Wild Hearts

by Jessica Burkhart

  “Did you like it?” Logan asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

  “Um, it was gone in three seconds. Loved it. Fish sticks are dead to me.”

  We rinsed our plates in the river and I froze. A sound came from the woods that sounded like a grunt and a moan.

  “Logan,” I said in a whisper. “What was that?” I stepped closer to him and put my plate on the ground.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Go back to the tent and I’ll go take a look.”

  “No way!” I grabbed his arm. “You’re not going to ‘take a look’ at anything.”

  He stared at me and his mouth was pressed into a thin line. “Brie, it could be a bear. Or a mountain lion. Go to the tent and I’ll take the gun and look.” His voice was low and almost commanding.

  “I’m not staying alone,” I argued. “I’m coming with you.”

  Logan tilted his head and his eyes narrowed for a second as if he was going to argue with me. “Fine,” he said, “but if I tell you to run, swear you will.”

  “Promise.” The sound came from the trees again. It was louder and longer this time. Logan jogged to the tent and pulled a rifle out of his oversize bag.

  “It’s safe, don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve been shooting with my dad since I was four.” I looked at the gun, almost stunned by it. I’d only seen guns on TV and the movies. I didn’t want to shoot anything.

  Logan held the gun down by his side and we walked forward into the woods. Every branch or leaf I crunched made me jump a little. Not a cougar, not a cougar, I chanted in my head. We walked a few yards and didn’t see or hear anything.

  “I think it’s gone,” I said.

  “Just a few more feet,” he said, looking around us. “I need to be sure before we go back to camp.”

  We maneuvered through the dense forest and I tried to tread lightly on the dirt path.

  Something moved in the tiny clearing up ahead.

  “Logan,” I said.

  Logan raised his rifle and shook his head. He waved at me to stay where I was and he took a few steps forward. I felt like I was going to throw up.

  I watched Logan’s back and tried to make out the shape writhing on the ground. Logan took a few more steps and then his shoulders relaxed under his thin blue T-shirt. He let out an audible breath and lowered the rifle. When he turned to me, he put a finger to his lips.

  Come here, he mouthed.

  I tiptoed up behind him and looked at the ground in front of us. A black mare was lying on the ground, drenched in sweat and struggling. She let out several groans—clearly from pain. Her enormous stomach ballooned upward when she rolled onto her side.

  “What’s the matter?” I whispered to Logan.

  “She’s in labor,” Logan said, not taking his eyes off the horse. “Something’s wrong.”

  My stomach twisted. “Can we help her?”

  The mare’s heavy breathing filled the clearing, and the short grass around her had been flattened as if she’d stood and changed spots many times.

  “We could try,” he said, looking at me. “I’ve helped birth a couple of foals, but she’s a wild mustang. She’s not likely to let us near her.”

  I shook my head. We couldn’t walk away and let the horse suffer or worse. “We have to try.”

  Logan put down the rifle and we took a few steps forward. The mare heard us the second we neared her and she lifted her head. Her black mane was stuck to her neck with bits of dirt and sweat. She rolled her eyes until the whites showed and Logan and I stopped.

  “Easy, girl,” Logan said softly, crouching down. I followed his lead and got down on my knees. “It’s okay,” he crooned to her.

  She flared her nostrils and her sides heaved from her heavy breathing.

  “Shhh,” I said to her. “We’re going to help you.”

  I inched closer and reached my hand toward her. “Brie,” Logan warned, “she could bite.”

  My shoes scuffed the dirt as I crawled on my knees and got closer to the mare. I didn’t let myself look her in the eye, so I didn’t threaten her. She grunted and rolled her eyes as I got closer.

  “It’s okay,” I said soothingly. “You’re going to be fine.” I kept my eyes on her and didn’t even notice Logan crawling up beside me.

  A contraction gripped her stomach and I forced myself not to look away. I placed a tentative hand on her swollen side and with a shuddering sigh of defeat, she dropped her head and rested.

