Out Stealing Horses Read Online Free PDF Page A

came back like a whirring boomerang and hit me on the forehead with a crack, arid I thought, shit, I'm paralysed. I looked down at my bare feet sticking out of the heather, and they had no connection with me.
    I was still lying there flat out when I saw Jon on horseback with a rope round the horse's muzzle come up to the fence. With the rope he could control it. He stopped just on the other side by pulling the rope, and the horse halted almost sideways to the fence. He looked down at me.
    'Lying there, are you?' he said.
    'I am paralysed,' I said.
    'I don't think so,' he said.
    'Maybe not,' I said. I looked down at my feet again. And then I stood up. It hurt, in my back and along one side, but nothing inside was damaged. Blood was running from a cut on my forearm and out through the sweater, which had a big tear in it just there, but that was all. I tore off what was left of the sleeve and tied it round the wounded arm. It smarted good and hard. Jon sat there calmly on his horse. Now I saw that he held my shoes in one hand.
    'Are you going to get on again?' he said.
    'I don't think so,' I said. 'My arse hurts,' although that was not where it hurt the most, and I thought Jon smiled a bit, but I was not sure, because the sun was in my face. He slid off his horse and loosened the rope round its muzzle, then sent it off with a wave of his hand. It was happy to leave.
    Jon came out through the fence the same way he had gone in; light on his feet, not a scratch anywhere. He came over to me and dropped my shoes in the heather.
    'Can you walk?' he said.
    'I think so,' I said. I pushed my feet into the shoes without tying the knots, so as to avoid bending down, and then we walked on into the forest. Jon first with me at his heels with a tender crotch, my back stiff, one leg dragging slightly and one arm held firmly against my body, still further in among the trees, and I thought perhaps I might not manage to walk all the way back when the time came. And then I thought of my father's asking me to cut the grass behind the cabin a week ago. The grass had grown much too tall and would soon just bend down and stiffen to a withered mat nothing could grow up through. I could use the short scythe, he said, which was easier in the hand for an amateur. I fetched the scythe from the shed and set about it with all my strength, trying to move the way my father moved when I had seen him do what I was doing now, and I worked until I was suitably sweaty, and it really went pretty well even if the scythe was a tool completely new to me. But alongside the cabin wall there was a big patch of stinging nettles, growing tall and thick, and I worked my way around them in a wide arc, and then my father came round the house and stood looking at me. He held his head aslant and rubbed his chin, and I straightened up and waited to hear what he would say.
    'Why not cut down the nettles?' he said.
    I looked down at the short scythe handle and across at the tall nettles.
    'It will hurt,' I said. Then he looked at me with half a smile and a little shake of the head.
    'You decide for yourself when it will hurt,' he said, suddenly getting serious. He walked over to the nettles and took hold of the smarting plants with his bare hands and began to pull them up with perfect calm, one after the other, throwing them into a heap, and he did not stop before he had pulled them all up. Nothing in his face indicated that it hurt, and I felt a bit ashamed as I walked along the path after Jon, and I straightened up and changed gait and walked as I normally would, and after only a few steps I could not think why I had not done so at once.
    'Where are we going?' I said.
    'There is something I want to show you/ he said. 'It's not far.'
    The sun was high in the sky now, it was hot under the trees, it smelt hot, and from everywhere in the forest around us there were sounds; of beating wings, of branches bending and twigs breaking, and the scream of a hawk and a hare's last sigh, and