Gift Horse

by Terri Farley

  “That truck’s burning oil,” Brynna said. Though they were past it, she looked in the rearview mirror and frowned.

  Sam didn’t ask for details. Brynna’s expression said “burning oil” wasn’t good. They couldn’t afford a new hay truck and it might cost a lot to fix the old one.

  Brynna shook her head and Sam could almost read her mind. There was no way Brynna could quit her BLM position unless the HARP job was dependable. But when Brynna spoke next, she didn’t say what Sam had been expecting.

  “What are you going to tell Mrs. Santos?” Brynna asked.

  Sam shrugged so vigorously that the shoulders of her new black sweater brushed her earlobes. “I’m just going to tell the truth. I have no idea what to do.”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad, working at the dump.” Brynna took one hand from the steering wheel and patted Sam’s hands, which gripped each other in her lap. Her eyes still watched the road as she added, with a suspicious lilt in her voice, “At least the weather should be nice by then.”

  The campus of Darton High was quiet. Most students wouldn’t arrive until just before the first bell rang.

  A flock of chickadees and sparrows took wing as Sam crossed the quad that separated the classrooms from the school office.

  “What are you looking for, guys?” she asked as they scolded from the branches of a small tree.

  Maybe worms, Sam thought. Though the grass wasn’t crusted in old snow and ice like it was at home, everything underfoot looked brown and soggy.

  The office doors were locked. Sam saw no secretaries inside when she peered through the windows.

  She glanced at the faculty parking lot. It was empty except for a single black sedan. Betting it belonged to Mrs. Santos, Sam knocked at the office door.

  Mrs. Santos must have been listening for her knock. Wearing a long tweed skirt, white blouse, and black tailored jacket, the principal appeared on the other side of the glass. With a cordless phone clamped between her ear and shoulder, she opened the door and motioned Sam inside.

  Sam slipped into the warm office and sat quietly while Mrs. Santos talked with someone about a burst pipe in the gym. Mrs. Santos tapped her fingernails on her desk and rolled her dark-brown eyes. Sam figured it would be just her luck if the frustrating conversation put the principal in a bad mood.

  Sam heard the bustle of secretaries and students increase in the other parts of the office. By the time Mrs. Santos hung up, Sam had only ten minutes left before the bell rang for her first class.

  “Okay, Sam,” Mrs. Santos said, finally. “I thought there’d be one more of us.”

  Mrs. Santos paused at the sound of approaching feet.

  Rachel Slocum peeked around the doorjamb of Mrs. Santos’ office. Shiny, coffee-colored curls rushed over her shoulder, held by a velvet bow. She wore a flippy powder-blue skirt and a white blouse with a frill at the neck. There was a tiny stitched monogram, too.

  Was Rachel here as a representative of the student council? Or had she failed to file a community service plan, too?

  Sam glanced at Mrs. Santos for a clue. Mrs. Santos didn’t give her one.

  If Rachel thought a designer’s fantasy of school-girl chic would improve Mrs. Santos’ opinion of her, though, she was wrong. Mrs. Santos didn’t even greet Rachel, just pointed a finger her way, motioned her inside, and kept talking.

  “I imagine your fathers refreshed your memories regarding the school’s community service policy.”

  That answered her question. Sam sighed. At least she and Rachel were on equal footing in here. They’d both left their community service hours until the last minute. Without a pinch of dismay, Rachel slid into the chair nearest the principal and swiveled it so that her back was to Sam.

  Sam didn’t mind. Rachel had just saved her from admitting she didn’t know what to do.

  “My father and I did discuss it,” Rachel said solemnly. “We think a donation of cash might be more useful than a donation of time.”

  Sam wanted to scream. Did the Slocums really believe they could buy anything? Mrs. Santos couldn’t let Rachel get away with this!

  Rachel kept her hands primly folded in her lap. Her nails glittered rose-gold. Her tapered fingers looked soft and pampered. More than anything in the world, Sam wanted to see those hands sorting garbage in the Darton dump.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to suggest anything else,” the principal replied as she clipped a silver earring back on the ear she’d pressed to the phone.

