A gnarled old man, someone’s hostler, picked the saddle up and shuffled over to where I sat, motionless, on the mare’s warm back.
“Someone cut the girth, looks like to me,” the old man said, squinting up at me. He hadn’t a tooth in his head, and his lips were stained by tobacco juice. His eyes had the milky quality of the incipient cataract, although his gaze was steady and concerned. “Got a spare? Won’t take a minute to fix.”
I swallowed and shook my head.
“Here, buckle this one on, Pete.” And Rafe Clery had appeared out of nowhere, a girth dangling from his hand. He grinned up at me. “I told them to hold the class a few minutes until you’re ready,” he said, taking Phi Bete’s bridle and holding up a hand to me to dismount.
Obediently I slid down her velvet shoulder, and found myself holding her reins. Rafe was busy unbuckling the one side of the girth as Pete’s stubby fingers moved deliberately on the other.
“Someone’s real scared of the competition you provide, Miss Dunn,” Rafe said in a sociable voice as he fitted the two parts of the girth together. The cut was obvious. Only a few threads had held the saddle on. “One, maybe two fences, and the first two are both stone, and you’d’ve bit the dust, badly.”
I swallowed, unable to meet his eyes, and I was scared. Who in this small New York State Fair could possibly know who I was? I hadn’t seen a familiar name on the list of exhibitors. Who had followed me from the West Coast? I’d hidden for almost a whole year since Dad’s murder.
“C’mon. I’ll give you a leg up. Mustn’t keep the class waiting in that hot sun. Hard on the horses.” He grinned, but his eyes didn’t. He looked worried. He’d shoved the deliberately severed girth under one arm as he laced his fingers for my knee.
I started to protest, but his effortless assist nearly sent me over Phi Bete’s back. He shoved my leg forward, checking the girth buckles carefully.
“Borrowed this from Bess Tomlinson. Wear it to victory.” Then he stepped back, and I didn’t even have time to thank either him or old Pete. I turned to wave, but Rafe was walking away, and Pete had turned his head to expectorate in the dust.
Such a close shave with disaster is no way to start a class. I managed to smile at the judges, who nodded solemnly as the gates swung shut behind me.
We were to jump the course in order of registration number. That put me at the end of a long, long line, but Phi Bete would stand quietly for hours. She would, but the others wouldn’t, for the nervousness of the riders was being communicated to their mounts, and there was much nonsense. The officials ought to have put a limit on this class. Or made a novice classification or something. The judges didn’t like the prospect of a long dusty session either. And issued additional instructions. Referees were summoned for each of the ten jumps. Eight faults disqualified. Refusal disqualified.
Well, that would pare the field down, I thought, and it did, although many of the riders as well as spectators muttered over the decision. By the time Phi Bete had faultlessly completed the round, there were only seven contenders, and much disgruntled argumentation beyond the gate, where the disqualified assembled to protest judicial prejudice.
The jumps were raised, and it was announced that this second round would finish the class. “Since we are running behind schedule, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s unseasonably warm for June, I’m sure you understand.”
Not very professional, certainly, but I was in sympathy with the decision. The wool of my jacket was steaming me, and it smelled. I longed to wipe the hatband. The damn hard-top would swim off my head at the next jump. As I looked at the altered obstacles, I could see that the added second layer of the artificial brush was a bilious show-window green, guaranteed to frighten a nervous jumper. Had they done that on purpose? And the second course of bricks were now a poisonous fluorescent red. My competition consisted of two old tried and true hunters, totally bored with the affair; two obvious novices, riders and horses, kids all; and two high-strung beauties, including the horse Mrs. Tomlinson had been schooling and cursing. Only she wasn’t up. Presumably it was her daughter. Maybe even her granddaughter, said I uncharitably to myself, but I had to consider every angle of my competition. And if she, the older Mrs. Tomlinson, did sleep with the Colonel, did his favor extend to the second and third generations? Somehow the detachment I could achieve on the bleachers failed me in the ring. I could not be objective.
I was now next to last to jump. Three faults disqualified one entry; a complete refusal to go over that horrid brush struck out another. One good round to Mrs. Tomlinson’s offspring, who did tend to rush her fences, making both horse and rider appear more awkward than necessary. One fault; a fault and a refusal. Then my turn. Phi Bete was contemptuous of the course, flicking her tail in that annoying way of hers, as if brushing off her passage. There was a murmur of amusement for this trait by the end of our round, but no faults against her nimble feet. And a good public image.
The last contestant was one of the old tried-and-trues, but a slow round, as if the horse considered every step before taking it. In fact, I was unconsciously tense, helping the old dear over every jump.
So that left four in the running. The damned judges made us show gaits. Tomlinson’s entry proved fractious, and the rider a poor horsewoman, so unless local sentiment prevailed, Phi Bete had taken the blue.
She had. The Colonel attached the ribbon with a wary eye toward her heels, as if he expected her to have acquired bad habits from her stable mate. It was the other way around, but why explain?
“What’s this about your girth being deliberately sabotaged, Miss… ah…?”
“Dunn,” I supplied my name. “Sorry to delay the class.”
He harrumphed, frowning, as if my answer were the wrong one. I smiled sweetly and kneed Phi Bete out of line to take my duty circuit. The announcer, hard up for material to fill in pauses, came out with some garble about my having overcome a bad start due to a faulty girth and triumphed in the good ol’ Amurrican fashion. “Give the little lady a big hand, folks!” Irritating man, with a nasal twang that would get on your nerves even if you didn’t have to listen to it amplified, whine, wow, and all.
Well,.the applause didn’t mean anything. It got heavier when old tried-and-true took his circuit with the red fluttering from his headstall. I took no satisfaction that Mrs. Tomlinson’s progeny was third. Especially when she appeared out of the crowd, a wide grin on her freckled face, just as I dismounted. (Somehow I hadn’t put freckles in my unkind mental image of her.)
“Damned good ride, Miss Dunn. Sorry about that girth business. Rafe showed it to me, and it was deliberately cut. No question of it.” She held out a thin, sinewy hand with many charm bracelets jangling on her wrist. She was Mrs. Tailored-Lady and elegant-in-silk, but her smile was genuine, and so was her concern. “We’ve all been suffering from vandalism this year. I hope none of them think of glue in the saddles.”
“It was kind of you to be generous with your tack…”
“Nonsense. Sportsmanship and all that best-man crap. Hate to see your mare scratched for lack of a girth. You made me ride up to the mark, I can tell you.”
She meant it, too. And drifted away before I could repeat my expression of gratitude. Her offspring-and it was a girl her very image, freckles, and braced teeth showing in a rather sullen pout-came on the scene.
Mrs. Tomlinson stepped right up to her, her thin fingers spreading to pat the curved neck of the hunter. Whatever she said was soft enough to reach only the girl’s ears, but the pout was erased instantly, and the eyes reflected the reprimand.