But when Gulliver’s sharp barks became frenetic and he dashed away around the barn, Billie followed him.
Hashtag stood with both forelegs stuck through the twisted wire fence. Billie hoped she would stay that way until she could find wire cutters and get her out.
“Steady, girl!” Billie called, backing toward the feed shed where she kept her tools.
Hashtag stood still for a moment then she thrashed, heaving herself up and back, trying to break free. Sweat drenched her shoulders and flanks, and her eyes went white with panic.
Billie returned and approached with the cutters, speaking soothingly while the mare struggled, the wires tightening around her forelegs. Pain and fear made her pull even harder. The wires cut deeper. Blood spurted from the leg closest to Billie.
“Easy, girl,” Billie cooed. “Oh, God, easy.” She tried to angle her way in close enough to grab a wire and cut, but each time she approached, Hashtag struggled harder.
Billie retreated far enough that the mare stopped struggling and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. When Doc answered, she didn’t even introduce herself, just started talking. “Cutting her leg…can’t get close… What should I do?”
Hashtag tried to rear, fell over in a horrifying slow-motion contortion distorted by her entangled legs. One of the strands of wire snapped as she kicked and wrapped itself around her face.
“Do you have a horse blanket nearby?” Doc asked. “No? Some cloth? Take off your shirt then. Approach her from behind her head so you don’t get kicked, and be careful. If she swings her head and hits you, she could kill you. There’s a rhythm to her movements, you see it? Thrash-rest. Thrash-rest. Get that shirt over her eyes while she rests. She’ll hold still when she can’t see. That’ll get you time to cut her loose, but be quick.”
“Don’t hang up, Doc!” Billie crammed the phone back into her pocket and pulled her T-shirt over her head. It didn’t look big enough to cover both of the horse’s eyes, so Billie sliced it up the front with the wire cutters. Hashtag seemed to struggle forever this time, banging her head against the ground, pawing, kicking, with each movement pulling herself tighter and tighter into the web of fencing. The minute she finally lay flat, exhausted, Billie lunged, knelt on her neck, wrapped the shirt over her eyes, and tied it in a knot under her jaw. She jumped away, afraid the thrashing would start again. But the blindfolded horse lay still. Moving fast, Billie cut the wire, untangling it as she went, and carefully lifted the barbs from torn flesh, freeing her.
Billie heard a distant voice. Doc, she realized, still on the phone, talking in her pocket.
“She’s squirting blood from her leg,” she told him. “She’s still lying down. I’ve cleared the wire away from her so she can get up.”
“Leave the blindfold on. It’s why she’s staying down and quiet. Now press on the wound until the bleeding stops. Press hard. And don’t get kicked.”
Billie grabbed Hashtag’s spurting foreleg and pressed into the blood with her thumbs while the horse lay quietly on her side, panting, soaked in sweat and blood.
“When it stops squirting…” Doc’s voice crackled. “I’m getting out of range, Billie, so I’ll try to get this said… When you can, roll up some cotton into a ball and stick it into the wound to keep pressure on. Bandage over that to hold it in place. That’ll stop the bleed… She’ll be fine…”
“Can you come?” Billie asked, but the call had ended.
She waited, counting one-one thousand, two-one thousand until she reached sixty. When she lifted her thumbs the bleeding had stopped. She had nothing to bandage with, so she took off her bra, cut it as she had her T-shirt and used that. Finally, she pulled the shirt from the horse’s eyes. Blinking, Hashtag lay still then struggled to her feet, testing herself for pain. Once she was on her feet, Billie led her, limping, to a small pen near Starship. Then she fed them breakfast.
What would Doc tell her to do now, if she could reach him? Antibiotics, she knew, a tetanus booster and pain medicine. Billie got them from the refrigerator in the feed shed and gave the antibiotic and tetanus booster injections, one on each side of the neck. She sprinkled powdered pain medicine over a scoop of oats and fed her that. At least the horse had an appetite.
The sun was way up, scorching. Billie ran out of hay before she ran out of horses and headed back to the barn. She swung the hay hook into a bale that looked like it would easily slide away from the others and into the truck bed, but it wouldn’t budge. She tugged and struggled until she gave up and climbed onto the mow to find the bale she wanted tied to another bale. She cut the twine and both bales skidded past her onto the ground. They were too heavy for her to lift into the truck. She’d have to cut the twine and lift each prickly, slippery flake, one at a time. From the corner of her eye, she watched Hashtag try, then succeed, to pull off her bandage.
Billie sank to her knees beside the searing truck bed and wept, half expecting someone to appear, Ty or Richard or Sam or Josie, or some stranger out in the middle of the desert. Someone who would say, “You always feed your horses naked?” and “Do you cry every day?”
She would scream, “YES! Every single fucking day! I cry because I am hurt and tired and broke, and my horses are hurt, and it’s so fucking hot, and there are flies and rattlesnakes everywhere, and the baby horse burned to death, and the others are hungry, and I
