The Girl from Felony Bay

by J. E. Thompson

  Next, with Bee again holding the light under her shirt, I picked out a bridle that used to belong to Daddy’s old Irish hunter. He had been a very large horse, and the old bridle had a number of holes that would allow me to let it out. I hoped it would work for Clem, the younger of the two carriage horses. I took the bridle and a long coil of rope, but I didn’t bother with a saddle because none of the ones in the tack room would come close to fitting Clem’s huge back. Finally I grabbed a folding step stool that hung from a peg on the wall and leaned it against the wall outside Clem’s stall.

  In the glow of the light under Bee’s shirt, we went into Timmy’s stall, where I saddled him, and then into Clem’s stall, where I got on the step stool and, after about ten minutes of monkeying around with the bridle, managed to get the bit into Clem’s mouth and the straps over his ears.

  As I expected, Clem tossed his head and objected to the bridle, not having had anything resembling a bit in his mouth for a long time. I patted his neck and whispered to calm him and finally gave him a second small bucket of oats to make him happy.

  Bee watched all the preparations with hardly a word, but I knew she had to be full of dread. “We’re going to ride horseback into Charleston?” she asked.

  “How else can we cover that much distance?”

  “But how can we get out of here without being seen? You said they were waiting for us.”

  “They are, but trust me. I have an idea.”

  I threw one end of the rope over Clem’s back, fed it twice around his huge neck, then took it down around his chest and back up. Then I cut the rope with my knife and tied the two ends with a square knot. Clem, who for many years had been harnessed to carriages every single day, stood patient and uncomplaining.

  “Okay,” I said to Bee when I finished. “Watch this and see if you can do it.”

  I brought the step stool around to Clem’s side and climbed on it again. Then I grabbed hold of the rope I had tied around his neck and chest, swung one leg up so it lay across his hindquarters, and let my other leg hang down along his side, showing Bee how it worked. I knew that if anyone looked at Clem from the other side, I would be almost totally invisible.

  “Do you think you could do this on Timmy for maybe thirty seconds?” I asked as I held myself in place along Clem’s side.

  Bee looked at what I was doing and shook her head. “I’ll fall off.”

  I thought for a second, then sat back up on Clem’s back. Then I lay down flat on his back, getting as low as I could, putting my arms around his neck to hold on. “Can you do this?”

  “I can do that,” she said.

  “Good, then this will be easy,” I said, hoping I was somewhere close to right.

  Bee shook her head. “Only one little problem. I don’t know how to ride. You were going to teach me when I finally got the bandages off my knee. Remember?”

  “Yeah,” I said, grimacing. “Well, I guess this is your first lesson.”

  Twenty-one

  We led Timmy and Clem out to the mounting block beside the paddock. I had Bee hold both horses while I went back into the barn to get Lem and a riding crop. This was where the next part of my plan came in. I walked Lem out along the dirt track that led to the barn until we came to the edge of the plantation drive.

  The drive was empty to the left as far as my eyes could see in the dark. However, when I looked right, I saw the dark outline of Uncle Charlie’s pickup truck maybe fifty yards away.

  I pointed Lem toward the pickup, stepped behind him, and gave his rump a hard whack with the riding crop. He lurched in surprise and began a slow canter toward Uncle Charlie’s truck. His canter quickly slowed to a trot, but by that time he was most of the way to the truck.

  A second later the truck’s interior lights went on as Ruth opened the driver’s door and got out. I raced back toward Bee, wanting to clap my hands for joy, because I knew Ruth had just ruined her night vision for at least the next couple minutes.

  I reached the mounting block, helped Bee into the saddle, and showed her how I wanted her to lie down as low as she could. Then I grabbed Timmy’s reins and went up on the mounting block. I hopped on Clem’s back, then quickly led Timmy out the dirt track toward the plantation drive.

