by Terri Farley
It would be unlike him to be jealous, she thought, then corrected herself. Well, not totally unlike him. But the Dialogue had published a story about his cross-country running victories, so he and Kit would be even after she wrote up this interview.
“Hi, Samantha!” Mrs. Ely’s cheeks were flushed, her blond hair flyaway, and she wore an apron over her teacherly slacks and shirt. “Come in and have some gingerbread. It’s almost ready.”
Sam hadn’t noticed Mrs. Ely’s Honda outside and she was surprised her history teacher was already home. Mrs. Ely was one of those teachers who arrived early and stayed late, giving makeup tests, tutoring, and grading papers.
And the house—wow, Jake had been right. There were candy canes hanging everywhere. An arrangement of pine boughs, gold bells, and red bows took up so much of the kitchen table, the cooling racks of gingerbread boys and girls barely fit, and Sam did a double take when she spotted Kit sitting amid it all.
He raised one hand in greeting as Mrs. Ely asked, “Need a refill on that cocoa, honey?”
“I’m good, Mom,” he said, then, shrugging his shoulders inside what was clearly a brand-new plaid flannel shirt, added to Sam, “She’s spoiling me. Wanted to put glitter on my cast.”
He sounded so much like Jake, Sam had to smile.
“Well, it would have looked cute,” Mrs. Ely said, but Sam could tell she was laughing at herself for fussing over her adult son.
Jake and Nate jostled for space in the doorway, bringing a blast of fresh air into the warm kitchen.
“Digger’s decided he’s a rodeo bronc,” Nate said.
Sam pictured Nate’s clean-limbed brown horse with the white chin spot as Nate pointed at Kit and added, “Must be your fault, bringing buckin’ bugs home.”
“Good horse like him, just brace your arms, keep his head up, and drive him forward,” Kit suggested.
“Yeah,” Nate agreed.
“Smells good, Mom,” Jake said, but as he stripped off his leather gloves and held his hands near the open oven, he stared at Kit. Actually, more at Kit’s arm, Sam thought.
“Help yourself,” Mrs. Ely said. Then, as she piled cookies on a plate, she smiled at Sam and asked, “Why don’t you two take your interview into the living room?”
“Fine,” Kit said, standing.
As Sam took a small notebook and pen from her pocket, she noticed Jake reaching for a cookie. His mom whisked the plate out of reach and handed it to Kit.
Though every kitchen surface was covered with treats, Jake looked as if his mother had slammed a door in his face.
Kit must have noticed, because he jerked his head toward the living room and asked, “You comin’, Baby Bear?”
Jake shook his head. Sam knew the lure of cookies and listening in on the interview wasn’t enough to get Jake to answer to his childhood nickname.
She almost told Jake not to be such a baby. After all, he called her Brat all the time and she tolerated it, but when Sam tried to meet Jake’s eyes, he turned away.
Sam followed Kit into the living room and jotted down a few setting details as background for her story.
She’d heard kitchens called “the heart of the house.” At River Bend, that was true. Here at Three Ponies Ranch, though, she’d give that title to the living room.
The bushy pinion pine tree, probably cut nearby, boasted about a hundred fat, multicolored lights and almost as many ornaments, made by each of the six brothers in elementary school.
Sam noticed a pink felt pig with one blue sequin eye, a handprint covered in aluminum foil with “Quinn” scrawled across it in smudged black crayon, a clothespin angel missing half of her glued-on hair, and leather pony ornaments with cutout middles that framed photographs of each of the six boys on horses.
Turning her eyes from the Christmas tree, Sam saw an Indian print rug with geometric shapes in bright colors spread in front of the fireplace. Turquoise, amber, and purple bottles collected in the desert sat on glass shelves in every available window, casting multicolored beams as if the windows were made of stained glass.
A pine-planked wall displayed some of Mrs. Ely’s photographs. Last year, she’d told Sam windows were her favorite things to photograph, and the pictures mingled with those of the Ely boys and their father, Luke. All black-haired and mahogany skinned, the Elys fished, barbecued, squatted awestruck next to a litter of barn kittens, and showed off every stunt humans could do on horseback.
