Mountain Mare

by Terri Farley

  “I’m going back to the studio to see if they’ve had any calls,” Lynn said. She half stood, then reached across to shake Jen’s hand. “It’s been nice meeting you, Jennifer, and if I ever need help with statistics, I’ll give you a call.”

  Since they didn’t want to take a chance of being late meeting Sam’s dad at Gate C, the girls slipped out of their grandstand seats before the fireworks began.

  Linc’s glare followed them. Sam felt it between her shoulder blades. Apparently Jen did, too.

  “You know he’s taking it personally that we’re leaving before the fireworks he paid for,” Jen muttered.

  Sam nodded, but she didn’t say anything until they’d left the grandstands and started toward the barns.

  “He’s already mad at us, but my Dad isn’t,” Sam said. “And he will be, if we’re late getting the horses out to Gate C. I mean, this is kind of a big favor. Dad’s usually asleep by ten o’clock and up again at four.”

  “My dad, too,” Jen said as they walked past uniformed Girl Scouts who were picking up litter before the rodeo grounds closed for the night. “So Linc’s whole ‘you’re ruining my reputation’ thing is about wanting to be part of the Rodeo Association?” Jen asked.

  “That’s what he told me,” Sam said. “You know, he needs to grow up.” Sam looked around quickly to be sure she hadn’t been overheard.

  “He sure does,” Jen said, sounding grim.

  Sam knew she should be quiet. It was easy for her to be mad, but Linc Slocum’s attitude was even harder for Jen to take. Linc was her dad’s boss. Jen’s family lived on Linc’s ranch, and it had once been their own.

  “Don’t you think it’s just like school?” Sam asked Jen. “He doesn’t care about rodeo. He just wants to be part of the popular clique.”

  Ace’s neigh rang out from the barns. Even before she could see him, Ace had heard her coming. Or maybe smelled her, Sam thought. It had been a long, dusty time since last night’s shower.

  “There’s your pal,” Jen said.

  Sam smiled. She could always count on Ace to cheer her up.

  They were almost at the barn when the fireworks ended.

  Behind them, Sam heard parents urging cranky children toward the parking lot. Some car engines were already starting up.

  “Looks like someone else came to see his horse,” Sam said.

  A single figure stood spotlighted by the barn lights. It was a guy, probably a little older than Jake. He wore khaki pants and a polo shirt. He looked very preppy and out of place.

  “Uh-huh,” Jen said, then she caught Sam’s arm and stopped her. “Give him a minute. It sounds like he’s getting all mushy with his horse, and you know he’d be embarrassed.”

  The guy held out his hand for the horse to sniff.

  “Hey, lass, you remember me, don’t you?”

  Lass? Is that what he’d said?

  Sam didn’t shuffle her feet, but she leaned forward as if she could pick up his prattle to the horse more clearly. Then she recognized the horse.

  “He’s—” Sam began.

  “Shh,” Jen said, but she’d noticed, too.

  He was standing outside the chocolate mare’s stall.

  Jen’s shushing must have carried, because the guy turned toward them.

  “Pretty horses,” he called, moving down a stall to peer inside. “Are they yours?”

  “A couple of them are,” Jen shouted back.

  Then they started walking again.

  Sam felt disappointed. “Too bad. I thought her owner had shown up.”

  “Me, too,” Jen said. “Didn’t I hear him right? I thought he asked if she remembered him.”

  “I thought so, too,” Sam said.

  At the same moment, she and Jen lengthened their strides, but they were too late to ask the guy what he’d meant.

  By the time they reached the pool of light, he’d already darted around the end of the barn and blended into the crowd of rodeogoers headed for home.

  After greeting their horses, who seemed quite at ease in their temporary homes, Sam and Jen began deciding whether they should ride Ace and Silly to Gate C instead of leading them.

  “It’s up to you,” Jen said. “Which do you think will keep Ace calmer?”

  “I don’t know. He’s never acted skittish before.” Sam regarded the bay mustang. Head hanging over the stall door, he watched the crowd move past, then turned to her with ears trembling at the tips. He was asking a question, too.

