by Terri Farley
“I want to hear it,” Sam said, shooting Jake a glare.
Just then, the Scout made a laboring sound and bogged down in the mud.
The interruption was awfully convenient, Sam thought, but when the tires spun uselessly, Sam knew enough to be quiet and let Jake concentrate. Getting stuck up here with the horse trailer, especially when Kit didn’t have full use of his arms, would mean dirty work for her and Jake.
As soon as the tires hit the highway, Kit said, “I know you’ve heard of Sitting Bull, the great chief and holy man of the Lakota Sioux.”
“Sure,” Sam said, ignoring Jake’s groan.
“And you know that after his people were defeated, he joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and traveled all over the world, performing?” Kit went on.
Sam nodded. She’d always thought it was a sad fate for a great warrior.
“But that wasn’t the end,” Kit told her.
“You are so—” Jake began, but Sam stopped him.
“It wasn’t?” she asked, and elbowed Jake gently. She didn’t want him to crash the truck, but she didn’t want him to barge into Kit’s story, either.
“Oh, no. Not nearly the end,” Kit assured Sam. Then, drawing a deep breath, he said, “Sitting Bull spent time with the silly circus partly because of—”
“Annie Oakley, Little Sure Shot,” Sam blurted. “Isn’t that what he called her?”
“That’s one story,” Jake grumped.
“That’s not right?” Sam asked Kit, blushing.
“Our grandfather says the chief stayed because of the magnificent white stallion Buffalo Bill had Sitting Bull ride in the show.”
“Ohhh,” Sam sighed. The chills racing down her neck, past her elbows, to the tips of her fingers told her this was a far better version of the truth.
“In the Wild West show, there were wagon races, shooting matches, and a special act in which the chief starred. In it, a stagecoach was chased and surrounded by a band of shooting, screaming Indians.”
Kit’s sarcastic tone took nothing away from the picture in Sam’s imagination.
“And then Sitting Bull, wearing bleached buckskins and bright feathers, galloped in on his white stallion. The war painted horse leaped and reared and ran amid the gunfire, and finally bowed to his delighted audience, which, truth be told, liked the horse lots better than the chief.”
“Of course, Sitting Bull wasn’t a Shoshone,” Jake put in, and Sam laughed. Jake must have forgiven his brother for telling her the story, so maybe he’d gotten over whatever was bugging him before. She felt satisfied by that possibility as Kit went on.
“Time passed, and even while the show was in Europe, Sitting Bull heard of the unrest stirring among the tribes. Sitting Bull decided it was time to leave show business,” Kit said. “As a parting gift, Buffalo Bill gave his old friend the white stallion.”
“Or he might’ve stolen him,” Jake joked. “Remember, he—”
“—wasn’t a Shoshone,” Kit finished with a chuckle. “Still, the old man returned to his people and urged them to resist the government’s campaign of stamping out Indian languages, religion, and ways. When the final clash came—and some say it was an outright assassination—Sitting Bull was afoot. He was shot many times. And he died.”
A crow rode the wind overhead and stayed silent, except for his beating wings.
“The horse could have saved him, I bet,” Sam said, but when Jake and Kit didn’t respond, the chills came back again and Sam asked, “What happened to his white stallion? Did he try to go to Sitting Bull?”
Jake rolled his eyes as if that was an unbearably romantic notion, but Kit said, “Maybe. All I know is that the stallion heard the awful gunfire and started doing what he knew how to do. He escaped the place where the chief had left him tied, and charged toward the sound he remembered.” Kit looked into Sam’s face as he added, “The sound of rifles.”
Sam shivered.
“And then the stallion pranced,” Kit said. “He leaped over bodies, untouched by a single bullet. He reared, pawing at the skies, just as he had in the white man’s circus. Finally, while the great chief lay dying, the stallion bowed to him.”
Tears pricked Sam’s eyes.
“It’s just a story,” Jake said.
“I know it.” Sam swallowed hard.
“A pretty widespread story,” Kit insisted, “and ever after, the tribes said the white stallion honored his master with a final dance.”
