The Black Saddle; Part Four
[conclusion]
By
Anyn Johannson
As the link came up what first
struck Ingrid were the two photos. One was from the obituary, the other a
recent newspaper account on a fatal automobile accident.
The newspaper’s account of the
accident showed a photo of a crumpled pickup truck with a tarp-covered driver’s
side door, and a half-upright empty horse trailer still hitched behind. The
fatality was the pickup’s driver after a car racing downhill had lost control
hitting the driver’s side. Ingrid knew enough
about horse trailers to know that a driver hauling one could not easily swerve
out of the way of another car.
Squinting hard at the photo’s
background, she thought she could make out the same hairpin turn where she had
trouble keeping on the correct side of the road the day she’d been given the
black saddle.
Next Ingrid turned to read the
obituary. Abigail Van Brom was the name printed under the photo. In it a
smiling woman with a long dark hair was holding the reins of a lovely horse.
The obituary was written by the deceased woman’s sister, and Ingrid sensed,
before she read it, that the name would be a match for the woman who’d given
her the black saddle.
Reading further, the obituary
mentioned how talented a rider, Abigail, “Gail” had been, that “she was well
known for her love of horses, and generosity in sharing her time and expertise
with other horse folk.” That had been the reason why “Gail had been late
leaving for her birthday party even though she knew it was dangerous to drive
that road with a horse trailer especially after dark. She’d stayed late at a
horse show helping someone with a difficult horse.” Ingrid looked a way from
the screen for a moment, wondering at something she couldn’t dare grasp.
Tui’s text in the email had asked
Ingrid, “Have you ever heard the folktale of a hungry ghost, one who isn’t done
with earth and is jealous of the living, especially if they died suddenly? What
are you going to do next?
For a brief second Ingrid thought
about calling the saddle giver, but what could she reasonably ask someone who’d
just lost their sister? Only thoughts both too irrational and too insensitive
to even contemplate came to her head. No. No phone call or email.
But what should she do? What did
this signify, if anything, for her riding Cissy? Ingrid stared at the computer
screen for a long, long time before finally standing up and walking over to the
saddle sitting in the living room. Her hand reached out, and for a spell,
lightly stroked its quality leather. It was made to be ridden in, not be a
household decoration.
Tomorrow they would try again to get
Cissy out on the trails. Wie müssen.
No dreams that night, all was a
black void when she suddenly jerked awake and opened her eyes. The clock showed
just past midnight. Yet it would be useless to try and go back to sleep. Ingrid
rose, grabbed her robe and headed for the kitchen to make a cup of coffee,
Smokey staying snugly abed. Once the coffee was ready, Ingrid padded over to
living room and sat down next to the black saddle. With the coffee mug in one
hand, and the fingers of her other hand idly worrying over the saddle’s two
tiny nameplate nail holes like Brailed ciphers, she stared silently out the
window during the long leaden hours of the night, waiting for the slight glow
in the east to tell of morning.
But daylight wasn’t the only thing
coming with the dawn. During the night the previous day’s light puffs of breeze
were being replaced by something far more powerful. The Santa Anas, “the Devil
Winds” had been flying down from the desert, over the mountains and heading
straight in the direction of the local canyons, filling the unresisting air
with their fierce, invisible force on their final flight to the sea.
Even though it was still very early,
barely light, Ingrid decided she couldn’t wait any longer. She too felt driven;
compelled to get to the barn and get on the trails even though the wind’s power
was rising. Stepping through the front door of her apartment she had to
immediately grab the towel covering the black saddle to prevent the wind’s
whipping it away. She got in the car and headed east toward the barn just as
the sun peeked over the horizon and found herself looking straight into its
blinding, flaming pumpkin-orange face for most of the trip.
Once at the barn parking lot, she
opened the car door to be immediately assaulted by the hot winds, dust stinging
both her skin and eyes. All around her the usual living colors of the canyon
hillside had been overlaid by a prickly haze of pallid dust and fine ash from
distant wind driven fires.
Cissy looked surprised to see Ingrid
this early, but stood politely while being tacked up. She even stood quietly
while around them erratic wind gusts created dust whirls and vortexes that
could immediately disappear or change into a straightforward gust. Not even the
earth seemed solid. Heading down alone to the creek bed crossing wasn’t the
safest thing; even on a good day and on a good trail horse. And a day like
today was even more worrisome, but Ingrid was resolute, determined that Cissy
would go down and cross the creek bed and get on the trails. She mounted up.
From horseback Ingrid looked ahead
on the path. The canyon seemed darker than normal and the usually scenic canyon
foliage forced into a surreal, wind orchestrated dance. Ingrid could still hear
Cissy’s hooves hit the occasional rock with a soft clunk, but any dust from her
hoof prints was immediately un-tethered from the earth, grabbed by the wind.
As in their previous trail riding
attempts, Cissy was fine while on the flat gravel path, but as they began
descent on the dirt trail she started to walk more slowly, hesitantly. Still
Ingrid sat deep in the saddle, her legs firm against the mare’s ribs, reins
gripped tightly with her hands spread wide, ready to combat Cissy’s antics.
