Red Feather Filly

by Terri Farley

  She counted again, using her fingers this time. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. The race was the following Saturday. Even though spring vacation would help, at best they’d only have seven full days with the filly.

  She’d seen a TV special about professional horse trainers who could tame wild horses in a few days. Even they admitted the horses remained unpredictable for months. And Jake, for all his skill, was just a kid.

  “Seven days isn’t very long,” she said, as Jake parked the Scout and they joined the mob of students hustling toward class.

  “No, but I’m going to convince our parents that we should leave right from school on Thursday, and since Friday is a minimum day for everyone except sophomores…”

  Sam’s mind spun as she pulled on her backpack.

  Jake was right. Sophomores had some sort of statewide test on Friday. Classes would be only thirty minutes long, so the school day would end early. Everyone, except the poor sophomores, would be dismissed at noon.

  She was a freshman and Jake was a junior.

  Jake gave her a brotherly slap on the back that made her stagger. “We’ll have eight and a half days, Brat. Piece of cake!”

  The rest of the week passed like a jumbled dream.

  Dad, Brynna, and Gram not only agreed to Jake’s plan, Brynna started assembling camping supplies and Gram began cooking food that would be easy to reheat over a camp stove. That was the good news.

  At school, things weren’t so easy. Every one of Sam’s teachers promised a spring vacation without homework, but major assignments were due Thursday in every class except P.E. and Journalism.

  On Wednesday morning she let Jake go see the pinto alone, while she slept in for another hour. She’d missed talking with Jen at the bus stop, yesterday.

  They both felt like it was a reunion. Jen chattered about plans for the Super Bowl of Horsemanship. Ryan had offered to pay the entry fee.

  Sam wasn’t surprised, until Jen explained that if they won, Ryan wanted to return half the prize money to Mrs. Allen.

  “And he’ll give half to me,” Jen said, with a sappy smile, “for all my hard work. I bet no one else in the race will be so generous.”

  Angry heat flashed over Sam. Was it a best friend’s job to point out Jen’s silly, lovey-dovey expression and her blind approval of anything Ryan did?

  Even though she wanted to shake Jen and shout, Sure, Ryan can afford to be generous. His daddy’s a millionaire!, she didn’t do it.

  That was probably why, when Jen mentioned that Ryan was having trouble working with Roman, Sam shivered with guilty satisfaction.

  That afternoon, when Dad and Pepper rode in muddy and grumpy from clearing irrigation ditches, Sam decided to give Dad one more example of her maturity. When she offered to clean up Tank, Dad gave her a grateful grin.

  She worked alongside Pepper, the seventeen-year-old cowboy from Idaho, and found she didn’t mind the work. Pepper was tired, but not as disgruntled as Dad, and he wanted to talk.

  As they tied Tank and Strawberry to the hitching rail, he confided they’d seen the Phantom.

  “You did? Where?”

  “Kinda by Lost Canyon,” Pepper said, stripping the saddle from Strawberry’s roan back. “That wasn’t the interestin’ part, though.”

  Sam watched Pepper shake the saddle blanket coated with sweat and loose hair. She gave him a few seconds, knowing she wouldn’t have to pry the story out of him.

  “He was battlin’ another stallion who, I guess, got a little too friendly with the gray’s mares.”

  Instantly, Sam thought of Moon. The Phantom’s night-black son had challenged him before. She hoped he wasn’t at it again.

  “They were kickin’ and squealin’,” Pepper went on, “and your horse was usin’ his teeth so much, he ’bout peeled that sorrel like a potato.”

  Sorrel. It wasn’t Moon, then. Still, Sam cringed. Of course she wanted the Phantom to win every fight, but bites could get infected and she didn’t want any mustang to die.

  By the time they’d finished grooming both horses, Brynna was home and it was almost dinnertime. Walking to the house, Sam was trying to remember everything she had to do before bedtime.

  Homework, of course, and pack for her camping trip. Since she and Jake would leave right after school tomorrow, he was coming by tonight to pick up her gear and stash it in the Scout.

  When she got inside, Gram had just finished talking with Mrs. Allen and she was reporting on the conversation to Brynna.

