“I guess I assumed…”
“Prejudged?”
“Maybe, but it’s not a bad judgment. Sure as hell not an unreasonable assumption.”
“Sure as hell?” Her laugh sounded hollow. “I thought it was hell. And if it wasn’t, I thought I was headed there. I was young, and I thought I was in love. He was a little older, and he said he loved me, too, but marriage would have to wait. Unlike Ken’s father, I grew up pretty quickly after Ken was born. With my parents’ help I was able to go to school and raise my son.” She shrugged. “I guess marriage is still waiting.”
“You wanna give it a try with me?”
“Oh, Ryder.” She hugged him tight, grateful for the sweetest goodbye a girl could possibly hope for. “I was only kidding about the rent. Can’t you tell when I’m joking?”
“Can’t you tell when I’m not?” He drew back as though they might have gotten too close to see the forest. “I’m ready for a home, and you’re ready for a husband. The way I feel about you, Meredith, I know I’ll make you a good one.”
“This is crazy,” she whispered, slowly realizing that he meant every word he was saying. There was no hook on her side, no catch on his.
“What’s crazy?”
“This feeling,” she said, now that she was beginning to think she could have it and hold it. “You make me feel so wild and wonderful. And funny. I’ve never felt this funny inside. I could make an absolute fool of myself over you right now.”
“Honey, that’s what I do for a living. You’ll be in good company.”
Company, she thought. His good company. It sounded so promising that she risked asking the big question. “What way do you feel?”
“Crazy, like. Dizzy, like you’ve been rolling me around in a barrel for days, and I don’t know which foot to put down first.” He pulled her close again. “And good. I feel so good with you that I’ll probably be good for nothing without you.”
“You’re kind of a nomad, and I’m kind of a homebody.”
“Maybe I could show you some places you haven’t seen except in books.”
“South Dakota?”
“Sure. We can start there.”
“And then?”
“Then come home for a while.” He reached down and brought his hat up from the floor. “Like my old friend here, I’ve always carried everything I had on my back. There was never any home to come to. You’ve given me a glimpse of what it’s like to come home.”
“Yes. We’ll start here.” She found the beaded turtle by feel and petted its bumpy back with her thumb. “This friend of yours has lots of memories. Maybe the details are lost to you, but you’ve carried this connection a long time, a long way, to this home. We’ll start here.”
“Sounds like a fine plan.”
“I might always be a homebody,” she said, a little tentative.
“I might always be a traveler, but I’ve finally found the road home. I have a feeling I won’t be able to stand being away from my homebody very long.”
“We’ll start here,” she repeated. “We two.” A cold, wet nose nudged her elbow, and she laughed. “Four.”
“Five.” Ryder put his hat on Meredith’s head.
She sat up and adjusted the angle of the hat, suddenly feeling eternally young and downright cute. “Turtle has it all,” she said. “Legs for going and home for staying.”
“And maybe something tucked inside his belly for long living and endless loving.” He laughed, simply for the joy of it. “Yes ma’am, me and Ol’ Man Turtle, we’ve got it all.”
SEVEN DAYS
Ruth Wind
Dear Reader,
As I was writing my short story for Lakota Legacy, Colorado was suffering through the worst drought in its history. Daily, the newspapers chronicled the effects—ranchers were selling off cattle who no longer had any grass to eat; farmers were throwing in the towel after another season killed their crops. In the cities our lawns seemed very foolish indeed.
What more natural setting for two love-thirsty people than the drought—and the end I visualized for it? My favorite part was writing about rain, falling and falling and falling into the drought of the earth and their lives—especially because it still hadn’t rained in real life. The rain of love is the most precious thing most of us will ever experience, bringing with it the promise of new life, new dreams, new hopes, along with a rain-washed sunny day. Enjoy!
Love,
Prologue
Michael Chasing Horse stood at the end of his drive, arms loose at his sides, watching a trailer filled with the last of his cattle turn onto the highway. Dust from the heavy tires kicked up in the air, joining with smoke from a grass fire—the third in a week—consuming another unknown number of acres.
