Shawn couldn’t help me, not on that unbroken mare. Hysteria in one
horse causes hysteria in others, especially in the young and spirited. Of
all Shawn’s horses, there was only one—a seven-year-old buckskin
named Apollo—who might have been old enough, and calm enough, to
do it: to explode in furious speed, a nostril-flapping gallop, then coolly
navigate while the rider detached his body, lifting one leg out of the
stirrup and reaching to the ground to catch the reins of another horse
wild with fright. But Apollo was in the corral, half a mile down the
mountain.
My instincts told me to let go of the saddle horn—the only thing
keeping me on the horse. If I let go I’d fall, but I’d have a precious
moment to reach for the flapping reins or try to yank my calf from the
stirrup. Make a play for it, my instincts screamed.
Those instincts were my guardians. They had saved me before,
guiding my movements on a dozen bucking horses, telling me when to
cling to the saddle and when to pitch myself clear of pounding hooves.
They were the same instincts that, years before, had prompted me to
hoist myself from the scrap bin when Dad was dumping it, because
they had understood, even if I had not, that it was better to fall from
that great height rather than hope Dad would intervene. All my life
those instincts had been instructing me in this single doctrine—that
the odds are better if you rely only on yourself.
Bud reared, thrusting his head so high I thought he might tumble
backward. He landed hard and bucked. I tightened my grip on the
horn, making a decision, based on another kind of instinct, not to
surrender my hold.
Shawn would catch up, even on that unbroken mare. He’d pull off a
miracle. The mare wouldn’t even understand the command when he
shouted, “Giddy-yap!”; at the jab of his boot in her gut, which she’d
never felt before, she would rear, twisting wildly. But he would yank
her head down, and as soon as her hooves touched the dirt, kick her a
second time, harder, knowing she would rear again. He would do this
until she leapt into a run, then he would drive her forward, welcoming
her wild acceleration, somehow guiding her even though she’d not yet
learned the strange dance of movements that, over time, becomes a
kind of language between horse and rider. All this would happen in
seconds, a year of training reduced to a single, desperate moment.
I knew it was impossible. I knew it even as I imagined it. But I kept