The familiar feel of the saddle was the same, but the horse wasn't. I'd run the old mare too hard. She'd died sometime in the night and when I'd left the house this morning it had been to find my saddle on this horse. I had felt a moment of remorse for the old girl as she'd given me her all, but this horse was definitely an upgrade.
Would it be fast enough, though, if the abhorrent strain of lion people suddenly came over the plain towards us?
I started to turn to look back, but abruptly stopped as the stitches across my chest pulled painfully. White knuckled, I held onto the saddle horn as I saw stars for a moment. It really didn't matter how fast the horse could go, because the small caravan of people I was accompanying were slow, painfully slow.
I wasn't leaving them. I looked ahead to the old Farmer's wagon only to see the baby that I'd saved happily grabbing at its adoptive mother's hair. I smiled for a moment as I watched the two.
It was nice to know that I had helped bring about such a moment. It made the pain I felt across my chest every time I took a breath worth it somehow.
I turned the horse sideways in a wiser nod to my limitations in order to look back over the way we had come. A column of smoke was even now rising into the late morning sky.
I glanced to the side at the old farmer who had pulled his mount up as I had done. I saw it all there on his face. The pain and even bitterness caused from suffering great loss.
"It can be rebuilt. Crops can be planted again," I said in an attempt to lift the despair from the other man's eyes.
Slowly the old man shook his head, "Not this time I fear. There's no going back and there's nothing worth going ahead for. It's over. I'm done."
"You're only done if you quit. You don't strike me as the type of man to let a plant perish from lack of water."
The old man's eyes turned to me and almost angrily he asked, "What's that got to do with it?"
"Just as you wouldn't let new transplant seedlings die from the shock of moving, I know also that if you put your will to this that you will survive and prosper even as a plant would have under your care. Consider this day your transplant to a new location. It will only get better from here."
Ruefully the old man shook his head, "You're strange boy. You'll go far with confidence like that."