Dust and smoke. It was all there was these days. Drought lay on the Plains like death, the earth so dry that it had broken a backhoe brought in to dig a ditch for goose hunters. Michael had laughed at the time, bitterly, but laughed nonetheless. Four feet down they dug, and still found the earth bone-dry. He imagined the concrete stretched all the way to the center of the earth. Even the yucca and cactus were looking withered and burned, and the grass had long ago crumbled and blown away on the gusts of an infernal wind that never seemed to stop blowing. He’d sold the last of his cattle because there was no feed for them, and hay was harder and harder to come by.
That cursed wind blew now across the sweat on his brow. It was filled with grit and sand and even—his nostrils quivered like those of one of his horses at the scent—the smell of rain walking down the sky. He could see it—life-giving rain pouring from dark-purple clouds. Rain that evaporated before it could reach the ground.
The old timers said it was the driest year they could remember since the Great Depression, seventy-five years before. The weathermen were reporting it as the driest year on record. Ever. To the west, the Rockies were a tinderbox, and they’d caught fire at least ten times over the past month. To the east, the cracked, burned land looked more like the Arizona desert than the usually arid, but fertile Colorado ranchland he so loved.
Even now, though, when conditions were so harsh, he could not help but love this land. He loved the sight of his home, built of timbers by his father’s own hands, the sturdy old barn, the ancient cottonwoods along the banks of the river. Loved the austere beauty of the dun-colored Plains rolling toward the mountains draped in soft blue across the horizon. Loved the enormity of the sky and the emptiness stretching all around.
It had cost him, this love of this harsh and unforgiving land. Cost him his wife, who went slightly mad with the winds and the blistering summers and the freezing winters. Now he’d lost the cattle. If he was careful, he could, like the walking-stick cactus, last another year or so.
But as he looked at the sky, he could not help but send up a prayer.
Rain. Send rain.
Chapter 1
Sunny Kendricks found something she’d never seen when she emerged from the restaurant where she worked in the tiny town of Hobart, Colorado—rain dancers.
The small park at the center of town was filled with townsfolk and ranchers from the outlying areas, their faces serious as they looked on the trio of Native American dancers dancing and singing to the heavy, heartbeat rhythm of a drum. The dancers were adorned in feathers and moccasins, their athletic strength making them look like beautiful birds. For a long moment, she stood and watched, captured by the music and the beauty and the hope they brought. The town had asked them to come.
Imagine!
She did not have time to linger, and hurried across the park to the small, neat day care center across the street. The children were out in the fenced play yard, and most of them were leaning against the fence to watch the dancers. Sunny heard a bright, “Hi, Mama!” and spied her daughter Jessica, a tow-headed eighteen-month-old, to one side.
“Hi, daughter!” Sunny bent and kissed her daughter through the fence, and Jessie laughed.
“C’mon!”
“I’m com
ing.”
The day had been a long one. Her feet hurt and she did not particularly love waiting tables. It was hard physical work, and she felt it this minute across her shoulders, down her back. But her pocket was plump with tips, and just the sight of her daughter made everything great. It had been so terrifying to nearly lose her. Any sacrifice Sunny had to make now was more than worth it.
She gathered her daughter and they headed out of town on two-lane Highway 50. Trees, their leaves muted by dust and wind and drought, lined the Arkansas River, so she didn’t see the fire until she left the shelter of the trees and turned down the lane that led to her small house, perched on a hill three miles down the road. “Damn,” she whispered, tightening her hands on the wheel. Smoke billowed up in columns of dirty white, much too close to her home for comfort. It was impossible to tell where it was, exactly, at this distance, but her heart squeezed.
What would they do if the fire took the house? There was no place else to go.