  Slowly, I inched up by her head and stroked her neck while Logan eased his way down by her tail and looked.

  “What’s wrong?” I said, stroking the mare and watching for a sign that she would snap at me or try to kick Logan.

  He positioned himself far enough away from a possible flailing hoof, but close enough to see.

  “The hooves are peeking through, but the foal must be stuck. She’s probably been in labor for a while.”

  “We need to do something,” I said. White foam spotted the mare’s chest as contractions gripped her and she struggled to push out the foal.

  Logan motioned for me to step away from her neck and stand by him. I squinted at the tiny black hooves peeking out and saw that with each contraction, the foal wasn’t moving. “Is it . . .” It hurt to say it. “Alive?”

  “I don’t know,” Logan said. “I’m going to help tug it out. I’ve done it before and as long as she doesn’t struggle too much, I can do it. She will die if we don’t help her to expel the foal.”

  “Are you sure you can do it?” I didn’t want to hurt the mare or foal. He nodded and took off his shirt. “I don’t want you to get hurt, either.”

  “I’ll be okay. The legs are going to be slippery, so I need something to grab them with,” he said, holding his T-shirt and inching closer to the mare. “And we’ve got to wrap her tail with something.”

  I took off my hoodie and gave it to him.

  “Watch her legs while I do this,” he said. I glued my eyes to the mare’s back legs and was ready to yell if she moved to kick Logan. But the contractions had exhausted her. She didn’t even try to lift her head to glance back at Logan. He quickly wrapped her tail as best he could with my red jacket and then covered his hands with his T-shirt.

  “What should I do?” I asked. The mare’s breathing was heavier by the second, and darkness started to bathe the woods.

  “Sit by her head and keep her calm. If she starts to struggle, keep talking to her.”

  I nodded silently and took my position.

  “When she has her next contraction,” Logan said, “I’m going to tug very gently. The foal should slip out.”

  “I’m ready,” I said. I put my hands on the mare’s neck and tried to massage her. She let out a breath and another contraction rippled her stomach. Her four socks were dusty, but the small star on her forehead gleamed in the dusk.

  “Hang on,” Logan said, his voice tight and his forehead wrinkled. He took his T-shirt-wrapped hands and gripped the foal’s legs. He watched the mare’s stomach and when he thought the time looked right, he gave a firm but gentle tug on the foal’s legs. The mare pushed harder than she had before and I rose up on my knees to see what was going on.

  A tiny black nose emerged and a face started to slip out. Logan gave the foal’s legs one more tug. The mare lifted her head as a strong contraction pushed the foal out up to its withers and then it slid onto the ground in a wet black mass.

  In seconds, the foal writhed and snorted to clear its lungs. It was solid black without a speck of white.

  “Oh,” I said, biting my lip to keep from crying. But a couple of tears splashed onto the ground.

  The foal was gorgeous even covered in the birth sac. The mare grunted and made whickering sounds to her foal. She gathered her legs under her and craned her neck to see the baby.

  “Come on,” Logan said to me.

  He unwrapped the hoodie and motioned for me to step away from the mare and foal.

  “We can’t leave her now,” I protested. “Don’
t we have to clean the umbilical cord or something?”

  “We did more than enough,” he said. “She’s wild and she’s probably had a few foals before this one. She can take it from here.” The mare lurched forward and started to stand.

  Logan motioned for me to follow him and we stood maybe ten or fifteen feet away.

  “Can we watch from here for a few minutes?” I said.

  “No,” Logan said, shaking his head. “We need to get out of the clearing and back in the woods. She’s still wild and she might feel threatened if we’re too close to her foal.”

  “What if we watch from the woods for just a few seconds?” I asked.

  Logan tilted his head. “Two minutes max,” he said.

  We both got down on our knees in some brush and dirt. I peeked through the leaves at the mare and her foal. It was getting darker by the minute, but I kept my eyes glued to the mom and newborn.

  “You were amazing,” I murmured to Logan as I watched the mare struggle to her feet and begin to lick her squirming foal. The foal snorted and it shook its entire body. The hair on its back stuck up in wet clumps.

