A Horse, Of Course!

by Sibley Miller

  “Oh, give me a home, where the Wind Dancers roam,” she warbled as she gazed out at the prairie. “Where the cows and the big horses play … Hey, wait a minute!”

  Sumatra suddenly realized that she wasn’t just making up her little ditty. She was inspired by something she’d just spotted off in the distance! A crowd of mooing cows nestled between a grassy hill and a rambling ranch. The ranch consisted of a small bunkhouse, a medium-sized barn, and a big paddock surrounded by a split-log fence.

  “The barn must be where those cows live when they’re not grazing in the valley,” Sumatra said to herself.

  But even more interesting than all the mooing cows was the big horse cantering easily among them!

  “Looks to me like that horse is working!” Sumatra said triumphantly. She began racing eagerly over the hills until she reached the pinto, who was a rangy mare.

  “Hello!” Sumatra nickered when the mare paused for a moment in her cow herding. “I’m Sumatra! A Wind Dancer!”

  “Well, hi there, you cute little thing,” the pinto said in a lilting twang. “I’m Sassafras, a cow horse. But you! A flying horse? I never!”

  “Well, I never met a real, live cow horse either!” Sumatra admitted with a grin. “So, I guess that makes two of us. I’d love to hear all about your job—”

  “Excuse me,” the cow horse drawled. “It looks like some of our cows have broken off from the herd. I’ve got to go rustle ’em back. I’ll be back faster than a bronco can buck!”

  Sassafras neighed the last words over her shoulder as she galloped up the hill, where a few lonely cows were looking lost.

  Sassafras whinnied loudly. She galloped around the confused cattle until, somehow, she nudged them back to the group.

  Then Sassafras trotted casually back over to Sumatra.

  “So, is this your first time out on the range?” the cow horse asked the Wind Dancer. “How do you like it?”

  “So much that … I want to make a career out of it!” Sumatra declared without a moment’s hesitation. “Your job is perfect for me! I mean, when I neigh, animals listen! I even directed a talent show recently!”

  “Well, that’s a great start,” Sassafras said with a twinkle in her eye. “But how do you feel about living life on the prairie? Smelling the sweet grass? Listening to the cowpokes as they sing songs, cook beans, and toast marshmallows over an open fire?”

  Sumatra’s eyes twinkled right back.

  “This is the life for me!” she replied.

  “Well, it’s not all cowgirl songs and riding the open range,” Sassafras cautioned. “We run a tight herd out here. Each cow can eat more than a hundred pounds of grass per day, so I have to keep them on the move.”

  “That’s a lot of grass,” Sumatra said.

  “Sure is!” Sassafras drawled. “That’s why the cows need me to lead them to it. And when they wander, I rustle ’em back. They’d be lost without a cow horse to guide ’em!”

  Sumatra grinned.

  “Then I definitely want to help!”

  Filled with excitement and determination, Sumatra flew high above the cows and noticed that a couple of calves had scampered away from the herd. Their mothers followed them, munching grass while they kept an eye on their little ones.

  “A-ha!” Sumatra said triumphantly. She buzzed down to the mama cows and whinnied at them.

  “All right, ladies!” she said. “It’s time to rejoin the herd.”

  “Mooooooo,” one of the cows said to her, blinking her long lashes lazily. She nipped up another tuft of grass and planted her feet firmly on the ground.

  “All right,” Sumatra whispered to herself. “If reasoning won’t work, I’ll try rustling!”

  “Yahoo!” Sumatra shouted. She flew circles around the mama cows, trying to edge them back toward the herd.

  When Sassafras had done this, the cows had scampered out of her way. But with tiny Sumatra, the cattle just stood their ground.

  “Grrr,” Sumatra grumbled—until she spotted the calves, who were scampering around the grass playfully.

  “I know what to do,” she told herself. “I should just rustle the calves! They’re smaller. And if I can get them to rejoin the herd, their mamas will follow. I’m sure of it!”

