The Wild One (10 page)

He was unprepared for the interruption. The way Dad's eyebrows shot up to disappear under his hat, so was he. But Sam had heard enough about range rats.

Sam took a breath, hoping her use of
mister
would keep Dad from punishing her.

“You'd think it would work that way, wouldn't you, little lady?” Slocum said. “But it just doesn't. Still, I could turn a good old-fashioned bronc buster loose on that Phantom. In an hour, he'd be thrown, hog-tied, sacked out, and taught some manners. Then I might make something of him.”

Sam only understood half of what Slocum suggested, but she knew it was evil. He wanted to terrify her horse into obedience.

What she wanted was to dive headfirst out the driver's window and make Slocum shut up. But Dad moved to block her view of Slocum and Jake muttered, “Cool it,” just loud enough for her to hear.

“You might have a good point, Samantha,” Slocum said. “Dumb or not, those horses are tough. And cheap.”

When Slocum pretended to contemplate their
combined wisdom, Sam felt sick. And Slocum's scheme only got worse.

“Since my wrangler, Flick, is working up at Willow Springs, trying to earn a few extra dollars, I'll have him watch for that stud.”

Now she remembered the cowboy with the droopy mustache. On the cattle drive Flick had joked that even dudes with “good bloodlines” scared easily.

In the lull between two guitar-twanging tunes on the radio, Sam heard Slocum chuckle, and now she knew he was baiting her.

“Yep, that guarantees I'll be the first to know the stud's been captured, and the first to show the legendary Phantom who's boss.”

D
AD REFUSED TO HEAD
for home. He said Gram wanted the entire day alone to work in her garden. Dallas, as foreman, could see that the evening chores were done.

Instead of cooking, Gram planned to build wire cages to hold up gangly tomato plants. Instead of washing clothes, she wanted to kneel in the dirt and pull weeds, while the sun warmed her back. Most of all, she wanted to hollow out basins around her thirsty vegetables, so precious desert water could wait in little pools before soaking slowly to the roots.

Sam understood and promised she wouldn't interfere with Gram's day off.

“I just want to check on Buddy,” she told him. “I won't get in Gram's way or ask for a single thing.”

“Nope. I promised to keep us gone all day,” Dad said. “So, we'll stop at Clara's for dinner.”

Clara's coffee shop looked like 1950s diners Sam
had seen in movies. It sat next to two houses and Phil's Fill-Up, a gas station that also stocked hardware and groceries. The settlement of Alkali had few citizens, but it was a friendly place and the only civilization between River Bend Ranch and Darton, where local kids went to school.

Inside, five tables crowded together and six round stools faced a counter. As Dad and Jake hung their Stetsons on a rack by the door, Sam read a faded banner stretched across one wall. It read
HOME OF THE BEST PINEAPPLE UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE IN THE WORLD
!

Dad ordered giant cheeseburgers and a mound of french fries. Sam ate quickly, but she waited for Dad to finish before asking more questions. When he folded his paper napkin, Sam pounced.

“How can we keep Mr. Slocum from getting my horse?” she asked.

“What makes you think he'll be caught?” Jake asked.

Sam refused to be sidetracked. She needed Dad's opinion.

“If he is caught,” she asked, “what should we do?”

Dad sighed. “We'd have to adopt him, and that means money.”

“I know, but Aunt Sue could send my birthday present early. You know she would, and she always gives me a hundred dollars.”

Dad shook his head. Without his hat, he looked
exposed. He'd never accepted the embarrassment of Aunt Sue giving Sam so much money every year.

“That wouldn't pay the adoption costs, let alone his feed,” Dad lowered his voice as the waitress brought the bill for lunch.

“I have my savings account,” Sam began, but when Dad pointedly plopped his hand down on the bill, she closed her lips.

“I'll think about it, but if I'm going to be forking hay to an animal all winter long, he must be good for something. Handling cattle. Dragging in firewood. Riding out to check fence, even.

“On a ranch, we all earn our keep. You do chores, I see that the cattle operation turns a profit, and Gram does everything no one else has time for. Jake here”—Dad jerked a thumb in Jake's direction—“does as he's told.”

“Yes, sir.” Jake laughed.

But then Dad's smile faded. “I don't see a four-year-old stallion who's been running wild doing much but causing trouble.”

Dad stood, dug in his pocket, then tossed some dollar bills on the table.

“You kids have some dessert and pay the bill. I'll be back after I see if Phil has a part I need for the well pump. That well needs to be redrilled,” Dad said, almost to himself. “But until we can afford it, I'm going to patch it together for one more year.”

