by Terri Farley
“If he doesn’t knock this off in a minute, I say we squirt him down,” Gabe said, and it was clear to Sam that he wasn’t angry. He was worried.
Then, as they both watched, the horse’s skin shivered. He shook his head, making his black mane dance, then seemed to relax.
“So that’s what you and Dr. Scott meant by loco,” Gabe said.
“That’s it, but he’s okay now,” Sam said in a singsong voice. “My big boy’s just fine, isn’t he?”
Again, Sam noticed the colt focused on her best when she passed near Gabe. For some reason Pirate was more interested in him than her. So she stood in front of Gabe, babbling nonsense, until the colt allowed her to squeeze the sponge over his neck and legs, letting the water dribble down and cool him. When he nipped at the scrapers, Sam used her hands to rub the excess water off his coat.
“Now walk him around,” Gabe ordered.
“Well, I know that’s what the vet said.” Sam tried not to sound impatient. “But it’s not that easy. I’d have to get a lead rope on him and convince him to follow me. Just give me a minute.”
Impatient and clearly worried, Gabe moved closer to Mrs. Allen.
Although Pirate’s hind hooves stayed planted, his front hooves tracked Gabe’s movements.
“Do that again,” Sam said. When Gabe didn’t respond, she decided bossing him around wasn’t the best approach. “I’m sorry to ask, but please move someplace else along the fence line. I don’t know why, but—” Sam broke off, shaking her head.
Gabe didn’t wait for an explanation. Using his shirt sleeve to rub perspiration from his face, Gabe winced as if his arms ached, then moved a few yards along the corral fence.
“He’s following you,” Sam said.
“My goodness,” Mrs. Allen said. “He is.”
“It’s a coincidence,” Gabe said.
His own grandmother ignored him. “Do you think it’s because he’s only been around Dr. Scott, and they’re both men?” she asked.
“You’re both nuts,” Gabe said, but Sam thought he was flattered by the colt’s attention.
“He’s definitely following you, but I don’t know why,” Sam said.
Sam didn’t care, either. She just knew that this was going to make taming the colt a whole lot easier.
After spending an entire day as the colt’s sole focus, Sam thought Gabe would be happy. When Dad and Brynna had called the previous night, she’d told them everything was fine. Dr. Scott had also called, to see how the colt was coming along, and she’d told him that the colt thought Gabe was fascinating and they were both happy.
But Gabe wasn’t.
The next morning, she was adding Kool-Aid to the colt’s water when Gabe made his way past the rusty iron gate to stand beside her at the corral.
Gabe didn’t say anything at first, just tapped his fingers on the crossbars of his crutches. He kept doing it until Sam looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
“My friend Luis just called,” Gabe told her, but he didn’t quit tapping.
“Great!” Sam said, but then she met Gabe’s green eyes. “Not great?”
Gabe shrugged, and then he kind of swayed between the two crutches. Sam got the impression he’d be tapping his foot if he could.
“What did he say?” she asked him.
Gabe shrugged. And started tapping his fingers again.
Sam finished filling the water bucket and gathered an armload of hay for the mustang. When Gabe figured out she wasn’t going to beg for details, he finally told her about his talk with Luis.
“He and Yogi are going to help coach a little kids’ soccer team and they want to know if I can do one third of the practices.”
To Sam, this sounded like good news.
“You can, can’t you?” Sam asked.
“I’m going to miss this entire soccer season,” Gabe said.
“But these are—what? Elementary school kids? You know enough to coach them without playing this season, right?”
“Of course, but the thing is, I’m a forward. Even if my legs come back all the way, it’s going to take a long time until I can run like I used to.”
Sam cast about for a comment that would cheer him up.
“I don’t know that much about soccer, but could you be a goalie? I mean, they don’t run as much, do they? And they throw a lot. You’re building up a lot of strength in your arms.”
Gabe started to say something, then stopped. For just a second, Sam saw a glimmer of pride in his eyes, but then it was gone. Gabe shook his head in disgust, as if no one could fill in the gaps in her knowledge of the game he loved.
