“Oh no!” I said. “Anything but that.”
Then Angus returned to the kitchen looking very pale. “There’s a dead horse on Highway Thirteen. It’s grey. It could be Pelican,” he said in a dull voice. Suddenly he seemed very small. “What are we going to do?” he asked. “Pelican isn’t even ours; he’s the Millers’.”
“What did the police say?” asked Dad.
“They want us to identify him,” replied Angus with a choke in his voice. “He’s on the verge.”
There was a short silence before Dad said, “I had better change,” and his voice sounded incredibly weary. He’s got to be in Washington at eleven, I thought. He won’t get any sleep.
Angus and I found shoes. We didn’t speak for suddenly there seemed nothing left to say.
Mum changed out of her evening dress into slacks and a polo-necked jumper. There were dark shadows under her eyes. Morning had come now, a bright summer morning. We all climbed into the car. The yard gate was open. Angus passed Dad a scrap of paper.
“That’s the location,” he said, “as given me by the state cops.” He sounded older, sadder and wiser.
I wondered what the Millers would say when they heard that Pelican was dead. They might not make a fuss, they might just say, ‘He was an old nag anyway. We never rode him till you came. He just stayed out with the work horses doing nothing,’ or they might start ranting and raving and calling us ’Blah blah English, who couldn’t keep gates shut’, for they were as unpredictable as English weather.
Dad drove cautiously and presently we saw a car and cops standing in the highway and drew up into the side. One of the cops called, “Are you the owners? He’s over there.”
Angus was crying now and so was I. Covering my face with my hands I started to get out of the car, thinking: Phantom looks grey in the moonlight, like a phantom, and I was remembering the first time I had seen him galloping free and wild across the valley, and how I had wanted him and sought him since that moment almost to the point of madness.
“I’ll go first,” said Dad looking at me. “You stay here. Tell me how I can identify him.”
“He had shoes. He was flea-bitten. He had a wall-eye,” Angus answered.
I felt as though I was suffocating, choking to death.
“I’ll come with you,” Mum said.
“We’re cowards,” Angus told me. “Why don’t we go?”
I couldn’t answer. Tears were running like a river down my face. Then Dad came back. The state cop called, “Good morning, sir.”
Dad started the engine. “It hadn’t any shoes,” he said. “It was a dark grey and quite young, I should think.”
“Poor thing,” I said, but I didn’t stop crying. Everything seemed sad now, life, the morning, the fact that we were going to England, the poor dead horse.
“We had better go home and sleep,” said Mum. “We’re all at breaking-point.”
It was six o’clock now; the valley was coming to life. We could hear a man singing on his way to work.
Dad parked the car outside the house. “Good grief, what a night!” he exclaimed.
We went into the house and Mum made toast and bacon and eggs. Then we returned to bed and slept the dreamless sleep of complete exhaustion. When I woke, Dad had already left for Washington and Mum was preparing lunch. There was the steady buzz of traffic on the highway and I could hear Angus talking on the telephone.
“The Millers haven’t seen them,” he said, coming into my room a moment later. “But they are coming straight over.”
“You might have waited before you telephoned,” I replied. “What’s the time?”
“One o’clock.”
My legs were stiff when I jumped out of bed and my head ached. I dressed and walked slowly downstairs.
“You look awful,” Mum greeted me. “Do sit down. There’s only a cold lunch. Angus has been on to the Millers.”
“Yes, I know.” I sat on a chair and stared out of the window at the stable where Phantom had been only yesterday, which now seemed a million years ago. If only we could put the clock back, I thought. If only we had gone out and helped the men with the truck we might have noticed the gate was open, but we were too feeble, too scared. How I hate myself.
“Come on, lunch,” Mum said. “Sit down. Where’s Angus?”
“I’ve just been on to the state cops again,” Angus said appearing. “They’ve got nothing to report. We’ve got two days, Jean, so do cheer up. We’ll find them yet.”
“With broken legs,” I answered, “on Highway Thirteen.”
