by Jessie Haas
Beware puts her ears back and shakes her head. A big deerfly, like a yellow-brown arrowhead, is biting her neck. Lily squashes it. Blood stains her fingers. Then something like a hot needle stabs into the back of her arm.
“Ow!” She slaps at it, but that fly gets away. “I hope you bit that stupid cow, too!” Lily says.
Here in the swamp some of the hot hurricane air still lingers. The sun draws up dampness from the ground. The air is hazy, and mosquitoes swirl and whine. They land on Beware, but when they smell fly spray, they rise and land on Lily instead. Lily holds the reins in one hand and slaps with the other. The morning seems long, and the swamp seems big and empty.
An airplane makes a white trail overhead. After a while Lily can hear the sound it makes. Far away a truck growls along the road, and a horn beeps. Somewhere between the road and the swamp, or on the dark pine-covered hill, the horses and the cow are running free. But it doesn’t seem possible they can be near. Nothing is near, except woodpeckers, and mosquitoes, and frogs.…
Beware stops.
“What?” Lily looks at the ground. It seems almost dry here, but horses can sense things people can’t. Maybe beneath the dry-looking surface the mud is deep, like quicksand.
But the cow’s tracks go straight across it, with the calf’s tracks scampering alongside. Lily follows with her eyes. The tracks curve away, into a brushy thicket.
That’s where Beware is looking, too. She bobs her head, the way horses do when they can’t quite tell what they’re seeing.
In the thicket something moves.
Stogie! Lily jerks the reins without meaning to. She clutches the whip. She can picture Stogie hiding there, his ears flat back, his strong yellow teeth ready to bite. His long mane hangs like ropes. His ragged hooves paw the ground.
But Beware steps lightly forward with her neck arched. That’s the way she steps when she sees a deer and wants to follow it. Lily’s heart beats hard. She should get off—
And then she is close enough to see, and it is the cow, standing in a cloud of mosquitoes with the calf at her feet.
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All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Jessie Haas
Cover design by Jessie Hayes
ISBN: 978-1-4976-6265-0
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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