When Gabe started tapping the crossbars on his crutches again, Sam wanted to reach over and grab his fingers, but the iron gate creaked and his grandmother saved him.
Mrs. Allen bustled across the ranch yard holding a leash in each hand. Imp and Angel strained ahead of her, headed for the orange truck. The two Boston bulldogs clearly weren’t used to walking on leashes, and it suddenly came to Sam that Mrs. Allen was trying to keep the dogs from bounding around Gabe’s ankles, as they surely would do unrestrained.
“I’m running into Alkali for milk,” Mrs. Allen said. “I bought all those groceries the day before yesterday and forgot milk. Now we have only a cup or so left. I don’t know what I was thinking. Will you kids stay safe while I’m gone?”
Mrs. Allen looked so pointedly at Sam—not Gabe—that Sam answered, “Sure.”
“It’s not like we’re going anywhere,” Gabe said.
Mrs. Allen’s eyes and lips drooped. She looked so sad, Sam thought, but only for a second.
“Well, you’re going to adjust your attitude while I’m gone,” Mrs. Allen said. “I’m sure you don’t remember this, but your grandfather had a perfect description of the way you acted when you were pouting.”
Sam sucked in her breath. Pouting was one of those words a sixteen-year-old guy would probably resent.
“I’m not—” he snarled.
“He said you were squirmy as a worm in a bed of ants,” she interrupted.
“That’s disgusting!” Gabe said.
Sam thought of the twitching and tapping he’d been doing since he talked with Luis and decided it was actually a pretty good description. But she decided not to say so.
After Mrs. Allen drove away, Gabe and Sam didn’t talk.
Together they stared at the mustang.
“I’d rather have something wrong with my face than my legs,” Gabe said.
Sam shivered, but she kept looking at Pirate as she asked, “Are you sure? Your face is the first thing everyone notices about you.”
“Like these crutches aren’t that noticeable?” Gabe asked with a bitter laugh. “You could’ve fooled me. Sorry,” he said, then. “It’s not your fault and it’s a waste of time to talk about it. No one’s going to give me a choice.”
Sam didn’t know what to do. How could she help Gabe?
If he were a horse, she’d try something different to get the same point across. If he was sensitive to a certain kind of bit, for instance, she’d try a hackamore.
Could that work with him?
If he didn’t like her suggestions or those from his grandmother, maybe she’d let the colt take over.
“Hey,” Sam said. She dug into the box Dr. Scott had brought and pulled out the big rubber soccer ball. “I know where you can get some practice.”
“What do you expect me to do? My legs don’t work, remember?”
“Gabe, I’m not being mean. For some reason, that little horse has decided you’re interesting. He needs a buddy and Dr. Scott said he loves that ball. What if you just went in there and batted it to him?”
“With my crutch?”
“Your crutch, your hand, your head—” Sam stopped, because she could see Gabe was tempted.
Then he glanced toward the house, even though Mrs. Allen was gone.
“Do I go inside the corral?” he asked.
“No.” Sam shook her head so hard, she
felt her auburn hair whirl. “He’s still wild, and even though he wouldn’t mean to hurt you, I’m not sure”—Sam slowed her words, trying not to make him irritated all over again—“that you could get out of his way fast enough if he goes loco again. Besides, I think that would get your grandmother really mad.”
“I don’t care,” Gabe said. “She’s the one who said I had to work with him. And then she threatened to kick me out if I didn’t.”
Gabe shifted his weight on his crutches, then headed toward the corral gate briskly, as if taking up a challenge.
Chapter Fifteen
Gabe didn’t look up from playing soccer with the colt when Mrs. Allen returned from Alkali.
At the last second, Gabe had agreed to stay outside the corral. Since then, he’d spent an hour balancing on his uncasted leg, gripping the top fence rail with one hand as he hung head down to punch the ball with his crutch from under the last fence board. Because the horse toy was egg-shaped, the ball rolled unpredictably and Gabe made his way from one side of the pen to the other and back again dozens of times.
“It’s less like soccer and more like playing pool with a jumping bean,” Gabe said. His face was flushed, but in a good way, Sam thought, and the colt definitely enjoyed his contortions.
