Excerpt
…empty stall next to Flicka but it was not there now. Maybe Ben had
used it on his harness – although it stretched her imagination to
think so – and put it in what she would have called the tack room
back home in Ontario. She didn’t know what Ben called the little
room at the end of the horse stable. He kept the door closed and
Sarah never had any reason to open it.
As she pushed it open now she could see immediately that the
room was nothing more than a catch-all or, more accurately, a
place to store junk. Sagging shelves were littered with old veterinary
medicine jars, cans and tins of every description. Old pieces
of harness dangled from rusty nails, coils of rusted barbed wire lay
here and there amongst battered household pots, buckets, broken
milk stools and crooked wheel rims. Over all hung a veil of thick,
dust-laden cobwebs.
Sarah shuddered. She would make her search quickly and get
out. She rummaged amongst the cans on the shelves, pushing aside
an old piece of tarpaulin and a few greasy rags. A dark cloud of dust
rose each time she touched anything. But one shelf looked cleaner,
as though its contents had been more recently placed there, and
here she thought she may find the saddle cream.
Surprised to see a tidy, but dusty, horse blanket covering something
behind the collection of junk on the shelf, she lifted it to see
what it concealed. And she gasped. There, amongst all the rubbish,
was a brand new western saddle.
Automatically she reached out to touch the shiny brown leather.
She ran her hand caressingly over the pommel and seat, and when
her fingers reached the back of the cantle they stopped at something
which felt like a raised plaque. Bending to get a closer look,
she saw that it was indeed a bronze plaque, engraved with the letters
S. Fielding.
Sarah stared at it until Flicka’s impatient neigh recalled her to the
present. Carefully, she covered her find with the blanket, replaced
the tins and bottles in front of it and went out, closing the door
behind her.
“Oh, Flicka,” she murmured, putting her arms around the mare’s
neck, “we’re going to be riding in style from now on, girl.”
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