  Even before we got there, Ruth was talking to herself. “How did you get out of the corral, you crazy horse?” she asked, as if Lem could actually explain. The makeshift harness worked perfectly as I slid down along Clem’s side in my trick riding position. Keeping a grip on Timmy’s reins and making sure that Clem blocked most of Ruth’s view of him, I nudged Clem across the plantation drive and into the soybean field on the other side. If Ruth saw anything, I was almost positive all she would see were two more riderless horses heading off to find fresh grass.

  We rode across the soybean field toward the woods on the far side. We were almost to the trees when Bee whispered, “Can I sit up now?”

  I glanced over at Timmy and saw Bee starting to slide off his back like a piece of melting cheese. Jumping off Clem, I shoved Bee back into the saddle, then grabbed both sets of reins and led both Clem and Timmy into the trees as fast as I could run.

  When we reached the cover of the longleaf pine grove, I stopped and looked back. It was too dark for me to pick the truck out of the blackness. This gave me a moment of relief; if I couldn’t see Ruth, she certainly couldn’t see us. After a second I turned and started to lead the horses through the trees toward the fence line.

  When we hit the fence, I turned left and walked along until I spotted what I was looking for, the back gate that led to our neighbor’s plantation. The retired judge who owned the property had already gone north for the summer, but I had ridden through his property enough that I knew it almost as well as Reward. Bubba Simmons was almost certainly parked out on the township road waiting to see if we would try to escape in that direction, but he would have to be parked where he could spot us if we came out the dirt track from Felony Bay or if we came out the plantation drive. If we rode to the far end of the judge’s plantation, we could come out on the township road at a point where he’d never be able to see us.

  I opened the gate and led Clem through while Bee followed on Timmy. After closing the gate, I brought Clem close to the fence, then climbed onto the top rail and used it to make an easy mount. As we rode across the pasture, a quick glance at my watch showed that it was three fifteen in the morning. The ride would take us a little more than two hours, by my best guess. With any luck we could be in downtown Charleston just a little after five, when there would be hardly any traffic. I was pretty sure we had successfully snuck out of Reward and was even feeling pretty good, thinking we might have the hardest part of the trip behind us.

  Bee was barely visible next to me in the darkness. “Having fun yet?”

  She gave me a wry smile. “Yeah, piece of cake. Now that we’re away from the snakes and gators.”

  We rode across another couple pastures, hugging the tree line for good measure in case someone was looking for us, went along one of the dirt tracks that crisscrossed the judge’s property, skirted the open lawns around his house, and finally came to the gate that led out to Felony Bay Road.

  I dismounted, opened the gate, and crept out. The night was very still, the breeze almost nonexistent, and I heard only the buzzing of night insects and the distant trilling of frogs. There was no sign of cars or lights. With a sigh of relief, I waved Bee out and onto the road, then closed the gate and once again used the fence to remount. We turned the horses in the direction of Charleston and went on without talking, the horses’ hooves almost silent in the dirt.

  After a ways we passed Mrs. Middleton’s dark trailer, and we both turned and gazed at it. I knew Bee was wishing just as much as I was that we could go knock on the door and ask for help. We also both knew that Bee had been right a little while earlier when she turned the idea down. Involving an old lady who hobbled around on a walker would be the worst thing we could do.

  After another minute the dirt
path turned onto the paved county road, and for the next forty-five minutes we rode steadily alongside it toward the end of Leadenwah Island. We stayed off the road wherever we could, keeping to yards and fields. A few dogs barked, and we saw several pairs of headlights, but they went past quickly, people speeding to early jobs.

  When we finally crossed the short two-lane bridge onto Johns Island, the homes became a little more suburban, but most still had good-size yards and plenty of open space. A few more vehicles came along, but we were able to get well away from the road before they reached us, and they never slowed.

  We were nearly halfway across Johns Island when I looked over my shoulder as I’d been doing every few seconds and noticed another pair of headlights about a half mile behind. Unlike the other vehicles we had seen, this one was coming much slower. It was still a long way off, but it seemed to brake frequently. It also appeared that the driver was shining a spotlight out the window.

