Starlight by Richard Wagamese

Author:Richard Wagamese
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2018-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

HE TAUGHT THEM HOW TO SIT A HORSE every day after school, walking them along the sides of the stock pen. The girl was excited, happy, and she tried to do what he said. Emmy was grim and determined. She let her head get in the way of the rhythm of the horse. She yawed in the saddle and gripped the pommel to keep herself straight. He needed to know they could sit a horse without difficulty. The girl got there fastest. Emmy fought gamely but her insistence on feeling safe and secure in the saddle kept her back. After a week he believed they were ready for the backcountry trails.

That Friday while they waited for Winnie to return from school he tacked up four horses. Then they loaded gear on a packhorse. It didn’t take long. When the girl jumped off the school bus and ran up the lane, they were ready. Once Emmy and Winnie had changed clothes, he tied rain slickers behind their saddles and led them out of the pen onto the hard bake of the pasture.

“Just sit the horse like I showed ya,” he told them. “These are good girls you’re on. They’ll want to go nose to tail behind me, but hold them back some. Don’t want them to get too close. Eugene’ll bring up the rear with the packhorse. Nice steady line. Have fun. Relax and look around you. We’re headed into some mighty pretty country.”

They walked acoss the pasture and he dismounted and opened the gate at the edge of a thin trail. When they’d passed through he closed it, remounted his horse, and guided them up the winding path that led up the ridge. He heard Emmy gasp. He glanced back behind him and caught her eye and nodded. She returned it stoicly. The trail had been worn in from years of use and wound between large ponderosa pines and polars. He had to yell over his shoulder for them to watch their legs as the horses edged around the trunks. It took them half an hour to crest the top. He walked his horse close to the edge and dismounted and then helped Emmy and Winnie down.

“You okay? Ya did well there.”

“Didn’t feel so well,” Emmy said. “It took a while to get used to the slope.”

“Goin’ down’s a little trickier but you’ll get a feel for it by the time we’re back,” Starlight said.

“I liked it,” Winnie chimed. “My horse just chugged right up that hill.”

He smiled at her. “You look like a natural up there.”

She smiled back at him and he reached out and rubbed the back of her shoulder. She shied off and he pulled his hand back. Roth caught his eye and squinted. The four of them stepped closer to the edge and looked out across the cuts of scarp and ridge that pushed upward into crest and peaks helmeted with snow. In that hard and fulgent light, the land appeared to divide itself into planes

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