Sam thought of San Francisco, where water
gushed every time you turned a handle. People complained about the cost each month when they paid bills, but the water never ran red with minerals and no one wondered if the supply would run dry.

Dad looked old and tired when he talked about money. When the restaurant door closed behind him, Sam sat looking at her folded hands.

“Just get me a candy bar,” she told Jake as he walked toward the cash register.

A candy bar was half the price of pineapple upside-down cake, but did it matter if she saved Dad a dollar?
Let me think about it,
he'd said, but logic wouldn't solve this problem. She had to come up with something creative. Something no one else had considered possible.

Jake returned with two candy bars. Since the coffee shop was cool from the big-bladed fan overhead, and the only other person inside was the waitress eating her own lunch and reading a magazine, Sam and Jake stayed.

“Making that stallion useful would mean training him,” Jake said.

“You're good at working with horses, Jake. I've been watching you with Pocahontas.” Sam had watched Jake with the little pinto, and realized all over again how good he was with horses. “I know you could help me school him. You did it before.”

Jake ignored the compliment. “It would mean gelding him, too.”

Sam noticed the scuffs across Jake's knuckles as he unwrapped his candy slowly, giving his words time to sink in.

“But he would have such beautiful colts,” she said.

Still, she knew he was right. Gelded horses were easier to train.

“I don't think Wyatt has much use for a breeding stallion around the place. They're unpredictable.” Jake cleared his throat. “Besides, you've heard Slocum criticize mustangs, and what he says is mild. Lots of ranchers think they should be gunned down on sight.”

Sam blocked the mental flash of a rifle shot and horses falling.

“You're saying no one would pay to breed mares to him,” Sam said. “No matter how strong, fast, and smart he is?”

“I know it sounds harsh, but it's true.”

“Besides, he'd be miserable,” Sam said.

“
Dangerous
, Sam. When that stallion is scared, he's dangerous. Got it?”

“Yes, I've got it.”

Sam glanced over to see if the waitress had looked up from her magazine at the sound of their bickering. She hadn't.

“You might be right,” Sam admitted. “Think of that little stallion staking out his territory in the Willow Springs corral.”

“I didn't say a stallion like him, Sam. I said, that particular stallion. The Phantom. Blackie. Whatever you called him before. He nearly killed you.”

This time, Jake's guilt didn't turn him pale. His ruddy skin grew darker.

“He wasn't trying to—”

“Sam. Shut up.” Jake grabbed Sam's wrist before she could push back her chair and stomp out of the restaurant. “Sorry. I didn't mean ‘shut up.' Could you just listen a minute? This talk between us has been a long time coming. We're going to have it now.”

Sam's hands shook when Jake took his away.

“Most of the time, I don't think we should even hang around together.” Jake looked at her from the corner of his eye, like a nervous horse. “I can't help teasing you, and you take it as a dare. That's why you keep getting in trouble.”

“I get in trouble on my own,” Sam said. “You've got nothing to do with it.”

“Don't try to lead me off the subject, Sam. We're going to talk about that day.”

Jake was right. She did
not
want to relive that day. In her lap, Sam's hands curled into fist and her fingernails bit into her palms.

“When I tried all that Native American horse taming stuff with Blackie—”

“It worked,” she interrupted, then put her fingers over her lips. “Sorry, I'll be quiet now. But it
did
work.”

“Yeah. Most of it I'd do over again. Some stuff I still do with rough stock your dad turns over to me. When you gave him a secret name, sighed your breath into his nostrils, and mounted him for the first time in the river, it all worked.”

Jake's eyes grew dreamy as he remembered. “That colt was yours, body and soul.”

Jake looked up then, sharply. “But he's still got a horse's brain. We couldn't trust him to think for himself.”

“It was my idea to leave the ranch grounds,” Sam said, remembering the second day she'd ridden Blackie.

“I was older. I knew better.”

“I remember begging,” Sam said.

“So what? I shouldn't have given in to a little kid.”

The wind had come up outside the restaurant. Dust pecked at the window. There were no trees and few other buildings to slow its force.

It had been a windy day at River Bend, when she'd sweet-talked Jake into letting her ride Blackie.

He'd agreed, but only if she met his list of requirements. Jake told her to ride bareback, so she did. He insisted something soft be used for Blackie's first bit-less bridle, so Sam fashioned an outgrown red flannel nightgown into a headstall and attached cotton rope reins.

