The Bones of Plenty. Lois Phillips Hudson
eye.
Then he was running, yelling.
“King! Kate! Whoa! Whoa! King you bastard, King!”
A shrieking mindless thousand pounds of horseflesh, his calm and sensible mare, wallowed in its harness, half buried in the earth.
Dragged down by the strap hooking them together, King pulled back into his collar and reared his front legs as high as he could lift them. Every time his great shoes came down, they struck away clods of frozen earth and the hole widened.
George unsnapped two hooks and the freed horse leapt away before there was time to turn loose the reins.
And here was the mare at his feet, rolling white-ringed eyes, bubbling foam through her gaping pink lips. If she didn’t already have a broken leg, she would in the next few minutes—if she didn’t die of fright first.
He squatted at the edge of the hole. The thawing and freezing of the last few days had buckled the top crust of earth covering an old, poorly filled well. His trips with the stoneboat over that spot had further weakened the ground. He could not even guess how deep the well was, but he knew there could be other gaps in the shaft. Another six-foot drop of the ground beneath her and Kate would be beyond all help.
She was head down, lying on her side, craning her neck up against the wall of the shaft, with her hindquarters twisted and jammed up above the rest of her body in such a way that none of her terrible struggles could possibly bring her to her feet.
“What on earth! What on earth happened?”
Rachel was running to him, with the fool dog bouncing and barking beside her.
“Why it’s an old well, of course!” he shouted. “Now go fetch King while I get some planks.”
George dragged some timbers up from the granary and slid them into the hole behind the mare. He hooked her traces and King’s into a heavy ring.
“Now lead him straight back,” he told Rachel, “and when I tell you, hit him a good one on the rump so’s he’ll start out fast.”
“How can I hit him on the rump if I’m up in front leading him?” Rachel said.
“Oh, Rachel! For God’s sake, haven’t you got any imagination at all?”
Rachel hauled on King’s bridle. The horse made her pull his head and stretch out his neck as far as it would go before he moved his feet. He laid his ears back and bugged out his eyes, trying to look around his blinders and see what George had hitched him up to.
When the slack was out of the traces, George yelled, “Get up, King! Back, Kate, back!”
The mare wrenched and hurled herself dangerously and uselessly. The traces pulled from the wrong angle. Then the ring broke and leather snakes whipped back around King’s legs.
“Hold him!” George cried. “For the love of Mike, what did you let him go for? My God!”
He sprinted after the horse. King did not stop till he reached the barnyard fence. George grabbed his bridle and ran up the hill with the gelding snorting and side-stepping behind him.
“Now hold him here!” He thrust the bit into Rachel’s hands. She bent a cold fist around the cold steel at the horse’s jaw. The gelding tossed his head roughly, yanking her arm up as far as she could reach. She had always been afraid of him.
“Oh, he’s just bluffing you!” George said. “He knows he can get away with it, and he’ll try it again. Now hang on to him!”
George ran to the porch and returned with a clanking pile of chain. He reached down into the hole and raised up Kate’s thick black tail. He tied the tail to the chain with a knot that took the whole length of the tail.
“Oh, George!” Rachel was appalled. “That will kill her!”
“Oh pshaw!” he yelled. “Women!”
George snapped the gelding’s traces into the chain. “Now make him pull!” he ordered. “Wallop him one!”
“Get up!” Rachel cried.
George let himself down into the hole, squatted with his legs braced wide apart, cupped his hand around the curve of the mare’s thigh, and shoved from his shoulder. Coupled with King’s pulling, the shove steered her leg on to the planks.
“Dammit!” he shouted. “Smack him one! Keep him going!”
Kate was lifted and righted enough to get her front legs under her. Then her hind feet were digging and sliding on the boards.
King leaned into his collar. George vaulted out of the well, grabbed the chain, and set himself as anchor man at the edge of the hole.
Between heaves he shouted, “Back up, Kate! Whoa back! That’s a girl!”
In a monstrous, sickening, leg-breaking scramble, the mare wrestled herself up out of the hole, nearly trampling George and causing King to plunge ahead in an access of released power. Rachel lost her hold on him again and stood, numb and shaking, waiting for George to tell her what to do.
But his concern now was for the mare. “Whoa back, Kate,” he said. “Back. That’s a girl. Back now, Kate.” His voice was low and gentle, and his hands held her bridle lightly and stroked her wet neck with compassion.
The horse trembled but she stood still, with her weight squarely on all four legs. It was hard to believe he had been so lucky. She might go lame, but no bones were fractured. Now if she just wouldn’t cast the foal.
“There, now, Kate,” he said. “There, now, old girl. That wasn’t so bad after all, was it? Not so bad as you and a lot of other people thought it was going to be, was it? You never even felt it, did you? You’re just lucky it was me that was around, you know that? Yes, sir, Kate. You’re just a lucky old nag, here. You’re going to be just as good as new once I turn loose your tail.”
He went back and disentangled the chain. Swatches of long black hairs were strung through the links. He pulled out a handful of hairs and held them up to Kate’s nose.
“See that?” he said to the horse, but loud enough for Rachel to hear. “Now, then, that wasn’t much of your tail to lose, was it? Some people around here thought I was going to pull the whole thing right off.” He rubbed her ears and ran his hands over her legs. “You’re not going to go and get a gimpy leg on me now, are you, Kate?”
Rachel said, “Do you need me for anything else?”
“No, you might as well go on back in. I guess I’ll throw this load of rocks into this damned hole here, after I unhitch.” He led the horses down to the barn.
She walked back to the house. The baby was fussing in the other room, but Rachel did not go in to her. She sat down on the kitchen stool and leaned her elbows on her thighs so she could hold up her head with her hands. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again the odd dots kept on falling through the blankness for a moment and then her vision returned. She got up and washed her hands in water she dipped from the bucket on the washstand into the mottled blue graniteware basin. She dried them on a terrycloth towel as thin and bare and flat as flour sacking.
What if they had lost Kate? She didn’t see how they could ever have bought another. Without a four-horse team George would never get the wheat in. She couldn’t stop thinking about how bad it could have been.
George had apparently recovered by the time he came in for another drink of water. “You know,” he said, “a lot of men that don’t treat their horses right never could have done that. Their horses wouldn’t have trusted them enough. I know some men that would have lost that horse. They would’ve just had to shoot her, probably, if they couldn’t get her out before she broke a leg. You’ve got to know how to handle a horse, and you’ve got to really like them.”
He