“Oh my God,” I shouted. “Rick, I’m riding.” Treasure nickered as if to say, “See, it wasn’t so hard.”
We I circled the meadow three times before Rick let us stop. When I dismounted, my legs were so wobbly I almost fell. He put his arm around my waist preventing me from taking a tumble.
I grinned from ear to ear. “I did it. Rick, I did it!” I thought of my dad and knew he’d be proud if he could have seen me riding. I felt so happy.
Arm still around my waist, he looked down at me. Then he leaned over and kissed me.
In a heartbeat, everything changed.
Startled, I pulled away. And then, for some stupid reason I started crying.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said “I only wanted to kiss you.”
I looked at him through my tears, so embarrassed I wanted to disappear into the ground.
He handed me his handkerchief.
“Thank you.” I wiped my eyes.
I tried to explain why I was crying. I couldn’t, because I didn’t understand it myself.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, picking up my sketchbook. Then I ran down the path back to the ranch.
“Maryann, wait,” Rick called. It only made me run faster.
I couldn’t out run my confusion.
When I got back to the ranch, I still held his crumpled handkerchief in my hand. Hurriedly, I shoved it deep in my pocket. I didn’t need it any longer. My tears had dried.
That’s when I realized my pencil case was missing.
What if someone on the ranch found it? How would I explain what I was doing on Ferguson property?
Monday, April 24, 1961
At school on Monday, study hall was my third class. On the way into the auditorium, I saw Lisa talking to a bunch of girls. She motioned for me to join them. I didn’t feel like talking, so I just waved back and walked on. I sat down, burying myself in a textbook. So far I’d managed to avoid Rick.
“Maryann.”
I looked up. He stood next to my seat.
“Hi,” I said then looked down at my book. I didn’t know what to say.
“You left this in the meadow,” he said, handing me my pencil case.
“You found it,” I looked, relieved. “Thank you.” I had nightmares how to explain to Aunt Bess how I dropped it on Ferguson property.
“I called you, but you didn’t stop,” he said.
I didn’t say anything since I felt so stupid running from him.
“Look, I’m sorry about what happened,” he began.
“It just took me by surprise,” I said. Inside I groaned. Did I just say that? It sounded so lame.
“It’s been hard since my parents…” My throat closed up and the words they contained got stuck.
He put his hand on my arm. “You don’t have to explain. You were finally riding and looked so pretty. I didn’t plan to kiss you, it just happened.”
I looked up at him. He thought I was pretty?
His blue eyes blinded me. I couldn’t look away.
“I’d like to kiss you again some time, okay?”
“Okay.” I smiled back, the awkwardness between us evaporating like the morning fog.
For the rest of study hall he sat next to me. When the teacher called for silence, we passed notes back and forth. His notes made me laugh and care for him more than ever.
Somehow, I got through the rest of the day. Gym was my last class. In no mood to change into my gym suit to play basketball, I thought about cutting the class. Lisa changed my mind. She kept making jokes and made it all fun. Everyone was laughing at some point by the time we were done with the game. Surprisingly, I felt better after the exercise.
Afterwards, when we came out of the locker room, Rick leaned nonchalantly against the wall by the vending machines.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Maryann.” Lisa smiled and walked away, leaving me alone with Rick.
Tongue-tied, I looked down at the floor and hugged school books tight against my chest.
“Just thought I’d see how you were holding up,” said Rick.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled looking up at him briefly, and then back at the floor. I didn’t know what to say to boys. I’d had so little practice.
“Well I better go or I’ll miss the bus,” I said finally. The hallway seemed like a hundred miles long.
“Do you want a ride home? I have Dad’s truck.”
I should have refused. My aunt’s warning to stay away from Rick ran through my head. Somehow, “Okay” came out of my mouth instead.
Rick grinned.
On the way out he told me about the Chevy truck he was fixing up as time and money allowed. “Once I get it running, I’ll drive it to school.”
