Winter Run by Robert Ashcom Page B

shot. Charlie was beside himself with excitement.
    “Get off, Daddy. Get off so I can ride.” This evenbefore Mr. Lewis had recovered from almost being ditched. Then he was down and Charlie was up, pulling at the stirrup leathers to make them a couple of feet shorter. But it didn’t work. There weren’t enough holes. Charlie tensed all over and looked up with something like panic in his eyes. Matthew said later that he had never seen a kid tie himself in such knots over a pony.
    “Now what, Matthew? They won’t work. There aren’t enough holes.” Charlie, of course, turned to Matthew in this time of emergency.
    “Come on, Charlie, there’s a harness punch up to the shop at the big house. I’ll punch the holes.”
    A little later the two of them were at the top of the hill in front of the garage, Matthew with the punch and the leathers pulled out, intent on the task, and Charlie looking down at Matthew’s hands, his eyes locked onto the leather and the old rusty punch, with the slanting October light coming over his shoulder, illuminating the pony’s head as she dozed on her feet, ears relaxed, uninterested.
    When the stirrups were the right length, Charlie pushed his feet into them and stood up, holding on to the pony’s mane and looking around as if he were seeing the familiar scene for the first time, smiling as the yellow light fell across his pale features. When he sat back into the saddle, he looked from Matthew’s smile to the ends of the stirrup leathers, which were so long they fell beneath the pony’s belly.
    “Cut them off, Matthew. They look dumb hangingdown like that. Cut them off.”
    “Now Charlie,” he said, “one of these days you going to grow up and need those leathers long.” Here he paused and said, no longer smiling, “Surely you’ll need these here leathers. Don’t you dare cut them off. Here’s how to fold them up into the keeper straps …”
    That evening after he had taken his first ride and put the pony away in the barn to eat an ear of corn, Charlie hurried up the hill to the big house, looking for Matthew.
    “Why, Charlie, what you limping about? What happened?”
    The boy was livid. “That damn pony kicked me! That’s what.”
    Matthew said it was the first time he’d ever seen Charlie angry like that. And certainly it was the first time he’d heard him use bad language. Matthew smiled as he told the story to Fred Henry that evening in the store.
    “Fred, that boy was mad. He was so fussed it took a while to get the story out of him. What happened was he led the pony into the barn and tied her next to the manger and went to get her an ear of corn. I reckon he felt like he needed to feed her something after the ride. He thought it would be a nice thing to do. So over to the barrel he goes and pulls out an ear and starts back to her. Now of course that pony ain’t used to eating grain, so she gets all excited and puts her ears back and starts switching her tail. Charliedon’t know no better, so he walks behind her to get to the manger. And, whap, she kicks him right in the knee and knocks him down. Hit his funny bone. That boy flew hot! He jumps up and turns around to her and raises his hand. He’s still standing right behind her, mind you. Well, she slaps her ears down again and cocks a leg. By this time Charlie has figured out that this pony ain’t no workhorse. And not only that, she got a mind all her own and won’t put up with any foolishness from nobody. He still has a mind to take a poke at her with a broom handle. But after what he seen Clarence do to that mare last summer, he ain’t going to be mean to no horse no matter what. So he’s stuck. He thinks it ain’t fair. That pony didn’t have no cause to kick him, seeing as how he was being kind, not mean. ‘So why did she do it?’ he asks. Well, what’s to say? That she’s just a pony mare and that’s the way she is? Anyway, that’s what I told him. One thing for sure, though, that boy ain’t