By the time they reached River Bend Ranch, they’d driven in silence for twenty minutes. Jake kept flashing Kit dirty looks, but Sam was sunk in melancholy over Norman White and her own stallion, not over Sitting Bull.
Still, she found the silence hard to break until she’d unloaded Ace. Even then, she thought her good-byes sounded mechanical.
“Nice meeting you, Kit. See you at school tomorrow, Jake.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Jake reminded her, but Sam hardly heard.
More than usual, she felt the smooth gloss of leather reins, as she led Ace toward the barn. He hung back, tossing his head, tugging toward the ten-acre pasture.
Sam made a clucking noise to keep the gelding moving, and finally he walked after her. They’d crossed the ranch yard and passed the small pasture where Dark Sunshine and Tempest were spending their last day together before weaning, when Sam stopped.
She’d almost put Ace into the open box stall he’d shared with Sweetheart.
But Sweetheart was gone. The old paint mare lived in town. She served as a beloved therapy horse for disabled children and Gram went to work with her and the kids twice a week. Sweetheart had left three months ago, and Ace had been living in the ten-acre pasture even longer.
“What am I thinking, good boy?” Sam asked her bay gelding.
Ace didn’t answer, just kept moving into the barn. He stopped where she’d crosstied and groomed him dozens of times and waited for her to take off his tack.
Sam eased her saddle off and carried it to the tack room with Ace’s bridle hooked over the saddle horn.
Much of Sam’s tension drained away as she groomed her horse. She paid special care to avoiding Ace’s ticklish spots—behind his elbows, under his belly, and especially his left flank—then cleaned his hooves and brushed him from poll to tail until not a single sweat mark remained.
Finally, Sam put all her grooming tools away, wrapped her arms around Ace’s warm neck, and asked, “So what am I going to do, boy? Beg Dad to let me adopt the Phantom? That’s not what either of us wants, but if that horrible Norman rounds him up, I can’t let him go to someone else.”
Ace nodded, and though Sam knew he was only rubbing his chin against her back, it felt like the bay gelding, who’d once roamed the Calico Mountains with the Phantom, was telling her it wasn’t such a bad solution.
Then, something else broke.
She and Ace were leaving the barn when a gust of wind shook the structure, slamming the door in their faces, and the little wooden horse Dallas, River Bend’s foreman, had carved and stained with white shoe polish to look like the Phantom flew off the ledge where Sam had poised it for good luck. It struck her head and fell on the floor.
The collision with her head should have slowed the figure enough to prevent damage, Sam thought as it landed on the hay at her feet. She wasn’t worried as she bent to retrieve it, until she saw that one thin wooden leg was missing. It had snapped off. Though the leg wasn’t hard to find, when she tried to fit the two pieces together, they didn’t match. Sam searched for a wood chip and couldn’t find one. Even if she glued the pieces back together, the white horse wouldn’t be the same.
First Jake’s windshield had cracked, then the coffeepot, and now this.
As she tucked the wooden pieces tenderly into her jacket pocket, Sam decided it was a good thing she didn’t believe in omens, because bad ones were piling up all around her.
Sam was in the kitchen, setting the table and breathing in the tomato, onion, and cream aroma of Gram’s swiss
steak and scalloped potatoes, when she heard the BLM truck drive up.
“Brynna’s a little…” Gram’s voice trailed off and she moved from the kitchen counter to look out the window in the door. She wiped her hands on her apron and stared.
“What is it?” Sam asked, but she was already beside Gram.
They both watched as the BLM truck backed up, then rolled toward the bridge and back over the La Charla River. Brynna walked across the ranch yard, toward the house. Blaze bounced out to greet her, and Brynna ignored him.
That was totally unlike her, Sam thought. Brynna always had time to rumple the Border collie’s ears. She hadn’t crossed to the corral to greet her blind mustang Penny, either.
Sam heard the shower running upstairs. Dad was getting cleaned up for dinner. She wished he was here, now, because he was probably the only one Brynna would feel like talking to.
As she and Gram stepped back from the door, Sam noticed that Brynna lifted her chin and pinned back her shoulders before stepping up onto the porch.
“Last day of work,” Brynna said. She tried to put a chirp in her tone, but her voice quavered and her blue eyes were filled with tears.