Gabe didn’t seem to care that the colt rarely used his teeth to grab the ball’s handle and shake it, and that he’d only kicked it once and trotted after it three or four times. It seemed enough to the boy that Pirate was playing with him.
Sam couldn’t have explained why the scene satisfied her so, but it did. The two seemed right together. Gabe didn’t demand more of the mustang than he gave freely, and even when he didn’t react to the rolling ball, Pirate filled his eyes with Gabe.
“That’s sappy,” Gabe protested when Sam told him.
“But true. He thinks you’re really interesting.”
Gabe shrugged, but he let her words stand as his grandmother came huffing from the truck.
“That danged Slocum,” Mrs. Allen snapped as she was towed along by the small black-and-white dogs. “I saw him in the cafe with his daughter—who’s really an awfully pretty girl, even if she does come from bad bloodlines—and I told him what I thought about him choosing now, when this colt is in such a delicate condition, to be burning off his fields. That hardhearted son of a gun didn’t care. And what’s more, he doesn’t plan to stop.”
Sam felt as if Mrs. Allen had snapped her fingers to bring her out of a trance.
“What?” Sam said.
“Try to listen, Samantha,” Mrs. Allen said briskly. “Before I picked up our milk, I stopped at Clara’s for a cup of coffee and maybe a little pie, I can’t exactly remember, I was so upset.”
“Who is this guy, Grandma?” Gabe demanded. “What did he say to you?”
Although Gabe wasn’t flexing and vowing to beat up the guy who’d annoyed his grandmother, Sam imagined his blond hair got bristlier and his pale eyebrows dropped in a threatening way.
She couldn’t help thinking it would be fun to see him take on Linc Slocum.
Mrs. Allen said, sighing, “I don’t know why I’m even surprised. The man is so self-centered—although his daughter Rachel did mention she’d heard I had a houseguest who was quite an accomplished athlete, and wondered if she might visit.” Mrs. Allen smiled meaningfully at Gabe.
He rolled his eyes at Mrs. Allen’s obvious match-making.
“I hope you told her ‘no,’” Sam blurted.
“Why, Samantha!” Mrs. Allen’s voice curled up at the end of the exclamation and her smile grew bigger.
“You don’t know Rachel,” Sam said. She ignored Mrs. Allen’s smirk. If the two of them had been alone, she might have told Gabe’s grandmother that she wasn’t jealous of Rachel.
Sam was afraid that Linc Slocum’s spoiled little princess of a daughter would do something to hurt Gabe’s feelings.
Sam peeked at Gabe from the corner of her eye. She got the feeling he understood her fears even without meeting Rachel.
“At any rate,” Mrs. Allen continued, “I hardly think Linc knew that I was asking him to hold off on burning the stubble on his fields for just a week until the colt’s been adopted and moved from the area.” Mrs. Allen stared at Sam again. “Samantha, what have I said that has you so absolutely slack-jawed?”
“The smell of the fields burning,” Sam said. “That’s what’s bringing back the memory of the fire and making the colt panic.”
“Isn’t that what I just said?” Mrs. Allen asked.
“You figured it out,” Sam told her.
“Figured it out?” Mrs. Allen tilted her head to one side. “Samantha, it seems fairly obvious.”
“It does now,” Sam said, laughing. “Can I go call Brynna? And Dr. Scott?”
“Help yourself,” Mrs. Allen said, waving Sam toward the house. “I’ll stay here and see what Gabe and the horse have got up to.”
The sky was black velvet, sprinkled with stars.
Gabe and Mrs. Allen had spread a blanket beside the colt’s corral and Sam sat between them as they watched the late August meteor showers.
“There goes another one,” Sam said.
As the meteor’s silver trail left a glowing streak across the darkness, Sam couldn’t help thinking of the Phantom.
“Doesn’t all that vastness make you feel small?” Mrs. Allen asked them both.
Crickets chirped in the moment of silence, before Gabe shifted on the blanket and grumbled, “It makes me feel itchy.”
“Itchy?” his grandmother asked.
“Yeah, and this other one’s no better.” Gabe jerked in annoyance and rubbed at his bare, bruised leg. “I don’t know, it’s like muscle spasms. Man! It’s like I stuck my toe in a light socket.”
