Early Warning

Debbie stood Rufus up next to the fence and clambered on bareback. He was slick beneath her, so she entwined the fingers of one hand in his mane and gripped the lead rope with the other. Fiona eased onto Prince, and sat there, limber and relaxed, until Debbie felt secure; then Fiona clapped her legs against Prince’s sides and headed diagonally up the hill in a big walk. Rufus jogged a little to keep up. Prince was a beautiful horse, a Thoroughbred who had raced at Pimlico. He was a chestnut (Debbie mouthed the word “chestnut”) with a blaze and two white feet.

As far as Debbie could tell, Fiona could do anything on a horse. It was not only jumping and fox hunting — in Virginia, lots of people did that. Fiona loved riding bareback, and she could do some things that you only saw in movies, like slide to one side and show her face under Prince’s neck at a canter, and then pull herself upright again. She could also ride backward, jump off at a trot and a canter, and get Prince to turn, stop, and back up without any bridle or halter at all, just voice commands and the weight of her body.

Debbie wasn’t sure what Fiona saw in her — they weren’t special friends at school. Debbie was in a group of seventh-graders who took Latin instead of French and thought serving on the Student Council was important. Most of them didn’t know who Fiona was, but in the fall, at the bus stand, Fiona had overheard Debbie say to one girl that she was going to have a set of riding lessons, and then she had started talking to her that afternoon. The next day, she had invited Debbie to meet Rufus and Prince, which was, of course, fine with Mom, who thought that Debbie did not need to copy her homework over twice just to make sure every word was perfect.

The horses ambled along nicely, until the dip was below them and the hillside stretched damp and green before them. All along the fence to their left, the dogwoods were blooming against the darker background of the not-yet-leafy trees, and there were a few bluebells. In the fall, they had picked blackberries at the top of the hill, right from the backs of their horses, while the horses ate grass. Now they walked along the fence about halfway up the slope; then Fiona said, “Stop a minute and watch this.” Debbie pulled on Rufus’s lead rope, and Rufus halted. Fiona trotted on up the hillside for another ten or fifteen feet and turned Prince, still trotting; as he trotted down the slope, she squatted on his bare back, and then stood up. After a few strides, she dropped the lead rope and jumped into the air, bending her knees. He trotted out from under her. She landed on her feet. Debbie clapped, and Fiona gave a little bow. She pulled a piece of carrot out of her pocket and called, “Prince! Come in!” Prince looped a lazy circle and took some bites of grass, but after thinking about it for a moment, he came up the hill and received his carrot. Rufus wanted a piece, too. When Fiona had given him a tiny bit, she said, “I started doing that over the weekend. I want to try it at a canter.”

Debbie had learned to sit calmly on Rufus and say, no matter what Fiona proposed, “That would be fun.” What Fiona saw in her was a mystery, unless it was that whatever she wanted to say about the horses Debbie was happy to listen to: Prince had won three races, his racing name was Ball Four, he was by Shut Out, which meant Shut Out was his sire. One day, out fox hunting, Fiona had stayed in the front, and when they had a kill she got a pad; a pad was the fox’s foot; only grown-ups got the brush, which was the tail, or the mask, which was the head. Her boots had cost sixty dollars; her saddle had cost seventy-five dollars; it was from England. Someday she was going to hunt in England; the best hunt there was the Belvoir; she could grow up to be a whipper-in. Now she said, “Okay, I’m going to do it again. You go down the hill and wait on the flat part.” Debbie turned Rufus and went down at a walk while Fiona went up at a canter. By the time Debbie had Rufus right in the middle of the flat part, Fiona and Prince were at the top, pointed downward. Debbie waved. Fiona clapped her legs against Prince’s sides, and he started to canter. Fiona leaned back, and then she was squatting on Prince’s back, her hand still clutching the lead rope, and then Prince was galloping right at Debbie and Rufus. Fiona stood up. Debbie held the pony’s mane, bit her lip.