Ryan Henderson - Writing Exercise #2

The boy ran down the mountain path after the horse. Limbs snagged at his clothes as he darted through the trees after the disappearing animal. He jumped through a tangle of brush in time to see branches across the clearing shaking where the animal had passed through them. He slowed to a stop while he tried to catch his breath. He stood panting in the clearing with his hands on his knees, golden morning sun melting down on him and the sweat soaking through his shirt. Dark pine sap stained his hands where he had braced against passing trees while he was sprinting down steeper stretches of the hill. His father had warned him about taking the new horse into the woods. He kicked the occasional fallen limb out of his way while he walked. He wracked his brain for reasons why the horse would have bolted. But he could not come up with anything less embarrassing than what had happened. For a little while it seemed like a good idea to say a cougar had spooked the horse. But there would be too many questions about size and weight he knew he would eventually confuse his story. His father always knew if there was a lion in the area, so his story about one grew less and less likely as he got closer and closer to home. He stopped at the back end of the meadow to give himself more time to think. The sunshine, which had been a blessing in the crisp morning air, was beginning to redden the skin on the back of his neck not shaded by his hat. The sweat on his back pricked where it rubbed against his shirt and he sat down in the shade of a pine tree. He tried to imagine where the horse could have gone. If it had been one of the regular ranch horses he wouldnt have worried about it. They eventually find their way back to the barn. But the new horse had only been on the ranch for a couple of days. He didnt trust it to come back on its own. He shucked his boots and ran his feet through the new grass still green and new and soft, not like the way it would be in late summer when it grew dry and coarse. Grabbing his boots, he walked barefoot towards the pond marking the edge of the meadow. And he enjoyed the coolness beneath his feet as he waded into the murky water. A few yearling steers eyed him curiously from across the pond. Ragged, scruffy beasts just beginning to recover from the leanness of the winter, they were as excited about the new season as he was. He watched as they began nosing one another. One larger one pushing the others closer to the water like his brothers would when they went out walking after church. The shoving escalated into butting and kicking before the steers took off running across the meadow with their tales flying like banners. The same thing usually happened with his brothers until either he or Jonas ended up in the pond while Jonathan scampered back towards the house. Mud squelched under his feet as he walked back and forth around the edge of the pond, looking for tadpoles. His father told him they were too high for tadpoles. But he kept looking all the same. He wondered if the horse had circled the mountain and followed the road to the winter camp. Little more than an abandoned clearing in the summer, it didnt seem likely. But the thought of walking home and facing his father was less appealing than the walk around the mountain. He began wading towards shore. The black mud around the pond, mostly manure, caked his feet and he used some dried cattails to scrape as much of it off as he could before putting on his boots. It was the first time he had visited the winter camp by himself. The empty coral, usually full of horses, and the cabin, boarded-up and chimney devoid of smoke, didnt fit the picture he conjured as he walked the side road from the meadow to the camp. Even the air seemed deserted despite occasional magpies squawking in the trees. The emptiness of the place bothered him. He chided himself for believing the horse would find the camp. He wondered if the horse had been there before or if there had been someone working there, if the animal might have then found his way by chance. But without anything living there it suddenly didnt seem like he would find the horse. The boy sat on the porch steps and looked around the clearing. As he sat listening to the wind and the birds whispering through the trees a man appeared out of the woods across from him. The man wore a shirt caked with mud and gore and carried his arm in a sling fashioned from the remains of one of the shirt’s sleeves. A large pistol was shoved in the waistband of the man’s pants. The man fingered the handle of the gun with the hand hanging from the sleeve and the boy wondered just how injured the man was. His pants were beyond repair and it looked like he had simply begun tying whole pieces of cloth over his legs as patches. His scarecrow legs ended in an enormous pair of roughshod boots worn down at the heels and in need of restitching. The gun and a pair of worn spurs dangling from the decrepit boots looked like the only things of value the man carried. The man stopped at the edge of the trees and watched the boy. He rubbed his bristly chin with the hand not in the sling. The middle three fingers were missing, leaving only a hard yellow thumb and a flushed little finger that cocked out awkwardly like it was broken. The boy wondered if the man could even hold the gun because its handle pointed towards the hand with the missing fingers. He sat on his step and used his penknife to dig the caked mud out of the seams of his boot. —Do you live here? He had been waiting for the man to speak, but his voice still surprised him. It was sweet, soothing. He thought it was the type of voice you might hear on the radio. —This is just the winter camp. Nobody lives here.