Ghost Rider

by Bonnie Bryant

  As he walked, White Eagle became aware that the wild white stallion walked with him. It surprised him because it was White Eagle’s arrow that had wounded the stallion, but the ear showed no blood—just a nick that looked like an old wound, long healed. The stallion matched the brave step for step, never straying more than a few feet. And when a rock in the mountain caused White Eagle to stumble, the horse was there for White Eagle to lean on. It was the first time White Eagle had ever touched the horse. He was certain the horse would flee from his touch, but the stallion did not. He waited. Then White Eagle understood. The horse was offering to carry them to the north.

  White Eagle lifted himself and Moon Glow onto the stallion’s back. He cradled her in his arms as the sleek stallion made the journey.

  It was an arduous journey, for Moon Glow had traveled far to search for feathers. When they arrived at her village, the chief took his daughter, but would not speak to White Eagle. The chief recognized him immediately as a son of the tribe of the south. White Eagle knew that his thanks was his life. He returned to the mountains.

  Time passed. Moon Glow healed and White Eagle survived in the rest of his test. But neither could forget the other.

  Then, one day, the stallion mysteriously appeared at White Eagle’s village and seemed to invite White Eagle to ride on him. White Eagle climbed onto the horse’s sleek back. The stallion took off immediately. Soon White Eagle found himself in the mountains once again. This time he was not alone. Moon Glow was waiting there for him. She was well and beautiful. At the moment they saw one another, they knew that they would love each other for eternity and that the stallion understood their love and had brought them together.

  Many times after that, the stallion carried the lovers to one another. Moon Glow delayed her marriage by insisting that she finish the cloak she was making for her future husband. She sewed the feathers on the soft, white leather, but try as she did to make it the pattern of a bison, it was an eagle, soaring gracefully. Though she knew she was being disloyal to her father and to her tribe, Moon Glow loved the design she had crafted, as she loved the man it stood for. She would present the cloak to White Eagle, rather than to her future husband.

  Finally the day came that Moon Glow and White Eagle had always dreaded. On the day that Moon Glow planned to give the finished cloak to White Eagle, Moon Glow’s future husband trailed the white horse to the mountains, When he found the lovers together, the warrior was angry and jealous. Hatred for this enemy of his people filled his heart. Vowing that the pair would be punished, he seized them both, bound their hands, and made them walk back to the village in shame. There was no sign of the white stallion as they walked. There would be no rescue this time.

  The chief was shocked to learn of his daughter’s treason. He immediately condemned White Eagle to death and offered his daughter to any of his braves who would still have her.

  “Oh, that’s so sad,” Stevie interrupted. “How could her father be so cruel!”

  The others nodded as John continued.

  All hope was lost for the lovers. There was no escape for either, and to both death seemed preferable to separation. At the moment of White Eagle’s execution, Moon Glow swallowed some poison. She lived long enough to watch the flames consume her beloved White Eagle and the flowing white cloak he wore to his death. As the smoke drifted up to the pale blue sky, she saw the distinct outline of a soaring eagle take flight. She gasped—whether in pain or surprise, nobody knows.

  Then, at that moment, there was a thunder of hoof-beats. A pure white stallion came galloping through the village. He paused at the weak and dying Moon Glow. With her last ounce of energy, she reached upward, clutched the stallion’s mane, and was swept up off the ground. Magically the horse rose in the air and flew sky-ward. Then, as the tribe watched, there appeared behind her on the horse, the pure white leather cloak she had so painstakingly made. On it was the perfect image of an eagle.

  “The lovers are gone now,” John said. “Living together in eternity. But they say the horse still roams the wilderness, riderless, on an endless quest to help others whose love transcends hatred and bigotry. He carries the nick in his ear as a reminder of White Eagle’s sacrifice, for the moment the brave performed the selfless act of saving Moon Glow, his fate was sealed. Our people call the horse after him—White Eagle.”

  Without another word, John rose and left the room.

