Free Emma and the Cutting Horse by Martha Deeringer

stood patiently waiting for a
signal to move forward. Emma saw headlights coming up the lane and
heard her mom calling her from the back porch. Her dad was coming
home from work, and it was already dark.
    “You go!” Kyle told her. “I’ll put everything
away and feed and water the horses. Hurry, so they don’t get
worried!”
    When she was halfway to the house, she heard
Kyle calling. Turning for a moment, she could barely make out his
shape in the near dark.
    “Hey, Emma. Thanks!” he called after her.
    She was going in the back door before she
realized that he had called her Emma.
    * * *
    The next Saturday dawned clear with a bright
blue sky and southerly breeze that hinted of spring. Emma fed the
horses and then turned Camaro into the arena to play. She bucked
and slid in the soft sand, and then lay down and rolled from side
to side to scratch her back, getting up with a coating of sand and
mud that obscured the golden patches showing beneath her loose
winter coat. In spring, Camaro turned a rich dark gold, and her
black mane sprouted a row of white hairs that lay atop the black,
an unusual color pattern for a buckskin. Within a couple of months
the summer sun would bleach her gold coat to a much lighter
shade.
    “Color is a complicated thing in horses,” her
father had explained. Taffy, Camaro’s dam, was a dark, smutty
palomino whose rump shone with chocolate dapples in the early
spring. But Camaro’s sire was bay. From him she got her black mane
and tail.
    Emma got the shedding blade and a halter and
went into the arena with Camaro, who hurried over in search of
attention. How different, Emma thought, from Miss Dellfene’s
reaction when someone entered her space. Pale gold winter hair flew
by the fistful beneath the blade, finding its way into Emma’s eyes
and mouth and sticking to her black hoodie until she looked like
she’d grown a coat of hair herself. Camaro loved grooming. If Emma
stopped for a moment the mare stepped closer to remind her to start
again.
    When her right arm ached from wielding the
grooming tools, she snapped a lunge line onto the halter and led
Camaro to the center of the arena. Then she stepped back away from
her, positioning herself opposite the mare’s hindquarters and
flipped the end of the lunge line at her.
    “Get up!” she said, using her most
authoritative voice.
    Camaro turned her head and gazed at her with
questioning eyes. Emma flipped the line again and clicked her
tongue and Camaro took a few hesitant steps forward, but then
turned to face Emma. It occurred to Emma that teaching Camaro to
lunge might be a bigger challenge than she’d thought. The filly was
so gentle from years of handling, all she really wanted to do was
stand close to people and be petted. It took nearly an hour and
lots of patience on Emma’s part to get three or four full circles
accomplished going in each direction.
    * * *
    Kyle progressed quickly from saddling and
mounting to riding Rosie in slow circles in the arena. The first
time he loped her, his face broke out in a huge grin. He still
didn’t seem very relaxed, and sometimes he forgot to push his heels
down and put his weight of the balls of his feet, but Emma was sure
she was seeing progress. He rarely reached for the saddle horn
anymore as he had in the beginning.
    “You’ve got Kyle looking pretty good in the
saddle,” her father remarked one evening. “He has refused to accept
any money from me since you started the riding lessons.”
    “Well, that was the deal,” Emma said.
    * * *
    When school let out for Spring Break, Emma
began taking Kyle for rides in the pasture. They crossed the creek
and rode through the big oak trees around the spring in the far
back corner of the ranch. They talked about horses and school and
movies, but sometimes they just rode together in comfortable
silence.
    During one of these rides, Emma told Kyle
about Candi Haynes and the messages on the bathroom wall.
    “When I pass her or one of her