  Sumatra flew right up to the cute cows.

  She flew over their heads and under their bellies. She whinnied and neighed. She did everything she could think of to move the babies back to their brood!

  But the calves only bleated at her cutely. And then, they ran away from the herd.

  “No!” Sumatra whinnied after them.

  Her head low, Sumatra flew back to Sassafras, who was chortling kindly.

  “They’re not listening to me!” Sumatra whinnied.

  “Aw, don’t be sad, sugar!” the pinto said to her tiny new friend. “It took me a while to get the hang of this job, too. I started training when I was just a filly. My cowgirl taught me all sorts of skills, from cutting the herd in half to rustling the cows into their paddock to roping a stubborn steer. It took me years to become the cow horse I am today!”

  “So, you think there’s a chance for me?” Sumatra asked hopefully.

  “Sure!” Sassafras said. “Or…”

  “Or what?” Sumatra asked warily.

  “Or maybe cowpokin’ just isn’t the right career for you,” Sassafras said simply.

  “Oh, but I want to be a cow horse!” Sumatra said. “I really, really do!”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. You just got here, after all!” Sassafras said with a smile. “And you don’t have to decide today. You’re just a young one yourself. You could find a zillion other things to be before you grow up!”

  “But—” Sumatra protested.

  “Listen,” Sassafras interrupted her. “Your job right now is to dream! And imagine! And play! You’re only a filly. You’ve got plenty of time to think about work.”

  Sumatra’s green-lashed eyes went wide.

  “I guess I never thought of it that way,” she realized.

  “Now, c’mon,” Sassafras went on. “Let me rustle up the rascally calves and their mamas and then we’ll settle down to eat.”

  “Okay!” Sumatra said with a grin.

  But when she met up with the mare at the campfire a few minutes later, Sumatra felt a pang in her belly—one that was more than just hunger. She turned to the pinto, who was lapping water out of a tin bucket.

  “You know, Sassafras,” she admitted, “I’d love to stay, but I have another job to do—at home!”

  “Well, get along, then,” Sassafras said with a sweet smile. “But come back and visit sometime, you hear?”

  “I promise!” Sumatra said with a grateful good-bye grin at her new friend.

  CHAPTER 6

  All Work and No Play?

  “Kona! Brisa! Sirocco!”

  Sumatra whinnied to her friends with delight, as all the Wind Dancers arrived back at the apple tree house.

  What a day’s adventure it had been!

  Kona was holding a stack of birch bark tickets in her teeth and looking a bit sheepish.

  Brisa’s face was streaked with make-up and her mane was tangled with glitter and sagging feathers.

  And Sirocco was covered in mud, not to mention bumps and bruises!

  Hmmm, Sumatra thought to herself slyly. She tried to squelch a giggle that was welling up in the back of her throat.

  “How was your day?” she asked Kona, Brisa, and Sirocco.

  Kona spat out her birch bark and declared, “I decided to be a police horse!”

  “Ooh, really?!” Sumatra said, trying not to let her eyes twinkle. “Tell me about it!”

  “Well, you know…” Kona said, glancing with shifty eyes at her friends. “Policing is all about keeping law and order. Making sure no animals steal or disturb the peace. I even gave out birch bark tickets to bad guys!”

  “So basically, you’re the same bossy-hooves at work that you are at home?” Sirocco said with a gleam in his eyes.


  Before Kona could retort, Brisa asked her a question.

  “Kona, if you gave away tickets,” she wondered, “why did you come home with a whole stack of them?”

  A laugh snorted out of Sumatra’s nose, but she tried to cover it up with a few coughs.

  Meanwhile, Kona changed the subject.

  “Brisa?” the violet filly asked right back. “Did you figure out what you’re going to be when you grow up?”

  Brisa grinned.

  “I’m joining the circus!” she announced.

  “The circus!?” Sumatra burst out. “Is that why you’re all … gluey?”