  “WHO WAS THAT boy?” Christine asked, sighing.

  “John,” Stevie said. “He works here. Wasn’t that a romantic story!”

  “Imagine—a flying horse!” agreed Carole.

  “My mother has told me a story sort of like that,” Christine said. “Only she didn’t tell it as well as John does. You know how important the traditional tales are to Native Americans don’t you? The generations learn from one another as stories are passed through the ages. We were telling stories long before the Europeans figured out how to write them down!”

  “Well, that guy really knows how to make up a good tale and tell it just right,” Stevie said. “That’s the sort of thing you learn at your parents’ knees.”

  “Jealous?” Carole teased.

  “No. He’s not as good as I am, but he is good. I mean, his story did make me shiver, but not the way my story scared you guys, right?”

  “His wasn’t supposed to be a scary story,” Carole said.

  “Oh, yes it was,” said Lisa, speaking for the first time. “It was meant to scare Kate from adopting the stallion.”

  “I know. And it’s not fair,” Kate added.

  All four girls looked at Kate, suddenly aware how much John’s romantic tale had touched her.

  “I want that horse. I don’t know how he knows that I do, but he does. And now he’s trying to make me change my mind. I just don’t know why.”

  “Maybe he wants the stallion himself,” Lisa suggested.

  “But how did he know I wanted it?”

  Lisa gulped uncomfortably. “I told him,” she confessed. “See, he asked me about the ride we took, and I mentioned the stallion. He seemed all upset about it at the time, but he wouldn’t tell me why. I asked him if he wanted the stallion himself, and he said that wasn’t it. He just said that nobody could have the stallion with the nick in his ear. It was strange. One minute he was friendly and helpful. The next minute he was all strange about the horse.”

  A confused look crossed Christine’s face. “Wait. I know him. Isn’t that Walter Brightstar’s son, John?”

  “Yes,” Kate told her.

  “Oh, there’s something odd about them, isn’t there? I mean, I sort of remember some kind of rumor.…”

  “They’re really good with horses,” Lisa said, suddenly wanting to defend John. “When I saw John, he was staying with a mare who is going to foal soon. He said she was restless and seemed to like his company. She did, too. She finally fell asleep while he was there.”

  All four of Lisa’s friends looked at her. “When was this?” Stevie asked.

  “After supper,” Lisa explained. “I went back out to the barn to get my watch. John was there with the mare.”

  “Ah, a late-night meeting in the barn! Just happened to forget your watch?” Stevie teased.

  “It wasn’t exactly late night,” Lisa said. “It was seven-thirty. And, yes, I did just happen to forget my watch. Give me a break!”

  Stevie regarded her carefully and then shrugged her shoulders. “Well, you’re probably telling the truth,” she said. She was teasing and Lisa knew it. “But I think John was just being a practical joker. He’s a pretty funny guy. I’ll bet he just happened to be passing by the bunkhouse and heard my story, then couldn’t resist the opportunity to join in on the Halloween fun so he made up that fantastic ghost story.”

  “I don’t think he made it up,” Christine said. “As I told you, my mother used to tell me one very much like it. The people around here know lots and lots of Native American tales. They’re mythical and romantic. Sometimes they’re pretty hard to
understand.”

  “This one wasn’t,” Kate said. “At least John’s reason for telling it wasn’t hard to understand. It was carefully designed to make me change my mind about owning the stallion. And all I can say is that it won’t work.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” Carole said. “It may be a story, but it certainly isn’t true. Remember that John began it by saying it all happened before his own grandfather’s memory? That means it must have happened at least seventy years ago, and most horses die in their twenties, though a few live to thirty, maybe thirty-five. There is no way a horse is going to live as long as seventy years! Out of the question.”

  “It’s a story, Carole!” Stevie said. “It wasn’t meant to be taken literally. Besides, if the story is correct, the silvery stallion is some kind of ghost anyway. Ghosts don’t have ages the way people or horses do. They just exist. Sort of.”