“These make me wish I’d had brothers or sisters,” Sam said, but when she turned to Kit, she saw he wasn’t listening. He frowned as he flexed the fingers sticking out of his cast.
Quickly, Sam stared into the fireplace, listened to the others banging around in the kitchen, and waited for Kit to say something.
Because he was a male Ely, she knew that it could take a while. Sam pretended she was fascinated by the wreath hanging over the hearth.
But it turned out Kit had been listening.
“Guess you’ll have one soon enough,” Kit said. “A brother or sister.”
“That’s true,” Sam managed as Kit gestured toward a scarred leather couch piled with pillows. “Thanks.”
She sat, and Kit walked slowly to the chair nearest the blazing fire. At first Sam thought his lazy stride was another family trait, like Jake’s tomcat-sleeping-in-the-sun squint, but then she wondered if Kit’s legs hurt.
What did a bronc’s first jump out of the chute do to the knees you held on with?
She hadn’t meant to be so obvious, watching him, but he caught her.
“We don’t need this on,” Kit said. He advanced on the television, but only turned it down, not off.
Last year’s Journalism class had taught Sam not to ask interview questions that could be answered with a yes or no, so she started out by taking Kit back to his Three Ponies childhood.
He remembered telling her that according to Shoshone legend, Jake had once been a horse and she’d been a mosquito.
“You guys were so little then,” Kit said. “I had to hold Jake up so he could sneak cookies off the kitchen counter, or get his boot into a stirrup. And when he couldn’t catch up with the rest of us, I let him ride on my shoulders.”
This was so different from the dare he’d thrown down in the truck, about finding a couple of wild horses to see which of them was the real horseman of the family. Sam wished Jake had been sitting right beside her to see the wistful look on Kit’s face.
Since she couldn’t exactly call Jake in and make him look, Sam continued the interview by asking Kit about his vision quest.
He looked surprised that she’d heard about it.
“I was here when your grandfather insisted Jake do his—” Sam broke off, not sure how to go on.
“Indian initiation ceremony?” Kit joked.
Sam nodded. “Jake caught and tamed this amazing pinto mare, and then he let her go.”
Kit gave a satisfied nod, but he didn’t say anything, so Sam kept talking.
“Adam made a canoe, right? Nate was a fancy dancer, Quinn did drumming, and Bryan…I can’t remember…”
“Built the sweat lodge. After I was gone, of course.”
Kit called his vision quest a week of sleeping on the ground, fasting, and thinking about what he wanted to do with his life.
“Grandfather was so disappointed.” Kit shrugged. “I’m surprised he made the rest of ’em do it.”
“How could he have been disappointed?” Sam asked.
“He said I left home and never really came back,” Kit said with a sigh. “But I just figured out that I was in love with rodeo. College wasn’t for me—at least not then.”
After that, Sam found it easy to get Kit talking about his life since leaving Three Ponies Ranch.
“Mostly it’s boom or bust,” he admitted. “On a night that the broncs are good to me, I sleep in a hotel room with as many of my buddies as we can squeeze in, but not before we play cards and eat our fill of room service steaks and salads.”
“Salads?
” Sam blurted.
“Yeah, most of us drive from rodeo to rodeo—the big guys fly, of course—but the way I did it, I had to eat too much fast food. It has to be something I can eat while I drive. So a big leafy thing that hasn’t been fried can taste like heaven.”
Taking notes, Sam noticed that Kit talked about his career as if it were over. She shook her head and scolded herself for being so literal.
“And the bust part?” she asked.
Kit chuckled. “Next night, it’ll feel like the broncs have been talking, deciding they let me off too easy, and since I spent all my winnings the night before, I’ll end up sleepin’ on a blanket in some fairgrounds barn.”
“That must be hard,” Sam said.
“It pays off, mostly. I mean, I almost made it to the Grand Nationals.”
So it had been true, Sam thought. She jotted a note—not that she’d need reminding later—that the boy from Three Ponies Ranch had made it to the top.
When Sam looked up, though, Kit was rubbing the fingers on his casted arm. He met her eyes and gave a self-mocking smile.
