And to show that I loved him for his own sake, I let him have a segment of the Danish.
When I’d finished and felt three times more alert, I checked his girth, side to side. Examined the stirrup leathers and the hackamore. Then I was faced with the problem of mounting my mountain without a leg up nor a block in sight.
“Alley-oop,” said a cheerful voice, and my left knee was grabbed. Up I went, to stare down at Rafe Clery’s impish grin. Behind him loomed a rangy, deep-breasted mare; her headstall’s red and black stripes marked her as belonging to the Tomlinson stables, or I missed my bet.
“Thought you’d be warming him up about now,” Rafe said, and was suddenly atop the tall mare, gathering in the reins. Then he gawked at Orfeo’s hackamore and pointed to it in dumb show.
“You cannot,” he said with measured incredulity, “be serious. You do not ride that behemoth with a hackamore? On an open road? When anything might happen?”
I didn’t dignify the inane question with an answer. I pressed my right knee, and Orfeo moved forward, his wither twitching as it always did, some unconscious reflexive action against years of crop and spur.
I didn’t look back, and I knew the mare followed. I led the way past G-Barn, through the narrow break in the old cyclone fencing, clip-clopping over the cracked concrete loading apron, let Orfeo pick his way over the old
railroad track until we reached the hard-packed dirt road. At my signal, he lifted into a dignified rocking canter, as slow and steady as any circus horse. We had a little stretch to go before the road ended in a mound of bulldozed raw, stony dirt. Beyond were the hard-packed but leveled streets of the embryo development.
Orfeo saw the impediment. His ears cocked forward, head lifted.
“You jump to level ground,” I told him, and his ears twitched. I could feel the increase in his canter, could feel power surging through his frame. Sometimes I think that Orfeo is really alive only under a rider on a jump course. He’s a born leaper, and it’s my private notion that Orfeo was nothing worse than a jump-school dropout, a training-ring delinquent. He was born knowing more than any human trainer could impart to him, and because they were forcing him against his natural inclinations and talent, he contended their right to direct him. I’d never admit it to anyone but Orfeo, but I was in the saddle only to lend countenance to his presence in a competition.
Jumping Orfeo-or rather, sitting on, when Orfeo jumped-is an experience. He doesn’t seem to leap. He just gets beyond the perpendicular obstacle in front of him smoothly, effortlessly. I could hear the rasping snort of the mare behind me, the plunging beat of her hooves, and then Rafe Clery was pulling her in beside the placidly cantering Orfeo. Before us stretched the inviting flat, curving roadbeds. The mare was excited, rolling her snaffle, trying to get her head away from Rafe Clery’s strong, steady hands.
The mare was the same height in the shoulder as Orfeo, but she looked less substantial. Rafe grinned over at me with pure creature delight for the morning, the exercise, the prospect in sight.
He gave me a mischievous nod, which I returned, and we were off at a fast canter. The mare worked for her speed, but Orfeo seemed merely to sink and glide forward, just fast enough. I kneed Orfeo toward the slope that would lead to an old stone fence, decoratively left to separate two lots. Orfeo stepped over it-all four feet at once. Beyond was a stream bed, wide, sandy, good footing on either bank, and no harm done if you took a tumble.
Down a ridge, over the wide storm gutters, up a long slope, across another ex-pasture to a gaggle of flat-topped stones, requiring neat, short hops. For someone supposedly running an unknown course, Rafe Clery was handling the fractious mare superbly. Then I remembered that he’d been touring the circuit for many years and perhaps the natural barriers I was taking were well-known landmarks to him. No matter, he rode superbly.
There was a high stone wall at the edge of the tract, a wide but empty meadow on the other side. We could go back and forth over that obstacle for height, and in one place, for breadth.
We jumped, until I noticed that the mare’s approaches and landings were smoother, as if she’d decided that she could trust this rider and was letting him decide. When we finally eased up, even Orfeo had worked up a sweat. We walked them back to the little stream. Here the bulldozer had missed a few young willows and bushes. The sweat on Orfeo’s neck had dried, and his breathing was easy. He pulled at the reins for water, and the mare was snorting for a taste of it.
“Oh, it’s not polluted yet,” Rafe said. “Runs through farmland back to forever.” He released the reins, and the mare buried her nose in the clear water, slurping happily.
Orfeo drank with the dignity of an old veteran, his eyes marking his surroundings, and he quietly sucked in water. The mare finished, a long stream of saliva drooling from her muzzle. Alert, eyes up, neck arched, she gazed at some distant object, snorted, pawed, and pulled to get to the enticing grass on the far slope.
“Well, I’ll tell Bess not to waste her entry money, but she will. ‘Isn’t sporting to withdraw,’“ he drawled in a Westchester boarding-school accent. That wasn’t how Mrs. Tomlinson sounded; she wasn’t that artificial.
“She was jumping well for you.”
“Yes, but I won’t be riding her this afternoon. I’m just a lick and a promise.”
“A promise in return for the loan of that girth?”
“Lord love you, no.” And his blue eyes twinkled. I took that.”
I discarded every rejoinder that occurred to me, because they would be provocative or saucy or bawdy and all wrong. Instead I gave Orfeo a signal, and he moved forward obediently.
“By the way,” he said in an all too casual tone of voice, “I had a few nightcaps with some of the other exhibitors and Budnell. They are upset about that girth-slitting. A case of honor. I told them you hadn’t for a moment believed it was anyone connected with the fair.”
“Of course not.”
“But Budnell says that there’ve been some funny incidents around here-oh, a missing blanket, a wallet or two stolen, bales of hay broken open for no reason, tack boxes ransacked, glue poured on a new saddle, a sheepskin cut up, and things have been lifted from the exhibitors’ hall. In short, evidence of malicious mischief not directed at you or Orfeo.”
I murmured politely. But Caps Galvano was here. He may not have recognized me, but he could have recognized Phi Bete. “You being alone in G-Barn would make it easier for a vandal to work,” Rafe was saying.
“I never did think it could be another rider,” I said. I wished he hadn’t brought the subject up, because it had been such a lovely ride. He gave me a friendly wave as he turned the mare toward D-Barn. It had been such a nice morning.
By the time I had curried Orfeo to within a feather of his skin, wiping him till he shone, and was standing back to admire my handiwork, Rafe Clery was looking in on us with approval.
“It is now eight of the clock. You got a swimsuit?” I was so surprised that I nodded. “Get it.”
“That stream is scarcely-”
“Stream?” Utter contempt for my outrageous notion. “There’s that beautiful Olympic-style pool at my motel, complete with high dive for idiots, low board for cowards like me, even a water shoot, and it’s all pining for some bodies to break its crystal chlorine clarity and justify its existence. Get your suit.”