  “Oh, I suppose,” Carole conceded. “I was just trying to make Kate feel better.”

  “Thanks, Carole,” Kate said. “You did make me feel better. You and Stevie reminded me that John’s story is just a story, and I don’t have to pay any attention to it. I’m going to get that horse at the adoption, and now I know what I’m going to name him.”

  “Yes?” Stevie asked expectantly.

  “White Eagle, of course.”

  With that, Kate reached for a marshmallow and speared it with a long-handled fork. She held it over the flames in the fireplace. It marked the end of the discussion as far as she was concerned. In a show of agreement and support, her friends followed suit. Soon five marshmallows were toasting over the fire, and Christine took over the job of tale teller.

  Later that night, cuddled into her down sleeping bag, Lisa thought about all the things that had happened that day and tried to make sense of them.

  First, there was the stallion. She could still see him rising above his herd of mares. He was simply magnificent—wild and free. Lisa wondered if he would be any less magnificent with a saddle and rider on his back. Was he so beautiful because he was free? That was a silly idea, of course. All the horses who roamed the country were descended from domesticated ponies, who had originally been brought to this country by the Spaniards who first explored and settled these lands. A horse that was beautiful free would also be beautiful under saddle, especially if he was lucky enough to have a rider as good as Kate Devine to own and ride him.

  Then there was John. And there was John’s story. Lisa knew she needed to think about John’s story, but first she just wanted to think about John. He wasn’t like anybody she’d ever met before. She liked that about him. At the same time, it frightened her a little bit. He was handsome, to be sure, but that wasn’t what frightened her. He seemed like at least two different boys at once. He was the kind, gentle, caring young man who sat with a mare for hours, watching and comforting her when his own father should have been doing it. That gave Lisa a start. Just where had Walter been while all this was going on? He should have been the one with the mare. Was John covering for him? Lisa decided not to think about that right then, either.

  Then there was the other John. That was the mysterious John who wasn’t going to tell why Kate shouldn’t adopt the stallion. That same John was the one who had shown up at the bunkhouse, walked in uninvited (it was a good thing they were all wearing sweatpants and sweatshirts to sleep in!), told a confusing and probably untrue story clearly designed to make Kate change her mind about owning the stallion, and then just walked out. What was he trying to do? More important, why was he trying to do it?

  Lisa’s mind replayed her conversations with John, especially the story he’d told. In her mind she heard it over and over again. Finally she fell asleep with the image of the horse rising into the sky above the village, carrying the star-crossed lovers to their destiny. The image was to remain with her for a very long time.

  “IF ONE MORE person asks me if they’re going to have to peel the grapes, I’ll scream,” Stevie announced.

  Lisa laughed. Stevie was pretending to be angry, but the fact was she was in her element. All five of the girls were at the regional high school, where the basement had been turned over to them for the party that was to take place tomorrow. Students from the school wandered in and out during their free periods, offering to help decorate or otherwise get ready. Kate and Christine had special dispensation from their own schools to have the time off to put together the Halloween Fair—-as long as they got their homework in on time and got the notes they missed from classmates.

  “Don’t worry about your homework,” Stevie told them. “That’s one of the things The Saddle Club is the very best at.”

  “You mean you’re going to do it for me?” Kate asked, teasing.

  “No, not me,” Stevie assured her. “If I did it, you’d both flunk out. No, the one who does the best homework is Lisa. She can do anything!”

  “Ahem,” Lisa said. “She can also follow instructions. Like I’ll be glad to help anybody with their homework. I don’t do other people’s work.”

  “Whatever,” said Stevie. “Just don’t worry. We’ll come through for you.”

  “You always have,” Christine said. “And that’s what you’re doing now, right?”

  Stevie looked down. She was standing on top of a very tall ladder. “Actually,” she said, “at this moment I’m not so sure.” In one hand she had some orange crepe paper, and in the other was a piece of tape. The problem was she was going to have to put the two of them together on a spot she could reach. The best she could do was the edge of a fluorescent lamp.