In the darkness Mrs. Allen turned to Sam. She couldn’t see Mrs. Allen’s face well, but the set of her shoulders was tense and expectant.
It took Sam a second to realize Mrs. Allen hoped it was a good sign that Gabe was feeling anything in his legs. Did it mean the swelling around his spine was going down? That he might be getting better?
“I’m sorry it’s so uncomfortable. These days, they discourage using knitting needles or coat hangers to scratch inside it, don’t they?” Mrs. Allen sounded merely sympathetic.
She doesn’t want to get his hopes up, Sam thought.
“No scratching with objects. They say if you scratch the skin and it gets infected, you’ll delay recovery.” Gabe seemed to be parroting something he’d heard in the hospital. “But they also say the cure is to elevate it over your head.”
“Mmm, that would be awkward,” his grandmother put in.
“Listen, hear that?” Gabe asked.
A scraping sound came from the corral.
Sam saw the colt’s outline on the far side of his enclosure, but she couldn’t tell what he was doing.
“I bet his burns are itchy,” Gabe said.
“Poor baby,” Sam said.
“He’s not a poor baby,” Gabe yelped. “He gets to scratch.”
“Gabriel, quit squirming or go back to the house,” Mrs. Allen said. “For heaven’s sake, you’re acting six instead of sixteen.”
Sam refereed before grandmother and grandson began another squabble.
“But he is good at thinking like a horse,” Sam defended Gabe. “He’s got the colt leading pretty well, too.”
Dr. Scott had started the colt, but when Gabe walked around the outside of the corral, Pirate followed, hardly noticing that Sam held the end of the lead rope attached to his halter.
Just the same, she and Gabe had been vigilant for smoke. Their senses couldn’t match the colt’s, but she hoped, if it wafted this way, she’d have enough warning to get out of the corral. Pirate’s frantic memories would crowd out any consideration for humans.
“I might be a vet,” Gabe said quietly, “you know, if pro soccer doesn’t work out.”
“You could do that,” his grandmother said, and Sam heard the pride in her voice.
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“There’s another one!” Sam and Gabe said in unison, and as she thought of the silver stallion again, Sam began wondering about the hot springs and Pirate.
And then, amazingly, Gabe said, “Have you ever heard of hydrotherapy for horses?”
“Oh my gosh, I was just wondering about that!” Sam said.
“I’m just thinking, the smoke craziness is something he needs to get over. He’d relax in warm water and maybe, if he smelled the smoke while he was there, and nothing bad happened—”
“That’s perfect. All their movements are slower in water. He can’t run and fall and hurt himself.” Sam realized Gabe was talking over her.
“—if we take the colt to those hot springs you—”
Sam wanted to clap her hand over Gabe’s mouth so he couldn’t say anything about her and the Phantom. She settled for shooting her elbow against his ribs and hoped Mrs. Allen wouldn’t notice.
Gabe caught his breath in surprise, but got her message.
“The hot springs?” Mrs. Allen asked dubiously.
“They use whirlpools and hot tubs and stuff like that for athletes, and I was just thinking it might kind of soothe him,” Gabe said.
Mrs. Allen chuckled. “He’s a wild horse, children. He’s not going to lean back and be calm in those hot springs.”
“He might,” Sam said. She didn’t openly contradict the older lady, but reminded her, “That is where we found Faith with the Phantom.”
“That’s true,” Mrs. Allen said, and despite the faint light, Sam saw her smile.
“Besides, it’s a medieval cure for madness,” Gabe said.
“Is it?” Mrs. Allen gasped.
“That’s what I read.”
“For a boy who claims not to be a good student, you do read a lot,” Mrs. Allen teased him.
Maybe because she was glad Gabe read and remembered, Mrs. Allen agreed they could try taking the colt to the hot springs. Gabe and Sam would walk, but she would arrive early in the truck and park nearby.
“I’ll stay in the truck and leave you three to yourselves,” Mrs. Allen said, “but only if you do this my way.”
“What’s your way?” Gabe sounded suspicious.