Alana shook her head, but the smile playing around her lips told her granddaughter that she enjoyed telling the story again.
“My friend Gary and I were out hiking,” the old woman began. “There are many trails up behind the falls that meander into the national forest. We had been out most of the day when I heard something snort. Gary thought it was a bear, but I was convinced it was a horse, and plunged straight through the undergrowth to find not one, but two horses, grazing in a small clearing. Neither had halter or bridle and looked as if they were completely wild.”
“One was a stallion and the other a colt,” Susan couldn’t contain her excitement. Even as a child this had been her favorite story.
“Who’s telling this story anyway,” her grandmother pursed her lips, slanting a look at the pretty young woman her gangly granddaughter had become.
“Go on then,” Susan urged.
Alana’s eyes sparked again as she remembered the tale. “Well, we couldn’t just leave the animals there in the forest. There was no telling what might happen to them. That colt was so skinny, and his tail was matted with thistle and burdock, I didn’t know what to think. Of course, the problem was how were we supposed to bring them home? After a bit of discussion, I convinced Gary we could make a halter from our belts and pretty soon I had that pretty bay paint stallion in hand. He was a decent horse, really, a bit shy to start, but smart enough to know that I was trying to help. That little black and white colt fell in behind its companion, and we started for the barns.”
“And you never found out who they belonged to?” Susan prompted excitedly.
“Not for sure. No.” Grandma Holmes agreed. “Some of the town folks had seen a man in the mountains a few times with a bay paint, but they didn’t know who he was and no matter how the police, and posse tried to find him, the only thing they found was a banged up moonshine still and a broken shotgun. The sheriff seemed to think there had been some foul play between rival moonshiners, but without a body or other trace, they didn’t know what to think.”
“Is that why they let you keep Israel, and Oreo? The two horses.” Susan still couldn’t believe that the horses had been turned over to her grandmother without any fuss at all. No one had tried to claim them, or even inquire about them.
“After the sheriff spoke with Gary and me and got our report about finding the horses, no one even batted an eye. They were mine to keep if I wanted them and even as unruly as that crazy bay paint proved to be, he was one of the most beautiful horses I have ever owned.”
Susan was too young to have ever seen the horse her grandmother dubbed Israel, but she had seen plenty of pictures. Her grandmother had gone from student, to wife and mother in the few short years after taking in the paint and his young companion, and in time, life had become so busy that her old horse had become more of a companion than anything else.
“He was a good horse,” Grandma Holmes mused. “I’m glad I’m the one who found him.” She turned sad blue eyes toward Susan. “Now you be careful poking around into things you know nothing about. Times were different back then, and those of us at the college were often warned about walking into the woods in case we came across someone hiding out up there. Back then, moonshiners were common, and they didn’t take well to anyone stumbling on their still.”
“You agree with the police then don’t you?” Susan asked. “You think the owner of Israel and Oreo was a moonshiner who came to odds with his competition?”
“It did make the most sense,” Alana agreed. “That’s why I don’t understand you’re fascination with the painted ponies and the missing man.”
Susan shrugged. She had always been interested in this story. She had been fascinated by the mystery of where the horses had come from, who the man with the still had been or where he had gone for as long as she could remember. With nothing else pressing in her life, she was determined to solve the mystery and put this chapter of her family’s history to rest.
David Watkins walked along the edge of the falls, following an ancient trail that may have been there since before the first white man had traversed the wilds of Georgia. He had been over the trail at least a dozen times this summer, but no matter how many trips he took, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something.
The old cabin, a hangover from his families somewhat seedy past, drew him as a lodestone draws steel, and he had to go over what he knew one more time.
Slipping below the moss covered eves of the old structure, he blinked into the cool darkness amidst the dank logs, and earthy smell of the dirt floor. David had been visiting this cabin in the national forest for years, his mind drifting back to the days as a boy when his father would bring him to the cabin looking for clues. The Watkins had been known throughout the northeastern region of Georgia as some of the finest bootleggers of their time, but that wasn’t’ what drew him and his father each summer. The cabin’s draw had more to do with the disappearance of David’s paternal grandfather in the 1960s than the seedy reputation of whisky runners from a by-gone era.
“What happened?” David mused for the hundredth time. It had never made sense to him that his grandfather would have been making rot got liquor into the early 1960s, but apparently, old habits died hard. At least that was what most of the