“If I hadn’t gone to that one last rodeo, training for the big time, I wouldn’t have wrecked my arm or had to take out a loan on my truck to pay doctor bills.”
“I don’t know much about it, but isn’t there, like, medical insurance for you?” Sam asked.
“For the big guys,” Kit said again. “And the Justin Boot company has a cowboy crisis fund, but when you see what happens to some riders, this”—he lifted his cast—“is nothing. I’d be ashamed to apply.”
Kit looked down as his mother came into the living room followed by Jake and Nate. After leaving home and staying gone so much, was Kit ashamed to ask for help with his medical expenses? Had he arrived on foot because he’d had to sell his truck? Sam wondered.
“Kit, Sam, will it bother you if we sit in on your interview?”
“We’re almost done, anyway,” Sam said. She glanced at the television and saw the evening news coming on. If she didn’t hurry she’d be riding home in the dark. “I only have one more question, and it’s kind of sappy.”
“Fire away,” Kit told her.
“All the kids at Darton High, your old school, will be wondering how it feels to live your dream. What would you tell them?”
Sam expected Kit to shrug, as Jake might have. Instead, Kit stared into the fireplace, then sat back in his chair.
When Kit spoke again, his voice had taken on the storytelling tone he’d used for the tale of Sitting Bull and the dancing white stallion.
“Well, Samantha, I’ve been pretty fortunate. That’s all. I’ve drawn lots of mostly good horses and most times I’ve stuck on ’til the buzzer. I managed to duck injuries, trucks that broke down in the rain, and bad luck….
“After this heals,” Kit continued, lifting his cast, “I see myself back at the chutes, helping Pani—he’s my best buddy, a cowboy from Hawaii, if you can believe it—tie on his riggin’, havin’ him give me a high five, even after I beat him out in the arena.”
“Is that really how it is?” Nate asked. “Your friends don’t get mad if you beat them?”
“Most don’t,” Kit said. “I’ve seen a man loan his ten-thousand-dollar horse as easily as you’d loan Sam here a pencil in school. And if a pal gets injured, we have fund-raisers and kick in whatever we can to help him.”
“But it’s such a vagabond lifestyle, going from place to place without a family,” Mrs. Ely fretted.
“When you’re that far from home, you kinda make your own neighborhood,” Kit told his mother. “Then you haul it around with you from state to state, rodeo to rodeo, like a snail with its shell.”
Kit swallowed so hard that Sam heard him, before going on, “Mom, I love rodeo. It’s just flat-out different from other sports. Cowboys don’t boo when the judge makes a call they don’t like. Oh, there might be boots scuffin’, or men pullin’ their hats down a little harder than’s called for, but that’s all. The fans don’t go out and trash the town for a celebration, either. That sort of behavior just ain’t our style.
“Basically—and Sam, you know this from my brothers and your own dad—cowboys don’t tolerate no whining.” Kit was quiet for a few seconds as he stared at his cast. “You just gotta take it as it comes.”
Chapter Eight
Sap sizzled inside a log in the fireplace, then popped. Sam breathed in the smells of gingerbread, wood smoke, and damp flannel shirts.
“I’m proud of you,” Mrs. Ely said simply.
Nate groaned and held his throat as if his mother’s sentimentality made him sick. Then Quinn clomped in from the kitchen, hollering to ask where everyone was, and Sam snapped her notebook closed. The interview was over. It was time she let the Elys get back to being a family.
“I’ve got what I need. Thanks, Kit,” she said. Feeling like a professional journalist, she leaned down to shake his good hand, and told him, “Don’t get up.”
Then she glanced at Jake to see if he planned to walk outside with her to get Ace.
From the corner of her eye, Sam had kept track of Jake’s reaction to his brother’s remarks.
He’d shifted, cleared his throat, and thrown his arm over the back of his chair. Even if he’d been bored, she’d expected to see Jake smiling now.
That wasn’t what she saw.
Jake’s reaction reminded her of a snowstorm. When you glimpse the first few snowflakes, you’re not even sure they’re there. You blink, thinking you’re seeing things, guessing it’s just blowing off trees or rooftops, but then, suddenly, flurries turn into fury.