  “I might have had a little accident in the center ring,” Brisa said, looking just as shifty-eyed as Kona had a moment earlier. “But that won’t stop me! Someday, I’m going to be just as grand a show horse as the great TrixieBelle LaRue, whom I’m sure you’ve heard of. I won’t give up, no matter what it takes!”

  “Oh, really?” Sumatra asked. She had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing this time.

  “Oh, yes!” Brisa said earnestly. “My days of lounging on clouds are over! I’m ready to get to work!”

  “Well … me, too!” Kona said a bit competitively. “Tomorrow, I’m going to pass out all my leftover tickets!”

  “Then you’d better get ready to give one to me!” Sirocco declared. “For speeding. I’m going to be a racehorse!”

  Sumatra noticed that Sirocco had very purposefully stopped licking at his wounds and started clopping proudly around the living room.

  “So, that’s how you got so muddy?” Sumatra asked him earnestly. “Winning a horse race? Wow!”

  “Winning…?” Sirocco’s voice trailed off nervously. Now, his eyes were the ones going shifty. “Um, well … I didn’t have, uh, time to make it to the winner’s circle. After all, I had to get home to help you all with dinner.” And quickly changing the subject, he asked Sumatra about her day.

  “My job?” Sumatra asked a bit nervously. “Well, I started off as a cow horse. But then I thought, why settle for just one career?”

  “Um, what are you talking about?” Brisa asked, blinking in confusion.

  “Well, how can I decide on just one job when there are so many cool ones to dream about?” Sumatra said breezily.

  “B-b-but,” Kona stammered, “today was our Career Day. You sent us out to find our callings!”

  “And we all found great ones!” Sumatra replied happily. “Maybe tomorrow or the next day, or the day after that, we’ll find more. After all, we’ve got time. We’re young! We’re magic! We’re Wind Dancers! We can do—and be—anything!”

  “I guess,” Sirocco said. But he was still frowning. “Though it seems like anything we do is going to be hard work.”

  Sirocco hesitated an instant before blurting, “Racehorses have to train a lot.”

  “So do circus horses!” Brisa admitted.

  “And police horses have to be so serious all the time,” Kona couldn’t help telling them.

  “And it wasn’t so easy herding cows today, I have to say,” Sumatra admitted.

  But then she added: “I have an idea. Play! That’s our job. For you,” she said, pointing her nose at Sirocco, “it’s zipping around like a speed demon.”

  Sumatra nuzzled Brisa next.

  “For Brisa, it’s getting glammed up and doing acrobatics in air,” she said.

  Then she gave Kona a giggly nod.

  “And Kona’s play is bossing around all her friends,” she teased. “Maybe someday, all those things will turn into jobs, but for now, they—”

  “—should just be a whole lot of fun!” Brisa whinnied.

  “Right!” Sumatra said. “I mean, we can’t just work every day!”

  “Not even on dinner?” Sirocco asked. “I’m so hungry. I didn’t even get to eat a hot pretzel at lunch.”

  “Sirocco’s right,” Kona said. “We should get working on dinner.”

  And that’s just what they did!

  Dream Catchers

  That night, the Wind Dancers flew to Leanna’s yellow farmhouse. Their smiles were big and carefree.

  When they arrived, they found Leanna on the porch swing with her little sister, Sara.

  “I’m definitely going to be a pastry chef when I grow up,” Leanna was saying to her sister. “I mean, mom’s already taught me how to make her famous carrot cake.”

  “But after school, you said you were going to be an astrophysicist,” Sara said, planting her toes on the porch rail to give their swing a push.

  “I know,” Leanna said with a giggle. “But the thing is, I don’t even know what an astrophysicist is! I do know what architects, surgeons, and writers are, though. And I wouldn’t mind giving those careers a try—oh! Wait a minute! I forgot!”

  “What?” Sara asked.

  “Horses!” Leanna declared.