  “No, you were the amazing one,” he said, kissing my cheek. “You saved a horse tonight.”

  “We did.”

  If I was honest with myself, after seeing this foal’s birth, something had shifted in me. I realized that I hadn’t cared about the horses as much as Logan did. I appreciated their beauty, and was grateful to them for the strength they had given Logan, but I hadn’t been as emotionally invested in them as I thought I was. Even after all the research that I’d done.

  Logan deeply cared for these animals, and his love for them made me see something in the mustangs. Something more than just horses. They were special, wild, and untouched by what was going on around them. But they were about to be moved, like I’d been a dozen times, and they had to go somewhere safe. My dad wasn’t the one who could provide that for them if he went rogue and didn’t wait for the BLM to step in.

  I looked at the pair of horses, and the foal didn’t waste any time attempting to struggle to its wobbly legs. It made several attempts to stand and finally locked its knees and shook as it fought to remain standing.

  “It’s a boy,” Logan said, peeking sideways. He wrapped an arm around me as we stood together. The shadows began to fall across the woods.

  “He’s perfect,” I said to Logan. “I think I get it now.”

  “Get what?” he said, shifting his arm around my waist so he could look at me.

  The colt took a few tentative steps toward his mother before crumpling in a heap of legs. The mare nudged his back and seemed to encourage him to try again.

  “I get why you and your dad are crazy about these horses. I guess I never really thought about what happened to animals when my dad takes over the land.”

  “Your dad’s not the worst the town has seen, believe me,” Logan said as we watched the foal take his first successful steps and try to nurse. “We had someone shooting horses in the middle of the day just because they trampled his crops.”

  “Oh, God. Did he get arrested?”

  Logan nodded. “Served forty-five days on a plea bargain. My dad was furious with that sentence.”

  “I bet,” I said. “Since your dad’s injured, what’s he going to do about the horses?”

  “He can’t do anything. But I can. Let’s go back to camp and I’ll tell you about it.”

  We turned to give the mother and foal privacy. Logan assured me they would be fine now and when we left, the foal was energetically nursing and swishing his wisp of a tail while the exhausted mare looked on.

  I couldn’t let Dad hurt the horses or move them where they weren’t wanted. If I knew Dad like I thought I did, he wasn’t going to wait for the BLM or anyone. I couldn’t let that happen. Now this was my project. Mine and Logan’s.

  We wound our way through the woods to the campsite. It was almost black out, except for what was left of the fire.

  “Spill,” I said the second we got back to camp.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A cowboy who says he’s never been throwed ain’t telling the truth.

  The campfire crackled when it hit a bit of green wood. A few sparks soared into the night. My face was warmed by the fire.

  “Pam met with the BLM?” I asked, sure that I’d just heard Logan wrong.

  We sat together next to each other on a weathered log. Our campfire spot had stones that made up a fire pit, and the ground nearby was free of grass and worn down to dirt.

  Logan smiled. “I know—it’s surreal for me, too. She had put in a favor for someone that she knew on the BLM board. She didn’t tell me about the meeting because she wanted to make sure she was actually seen and they approved her plan.”

  “Which is?”

  “Pam is giving the BLM thirty-five hundred acres of land plus an old barn to use. She wants the property to be a sanctuary for the mustangs that are near us. It’s up to me to herd them to her land. The herd will still be free with that much room and they won’t know that I’ll be around making sure they’re safe.”

  “So on all that land, they won’t sense that they’ve been caught?” I asked.

  Logan shook his head. “Doubtful. Roughly, they’ll have seven miles to roam. This is such a dream scenario, Brie.”

  I gazed at the campfire, quiet. I tried to process what Logan had just told me, but it was too much.

  “I don’t know what to say. I can’t even process it! And Pam can really take the whole herd? How will she afford the upkeep of the land and stuff?”