I felt special walking next to him out to the truck. He unlocked the passenger door and helped me in. I’d never ridden in a car or truck alone with a boy before. I felt happy and self-conscious.
Before we left, he adjusted the radio to a country western station. A song about heartache played. Listening to the lyrics, I thought it was the best song I’d ever heard.
“So when are you gonna tell your aunt you can ride?”
“Good question,” I replied, trying to avoid thinking about it. I wanted to enjoy being with Rick, so I pushed away what my aunt would say if she knew Rick was giving me a ride home, let along teaching me to ride horses.
I gave a sidelong glance at Rick then continued looking straight ahead. “Why does everything have to be so complicated?” I sighed.
He reached over and slipped his hand in mine.
“I don’t know, Maryann. Sometimes it just is.” He gently squeezed my hand.
I wished this afternoon would last forever. All too soon, we approached the ranch.
“Can you drop me off on the main road?” I asked as we neared the turn off for the ranch. “That way I can walk down the drive and my aunt won’t notice.”
Rick shifted gears and the truck slowly came to a stop.
“I wish I could drive up to the house and drop you off,” he said. “I hate this sneaking around like I’m a fugitive or something.”
I heard the frustration in his voice. “I know.” I turned and smiled at him. “Thanks for the ride.” I clutched the door handle, ready to bolt.
“You gonna be okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” I said with more conviction than I felt.
Rick was so good looking. He could go out with anyone. Why was he interested in me? I wondered.
Then he smiled and for a heart-thumping minute, I thought he was going to kiss me. He didn’t.
He brushed my cheek lightly with the back of his hand. “You have the prettiest smile.”
Something tight inside me loosened, like a hard knot that came undone.
I got out of the truck and shut the door.
“See ya,” I said and sprinted down the drive.
When I came into the kitchen, Russ was pouring a cup of coffee.
“Amazing how this weather puts such color in a girl’s cheeks,” he teased.
I looked out the window and saw the spot where Rick dropped me off. He’d seen everything. My stomach dropped.
“Rick’s a good kid,” said Russ. “Your aunt has some blind spots. We all do. Just so happens Doug Ferguson’s one of hers. I’m glad you’re keeping an open mind about his son.”
Relieved, I smiled at him.
“Now why don’t you get changed so you can help me feed the horses before supper?”
Chapter 9
Wednesday, April 26, 1961
“What are you doing here kid?” a raspy voice barked.
In the barn helping Russ feed the horses, he startled me and I dropped the scoop I’d been using. Grady Gibbons stood in the doorway, his dark eyes flashed with malice. He took a step toward me and I backed away.
“I’m…I’m helping Russ feed the horses.”
This short man with a bushy mustache and eye brows, looked ordinary enough, but the animals were uneasy around him.
Even his own horse, Freeman, was unsettled until he mounted. Grady always sounded angry.
“Looks to me like you’re messing things up more than helping.” He took out a cigarette and flipped open his lighter.
“What’s going on here?” Russ asked, entering the feed room. Relieved, I resumed scooping grain into the buckets.
“Gotta get a new neck rein. Mine broke.” Grady searched through the straps of leather hanging on the opposite wall.
“Why don’t you try keeping your tack clean? It would last longer. And put that cigarette out. You know there’s no smoking in the barn.”
Grady threw this cigarette down then barged through the door bumping against Russ on his way out. The butt smoldered until Russ stomped on it.
Aunt Bess joined us a minute later.
“He’s trouble,” Russ said. “You mark my words. Grady Gibbons is trouble.”
“Now Russ,” said Aunt Bess. “I know you two don’t get along. He’s been here six months and nothing’s happened. He gets his work done.”
“I don’t like the way he treats the horses.” Russ wouldn’t let the subject drop. “I don’t like him working with the colts.”
“We don’t have enough men at the moment. We need Grady.”
Russ looked at me. “Maryann can help us. She’s picking up things real quick. The horses trust her. How about it?” he asked. “Do you want to help us halter break the horses?”
