Taming Rafe

by Susan May Warren

  It made a girl wonder: who had Daddy hoped she’d be? She’d never even asked. She always figured she belonged to the land. To the ranch. But with Nick and Piper having their first child, they’d need to move into the house instead of living in the hunting cabin on the hill. And then where exactly would she belong?

  She stared out into the horizon, where the outline of the Bighorns just barely etched the gunmetal sky.

  The horses nickered from the corral across the yard. In the quarantine pen, she noticed that the new quarter horses had huddled up, their noses together as they fought the wind. She’d put them in the shelter last night, but perhaps the draw of hay had lured them out. She should check on Sunny. He’d had a runny nose, a symptom that in other horses wouldn’t register a great deal of concern, but in a horse nearly thirty years old, it made her worry.

  The smell of the horse barn greeted her with a hospitality she craved as she opened the door. Call her strange, but she loved everything about horses, from their expressive eyes to the smell of their manure—so different from that of cows, pigs, or any other ranch animal.

  The Buckle’s horses stirred little as she entered. The ranch had a small handful of stock horses—lately Nick preferred to take his truck out into the field. Stefanie, however, couldn’t surrender the nostalgia of working the ranch by hand, just her and Sunny, compatriots.

  Perhaps that was where she belonged—with Sunny.

  The quarter horse had been the first horse she’d rescued, right about the time her mother lay dying of breast cancer. Stefanie had bought him with a year’s worth of chore money after seeing him waste away in the backyard of a house just outside Phillips. She’d ached with his neglect, how his ribs sawed through his tan hide, the razor bones of his spinelike spears in his back. He could barely walk when she’d led him to the trailer, and it took a full year before he recovered enough for her to start training him. She probably would have lost hope if it hadn’t been for his eyes. They all but begged her to notice him. Begged her to care.

  That year she’d brought Sunny back to the beautiful gelding he was born to be and discovered that she had a talent. A way of understanding an animal that ministered to both their broken places.

  Nick’s horse, Pecos, raised his head to stare at her as she walked to the end of the row of stalls. A beautiful black-and-white Overo paint, Pecos had a wild streak that at one time had seemed exactly fitting for her oldest brother. But Nick had worked his wild streak out of his system. As had Rafe.

  She always thought she’d been born without the Noble propensity to rebel and wander. So why did she suddenly feel so restless, so unfit for the life she’d always known?

  She flicked on a bulb midway through the barn, and light pooled on the dirt floor. Funny, she didn’t see Sunny standing in his stall. Coming up to the paddock door, she spotted him lying down fully on his side. As if in distress.

  “Sunny.” She opened the door and crept in. “What’s wrong, pal?” She knelt at his side, her hand splaying across his body.

  He didn’t raise his head, just opened his eye and looked at her a long moment before closing it. Under her hand, his breath labored.

  Oh, Lord, please . . .

  Stefanie ran her hand down his neck, over his withers. “It’ll be okay, Sunny,” she said softly. Had one of her new horses had a contagious disease? Thankfully, she’d quarantined them. But the weather—maybe it was just a cold?

  She got up and retrieved her medical kit. She found a thermometer, prepared it, and took his temperature.

  The reading dried her mouth—105.5.

  Sunny began to cough. Then blood dribbled from his mouth into the straw.

  Stefanie took one look at the ooze, turned, and ran from the barn. “Dutch!” She bolted across the yard, nearly tripped, and flung herself toward the calving barn. “Dutch!”

  He met her at the door, catching her.

  Her breath came in gulps of razor-cold air. “It’s Sunny. I think he’s got the new flu, the one—”

  “Calm down,” Dutch said, but he had already started jogging toward the barn. “Call the vet!” he yelled over his shoulder.

  Stefanie counted the seconds with her thundering heartbeat as she sprinted inside, grabbed the phone, and left a frantic message with the on-call vet’s answering service in Sheridan. She didn’t care that she left a muddy trail across her kitchen floor, a bloody handprint on the phone. Her gaze never left the barn door. The message delivered, she dropped the phone onto the cradle and ran back outside across the yard.

  Just as she reached the door, Dutch met her, a wall that stopped her cold as he grabbed her arms. “No, Stef, you can’t—”

  “I have to help him. Dutch, let me go!” She yanked out of his grasp.

  He stepped in front of her again.

  “No.”

  She looked up at him, her heart choking off the breath in her throat as she read his grim face. Oh. Oh. She gasped for air and grabbed for the barn door. She missed it and went down hard into the dirt.

  Dutch crouched beside her, his big hand on her arm. “I’m sorry. He was probably gone by the time you left the barn.”

  Gone? Gone?

  Oh, Lord, please . . . oh no . . . Her breaths came fast, one on top of another. She clamped her hand over her mouth, as if holding in a scream. Only, she didn’t have one. Instead, a ball of pain scoured her throat, falling down into her belly.

  Gone?

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t . . . She moaned, a sound so mournful it made her hurt clear through. She shook free of Dutch and crawled toward the barn. Somehow she found her feet.

  Dutch had left the paddock door open. The light on. She stood there for a moment, staring at Sunny, at his beautiful brown hide, his long eyelashes closed over his eyes. He’d always been a magnificent horse in temperament, in form. He possessed an inner strength that had seeped into her soul.

  Now he seemed at peace, as if he might be sleeping.

  She crept close, dropped to her knees.

  She heard Dutch’s heavy steps behind her as she laid her hands on Sunny’s body. The breath no longer lifted it, but she still felt the warmth of the life that had run through his veins.

  “Stefanie . . .”

  Her voice emerged, just above a whisper. “Once, near the end with Mom, I couldn’t take it anymore. I guess I must have been about thirteen. Everything hurt inside me. I wanted to leave because I couldn’t stand to see her suffer, so I packed a backpack and . . . I left.” She closed her eyes. “I walked all the way out to Cutter’s Ridge, where it runs into the Big K, and just stood there on the edge of the ravine. I thought that if I just threw myself over, perhaps I could fly. I really thought it. Just fling myself over and fly.”

  She hiccupped a breath, drawing in another for strength as she opened her eyes. “Sunny found me. I don’t know how he got out of the corral, but as I stood there, ready to jump, he appeared, rubbed his nose into my back, as if to say, take me with you.” She stroked his mane. “Take me with you.”

  “Stefanie—”

  “Go away, Dutch. Just . . . go.” Stefanie ran her hands over Sunny’s side. Such a strong animal. How could he be gone so quickly?

  Slowly, she climbed over him, lying alongside his back, her head on his neck. Tangling her hands into his mane, she closed her eyes, breathing in his smell, remembering the hours, probably collective years she’d seated herself across his back, trusting him. Talking to him as his ears cocked back, listening.

  “Take me with you,” she whispered. She turned her head into his neck, letting the sobs rack her body. “Please, Sunny, take me with you.”

 

 

 
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