by Terri Farley
“Oh, all right.” Sam pretended to go along. “I guess that makes sense. No one will notice the difference afterward.”
“Samantha!” Mrs. Allen’s voice soared on the middle syllable just like Gram’s did when she was acting appalled.
“Don’t feel sorry for him,” Sam said. “Believe me, you don’t know what he’s capable of, Mrs. Allen. Jake Ely is not all good deeds and helping hands.”
From the corner of her eye, Sam saw that though Jake’s expression stayed cool, humor sparked in his eyes as he got down to work.
The palomino pretended to ignore the air mattress as Sam and Mrs. Allen closed in on her. She looked up, down, past them, then jerked her muzzle toward the rafters.
“Yes, girl, I’m afraid it is coming at you,” Sam crooned to the horse. “But it won’t hurt, I promise.”
Sam’s voice must have comforted the mare. As they gently pressed the air mattress to hold her in place against the barn wall, she stayed put.
The only thing wrong with their arrangement was that Sam had agreed that since Mrs. Allen knew more about doctoring animals, she could stand closest to Jake, get a better view of the injury, and offer advice if she thought he could do something differently.
But Mrs. Allen only nodded in approval and Sam had to crane her neck to see past the old lady as Jake’s hands moved gently over the horse before he began washing her.
Even though he was crouched in an exposed position that could be tough to scramble out of if the horse acted up, Sam saw Jake paid attention to the mare’s face, not the path his hands were taking.
“Shouldn’t you watch her hooves? Or look where you’re touching her?” Sam whispered, finally.
“If her eyelid twitches, her lips jerk back from her teeth, or she gives me any other sign it hurts, I’ll check where I am,” Jake said.
Once, when his hands pressed the swelling high on the mare’s injured leg, she bucked back against the rope and Jake had to scuttle out of the way. Jake nodded to himself a few times. It was then that he lowered his gaze to stare at his hands as if his fingers had memories and could report where the mare was sore.
Finally he squeezed spongefuls of warm water over the dirt and blood, turning the palomino’s leg clean and butterscotch gold again.
“Look at that,” Mrs. Allen said approvingly. “He’s gentle as he’d be with a newborn babe.”
Jake sucked in a breath as if the description were sissified, but he didn’t contradict Mrs. Allen, even when Sam added, “Oh Jake, that’s so sweet.”
By the time he’d finished sponging the dirt and caked blood away, the cut didn’t look so bad.
Jake sat back on his bootheels for a few quiet seconds and stared at the cut. Then he gave a quiet laugh of surprise. When Sam leaned to get a better view around Mrs. Allen, she was in time to see Jake looking up at her.
“It’s already healing,” Jake said with a shrug. “I don’t think the cut’s bothering her much. She did something up here between her forearm and chest. That’s where it’s swollen.”
“Does it feel hot?” Mrs. Allen asked.
Jake shook his head “no.”
“It would if there was an infection,” Mrs. Allen said, then shrugged. “It could be that she has a bruise from the kick and that, plus the cut, have combined to make her favor that leg. How does that sound to you?”
Sam didn’t bother answering, since Mrs. Allen was obviously talking to Jake.
He nodded, as if that was exactly what his gentle exploration of the mare’s legs had told him.
“Maybe Jen was right,” Sam said, nodding slowly.
“About what, Samantha?” Mrs. Allen asked. The lines around her lips made a drawstring effect. Clearly she doubted that Jen could have made a diagnosis over the phone.
“By my description, Jen wasn’t convinced the cut came from Hotspot’s kick, because when I heard it, it sounded meaty.”
“Meaty,” Jake muttered, under his breath. “How poetic.”
As it turned out, the bandages, scissors, gauze, adhesive wrap, and antibacterial ointment in the first aid kit were all Jake needed to tend the horse.
At last he stood, holding all the supplies his arms would carry, and stepped back from the horse. The mare’s head swung around as far as the rope would allow, to watch him. Jake nodded that Mrs. Allen and Sam could remove the air mattress.
They stepped back and the mare blew through her lips in relief as they led her back into the stall.
“I think she deserves a snack,” Sam said.