“I thought you had two more weeks,” Gram said.
“So did I.” Brynna stopped, pressing her shaking lips together for a second before she could go on. “But the D.C. office phoned to say they were going with my earlier leave date, that he…” She lifted a hand toward the truck and Norman White, though they were gone. “He…,” she repeated, but she couldn’t finish.
When Gram tried to wrap her in a hug, Brynna stepped away. “Please don’t. I can’t fall apart, and if you—”
“I understand,” Gram said, but she linked her hands together as if it were the only way she could keep from comforting her daughter-in-law.
“He drove me home because I won’t have access to a BLM vehicle until my leave ends. I think he didn’t want me to have an excuse to drive up there and return it and get in his way.” Brynna gave a bitter laugh. “Can you believe the home office didn’t even wait until Monday? Someone phoned to say I should take some time off to enjoy myself. As if I could, with him…”
Brynna shook her head once more, and then rushed for the stairs.
Sam’s heart sank as she looked after her stepmother.
With her braid bouncing between her shoulder blades, Brynna looked like a distraught teenager.
“Careful on the stairs,” Gram whispered, and Sam wondered why she bothered, because Brynna couldn’t possibly have heard.
Chapter Five
Dinner was a little late that Saturday night.
When Brynna came downstairs holding Dad’s hand, her pink thermal shirt was stretched to its limits over gray sweatpants and her eyelids were red from crying, but her wet hair was fragrant with shampoo and she no longer trembled.
Forks clinked on plates. Teeth chewed. Throats swallowed. And every time Sam thought she could stand the silence no longer, Dad frowned at her.
What did he think she was going to say? Gosh, she didn’t want Brynna unhappy any more than Dad did. Not only did she care for her stepmother, but Brynna had been the only one standing between the Phantom and capture since the day they’d met.
Finally, Brynna drew a shaky breath and said, “Norman’s proposed a fifty percent reduction of wild horses on the range.”
Sam closed her eyes.
“He thinks this winter will have a bad impact on the horses’ habitat, especially in the Calico Range. That contradicts my research, which shows the horses going into winter strong enough to stand up against the weather and then benefiting from the high moisture content in this winter’s storms, which will mean huge growth in rabbit brush, bitter brush, and all kinds of bunchgrass.”
Brynna was a biologist, Sam thought. Her opinions were backed up with facts. So, why didn’t Norman believe her?
“How will they decide who’s right?” Gram asked.
“Coin toss,” Dad muttered.
“I hope not,” Brynna said, smiling at Dad’s loyalty. “I’m home for a while, though, and rather than harassing my Washington contacts every day, I’m going to help you with weaning Tempest,” Brynna said, nodding to Sam. “You with holiday baking,” Brynna said to Gram, then turned to Wyatt. “And you with some of Pepper’s chores, since we’re letting him go home for two weeks.”
Sam wanted to beg Brynna to help her make emergency plans for the Phantom, but she’d wait a little while. She wanted to save his whole herd, too, but that seemed impossible. Her only choice, if they brought him in, was to take money from her college fund to pay the stallion’s adoption fees.
And I will stand up to you over that, Sam thought, looking at Dad.
Misinterpreting her glare, Dad sat back from the table and fixed her with steady eyes.
“About the weaning,” he said. “I’m still planning on loading that buckskin up first thing tomorrow morning and taking her to Clara’s pasture, where she’s out of sight and sound of Tempest. She can run around with Teddy Bear, Jinx, and those two yearlings.”
“I know,” Sam said. She looked down at the food on her plate without appetite.
“Dallas is right about it being the kindest thing,” Gram said. “If we put her in the ten-acre pasture where she and Tempest can see each other, there’ll be no end to the neighing and crying. If we make the separation quick and final—by that I mean just for three weeks, of course—it’s like ripping off a Band-Aid. It will only hurt for a minute.”
Sam had heard Dallas’s Band-Aid comparison more times than she could stand, but she just nodded.
Brynna gave a little sniff, the only sign of her earlier tears, before she said, “Tempest has been doing great with the creep feeder. We don’t have to worry about her nutrition.”
