The two legged stepped down from the spotted horse and moved toward the mustang. He trembled as the two legged approached and slowly extended a hand. “Easy, mithakhola, I will not not hurt you. I will free you so you can fly away.”
The hand smelled of sage and sweetgrass and sunshine and something herbal and strong. The mustang drew the mingled scents into his lungs, and when the hand touched him, he flinched but remained still. The hated harness binding his head was being loosened. In a heartbeat it fell away and the pressure of imprisonment was gone.
The mustang whirled in one movement and tore off at a gallop, the rope tangling around his hind leg for one jump, two, before it fell off like the bindings on his head and he was free! He lowered his head and put on a strong burst of speed to outrun the two legged, and then stopped at the crest of the knoll and whirled around to look behind him for pursuit, head high and nostrils flaring.
The two legged was watching him and raised his arm, the rope and halter dangling from it.
“Oyuskeya unpi, mithakhola, tanyan omani,” the deep voice called out. “Freedom, my friend. Have a good journey.” Then the two legged climbed back onto the spotted horse and returned the way he had come.
The loneliness built within the mustang until he could stand it no longer. He whinnied plaintively at being left behind, then followed the two legged on the spotted horse.
* * *
SHANNON WALKED OUT onto the porch to find her father. She was halfway down the steps when she spotted him near the machinery shed with another man. Billy came out onto the porch behind her and said, for her benefit, “My grandfather, Henry Crow Dog.”
She stopped short and looked back at him, surprised. “From the reservation?”
“He comes to visit your father from time to time, usually when the tribal police are looking for him. Lets himself through the gate that backs onto BLM land.”
“But how did he get here? The reservation is over a hundred miles south, as the crow flies. And why would the tribal police be after him?”
“Henry lost his driver’s license years ago. Usually he gets caught driving into town or something and they want to throw him in jail for a few days to teach him a lesson. So he saddles his horse and rides over. He and your father like to share the tobacco. Bet you didn’t know your father smokes the pipe with an outlaw Shoshone.”
“Nothing my father does would surprise me.”
“Whatever you do, don’t ask him to stay for lunch,” Billy warned. “He’s like a stray cat. Feed him once and he might never leave.”
Shannon walked to meet them, sizing up Billy’s grandfather. He was shorter than her father, but just as wiry and strong looking, dressed in worn jeans, scuffed boots, a flannel shirt and a dark leather vest. He wore a flat-crowned black hat with a colorfully beaded hatband over long black hair streaked with gray, and he didn’t look like a grandfather.
“Lunch is ready,” she called with a wave of her arm when they were in earshot. “I’ll set another place.”
Henry Crow Dog raised his own arm in response and even from a distance Shannon recognized the rope and halter he held in his hand. Shannon felt her stomach drop. Had the wild horse gotten hung up on something? Was he dead? How else could Henry Crow Dog have gotten the halter off that mustang?
“Henry found the mustang that ran off,” her father said as the two came to a stop in front of her. “He was hung up by the back fence line, so Henry took the halter off and the mustang followed him back here.”
Shannon hid her surprise and stuck out her hand. “Shannon McTavish. Thank you. That mustang doesn’t much like the idea of being saddle broke.”
“Smart horse,” Henry said, shaking her hand.
“I hope you’ll have lunch with us. You’re welcome to put your horse in our corrals. We have plenty of hay. Billy can take care of him for you.” She shot a glance over her shoulder. Billy was still standing on the porch wearing a stony expression, hands on his hips. She got the distinct impression he and his grandfather weren’t on good terms.
“My horse is already turned out with your horses,” Henry said. “That mustang was trying to find his way home. He doesn’t want to be civilized.”
“We’re not all that civilized around here. Seems like he should fit in just fine,” Shannon said wryly.
Henry nodded to his grandson as he climbed the porch steps. “Billy,” he said.
“Grandfather.” Billy nodded in response but his stance never changed and his expression remained aloof.
“I heard you bought some land from McTavish so I came to see it.”
“Nothing much to see,” Billy said.
“Come inside, Henry,” Shannon invited him. “Rose, help me get lunch on the table.”
Five minutes later the men had removed their hats, washed at the sink and chosen their respective chairs. A big platter of ribs, a pot of leftover beans, a bowl of coleslaw, a basket of Kitty’s wonderful biscuits and a pitcher of cold sweet tea crowded the center of the table. Shannon had put cutlery and plates on the table as well as a generous stack of paper towels. She sat down between Rose and her father, her chair legs scraping loudly in the silence of the kitchen. She glanced around the table. All eyes were fixed on their own plates. The silence stretched out.
“This looks good,” McTavish finally said, breaking the awkward moment.
“Kitty Sayres cooked all of this for the haying crew. I can’t claim credit. All I did was heat it up.” Shannon picked up the basket of biscuits and started passing it around the table. She followed it with the pot of beans, the bowl of coleslaw and, finally, the platter of ribs. Food eventually filled the plates and the pitcher of tea filled the glasses.
“So,” Shannon said to Henry as she distributed the paper towels around the table. “How’d you get the halter off that mustang?”
Henry paused with a fork full of beans halfway to his mouth. “I unbuckled it.”
