The Challenger

by Terri Farley

  Mrs. Ely seemed not to notice. As she strolled toward the house, Jake looked after her, then glanced at Sam for help.

  Yeah, right, Sam thought. After that smug little smile he’d given Rachel, the muscle man was on his own.

  Jake’s chest rose and fell in a silent sigh and he moved a few steps closer. As he did, Sam saw his jaw clench tighter. She’d bet the leg he’d broken last month still hurt.

  “I’m afraid Royal might be too much for me.” Rachel’s tone invited Jake to contradict her.

  He took his Stetson from a fence post and pulled it on before he answered. “Probably,” he said.

  Sam swallowed a laugh. It was a good thing Jake was interested in ranching and police work. He’d make a terrible salesman.

  “That’s done, then.” Slocum stepped nearer.

  “Daddy—” Rachel whined, but this time her father didn’t listen.

  “What do you know about a mountain lion up on the ridge?” Slocum asked Jake.

  Something in his tone worried Sam, but Jake just shrugged.

  “You’ve seen tracks, haven’t you?” Slocum demanded.

  Jake was well-known as a tracker. If there had been a mountain lion nearby Jake would have seen signs. But Jake stood even stiller than before.

  Slocum took Jake’s silence as a dare.

  “C’mon, what’s it to you?” Slocum taunted. “If there’s a cat prowling behind my house, and yours, and the Forsters’, we need to take care of it.”

  The more Slocum pushed, the more stubborn Jake became. His jaw set harder with each word Slocum said.

  All at once, Sam thought of Buddy. Her pet calf was six months old. Would a mountain lion see her as easier prey than a deer?

  “A cougar’s tracks don’t look much different from a big dog’s,” Jake offered, but Sam noticed he didn’t answer Slocum’s question.

  Slocum noticed, too. “You could tell the difference.”

  “Maybe Jake has better things to do than snoop around the ridge,” Rachel said, shifting so that her body angled toward Jake. “Besides, Dad, Katie Sterling said they were shy.”

  Jake watched Linc, then Rachel. His eyes barely moved, but Rachel didn’t need much encouragement to start flirting all over again.

  “Not that the idea of a dangerous animal being up there doesn’t give me chills.” Rachel skimmed her palms over the sleeves of her spotless white shirt. “But if Jake isn’t worried about it, neither am I.”

  Linc crossed his arms and fixed Jake with a stare.

  Finally, Jake spoke, but each word mocked Slocum’s concern.

  “The tracks are from a mother lion teaching her cub to hunt. The cub’s a yearling or a little older. They’re stalking squirrels and rabbits. Nothing big.”

  “I knew it!” Linc shook his index finger at Jake. “Doesn’t mean they won’t graduate to something larger, does it? And what if a rider was afoot?”

  All at once, Sam understood Slocum’s worry. He fell off his horse, Champ, pretty often. Just a few weeks ago, she’d caught the palomino and led him back to Linc, who’d been tottering across the desert in high-heeled cowboy boots.

  Even before that, Slocum had hinted he was afraid of the big cats. When an escaped stallion called Hammer had tried to steal a mare from the Gold Dust Ranch, Linc had looked at the teeth rakings on her rump and asked Gram if they were from a cougar.

  “If that happened,” Slocum went on, “a person on the ground might make a pretty tempting tidbit, don’t you think?”

  “I think it’s a pretty big switch, goin’ from rabbits to riders. And cougars are solitary animals. It’s not like they run in packs,” Jake said.

  “That’s fine. I’m only getting a permit for one.” Slocum threw the words down like a dare.

  Jake’s face grew darker, and Sam’s mind raced, trying to think of something, anything, to say. Her instincts told her this could explode into a fight. If it did, Jake wouldn’t lose, but he’d suffer for it. A teenager couldn’t slug it out with an adult—no matter how much he deserved it—and not get in trouble.

  She glanced at Rachel for help, but she was already standing by the Cadillac. Once the conversation had turned away from her, she’d lost interest.

  On her own, Sam blurted, “Isn’t there a certain season for hunting mountain lions? Like there is for other animals?”

  “Ask him.” Slocum’s finger pointed at Jake again.

