Page 18 of Because I Could Not Stop for Death

“No, not yet,” he said. “By the time Mr.Johnson and I reached the stables and he sent a house servant to get a doctor and the police, many of the stable hands had reported to work. They were all standing around the stall where Henry died. It was a gruesome sight.”

My stomach twisted into a knot. However, Emily said calmly, “I imagine that it was. Did any of those men or did you touch anything?”

“Touch anything?”

She nodded. “Yes, in the stable. Did you touch anything?”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t notice if the other men did.”

I looked around the stall that Henry and Jeremiah had used as their room. “Is this the stall where he died?”

“No.” Jeremiah shook his head. “If it had been, I would not be able to sleep here at night. I just thought you would like to see your brother’s final home.”

I was glad to have seen it and also sorry that I had. It was good to be in the final place where my brother had walked and lived.

“The stall where he died is not far.” He stepped out of the stall and walked to the back of the barn.

A large black horse blew hot air from his nostril when we walked past.

I shivered.

“It was in the very last stall here,” Jeremiah said. He pointed at the closed stall door. “We don’t have a horse in there now. None of the stable hands want to go in there. Partly because Henry was well-liked around the stables and partly because they are afraid that it is haunted.”

Emily studied him with her appraising eyes. “You believe in ghosts.”

He put a hand on his chest. “Me? No, no, I don’t. Not really.”

It wasn’t the most confident denial that I’d ever heard.

Emily nodded and gave no indication as to whether she thought there might be ghosts roaming this world or not. I personally did not believe it. The only ghost mentioned in the Bible was the Holy Ghost, and that was very different.

“It won’t matter for much longer,” Jeremiah went on to say. “Mr.Johnson says that we have to start putting horses back in it next week. As spring grows closer, the stables will be almost full. Mr.Johnson rents his stalls to some of the wealthiest men in Amherst. Many of them don’t have the land to keep a stable or a barn of their own on their property.”

“My father had boarded our horses here before, I know,” Emily said. “When we move, that will no longer be an issue, as we will have plenty of land to house them.”

Jeremiah nodded and then looked to me. “Would you like to look inside?”

I swallowed hard.

“It’s been cleaned the best we can,” he said.

I wondered what “the best we can” meant. Would there still be blood on the walls? Or worse? However, my mind didn’t have the capacity to think of much worse than that.

“Yes,” I whispered. “I would like to see it.”

Jeremiah opened the stall door without a word. The first thing I noticed was the dirt floor, which had been raked over. It had new dirt and straw laid down over it. My gaze traveled up from the walls, and there were deep dents in the wood at the back of the stall. One was so deep that it broke through to the outside of the stable. There was a piece of wood on the outside to keep the cold and rain out of the building.

I nodded to that mark on the wall. “That is where he fell.” I said it as a statement. It wasn’t a question.

Jeremiah nodded.

Emily stepped into the stall and walked up to the indents in the wall. She held her small hand up against the hole. The hole was larger than her hand. “The horse must have been very upset, almost crazed, to kick through the wall like this. Was the animal hurt?”

Jeremiah shook his head. “Not seriously. He had a few splinters and scrapes, but nothing that put his life at risk. When I first saw everything, I thought the horse would have to be put down. One broken leg can fell a horse. They are actually quite fragile animals for their strength and size.”

Emily tilted her head, and her face fell under the shadow of her navy blue bonnet. “Was it the large black horse that we passed that made these marks? He looks like a creature large enough to cause the damage to the stable wall.”

Jeremiah tugged on the sleeves of his white work shirt. They were an inch too short from his wrist. “It was,” he finally admitted.

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