That part was true. Sam was happy that Dad had constructed the feeding pen with an entrance just big enough for Tempest to get in and eat, but too small for Dark Sunshine to follow. Day by day, the foal had become less dependent on her mother’s milk, so she’d really only miss her company.
Loneliness would be bad enough, Sam thought, and suddenly she knew Tempest wouldn’t be the only one missing Dark Sunshine.
“May I please be excused to go out and visit them?” Sam asked. “I promise to do the dishes when I get back.”
“Go ahead,” Dad said. Though he sounded gruff, Sam knew he understood.
“Take your time,” Brynna told her. “Your Gram and I can handle things in here.”
It was nearly dark outside.
Sam hunched her shoulders against the wind and jammed her hands into her coat pockets as she crossed the ranch yard. If all the predicted storms blew in, she wouldn’t be going anywhere without a hat, gloves, and scarf, as well as her jacket.
As soon as Sam stepped into the barn, she felt sure those storms would come. Moisture in the air always brought out a Christmas tree smell from the pine boards. The smell reminded her of the rainy night she’d stayed with Dark Sunshine through her labor and delivery of her foal. And though it was probably silly, instead of turning on the barn lights, Sam went to the tack room and retrieved the lantern she’d used for gentle illumination on that night.
A golden glow swung around Sam as she returned to the stall. Dark Sunshine and Tempest both crowded close at her arrival, but Sam couldn’t help noticing the different expressions in the horses’ eyes.
Tempest’s eyes glowed with excitement, because Sam brought food and fun into her life. When Sam didn’t rush into the stall to give her a filly massage, Tempest rocked into a half rear and squealed excitedly.
“In a minute, baby,” Sam said, “And you be careful. You’re getting to be almost as big as your mama.”
Dark Sunshine was just over thirteen hands tall, and her black-shaded legs were delicate as a doe’s.
As Sam slipped inside the stall, the buckskin’s wide-browed face nudged her shoulder, but then Sunny stepped back.
Beneath her black forelock, Sunny’s eyes were watchful, al
ways expecting the worst.
You’ve never been happy here, Sam thought, but she didn’t say the words, because there had been moments after Tempest’s birth when Sunny’s longing neighs toward the mountains had stopped. And once, at the river, she’d had a chance to flee with the Phantom and she hadn’t.
Sam stepped closer to Sunny and slid her hands over the mare in long, loving strokes.
It wasn’t Sunny’s fault that she was cautious. The first time Sam had seen her, the mare had been dehydrated and half-starved. Used by wild horse rustlers to lure other horses into a trap, she’d been left behind, blindfolded, time after time.
Sam had saved her—she guessed stolen was more accurate—but the mare had been beaten and traumatized. Fear had made her so vicious, no one could get close enough to remove her blindfold. When the red bandanna had finally fallen off, the mare’s panic had made Jake guess the mare had been kept in a dark stall for most of her life.
Watching her whirl with flattened ears and flared nostrils, he’d said, “She’s half scared you’ll put her in the dark, and half scared you’ll bring her into the light.”
Sunny’s spirit might have healed if a terrible barn fire hadn’t struck River Bend Ranch. All the other horses had been freed to run from the flames, but Sunny had been forgotten in the round pen. By the time Sam remembered her, the mare’s chest had been bloody from pounding against the log rails. Then the mare had stampeded after the other horses.
On another night, Sam’s heart would have sung to see Sunny passing all the bigger horses—first Tank, then Sweetheart, Strawberry, Ace, and even long-legged Popcorn—but it hadn’t been a beautiful sight. Terror had spurred the tiny mare to race for the lead.
“And it was so sad,” Sam whispered, “when the Phantom brought you back.”
Sad but amazing, too, Sam thought.
After guarding the buckskin jealously for weeks, the Phantom had returned her, driving her with snapping teeth back across the river to the ranch, where she’d get the human help she needed to heal her cuts.
Sunny had never stopped longing toward the Calico Mountains. So, a few weeks before, Sam had gone with Dad to check every post and crosspiece of the fence around Clara’s pasture. The mare should be safe there. Even if she wanted to escape, her slim legs were too short to launch her over the rails to freedom.