She glanced at Jessie in the rearview mirror. She’d fallen asleep, her cheeks rosy, her hair damp. The air conditioner on the serviceable Escort worked, but it was still pretty hot. Sunny flipped her own hair off her brow and focused on a positive image: her house, sitting in the open beneath a single old elm, protected by a wall of imaginary water. Aloud she said, “Whoever is listening, I hope you’ll give me a break. You know the situation as well as I do.”
The house was a loan from a friend in Denver. It had belonged to Diana’s family years ago, and no one lived there anymore, or worked the small cantaloupe farm that once surrounded it. The fields were empty and dry, the water rights sold to a hungry Denver developer. Without the water rights, the land was useless, and not even the solitary rancher at the foot of the hill was interested, so the house sat empty.
It had been a godsend for Sunny and Jessica. Sunny had had a difficult pregnancy, complicated by her rat of a husband walking out when she was seven months along. Then Jessica was born with a hole in her heart, requiring surgery and a difficult six-month recovery. By the end of it, Sunny had run through every penny of her savings, lost her home and had nowhere to turn. Diana, a boutique owner who had purchased many of Sunny’s one-of-a-kind creations, had offered the house.
They’d been here two months, and while it was a brutal land in many ways, Sunny was so relieved to have a home and a job that she would have scrubbed the floors with her teeth.
As she came around the turn where the road forked—going north to her house or west to her only neighbor’s—a man stepped into the road and flagged her down. She slowed and rolled the window down, startled by her first up-close glimpse of him. Tall, with a rancher’s lean, hard physique, he crossed the road toward her.
She’d known he was Native American because of the name painted on the mailbox: Chasing Horse. She had also seen him at a distance, riding his horses, working on things when she passed. She always waved, and she kept telling herself that she ought to come down and introduce herself. Each was, after all, the only neighbor the other had. The timing never seemed quite right, though, or maybe, Sunny thought, it was her innate shyness that kept her from doing it.
Up close, he was rather ruggedly handsome, with a hawkish nose and hard-planed cheeks turned the color of nutmeg by the sun. His hair was brush-cut, severe on some men, but right for this face. She wanted to put her hand on the top, feel the bushiness against her palm. “Hi,” she said. “Is something wrong?”
“You saw the fire?” His voice was not loud. A good, husky voice with a little lilt in the words.
“Is it bad?”
A single nod. “Depending on the wind, one or the other of us could be in trouble.”
Sunny frowned. “Okay. What should I do?”
“Not much you can do. Keep an eye open. Be prepared to leave if you have to.” He spied the car seat. “Your daughter?”
“Yes.” Sunny smiled. “Jessica.”
“Keep a bag packed for her, just in case. Maybe one for you, too. If you need anything, I’m right down the road.”
“Thank you.” She stuck her hand through the car window. “My name is Sunny Kendricks.”
“Michael Chasing Horse.” He touched her hand briefly, then let it go, lifting a hand in farewell.
When she was safely up the road, she let go a breath. “Wow,” she said aloud. And again. “Wow.”
In the backseat, Jessie, likely awakened by the conversation, said, “Wow.”
Sunny laughed.
Sunny’s front window looked west to the mountains and to the ranch nestled next to the river beneath its canopy of cottonwoods, so she could keep an eye on the fire as she straightened up the small house, gave Jessie a snack, and sorted out a pile of bills that she was—she realized thankfully—going to be able to meet. It had been a good week for tips. Sometimes, the sheer enormity of the bills could overwhelm her, but the doctors and hospital had been quite willing to work out payment plans. Sitting at the small wooden table she’d covered with a flowered cloth from Goodwill, she wrote checks, subtracted the payments from the staggering totals, and grinned ruefully. Not for the meek and mild, those totals.
Jessie’s hole in her heart was not an uncommon birth defect, unfortunately, but fortunately was one that was repairable with surgery. Sunny’s daughter had come through the operation with flying colors, but had contracted a respiratory infection right afterward. It had been touch and go for quite some time. Many, but not all, of the resulting costs had been covered by insurance. The rest had fallen to Sunny, and she was determined to pay every penny of it. Those doctors and hospitals had saved her daughter’s life.