  “Well, Trudy’s given in to our rich neighbor,” Gram began in frustration. She stopped talking, looking a little guilty as soon as she saw Sam.

  But then Dad came into the kitchen. He’d already washed up and changed to a fresh shirt for dinner. Sam could smell the pine tar soap he always used.

  “How’d she do that?” he asked.

  “For a substantial donation, she agreed to let Linc ‘display’ his bison herd at the start of the race.”

  “We’ll have more loco horses than they know what to do with,” Dad said.

  Sam agreed, and she didn’t much like the idea of being on one of them. Still, she was curious.

  “I’d like to see them,” Sam admitted.

  “So would I,” Brynna said. “But I’d feel better if he had the faintest idea of what he planned to do with them.”

  “It sounded like he wanted to have hunters pay to shoot them,” Gram said.

  “If so,” Dad said, “he’d better keep ’em penned on his own property. Come hunting season you always hear of dudes shooting a heifer, thinkin’ she’s a buck. Can’t imagine it’s any different with buffalo hunters.”

  They were clearing the dinner dishes when Jake and his grandfather arrived. They loaded her camping gear in the cargo area of the Scout. Gram and Mac still stood outside talking while Sam took Jake inside for dessert.

  As soon as he saw Brynna, Jake squared his shoulders and stopped.

  “Hello, Jake,” Brynna said.

  “I had a question,” he said. “If…well…if I run this filly onto public lands, and she mixes in with the wild horses, what happens?”

  Sam listened intently. Jake hadn’t mentioned his concern over this before.

  “Nothing until there was a gather. If there was a gather and she was brought in and if there was some identification on her, say, a brand, we’d trace her back to you. Then, you could either claim her and pay the trespass fees for grazing her on public lands for free, or you could give her up to us and we’d try to find her another home.”

  “There’s gotta be some crossover with tribal lands bordering public lands.”

  “There is,” Brynna admitted. “We know some horses wander back and forth and most aren’t branded. We wouldn’t know they weren’t wild unless someone came forward, claimed them, and paid the trespass fees.”

  Jake looked as if he had another question, but just then his grandfather poked his head inside.

  He gave friendly waves to all the Forsters, then looked at Jake and jerked his head toward the car.

  “Jacob, let’s go. Your mother made me promise to hurry. You’ll be sleeping on the ground tomorrow and she wants you to get a good night’s sleep tonight.”

  Without a word of protest, Jake went. Sam was sure she’d never heard him called Jacob before. It sounded strangely grown-up, and she wondered if that was why Mac Ely had used it.

  Sam got to bed on time, but her sleep was plagued with nightmares.

  Just before dawn, she dreamed of a maze. At first she thought she was in one of the ravines branching off the main part of Lost Canyon or Arroyo Azul. Then she thought she was inside a video game. At last she realized it was a carnival ride, one of those cars with a seat belt and steering wheel, but no matter which way you turned, you really had no choice.

  In her dream, it was dark and she rode alone, ears hurting from the blatting sound that warned her of each new danger. First, a mannequin of Jake popped up in her path, blowing a police wh
istle. Blatt! The car jerked right and there was the Phantom, head snapping forward like a striking snake.

  Her dream hands steered frantically away and she barely missed a model of Ryan, arms crossed as he gave a mocking laugh that was instantly drowned by another blatt.

  The car ratcheted up a long hill, past Jen on a rearing Sky Ranger with flashing red eyes. At the top of the hill, a big brown buffalo rocked like a hobbyhorse. Lightning bolts zigzagged from its nostrils. And just when she thought the nightmare had ended, she rounded one last corner and the car plunged down into darkness. At the bottom, Linc Slocum cackled and took aim at her. Not with a gun. What was it? She tried to put on a brake, but there were too many pedals on the floor of the car. She kept plummeting down, and just before impact, Linc Slocum stopped her by throwing a high-heeled Western boot.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You talked in your sleep a lot last night,” Brynna said as she drove Sam to the bus stop the next morning.

  “I bet I did,” Sam said. “I had a crazy dream. You and Dad weren’t in it, but you might have been the only ones.”