  “So that means you’ll accept?” Rachel stood, smoothing the back of her skirt as if the meeting had concluded.

  Mrs. Santos let the silence spin out. She must be considering it.

  Then she chuckled. “Of course not.”

  Sam didn’t clap, but boy, did she want to. It was a good thing she didn’t gloat, because Mrs. Santos’ attention had shifted to her.

  “We had a faculty meeting late yesterday afternoon to discuss our plans for students in your situation. I’d been hoping I could talk with you beforehand. I even sent you a note—”

  “I never got a note.” Sam stopped when Mrs. Santos raised her eyebrows. “Sorry for interrupting, but I really didn’t.”

  “Mr. Blair tried to give it to you after class, but he said you were quite eager to leave school yesterday.”

  Sam almost moaned aloud. This just got worse and worse.

  Yesterday, while she’d been doing a good deed, trying to save poor Tinkerbell, her teachers had decided she was a slacker. It just wasn’t fair!

  Sam closed her eyes as Rachel explained she had received the note, but she’d had an appointment after school yesterday that simply couldn’t be rescheduled.

  “This is awful.” Sam moaned. “I don’t want my teachers to think that way about me.”

  Rachel gave her a horrified look, as if confessing that your teachers’ opinions mattered should be humiliating.

  Sam didn’t care what Rachel thought.

  “Actually, they don’t think badly of either of you,” Mrs. Santos said. “They think you’re both leaders. You, with the underclassmen,” Mrs. Santos said, nodding at Sam. “And you with juniors and seniors.”

  “They think Samantha…?” Rachel’s lip-glossed lips pressed shut, but Sam knew what she’d been about to say.

  And she agreed. How could her teachers think she was a leader when she was so afraid of going in front of the student council, she couldn’t even think of a plan? Besides, she wasn’t in any clubs, didn’t participate in any activities except journalism, and when she’d tried out for the freshman basketball team, she hadn’t made the last cut.

  Mrs. Santos didn’t explain. Instead, as the bell rang for class, she handed each girl a list.

  “We’d like your help in putting together a major community project that will involve as many students as possible. Those,” she said, nodding at the lists, “are students who haven’t turned in the forms stating their intentions.”

  Crossing all of her fingers and hiding them behind her, Sam stood, then summoned the courage to ask, “Do we still have to bring this project in front of the student council?”

  Mrs. Santos must have noticed her quavery voice, because she nodded slowly, looking sympathetic. “You do,” she said. “In fact, Rachel will be abstaining from all community service projects votes until you two have come up with something.”

  Rachel gave Sam a stare that actually seemed hot. It blazed between the two girls, but if the principal noticed, she showed no sign.

  “And, of course, if you girls can’t come up with something, you know my safety net project. That’s all set up and ready to go.”

  The dump. Looking for one bit of fun she could wring out of this morning, Sam glanced at Rachel to see her reaction. The rich girl looked frozen, except that her bottom lip pushed out in a pout.

  Mrs. Santos folded her hands on her desk. She smiled and leaned back in her chair. “Good luck, girls. Now you’d better get to class.”

  They left the office side by side
, neither speaking as they jostled across a campus now crowded with students.

  When Rachel noticed Daisy and her other friends approaching, she veered away from Sam.

  “Just leave the bloody thing to me,” Rachel said, reviving her faint British accent to sound properly put-upon.

  Sam could have taken that, but as Rachel was surrounded by the perfume and popularity of her own little clique, she fluttered one hand in Sam’s direction and added, “I’ll tell you what to do.”

  That was too much. And she didn’t care what Daisy, Rachel, or any of those girls thought of her.

  “Fat chance!” Sam snapped back. Hands on hips, she stood until Rachel turned around, her lips parted in disbelief.

  “I beg your pardon?” Rachel accompanied the carefully spaced words with a glare. “What did you say?”

  Wishing they hadn’t attracted quite so many fascinated onlookers, Sam drew herself up to her full height and took a breath. “I said: Fat bloody chance!”

