Wild Desperation

Chapter 49

                                             Sang

The next morning Jess was awake before I was and the sound of her moving about woke me up. She had laid out some breakfast for us and even made up a platter of food for Arrow, all of which I thanked her for. I checked on the smoked hide once we finished eating and pronounced it as finished as I folded them and tossed out the smoke wood. "So since you got enough meat yesterday that you don't have to hunt today, do you want to do something later?" Jess asked trying and failing to hide her eagerness. 

"Well after I take care of everything I've got to do this morning and do some training at the Toma house. I'm pretty free after that, and I was thinking of riding Nightmare around a bit if you want to ride along?" I smile as she starts to bounce excitedly in place. "You mean I can ride with you?!" She squealed in joy. "If you don't mind riding with me a bit, Nightmare can carry both of us easy, and he needs to get some exercise before he gets lazy." I shrug. "Yes! I don't mind! We can ride wherever you want and we can check out the area inside the fence more!" She grinned as she gave me a quick hug before hurrying out to go do her own morning chores.

 I headed for the barn and checked up on the goats and my handsome stallion, I left their stalls open along with the barn door so that they could go in and out of the pasture when needed. I decided to set it up that way due to the fact that a few of the does were acting a bit strange and if they had a possibility of kidding I wanted them to have a place to shelter away inside. Once the animals were taken care of I had fun with two hours of training with Raven, North and even Nathan who had decided to join in for the day.

It was around ten thirty when we quit and I had Arrow go through the snared meat that Brandon had brought in this morning and last night. They took the good stuff to get cooked and burned the rest, I told the boys I was meeting up with Jess and headed for the barn. I noted that Licorice and Sadie were both looking a bit uncomfortable and were most likely in the early stages of labor. I decided to close them both up in separate sides of one of the divided stalls and make them comfortable, there was no telling when they would actually give birth but this way the other goats wouldn't be bothering them or stressing them out.

 I got Nightmare's rope hackamore on him, carefully brushing out his coat and rubbing out his legs as we waited for Jess to show up. "Sang, Sang, I'm here! I'm not late am I?!" Jess called as she jogged up and I chuckled at her exuberance. "No Jess, you're not late. I on the other hand just got here early to get everybody ready. I put Licorice and Sadie in one of the stalls too, looks like we might have some babies by tonight or tomorrow." I smiled. "Should we stay and keep an eye on them?" Jess asked as she sent a worried glance up to the barn.

 "They will be fine for a few hours and we can check on them as soon as we get back, unless you don't want to go riding anymore." I hummed as she whipped her eyes back around to meet mine as she shook her head. "No, they can wait a few hours. I have only ever been on a pony when I was really little, I'm not wasting away an opportunity like this one." She stated. "Good, you'll be behind me since I've got to direct him around. Now come on up!" I was quick to mount up and offer my hand down to her. She quickly took my hand and I helped pull her up to settle in behind me. She wrapped her arms around my waist when I instructed her not to fall off, and then I urged Nightmare forward at a walk.

 "He has such a broad back, doesn't it hurt when you ride him for a long time?" Jess asked as she let go of my waist at the slow pace. "Yeah but you get used to the pain, besides it's a lot better than walking all day." I shrugged as I turned Nightmare into the trees. We rode at slower paces for the next hour and a half, walking and trotting through the trees as we talked about random things. We were a decent ways from the main part of the community when we came up on a large dirt path that was about 10 feet wide. "Where does this path lead?" I asked as I pulled Nightmare to a quick halt.