  “Are you putting too much pressure on yourself to win this race?”

  “Not yet,” Sam said. “I haven’t even done anything to prepare for it, except check out Jake’s horse.”

  “But it means a lot to you,” Brynna said in a leading voice.

  Sam looked down at her left wrist. She circled it with her fingers, wishing she’d found her horsehair bracelet. She kept looking down, afraid her face would give her away. She wasn’t about to tell Brynna she hoped this race would show Dad she was nearly grown.

  “It doesn’t mean that much to me,” Sam said, once she thought she could trust her face not to give her away. “But Jake really wants the money for his truck fund.”

  Brynna looked skeptical, but she didn’t press for a different answer.

  “According to Mac, you’ll be camping out near Monument Lake from tonight until at least Sunday. And he’s coming by about eleven to pick up Ace and trailer him out there with you.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Ace gets to go to school.”

  Jake hated the idea. He wanted to keep the entire project quiet. Now, not only was his grandfather, known as a shaman, coming to school with his rust-wrecked Scout and its radical bumper sticker; he would be dragging a horse trailer and horse.

  So much for slipping out unnoticed, Sam thought.

  “Your Dad will be out to check on you,” Brynna said. “He’s already talking about bringing you home for a shower…”

  “We’ll be right next to a lake, you know,” Sam pointed out.

  “Yes, and you know how he is.” Brynna kissed Sam on the cheek at the bus stop.

  “You be careful, honey,” she said, wrapping her in a hug. “See you in a couple days.”

  By noon, Sam was climbing into the backseat of the old Scout. It smelled of French fries and a fast-food paper bag was waiting on the backseat for her.

  “Hello, Samantha,” Mac Ely said. “Your horse has been very cooperative. I hope you don’t mind a bumpy ride.”

  “I’ll be fine, Mr. Ely,” she said, fastening her seat belt, then turning to look through the back window at what she could see of Ace.

  “Looks like the circus came to town,” Jake muttered.

  Sam turned back to see Jake staring straight ahead through the windshield, even when other students pointed and waved.

  She did feel a little sorry for him. Jake was a private sort of guy. The only thing he did to draw attention to himself was his running.

  She decided this was as good a time as any to give him the little present she’d brought. She unzipped the front pouch on her backpack and withdrew the red-brown hawk’s feather she’d been saving for him.

  “Here,” Sam said. “For luck.”

  Jake took it, stroked his fingers down the plume, and mumbled a quiet thanks.

  “It’ll look good in the filly’s mane when you ride her in the race,” Sam said. “Oh, and about all of them…” She gestured at a few kids who were staring at the truck and trailer. “They’ll all have forgotten by the end of spring break.”

  “No, they won’t,” Mac corrected her. “They’ll be saying, ‘Hey, that kid with the weird grandfather? He and his friend won the Super Bowl of Horsemanship!’”

  Jake couldn’t stifle a faint smile, but it vanished when the Scout’s back end scraped and screeched in the school’s steep driveway, and its front end pointed up, as if it were about to lift off.

  Sam was putting one hand on the door for balance as the Scout bumped out of the lot, toward the freeway, and almost missed seeing Ryan Slocum.

  But he saw them.

  Driving the baby-blue Mercedes-Benz, he swooped into the school lot, probably to pick up Jen.

  As Ryan spotted Jake in the front seat, he frowned, then gave his horn a dignified beep and waved.

  “Perfect, just perfect,” Jake muttered.

  And they were on their way.

  Sam loved the high desert, but today, when she was in a hurry to get out of the backseat, away from the smell of the fast food she’d just pounded down, it seemed too much the same.

  After miles of sand dotted by green sage and piñon, the sudden appearance of Monument Lake as they topped the rise was a shock.

  Both times she’d been here recently, the lake had been veiled with mist. Today, it was as she remembered: a turquoise gem set between chalky pink-and-gray mountains.

  The “monument” in the middle was a tufa formation, made of some kind of alkaline chemicals, but it looked like a giant altar built by an ancient civilization. It was alive with movement, covered with gulls.

  There was no sign of the tribal herd.