“If they were still on the highway the police would know,” Mum replied. “Don’t be an idiot, Jean.”
“I wish we weren’t going home,” I answered. “There would be some hope then.”
“We’ll look for them this afternoon. We can walk,” my brother replied. And then we heard hoofs coming across the yard outside. We rushed to the window. Pete and Wendy had arrived, riding Frances and the bay mare.
“Hi,” shouted Wendy, “what’re you doing?” They dismounted as we joined them outside, their faces red from riding.
“Tough luck the horses going,” Pete said. Frances was rubbing her skewbald head on my shirt. I remembered the hours I had spent on her back in the past. We had shared a great deal together, good and bad.
“We reckoned you could do with these,” Pete told us, tall and sun-tanned, his shoulders slouched. “We’ve gotta go to Washington, but we’ll be back later.”
“Here’s Mum,” cried Wendy. “Quick! Take the horses. We gotta go real fast. She didn’t want us to come in the first place.”
They were running across the yard now. We held their horses, shouting. “Thank you,” wondering how we could ever repay them for their generosity.
“Some friends,” muttered Angus.
“They could have been furious with us for losing Pelican,” I answered.
They were waving out of the station wagon’s windows, yelling, “Be seeing you.” And I wondered where we would find such friends again.
Mrs Miller’s face was set and angry. “You do that again,” she shouted. “You darned rebels …” Angus was patting the bay mare, who had never had a name. She was wiry and quick, a real cow pony people said, while Frances was a proper apache with a long head and a canter which seemed to last for ever.
“We may as well start looking straightaway,” Angus said. “Here, hold the bay mare while I get the head collars.”
The day was hot now. The ponies hung their heads. There will be a breeze in the mountains, I thought, there always is.
“Shall we separate?” asked Angus, swinging into his saddle. “They can’t have got to the mountains without jumping half a dozen fences, which Pelican could never manage.”
“I’ll go to the right then,” I answered, turning Frances with one hand. “Be seeing you.”
Our horses parted without argument. The sun was in my eyes. “See you in about an hour,” shouted Angus.
I saw Mum waving. She shouted something which I didn’t hear. There were white shacks in the distance along the highway, and a line of electric cables and a plane crossing the blue sky as lonely as a solitary bird. And gradually, as I rode, I could feel hope coming back. Two days seemed a long time when I divided it into hours. Anything could happen in that time. I started to sing as I cantered, my eyes searching for horses, my mind planning the future.
5
I kept within sight of the highway and to the right of the mountains. Angus was riding towards the town called Middlesburg. The plane had disappeared across the horizon. I saw some wild turkeys, longer- legged than the English turkeys. A man seated on a tractor was crossing a distant field. Cars passed incessantly along the highway, gleaming in the sunshine. There were boulders scattered on the ground. The night seemed to have belonged to another time and place. My feeling of panic had gone. I felt one with Frances, welded to her in the way a horseman feels who has spent half his life on a horse. I belonged to the countryside, too, as the ca
rs never could.
After ten minutes or more I drew rein and scanned the horizon. Frances dropped her head, stretching her neck and blowing. I couldn’t see my brother any more. I pushed Frances into a canter again. The sun was full in my eyes now and, as the day grew hotter, I started to long for rain, for the soft English drizzle which falls so often at home. And then Frances stopped. She raised her head and neighed and from somewhere quite near an answering neigh came back. I wanted to cheer and I wished that Angus was with me as I pushed Frances forward, leaving the reins loose on her neck, already seeing myself leading Phantom home, while Pelican followed, across the sun-drenched valley to Mountain Farm.
I unwound the head collar from round my neck while Frances trotted joyfully towards some boulders where I found Phantom. He was half on the ground, his coat dark with sweat, his forelegs caught to the elbow in a tangle of barbed wire. Beside him ran a stone wall which he must have jumped without seeing the pile of rusting wire on the landing side. Tetanus! I thought, as I leaped on to the ground and he raised his head and nickered as though he had known all along that I would come in the end. I knelt beside him, talking. “It’s all right,” I said, stroking his wet neck. “I’ll get you free. Stay still, don’t worry.”
