Wild Horses (Sadie's Montana #1)(2)

The Bible said that if you had faith as small as a grain of mustard seed, you could move a mountain, which, as far as Sadie could tell, no one had ever done. Surely if someone had done it in the past, they would have written about it and stashed it away as very significant history.

But that mustard seed verse is why she decided that it was worth a try. Dat’s big, brown horse had no company in the barn except a few rabbits and the cackling hens. He had always said horses do better when there are two or three together in one barn.

Her opening argument came when Dat asked her to help move the rabbit hutch to the other end of the barn beside the chicken coop. She tugged and lifted mightily, pulling her share, glad she had a good, strong back and arms.

“There,” Dat said, “that’s better. More room for Charlie to get his drink.”

Sadie lifted her big, blue eyes to her father’s which were a mirror of her own.

“Dat?”

He was already lifting bales of hay, making room for the straw he had ordered.

“Hmm?”

“Dat? Eva got a new white pony. Well, it’s a horse, actually. A small one. She can ride well. Bareback, too. She doesn’t like saddles.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Does Charlie like it here by himself?”

There was no answer. Dat had moved too far away, hanging up the strings that held the bales of hay together.

Sadie waited. She arranged her dichly, smoothed her blue-green apron across her stomach, scuffed the hay with the toe of her black sneaker, and wished with all her heart her dat would like horses.

When he returned, she started again.

“Dat? If someone gave me a horse to train, would you allow it?”

Dat looked at her a bit sharply.

“You can’t ride. You never had a horse. And I’m not feeding two horses. No.”

“I’ll pay for the feed.”

“No.”

Sadie walked away, hot tears stinging her long, dark lashes. Just plain no. Flat out no. He could have at least tried to be kind about it. Every crevice in her cliff disappeared, and the mountain became higher, darker, and more dangerous than ever. There was no getting around it or over it anymore. There was no use. Dat said no.

Sadie knew that a basic Amish rule of child-rearing was being taught to give up your own will at a young age. Even when they prayed, they were taught to say, “Not my will, but Thine be done.”

She knew very well that both Mam and Dat thought that was the solid base, the foundation of producing good, productive adults, but why did it always need to be so hard? She wanted a horse. And now Eva had one.

But the good thing about Eva having a horse was that Sadie learned to ride, and ride well. The girls roamed the fields and woods of the rural Ohio countryside, sharing the small white horse named Spirit. They wore their dresses, which were a hassle, but there was no other way. They would never be allowed to ride in English clothes, although they each wore a pair of trousers beneath their dresses. It was just not ladylike to have their skirts flapping about when they galloped across the fields. Even so, their mothers, who were sisters, frowned on these Amish girls doing all that horse-back riding.

Then, when Sadie had given up and the cliff had faded a bit, church services were held at Uncle Emanuel’s house. Only Dat and Mam had gone because it was a long way to their house in another district.

Dat and Emanuel had walked to the pasture. Dat looked at this long-haired, diseased, wreck-of-a-horse, and he thought of Sadie. It might be a good thing.

He didn’t tell Sadie until the morning before the horse arrived. Sadie was so excited, she couldn’t eat a thing all day, except to nibble on the crust of a grilled cheese sandwich at lunch. That’s why her stomach hurt so badly when Paris arrived.

She had often told Eva that if she ever owned a horse of her own, she would name it Paris, because Paris was a faraway, fancy city that meant love. Paris was a place of dreams for an Amish girl. She knew she could never go there because Amish people don’t fly in big airplanes, and they don’t cross the ocean in big ships because they’d have to have their pictures taken. So they were pretty much stuck in the United States. She guessed when they came over from Germany in the 1700s, they didn’t need their pictures taken. That, or else cameras had not been invented yet.

So Paris was a place of dreams. And Paris, once Sadie’s dream, had now become her horse.

The truck driver grinned around his wad of snuff.

“Havin’ problems, are you?”

“Hey, this thing means business!” Emanuel shouted, tucking his shirttail into his denim broadfall pants.

Sadie stepped forward.

“Can I look at her?” she asked timidly.

“You can look, but you better stay out of the trailer.”

Sadie moved swiftly up the ramp, only to be met by a bony rear end and a tangled, dirty tail swishing about menacingly.

Uh-oh, she thought.

A tail swishing back and forth without any pesky flies hovering about meant the horse was most definitely unhappy. It was the same signal as ears flattened against a head, or teeth bared, so Sadie stood quietly and said, “Hello, Paris.”

The bony hips sidled against the trailer’s side, and the tangled tail swished back and forth furiously.

Sadie peeked around the steel side of the trailer. Paris looked back, glaring at her through a long, unkempt forelock stuck with burrs, bits of twigs, and dirt.