  Jake shrugged. If he knew, he wasn’t telling.

  Linc passed his car keys from one hand to the other, making them jingle. “Time to go,” he said, and turned back toward the car.

  “Sam?” Rachel held the car door open, but Sam didn’t get in.

  “Thanks,” she said. “It was fun, but I need to talk with Mrs. Ely about a history question. I’ll, uh, have Jake drive me home later.”

  Jake didn’t contradict her, thank goodness.

  “On a Saturday?” Rachel raised an eyebrow, not believing Sam for a minute. “What kind of question could be so important?”

  Sam figured it was just bad luck that Rachel was in her class. It didn’t matter that Rachel was a junior repeating a freshman class. She still knew they had no homework.

  “That’s some serious kissing up.” Rachel climbed into the car and slammed the door.

  Before he joined her inside the Cadillac, Linc stared at Jake across the vehicle’s gleaming roof.

  “Ely,” he said.

  Jake didn’t answer, but he lifted his chin, showing Slocum he’d heard.

  “When I go after that cat, don’t get in my way.”

  A minute later, Linc gunned the engine so loudly, the Elys’ goose honked a protest. Linc accelerated, sand and gravel spitting from the car’s back tires. In seconds, nothing was left but dust rolling in interlocking swirls, chasing their own tails.

  When Sam looked back over her shoulder, Jake was gone. He was walking toward the barn, leaving Royal tied at the corral. So Sam did what Jake always accused her of. She tagged along.

  She didn’t say a word. She got more out of Jake if she waited for him to talk.

  Nate was more direct with his little brother.

  “What was that all about?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the fresh straw he was forking into a stall. Just as Sam didn’t try prying an answer out of Jake, Nate didn’t even look at him.

  “Old ways and new,” Jake said.

  That didn’t make much sense, Sam thought. Neither did the way Jake watched his brother wield the pitchfork as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

  Sam sat down on a bale of straw, just out of the way, and kept listening.

  “Is he part of the new way?” Nate jerked his head in the direction Slocum had gone.

  “Yeah.” Jake leaned to pluck a piece of straw from the mound. “Make an enemy where there isn’t one. Kill before there’s a reason.”

  “Just in case.” Nate put in.

  Sam tried jumping to a conclusion. “You both think he’s a coward,” she guessed.

  Nate gave a half smile. “Who’d say that about a neighbor?”

  “You guys would, just not directly,” Sam insisted.

  “Look, the cougars aren’t hurtin’ anybody. The she-cat is limping.” Jake sank down to sit next to her, then closed his eyes and rubbed his leg. When he opened them and saw Sam watching, he added, “They’re not going after Buddy.”

  Startled, Sam said, “If you don’t want me to make comments about that Indian mysticism stuff, you should stop reading my mind.”

  He pushed to his feet.

  “Jake, I was teasing.”

  He walked out of the barn. Sam watched him go, feeling guilty, because she knew Jake hated any hint that he wasn’t a hardheaded realist.

  Sam jumped up and shouted after him. “I think Slocum’s wrong! Does that make any difference?”

  Jake didn’t come back, and Nate didn’t quit layering straw into a stall.

  “He’s putting Royal away, is all,” Nate said.

  “Rig
ht,” Sam said. They both knew Jake was mad. Through the barn door, she watched his jerky movements.

  “How come,” Sam said slowly, “whenever I’m around Jake, I end up picking sides?”

  “Hmm,” Nate said.

  You’re a lot of help, Sam thought. An almost-eighteen-year-old should be able to come up with something better than that.

  “Maybe it’s because Jake knows where he stands, and he won’t back down.” Nate looked pleased with himself—until he met Sam’s eyes. “It’s partly ’cause of you, he’s so mad at Slocum.”

  “Because of me?” Sam squeaked. What could she have to do with Slocum and the cougars? “No way.”

  “He had this dream.” Nate peered out the barn door to make sure Jake hadn’t doubled back. “In it, something disturbed the cougars and they started killing wild horses—something like that.”

  “Something like that?” Sam demanded.

  “It was just a dream,” Nate said. “No big deal.”

  No big deal, Sam thought, except Jake had been so uneasy about the dream, he’d told Nate.