Jake looked angry. He must feel jealous of Kit’s lifestyle, independence, and success. He was probably too embarrassed to admit it, but resentment had been bubbling up in him since Kit arrived home. She didn’t want to be nearby when it boiled over.
I’m out of here, she thought, giving a quick wave, then heading out of the living room. She heard Jake’s boots and the chime of his spurs following her through the kitchen.
He’s just going to be surly, Sam warned herself when she was tempted to stop.
So she walked faster. She’d made it outside to the front porch when she noticed the deepening dusk. She had to hurry home.
“I forgot how much I hate it when he plays people.” Jake’s voice made her glance back.
“What?”
“I keep trying to remember the good times, but when he does that thing—”
“What thing?” Sam asked.
“Reeling folks in, like he did just now.” Jake jerked his head toward the house. “Like he did tellin’ you about Sitting Bull.”
That wasn’t playing people, Sam thought; it was weaving words into great stories. It might even be charm, but she didn’t tell him that.
“You can do the same thing,” she said, seeing the skill in a flash of memory. “When you told me about the three Indian ponies your ranch is named for and the star shower—”
“I don’t use that sad smile to make people go gooey-eyed.”
Just leave, Sam told herself, and she stepped off the porch.
“You guys will work it out,” she said airily, but Kit’s wistful expression as he recalled boosting little Jake up to reach things crowded out her good intentions. “Jake, that’s a real smile.”
Just as he’d welcomed Witch’s misbehavior, he welcomed Sam’s.
“And you’d know that, better ’n me,” Jake scoffed, “after spendin’ how much time with him?”
Jake was rarely sarcastic, so she tried to stay calm. But when he leaned against the house with his arms crossed and gave a scornful sniff, that did it.
“I know,” Sam snapped as she marched closer to Jake, “because I was paying attention when he was talking about you before you and Nate came into the room—”
“Don’t point your finger at me, Samantha.”
“Okay,” she said, then poked her index finger against his chest.
Jake sidestepped and left her hand hanging there until she dropp
ed it to her side.
Then she tried being sympathetic. “Jake, I know it must make you crazy when Kit calls you Baby Bear—”
“Hold your voice down.”
Sam took a deep breath. His request made her even madder. Did he think she wanted his family as an audience to this ridiculous discussion?
“What,” she whispered, “did he have to gain by saying nice things about you when you weren’t there to hear? Huh?”
“This,” Jake said, and now he was the one pointing. “You standing up for him.”
“I am so sure—” Sam broke off and stared into the lavender sky. Spotting the evening star, she made a hurried wish that she could smooth things over. “Jake, a twentysomething-year-old man doesn’t care if a high school sophomore takes his side against his brother!”
Jake was in over his head. He didn’t like to talk, let alone dissect relationships.
So Sam gave him a minute. She heard Ace nicker. She made out the garbled noise of the television inside the Elys’ house. She saw Jake scuff his boot toe in the dirt as he muttered, “I don’t know.”
Sam looked down to snap her coat closed just as the front porch light suddenly glared down on them.
The kitchen door swung open, nearly striking Jake.
“Sam, don’t go,” Mrs. Ely said. “I’m not a gossip. Well, not usually,” she corrected with a sheepish grin, “but honey, believe me, you’ve got to see this! You, too, Jake. I wish Luke were home,” she fretted, glancing toward the ranch gates.
Then she turned to go back into the house.
Sam only stared at Jake for a second. Was he going to say something to erase his hostility?
“What?” she encouraged him, and then Sam waited.
She didn’t want to be impatient, but her curiosity was stronger than her desire to continue their stupid conversation. So, when Jake mumbled “Nothin’” and stepped aside to let her squeeze past him, Sam slipped back into the house.
“That son of a gun had it coming!”
Sam followed Nate’s crowing voice back into the living room.
Everyone was staring at the TV, but it took Sam a few seconds to make sense of what the reporter’s voice was saying. She recognized Lynn Cooper’s throaty tone at the same time that she recognized two of the three men on the TV screen.
