Nicholas Evans - The Horse Whisperer

He said, 'That's what you said about Pilgrim, but you were wrong.'

'The only other choice is losing you!' He nodded. 'That's not a choice, can't you see? Could you choose to lose me?'

'No,' he said simply. 'But I don't have to.'

'Remember what you said about Pilgrim? You said he went to the brink and saw what was beyond and then chose to accept it.'

'But if what you see there is pain and suffering, then only a fool would choose to accept it.'

'But for us it wouldn't be pain and suffering.'

He shook his head. Annie felt a rush of anger now. At him for uttering what she knew in her heart to be right and at herself for the sobs now racking her body.

'You don't want me,' she said and hated herself at once for her maudlin self-pity, then even more for the triumph she felt as his eyes welled with tears.

'Oh Annie. You'll never know how much I want you.'

She cried in his arms and lost all sense of time and place. She told him she couldn't live without him and saw no portent when he told her this was true for him but not for her. He said that in time she would assess these days not with regret but as some gift of nature that had left all their lives the better.

When she could cry no more, she washed her face in the cool water of the pool and he found a towel and helped her mop the mascara that had swum from her eyes. They waited, saying little more, while the blotching faded from her cheeks. Then separately, when all seemed safe, they left.

Annie felt like some mudbound creature viewing the world from the bottom of a pond. It was the first time she had taken a sleeping pill in months. They were the ones airline pilots were rumored to use, which was supposed to make you confident about the pills, not doubtful of the pilots. It was true that in the past, when she'd taken them regularly, the after-effects seemed minimal. This morning they lay draped over her brain like a thick, dulling blanket she was powerless to shrug, though sufficiently translucent for her to remember why she'd taken the pill and be grateful that she had.

Grace had come up to her soon after she and Tom came out of the barn and said bluntly that she wanted to go. She looked pale and troubled, but when Annie asked what was wrong she said nothing was, she was just tired. She didn't seem to want to look her in the eyes. On the way back up to the creek house, after they'd said their good-nights, Annie tried to chat about the party but barely got a sentence in reply. She asked her again if she was alright and Grace said she felt tired and a little sick.

'From the punch?'

'I don't know.'

'How many glasses did you have?'

'I don't know! It's no big deal, don't go on about it.'

She went straight up to bed and when Annie went in to kiss her good-night she just muttered and stayed facing the wall. Just as she used to when they first got here. Annie had gone straight to her sleeping pills.

She reached for her watch now and had to force her muffled brain to focus on it. It was coming up to eight o'clock. She remembered Frank, as they left last night, asking if they'd be coming to church this morning and because it seemed appropriate, somehow punishingly final, she'd said yes. She hauled her reluctant body out of bed and along to the bathroom. Grace's door was slightly ajar. Annie decided to have a bath, then take in a glass of juice and wake her.

She lay in the steaming water and tried to hold on to the last lacing of the sleeping pill. Through it she could feel already a cold geometry of pain configuring within her. These are the shapes which now inhabit you, she told herself, and to whose points and lines and angles you must become accustomed.

She dressed and went to the kitchen to get Grace's juice. It was eight-thirty. Since her drowsiness had gone she'd sought distraction in compiling mental lists of what needed to be done on this last day at the Double Divide. They had to pack; clean the house up; get the oil and tires checked; get some food and drink for the journey; settle up with the Bookers…

As she came to the top of the stairs, she saw Grace's door hadn't moved. She tapped on it as she went in. The drapes were still closed and she went across and drew them a little apart. It was a beautiful morning.

Then she turned to the bed and saw it was empty.

It was Joe who first discovered Pilgrim was missing too. By then they'd searched every cobwebbed corner of every outbuilding on the ranch and found no trace of her. They split up and combed both sides of the creek, the twins hollering her name over and over and getting no reply but birdsong. Then Joe came yelling from down by the corrals, saying the horse was gone and they all ran to the barn and found the saddle and bridle were gone too.

'She'll be okay,' Diane said. 'She's just taken him for a ride somewhere.' Tom saw the fear in Annie's eyes. They both already knew it was something more.

'She done anything like this before?' he said.

'Never.'

'How was she when she went to bed?'

'Quiet. She said she felt a little sick. Something seemed to have upset her.'

Annie looked so scared and frail, Tom wanted to hold her and comfort her, which would have looked only natural, but under Diane's gaze he didn't dare and it was Frank who did it instead.

'Diane's right,' Frank said. 'She'll be okay.'

Annie was still looking at Tom. 'Is Pilgrim safe enough for her to take out? She's only ridden him the once.'

'He'll be alright,' Tom said. It wasn't quite a lie; the real issue was whether Grace would be. And that depended on the state she was in. 'I'll go with Frank and we'll see if we can find her.'

Joe said he wanted to come too but Tom told him no and sent him off with the twins to get Rimrock and their dad's horse ready while he and Frank went to change out of their church clothes.

Tom was first out. Annie left Diane in the kitchen and followed him out over the porch to walk beside him to the barn. They only had the time it took to get there for the two of them to talk.

'I think Grace knows.' She spoke low, looking straight ahead. She was trying hard to keep control. Tom nodded gravely.

'I reckon so.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Don't ever be sorry Annie. Ever.'

That was all they said, because Frank came running up alongside and the three of them walked in silence to the rail by the barn where Joe had the horses waiting.

'There's his tracks,' Joe called. He pointed at their clear outline in the dust. Pilgrim's shoes were different from those of every other shod horse on the ranch. There was no doubt the prints were his.

Tom looked back just the once as he and Frank loped up the track toward the ford, but Annie was no longer there. Diane must have taken her inside. Only the kids still stood there watching. He gave them a wave.

It wasn't till she found the matches in her pocket that Grace had the idea. She'd put them there after practicing the trick with her father at the airport while they waited for her flight to be called.

She didn't know how long they'd ridden. The sun was high so it must be some hours. She rode like a madwoman, consciously so, wholeheartedly, embracing madness and urging its return in Pilgrim. He'd sensed it and ran and ran all morning, mouth afoam, like a witch's nag. She felt that if she asked he would even fly.

At first she'd had no plan, only a blind, destructive rage whose purpose and direction were not yet set and might be turned as easily on others as herself. Saddling him and shushing him in the gathering light of the corral, all she knew was that somehow she would punish them. She would make them sorry for what they'd done. Only when she reached the meadows and galloped and felt the cold air in her eyes did she start to cry. Then the tears took over and streamed and she leaned forward over Pilgrim's ears and sobbed out loud.