Nicholas Evans: The Horse Whisperer

She was cowering at the back wall, trapped by a turmoil of shrieking mares. There were seven or eight of them and some colts and foals too, all running in circles and scaring each other more at every turn. Their clamor echoed back at them from the walls, only to redouble their fear. And the more they ran, the more dust they churned and the blindness only made them panic more. At the center, rearing and screaming and striking at each other with their hooves, were Pilgrim and the white stallion Tom had seen that day with Annie.

'Jesus Christ.' Frank had arrived alongside. His horse balked at the sight and he had to rein him hard and circle back beside Tom. Rimrock was troubled but stood his ground. Grace hadn't seen them. Tom got down and handed Rimrock's reins to Frank.

'Stay here in case I need you, but you're gonna have to make way pretty quick when they come,' he said. Frank nodded.

Tom walked to his left with his back to the wall, never taking his eyes off the horses. They swirled in front of him like a crazed carousel. He could feel the bite of the dust in his throat. It was clouding so thick that beyond the mares Pilgrim was only a dark blur against the rearing white shape of the stallion.

Grace was now no more than twenty yards away. At last she saw him. Her face was very pale.

'You hurt?' he yelled.

Grace shook her head and tried to call back to him that she was okay. But her voice was too frail to carry through the din and the dust. She'd bruised her shoulder and twisted her ankle when she fell but that was all. All that paralyzed her was fear -and fear more for Pilgrim than herself. She could see the bared pink of the stallion's gums above his teeth as he hacked away at Pilgrim's neck, where already there was the black glint of blood. Worst of all was the sound of their screams, a sound she'd heard only once before, on a snowy, sunlit morning in another place.

She saw Tom now take off his hat and step out among the circling mares, waving it high in front of them. They skidded and shied away from him, colliding with those behind them. Now they'd all turned and he moved in quickly behind them, driving them before him, away from Pilgrim and the stallion.

One tried to break away to the right but Tom dodged and headed it off. Through the dust cloud Grace could see another man, Frank maybe, moving two horses clear of the gap. The mares, with the colts and foals at their tails, bolted past and made good their escape.

Now Tom turned and worked his way around the wall again, giving space to the fighting horses, Grace supposed, so as not to drive them nearer to her. He stopped more or less where he'd been before and again called out.

'Stay right there, Grace. You'll be okay.'

Then, without any sign of fear, he walked toward the fight. Grace could see his lips moving but couldn't hear what he said over the horses' screams. Perhaps he was speaking to himself or maybe not at all.

He didn't stop until he was right up to them and only then did they seem to register his presence. She saw him reach for Pilgrim's reins and take hold of them. Firmly, but without any violent jerking of his hand, he drew the horse down off his hind legs and turned him from the stallion. Then he slapped him hard on his rump and sent him away.

Thus thwarted, the stallion turned his wrath on Tom.

The picture of what followed would stay with Grace till the day she died. And never would she know for sure what happened. The horse wheeled in a tight circle, tossing his head and kicking up a spray of dust and rock shards with his hooves. With the other horses gone, his snorting fury had dominion of the air and seemed to grow with each resounding echo from the walls. For a moment he appeared not to know what to make of the man who stood undaunted before him.

What was certain was that Tom could have walked away. Two or three paces would have taken him out of the stallion's reach and clear of all danger. The horse, so Grace believed, would simply have let him be and gone where the others had led. Instead, Tom stepped toward him.

The moment he moved, as he must have foreseen, the stallion reared up before him and screamed. And even now, Tom could have stepped aside. She had seen Pilgrim rear before him once and noted how deftly Tom could move to save himself. He knew where a horse's feet would fall, which muscle it would move and why, before it even knew itself. Yet on this day, he neither dodged nor ducked nor even flinched and, once more, stepped in closer.

The settling dust was still too thick for Grace to be sure, but she thought she now saw Tom open his arms a little and, in a gesture so minimal that she may have imagined it, show the horse the palms of his hands. It was as though he were offering something and perhaps it was only what he'd always offered, the gift of kinship and peace. But although she would never from this day forth utter the thought to anyone, Grace had a sudden, vivid impression that it was otherwise and that Tom, quite without fear or despair, was somehow this time offering himself.

Then, with a terrible sound, sufficient alone to ratify the passing of his life, the hooves came down upon his head and struck him like a crumbled icon to the ground.

The stallion reared again but not so high and only now to find some safer surface for his feet than the man's body. He seemed for a moment fazed by such prompt capitulation and pawed the dust uncertainly around Tom's head. Then, tossing his mane, he cried out one last time, then swerved toward the gap and was gone.

Spring came late to Chatham the following year. One night, in the closing days of April, there fell a full foot of snow. It was of that heavy, languid kind and gone within the day, but Annie feared it might have withered the buds already forming on Robert's six small cherry trees. When however in May the world at last warmed, they seemed to reassert themselves and the blossom when it came was full and unblemished.

Now the show was past its best, the pink of the petals faded and delicately edged in brown. With each stir of the breeze another flurry would dislodge, littering the grass in wide circumference. Those that fell unbidden were mostly lost among the longer grass that grew around the roots. Some few however found a final brief reprieve on the white gauze netting of a cradle which, since the weather had grown mild, stood daily in the dappled shade.

The cradle was old and made of woven wicker. It had been handed down by an aunt of Robert's when Grace was born and prior to her had sheltered the cranial formation of several more or less distinguished lawyers. The netting, across which Annie's shadow now loomed, was new. She had noticed how the child liked to watch the petals settle on it and she left those already there untouched. She looked in and saw he was sleeping.

It was too early to tell whose looks he had. His skin was fair and his hair a light brown, though in the sun it seemed to have a reddish tinge that was surely Annie's. From the day of his birth, now almost three months past, his eyes were never anything but blue.

Annie's doctor had told her she should sue. The coil had only been in four years, a year less than its recommended life. When he examined it, the copper was worn right through. The manufacturers would be sure to settle, he said, for fear of bad publicity. Annie had simply laughed and the sensation was so alien it had shocked her. No, she said, she didn't want to sue and neither, despite poor precedent and all his eloquent listing of the risks, did she want a termination.

Were it not for the steady configuration in her womb Annie doubted whether any of them, she or Robert or Grace, would have survived. It could, or should perhaps, have made things worse, become a bitter focus for their several sorrows. Instead, after the shock of its discovery, her pregnancy had, by slow degree, brought healing and a kind of clarifying calm.