Dark Sunshine

by Terri Farley

  Mikki emerged from the corral and slid the bolt closed on the gate, looking proud of herself for closing it the right way.

  “His head went up and his ears went forward when he saw me,” Mikki reported. “He took two steps backward, but he didn’t run away. Is that good?”

  “In just a couple days? I think that’s great,” Sam said, but there was no time left to talk. They heard the sound of tires on the desert floor as the gray van drew close, then rolled across the bridge.

  Without a good-bye, Mikki trudged toward it.

  Sam remembered the feeling of giving back horses at the end of a ride. She still didn’t know what it was called, but it felt something like surrender.

  If Dad hadn’t driven into Alkali for two half gallons of milk, he probably would have called BLM to come get Dark Sunshine.

  Left alone to feed the horses, Sam saved Ace, Sweetheart, and the buckskin for last. All three were munching the hay she’d forked to them when Sam gave in to temptation.

  Facing into the dark barn, the mare ate. The only sign she even knew Sam was there was the occasional shivering of her skin, as if she were scaring off flies.

  Maybe she and Jake and Brynna were all wrong. Maybe the mare’s first family had been kind to her, and she only needed to be reminded that the human hand could comfort as well as punish. It was worth a try.

  Moving by millimeters, Sam placed one foot on the lowest fence rail, then matched the other beside it. She went up one more rail and leaned out over the top rail, arm extended toward Sunshine’s golden hide.

  The mustang ran. Ears flat, eyes narrowed, and mouth agape, the mare rushed the fence as if it were invisible. Kicking as she went, the mare collided with the fence. The vibration knocked Sam off the other side of the corral.

  Before Sam could stand, before the cloud of dirt and straw could settle, the mare threw herself at the fence again.

  Don’t let her get out.

  The rails held, but Sam blamed herself for being an idiot. She’d moved too fast. The mare’s trust must be won minute by minute. She needed more than a clumsy reminder that some people weren’t monsters.

  The mare trembled as if she’d try to batter the rails down with her chest, and her silence was scarier than any scream.

  This was no warning. Dark Sunshine’s attack wasn’t a threat. The mustang’s eyes blazed with fear. Sam knew she must be careful. The mare might not be hateful, but flying hooves could kill even if they were used in self-defense.

  As Sam turned her back to the corral and walked away, the mare sighed with relief.

  Sam rubbed the dust from her eyelashes and stood blinking. Her hands were dirty and she’d only made it worse. Through blurry eyes, she glanced over her shoulder at the mare.

  Dark Sunshine’s head hung. She breathed short puffs into her hay, but she wasn’t eating.

  Poor girl, Sam thought. We’ll think of something.

  Tomorrow was Thursday. She’d promised to ride up to the trap with Jen. Sam shivered. She didn’t want to go back, but maybe Jen could help her find a clue to what those men had done to hurt Dark Sunshine so much.

  That night, Sam tossed from her back to her front, tangling her legs in the sheets. She pulled her quilt up and pushed it off.

  It was only eleven o’clock, but her brain had been spinning since she’d looked into the mare’s eyes. Fear mixed with bravery was a dangerous thing.

  Suddenly, Sam sat up.

  She knew how to help Dark Sunshine. The Phantom had given her the answer.

  How could she help a mustang who only felt safe in the dark? By moonlight.

  Phantom had endured terrifying hours with people, and yet he came to her by moonlight. The night he’d taken her to the valley that sheltered his herd, Sam had sat near dozens of wild horses. None had seemed afraid, though they could clearly see her in the brightness of the moon.

  It could work. It would work!

  Sam eased out of bed. Her nightgown swished around her ankles as she crept down the hall to the door of Dad’s room. One wooden board creaked under her toes.

  “What’s wrong?” Dad’s voice cut across the sound of bedsprings and his feet hitting his bedroom carpet.

  His outline showed in the hall before Sam reached his door.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” Sam managed. He’d sure scared her. Her pulse shook her whole body. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “You surprised me some. That’s all.” Dad’s tone was calming. “Let’s go into your room to talk. I don’t want to wake Gram.”