“You know where I keep the feed,” Mrs. Allen said, then turned the watch on her wrist so that she could read it. “It’s after noon. I’ll go up to the house and see if I can get us a little something.”
“No need,” Jake said.
“I’m not hungry, either,” Sam said, remembering Mrs. Allen had greeted them with a warning that they shouldn’t expect lunch.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Allen snapped. “Come up when you’re ready and I will have found something to feed us. For the first time in days, I’m feeling a bit peckish, myself.”
Together, Sam and Jake watched the palomino lower her head to the clean straw bedding. She lipped at it, snorted, then nosed the alfalfa with more interest than she had before.
Don’t get too comfy, girl, Sam thought.
“So all she needs is to rest, and then I can turn her out,” Sam said. For some reason she didn’t feel satisfied. It had to be Jake’s fault, but she wasn’t sure why. “Right?”
Jake shrugged.
Then, centering his weight between his running shoes so he could bolt if he had to, Jake laid one palm against the mare’s withers. Her golden hide shivered, but she didn’t move away. Even when he leaned against his hand, like Sam would if she were trying to move Ace, the mare just shifted her weight instead of shying or snapping at him.
Without lecturing, Jake was telling Sam she was about to break the law. If this mare belonged to someone else, she wasn’t allowed to roam free on the public lands.
“You think she’s been domesticated,” Sam said.
Jake shrugged, but he kept looking at the mare as if her gentleness spoke for itself.
“What’s so wrong with letting her go back to the herd? No one will even know she’s been away. No humans, I mean, except for you, me, and Mrs. Allen,” Sam said, but Jake still didn’t look convinced.
“She’s the Phantom’s lead mare. You know a lead mare picks good grazing, and disciplines the young bachelor stallions who get too uppity, and…” Her voice trailed off, but then she thought of something Brynna had said. “More wild horses die during winter than any other time. They die of exposure, or get so cold they don’t paw snow off the brush underneath and eat it. And there’s a harsh winter coming. Everyone says so. If the lead mare’s not there to find shelter they could wander into a blind canyon and get snowed in.”
Sam stopped talking.
The Phantom was an experienced herd stallion now. He could think for his herd. And there were few enough that he could watch out for them. Besides, he’d probably lead them back to his hidden valley, where there was shelter and food year-round.
Sam swallowed. Then she gritted her teeth in frustration. Why was her brain refuting its own arguments?
“I’m not sayin’ it’s wrong…” Jake began.
“What are you saying, Jake?” Sam snapped. She could have bitten her tongue off. Her tone was sarcastic, and that never worked with him. “No, really, I want to know.”
But Jake’s warm, brown eyes had turned as blank as the barn wall.
“Nothin’,” he said, and then he left.
As he walked away, Jake’s form was silhouetted in the barn door. He moved like a cowboy even when he wasn’t dressed like one.
Sam kicked at the straw in frustration. After fourteen years, she should have learned how to handle Jake Ely.
Then, for just the slightest second, his footsteps paused.
Turn around and tell me I’m doing the right thin
g, Sam begged silently.
But he didn’t. Jake kept walking.
Sam sighed and turned her attention back to the mare.
The palomino had a mouthful of alfalfa. She chewed loudly, taking such pleasure in it, her lips were covered with greenish foam. She was probably comparing the hay to the dry, end-of-summer cheatgrass and weeds the wild horses had been living on.
“Well, shoot, girl,” Sam whispered to the mare. “No one makes this easy, do they?”
Sam caught up with Jake before he went inside. Or maybe he’d waited for her because he was about to be set upon by Mrs. Allen’s Boston bull terriers. When they’d been little kids, she and Jake had called them devil dogs.
They probably weren’t the original devil dogs, Sam thought, as Imp and Angel announced them as intruders even before they touched the doorknob, but their yapping pandemonium was the same.
“Go,” Sam said. She led the quick entrance into the house and slipped through the barely opened door, careful to not let the dogs escape.
The two little black-and-white dogs bounced off the floor as if it were a hot griddle.
It was crazy, loud, and annoying. Jake stood redwood-tree still, thinking this would discourage them. Sam let the dogs ricochet off her legs and take flying licks at her fingers, but neither strategy really worked. Imp and Angel acted like jumping beans until they were good and ready to stop.
