Firehorse (9781442403352)

FIREHORSE

Also by Diane Lee Wilson

Black Storm Comin'

Margaret K. McElderry Books

DIANE LEE WILSON

M
ARGARET
K.M
C
E
LDERRY
B
OOKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Diane Lee Wilson

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Book design by Michael McCartney
The text for this book is set in Old Times American.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilson, Diane L.
Firehorse / Diane Lee Wilson.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: Spirited fifteen-year-old horse lover Rachel Selby determines to become a veterinarian, despite the opposition of her rigid father, her proper mother, and the norms of Boston in 1872, while that city faces a serial arsonist and an epidemic spreading through its firehorse population.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-1551-5
ISBN-10:1-4169-1551-6 (hardcover)
eISBN-13: 978-1-4424-0335-2

[1. Veterinary medicine—Fiction. 2. Sex role—Fiction. 3. Horses-Fiction. 4. Arson—Fiction. 5, Family life-Massachusetts—Fiction, a Boston (Mass.)-History-186&-Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.W69059Fir 2006
[Fic]-dc22
2005030785

F
OR
B
AILEY, NOW AND ALWAYS

ONE

I'
VE ALWAYS BEEN RUNNING, IT SEEMS
. O
R GALLOPING
. Y
ES
, that's it: galloping! It's not very ladylike and it drives Mother to distraction—not to mention what it does to Father. But I believe it's a way of drinking every last drop out of the glass life offers you.

In Wesleydale, my hometown in Illinois, my horse Peaches and I tore around the countryside like a pair of wild-lings. Saturdays, especially, we'd ride out early, make our usual stops, and be waiting in the oak grove past the Murdock farm by mid-morning. When the nine thirty train whistled in the distance, the townspeople thought it was announcing its approach. But I knew otherwise. I knew it was calling
me
. And the challenge it presented kindled a fire in me as hot as the locomotive's furnace.

One Saturday morning—June 15, 1872, to be exact—was already hot and muggy, and my skirt was bunching around my knees. The sidesaddle would have kept it cleaner, but who can
run a race with one leg tied up high? Or while wearing a corset, for that matter? I'd left both behind.

Eagerly I gathered the reins up tight, my heart chattering with the
clickety-clack
of the onrushing train. I plaited my fingers through Peaches' mane, and she began dancing. Then, for mind-shatteringly long seconds, we waited. When the train was just around the bend, I eased Peaches onto the road and huddled down, watching over my shoulder. The instant the locomotive came into view, I thrust my arms forward and Peaches bolted.

Belly to the ground, she shot out of the oak grove and raced alongside the railroad tracks. The locomotive charged up behind us. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the engineer lean out the window. He tried to look grim, but I knew he was fighting a smile. Two short whistle blasts nearly split my ears and then the locomotive was right up next to us!

I crouched so close over Peaches' neck that her mane whipped my cheek. When I drummed my bare heels against her sides, she doubled her speed. The pebbled dirt road melted into a blur. My heart pounded through my skin.

Again the locomotive rumbled at our flanks. It pulled up beside us, then past us, and the engineer, tasting triumph, leaned out the window and waved. I grabbed a hank of mane with one hand and shook the reins at Peaches with the other. I hollered like a heathen. And, bless her heart, she pulled even. We were almost there! For breathless moments we ran side by side: the black machine and the red mare. The panting and the
chugging and the pounding swallowed up my world and spit me out anew, free as a winged bird.

The finish line was the brick tunnel near the Evans Dairy, where Jericho Road dipped, curved sharply, and passed beneath the tracks. Taking the turn at such speed was pure danger, but I wouldn't have had it any other way. Seeing it ahead, I clutched Peaches' mane with both hands, centered myself on her bare back, and put my trust in her. She pricked her ears and hunched lower, then suddenly scrambled out of rhythm. Bits of gravel flew into the air as she lost her footing, and for one sickeningly empty beat we were falling. The ground rushed up at us. But somehow she planted a foot and stopped it, heaving us forward in the same instant. And we managed to dash into the dark tunnel just as the locomotive thundered over it.

The whistle sounded once as we shot out the other side, a shrill good-bye. I thought I heard the engineer's laugh carried on its pitch. Before the entire train passed, I spun Peaches around and dived back into the tunnel. Reining her to a standstill, I savored the deliciously frightening roar directly over our heads. The vibrations shook our very bones. And then the train was gone and I was left smiling.

Satisfied, we headed for home. Mundane chores were waiting: The same old weeds, it seemed, were always sprouting up just to be dug up; the same old hens had to be nudged aside to gather the same old eggs. A chemise that never seemed to get properly mended required yet more stitches. The civilized world was impatient to fasten its buttons around us. But we still had a
little time. We weren't captured yet. Peaches nodded contentedly as she shuffled, trailing little clouds of dust with each hoof fall. I swung my legs freely and hummed a favorite hymn.

Galloping, I know for a fact, washes you cleaner than any scrubbing. It sends air rushing into your darkest corners and chases the cobwebs out. Every Saturday after our race I felt as clean as a swept porch. Light and happy. And hungry. As usual, I'd slipped out to the barn without any breakfast, and my stomach was noisily reminding me. So when I looked up to find us passing Mr. Jude's apple orchard, I have to confess I was sorely tempted. A new rail fence ran along the side of it, the splintery boards gleaming a pinkish yellow in the sunlight. It was four feet high if it was an inch, and put there, I was certain, simply to make those apples look all the sweeter. My mouth watered.

I knew that orchard. A few months before we'd wandered into it from another direction, and Mr. Jude had chased us out with his dogs. Then he'd gone straight down and told Father about it, adding that Peaches and I had trampled his newly tilled garden, which was a lie. He'd accused me of something else, too, something that I still didn't quite understand.

From my bedroom over the porch, I'd tried to hear what they were saying, but I couldn't make out the words. The front door slamming was plain enough, though. I'd peeked out my window to see Mr. Jude stalking down the drive. Inside, I heard Father's clipped and carefully measured voice, the one he used when explaining his wishes to little children or the elderly. Like
a muffled echo, it was followed by Mother's even footsteps skimming the stairs. Father was sending her.

It wasn't the first time she'd served as his messenger. While Father could talk to me rationally about the weather, or the condition of the surrounding corn crop, or sometimes—
sometimes—
about the columns he wrote for his newspaper, he couldn't and wouldn't discuss my many instances of “unbridled behavior,” as I once heard him describe it to Mother. I was
her
daughter then. That was
her
job. Funny thing was, I was nothing like my mother.

She came into my room and began darting about, tidying this and smoothing that. She moved as lightly and noiselessly as a butterfly. “Next Saturday morning,” she said, “let's invite Mary Grace over and we'll bake up some gingersnaps. Or we could look through flower catalogs; I've just received a new one.” I murmured something evasive and left my bed to straddle the chair in front of my dressing table. Fingering its chipped green paint, I waited for her to tell me what she'd really come to say.

She fluttered some more. Then, reaching for the brush, she gave out a little sigh and motioned me to turn around. With her first stroke, the brush caught in my windblown hair and our eyes caught in the mirror. One pair was the color of faded hyacinths, the other was as green as the fields and unnaturally defiant. Two more dissimilar faces you could not have found, yet somehow we'd been planted in the same family.

She petted my shoulder. I knew it was coming: her message. “Your Father thinks, Rachel dear,” she said, “that perhaps it's time you give up your horse?”