  “Okay?” she asked. Lisa was standing on the floor, holding the ladder to steady it.

  “Sort of,” Lisa told her. “But you’d better hurry down now. Two more people want to know who’s going to peel the grapes.”

  “Yeooooooo!” Stevie said. But she was laughing when she got back down to ground level. “I think I’ve got an idea,” she said to Lisa, her eyes sparkling. That was usually a sign of a really good or a really bad idea. With Stevie it was sometimes hard to tell which was which. “The next person who asks me about the grapes will be assigned the job of putting up the rest of the crepe paper.”

  John Brightstar sauntered into the basement. “Hey, good morning, girls!” he greeted them. “The ninth grade has a free period, and my teacher said I should offer to help. Any grapes need peeling?”

  Stevie blinked in astonishment. “No,” she said sweetly. “But we have another job that’s right up your alley. Come on aboard.”

  It turned out that John was actually the perfect person for the job of hanging orange and black crepe paper, because he was tall enough to reach the ceiling from the top of the ladder. It also meant that Lisa was assigned to retain her position of holding the ladder and steadying it. She held on very tightly.

  Stevie didn’t waste a second. There was an awful lot of work to do and it didn’t seem as if there were anywhere near enough time to do it. Stevie mustered her troops to the area she’d designated as the horror house and began partitioning it off.

  One section was where the awful things to feel—including the peeled grapes that blindfolded visitors would be told were eyeballs—would be laid out. Stevie knew that peeling grapes was a boring job, but she thought she and the girls could do it that night in the kitchen at The Bar None. After all, they’d just need a few of them. What was the big deal? They’d also cook the pasta designated as brains and fill long oiled balloons with water and tell everyone they were entrails. Stevie was pretty sure they could think of some more disgusting things before the fair, too. She just had to put her mind to it.

  “Okay, this is where we’re going to have the wind tunnel. Can anybody get their hands on a tube-type vacuum cleaner so we can reverse the air flow?”

  Two hands went up. That solved that problem. It also gave Stevie two volunteers to run their own mothers’ vacuum cleaners, since Stevie was pretty sure the mothers would insist on it anyway.

  “And next comes the ghost mirror
,” Stevie said. “Is there a full-length mirror we can paint stuff on?”

  There was. One of the high school students “borrowed” it from the girls’ room upstairs, and Stevie assigned an aspiring art student the job of painting a suggestive ghost on it. That way, the “guest” in the horror house would see herself or himself, plus a ghost. Anyone who pooh-poohed the ghost would be treated to the immediate appearance of somebody dressed in an identical outfit.

  “It’s going to be great!” Stevie said. “Just make sure the ghost you paint is just a little wispy. We don’t want anybody to be able to see anything clearly. The kids’ imaginations are going to be doing an awful lot of work.”

  “Got it!” the artist said, and then disappeared to “borrow” some paints from the art room.

  “Next, we have to have something for the kids to fall down on that won’t hurt them.”

  “Mattresses?” somebody suggested.

  “Probably,” Stevie said. “But I’m open to other suggestions.”

  “Rubber balls? We’ve got a ton of them in the gym.”

  “We’d really need a ton of them,” Stevie said. “I mean, this has to be safe. In spite of what the kids think, we have to treat them like precious packages. We want them scared, not hurt.”

  “You mean precious packages, like fragile things you ship places?” a redheaded boy asked. Stevie had the feeling he was on to something.

  “Yes, very fragile,” Stevie agreed. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, my father runs this mail-order business, and he just got a truckload—and I mean truckload—of Styrofoam peanuts. He uses them all right, but he doesn’t use that many, and it’s a three-year supply. The place that delivered them doesn’t want to take them back. You getting the picture?”

  “Perfect!” Stevie declared. “I’m sure he can get a tax deduction for a donation to a worthy cause.…”