As they'd set out, the colt looked flashy and responded like a dream. He'd welcomed Sam's small
weight on his back and her hand resting on his withers. His wide eyes took in everything and his slim black legs pranced as they'd passed the ranch house, angled through pastures, and headed for the open range.

“Everything was going fine,” Jake's voice narrated the pictures in Sam's mind. “You followed my directions, exactly.”

“Because I looked up to you, Jake, even though you called me a brat and a tagalong and teased me unmercifully.” Sam was joking, but Jake's downcast expression said she'd made him feel even worse.

“I only planned to take you out a mile or so, but Blackie was doing so great, we just kept riding.”

“It showed how much time we'd taken gentling him,” Sam added. “You taught me a lot, Jake.”

Jake didn't seem to hear her.

“All the way out, I opened the gates and closed them behind us. I don't know why I thought that was such a chore.”

From her earliest days, Sam had known that major ranch rule. If a rider came to a gate that was open, the gate was left open. If it was shut, the rider had to ride through, then back his horse and close it.

“Coming back, I let you ride ahead, so you could maneuver Blackie to open the gate. You'd only been riding him for one day, though, and it was windy. Blackie was already starting to spook at blowing sagebrush. What was I thinking making you fight those gates?”

Sam thought she'd forgotten most of that day, but details came back with the remembered scent of dust on summer wind and Jake's shout.

“Ride in parallel to the gate,” Jake had yelled. “Parallel, brat. Get him to face the hinge. That's it. Now rattle the gate. Whoa, keep him together. Now ride back and do it again. Parallel. Rattle it. See? He's not as scared this time.”

Blackie had tensed beneath her. She'd felt his sweat soak through her jeans. But he'd trusted her. By the third time Sam rattled the gate, the colt didn't tremble.

But holding the gate open and getting the horse through wasn't easy. By then, Sam was sweating, too.

“Pull the gate towards you. Don't take your hand off it.”

“Jake, it's too hard. He's scared.”

Sam could still hear her quavering voice, and she'd known her hands, shaking on the reins, only made the colt more afraid.

“Just back him through, or turn him,” Jake's impatience made Sam feel clumsy. “Don't take your hand off the gate, I said. Sam, get a grip.”

The black colt had danced in place, tossing his head. His black mane stung her cheeks and her arm ached from holding the gate open. Her legs quivered from urging the horse to obey.

“Jake, he's really scared,” she said over Blackie's snorts. “You have to get this gate. I can't.”

All right, you baby
. The words echoed in Sam's mind. Had he really said them? Sam looked at Jake across the table and asked.

“Yeah, I said it,” Jake admitted. “And soon as you twisted around in your saddle to start yelling that you'd slug me if I didn't take it back, Blackie fell apart. He charged into the gate. You lost your hold on it and Blackie thought he was trapped.

“His shoulders were only pinned for a minute, but he reared to escape. I tried to ride in and help, but he bolted backward, slamming into my horse. You stayed on, until he took off for open range.”

That's when she'd lost her reins. Sam remembered leaning against the colt's neck, looking down at the gray-green desert floor speeding by in a blur as the ropes swirled around the colt's running legs.

Why hadn't she just held tight and ridden out his fear? Why had she stretched, reaching down to grab them? It made no sense to her now, but she had.

“And when you leaned down on the left to grab your reins, he caught a glimpse of you and veered hard right. You went one way, he went the other, and his off hind hoof caught you in the head.”

Like a drumbeat she'd never forget, Sam heard those hooves pounding away. She felt weak, as if she'd lived it all over again. As if she were lying shaken on the ground.

“I don't remember much after that,” she said.

“You were unconscious. Your head was bleeding.
I knew head wounds bled a lot. I knew it, but it was
your
head. And there was so much…blood.” Jake separated the last two words with silence. “I didn't know what to do.”

What
should
he have done? Sam didn't know, and yet she was thirteen now, the same age Jake had been then.

Water rushed against a metal sink as someone washed dishes in the restaurant kitchen. The waitress closed her magazine, stretched, and carried her plate across the room on squeaky tennis shoes.

“Can I get you two something else?” she asked.

“No, we're just going,” Jake said.

What should he have done?
Sam swept the candy wrappers into a pile. Then she and Jake stood and headed for the door. Jake took his black Stetson from the rack, as she threw the wrappers away.

Sam squinted against blowing dust as they left Clara's and walked toward Phil's Fill-Up.

“It was the hardest thing I've ever done, galloping away, leaving you there all alone.”

Sam tried to catch Jake's arm. She wanted to tell him that he couldn't help being a dumb kid, that he had no right to keep shouldering this guilt.