  Dad followed her back down the hall and switched on the light.

  “I wasn’t going down to the river.” Sam offered the truth as she climbed back into bed. More than once she’d been in trouble for leaving the house at midnight.

  Dad nodded. Either he believed her or he was taking in her messy room. He hesitated near the chair piled with boots and jeans, then sat on the bed next to her. For a minute he surveyed the room as if he’d never seen it before.

  Dad’s fingers brushed the white quilt with the patchwork star, then he stared at her shelf of horse statues, wooden, glass, and plastic. His gaze touched each prancing leg and backswept tail. He studied the unicorn wallpaper just visible inside her closet, and the stack of schoolbooks and magazines about to avalanche off her bedside table.

  “I don’t blame you for going out there.” Dad gestured toward the river. “If I were to blame anyone”—he chuckled—“I guess it would have to be Louise.”

  Sam held her breath. Louise was her mother, and Dad rarely talked about her. As a child, Sam had asked him about her mother all the time. But her questions so obviously hurt Dad, she’d finally stopped.

  Now, he’d just dropped Mom’s name between them and laughed at some memory that pleased him.

  “She named that river, you know.”

  “I didn’t know!” Sam shook her head. The river had always been called La Charla. She knew it meant “chitchat” in Spanish, and she’d just assumed some lonely explorer had pretended the river’s babbling was a voice from home.

  “Sure.” He nodded. “Before we got married, it was just River Bend’s river. But she acted like it was a friend. When she was expecting you, she had a hard time sleeping.” Dad gave Sam a sudden smile. “She swore you were doing somersaults inside her. So, she’d slip out of bed and walk down to the river. I don’t know how many times I found her there, sitting on a rock, watching the moon dance on the little waves.”

  Sam’s arms wrapped around her ribs. She did the same thing.

  “Louise said the sound of the river soothed you, and after she’d sat there a while you’d let her sleep. And then when you were born”—Dad shook his head, as if the rush of memories kept surprising him—“you were a colicky baby. But Louise and I would carry you out in the moonlight and stand by the river, yawning, and it always settled you down so we could grab a nap before you were hungry again.”

  “I didn’t know any of that,” Sam said.

  “I haven’t thought about it for years.” Dad’s voice changed as he left the past behind. “Just because I don’t blame you doesn’t mean I think it’s safe. Especially now.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. She didn’t mind the warning. Dad had just given her a whole new picture of her mother.

  Dad cleared his throat and picked up Jingles, the black plush horse that spent his days posed on Sam’s pillow.

  “What’s had you tossing and turning ever since you came in here?” he asked. Dad’s index finger touched the gold bells stitched to the toy’s saddle. “I figured unless you had ants in your bed, you were stewing about something.”

  Dad looked up at her then, expecting her to explain.

  “I know how to work with Dark Sunshine,” she said. “You know how she keeps staring into the barn. I mean, it’s natural, since the people who adopted her kept her in a windowless stall.”

  “Where’d you come by that information?”

  “Brynna,” Sam said. She hurried, h
oping Dad wouldn’t point out that Dark Sunshine wasn’t there to stay. “And I know how to start gentling her.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I could spend Friday night with her in the round corral. We’ll put Ace and Sweetheart out in the barn pasture since the fence is fixed, and we’ll put Popcorn, alone, in the little corral off the barn.”

  Dad didn’t tell her that she was insane, or that the mare had to go. He just gave Jingles a shake and listened.

  “What I’d do is sit with her, then do that herd mirroring thing Jake had me do with Blackie after we’d first weaned him. Remember?”

  It was hard to believe the small and scared colt had grown up to be the Phantom, but Sam knew her patient care and attention then had knit the bond that connected them now.

  Dad sighed. “Most days it seems a long time since you and that horse were little, but I can still see you in pigtails, following Blackie around when he walked away, then letting him follow you when he needed a leader.”

  “It worked pretty well, didn’t it?” Sam whispered. She wondered if she had her Mom to thank for Dad’s unusual patience tonight.