Shannon wanted to ask a whole lot more questions but he was eating, so she concentrated on her own plate and wondered why Henry and Billy were at odds with each other. What had happened between them? She noticed her daughter hadn’t touched her food. “Rose, eat your lunch.”
“I’m not hungry, Momma. I want my frog back.”
“Your frog is gone. Now eat.”
“Did I make him go to sleep when I put him in my bed?”
Shannon poured herself some iced tea. “No, sweetie. It wasn’t your fault. Your frog wasn’t asleep, he died. It was just his time, that’s all. You had nothing to do with it. Try to eat something. These ribs are delicious.”
“But he’s not dead. Billy said the water would wake him up so he could swim away. He saw it, too. He swam away, we both saw it!” Rose’s lower lip trembled. She was close to tears.
“Rose, we have company. We’re not going to discuss the frog any further. No more tears. Eat your lunch.”
Henry pushed from his chair and reached for his hat from the wall peg. “Death is part of the Great Mystery of the Creator, and your daughter needs to understand that it is okay to cry, because only when the tears flow do we begin to feel a connection to all things, and it is that connection with all things that makes us strong.” Without waiting for a nod from Shannon, he looked at Rose. “Can you take me to where you last saw your friend?”
Two huge tears spilled over and ran down Rose’s cheeks. “Yes,” she sniffled.
“Good. Then we will go to that place and send him on his spirit journey.”
A surge of indignation propelled Shannon to her feet. “Rose should eat first.”
Henry put his hat on. He held Shannon’s gaze for a long moment. Shannon slowly sat back down. Henry shifted his gaze to Rose. “Ready?”
Rose nodded. She slid off her chair and walked to the kitchen door, and the two departed together. When the kitchen door banged shut behind them, Shannon looked first t
o Billy, then to her father.
“I can’t believe that man just took my daughter away without asking!” she said.
Billy broke a biscuit in half. “Henry might not have a driver’s license, but by the time he’s finished with his smudging ceremony, Rose will know all about ’Skan and the spirit journey and the meaning of the frog totem. Let him teach Rose about the Great Mystery. His lesson will be better than mine, and a whole lot more helpful. Could you pass the butter, please?”
* * *
JUST AS BILLY had predicted, Henry stayed for an entire week, bunking with Billy in the cook’s cabin and helping out with the mustangs, not because he was asked, but because he enjoyed working with horses. Shannon grudgingly pardoned Henry’s proprietary behavior with her daughter, mostly because Rose had instantly bonded with Henry and to protest their friendship would only create more friction in a household that had enough internal conflicts already.
She helped Billy and Henry with the mustangs, tolerated her father’s surliness as he struggled with both his broken arm and his daughter’s perceived disloyalties, and cooked endless meals for the hungry crew. Three meals a day took quite a bit of prep work and planning, all the while keeping one eye on Rose, so Shannon was looking forward to the chicken barbecue at the Grange, not to mention a day without cooking and cleaning.
And there was no denying that she was also looking forward to singing again.
Saturday dawned clear and cool, an early August morning that held a hint of fall. Shannon slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Rose, and opened the window wide so she could lean her forearms on the sill and admire the sunrise.
She’d forgotten how quiet Wyoming mornings could be, and this day had begun with a hush, as if the entire valley was holding its breath, listening to the stillness of the mountains. Not a breath of wind was stirring.
Then she heard a meadowlark sing the first beautiful salutation to the sunrise. Moments later a raven flew over with a loud swish of wings, spied her standing at the window and veered aside with a startled croak. One of the mustangs whinnied down at the corrals. She wondered if it was that restless young bay who wanted to go back home.
A movement out by the barn caught her eye. Billy. Already up and working. Not surprising. Sometimes it seemed as if he hardly slept. He’d been withdrawn and downright glum since his grandfather had arrived, leaving in his truck after working all day to go stock shelves at Willard’s or spend a few hours alone at his house, pounding nails until darkness brought him back to the ranch again. Occasionally he missed supper, but Shannon guessed it was the only time he had to himself, with Henry Crow Dog sharing the little cook’s cabin.
Shannon washed, dressed and started a pot of coffee down in the kitchen. She was surprised her father hadn’t already put the coffee on himself. He was usually an early riser, but Tess was the only one in the kitchen, wagging her tail when Shannon paused to stroke her head. Shannon pulled on a light jacket and walked out to the barn, where Billy was throwing a few bales of hay down out of the loft to feed the mustangs.
She helped him lug the bales out to the corrals, break them apart and throw the flakes of hay inside. The wild horses were coming along nicely after a week of handling. No longer did they shy to the far side of the corral when the humans approached with the hay. The bay was the only holdout, distrustful and wary whenever Shannon and Billy were around, but he trusted Henry, which galled Shannon to no end. It galled her, too, that he called the horse Khola, which he explained was short for mithakhola, which meant friend.
“What does that wild horse see in your grandfather?” she asked as she and Billy leaned against the corral fence and watched the mustangs jockey for position.
“Annoys you, doesn’t it?” Billy said. He was chewing on a piece of hay, hat pushed back, forearms dangling over the top rail.
