Read Online Girl and Five Brave Horses, A by Sonora Carver - Free Book Online

“Just be patient. I’ll be there.”
    The other types of dives horses made were the medium plunge, in which equal pressure is exerted with all four feet, a very graceful dive to witness; and the nose dive, which occurs when the horse exerts the greatest pressure with his hind feet. This last dive is not only very beautiful but also the most spectacular and by far the most difficult to ride.
    In all three dives the horse enters the water head down and forelegs extended, but in the nose dive the horse enters the water with his whole body in an absolutely vertical position, while in the other two styles the body goes in at an angle. The extreme plunge was by far the easiest to ride, which was the reason I had learned on Klatawah.
    There was more to Klatawah, however, than mere showmanship. He was utterly dependable and, aside from a real intelligence, had an endearing sense of duty. He first demonstrated this to me one day shortly after I had started diving from the high platform.
    It was discovered just before performance time that the ground near the front of the tank had mired. When the workmen were preparing it they had scooped too much soil away from the incline and then back-filled with soft dirt to make up for their mistake. After a few days the slow seepage of water through the tarpaulin had turned the incline into a quagmire. Since this made it difficult for the horse to climb out, especially when burdened with a rider, Dr. Carver told me to dismount once we were in the water and let Klatawah swim out alone.
    Ordinarily I would never have dismounted, since the mark of an expert rider is the one who stays with her horse, but that night as Klatawah surfaced I immediately let go and slipped off his back. When he started swimming he realized I was not on his back and turned and circled the tank, looking for me. He swam up beside me and gave me a look that clearly said, “You poor thing. Fell off, did you? Well, get back on. We’ve got to do this thing right, you know.”
    When I still did not mount but continued to do my own swimming he gave me another look which seemed to say, “Well, if that’s the way you feel about it,” and headed for the incline.
    It would have been a different story with Judas. Judas, the horse I rode alternately with Klatawah, was, to put it bluntly, a horse of a different color. Had I slipped off his back while in the tank it is likely he would have gone off and let me drown. Not that he was malicious; he simply didn’t care. For Judas it was every man for himself.
    He was a white horse with roan ears and roan spots on his body. He had been given his name by a performer who was riding him on the practice lot one day when he threw her off over his head. “That horse is a Judas!” she had said, and Dr. Carver, overhearing, had seized on the name. He said that since he had one biblical character in the troupe—John the Baptist—he might as well have another.
    Judas’ personality contained more complex qualities than this streak of unreliability. Like many horses, he had an abundance of curiosity, and his was not only unusually strong but of a peculiar quality. It was the impersonal curiosity of a bystander, so completely cold-blooded that I had the feeling he would have stood by and watched any crime without turning a hair. Furthermore, his curiosity was so compelling that in his stall he never stood to eat his hay but after getting a mouthful would walk to the door and hang his head out. A lot of hay usually fell out of his mouth, and frequently as much as a third of his meal would end up outside on the ground, but Judas’ philosophy seemed to be that he would rather satisfy his curiosity than his stomach. Later I became convinced that this animal was also capable of chagrin.
    One day when he and Klatawah were out grazing in the pasture adjoining the tower I saw George going out to bring them back to the barn. It must have been a day when Judas was feeling unusually perverse, because