All the time I was forcing back the tears which were threatening to choke me. He rubbed his head on my shoulder and tried to stand; and I saw the blood on his legs and the flies feeding on it as he sank back again on to the dusty, churned up earth. I pulled at the wire. In places it was buried in weeds and part of it was stuck under one of his shoes. I stood up and saw that Pelican was grazing peacefully on the other side of the wall and that less than half a mile away the highway wound its way to Washington. I shall need wire cutters, I thought, and the vet and an anti-tetanus injection, and even that may be too late.
Suddenly I felt resolute and determined. “I’ll be back,” I said, standing up. “Stay still. I’m going to get you free.” Then I was vaulting on to Frances, galloping as though my life depended on it towards the Millers’ house in the distance. Time passed slowly. It was ages before the house grew any nearer, and now the terrors of the night and early morning had returned. I saw Phantom dying of tetanus and the vet saying, ‘There’s no hope. I’ll get the humane killer from my automobile,’ and myself leaving for home without him.
There was no one in the Millers’ yard when I reached it. I rushed to the house and Annie, the cook, found me wire cutters. “You look real terrible!” she exclaimed. “What has happened?”
“I haven’t got time to explain, but Phantom’s hurt,” I replied, and she understood.
“The horse that lived in the mountains. Sure, I know him,” she said.
I had left Frances tied to the yard gate. She was still blowing as I vaulted on to her back again. She did not want to go now, and though I could understand her feelings I hit her with the ends of the reins and somehow we crossed the valley again, jumping a stream, avoiding the boulders by a miracle. Phantom seemed hardly to have moved but his legs had fresh blood on them. I worked frantically with the wire cutters and, because I hurried, I kept cutting unnecessary strands. Once Phantom tried to get up, pulling the strands tighter against his legs so that the barbs sank deeper into his flesh. I could have cried then. The flies were besieging us both now and I had to stop to wipe them off my face, wishing that Angus would appear and hold the wire for me while I cut it. The sun had moved so I knew that far more than an hour had passed since we parted, but at last the wire was cut away and I cried, “Up, Phantom, come on, up.”
He tried three times before at last he was standing on all four legs, blowing through his nostrils as though he had been galloping. The wire had left deep cuts and punctures, a perfect breeding-ground for tetanus, and small pieces were still embedded in his flesh. He did not want to move. I shouted at him and hit him with the headcollar rope and then he lurched forward like an old person stiff in the joints.
“We’re going home,” I said. “Come on.”
I decided to leave Pelican as he looked peaceful enough grazing. I walked slowly, dragging Phantom and Frances after me. He’ll never make the plane, I thought. They won’t accept him. He was limping on his near fore, and his off fore seemed little better. His sides were tucked up and his mane matted with sweat, earth and blood. Then he raised his head and stopped and I saw that Angus was galloping towards us waving and shouting, “Fantastic! Where’s Pelican?”
I stopped and waited for him. The blood was drying on Phantom’s legs, leaving a crust on the cuts.
Angus halted the bay mare. “What’s the matter?” he shouted. “What’s happened to Phantom?”
The bay mare was dripping sweat on to the dry earth and I thought how hard we had used the Millers’ horses and felt guilty.
“He was caught up in wire,” I yelled. “His legs are ruined. He’ll never make a show horse now, and he’ll probably get tetanus because it must be more than ten hours since he fell into the wire.”
Angus had dismounted. He looked at Phantom and sighed. “Of all the rotten luck!”
“I must have broken a mirror,” I told him, “I’ve had nothing but bad luck for days now. Pelican is just over there. We’ll have to lead him back along the highway later. There’s no other way out of the field.”
It was almost as though someone else was speaking, someone more sensible and practical than myself.
“I’ll go on ahead and telephone the vet,” Angus said, remounting the bay mare. “Phantom looks awful and so do you.”
