Pony: Parts Five–Six

Sometimes we’d be riding, and it felt like we were seeing the same trees, the same groves, the same small knolls full of bloodroot and chickweed, over and over again.

I jumped down from Pony and started plucking fiddleheads while Marshal Farmer got on his haunches to examine the trail, which had become a bit vague in the brush here.

Really, he was such a cantankerous old man, I could hardly stand it at times.

“Basically, they wash old banknotes clean of ink, and then print them with higher denominations that look real enough to pass for genuine money.”

I could not keep from exulting. “Then my theory makes sense! Pa uses chemicals to print pictures on paper, Marshal Farmer, whereby the image doesn’t just rest on the surface, like it does with albumen prints, but is dyed into the paper fiber itself. He took out a patent on it and everything.”

“That’s a deal!” I answered, feeling good that I had gotten him to be amiable.

I jumped down excitedly and ran over to the base of a tree where two little songbird eggs lay unbroken on some bracken.

“Lucky?” he hissed, and suddenly all the mirth in his voice was gone. “You’re out here in the middle of nowhere, chasing a band of outlaws. How’s that lucky?”

I hated myself for having prattled on about any of that.

Again I shrugged, trying to feign indifference.

As I peeled the egg, I could feel the marshal’s eyes glowering at me.

As he was saying this, I bit into the top of the peeled egg. Then I immediately spat it out, stifling the urge to throw up.

“And I don’t care one iota whether you believe me or not,” I continued.

Marshal Farmer, in his inimitable way, had sparked little fires inside my head a hundred times hotter than the campfire at my back.

And there’s no rhyme or reason to the little he does know. The rules of chess. A dislike of pears. His disdain for shoes.

Nor was he the only ghost I’d ever seen. There were always others, at the edges of my vision. Fleeting shadows in Boneville. Figures lurking behind trees.

And while some people, like my mama, might know exactly where they’re going, other people might not. Maybe they meander a little, not sure where they’re headed, or feel a bit lost.

I have made my peace with all the laws of physics that are broken, and the unnatural biologies at play, and the inconsistent proofs of Mittenwool’s existence. I have made my peace with the delicate logic of his Being and all its fragile manifestations.

I was tired and testy, for lack of sleep.

Merely watching the marshal pacing to and fro on the precipice made my very spine twitch and my knees go wobbly.

He scooted himself to the very edge, then lay prone, so that his head was completely dangling over the side of the cliff.

With my hands clutching the edge of the cliff, I lay shoulder to shoulder with him, our heads hanging over the chasm below.

Here the rock was much steeper, so to be able to lean our heads over the side of the cliff required more upward pulling than my arms could muster.

But from this vantage point, at the juncture directly opposite the cliff wall, I could see what I had not been able to see before.

Between the two overlooks was nothing but a straight drop to the frothy creek below.

“I got my bearings now,” he said, gazing down into the chasm. “This here is called the Hollow. And those woodlands across from us, that’s Hollow Forest on a map. Straight up the mountain is Rosasharon, not more than a two-hour ride that way.”

It stirred me to see that dour horse take off so, like she was flying.

The cascade of noises echoed through the ravine. The clang of horseshoes on stone. The braying, like a long, shrill cry.

Pa had a series of books that I loved to peruse at night called A History of the Earth, and Animated Nature.

All along, Pony had seemed familiar to me. His profile. The arch of his neck. The high carriage of his tail. It was there in the book, in those drawings of his desert forebears.

Pegasus himself could not have done a better job leaping over that chasm, with me astride, gliding through the air with graceful majesty.

I must have looked like a vagabond to them, riding down the main street in my mud-caked clothes.

Marshal Farmer is hurt. His body’s all mangled.

It had circled around me like floodwaters, and I was afraid I would be carried away by the torrent and swept out to sea.

After I was done, Sheriff Chalfont didn’t say anything, but let my words gestate in his mind.

“Well, ain’t that a load of bunkum right there,” he scoffed, chewing noisily. “Come on, sonny boy. You must have more fables than that to tell us.”

How many times do I have to be rapped on my knuckles to learn that most adults don’t give a whit what children have to say?

Sheriff Chalfont was on a big white mare, majestic as a painting, and Deputy Beautyman rode a muscular dun he called Petunia.

“I mean, he’s a tough old codger.”

“I can take you there, Sheriff,” I continued fervently.