  She swallowed hard. No big deal, except that he’d risked a fight to discourage Linc’s interest in the cougar.

  And, she decided, it was a very big deal when Jake was ignoring Royal to stare up at the ridge as if something terrible was coming their way.

  Chapter Three

  Sam didn’t have a chance to nag Jake for details of his dream, and she had only a few moments of silence to worry over the wild horses.

  Gram pulled into Three Ponies Ranch, looking rushed and bothered. She waved Sam into the Buick before she could say a proper good-bye to the Elys.

  Sam knew they were going to meet Brynna for dinner at Clara’s Diner, but why was Gram in such a hurry?

  “You’ll need time to shower and change,” Gram explained as they pulled onto the highway.

  “We’re just going to Clara’s, right?”

  Gram nodded. “I want you to wear a dress.” She lifted one hand from the steering wheel and rubbed at the line between her brows, as if telling herself to relax.

  Gram was keeping something secret, but Sam didn’t ask what. She had an outfit she’d been saving for an “occasion,” and this might be the best chance she’d get.

  “How about my black skirt and new sweater?”

  “Fine.” Gram sawed at the wheel, swerving off the road and over the River Bend bridge much too fast.

  Instead of barking a greeting, Blaze scampered out of the way. He bounded onto the bunkhouse porch, tail wagging at half-mast.

  A cloud of steam still hung in the bathroom when Sam went in. She heard Dad whistling in his bedroom, and froze.

  The last time she’d heard Dad whistle…

  Dad never whistled.

  After showering and blow-drying her hair into a smooth cap, Sam pulled on her new scoop-necked sweater. Jen, Sam’s best friend, had insisted Sam buy it the last time they’d been at Crane Crossing, the mall in Darton.

  Sam tugged at the sweater’s hem and considered it in the mirror. Not too tight or too baggy, the sweater fit fine. She was almost embarrassed that it matched the reddish brown of her hair. On the other hand, it was a sweater, not a horse.

  Sam leaned close to the mirror to put on rose-tinted lip gloss. Why was Gram making such a big deal about this dinner?

  “Ready to go, hon?” Dad leaned in the doorway.

  His dark hair was wet and slicked back above the collar of a blue-and-white checked shirt. His jeans were new, and he was being entirely too nice.

  Sam knew she couldn’t comment on that, but now she was even more worried.

  “Something wrong?” Dad asked. His smile started to fade.

  Don’t be a brat, Sam told herself.

  “Nothing’s wrong, except I’m so hungry I’m hallucinating a mountain of Clara’s fries floating in midair,” Sam chattered. “And I’m in need of decent company after spending all day with the Slocums!”

  Dad grinned instead of reprimanding her. He had an obsession with manners, so that was another bad sign.

  Sam put down her brush, picked up her coat, and followed Dad. Gram looked up at them as they came downstairs. For a second, Gram’s bottom lip trembled, then her hand covered her mouth. All at once, she rummaged in her purse as if she’d lost something.

  “Are you okay, Gram?” Sam could have sworn Gram was about to cry.

  Gram cleared her throat. “It’s nice to see you with a touch of lipstick, is all.”

  “Good,” Sam said. “Because I’m probably the first person in the entire history of Clara’s who’s ever worn makeup.”

  “Oh, now…” Gram began.

  “Unless,” Sam added, “maybe a rodeo clown stopped in before he’d scrubbed off his greasepaint.”

  For some reason, both Gram and Dad thought that was very funny. They were still laughing as they all piled into the car.

  Sam wondered why neither of them guessed she was babbling out of absolute fear.

  They parked the Buick and approached the diner.

  “Order anything on the menu,” Dad said as he reached for Clara’s squeaky front door.

  The dark feeling had faded on the drive over, but now it came back.

  What if she was sick? Was there some aftereffect of her riding accident no one had mentioned to her that would kick in about now?

  Wait. Sam reined in her imagination. Dad wouldn’t smile if she was in trouble. Still, his generosity needed testing.

  “Jumbo fried prawns?” Sam asked. “And chocolate upside-down cake?”

  “Sure, why not?” Dad pushed open the diner door and a bell rang their arrival.

