I let out a piercing scream, then keeled over like an unpedaled bike. Apparently that set off Frey. He must have remembered Mr. Barner as the man who’d crept into the corral in the middle of the night and so stressed me out that I’d needed the blacksmith, Mr. Turn, to drag the thief out of his pen.
I was told later that my horse was so confused he didn’t know what to do. He stood over me, not allowing anyone to get close, but he also peeled back his lips and greenish yellow teeth as a fierce-looking potential threat to anyone attempting to get close to me.
The boys I was later told were screaming, and Mrs. Penn had sprung up to grab them back. The doctor had set forward to rescue me from the, as he thought, dangerous hooves that were rearing over my body, but Doc. couldn’t approach the horse, and then, Officer Krugel, completely ignoring the danger, had suddenly rushed forward to gather me in his arms even with Frey in panic mode.
What a scene, and I’d missed it all. When my eyes fluttered open, the first thing I saw was Frank bending over me, protecting me, from a horse who would never harm me. Frank’s lips were on my forehead briefly, then his eyes were peering down at me, and he was saying over and over, “Wake up, Shama. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it, my love.”
I think it was the love part that brought me out of my stupor. I suddenly remembered how horrid the officer had been to me, and when my eyes scanned for the boys and for Frey, they also took in the presence of the man I wanted to see the least of all the villagers. Well, other than the mayor, who might be only slightly worse.
Mr. Barner stood beside the exact same preacher I’d met on the road. Why were they here? Why had they come to see Officer Krugel?
Questions pounded me, but I held them back. I wanted to jerk myself out of the officer’s arms, but I was limp from my faint, and I felt nauseated, too.
“There she is,” Mr. Barner said. “And that’s my horse, the one she stole.”
That was almost enough to send me back to the oblivion of the blackness of my earlier faint, but outrage struck me instead.
“How dare you!” I thrust with a voice so shaky with anger, I felt it darken with witch magic. I took in a deep breath and stabilized my emotions. Stifling my fury took me a moment. I hardly felt the shift in the officer’s posture, the stiffness that entered his hold, the way something clanked in my mind like a heavy door slamming shut.
He believed Mr. Barner. So much for dealing with whatever problem there was together.