  The Wind Dancers’ ears pricked up and they smiled at each other. Leanna was talking about them!

  “I forgot how much I love horses,” Leanna said. “Well, that settles it. I’m going to be a large-animal veterinarian like Dr. Withers.”

  Sumatra grinned at her friends.

  “That’s my cue!” she whispered. Using her teeth to nip up the present she’d been holding between her forelegs, she flew to the open window of Leanna’s bedroom and went inside. Then she carefully laid something on the little girl’s pillow.

  It was a tiny journal! The pages were made of Kona’s birch bark and they were bound together with magic ribbons—the exact same pale green ones as in Sumatra’s magic halo.

  Scratched onto the notebook’s cover were two words: Dream Catcher.

  Inside were written these words: “Here’s a place to write down all your hopes and dreams for your future career. No matter how many jobs you think up!”

  With that, Sumatra was ready to go to dreamland herself!

  She rejoined her friends, and the four of them flitted into the darkening evening.

  Laughing and whinnying, they loop-de-looped through the air. They were as carefree as dandelion seeds bouncing on the breeze—and just as full of possibilities!

  Here’s a sneak preview of Wind Dancers Book 8:

  Hungry as a Horse

  CHAPTER 1

  If You Give a Horse a Muffin …

  It was morning in the Wind Dancers’ apple tree house, and that meant Sirocco was on clean-up duty from an apple muffin breakfast.

  First, he took the breakfast dishes to the water trough and scrubbed them splashily. (Kona sighed good-naturedly and dried the floor with a dandelion fluff mop. Sirocco didn’t notice.)

  Then, Sirocco used his teeth to stack the breakfast plates on a shelf. (He also failed to spot Brisa straightening them into a neater, prettier stack.)

  Finally, the golden colt blew all the crumbs off the table with a few gusts of hot breath. (And once again, he had no idea when Sumatra swept the crumbs from the floor with her pale green tail.)

  With his chores finished, Sirocco blew his yellow-gold forelock out of his eyes, and said, “Whew! What’s on the menu for our mid-morning snack?”

  Kona gaped.

  Brisa gasped.

  But Sumatra spoke up!

  “Mid-morning snack?” she asked. “You still have apple muffin crumbs around your mouth!”

  “I know, but look at this kitchen!” Sirocco said. “It’s sparkling! And all because of my hard work.”

  “Oh, really? Your hard work?” Sumatra asked dryly, while Brisa tittered and Kona rolled her eyes.

  “Well, yeah!” the clueless colt said innocently. “And hard work always makes me extra hungry!”

  Then he turned to Kona.

  “You know,” he said generously, “I don’t need something different for my snack. I’ll just take a couple more of those yummy muffins you made for breakfast. We’ll call it seconds.”

  “More like fourths!” Kona said. “Besides, there aren’t any muffins left from breakfast. Not after you ate three whole ones already. You eat food as fast a
s I can make it!”

  “Hmm,” Sirocco said, pondering this problem. Then, his brown eyes lit up!

  “I have a solution!” he said. “Sumatra and Brisa should help you more often with the cooking. Then you could make more food!”

  The three fillies gaped at each other.

  “I have a better solution,” the violet-black Wind Dancer said to Sirocco through gritted teeth. “How about you start doing some cooking yourself?”

  “Me?!” Sirocco squawked.

  “Yes, you!” Brisa chimed.

  “Please,” Sirocco scoffed. “Isn’t it enough that I help with the cleaning up around here? I’m not going to cook, too. That’s filly’s work! I’m a colt!”

  A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK

  An Imprint of Macmillan

  WIND DANCERS: A HORSE, OF COURSE! Copyright © 2009 by Reeves International, Inc. All rights reserved. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  Series editor, Susan Bishansky

  Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto

  First Edition: 2009

  www.feiwelandfriends.com

  eISBN 9781466890718

  First eBook edition: January 2015