A woman was driving home from work late at night. She had thirty miles of narrow country road once she got off the freeway. Thirty miles of hobby farms and nurseries and Grange halls and country churches and manufactured homes - all flung far apart by woods and fields. The road had hills and turns that still came up on her suddenly even after twelve years.
The white horse appeared out of nowhere and danced in the headlights. She swerved and missed the horse. Behind her a big pick-up also missed the animal. She pulled over and parked on the shoulder. The white horse thudded past her, its unshod hooves making a soft sound on the road.
It was an ugly horse. Not really white. Its winter coat was yellowish and shaggy and matted with mud. But smooth gaited. The horse practically glided.
The truck had stopped behind her. A young woman driving. Grocery bags on the front seat. They stood together in the dark road looking at the horse grazing on the shoulder a few yards away.
``He's going to get killed,'' the woman said.
``He's going to kill someone,'' the younger woman answered. She added ``I have a cell phone, I could call 911.''
``They wont do anything - but at least we will have done something...''
``I'll call.'' The young woman got back in her truck and drove slowly away. The horse had disappeared.
When the woman got home she told her husband about the horse. He was in bed and mostly asleep. He grunted.
During the next month the woman saw the horse several times as she drove home. It never seemed to jump out at anyone else. She could be driving a couple of hundred yards behind someone, and the horse would jump out in front of her, as though he had waited for the other car to go by.
``Perhaps he likes the sound of my car,'' she thought. But her car was a Nissan Sentra. It sounded like a million other cars.
The woman put a rope and halter in her car. Next time she saw the horse she lured him with apples and got the rope around his neck. The horse was not happy, but she got the halter on him and tied him to a sturdy fence post.
``You're mine now,'' she said.
Her husband couldn't believe his ears.
``You want me to put gas in the truck, hitch up the trailer and drive twenty miles down the road to steal a half wild horse? Are you crazy?''
But he loved his wife and he liked a bit of adventure so he put gas in the truck, hitched up the trailer and drove twenty miles down the road to steal a half wild horse.
When they got to the place where the woman had left the horse they found him still there. He wouldn't go in the trailer. Two men in an old Trans Am stopped and helped them or they'd never have got him in.
She put up a sign at the grocery store but no one called.
She named the horse Night Warrior and she worked with him for a year until he was the best trail horse around. She took him on endurance rides and he kept up his smooth gait long after fancier horses gave up.
``It's all that running he did trying to catch me,'' the woman thought.
At the community fair the woman and horse entered a barrel race. As they rounded the last barrel a child's voice rang out. ``Snowball!'' The horse faltered. The woman's heart sank.
``That's Snowball. That's my horse. He got out. We thought we'd never find him.''
The woman was heart broken. She knew she had to return the horse. She hated the indignant child, her accusing mother. Then she saw that Snowball was nuzzling the girl's shoulder.
She turned away. They had no trailer to take the horse home. She did not offer hers.