  Sam’s confusion vanished the minute she saw Brynna Olson sitting alone at a corner table.

  Tonight, Brynna wore no uniform, no tight French braid, no look of cold professionalism. Her hair streamed red and ripply over the shoulders of a bright blue dress. Brynna’s smile lit her whole face, and she bounced to her feet as if she couldn’t stay seated another instant.

  In one long stride, Dad was next to Brynna. His arm curved around her waist before he looked at Sam with raised eyebrows.

  They were so obvious about what was coming next, Sam couldn’t help laughing. “Yes?” she asked.

  Gram pulled out a chair and sat. Sam did, too, though it was way too late to worry about attracting attention. Even Clara, with her waitress pad and food-smudged uniform, was watching them with a sappy smile.

  Dad leaned across the table and flattened his hand on Sam’s. “Tonight’s a celebration, Sam. I’ve asked—well, Brynna and I have decided to get married.”

  Dozens of questions swirled in Sam’s mind, but she wasn’t shocked or sad.

  “Congratulations,” she said. Then, because that sounded too stiff, she added, “You guys look really happy.”

  “We are, Sam.” As Brynna’s hand came down on top of Dad’s, Sam saw the silver ring set with a small round diamond. “I’ll do my best to be the unwickedest stepmother who’s ever lived.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to change your life, or take up too much of your dad’s time, or anything like that.”

  Sam believed her, but when she pictured Brynna Olson living in her house, it felt weird. Then an even worse picture flashed through her imagination.

  “We are all going to live at the ranch, right?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Dad said. “The only way I’m leaving River Bend is in a casket.”

  “Wyatt, don’t be morbid,” Gram scolded.

  Morbid, maybe, but it made Sam feel better.

  “When are you having the wedding?” Sam asked.

  Clara overheard the question as she set out glasses of ice water. She didn’t whoop with surprise, just acted as if she’d seen this coming long ago.

  “Best wishes, you two. I’ll be back to get your order in a minute.” Clara smiled and tapped her pencil’s eraser against her order pad. “Dessert’s on the house.”

  While Brynna thanked Clara, Dad answered Sam’s qu
estion.

  “It’ll be soon,” he said. “Just after Christmas, I think. While you’re on winter break.”

  That was soon. Thanksgiving was coming up. Sam imagined all the kitchen bustle that came with the holiday, and snatched a quick look at Gram.

  She looked like she was holding her breath.

  Sam’s irritation that Gram had known about the engagement and kept quiet vanished. Even if Gram was happy, she must feel worried, too. Since Mom’s death years ago, Gram had run the house and garden, ruled the ranch in partnership with Dad, and been the undisputed queen of the kitchen. How much would change?

  Before dinner came, they toasted Dad and Brynna with soda. Sam had eaten only two of her jumbo shrimp when Brynna asked if she’d act as maid of honor.

  Sam thought the maid of honor was the girl who walked down the aisle before the bride. She pictured herself moving toward the front of the church with everyone watching. That was a little scary.

  “I’m not sure how to do it,” she admitted. “I’ve never been a bridesmaid before.”

  “And I’ve never been a bride.” Brynna laughed. “But Grace knows a lot.” She nodded at Gram. “She’s agreed to bake the wedding cake, and Mrs. Coley said she’d make our dresses. I’ll get some books and we’ll learn together. It’ll be fun.”

  Sam agreed. It would be fun, but as Brynna chatted and planned with Gram, Sam already missed the other Brynna, the tough-minded professional who cared more about mustangs than satin and lace.

  Sam had just taken a bite of chocolate upside-down cake when Brynna pushed her hair back and straightened her shoulders.

  “Can’t it wait?” Dad asked, as if he knew what Brynna was about to say.

  “It could, but Sam won’t mind.” Brynna looked sure of herself.

  Sam licked some frosting from her fork and glanced between the two of them. “Mind what?” she asked.

  “Talking about the Phantom,” Brynna said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Probably nothing, but one of the choppers was flying over Lost Canyon and saw a herd. There were a few light-colored horses, and I wondered if you thought it was possible the Phantom was wintering in Lost Canyon.”

  “How would she know?” Gram asked.