  “I wonder where the horses hide out during the day,” Sam said.

  “Oh, they’re mostly penned,” Mac said, nodding. “Shan Stonerow took them in.”

  Sam gasped and Jake turned slowly to stare at his grandfather.

  “The pinto’s out there, still,” Mac added. “I asked him to leave her for now.”

  “She’ll be lonely and easier to catch,” Jake mused, but he didn’t sound grateful. “You didn’t have to make it simple for me.”

  Mac Ely burst into a laugh and his “just you wait” expression took in Sam as well.

  “Oh, Jacob,” Mac said. “While this filly is running you over fifty acres of desert, you’ll have plenty of time to remember those words.”

  “There’s some stuff I didn’t tell you,” Jake admitted as they climbed out of the Scout.

  A camp surrounded by cottonwood trees was already set up. The tent stood next to stacked firewood, and Chocolate Chip, the Quarter horse brother of Witch, nickered a greeting.

  “I guess so,” Sam said. She unlatched the trailer doors and backed Ace out to join Chip.

  Chip dwarfed the mustang. He was only about two hands taller, but he was muscular and heavy-boned. His conformation was identical to Witch’s, and he was just as fast. Only his dark chocolate coat and mild temperament set the siblings apart.

  As Ace and Chip touched noses, Sam remembered her only ride on Chip.

  Queen, the red dun who’d been the Phantom’s lead mare, had escaped. Sam had ridden after her at a full gallop, on Chip. Suddenly, she didn’t wonder why Chip was here.

  “You gave up the idea of running her down,” Sam said. She kept all reaction from her tone, but she was glad Jake had come to his senses. Then she found out he hadn’t.

  “Not exactly, but we’ll talk while we ride. Wait here. I’ll be back.”

  Jake ducked into the tent to change, without giving Sam a chance to reply.

  Maybe it was because she’d been bumped around in the backseat with a belly full of fast food that Sam decided to tell Jake to quit giving her orders.

  When he came out of the tent wearing faded green sweatpants and a green-and-gold Darton High sweatshirt with the sleeves hacked off, she was ready for him.

  “Jake, I want to do this,” she snapped, “
but if you don’t stop bossing me around, we’re going to have a fight. I don’t mind you taking the lead, but you just keep assuming stuff. That I’d be your partner and bring Ace along, for a start. And when you changed the plan,” she paused, gesturing to take in the camp and horse, “you didn’t tell me. Stop doing that.”

  As Jake recovered from the ambush, Sam sneaked a quick glance at Mac. He busied himself with arranging wood in the stone fire ring, though it wouldn’t be dark and cold for hours.

  “Okay,” Jake said grudgingly. “But I don’t know why you can’t just go along…”

  Sam’s hands perched on her hips.

  “You’re not getting this, are you?” she demanded.

  “Forget I said that.” Jake moved his hands as if erasing his words. “But we need to find that filly and start shadowing her now. This is day one of our eight and a half. From this time on, every minute counts.”

  Riding double was another thing Jake hadn’t mentioned.

  “How long do you expect me to do this?” Sam asked.

  Sam sat in the actual seat of the exercise saddle. Smaller than a Western saddle, it changed her position and balance. Not only that, but saddlebags were attached to the front of the saddle because Jake sat behind the cantle, where saddlebags would usually go, so that he could dismount in a hurry.

  “I’m guessing less than twenty-four hours,” Jake said.

  “Twenty-four—”

  “I’ll get off to run every time we get close to her,” Jake assured Sam. “So you’ll have the saddle to yourself.”

  “I guess that’s all right,” Sam said. “I can work the kinks out of my neck when we get back to camp for dinner.”

  “Well, no,” Jake said. “We’re not stopping for dinner.”

  Sam looked at the bulging saddlebags. Dinner must be inside. She wished she’d been more appreciative of her last hot meal, even if it had been a skinny cheeseburger and pale fries.

  Sitting behind her as they rode away from camp, Jake still felt tense, as if there was more to tell.

  “What else?” she demanded.

  Against her spine, Sam felt Jake’s chest rise as if he had to draw a deep breath for this next part.