The Hex Witch of Seldom by Nancy Springer Page B

confusion and working together again, she knew several things very clearly. She knew gut-deep that Shane must not be castrated, and therefore she knew that she could not take him back to Pap. Her grandfather had no more give in him than a rock, experience told her. Shane had to get away. If someone took him back to Pap again, he would be gelded, sure as a dog gets fleas.
    Her grandpap had told her not to come back without the horse. Well, then, she wouldn’t come back.
    Cleanly, calmly, as she ran, her mind started working on her own survival. She would need food. She would need a means of traveling, and she would need someplace to go.
    First, though, there was one last matter to be attended to, if Shane was to get away for good. She had to find the black horse and speak to him once more, just the once, asking him to let her take the halter and lead rope off him. There had been no time, back in the barn. But the dangling lead would make Shane vulnerable to anyone who got near him. What was worse, the lead and halter could catch in the trees or rocks of the rough mountain terrain. Shane could starve to death.
    She wouldn’t let the thought panic her, not yet. But it had sent her running for all she was worth up the lane, upmountain, because Shane had gone that way.
    The lane rounded a curve, and the shanty where Travis Dodd lived with his parents came into view. Bobbi slowed to a jog. The horse might still be within earshot. “Shane!” she shouted to the woods. “Shane!”
    She stopped in front of the shanty, scanning the encircling woods, listening. Nothing happened except that Travis appeared at the shanty door in his ragged pajamas, looking surprised. Bobbi jumped back from him like a spooking colt. She had forgotten he would be home, sick, while both his parents worked. But there was no time to spare thought for Travis.
    â€œHave you seen Shane?” she demanded.
    Travis looked puzzled for a moment, until he tore his mind off Bobbi’s presence and remembered who Shane was. “The black horse?” His face lighted up. “I thought I heard something! Must have been him. Went by here a minute ago.”
    â€œShane!” Bobbi called to the woods. “Come here, please!”
    â€œHe get loose?” Travis asked. It was not the first time he had asked Bobbi a stupid question, though he didn’t seem to have that problem with other people. He flushed, but, preoccupied, Bobbi did not notice.
    â€œI set him free,” she said softly, still watching the woods. Then, before Travis could gawk, she wheeled on him. “Travis, get me something to eat, please. Quick.”
    Startled, he didn’t move for a moment.
    â€œAn apple, a couple slices of bread,” Bobbi expanded impatiently. “Hurry up. I gotta catch him before he gets too far away.”
    Travis opened the refrigerator—it stood beside him on the shanty porch—and handed her his school lunch, packed the night before just in case he felt well enough to go. “Thanks,” Bobbi told him. She ran on, and he watched after her as she disappeared into hemlock and mountain laurel. He thought the sandwiches were for the day, until she went home at nightfall. But she knew that this was her food for the foreseeable future, and Lord and the black horse only knew where darkness would find her.
    She was a hunter. She knew how to look for sign. Skirting the Dodd clearing, she found the place where Shane had entered the forest, displacing the dead leaves and pine duff on the ground with his hooves. A horse leaves a plain trail in the woods, especially in the soft, moist ground of springtime. Bobbi followed as fast as she could, through grapevine tangles, down damp ravines where the hoofprints showed plainly, along the mountainside on slopes so steep that her feet slithered and she supported herself with her hands. From time to time she thought she heard a crashing noise in the brush ahead. But when she stopped