  “You’d have more control in the saddle,” Jen mused.

  “You’d have more control in the saddle,” Sam said. “I’m not so sure about me. But I guess we could hope for that whole herd mentality thing and have him follow Silly.”

  “Yeah, and I think people are less likely to want to come up and pet him if you’re riding him,” Jen suggested.

  While they saddled the horses, Sam worried about the chocolate mare.

  She wasn’t part of Hal’s rodeo remuda, so who would take care of her? He probably had a groom come around and feed all the horses in the barn. And if there was an emergency, like a fire or an outbreak of a virus or something, they wouldn’t leave her behind. Still, she was nobody’s horse, and that was kind of sad.

  Mounted up with ten minutes to spare, Sam and Jen started toward the gate.

  Think like a horse, Sam told herself. A scared horse.

  At first she thought Ace had recovered from his jitters. He didn’t shy at a spinning pinwheel that was being brandished by toddler. He didn’t mind the boy swinging his rolled rodeo program like a baseball bat. Ace didn’t even notice the German shepherd in training as a companion dog. But when a water truck followed the crowd out of the rodeo grounds spraying a faint waterfall behind it to keep down the dust, Ace spotted it.

  “You’re not scared of that,” Sam said confidently, but she shortened her reins and firmed her legs. “Would it scare you less if you could take a good long look at it? Or should I just hurry you on?”

  Ace’s ears flicked back to catch Sam’s voice, but his choppy stride gave her no hints. So when Jen moved Silly into a quicker walk, Sam followed. It looked like the right decision.

  Ace was almost past the truck when its waterfall shut off and some pump within the truck made a sound like a low, liquid groan.

  Muscles flexed in the gelding’s shoulder and his forelegs left the ground as he whirled away.

  This time, Sam was ready for him. He’d veered left, so she kept him turning in that direction until he’d made a complete circle. She and Ace were both taking short breaths by the time he was facing back in the original direction.

  “Follow Silly’s pretty white tail,” Sam said. Even though her voice shook, she got the words out.

  And Ace did just what she’d asked him to do.

  They reached Gate C at 9:55. It was on the far side of the fairgrounds, and most of the cars were streaming out of Gates A and B.

  Sam and Jen waited patiently. While the horses sniffed for weeds growing up through cracks in the asphalt, the girls stared wearily after red taillights that were streaming toward the town of Darton.

  “Do you think someone around here owns her?” Sam said suddenly.

  “The mare?” Jen asked. “I don’t know, but it’s only been a few hours since she was on television. Someone will turn up.”

  When Sam’s sigh slipped out, Jen said, “She’ll be fine. No one can ignore such a cool, well-mannered horse.”

  They lapsed into silence.

  Could I fall asleep in the saddle? Sam wondered.

  “It’s ten fifteen,” Jen said. She was staring at her watch—not annoyed, but just taken by surprise. “What do you think?”

  Sam shook her head. The worry she’d been feeling over Ace and the mare merged with this new concern.

  “Dad’s never late.”

  “This rodeo traffic is probably slowing him down,” Jen said, but at ten thirty, when Dad still hadn’t shown up, Sam knew something was wrong.

  “Wha
t if I ride back to the phone booth and call?” Jen asked.

  “Call who? My dad or your parents?”

  “Either one,” Jen said. “It’s late, but if I know my mother, she’s waiting up. Not only that; she will have calculated—down to the minute—how long it should take your dad to drive from here to Gold Dust Ranch. She’ll freak out if I’m not home on time. Even if she’s dozed off, I know she’d rather have me wake her up than sit there fretting.”

  “You’re right,” Sam said, but then both horses’ heads flew up from snacking.

  “We can quit worrying,” Jen said as a truck pulling a Gold Dust Ranch stock trailer eased through the gate. “My dad’s here.”

  Jen sounded relieved as her father drove past them and pulled over, but the sight of Jed Kenworthy instead of her own dad made Sam even more anxious.

