuringly.

“Her name is Darla,” her father said, sliding
his fingers under Scout’s cinch to check it and swinging aboard.
“She’s ten years old and in the fourth grade. Her parents aren’t
sure what she’s wearing, but they last saw her in jeans and a green
sweater. That will make it harder to spot her in the brush. We’ll
head south until we reach the river. As soon as we get in the
trees, we’ll spread out a little. And call her name. Loud.”

The other riders started for the edge of the
trees behind and on the north side of the house. A hundred yards
into the woods the dim light swallowed details of the scene before
them.

“Darla! Darla, where are you?” her father
shouted.

Emma heard shouts from the other riders too,
although as they rode deeper into the woods the sound became
muffled. She moved Ditto a few yards to the right of Scout and
searched the surrounding brush for any sign that someone had walked
through here. There were no trails, and soon the horses were
pushing their way through dried brittle weeds up to their
chests.

“Darla! Darla!” Emma called, but she heard
nothing but the sounds of the horses crackling through the dry
weeds. Huge live oaks loomed above them, and fallen limbs hid
beneath the weeds waiting to trip the horses. The sharp smell of
dried dove weed filled her nostrils. Emma gave Ditto his head so he
could pick his own way, but failed to notice a limber sapling until
Ditto brushed against it, bending it down. When it snapped back,
the little tree lashed across her face making her cheek burn.

For what must have been an hour, they inched
their way forward, calling Darla’s name every few minutes. The
horses seemed to know that they were supposed to stay together.
When they strayed too far apart, Ditto adjusted his course to keep
Scout in sight. Emma caught her father glancing back to check on
her, but although blood dripped from the scratch on her cheek and
dried on her neck, she was determined not to worry him.

In the tangled deadfall under a large tree, a
small animal scuttled through dry leaves, and Ditto tipped his head
toward the sound. Emma hoped the neighborhood rattlesnakes were
gone to their dens by now. Temperatures at night had dipped into
the 40s, so she thought they would be underground. Everything
blurred together in shades of brown and gray. Turning to check on
her father, Emma discovered that he was off his horse searching the
ground. The walkie-talkie on Scout’s saddle crackled with static,
but no voices brought good news. She reined Ditto toward her father
and climbed down.

“Did you find something?” she asked. Her
father brushed her scratched cheek with his fingertips
wordlessly.

“Something traveled through here recently,”
he said. “See how the weeds are bent over? But it could have been
anything. A deer. A coyote. The ground is too dry and there are too
many dead leaves to show footprints.”

“Darla!” he hollered. “Answer me. Help us
find you!”

Silence.

“Maybe she’s asleep,” Emma said. She couldn’t
bear to think about the possibility that the girl was dead.

“Her parents said she might have run away,”
her father said, shaking his head in frustration. “She had some
kind of ruckus with her father last night. I guess it’s possible
that she doesn’t want to be found, although by now she’s bound to
be cold and hungry.” He climbed back on Scout. “You okay to keep
going?” he asked.

Emma nodded and turned to Ditto, noticing
small drips of blood on his front legs from scratches he’d gotten
forcing his way through the tangled brush. Emma could see thorny
vines scattered among the tree trunks, but there was nothing to do
but keep looking. She climbed back on in the deepening gloom.

* * *

A half hour later she could hear the rushing
water of the river. It had been a dry summer and fall and the low
water flowed slowly over stones that usually hid beneath the muddy
surface. The bank dropped off sharply to the river below, and Emma
reined Ditto up. On a muddy rock bar below that had been exposed by
the receding water she saw something red. It was a sock. A sock
with a foot in it. And blending into the mud lay a mud-smeared
little girl.

Emma opened her mouth to shout for her
father, but nothing came out but a croak. Her voice was hoarse from
yelling Darla’s name.

“Dad,” she croaked. She’s over here!”

Scout was still thrashing through the tall
blood weeds above the river.

“Dad!” This time she could hear a slightly
hysterical tone in her own voice. Her father looked through the
brush and spotted her. Within seconds Scout was beside Ditto and
her father was out of the saddle and sliding down the bank.

“Darla,” he said, bending over the prone body
on the ground. “Are you all right?” Emma saw the girl draw up her
legs and heard small, muffled sobs as her father knelt on the muddy
rocks.

“Emma,” he called. “Tie the horses to a tree
and bring me the walkie-talkie and a bottle of water.”

Emma’s legs moved stiffly as she jumped down
and looped the horses’ reins around the branch of a small tree. She
unzipped her father’s canvas bag and grabbed the water, lifting the
walkie-talkie’s strap from the saddle horn.

“You guys stay here,” she said to the horses,
as though this was a scene from a Western movie, although she knew
it was not. Ducking under Ditto’s neck, she hurried to the edge of
the bank. It was steep, nearly straight down, and the top had been
undercut by flowing water at some earlier time. A twenty-foot drop
stood between Emma and the spot where her father crouched beside
Darla. She sat down on the bank and grabbed a handful of weeds with
her free hand, scooting over the edge. The weeds held for a moment
and then the roots ripped loose sending her skidding down the dirt
bank on her bottom in a shower of loose dirt and rocks.

Her boots were full of dirt when she finally
stopped sliding, but she still had the walkie-talkie and the water
bottle. Her father had removed his coat and wrapped Darla in it,
pulling her head onto his knees. Pitiful sobs and whimpers came
from the girl’s muddy face. Emma handed the walkie-talkie to her
father and knelt on the other side of the girl.