Usually, Mrs. Allen gave them totally ineffectual orders to behave, but now she sat as if she didn’t hear the dogs’ racket.
For a second, noticing the way Mrs. Allen’s hands sat, fingertips touching, atop the kitchen table, Sam thought that the old lady was praying. Sam squirmed in embarrassment at the rude way they’d crashed Mrs. Allen’s devotions.
But maybe not. Mrs. Allen’s hands were cupped, as though she’d caught something delicate.
Sam heard Jake swallow. He rubbed the back of his neck in discomfort, and Sam agreed with his unspoken embarrassment. She was less at ease with this quiet Mrs. Allen than the cranky one.
“The phone was ringing when I got up here,” Mrs. Allen said.
“Not Gabe—” Sam blurted.
“No, Gabe’s fine. In fact, everything’s fine. Out of the blue, I just got an offer to make a nice little chunk of money.”
“That’s great!” Sam said. Again, though, she felt too loud. “Isn’t it?”
“It is if I can get you kids to help me,” Mrs. Allen said.
Sam hesitated for a minute. Since school had started, she had tons of homework. She hadn’t done a single one of her Saturday chores before riding out at dawn, either, and Gram wanted her to clean the oven. Sam shuddered. She didn’t know why she had to do it. It wasn’t like she’d let an apricot pie boil over, or a pork roast spatter, but Gram pointed out that since she had no trouble eating what came out of the oven, she could help clean it.
So, yeah, she had a lot to do, but if Mrs. Allen needed her…
“’Course,” Jake said.
“Of course,” Sam echoed, wishing he hadn’t beaten her to agreeing. “What do you need?”
Mrs. Allen opened her hands and smoothed out a page from a tablet. It was covered in her erratic handwriting. Since she’d had it rolled into a tight tube, it took a couple tries to make it lay flat.
“Well, to start out with, we’ll need a fire truck,” Mrs. Allen said, “and a nine-by-twelve-foot tarp, a baby stroller, an umbrella, enough scrap wood to make something like railroad tracks—that’s no problem—” Mrs. Allen interrupted herself, then went on, “I’m not sure where we’ll get one of those big foam ‘we’re number one’ fingers people wave around at sports events, but—” Mrs. Allen broke off again and gave Jake an appraising look. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to dress up as a clown and ride a unicycle if I could find one?”
“Ma’am?” Jake choked the word out.
“Just a bicycle, then, I suppose, and maybe one of my big hats.” Mrs. Allen sighed, nodded, and looked back at her list. “I guess that’s all, since they’ll be bringing their own guns loaded with blanks.”
Chapter Six
Sam wondered if this was how life unrolled around you when you were crazy. People spouted weird, unrelated words and no matter how hard you listened, they still sounded loony.
Sam eased away from the kitchen table. She’d spent enough time in Mrs. Allen’s house that she felt at home, so she opened the freezer to see if the ice cubes had frozen yet. They hadn’t, but she couldn’t help thinking one person in this room definitely needed a cool drink to soothe a heat-fevered brain.
“Sheriff Ballard called,” Mrs. Allen began.
“Oh. Got it,” Jake said.
Sheriff Ballard. Bicycles. Tarps. Guns.
That all made sense to Jake?
Luckily, Mrs. Allen saw Sam’s confusion and explained.
“It seems Sheriff Ballard has gathered some local riders for a mounted posse he can call out for emergencies,” Mrs. Allen said. “He mentioned search and rescue, which I understand, and riots, which I don’t. Not in Darton County, for heaven’s sake. Still, he’d scheduled some training sessions, called de…” Mrs. Allen’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling as she tried to remember. “Designing? No, that’s not it.”
“Desensitization?” Jake suggested.
“Yes!” Mrs. Allen said, and her enthusiasm made Sam smile. “The sheriff has hired an out-of-state expert on desensitizing police horses, and he’s doing some workshops with this volunteer unit. Folks will bring their own horses and get them bomb-proofed.” Mrs. Allen hesitated for a second. “Although, I doubt he means that literally.”