  The truck door opened and Jed jumped down, strong and thin, but his light-brown hair looked gray under the fairground lights and the droopy corners of his eyes made him look sad.

  “My dad—”

  “He’s fine,” Jed told Sam. His hand made a dismissing gesture as if whatever was wrong wasn’t worth worrying about. “Let’s get these horses loaded.”

  “But what’s wrong?” Sam insisted.

  Impatience flickered across Jed’s sun-lined face. He was a tough man. When drought and low cattle prices had forced him to sell the Diamond K Ranch to Linc Slocum, he hadn’t taken his money and fled the high desert. He’d stayed as foreman on the renamed Gold Dust Ranch, and Jed had never let Linc squash his “I’m the boss” attitude.

  Now he expected her to do as she was told without explanation.

  Well, I have a stubborn streak, too, Sam thought.

  She stayed in the saddle, waiting, as Jen dismounted.

  “Truck stalled,” Jed told her.

  “It does that all the time,” Sam said, “and dad always gets it going again.”

  Jed gave a slight shake of his head, resigning himself to giving the whole story if he wanted her cooperation.

  “Got to the middle of your bridge, engine died and wouldn’t start again. Brynna’s BLM truck’s got no trailer hitch. Now come on down, Samantha, and maybe we’ll get home before daybreak.”

  “Thanks for coming after us,” Sam said as she slipped from the saddle.

  It wasn’t quite an apology, but that was because she hadn’t finished irritating Jed. She hadn’t turned into a cooperative young lady, and she didn’t want to get his hopes up.

  Chapter Eleven

  If animals could have instincts, why couldn’t people have intuition?

  Sam knew she wasn’t just worried about the truck. Ever since she’d returned home from San Francisco, Dad’s truck had suffered from breakdowns.

  Sam fingered a lock of Ace’s coarse black mane. New trucks cost money, and she was sitting astride a lot of it, but she wasn’t just worried about money, either.

  No, something else was gnawing at her. Her intuition insisted she’d missed some hint of trouble. She had to go back and check on the chocolate mare.

  Jen and her dad were way too logical and level-headed to follow hunches, even hunches that wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  So Sam didn’t try to explain.

  “Sam?” Jen said as she finished loading Silly.

  Jen was a good friend, as well as a perceptive one. She could read Sam’s face as clearly as if Sam had handed her a note.

  “You want to go back,” Jen said flatly.

  Sam nodded and Jen stepped aside, nodding toward her dad.

  “I’m really sorry,” Sam said to Jen’s dad. “But I need to run back to the barn.”

  As Jed’s astonished expression turned into a frown, Sam ground-tied Ace and edged a step away.

  “I left something in the barn and I am so sorry. I’ll race over there as fast as I can and load Ace the instant I get back—”

  Jed snagged Ace’s reins. “I’ll get him in the trailer, but hurry. And I’m only doin’ it ’cause you’re wearin’ your dad’s stubborn look.” Jed clucked his tongue and Ace followed him as Sam turned to go.

  She heard Jed say, just loudly enough that she knew he meant for her to hear, “Jennifer, just remember what I told you: Only a fool argues with a skunk or a Forster whose mind is made up.”

  Sam ran as fast as her leather boots would allow.

  The fairgrounds lay quiet around her. A paper cone from cotton candy blew across her path, dancing away in a late night breeze when she tried to pick it up.

  Just before Sam reached the barn, she passed Linc Slocum. Thumbs hooked through his belt loops, he stood with some other men. One was a rodeo security guard wearing a white shirt, fingers fiddling with the volume knob on his walkie-talkie.

  Along with the other men, he was laughing a little too loudly. They acted like raucous boys instead of grown-ups. Sam guessed Linc Slocum had found his clique.

  The barn was just yards away when Sam noticed the mare wasn’t looking over the top half of her exterior door. Sam almost growled. There went her great idea of just giving the mare a pat on the neck and jetting back to the waiting Kenworthys.

  Standing out here staring into the dark stall would probably be less productive than going through the end door and walking down the aisle until she reached the mare.

  Hurry, Sam reminded herself, then jogged to the end and opened the door.