  Sam thought she heard a few scattered cheers as she hurried off to class, but she wasn’t sure. Mostly, she was wondering what she’d gotten herself into.

  Chapter Seven

  “So what are you going to do?” Jen Kenworthy turned to Sam as they rode the bus toward home. Behind her glasses, Jen’s blue eyes rounded with curiosity and she twisted the end of one white-blond braid around her index finger.

  “I’m thinking, but I’m not coming up with anything.” Sam leaned back against the bus window.

  Jen studied her for a full minute. When she talked next, Sam wondered if her friend could read her mind.

  “I know you’ve never been into the whole rah-rah student council thing, but now you’d better get into it.”

  “Those girls hate us,” Sam protested in a whisper.

  “They don’t hate you, or me,” Jen said. “That would mean that they know we exist. They have much more important things on their minds.”

  “Like shoes,” Sam said, returning Jen’s sarcastic smile. “And mascara.”

  “Exactly,” Jen said. “But I’ll tell you, if Mrs. Santos wants a dynamite idea for a community service project, you’d better come up with something. If she says you’ll be sorting garbage, you will.”

  Sam had a feeling Jen was right. “Since I’ve pretty much alienated Rachel, I guess I’m on my own.”

  “I bet if you think of something good, she’ll go along with you.”

  But would she stand up and present the idea to the student council?

  Sam sucked in a breath. She shifted her eyes away from Jen’s face to look out the window. It was a pinto landscape this time of year. Snow shone white in every shadow. She wished something exciting would happen, right this minute, so she didn’t have to confess she was a chicken.

  She was terrified to speak to the student council, but while she waited, things only got worse.

  Today in Journalism, while she typed a story, she’d also watched Rachel and her best friend Daisy. They’d called other students over to the desks they’d arranged in a corner of the room. Though they pretended to ask whether each student had sold an ad for the current edition of the Darton Dialogue, Sam had noticed a lot of stares directed her way. What if Rachel was putting the word out that nothing Sam suggested would be acceptable to the student council?

  “Why are you so worried?” Jen asked. “Your eyes are darting all over the place and your hands are actually shaking.”

  “No they’re not.” Sam tucked her hands under her thighs.

  “Okay,” Jen said, reasonably. “Tell me when you’re ready.”

  Even Jen’s unquestioning friendship didn’t help. Sam felt boneless with fear. She didn’t look around at the other kids on the bus. She tried to act normal.

  Sam wanted Jen’s help. She just wasn’t sure how to ask for it.

  She couldn’t tell Jen what Rachel had said, because she hadn’t actually heard her say anything. She couldn’t tell Jen what Rachel had done, because so far, she wasn’t sure Rachel had done anything more than act superior.

  “If I thought of a good community service project, do you think Rachel would present it to the student council?”

  Jen gave her a confused look. “Why would you want her to? If it’s a good idea, stand up and take credit for it.”

  Sam’s spirits sagged. Jen wouldn’t understand at all.

  “If you want my honest opinion,” Jen added, “I don’t think she’ll do anything if she thinks it will make you happy. From what you said, she’s pretty embarrassed.”

  “But you told me you thought she’d go along with any good idea I had.”

  “And she will,” Jen said with a nod. “If you convince her it’s in her best interest, and that she’d look good doing it.”

  That would be a lot of work, Sam thought. And if she did nothing at all, the satisfaction might be just as great. A wicked vision swam toward the surface of Sam’s imagination. She smiled as she pictured Rachel at the dump.

  “It would almost be worth it,” she said savagely.

  “Going to jail for murder?” Jen asked. “I don’t think so.”

  “No. It would be worth spending my entire spring break working in the Darton dump, just to see Rachel have a nervous breakdown because she had to touch something icky.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Jen giggled. “Can I come?”

  Cheered by her evil thoughts, Sam sighed. “Whatever happens, I’ve got to come up with something. If I mess up just a little, Dad won’t let me keep Tinkerbell.”

  Jen bounced on the bus seat and squeezed Sam’s shoulders. “Do you even believe this? We both have new horses to play with!”

  Sam bounced in return and her dark feelings vanished.