  “You’re right, it’s a lot,” Logan said. “Maybe we can break up the herd eventually . . . A few years ago a town not too far away started a private humane society and took stray cats and dogs off the streets and adopted them to new homes.” He played with a stick and snapped off bits of the twig and tossed them into the fire.

  “Is that possible for us?” I asked. “How hard would it be to tame some of the horses? Can you adopt out any of them? Like gentle them and hold an event?”

  Logan looked at the stars and then back at me. “Depends. Some, like the older ones, probably won’t ever let anyone ride them. But the young colts and fillies have a chance at being gentled. Doesn’t mean they could be handled right away.”

  “We have to try. Logan, I can’t let my dad’s problem with your dad keep us from doing this. We’ll hide it as long as we can. Hopefully, by the time Dad does finds out, we’ll be so far along that he’ll just let me keep going. We can do this. I know it.”

  Logan looked at me for a long time. “Let’s get the bedrolls unpacked and we’ll keep thinking,” he finally said.

  We left the fire burning and Logan erected a small red tent while I washed my face. I copied Logan as he released the ties that bound the rolled-up blankets and at the end of the blanket, a pillow popped out.

  “How’d you get that so tight?” I asked. I couldn’t even tell a pillow had been in the roll.

  “Cowboy secret,” Logan said. “Maybe I’ll tell you sometime.”

  He grinned and we walked back out to the fire. It was completely dark now and the clear sky sparkled with thousands of glittery stars. I slipped my hand into Logan’s.

  “Ready to put out the fire and get in the tent?” He watched me swat at a mosquito that buzzed around my ear.

  “Please.”

  Logan flicked on the battery-powered lantern and carefully doused the fire with a bucket of creek water. The horses slept a few yards away and the dogs watched over the cattle.

  Nerves mixed with excitement stirred in my stomach.

  Logan inched closer to me and tugged on the end of my sloppy ponytail. “We’ll figure this out.”

  “I know.”

  Logan took off his hat and kissed my cheek, my nose, and my mouth. I kissed him back and wrapped an arm around his neck. We were in a tent with no parents for miles. It wasn’t like I hadn’t already thought about tonight. I wasn’t worried for a second that Logan wou
ld be anything less than the perfect gentleman he always was.

  He stayed outside of the tent while I’d changed into PJs—a thermal black V-neck and peach-colored leggings. I’d agonized over what pajamas to bring. Amy helped me go through my stash of pajamas. I’d tried on practically all of them and Amy had vetoed every single pair. She’d dragged me to a strip mall just outside of town and took me to a clothing store for people who lived and worked in the cold.

  I’d balked at flannel and turned down thermal. Amy had shrugged and picked out two pairs of PJs that she liked. She paid for them and tossed the bag into my lap once we were back in her car.

  “I’m not wearing this! Amy, I have to be cute! They still have the tags on them, so let’s go get your money back.” I’d started out of the car, stopping when she called my name.

  “If you don’t at least take a pair of those with you, then you have no alibi,” she’d threatened.

  Now I thanked Amy. I was going to buy her breakfast for this. Even in thermal PJs, I was chilly.

  I left Logan alone to change. By the time I finished brushing my teeth, Logan was beside me—toothbrush in hand.

  “You’re in thermal, too!” I said. He was in a red thermal shirt and black pants.

  “Yes, because it’s cold out,” Logan said, shaking his head at me. “You are oddly excited about my thermal pajamas.”

  “It’s freezing out here,” I said. “I can’t believe how fast the temperature dropped.”

  He nodded, his mouth full of toothpaste. He tilted his head toward the tent. I hugged my arms to my body and took him up on his silent suggestion. While I waited for him to come into the warm tent, I checked my phone. No messages. But also no bars. Please don’t let anything happen that makes Mom or Dad need to call me, I thought. Yawning, I put the phone away. It was barely nine and I was exhausted.

  The tent doors flapped open and Logan crawled inside.

  “It is cold,” he said, zipping up the tent’s door flaps.

  “I bet I could distract you,” I said. I grabbed his shirt collar, pulling him toward me. We starting kissing and I forgot all about my PJs.