Wild Horses (Sadie's Montana #1)(7)
The teachings of her parents were a precious heritage handed down for generations and a firm foundation that allowed for happy freedom of spirit. Honoring her parents and respecting their wishes brought peace and a secure, cuddly feeling like a warm, fuzzy shawl you wrapped up with in the wintertime.
Sadie often thought about this. What if she would have rebelled and refused to accompany her parents to Montana? It would have been unthinkable, but still… So far, no husband and no horse. She wasn’t sure which one she longed for more. Probably a horse.
Every husband was apparently a little like Ezra. Sadie sometimes caught Mam compressing her lips into a thin, straight line when Dat said something was too fancy. Like French doors. Mam had her heart set on them so she could look at the awesome, gently rolling, wooded hillside while she ate at the dining-room table. Dat had snorted, saying he didn’t know what kind of fancy notion she got herself into now. French doors were too English. But in the end, Dat smiled and agreed, saying Amish houses could have French doors, he guessed. Mam had laughed and her eyes shone and Sadie could tell she was very happy.
So husbands could be a bit intimidating, especially if they were too weird about a lot of different subjects. Horses were easier. If only she could find one.
Jim gripped the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes, hard, drawing Sadie back to the present. She grabbed at the dash, nearly slamming against it, a scream rising in her throat.
“What the…?” Jim yelled.
Sadie struggled to regain her seat, her eyes wide with fear. Through the swirling whiteness outside, a dim, shadowy form leapt in front of the truck, slid, and went down—way down—as Jim struggled to keep control of the careening vehicle. Sadie screamed again as the tires hit the form on the road and bumped to a stop.
Her hands crossed her heart as if to contain the beating, and her eyes searched Jim’s, wild with questions.
“I’ll be danged if it ain’t a cow,” he muttered, jerking on the door handle.
“Sh…should I…” Sadie asked, her voice hoarse.
“Come on out. We’ll see what we got.”
Chapter 3
SADIE GRABBED FOR THE door handle, then hesitated. A cold blast of air from the opposite side of the truck caught her head scarf, and she was shaken to reality.
What had they done?
Struggling to stay on her feet in the ice and snow, Sadie held on to the side of the truck, straining to see what had gone down, what had been so big, so unexpected, what had so suddenly disappeared in front of the truck.
She heard Jim’s low whistle. In the same instant, she saw the thick, heavy hairs of…
“Well, it ain’t a cow.”
Sadie stood and stared. She had never seen a horse as thin and gaunt as this. In fact, she had never seen any animal as thin as this—a skeleton covered with hide and a shaggy black and white coat.
“Skinniest horse I ever laid eyes on.”
“Is he…hurt?” Sadie ventured.
“Dunno.”
“He’s… just lying there. Do you think he’s dead?”
“Well, no. We didn’t hit him very hard. He sort of slid and went down before we hit him.”
“He’s likely starving. He could be dying right here.”
“Dunno.”
Jim knelt in the swirling snow, bent low, and laid a hand on the horse’s cheekbone. Sadie stood, holding her arms tightly against her waist, and wondered how a horse’s face could be thinner than normal.
Horses don’t have a lot of flesh on their faces. The softest part is the smooth, velvety nose, always whooshing warm, sweet breath into your face. Horses don’t have bad breath like humans. That’s because they eat clean hay, oats, corn, and fresh, sweet grass in pastures. They don’t eat greasy bacon and aged cheese and Twinkies and whoopie pies and potato chips that leave their stomachs sour and make gas rise to the top, and then cause them to belch the way people do.
This horse’s face was thinner than most, its large eyes sunk into huge cavities. He looked like a skeleton with a head much too large for the scrawny, protruding neck, almost like the drawings prehistoric men etched on cave walls.
The snow kept coming from the sky, a whirling, grayish-white filled with icy little pings which stung Sadie’s face. She watched as Jim felt along the horse’s painfully thin neck, then down to its shoulder, before touching its pitiful ripples of bone and hide that was its side.
“He’s breathin’.”
“He is?”
Sadie knelt in the snow by the horse’s head, watching for a flicker—any sign of life—from this poor, starved creature. Slowly she reached out to touch the unkempt forelock, still very thick and heavy in spite of his weakened state. She lifted it, letting the heavy hair run through her fingers, and murmured, “Poor, poor baby. Whatever happened to you?”
Jim rose a bit stiffly, then reached in his coat pocket for his cell phone. Sadie stayed by the horse’s head, speaking soft endearments, willing this emaciated creature to life.
Jim was muttering to himself, clumsily pressing buttons too small for his large, calloused finger, repeatedly pushing the wrong one, growling over and over before finally stoping, his eys narrowing.
“Hey. Yeah, Jim here. I’m bringin’ the Amish girl to the ranch. A half-dead horse jumped out in front of us. He’s down. Ain’t responding.”