  When she thought about Tinkerbell, it was like taking off sunglasses. The whole world looked brighter.

  “How’s Golden Rose coming along?” Sam asked.

  “She’s doing great. Mom, Dad, and I are handling her every chance we get. She’ll let me pick up her feet, halter her, brush her tail, whatever. In two weeks, Dad’s going to try her under saddle.”

  “That’s quick,” Sam said. Just two weeks ago, she and Jen had found Golden Rose living in a ghost town. The mare had been missing for years. “I don’t know how much training Tinkerbell has had. It’ll be fun to find out.”

  “Do you think he’ll be there when you get home?” Jen asked.

  “I hope so.”

  But he wasn’t. Sam hurried home from the bus stop. She moved as fast as she could over old snow that had hardened into ice. Planting her feet to keep from slipping, she jogged against the icy wind, only to find a chore—instead of a horse—waiting for her.

  Pepper, River Bend’s youngest cowboy, stood near the hitching rack outside the house. Sam was still trying to catch her breath to ask if he’d heard anything about the new horse, when he ordered her to help with an outdoor task.

  “Dress warm and get on back down here,” Pepper said.

  “For what?” Sam asked.

  If Pepper’s headgear was any indication of what he wanted her to do, it involved a trek to the North Pole. Beneath his Stetson, Pepper wore a wool hat with earflaps hanging down.

  “I’d rather freeze than look like some hound dog,” she told him.

  “You may get the chance,” Pepper said. “Your dad wants you to help me out at the stock tanks.”

  “No, I’ve got to wait for Tinkerbell.”

  Pepper grimaced at the name. “He figured you might say that. You can wait out there, is what Wyatt said.”

  “Out there” meant the snowy, windswept range.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said, trying to sound helpless. “What kind of help could you need from me?”

  “Listen,” Pepper lowered his voice and glanced toward the bunkhouse. “Dallas’s arthritis is acting up something awful. Your dad doesn’t want him doing this chore with me and it’ll go lots faster with two of us.”

  “Of course I’ll help,” Sam said, ashamed she’d tried to shirk a chore t
hat might actually hurt Dallas. “But there’s water in the tanks, and the cattle come drink from them. Isn’t that pretty simple?”

  Pepper chuckled and rubbed his gloved hands together as if anticipating big fun. “While you’re in there, make sure you grab some gloves.”

  There was no point arguing, so Sam hurried. If she dawdled, Dad might make her leave after Tinkerbell had arrived.

  Sam zipped through the kitchen door. Her cold cheeks burned from the warmth inside. The aroma of fresh-baked cookies and the sound of the clothes dryer tumbling would have made a great welcome home, if she hadn’t been in such a rush.

  “How did it go, dear?” Gram asked.

  “Okay, I guess,” Sam said, scooping up the chocolate chip cookies Gram had arranged on a plate for her after-school snack. She kept talking as Gram followed her up the stairs.

  “Tonight after supper, we can brainstorm some ideas with Brynna,” Gram said. “Mrs. Santos didn’t forbid you to do that, did she?” Gram asked as Sam wiggled into her long underwear.

  “No,” Sam said, voice muffled by each layer she pulled on. “While I’m gone you’ll watch for Tinkerbell, right?” Sam said as her head popped free of her turtleneck.

  “From your description, I don’t think I could miss him,” Gram joked.

  Heater blasting, Pepper drove the hay truck off the main road, then bounced over frozen ruts toward the winter range. It wasn’t that far south, but there was a drop in altitude. At least that’s what Pepper told her, but to Sam the gray-brown hills and snow-clumped sagebrush looked the same as the range closest to the ranch.

  Once they stopped, Sam discovered why Pepper had tossed an axe in the truck bed. They were going to break the ice off the stock tanks.

  “This is one reason the cattle are wandering off,” Pepper said. He peered at what was probably a frozen surface, while Sam stood shivering by the truck. “Stay back, now.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.”

  Pepper shrugged his shoulders inside his jacket, then bent his neck side to side, loosening up before he swung the axe. The first time, it struck with a dull thud; the next time, with sort of a glassy clunk.