“Yes,” Shannon admitted. “I’ve tried so hard to make friends with him and he wants nothing to do with me. The horse, I mean, not your grandfather.”
“Henry pisses me off, too,” Billy remarked casually. “Not because of that mustang and not because Rose worships him, but because he disowned my mother when she had me out of wedlock. Chased her right out of his life when she was young and scared and alone and in love with the wrong man. So because she had nowhere to go, she went and married that wrong man.”
“Your father?”
Billy nodded. “He was an abusive alcoholic. I was born on the rez but my mother moved from there because my father was white and had a house close to town. But he didn’t have a heart, and he sure as hell broke my mother’s.”
Billy tossed the piece of grass to the ground. “Still, if I’d grown up on the rez, I wouldn’t have gone to your high school. You wouldn’t have been my lab partner. Guess you could say that meeting you was the silver lining to Henry Crow Dog kicking my mother out of his house when she was just sixteen years old...even though you broke my heart when you wouldn’t go with me to the prom.”
“I did no such thing,” Shannon retorted. “You had more girlfriends than you knew what to do with. Are your parents still alive?”
“My father died of liver failure while I was in the Marines and my mother sold his house and moved back to the rez. Housing’s really short there, so she moved in with one of her widowed sisters, my aunt Mary. Henry asked Mary and my mother if he could move in with them when his current wife kicked him out, and they both said no. So now he comes here, wanting to move in with me.” Billy uttered a short laugh. “What goes around comes around.”
“What will you do?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. What do you say to your grandfather when he wants to move in with you because he has no place else to go?”
Shannon watched Khola, who was watching her with a pensive expression on his beautifully wild equine face. Khola. Now she was calling him by that name.
“When I left here with Travis ten years ago, my father disowned me, but he took me back when I came home again. Maybe that’s what family does, even when they don’t want to. Speaking of my father, I better go check on the coffee. I started it before coming out here. Daddy wasn’t up yet, which is unusual for him.” Shannon pushed away from the fence and started for the house.
“You still planning on singing at the barbecue today?” Billy asked as she started away.
“Yep,” she said, casting a smile over her shoulder. “You should come, even if you don’t want to. I can really put on a show.”
* * *
THE COFFEE WAS DONE. Shannon carried a cup with her as she tapped on her father’s door. When there was no response, she opened it and poked her head inside. “Daddy?”
His bed was neatly made. She drew a breath and released it. Relief. Why did she always imagine the worst? He’d been fine at supper the night before, if still a little peeved with her about singing at Patriot Energy’s barbecue, but he hadn’t died in the night. He was just up and about before her, not unusual. What was unusual was that he hadn’t made the coffee. She went back downstairs and started breakfast.
She’d told the band members she’d be at the Grange Hall at eleven, which gave her five whole hours to work with Khola. She was determined to win the horse over. She was her mother’s daughter, after all, and this horse whisperer stuff should run in her blood.
She was draining the bacon on the sideboard when Billy came into the kitchen. He poured himself a mug of coffee and glanced around the kitchen. “They’re both missing in action,” he commented before taking his first swallow. “Henry and your father, along with two horses. They’ve flown the coop.”
Shannon turned from the stove, spatula in hand. “On the day I’m singing at the wind developer’s barbecue. How very interesting. What do you suppose they’re up to?”
Billy shrugged. “Robbing a bank, probably. I wouldn’t put it past Henry, and your father could use the money.”
Shannon laughed. “Somehow I
can’t see the two of them pulling off a bank robbery, especially with my daddy riding a very old horse and sporting a broken arm. How many eggs?”
“Three,” Billy replied, leaning his hip against the counter. “You ever wonder how your life might’ve turned out if you’d gone to the prom with me instead of Travis?”
Billy’s question caught Shannon off guard. She cracked the eggs into the hot fat one after the other. “No.”
Billy nodded slowly. “You ever thought about that kiss we shared on this porch?”
Shannon spooned the hot bacon fat over the egg yolks. “I’ve thought about it from time to time,” she said, feigning indifference.
“Good thoughts?”
“You only wanted me because I was the only girl that ever turned you down.”
“That’s not the only reason.”
Rose chose that moment to descend the stairs, one step at a time, still clad in her pajamas.
Shannon handed Billy his plate of eggs and turned to her daughter.
“Sweetie, today we’re going to a barbecue, and you’re going to see a magician with a real live monkey! Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
“Can we go now, Momma?”
“I have to work with the horses for a bit. Do you want to keep me company?”
After working with Khola for a few hours, Shannon hurried to get herself and Rose ready for the barbecue. At eleven, she took Rose out to the car, securing her into the back seat. “Wait here a minute, while I tell Billy we’re leaving,” she said. She found Billy in the barn, filling two water buckets from the spigot.
“We’re off,” she said.
He straightened, shut the water off. “Leave Rose with me. I’ll watch her.”
Shannon shook her head. “I promised she could come. She’ll be fine, I can keep my eye on her while I’m singing, and there’ll be neighbors and friends there. I know just about everyone in Bear Paw. Sure you won’t come along?”
A Family For Rose Page 11