  “Yeah, but Blackie was hand-raised, not born wild and abused. One more thing you don’t want to forget: Blackie belonged to you.”

  “Yeah.” Sam let the word stretch out.

  “I suppose Brynna’s mentioned the foster care deal?”

  Sam bit her lip. Brynna hadn’t. Was Dad talking about Mikki or Dark Sunshine?

  “No, huh? I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. She’s put through paperwork for us to foster the mare. They do it with orphan foals more often, but there’s provisions for adult horses, too. We get paid for helpin’ her back to normal.”

  Sam didn’t ask for details, and she didn’t bounce on the bed and squeal with joy. She only said, “Oh, wow.”

  “Someone could still show up with title to that horse,” Dad cautioned. “A bill of sale would supersede BLM’s agreement with us.”

  “No one will,” Sam insisted. “You know it, Dad. Anyone who’s treated her this way doesn’t care.”

  Dad patted her back as if he were searching for words to explain. “Sometimes people want things just to own ’em. It’s not fair and it’s not right, but they don’t know better than to abuse what’s theirs. Look at Mikki.” Dad shook his head. “That child’s had hard use, too.”

  To Sam, the buckskin was the more likable of the two, but she didn’t say it. And the longer she kept her opinion inside, the more clearly she saw how both Mikki and the mare refused to show when they were afraid.

  “I guess Mikki’s no more to blame for her ugly attitude than Sunshine,” Sam admitted.

  Dad put Jingles back on the pillow and gave Sam another pat on the back as he rose.

  “Get to sleep, now,” he said. “You’re going to need lots of energy if you plan to have a slumber party with a wild horse.”

  Chapter Ten

  “I’M NOT AFRAID of rats or snakes,” Sam said. “I just don’t like being surprised.” Sam hesitated outside the door of the old bus and rubbed her arms free of goose bumps. She couldn’t hear anything moving in there, but it looked like a great hiding place for things she’d rather avoid.

  Minutes ago, she’d stood in the sunlight that bathed the empty trap at Lost Canyon in autumn gold. Crowded with sagebrush and piñon pine, the old wood had looked picturesque. Only the feed sack cover for the missing truck seemed creepy. She and Jen weren’t scared—the place was obviously deserted.

  Feeling adventurous, they’d tied their horses at the trap—which was disappointingly free of yellow crime scene tape—and hiked in the direction Sam had seen the cowboy go to retrieve his whip. That’s how they’d found the old bus wedged into a narrow chasm.

  “Well, I am afraid of rats and snakes,” Jen admitted suddenly. “Nerve toxins and bubonic plague are things I’d rather enjoy through a microscope.”

  “The rangers have already been out here, and they probably disturbed whatever animals were living inside,” Sam reasoned.

  Jen gave Sam a lopsided smile. “Oh, good. Now they’re ticked off and ready to protect their home.”

  Sam considered the bus again. Painted a pale blue that had faded almost to white, it was obviously not a school bus. Jen had suggested it was a prison bus for shuttling convicts between jail and work crew chores. Whatever its former purpose, someone had positioned it in this natural niche so that the windows on one side were smack against the hillside. The side she and Jen could see was creased and rusty.

  They’d thought it was long abandoned, until Jen noticed clothes tucked into windows in place of curtains and Sam saw the path worn to the door, which was folded halfway open.

  “Okay, we don’t have to go in,” Sam said.

  “Of course we do,” Jen said. “The rustlers probably holed up here between horse trappings. We might find something the rangers overlooked.”

  “Not likely.”

  “But possible,” Jen insisted. “It’d be great if we found something with a name on it.”

  “Oh, and how about an address, too?” Sam said. “A driver’s license would be good. Then the rangers could just cruise over and pick them up.”

  “You’re getting as sarcastic as me,” Jen said, crossing her arms. “So knock it off. I just want the rustlers caught so that you don’t have to keep looking over your shoulder all the time. Which reminds me…”

  “Yes?” Sam couldn’t help looking back down the canyon toward the trap.

  “Does your dad know where you are?”

