Now my mascara will be streaky.
I sit upright, gather my breath. Let go of the reins briefly, and wipe my eyes. “Okay. Okay.”
Tinkerbell shakes her head, bobs, swishes her tail and stamps a foot, then turns her head to one side and stares at me with one big dark eye, as if saying,are we ready to go yet, crazy lady?
“Okay,” I say, responding to what I imagine this horse is thinking. “I’m ready. Let’s go, Tinkerbell.” I shift my seat forward. “Walk.”
And away we go. In comparison to our accidental trot, the walk does seem slow.
I discover what Theo meant by spirited—this horse wants togo. If I so much as brush her sides with my feet, she bolts. The first time, she jumped into a trot. The next time I accidentally forgot and kicked her sides, she goes straight past the trot and into a bumpy, jolty run. A canter? I think that’s a word for a horse run.
God, I really am city.
She won’t stop, now, either. I pull on the reins, squeeze, but she just shakes her head and goes faster, and it’s all I can do to stay on.
I was once invited by a ranking Air Force officer, as part of an attempt to woo me, to sit in the back seat of a brand-new fighter jet as he flew it. Quite a privilege, as I was given to understand. He decided it would be fun to scare me a little by doing some “evasive maneuvers” as he put it. Meaning, loops and twists and all sorts of things.
That wasn’t as scary as being on the back of a runaway Tinkerbell.
I scream whoa, doing everything I can remember Theo told me, but nothing works. She just wants to run. And run, and run.
So, run she does, and all I can do is hold on with my leg and grip the front of the saddle and the reins as hard as I can, and hope she’ll eventually get tired.
I even try talking to her. “Tink? Whoa, girl. Please, please, whoa. Please stop. You’re scaring me.”
She just whinnies as loud as she can, making my ears ring, shakes her head, and pours on the speed, going from a canter to a full gallop.
And now, very literally, all I’m capable of doing is holding on and hoping I don’t fall. I don’t dare think about falling, though.
The fence flies past my right leg, whizzing in a blur, grass waves and speeds in a green smear, and the whole world narrows down to nothing but the wind rushing past my face and the pounding slam of the horse between my thighs, her huffing and snorting, the pounding of her hooves.
I manage to twist my head enough to see in front of us, and I realize there’s something there, now. A smear of brown, which resolves into the geometric shapes of a cabin and a barn. I try again to get Tinkerbell to slow down, but she’s got her own ideas.
Faster, faster.
She’s showing off, I realize, as I glance to one side and see a cluster of horses on the other side of the fence keeping pace, whinnying and snorting at Tinkerbell, who answers, shakes her head, whinnying again in that deafening cry.
I hear voices—shouts. “Stop! Stop!”
Men, noticing me and my headlong flight on the back of this crazy animal, shouting at me to stop.
“I can’t!” I scream. “She won’t stop!”
I’m staring past Tinkerbell’s heaving neck, watching men scatter out of the way.
All except one.
He stands up from where he’d been hunched over a horse’s hoof. Drops a tool on the ground. Slaps the horse to send it scurrying out of the way.
He stands, directly in the line of runaway Tinkerbell.
“She won’t stop!” I shout. “Get out of the way!”
He’s massive. His shoulders resemble the Rockies themselves. He’s utterly unmoving. Unafraid.
There’s a fence ahead, and Tinkerbell isn’t slowing.
Fear crawls up higher, inching up into my throat. My head is pounding and my chest is tight. I’m terrified.
