Page 37 of His Tenth Dance

Carver and Samantha, a couple of young adults in their twenties, led this group, and Molly rode with Mission in the back. As the foreman of the family farm, Mission really didn’t have time to assist with horseback riding lessons anymore—and yet he’d thrown a pretty royal fit when Molly had tried to take him off the schedule.

“I can do it,” he’d insisted. “It’s one of my favorite things about being on this farm. Please, at least let me have one lesson a week.”

She’d agreed, as long as he didn’t have to teach it.

“Fine,” he’d said. “I can be a back rider.”

And a back rider he had become.

She glanced over to him, though he rode about fifty yards away, over on the other corner of the group, where a couple of girls were slowly plodding along. Molly suspected they were doing a lot more chatting than riding, but on this slow summer day, no one seemed to care.

Molly had spread further south to keep her eye on a trio of boys who certainly didn’t have the skills to command the huge horses they rode. But Molly’s horses were calm and used to children, and for the most part, they would obey the commands they were given, no matter who gave them.

Something rustled in the long grass to her right, and Molly looked that way, suddenly on high alert. After all, they had snakes on the farm, and horses didn’t seem to care if they were harmless or not.

Lady lifted her head and tossed it, then she started to prance sideways.

“Whoa, whoa,” Molly said.

Then she heard the rattling.

Lady heard it too, and while she was normally calm and submissive, now she reared up, a whinny coming from her mouth.

The rattling got louder somehow, which made no sense, and then her horse screamed.

And bolted.

Molly had tightened her grip on the reins when she’d first heard the rustling in the grass, and though she was an experienced rider, she could not stay on a spooked, terrified,boltinghorse.

She slipped from the saddle, panic and fear striking at her as if they were the rattlesnakes sinking their venomous fangs into her heart.

She hit the groundhard, a sound she’d never heard before echoing through her head and reverberating through all non-hearing parts of her body. As pain roared through her back and legs, she couldn’t get a breath. Her head felt like it had just been split in half.

She heard commotion around her, but she couldn’t separate the individual noises enough to make sense of them.

She heard a man call—and she vaguely recognized the voice—but couldn’t put a name to it.

More rattling. Louder than before.

Molly groaned, the sound full of desperation mixed with pain, but she still couldn’t move. Everything had gone dark, but she wasn’t sure she’d closed her eyes.

Help me, sounded inside her head, but she was pretty sure she didn’t say it out loud.

“Molly!” Mission yelled, and then he touched her shoulder. “Molly, wake up.”

She hadn’t realized that she’d gone to sleep, but Mission sounded pretty adamant that she had.

The rattling continued, and she wanted to shout a warning to Mission.There’s a rattlesnake. Don’t come too close.

“Molly, look at me,” he demanded again, but the last thing she heard was, “She’s not waking up, Boone. Call Nine-One-One.”

thirteen

Something spooked that horse, boy.

Mission heard the words in his head in his grandfather’s voice, but they could have just as easily come from God.

He currently knelt in the grass next to Molly, and he quickly got to his feet and looked around. One moment she’d been riding along, the horse moving perfectly fluid and gentle as normal. He’d worked plenty with Lady, and the horse never had a problem.

---