  As she did, Sam caught the quick flash of light on an anxious equine eye.

  But the gleam came from the fairgrounds lights outside. Illumination had followed her in as she opened the door. The stable lights, which had been on just half an hour ago when she and Jen had saddled up, were now out.

  Still standing in the doorway, Sam breathed the comforting scent of cedar shavings and horses. She listened to the restless shifting of hooves.

  If she were watching a movie, Sam knew she’d think the on-screen character was stupid to even consider going into the unfamiliar barn when she couldn’t make out anything in the darkness.

  But this was real life. She had no good reason to be scared.

  The fairgrounds must have some master computer that doused the lights at ten o’clock.

  Sam tried to remember what was inside the barn. A tack room on this end and a feed room down at the other end, with only an aisle down the middle and stalls on each side, right? There was no place for anyone to hide, unless they stretched out flat behind a hay bale or one of the costume trunks.

  Sam put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. If some creep had hidden inside one of the trunks, they’d give her a great head start with all the racket they’d have to make getting out.

  “Hey, girl,” Sam called out, feeling a little braver.

  Two overlapping nickers and a snort came back and Sam almost smiled.

  Her lips froze when she heard another sound. There, in the heartbeat of silence that followed the horses’ greeting, she heard an indrawn human breath.

  Maybe.

  You’re imagining it, Sam told herself.

  She cleared her throat loudly.

  If there was someone inside, it would be a member of Hal’s staff. But that didn’t make sense. Anyone with a reason to be here would have long since called out to her.

  No, it was just her and the horses.

  And horses were silent by nature, so the snorts and low whinnies told her they were nervous.

  “Probably because I’m lurking here in the dark, huh, guys?” Sam filled her voice with bravado.

  Accustomed to the darkness now, her eyes finally made out shifting shadows of horses looking over the interior stall doors.

  She was about to go striding in when a floorboard creaked.

  No kidding? Sam chided herself. With a few tons of horses standing on it, a floor might creak?

  Do it, Sam told herself. Count down the stall doors to the fifth on the right. Touch her muzzle to make sure she’s still there. After that, you can stop acting crazy and go home.

  Sam stepped inside.

/>   If she were home, there’d be a flashlight on a shelf just inside the door. There’d be a lantern in the tack room.

  Sam took a long step and trailed the fingers of her right hand against the first stall door. She heard the rustle of a horse moving in its bedding.

  She took another step, counting off the second stall door as hooves thudded, startling back when the horse realized he didn’t know her.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she crooned.

  At stall three, relief flowed through her. The welcome scent of a horse standing very close was followed by the velvet brush of its nose, extended in greeting. A frightened horse wouldn’t be checking her out like that.

  Something scuffed behind her. A shoe?

  Sam looked over her shoulder. Though her brain insisted there had been movement, her eyes saw nothing.

  She passed stall four.

  When she reached five, there was a snort of recognition. Sweet alfalfa breath tickled her neck.

  “Hi girl,” Sam said, and her hand found the mare’s cheek, sleek and smooth. “Were you patiently waiting for me to get down here and visit?”

  Then everything happened at once. The mare’s head jerked. She squealed in alarm. Outside the barn, Jed Kenworthy’s irritated voice called, “Samantha!”

  And a hand slammed between Sam’s shoulder blades, driving her down the aisle.

  “Hey!” she yelled, trying to dig in her heels.

  But a second push propelled her a few steps before she stumbled through the feed room’s open door.

  She had to turn around. She had to get a look at him.

  She had just enough breath to make a threatening sound as she wheeled toward the open feed room door, widening her eyes and filling them with nothing but shades of black.

  A man’s voice, but not a voice either, an almost apologetic mutter in his throat, made Sam hesitate. Should she jump at him? Try to tackle him down, since she’d just heard Jed Kenworthy who would surely back her up?

  The flurry of thought only took a second, but it was long enough for the door to slam in her face.

  She staggered backward until her spine slammed against the far wall. For a second, all was quiet and she was surrounded by the comforting smells of hay and grain.