Sam laughed. Of course Sheriff Ballard meant they’d train the horses not to shy at unusual things that might send the average horse into a frenzy. This was beginning to sound really fun.
“And what will we do?” Sam asked, but more than helping out, she wished she could ride Ace in the workshop. This time last year, she wouldn’t have thought anything could make her cow pony act skittish, but a single trip to the outskirts of the city had shown her she was wrong.
“Well, the first class was supposed to take place at the fairgrounds tomorrow and someone forgot to write it down, or double-booked it, or something like that, and there’s already a computer convention scheduled there, with lots of little booths and demonstrations in the arena, which is where the desensitization would have taken place. Not only that, the Police Explorers, a youth group that was supposed to create all the loud distractions—”
“Oh, now I get the part about the clown on the unicycle!” Sam interrupted, nodding. That was just the sort of thing a police horse would have to tolerate during parade duty.
It was beginning to make sense to her now.
“So, the fire truck will run its lights and sirens so that if the horses are around emergency vehicles…” Sam mused aloud, and her mind went spinning on.
The big tarp would accustom them to walking over strange footing. The baby stroller would teach them to be careful by strange rolling objects. And if a horse would stand still for having an umbrella opened in its face, or a pistol fired nearby, he’d be tolerant of almost anything.
“Do you know how much I’d love to take Ace through training like that?” Sam sighed.
Such things sure didn’t come naturally, no matter how good the horse was. Sam knew that from experience. When she’d ridden Ace into town for the rodeo, he’d spooked at a water truck, noisy children, and other things that police horses could encounter daily.
“Do it,” Jake urged. “You know he’ll want more volunteers for the posse.”
Mrs. Allen cleared her throat and looked a bit strained.
“The thing is, when the sheriff mentioned the amount he’d budgeted for the fairgrounds and offered it to me, I said yes, of course we could stage the desensitization class here, but I’ll need some young people to help out.”
Sam didn’t know how to feel. Even if she didn’t get to use Ace, this was an exciting opportunity. She could learn a lot,
help Mrs. Allen, and keep an eye on the injured mare. Her teeth sawed at her bottom lip as she imagined how nerve-wracking the strange sounds and scents would be for the mustang.
But she’d be right there, and everyone else would be too busy to discover the hidden horse. And if, by some bizarre chance, someone did go into the barn and see her, wouldn’t they think the palomino was just one of Mrs. Allen’s rescued mustangs? With luck, even Mrs. Allen would forget about the mare.
Sam sighed and smiled. Everything would work out for Mrs. Allen and the mare, and Ace was just fine the way he was.
“How many kids did he say you’d need to help harass the horses?” Jake asked.
Sam hoped it wouldn’t matter that she’d missed about half of what Mrs. Allen had just said. She also hoped Gram would let her put off cleaning the oven, and Brynna would agree to let her organize her bedroom closet some other day, because she’d be helping to train horses for the sheriff’s posse, and helping Mrs. Allen make enough money to keep the wild horse sanctuary afloat. How could they possibly say no?
“He didn’t say,” Mrs. Allen told him. “Just some.”
“How many volunteer riders are coming?” Jake persisted.
Mrs. Allen sucked in a breath through pursed lips. “I’m not sure. He mentioned his own horse, Jinx. Your Jinx, Sam,” Mrs. Allen added. “Hard to believe Clara at the diner got him for one dollar and a piece of cake! He is the nicest horse. And fast? Well I should say so.”
Jake clasped his hands together and let them hang in front of him, forcing himself to be patient.
“And let’s see,” Mrs. Allen said, finally, “the sheriff told me Katie Sterling and Mr. Martinez are on the posse, so they’ll bring Tinkerbell and Teddy Bear, but I don’t know who all else. I guess I should have asked.”
Jake brushed aside Mrs. Allen’s concern. “You’ll need more than two,” he said, then he looked at Sam. “How ’bout you get Jen and I’ll call Darrell, and in the meantime, you phone Sheriff Ballard and see if you can ride Ace during the training.”
“Jake, that’s really nice, but what about you and Witch? Or Jen and Silly?” Sam couldn’t help thinking her friends would have fun riding in the class, too.