I looked at my aunt to see her reaction. “Sure. If Aunt Bess says it’s okay.”
“Your aunt thinks it’s just fine.” She hung several bridles up on the wall.
“I’m real proud of how fast you’re learning, Maryann.” she said. “Of course you’d be getting paid, too. Isn’t that right, Russ?”
“Sure, Bess,” Russ nodded in agreement. “Forgot to mention it. Kinda slipped my mind.”
Aunt Bess followed me as I walked out to put the buckets on the feed cart. “After all, a woman needs some spending money of her own, now don’t she?”
After I finished putting the feed for each horse in their stalls, I walked out to the corral. Shadow Dancer pranced around. To me, he stood out from any other horse on the ranch because he was so beautiful.
“His mother was Winter Dream,” Aunt Bess said as we watched him. “She was a snowflake Appaloosa.”
I tried to picture the color. I couldn’t. “What’s that?”
“Means her coat was dark red with white spots, kinda like snowflakes. She had great bloodlines and the lightest mouth I’d ever seen. Used to ride her myself. Bright, too. Sometimes, too damned bright for her own good.” She chuckled.
“Where is she?” I asked, wanting to meet Shadow’s mother.
“Lost her after she weaned Shadow. Broke her leg real bad. We had to put her down.” Aunt Bess cleared her throat and turned away. “Sometimes it tears your heart out breeding horses.”
I’d learned a lot about death over the past weeks since I lost Mom and Dad. Watching Shadow, I realized he’d lost his mother, too. The terrible ache of losing my parents sat deep and heavy inside, weighing me down. Some days it was hard to move at all. Would this feeling ever go away?
“I can trace his pedigree back farther that I can my own family,” she continued. “I got some good fillies from Dream. Shadow was her last foal, and the only colt. I put more store in my mares than I do the stallions.”
“Why are the mares so important?”
“You can always get good bloodlines in a stallion if you’re willing to pay the stud fee. It’s the mares that will make or break a bloodline. She’s the one raising the colts. It’s her disposition that trains them and shows them what to make of the world. If she’s flighty and scared, chances are her babies will be, too. It’s all the in the eyes. That’s where you can tell what kinda horse you got yourself.”
Prancing and tossing his head, it seemed Shadow Dancer knew how handsome he was. Then he stood still and looked directly at me. It was like we understood one another. His dark eyes sparked with intelligence, yet there was a reassuring softness in them.
“He’s about two.” my aunt said. “Born late in the season so we let him stay out in the big pasture another year before training. Sure was a pretty colt. Well, I better get back to the house.to call Doc Hansen to come do the gelding.”
As Shadow stood in front of me pawing the ground, Russ joined me at the fence. He pointed to Shadow’s feet. “See how his hooves have light and dark stripes running up and down them? That’s another mark of an Appaloosa. So are his eyes.”
“His eyes?”
“Yeah. See the white around them? That part’s called the sclera. People have it, too. In the Appaloosa, it’s white like a person’s eye. If you saw the whites of a normal horse’s eye you’d say he was mean or scared. In an Appaloosa? That’s a common expression.”
“Shadow’s daddy, Penny Wise, was the top stud in Oklahoma for the past ten years. We saw him at a Denver show and fell in love with him. Bess trailered Winter Dream almost a thousand miles to make the breeding.”
Spellbound I watched Shadow through the fence. Suddenly, he lunged at me snorting and baring his teeth. I jumped back.
Russ laughed. “Don’t mind him. He’s just feeling his oats. Been out on the range too long and not around people enough. More scared of you than you are of him. He’s just tryin’ to hide it by looking fierce — like some people do.”
I grinned, thinking of Aunt Bess.
“Talk to him,” he urged. “Get him used to your voice and your smell. Get him to trust you.”
I didn’t know much about horses, but there was something special about Shadow Dancer. I wanted to know more about him; I wanted to ride him.
Shadow paced around and around searching for a way out. There was none. The fence was high and sturdy.
