Nicholas Evans: The Horse Whisperer

'Get out of the way! Grace!'

Grace was transfixed. There was a roar of blood in her head that seemed to freeze and separate her from what she was watching above her. But upon Judith's second cry she reconnected and tried to turn Pilgrim down the slope. The horse yanked his head, frightened, fighting her. He took several small sideways steps, twisting his neck up the slope until his feet too skidded and he nickered in alarm. They were now directly in the path of Gulliver's slide. Grace screamed and wrenched the reins.

'Pilgrim, come on! Move!'

In the odd stillness of the moment before Gulliver hit them, Grace knew there was more to the roar in her head than the rushing of blood. That snowplow wasn't out on the highway. It was too loud for that. It was somewhere nearer. The thought was vaporized by the shuddering impact of Gulliver's hindquarters. He bulldozed into them, hitting Pilgrim's shoulder and spinning him around. Grace felt herself being lifted out of the saddle, whiplashed up the slope. And had one hand not found the rump of the other horse she would have fallen then as Judith fell. But she stayed on, wrapping a fist into Pilgrim's silky mane as he slid'down the slope beneath her.

Gulliver and Judith were past her now and she watched her friend being flung like a discarded doll across the horse's rear, then jerk and twist viciously back as her foot snagged in the stirrup. Judith's body bounced and swung sideways and as she hit the ice hard with the back of her head, her foot took another twist in the stirrup, locking itself there so that now she was being dragged. In one seething, frenzied tangle, the two horses and their riders careered down toward the road.

Wayne Tanner saw them as soon as he came out of the bend. Assuming he would be approaching from the south, the mill people hadn't thought to mention the old access road farther north. So Wayne had seen the turn and taken it and was relieved to find the Kenworth's wheels seemed to hold the untracked snow as well as they had back on the highway. When he came around the bend he saw, maybe a hundred yards ahead, the concrete walls of the bridge and beyond it, framed by it, some animal, a horse, trailing something. Wayne's stomach turned over.

'What the hell?'

He hit the brakes, but not too hard for he knew if he made things too sudden the wheels would lock, so he worked the trolley valve on the steering wheel, trying to get drag from the brakes at the back of the trailer. He couldn't even feel it. The gears would have to bring him down and he smacked the heel of his hand into the shift and double-declutched, making the six cylinders of the Cummins roar. Shit, he'd been going too fast. There were two horses there now, one with a rider on it. What the hell were they doing? Why didn't they get off the goddamn road? His heart was pounding and he could feel a sweat breaking out as he worked the trailer brakes and the shift, finding a rhythm in the mantra going through his head: Hit the binders, grab a gear, hit the binders, grab a gear . But the bridge was looming up too fast. For Christsake, couldn't they hear him coming? Couldn't they see him?

They could. Even Judith, in her agony on the ground, could see him, fleetingly, as she was thrashed around screaming through the snow. Her thighbone had snapped when she fell and in the slide to the road both horses had stepped on her, crushing ribs and splintering a forearm. In that first stumble Gulliver had cracked a knee and torn tendons and the pain and fear that filled his head showed in the whites of his eyes as he reeled and pranced and tried to free himself of this thing that hung hooked to his side.

Grace saw the truck as soon as they reached the road. One look was enough. Somehow she had managed not to fall and now she had to get them all off the road. If she could get hold of Gulliver's reins, she could lead him off to safety, dragging Judith behind. But Pilgrim was as freaked as the older horse and the two of them circled frantically, feeding each other's fear.

With all her strength, Grace tugged on Pilgrim's mouth and for a moment had his attention. She backed him toward the other horse, leaning precariously from her saddle, and reached out for Gulliver's bridle. He moved off, but she shadowed him, stretching out her arm till she thought it would pop from its socket. Her fingers were nearly on it when the truck blasted its horn.

Wayne saw both horses leap at the sound and for the first time realized what it was that hung from the side of the one that had no rider.

'Holy shit.'

He said it out loud and at the same time found he had run out of gears. He was in first and the bridge and the horses were coming up so fast he knew all he could do now was go for the tractor brakes. He murmured a little prayer and stepped harder than he knew he should on the foot valve. For a second it seemed to work. He could feel the wheels at the back of the cab bite home.

'Yeah! That's my girl.'

Then the wheels locked and Wayne felt forty tons of steel take charge of their own destiny.

In a stately, accelerating slither, the Kenworth snaked into the mouth of the bridge, entirely ignoring his efforts at the wheel. Now Wayne was just a spectator and he watched the cab's offside wing below him make contact with the concrete wall in what at first was but a glancing kiss of sparks. Then, as the deadweight of the trailer shouldered in behind, there was a gouging, ripping mayhem of noise that made the very air vibrate.

In front of him now he could see the black horse turn to face him and he saw that its rider was just a young girl and that her eyes were wide with fear beneath the dark peak of her hat.

'No, no, no,' he said.

But the horse reared up defiantly before him and the girl was jerked back and fell to the road. Only briefly did the horse's front feet come down, for in the moment before the truck was upon it, Wayne saw it lift its head and rear again. Only this time it leapt right at him. With all the power of its hind legs, it launched itself over the front of the cab, clearing the sheer face of the radiator grille as if it were a jump. The metal shoes on its front feet came down on the hood, skidding up it in a frenzy of sparks and as a hoof hit the windshield there was a loud crack and Wayne lost all sight in a craze of glass. Where was the girl? God, she must be down there on the road in front of him.

Wayne smashed his fist and forearm against the windshield and when it shattered he saw the horse was still there on the hood. Its right foreleg was stuck in the V-shaped struts of the wing mirror and the animal was screaming at him, covered in fragments of glass, its mouth foaming and bloody. Beyond it, Wayne could see the other horse at the side of the road, trying to limp away, its rider still hanging by her leg from the stirrup.

And still the truck kept going. The trailer was coming clear of the bridge wall and with nothing now to restrain its sideways drift, it began a slow, relentless jackknife, effortlessly scything down the fence and sending up a cresting bow-wave of snow like an ocean liner.

As the trailer's momentum overtook that of the cab and slowed it, the horse on the hood made one last great effort. The struts of the wing mirror broke and the animal rolled free and disappeared from Wayne's view. There was a moment of brooding calm, as in the eye of a hurricane, in which Wayne watched the trailer finish its sweep of the fence and the edge of the field beyond and start slowly arcing back toward him. Corralled in the quietly closing angle of the jackknife stood the other horse, uncertain now where escape might lie. Wayne thought he saw its dangling rider lift her head from the ground to look at him, unaware of the wave that was breaking behind her. Then she was lost. For the trailer surged over her, scooping the horse toward the cab like a butterfly in a book and crushing it there in a final thunderous slam of metal.