This determination did accomplish some benefit as they continued further
downhill than they’d ever been previously, before Cissy expressed her usual
“No, I won’t go” with a dainty head toss.
But then soon it all began again.
Despite Ingrid’s determination Cissy increased her head tossing and started
sidling sideways, seemingly any direction except forward. Soon things
degenerated to the more serious balking. Coinciding with a sudden gust of the
wind, Cissy leaped forward and then pivoted wildly off the trail, dangerously
close to a steep slope. Ingrid gave silent thanks that she was able to stay on
Cissy, something she knew she never could have done in her old saddle.
But the world began spiraling as
Cissy kept alternating turning in circles, and backing up the bank of the creek
bed, zig-zaggedly heading toward a large dead oak tree whose wind tossed low
branches seemed to be motioning a come-hither welcome. Cissy kept on backing,
half-rearing, tossing her head, and backing again toward the tree. Spin, back a
crooked step or two, pull another swift 180-degree pivot, her feet sliding
unsafely more than once on the brushy, rocky, slope. Spin, whirl, a full rear,
back at few jerky steps again, another rear, on and on. Ingrid realized Cissy
was completely out of control, more so than ever before and this time far up
the steep hill and away from the trail. Feeling all her past failures take
over, Ingrid now only sat frozen, doing nothing to dissuade Cissy’s
increasingly dangerous behavior.
Suddenly from behind the desiccated
hand of a dead branch hit her shoulder, hard, cleanly shoving her off the black
saddle. Ingrid had a split second airtime, then was lying prone on the bone-dry
hard ground gasping for breath. Opening her eyes from an oddly angled
ground’s-eye view, vision blurred by the fall, Ingrid logically knew what she
saw must be the result of her reins being caught in Cissy’s long mane, but from
her perspective it looked more as if an unwilling Cissy was being forced to
move down hill. The mare was indeed moving forward slowly, and with obvious
reluctance, not back toward the barn where she wanted to go, but instead
downhill towards the creek bed trail crossing. And she was throwing in enough
violent head tosses to make the reins come loose from her mane several times
over, yet there they stayed just in front of the saddle, about the spot a
rider’s hands would be. Ingrid closed her eyes; her dreams were spilling over,
escaping to some bizarre, wild place she could not follow. The wind’s noise and
the sound of Cissy’s hooves on the rocky ground were so intermingled there was
no separating one from the other. She didn’t know how many minutes passed when
she next opened her eyes to see that Cissy had indeed finally crossed over the
creek bed and was inexplicably galloping away on along a trail heading toward
the distant hills. Ingrid put her hands over her face and just lay there trying
to take it all in. It was a fair amount of time before she thought she heard
her name through the wind.
“Ingrid. Ingrid. Hello, Ingrid.
Ingrid are you here?”
Yes! Ingrid spotted four riders down
below calling for her. They obviously hadn’t thought to turn their gaze so far
up slope. She slowly sat up and shouted, “Up here - up here. I’m okay”. And all
things considered, remarkably, she was indeed okay. This time even the wind
helped, letting her voice easily carry downhill to the searchers.
But what about Cissy?
As Ingrid carefully wound her way
down slope to meet the four riders, there came the ring of one rider’s cell
phone. After answering, he called uphill to her that it was another rider
calling in from a far off section of the trails saying they’d found Cissy.
“It was the darndest thing, you
know. From a hilltop we saw Cissy a good distance away, galloping a really
spirited clip along the trail, and all by her lonesome too. Not what I would
have ever expected. And she kept on traveling further and further out. We set
right off after her, but of course we have to go down off the hilltop and
through all that tree-lined, snaking trail, and we soon loose sight of her.
Though we did spy her once again, way down in a small clearing just slowly
walking in a gentle circle - you know - as if she was being cooled off after a
training session. But it was a few more minutes of riding time ‘til we could
actually get there. No way to keep sight of her in the meantime - mighty glad
she was still there when we arrived! And there she was just standing there,
with her reins kinda half caught on some bushy twigs, likely foolin’ her into
thinking she was tied up. Cissy looks just fine Ingrid, perhaps a little cowed,
but safe and sound. And hey, you now know she can go out on the trails too”, he
finished, breathlessly laughing at his own joke. All the other riders, most
with wry grins, nodded in agreement.
“But yeah, from now on only go out
with the group. No more scares. This morning when somebody noticed your horse
was out of her pen and no one had seen you on the property, we got worried. So
we went out after you and Cissy. Stay with us from now on, okay?”
Ingrid smiled her thanks, to him, to
all of the other smiling riders gathered around as she walked over and took Cissy’s
reins from him. He was right, Cissy did appear noticeably meeker, and except
for a sweaty coat, none the worse after her peculiar adventure.
Ingrid slowly walked a small
distance from her friends. Surprised and grateful for all they had done that
morning to make sure both she and Cissy were safe. Happy knowing she could plan
to go on real trail rides with them in the future.
It was done.
End