Firehorse (9781442403352) (32 page)

“This way,” someone called. Risking a glance over my shoulder, I saw one of the stableboys running back toward the livery. He was waving his arms. “Take them to the depot. Someone there will help you.” He pointed, too, then dived into the smoky cavern.

The three crazed horses began tugging us after him, but the Girl, more sensible finally than them, braced her legs. I added my own weight, and though it seemed my arms were being yanked from their sockets and new burns were being branded into my palms, I wrestled them to a stop. Thumping the Girl's shoulder with my heel, I turned her around. With open space ahead, she struck up a powerful trot. The anxious horses, satisfied to be moving anywhere, followed.

Somewhere in the city a thunderous boom rattled the ground. It sounded like battle. More than anything I wanted to gallop—I needed to gallop—and I leaned over the Girl's neck. She hardly needed the urging. Her withers rose and she powered into a rolling gallop that soon ate up the ground.

The four horses and I moved as one. Shoulders banged my knees. Heat poured from body into body. My breathing joined theirs and I allowed instinct to overtake me. I became a galloping horse too, charging recklessly into the night, fleeing death.

Several blocks ahead a man waved for attention with one arm and pointed down another street with the other. We rounded his corner like racehorses. I saw the finish line straight ahead: the gate to the freight depot yard. A few horses already milled behind it, and as we thundered closer, a boy shooed them
away and swung the gate open. We rushed through it like an undammed river. The Girl slid to a halt and I dropped the ropes, allowing the horses to join their frightened stablemates. With the grace of a dancer and no signal from me, the Girl wheeled about and bolted back through the gate and toward the burning livery. Her gallop, I noticed, was amazingly smooth and, now that she had her work, amazingly calm.

This time I was handed the ropes to four horses. A mounted stableboy joined me, tugging along a small herd of his own. The Girl insisted on leading the way. She pinned her ears and shook her head, and not one of the galloping horses dared to nose past her. A shrieking wind hurled burning cinders at our heels. It rained ash on our shoulders and flanks. The night sky was a sheet of luminous orange and it seemed the entire world was aflame.

When we'd safely delivered those horses to the depot yard, the Girl wheeled around again and went racing straight back through the smoke and popping sparks and gagging fumes. We were handed more ropes, and more horses banged against my knees and ripped fresh sores into my oozing palms. I swallowed their sweat and saw my own panicked reflection in their panicked eyes, and we galloped flat out like the devil himself was chasing us.

Again and again we sped toward the livery, grabbed the ropes to frantic horses, and sped away from it. With each trip I hoped to find Balder at the end of a lead rope, but the horses I rescued were all strangers to me. The Girl never slowed until a
dozen or so trips later, when we found ourselves dragging some of the sick horses to safety. The distemper had dulled them beyond caring. I think they would have stood in the livery doorway and been burned to a crisp if I hadn't jerked on their ropes and yelled and made them stumble all the way to the depot yard.

By that time sweat drenched my body and stung my eyes. Some eighty or a hundred horses wheeled and whinnied in the yard, a far cry from Mr. McLaughlin's original three hundred, but all that had survived the plague of distemper, I supposed. Or the fire. As I released the sick horses I was so relieved to see Balder's gentlemanly bay face among the other survivors. Someone else must have delivered him to safety. He was a welcome sight in an otherwise ghastly night.

When we returned to the livery, no more horses awaited us. The back of the building had completely collapsed, and splintered timbers jutted upward like broken bones. The fire's roar was deafening, and I couldn't hear any whinnies at all. I hoped all the horses had been freed. Some firemen had finally arrived, pulling an antiquated hand pump. They were spraying a weak stream of water on the front of the livery. It was just enough to hold the flames at bay while the more expensive carriages, piled high with harnesses, were wheeled out. I was thankful for the break, because I was trembling with exhaustion. Even the Girl seemed willing to stand and blow. Under my legs her sides expanded and compressed like a bellows.