“Your aunt takes no chance of a horse being injured trying to jump fences,” Russ explained. “After the young colts are gelded, they aren’t likely to jump real high. We put them in the pastures with lower fences. Later they go into the fields with just barbed wire.”
There were so many things I just didn’t understand.
“What does ‘geld’ mean?”
Russ cleared his throat and looked down at his boots.
“It means to cut ‘em so they can’t breed.” He shuffled his feet still avoiding my eyes. “You know, like spaying a dog or fixing a cat.”
“Oh.”
I watched Shadow Dancer racing around the corral and shivered.
“Why is Aunt Bess going to geld Shadow Dancer? Why doesn’t she use him for breeding.”
Russ adjusted his hat, not answering my question right away.
“Well, not every horse is worth breeding. That’s why we geld the younger ones. Makes them easier to handle.” He laughed. “You can’t have a ranch full of stallions. We have two stallions now for breeding. Leo, an Appaloosa, and Ramrod, a bay quarter horse.
“Aunt Bess said Shadow Dancer is the only colt from Winter Dream. Isn’t that bloodline worth keeping?”
“Seems to me it is. Bess who has the final say.”
Friday, April 28, 1961
The next day Aunt Bess was fuming.
“I’ll kill him. I swear I will,” she threatened, watching Shadow Dancer pace the boundaries of the corral.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Someone didn’t shut a gate and he got in and bred Daisy Sue. She was supposed to go to a stallion in Texas. I planned that breeding for over a year.”
Shadow Dancer whinnied and strained against the fence, trying to find the mare.
“Maybe you’re being too hasty, Bess,” said Russ. “Why don’t you see what kind of a foal he’ll throw? You know how good Daisy Sue’s foals are.”
“Be nearly a year before there’s any foal to see, then another two to see if it’s any good.” Aunt Bess took a deep breath then let it out.
“Well it’s over and done with.” She walked away shaking her head. “Nothing we can do now,” she muttered.
“Russ, don’t let her geld Shadow Dance,” I pleaded. “Please don’t.”
I knew the spirit that drew me to Shadow Dancer would be gone once he was gelded. I’d do anything to prevent it —anything. Since I’d come to the ranch, I’d heard stories of horses who didn’t make it after they were gelded. Some got infections and died. Others survived but never had heart afterwards. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to Shadow.
“I think she considered using Shadow Dancer at stud until he bred that mare.” He sighed. “When Bess gets mad, it’s hard for her to see reason. Maybe she’ll come around if we give her time.”
“We don’t have time,” I said. She told me the vet’s coming tomorrow.”
“Well then we’ll just have to pray for a miracle.”
At supper that night, she announced, “I confirmed Doc Hanson will be here tomorrow at ten.”
I couldn’t finish what was on my plate and excused myself from the table.
“Now what’s wrong with her?” she asked as I left the room.
That night I dreamed the vet came to do the gelding. There was flailing hooves and blood. When Shadow Dancer got to his feet his eyes were dull, his head hung low. He looked like he was going to die. When he finally looked at me, his soul was gone.
Crying, I woke up, unable to shake the fear. I needed to touch Shadow Dancer to dispel it.
I slipped outside, a coat over my pajamas. Frost lay thick on the ground and a half moon dimly lit the sky. The wind blew through the pines and sounded like voices whispering, like ghosts. The cold air stung my lungs. It felt more like winter than spring.
In his stall, Shadow Dancer sniffed the hand I put out. We stared at one another.
“I dreamed about you,” I whispered. Shadow’s hot breath blew on my hand warming it. “It was awful.” I told him about my dream, even the horrible parts, until I was crying again.
He learned closer as if to console me. I stroke his soft nose. I never wanted anything as much as I wanted Shadow Dancer to remain whole. I knew what I had to do. Did I have the courage to go through with it?
“I won’t let them do it. I won’t.”
Shadow nodded his head as if agreeing. Then he looked straight at me, as if he understood everything I’d just told him.
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