Beware the Mare
Beware the Mare, Book One
THANKS TO JOSEY,
WHO GAVE ME THE IDEA
1
“HERE HE COMES!” Lily calls from the kitchen window. She sees the old rattly truck turn into the driveway.
“About time!” Gran sniffs. She strikes a match and lights the blue gas flame under the supper vegetables.
The truck’s sides wobble, and the big springs creak. Thud! Bang! Whinny!
“There’s a horse in the truck!” The door crashes. Lily is gone. Closing her lips firmly, Gran turns the vegetables off.
On the grassy bank in front of the old gray house, yellow daffodils bob. The air is filled with their perfume. It is very early spring. The trees are bare, but the fields are bright green, tempting the animals. Already the young steer has broken the fence three times.
Lily doesn’t notice the daffodils or the green fields. She can think only of the truck and what might be inside it.
The truck stops, and Gramp hops down from the high seat. He wears green work clothes and a green cloth hat. Clamped in his teeth is a stained corncob pipe. Beneath the sign that says his name—LINWOOD GRIFFIN, LIVESTOCK DEALER—he Stops to tap the pipe on his palm and put it in his shirt pocket. Gran has made him quit smoking, but Gramp still loves his pipe.
He looks up now and winks. “Lily, you’re watching me just as sharp as your granny does,” he says. “Don’t you two trust a fellow?”
Gran thinks Gramp might still smoke his pipe sometimes when he’s out alone in his truck. But Lily has seen that no ash came out when he tapped it. Gramp is only teasing. “I trust you,” she says.
“That’s good. Watch your toes, while I drop this tailgate.”
Mom comes from the garden, where she has been digging. Her blonde hair is tied back under a red bandanna. From the house Gran walks out and stands with her arms folded across her apron front.
“What you got, Pop?” asks Mom.
“I think I got a deal,” says Gramp, scratching his white bristles, “but I dunno.”
He releases the stiff bolts at the back of the truck and lowers the heavy tailgate to the ground. Lily stands right behind it, so she can see as soon as the truck is open.
The truck is a dark cave, big enough to hold two workhorses. The bay mare in the cross-ties looks very small. She twists, looking over her shoulder at the big opening. The rims of her eyes show white. She whinnies loudly.
“Stand back, girls,” says Gramp to all of them. He walks up beside the mare, speaking in a calm, clear voice.
“Easy there,” he says. “Move over.” He pushes with the flat of his hand, and the mare steps aside. Every move Gramp makes is slow and clear and easy to understand.
Now he unties her and leads her down the ramp. They both trot. She lands at the bottom and stops with her head high, looking toward the barn.
The other horses mill around, looking back and neighing: Stogie, the wild black Morgan; the Girls, who are workhorses; the three horses Gramp is going to sell; and the pony. The bay mare is bright-eyed and eager to go meet them, but Gramp turns her away.
“Barbie,” he says to Mom, “just lead her up and down the drive for me. I want to watch her move. Careful!” he warns as Mom takes the lead rope.
Gran looks at him sharply. “What’s wrong with the animal?”
“Nothing, far as I can see.” But if this is true, why does he sound puzzled, and why does he reach up under his green hat to scratch his head as he looks the mare over?
The mare is nervous. She holds her head high. Her little ears work back and forth, listening to the other horses and to the ping of the cooling truck hood. But she walks quietly beside Mom. She doesn’t crowd; she doesn’t shy; she doesn’t try to nip.
“You want to trot her, Barb?”
“Why not?” says Mom.
“Careful,” Gramp says again. What is he afraid of?
Mom runs down the driveway. The mare trots beside her. She is nervous, but she is trying very hard to be good.
“Hmph,” says Gramp. He sounds as if there is something he doesn’t understand.
“She felt good to you?” he asks Mom.
“She’s an angel!”
“Hmph!”
“She’s pretty,” says Lily, cautiously.
Usually when Gramp brings a horse home, he warns Lily, even before he lowers the tailgate: “Don’t fall in love with this one. He’s not a keeper.”
Today he hasn’t said that. This mare is just the right size for a girl outgrowing her first pony, the pony who was Mom’s pony and is old and tired. What is wrong then? Why isn’t the rope given to her? Why doesn’t he say, “Here, Lily, she’s yours?”
“She’s sound, of course?” Mom says. Mom is wondering, too.
“Sound as a dollar—sounder! Feel those legs.”
Mom runs her hand down all four legs.
“Perfect,” she says. She stands back and looks.
The mare is shaggy. Her winter hair has shed out on her back and shoulders, but not yet on her belly. Her mane is tangled. She hasn’t been brushed in a long time. But she looks strong and fine and lively.
Mom puts her arm around Lily’s shoulders. “All right, Pop, what’s wrong with her?”
“I … dunno,” Gramp says. He looks embarrassed. “I don’t like her name, that’s all.”
“You don’t like her name?”
“Nope.” He scratches under his green hat. “Ain’t much to go on, is it?”
“What is her name?”
“Beware. Her name is Beware.”
“Where did you buy this animal, Linwood?” Gran asks. Everyone else calls him Lin or Woodie. Only Gran calls him Linwood.
“I got her off Clyde Jones,” Gramp says, and Gran sniffs. Gramp and Clyde Jones are always trading horses, and one of them usually cheats.
“What did he say about her?”
Gramp glances at Lily. “I told him what I wanted her for. He said she’s been a kid’s horse. He’s had her a couple months, out in the barnyard with the rest of ’em. No sign of trouble.”
“Clyde wouldn’t cheat you about something important,” says Mom. She likes Clyde Jones.