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Fuck, it was cold out here.
“Come on, baby. You’re safe now. I’ve got a warm blanket for you, and some good hay in the trailer. All the apples you can eat. When we get you home, you’ll have friends, and so much good shit. And I’ll sing sappy songs the whole way. Come on, baby. Come on. It’s okay.”
He nodded his head and nickered softly but didn’t come closer. Thinking—hoping—she knew what he wanted, Phoebe took a risk and tossed the apple slice, aiming for the ground halfway between them.
The horse flinched at the toss, but he didn’t run. He hurried to the apple and snarfed it up. Then he looked at her again and did the same thing, nodding and nickering. She took another slice from the baggie and tossed it between them again.
In that way, she got Smoky to come almost within reach.
“Well, hi, baby. Here.” Again she set a slice on her palm and held it out. He stretched his neck and pooched out his lips, trying to reach it without moving closer. When he couldn’t quite make it, he did the nod-and-nicker thing again, but this time she shook her head.
“Not this time. Now you’re gonna have to trust me. Come on. You’re okay.”
They stood at an impasse for a few more minutes. Twilight was starting to fade away. Pretty soon she was going to be doing this in the pitch dark of an overcast country night.
“Come on, sweetheart. I know you can be brave. Look how much you’ve survived already.”
After one more attempt at stretching enough to reach, Smoky took the last steps and snuffled the apple from her palm.
“Good boy! Good boy!” She snagged another slice and held it out. He shied a little from the sound of the baggie, but he didn’t bolt or charge. As he took the apple, Phoebe carefully set her other hand on his nose. He shied, tossing his head out of her reach, but he didn’t step away.
By the time the baggie was empty, Smoky was all up in her business, looking for more, nibbling at her gloves, her pockets, her hat—and Phoebe was stroking his nose to her heart’s content.
God, he was so skinny. She couldn’t believe he was still on his feet, much less energetic enough to be suspicious of her. Fiery hatred for the people on the other side of the pasture filled her to the brim.
“Okay, Smoky, my love,” she cooed as she eased her pack from her back and set it on the frozen ground. The horse immediately went to snuffle and paw at it. “Yes, there’s more to eat in there. I’ve got carrots, too, but for those, you need to let me halter you. Okay?”
Keeping an eye on his reaction, she eased open the zipper of the largest compartment. Smoky shied a bit at the sound of the zip, but when he saw the opening, he tried to shove his snout in right away. All of this was immensely promising.
“No carrots there.” Phoebe eased his nose back and slowly pulled out the halter, lead already clipped on. “Those awful people tell me you can’t abide a halter or bridle. Is that true?”
Horses became head-shy for two reasons: pain or fear. Actually, those were the same reason: pain made fear. One way or another, a head-shy horse had come into contact with at least one terrible person.
Laying the halter over her hands, she let Smoky investigate. The halter itself didn’t faze him, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was that bit of woven nylon going up near his eyes.
Working in all but complete darkness now became a help. Though horses had good night vision, it was still less keen than their day vision, and that gave Phoebe a little bit of room to work around his fear, especially since she’d taken the time to gain some trust.
Hanging the halter and lead over her shoulder so Smoky could still investigate it, she pulled out the feedbag she’d modified for just this purpose.
At the bottom of the bag was about two cups of sweet feed. Smoky caught scent of that and just about knocked her over trying to get to it. Laughing, Phoebe held the bag open, and the horse plunged his head in. While he snacked on oats, corn, and molasses, she eased the bag up his nose, over his eyes—she’d covered the bug screens with opaque nylon—and over his ears with minimal resistance.
Horses were prey animals with sharp eyesight, a big blind spot right in front of their face, and very few defensive moves. Flight was their primary defense, so they were afraid of a whole lot. In the horse world, jokes were legion about all the things, real and imaginary, that could send a horse flying off in abject terror and often taking their person on a wild ride. You could train a horse to get used to a lot of visual and aural commotion, which is how they became mounts for herding, police, search and rescue, or the military, but that training was intense, and the horses were carefully chosen for it. Most horses could at least habituate to their living conditions and the people they lived with, and a horse raised with kids was usually a lot more tolerant of fuss, so long as it was fuss that happened regularly. But in general, horses were giant scaredy-cats and absolutely despised change.
However, they were not great thinkers. If you covered their eyes, and weird noises weren’t happening, they generally forgot there was something scary around and calmed at once.
With the hooded feedbag on, Smoky barely noticed the halter going on over it. Now Phoebe wished she’d brought the blanket out here, so she could have gotten that on easily as well. But it wouldn’t have fit in her pack.
When the feedbag was empty, the horse got restless, trying to find a way to get more. His eyes were still covered, so she had no trouble getting the bag off, and Smoky immediately began searching her for more goodies. He sniffed out the carrots in her pocket, and snatched them from her hand before she could get them all the way out.
“Easy, baby,” she chuckled. “You gotta start slow after going without so long. Don’t want to make yourself sick.”
Overfeeding a horse meant more than a night moaning on the couch with their jeans unzipped. Horses couldn’t vomit; they had a specialized, one-way digestive system. If their stomach rejected what went down, it was pretty much their stomach itself that came up—and that was fatal. Thus, refeeding a starved horse was a delicate process. Phoebe had to balance the needs of rescuing Smoky with the needs of returning him to health.
Now, though, she had a haltered animal who had decided she was an angel sent from above. So she gave him the rest of the carrots, put her lightened pack on her back, loosely looped the rope lead in her hand, and led him leisurely across the dark pasture, watching each step so she didn’t fold an ankle on the hoof-heaved earth.
When they got to the gate, Ricky and his wife were gone. Lights in the house were on, and she saw the wife at the kitchen window. They’d walked away and left her to her own devices.
Good. She had the surrender paperwork signed and folded up in the pack, so she didn’t need them anymore, anyway. It would have been nice to have another pair of hands in case Smoky balked at the trailer, but she thought they’d become friends enough she could manage to convince him.