The wind had shifted, pushing the massive fire away from us. At least the horses in the depot yard would be safe. But as I
scanned the city skyline, the extent of the unfolding catastrophe struck me dumb. In all directions flames licked the heavens. They ran unchecked from one building to another. Beneath the din, steam whistles screeched their puny protest. I imagined other firemen aiming their hoses at the inferno, and I hoped James was safe. Somewhere deeper in the business district, two cannonlike booms shot a mass of fresh sparks into the night. A rumble and crash shook the ground. It sounded as if the firemen had resorted to dynamiting buildings, to snatching fuel from the jaws of the flames in a desperate attempt to starve it into submission. Two more booms produced a prolonged earth-shaking. I worried that the fire-soaked walls of the livery would collapse with the next explosion. Where was Mr. Stead?

Wiping the smoke from my stinging eyes, I watched the men dragging out the carriages and searched each face. From inside the livery someone shouted, and I thought it might be him, but before I could be sure, a chestnut colt, no more than a yearling, burst through the doorway with an extralong lead rope trailing between his legs. He seemed to be the fire's own wild creation as he bolted straight out of the flames. Dazedly he trotted left and right, whinnying for help. Home was inside the livery, and he stretched his legs and ran for it. Mr. Stead spread his arms to block entry. The leggy creature spun away and wildly went bounding over and through the maze of carriages and heaps of harnesses. He leaped over a wheelbarrow and cleared the two shafts of a buggy and, finding himself boxed between carts, twisted and tried to scramble over the enmeshed
wheels. No man-made barrier was going to hold
him
. In midair, his head snapped around like a weathervane in a summer storm, and he was yanked to the ground with a wicked thud. Instinct made him fight. With fierce, high-pitched whinnies he kicked blindly at his attacker. Gaining his feet only to find that the rope had his head snared tight, he flailed all the more. I was off the Girl and running.

He was a cyclone, a little red cyclone with tiny hooves and stumpy tail flinging every which way, and I loved him instantly. Looking for an opening, I found my opportunity and jumped in at his shoulder. I grabbed hold of his halter with one hand and his tail with the other and pulled him in close, buffering his panic with my body.

Mr. Stead hurried through the mess to untangle the rope that had the colt caught. “Good girl,” he said to me. “Hold him there now. I've almost got it.”

I took the music of his words and hummed it to the squirming colt. I rocked against him and hushed his whinnies and drew his head into my chest. “Easy there, little one. Easy now.”

The damaged livery gave out an eerie groan, like that of a dying animal. We all turned our heads to watch the far wall waggle dizzily and cave inward in slow motion. That brought the rest of the roof with it, and bricks and rafters and moldings piled one on top of the other in a thunderous crash. A rush of heat and a shower of snapping sparks shot over us, frightening the colt into another panicked scramble. I cradled him tighter.

Ducking his head, Mr. McLaughlin came running through
the sparks with a pair of thrashing cats in his arms. “We got everyone, I think.” He opened his arms and the two felines dashed beneath the shelter of a carriage. They swished their puffed tails angrily and surveyed the scene with glinting green eyes.

“There!” Mr. Stead rose, triumphantly displaying the disentangled end of the rope. “Now, let's have a look at this little rapscallion. Are you all right?”

I nodded. I could barely take a breath with trying to hold the fractious colt to my chest, but I wasn't letting go. There was something special about him, something that had drawn me like a magnet.

Then I noticed the dangling leg. The colt was so restless he pranced airily in place, but his off foreleg didn't move. As Mr. Stead began his examination Mr. McLaughlin bent down beside him. “Is it broke?”

“Most likely,” came the awful answer, and then I couldn't get a breath at all. Mr. Stead began moving his hand down the leg. At each probing pause I mentally named the unseen bone: radius, carpus, metacarpus. “It's so hard to tell in these young horses.”

“Aw, that's a right shame.” The liveryman patted his bulging pockets and felt about his coat and finally pulled out a palm-size pistol. He checked the barrel, nodded, and stood. Reaching for the colt's halter, he said, “Miss, you'd better step out of the way. Just close your eyes now and cover your ears and let the veterinary and myself handle this.”

I hunched my shoulder to block his reach. “You're
not
going to shoot him.”