  “Uh-oh,” I said.

  Bee looked back. “You think they figured out that we got off the plantation?”

  I nodded. “They might have gone looking for Timmy and Clem and figured it out when they couldn’t find them.”

  At that moment we were riding through a field, a little ways off the road, but since they were searching the sides with a spotlight, I knew that the horses would be easy to pick out. I felt trapped and fought a rising tide of panic as I looked around.

  “We have to get farther off the road,” I said.

  “Gee, you think?” Bee said as she kicked Timmy into a trot.

  Up ahead a narrow driveway seemed to go deeper than most of the others, curving sharply through the trees to some invisible house. Having no other choice, we turned onto it. I kicked at Clem’s flanks to urge him forward, but my legs were spread so wide on his huge back that I couldn’t manage more than a tap. He plodded at his carriage-horse pace. The clopping of his hooves on the gravel seemed maddeningly slow. I kept looking back, seeing the approaching high beams through the trees and the searchlight spearing into yards and fields on either side. The curve in the driveway was too far away. The lights kept getting closer. We weren’t going to make it.

  We reached the curve and got barely out of sight when the spotlight shot down the drive. Both horses stopped and sat perfectly still, and Bee and I didn’t dare to breathe. Out on the road the truck engine idled low and smooth, as if the driver had stopped and was thinking about turning down the drive for a better look. For several seconds I worried that the spotlight had caught a flicker of Clem’s tail.

  The idling continued. I was sure the driver sensed our closeness, but I also knew that turning into someone’s driveway at four fifteen in the morning was a good way to bring a call to the police. I crossed my fingers and toes and prayed that whoever was in the truck would be a little bit cautious.

  Another few seconds ticked by, and then the truck engine grew louder. I tensed, ready to jump off Clem’s back and run, but then through the trees I saw the headlights moving down the road, the spotlight continuing its search.

  “That was close,” Bee said.

  I blew out the breath I’d been holding. “You’re not kidding.”

  Once again we waited. The high-pitched peeping of frogs came from a nearby pond and, from farther off, the fitful barking of a dog. We didn’t dare move, because we didn’t know if the truck would turn around and come right back. I had to figure that whoever was looking for us would realize that we couldn’t have made it much farther than this. They were almost certain to turn around in the next couple minutes and head back toward Leadenwah.

  Five minutes passed, then seven, then ten, before we heard a vehicle approaching from the opposite direction. It sounded like the same truck engine, and just like before, it was going slow. To my relief the spotlight was more sporadic this time, the searching more rushed. The driver seemed to be in a hurry, perhaps eager to get back with his or her partners in crime and decide what to do next.

  “What do you think?” I asked as the truck’s lights faded.

  “I think maybe we have a little time before they come back,” she said.

  “I think you’re right.”

  “I’m scared, Abbey.”

  “I know,” I said. “I am, too. But we can do this. Come on.”

  We turned back to the road and once again headed toward Charleston. A glance at my watch showed that hiding from the truck had used up over fifteen valuable minutes. The time was getting short, every minute of delay meaning more traffic and more of a risk of getting caught.

  It took us forty-five minutes to cross the rest of Johns Island. As we approached the long bridge over the Stono River, I broke a green branch from a sapling and used it to whack Clem into a reluctant trot. My heart was in my mouth as we went up the long bridge and then down the other side. We would have been trapped if the pickup had caught us there, but thankfully we saw just a single car going in the opposite direction.

  The bridge brought us onto James Island, where we turned off the road and trotted across the fairways of a municipal golf course that took us far from the reach of any spotlight. When the golf course ended, we went through small subdivisions and stayed off the main roads.