And look at her now! Sunny glanced at the sturdy toddler, her fine blond hair growing down to silky little curls at her neck. Jessie was fiercely focused on using crayons to cover every inch of a piece of scrap paper with color. She was healthy as a horse these days—a vigorous eater, a happy kid on every level.
A gust of wind caught Sunny’s attention, and she stood up to check the flames again, worry pulsing against her breastbone the smallest bit. Firefighters were stationed a few yards away from the barn down below, digging a trench. There were a lot of them, and they had to be exhausted by now, working as they had all day and half the night to stop this particular fire, which had followed on the heels of another three days before and another five days before that. Sometimes it seemed the Plains would never stop burning.
“I think, baby girl,” Sunny said, “that we ought to make ourselves useful. Wanna help me cook?”
“Cook?” Jessie said, leaving the crayon on the floor. She added something more, but Sunny hadn’t exactly sorted out all the words she knew yet, so she bent to scoop the girl up.
“Tell me all about it,” she said, and settled the girl in her high chair. For a horde of hungry, hardworking men, there was really only one choice—piles of fried chicken and even bigger piles of potatoes. She’d purchased a half side of beef with a specially priced bulk order of chicken three weeks before. Her boss at the restaurant had recommended it, predicting that the drought would make beef prices skyrocket in the fall. He’d helped her track down a used freezer, and Sunny could not believe the amount of security she felt from that store of meat.
Now it would have an extra benefit—community-building for herself and her daughter. Sunny didn’t know if they’d actually stay here, but it never hurt to be friendly to neighbors. Especially in such trying times.
Turning on the radio and settling Jessie with a measuring cup, a set of spoons and a bowl of water, Sunny hummed along with the music and defrosted the chicken, then prepared the seasoning. It was one of the few recipes she had from her own family—the secret spice was nutmeg—and she was proud of it. It was also attached to one of the only really nurturing memories she had of her own mother. Debbie Kendricks had been beautiful and lost and badly treated by men her whole life. The combination made her a dramatic figure and a rather poor mother. To her horror, Sunny had realized when her husband left her that she’d picked up
her mother’s knack of trying to save men who couldn’t be saved. When her daughter was born, she resolved she would not repeat the pattern. She would spend her life alone before she subjected Jessie to any of that.
As if the baby heard her thoughts, Jessica raised a cup of water. “Want some?”
Sunny laughed and bent down to take a tiny sip. “Thank you!”
Jessie beamed. “Thank you!”
Chapter 2
By late afternoon, the fire had roared within a hundred yards of the barn and corrals on Michael’s land. He, along with a crew of volunteer and professional firefighters, worked frantically to keep the fire in place. Without the wind, it might have been an easier fight, but each time it seemed they had the voracious flames in check, the wind gusted along and threw sparks to some new spot.
“I hate this wind,” growled Jacob Nelson, a fellow rancher who had also been forced to sell off sizeable portions of his own herd of cattle. “Like to drive a man insane.”
Michael wiped his soot-and-sweat-caked face, resettled his cowboy hat and shoveled another load of dirt. “How’d you fare in that fire two weeks ago?”
“Ate up about forty acres, but it was scheduled for a controlled burn anyhow.” He shrugged—none of those this year. Too unpredictable.
Michael nodded and bent wearily back to his task. After another hour, the wind shifted direction once more, and this time, it was a kindness—the flames doubled back upon themselves, eating up the edges of the blackened space and dying to nothing. Plumes of smoke, beautiful against the black, were all that was left.
His back ached from the shoveling, and his skin felt caked with grit, but he managed a smile and a high five for a firefighter who trudged up to him, his face a reverse raccoon mask. They both sighed, turning when a car horn tooted merrily from the road. The fireman said, “Your wife?”
“Neighbor,” Michael said with some surprise.
Lakota Legacy: Wolf DreamerCowboy Days and Indian NightsSeven Days Page 16