“It's for the best, Rachel.” This was a nightmare. Unbelievably, Mr. Stead was trying to ease the halter from my grip. “You can't save them all. Besides, this little fellow's in a lot of pain. That's why he's struggling so hard, but soon he won't feel a thing.”

They were blind, both of them. Couldn't they see how special this horse was? Couldn't they see that his heart more than compensated for his injured leg?

Quite as if he understood the men's words, the colt gave up his fight at once and sank his damp, trembling body against me. His nostrils fluttered. Smallishly built, he had the same narrow face and almond-shaped eyes as Peaches. He even had her copper-colored coat. No wonder he'd kindled me.

While Mr. Stead had been examining the colt, some of the stableboys had gathered. They ringed us like a hungry pack, exchanging cold glances, shaking a head here, scoffing there. Deciding our fate. Well, I'd fight them all if I had to. Hugging the colt to me, I glared at each of the men in turn. “You aren't going to shoot him,” I said. And to Mr. Stead I pleaded, “You aren't even sure that his leg's broken. And if it is, we could put him in a sling until the bone mends.”

“That's impossible,” Mr. McLaughlin interrupted. “Where would I hang a sling when I don't even have a barn?” He waved his pistol at the livery's smoldering remains. “Now step out of the way and let us men do our job.”

Mr. Stead hesitated. A flicker, just a flicker, of agreement showed on his face. But it vanished. “Do you know the commitment required in keeping a horse in a sling,” he questioned, “especially one as young and wild as this? Do you know how much time and labor are involved?”

“Two to three hours to construct the framework,” I recited promptly from Chapter Eleven, giving it all I had. “If it's a simple fracture, a month or so in the sling, which can be cut from either bagging or sailcloth; if it's a compound fracture, as many as three months. Cotton padding and starched bandages to wrap the limb; the affected area to be made wet with warm saltwater at least five times daily.” That last sentence came rushing out on one triumphant breath.

He only smiled sadly. “You're well up on your reading, I see, but it's just not—”

“Here now,” Mr. McLaughlin said, clamping hold of my wrist and giving it a jerk, “no milksoppy girl gets to decide the fate of
my
horse.”

“Ow!”

Mr. Stead lunged. “Henry!”

“Stop that at once!” A booming voice that I recognized too well froze everyone in place. Father, of all people, strode onto the scene like the exasperated director of a stage play. “What's going on here?”

The liveryman released his grip. I tried to soothe the startled colt by pulling him close to me again, though what comfort he'd find next to my pounding heart I didn't know.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he said, “but we've got a horse with a broken leg here and we're trying to put him out of his misery, but this girl—”

“Mr. Stead?” Father interrupted. “What do you have to say about this?”

“The colt's badly injured, that's a fact-”

“But he's not beyond saving,” I argued. Father's scowl only grazed me.

“She is right,” Mr. Stead admitted.

“Then why aren't you saving it? Aren't you a veterinary?”

That led into a contentious debate of capabilities and responsibilities and probabilities that flared into a shouting match. I sank my chin onto the colt's thick, short mane, murmuring a prayer, and when I opened my eyes, I noticed the Girl standing a little apart from us. Her ears pricked toward the flames that marched away to devour other buildings. She looked more contented than I'd ever seen her, and I realized that this was where she belonged: in the thick of disaster, fighting to save lives.

In the shadows behind her, something else caught my eye: a familiar flash of white about the size and shape of a dalmatian. And was that a fireman scurrying along beside the dog? A fire chief, perhaps? No, it couldn't be. Fatigue was playing tricks on me. It was probably just another looter. The city's disaster seemed to have attracted its share of vultures.

The lady journalist—I still didn't know her name—left her shelter to join the circle of men. Boldly she stood right beside
Father, studiously flipping through her notebook. That irritated him into bellowing, “What are you doing out here at this time of night?”

“I could ask the same of you,” she replied with confident raciness. “What have
you
been doing these past few hours?”

In all my days, I'd never seen him look so flustered. “Are you daring to accuse me of something?” he challenged.

“Are you guilty of something?”

“Of course not!”

“What about your friend?” “What friend?”