  “He wasn’t home. He doesn’t get a half day off like we do. And I told Gram I was going riding with you.” Sam smiled, but Jen’s implication gave her chills.

  “So no one knows where we are.” Jen gave her voice a ghost story waver.

  “Who did you expect me to tell—Jake?”

  “No. Definitely no.” Jen squared off, facing the bus door, then tugged Sam’s shirtsleeve. “After you, Nancy Drew.”

  Sam pushed the door open the rest of the way and jogged up the stairs. Something did skitter inside, but Sam was more aware of the odor.

  “Yuck, it smells like old sweaty socks.” She grimaced.

  “Mixed with a lingering aroma of canned chili.” Jen moved ahead of Sam and nodded to tin cans scattered under a blanket-covered bus bench.

  They both looked down the aisle. It was clear, almost as if it had been swept, but some seats leaned at weird angles and several had come unbolted from the floor.

  Sam was wondering if the bus had rolled down there from the highway, when Jen took a squeaky breath and pointed.

  “Behind you.”

  Sam whirled, gasping.

  And saw nothing.

  “Ow! You stomped on me!” Jen complained.

  “Serves you right.” Sam panted. “What are you looking at? I don’t see anything.” Sam scanned the driver’s seat, the speedometer, a sun-cracked plastic frame where the driver’s license was supposed to go.

  “That,” Jen said.

  On the shallow shelf below the driver’s mirror, Sam finally saw what Jen had spotted.

  An empty cottage cheese carton held water with something floating on the top. It wasn’t cottage cheese. Next to the carton sat a man’s razor with gross bits of whisker still clinging to it.

  Jen edged past Sam for a closer look.

  She was welcome to it, Sam thought as she backed away and started back down the center aisle. This was ridiculous. What did they think they were going to find?

  Sam looked to her right. A seat held two sleeping bags, one ripped with fluffy stuff poking out. She looked left. A coiled rope hung over a seat back and a glove lay on the bench part.

  The floor slanted beneath her feet. The bus must have a flat tire on this side. Sam started to grab a seat back for balance, when Jen’s voice startled her again.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Jen said. “Just in case they haven’t fingerprinted.”

  “You watch too much television,�
�� Sam grumbled.

  That’s when a shiny mouse ran over her left boot toe and ducked under the jean hem on her right leg.

  “Oh, no!” Sam bawled.

  She stamped. The mouse fell.

  He scurried back the way he’d come. Sam shuffled and scooted her feet, trying not to crush him. Her foot slid out from under her and she stumbled, landing facedown.

  “Don’t touch anything!” Jen yelled again.

  “Tell that to the paramedics when they arrive,” Sam mumbled.

  Jen moaned, and Sam felt her friend’s footsteps pound closer. She’d frightened Jen, and that wasn’t very nice. But Sam wasn’t feeling nice. She lay in the aisle of this convict bus, with the breath knocked from her chest. She needed to do a push-up to get upright, but she didn’t like the idea of pressing her bare hands against this floor.

  From her position, she saw the undersides of seats. No gum, just cobwebs and red-brown rust where a metal seat support had cracked, showing a corner of yellow paper.

  Sam closed her eyes, then opened them.

  “Are you okay? Sam, do you have a concussion or something?” Jen squatted nearby.

  “I see something?”

  Jen sat quiet for a minute. “Why are you asking me? Sam, you’d better be all right. I can’t carry you down to—”

  “You don’t have to.” Sam flipped into a seated position before she delicately removed a piece of paper that had been rolled and slipped inside the metal tube.

  “Oh, wow.” Jen sighed, and they read it together.

  Gold for $125 and barter goods

  I bukskin mere,

  3yrs old and tack

  to certis Flickinger

  “I can’t read the signature,” Jen said, “but this guy needs some help in English.”

  Sam read the words again.

  “It’s signed by Rose Bloom. See the B there? She’s the lady who adopted Dark Sunshine and got title to her a few months ago. That’s what Brynna said.”

  This bill of sale proved Dark Sunshine belonged to someone named Certis Flickinger. He had to be one of the rustlers.