The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

knobs sticking up from the pommel. “It’s a side-saddle,” Fred said. “Must be
twenty, thirty years old. Maybe more.”
“So?”
“Here, I’ll show you.” Fred scooped the saddle up. He exchanged it for
Butter’s, then tossed me into it. My left leg went into the stirrup, snug beneath
one of the crooks. My right leg hung down on the stirrup-less side. “Now you
swing your right leg over, right here,” he said. He showed me how to tuck my
right thigh around the other crook, so that my right leg actually draped over
the pony’s left shoulder. “That’s it,” Fred said. “Now shove your right hip
back, and get square in the saddle.”
It felt very odd, but also snug and secure. As Butter had become more
forward, my bad foot had become more of a problem. That I couldn’t use the
right stirrup was no issue, except that it tended to make me lean. But I
couldn’t use my right foot properly—I could thump him with it, but I couldn’t
keep any sort of proper contact with his side. My ankle, such as it was, didn’t
move that way.
“Now,” Fred said, handing me a heavy leather – wrapped stick, “here’s
your right leg.”
“My leg?”
“Absolutely. You haven’t got one of your own legs on the right side, see?
So you hold one end of that stick and keep the other end on the pony. You’ll
signal him with it, just like you would with a regular leg.”
Fred led us out to the field where I usually rode. “Take a bit of time to get
used to it, both for him and for you.” He was still grinning ear to ear. “’Ow’s
it feel so far?”
“Pretty good,” I said. My seat could still move with Butter’s walk, but my
legs felt firm. “I didn’t know they made saddles for cripples.” I wondered
where Fred had found it, whose saddle it had been.
“Nah, not for cripples,” Fred said. “This is how all proper ladies used to
ride. Back when, straddling a horse wasn’t thought to be ladylike. But after
the war, things changed—the gentry women started riding astride, and after
that pretty much so did everyone.”
“Which war?” Because the one we were in wasn’t over.
“Last one. Twenty years back.” Fred’s face clouded. “England lost three
million men.”
“So they had lots of extra women,” I said. “And lots of men’s saddles for
them to use.”