  It was already a few minutes after five o’clock, and there was a glow in the eastern sky. Birds were singing in the trees. Lights were on in some of the houses we passed, and we even saw several joggers. They gaped at two girls riding horses in the pre-dawn. Most of the world was still far from awake, but morning was coming on way too fast. We had only a short distance to travel, but every hundred yards seemed to take forever on the old carriage horse. Light was starting to leak into the world. Dawn was going to make us sitting ducks for Uncle Charlie.

  We rode through more neighborhood streets, across the campus of a school, and behind a few commercial buildings, staying out of sight as much as possible on the way to our final bridge. Even so, the world around us continued to grow lighter as we prepared to make our final dash into the city.

  Finally we reached the end of James Island. The bridge was narrow and old-fashioned, with no bike lane, and we could hear it before we saw it. Early cars and trucks were whizzing across, their tires making an eerie whining on the bridge’s surface.

  “What’s that sound?” Bee asked.

  “There’s a section of metal grating on the bridge,” I told her.

  “Timmy doesn’t like it.”

  The pony was sidestepping and tossing his head. “He’ll be okay,” I said. “Just follow behind me.”

  Clem’s years of being a carriage horse should make him okay with the metal grate, I told myself. I just hoped I was right.

  “What if I get bucked off?” Bee asked.

  “You won’t,” I said, crossing my fingers and making a wish that she really wouldn’t.

  Both Clem and Timmy were jumpy as we started onto the bridge, and several drivers had to hit their brakes and swerve around us. I whacked Clem’s butt to urge him into a trot. We were almost home free. Two hundred yards ahead loomed the tall buildings of the Medical University Hospital, and just beyond were the old neighborhoods where we should be able to lose ourselves in the tangle of narrow streets.

  We were nearing the end of the bridge when it happened. A black pickup truck going in the opposite direction slammed on its brakes. The driver’s head was turned toward us, and I caught a quick glimpse of Uncle Charlie’s scowl of surprise and rage.

  My own eyes went wide with shock, and my heart seized in my chest. Uncle Charlie was holding up traffic. There was angry honking behind him, but he didn’t seem to care. He gave me a look that made my blood turn to ice; then he floored his accelerator and shot forward, speeding toward the opposite end of the bridge, where I knew he would find a place to turn and come roaring back in our direction.

  “Come on, Bee,” I said, smacking Clem’s flanks with my switch. It seemed to take forever, but finally he started to canter, and I held on to my slapdash rope harness for dear life.

  “W
here are we going?” Bee asked as we reached the end of the bridge.

  “Here,” I said, slowing Clem to a trot and turning into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. Around the back there was an exit onto a smaller road.

  Uncle Charlie was close behind us—I could feel it. I kept looking over my shoulder for the black pickup, but thankfully I didn’t see it. We turned right at our first intersection, then immediately left, zigzagging and winding through the twisting inner roads around the hospital.

  There were a lot more cars on the road now. A number of drivers stared at us wide-eyed. There was a big risk that one of them might use their cell phone to report us to the police. We couldn’t afford to let that happen, because the police would just turn us over to Uncle Charlie. We crossed another road and went into the parking lot of a small corner building. The lot went around the back and gave us a momentary place to hide while I tried to come up with an idea.

  Even if we were out of sight, Uncle Charlie was still searching. He would never quit. He would drive up and down all the roads around the Medical University and poke into all the open parking lots. No place around there was safe.

  It was almost full daylight, and the streetlights that had started lining the streets when we crossed off James Island were winking out. We had to get Clem and Timmy out of sight fast, but where were we ever going to hide a couple horses in downtown Charleston? Also, we needed to get ourselves to some place where there would be lots of people around, so even if Uncle Charlie found us, he wouldn’t be able to do anything bad.

  The problem was that it wasn’t even six o’clock. There were a few people on the street now, but hardly any places were open. I thought about Custis, but I didn’t know where he lived. I knew he wouldn’t be at work until probably eight thirty at the earliest, which meant we had a serious amount of time to kill. My brain was a muddle of panicked thoughts, but I tried to calm myself enough to think.