I wanted to say, “Thanks a million,” but the words stuck in my throat. I watched Angus gallop away leaving a cloud of dust behind him and I started to hate the valley, the blistering heat, the soulless procession of cars roaring along the highway. Suddenly there seemed no point in anything any more. I started to wish that I had never set eyes on Phantom, had never caught him. Then I looked at him and saw how large his eye was, how wide his cheek. I saw his matted mane, his tail which he still carried as though on a parade ground, his neat hoofs, covered with blood and dust and I cried, “I’m going to get you home to England somehow. I swear I am.”
Presently I could see Angus coming back, waving his arms and shouting, “The vet’s coming right away. I told him about the possibility of tetanus. He says there’s no time to lose. Can’t you hurry?”
“I’m trying to,” I replied, “but he can’t walk any faster. Can’t you see he’s lame?”
Angus dismounted from the bay mare. “Mum says if he’s really lame you’ll have to leave him behind,” he told me. “There’s only two more days.”
“As if I didn’t know,” I answered. I could see Mountain Farm, looking tiny in the distance with Mum standing at the yard gate waiting for us. I was very hungry now and my toes were raw again, so I took my boots off and walked the rest of the way barefoot, though Angus did his best to persuade me to ride.
The vet arrived before we did, parking his car in front of the stables. He was called Dr Beecher, because vets in America had ‘Doctor’ in front of their names. He was small with dark hair and he had visited us once before when I had brought Phantom home sick from the mountains. It had been winter then.
Dr Beecher watched us limping home. “So it’s that darned horse again,” he said. “He looks a heck of a lot better than he did last year.”
Angus was leading Frances now. “Why don’t you ride?” he asked. “You look idiotic walking without shoes.”
I shook my head. I could not explain how I felt. I think I wanted to share some of Phantom’s pain.
Mum looked at my bare feet and said, “Oh, Jean …”
Dr Beecher bent down to look at Phantom’s forelegs. He made a tut-tutting noise before he said, “Put him in the barn. I’ll get my case.”
The sun was moving towards the west and the air was full of midges. The stable needed mucking out. Dad was not home yet. I wondered what he would say when he saw Phantom.
“Hold fast, little horse,” said Dr Beecher, returning with a syringe
, wiping a patch on Phantom’s neck with a piece of cotton wool. I spoke to Phantom as the needle went into his neck and he hardly moved, only braced himself and then relaxed as the needle came out again. “Now another one; penicillin this time,” Dr Beecher said, “and I’ll dress his legs next. He’s made a real picnic of them.”
Angus muttered, “Some picnic.” Mum offered to fetch some water. I didn’t feel like talking any more. I kept seeing a plane leaving without Phantom, and wondering who would be looking after him then, dressing his legs, feeding him … what would happen to him when I had to leave in two days’ time?
Mum was talking now. Dr Beecher was winding a dressing round one of Phantom’s legs. Angus had turned Frances and the bay mare out into the field near the highway.
“Will he be all right to fly in two days’ time?” Mum asked. “We’ve booked a flight for him from New York. We’re going home.”
Dr Beecher didn’t say anything for what seemed like minutes, but which can’t have been more than ten seconds, then he said, “He’s going to be real stiff tomorrow, and there’s still a chance of tetanus. His chances aren’t looking good,” he replied. “Can’t it be postponed?”
Mum started to explain and her voice seemed to go on and on for ever. Angus returned and I gave him the thumbs-down sign. Phantom’s legs were bandaged now, so I fetched him a bucket of water and then a feed.
Dr Beecher got into his car. “I’ll stop by tomorrow,” he said. “But call me up if he gets any fresh symptoms.” His tyres left marks in the dust of the drive. The frogs were croaking again and from somewhere came the constant lowing of a cow, sounding as though she had lost her calf.
“I don’t know what we are going to do. You must be starved,” Mum said. “And Dad will be home in a minute and I don’t know what he’ll say.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” I replied, more from habit than anything else; because I knew whoever was to blame, it didn’t alter anything.
Phantom Horse 2: Phantom Horse Comes Home Page 4