Red Feather Filly (4 page)

Jake couldn't mean something like that.

“Really?” she said.

Most people would take that as a cue to explain. With Jake, you never knew. She didn't get her hopes up. Living with Dad, who had the same I'll-take-care-of-it-myself personality as Jake, had prepared
her for disappointment.

“Really,” Jake said. “He doesn't care that I don't have time, getting ready for track season, either.”

Laughter came from the carpenters who were taking their lunch break. The back door of the empty bunkhouse swung creaking in a gust of wind. Sam wished she'd grabbed her jacket when she'd come back outside. If she stayed long enough to get something out of Jake, she could be here until sundown.

“What kind of initiation thing are you talking about?”

“Grandfather doesn't care what we do. Like, it doesn't have to be Shoshone, but he says we shouldn't turn our backs on the old ways. We should master just one thing.”

We.
That sounded like Jake wasn't the only one. His brothers must be included, too. That sounded reasonable to Sam. Gram wanted her to learn to cook her mom's favorite recipe. Wasn't that sort of the same thing?

“So, your brothers have to do something with you?”

Jake's expression stayed blank as he said, “They've already done their stuff.”

“Oh.” Sam gritted her teeth together to keep from begging for more information. To her, this family custom sounded incredibly cool, but Jake still didn't want to tell her.

“You're dying for details, aren't you?” Jake said.

Sam nodded.

He sighed as if he were weary of the recitation
before he'd even begun.

“Kit went on, like, an old school vision quest. Surviving in the wild, living off the land. That sort of thing.”

Sam didn't interrupt, but she wanted to know more about Kit. She knew he was Jake's oldest brother, but she'd never met him. Where did he live? How old was he? Why had he left Darton County? She knew enough to keep quiet, though.

“Nate learned to be a fancy dancer and he performed at a powwow in Reno. Adam built a canoe the old way and he still hauls it out to Monument Lake sometimes. Bryan built a sweat lodge. Dad calls it our Indian sauna. We all use it once in a while. And Quinn learned to drum. Grandfather had him play at some ceremony last fall. And then there's me.

“Mom says it's important to do something, because it will make Dad and Grandfather happy. But she can't fool me. The history teacher part of her thinks it's great.

“She brought up all these examples of family traditions, like joining your parents' church or the fraternity your dad was in at college, stuff that's a lot more of a commitment than this.” Jake stopped, shaking his head. “She actually suggested I make a teepee. Can you believe it? Like Darrell—”

Jake bit off the end of the sentence, but Sam could guess what he'd been about to say. Jake's best friend Darrell didn't have to make a teepee or a canoe or a sweat lodge. Was Jake just afraid of being different?

“You wear your hair long,” Sam said. Maybe pointing it out would remind him he didn't care that much if he stood out from the crowd.

“Other guys have long hair.”

Not like yours
, she wanted to say.

Instead, Sam turned her face skyward. The wind had vanished and the sun shone from between the clouds.

She didn't pin Jake down and ask what he was going to do. He'd already told her more than she'd expected. She was satisfied and a little flattered that he'd confided in her.

“Hey,” she said. “Gram's making a cake and she wants you to come eat some of it. Think you can hang around that long?”

Jake nodded. Then, at the sound of hooves, he looked toward the rear of the ranch, past the broken barn, beyond the corrals to the path that led up the hillside and eventually to Aspen Creek.

Brynna and Dad were coming home. Their voices sounded relaxed and happy. Sam was glad, but their arrival meant an end to her talk with Jake.

Her eyes turned back to his. For a second, before he brought down the shutters of his eyelids, she saw his confusion.

She didn't say anything, of course, but something in Jake's dark-brown eyes had reminded her of this morning, and the geese she'd seen, trying to decide whether to fly with the flock or split off on their own.

B
efore Sam could tell Jake about Mrs. Allen's race, Brynna and Dad trotted up, talking.

“Strawberry looks like a different horse when Dad rides her,” Sam muttered to Jake.

The roan approached in a classic cow-horse jog. Usually, she looked like a plump, pouty mare who'd do anything to escape exertion. With Dad astride, Strawberry's Quarter horse breeding showed in every muscle.

“She knows he won't put up with any nonsense,” Jake said. “That takes a burden off a horse, knowin' she can't be in charge.”

Brynna rode River Bend's only Appaloosa. Maybe because he was shedding his winter coat, the spots on Jeepers-Creepers' gray body looked especially clear,
as if he'd been splattered with black paint. He arched his neck as he approached.

Both horses seemed to be having as good a time as their riders. Seeing Brynna and Dad together, Sam couldn't stay irritated that Dad had lectured her about her inept riding. How could she complain when Dad and Brynna looked so happy?

Brynna wore a long-sleeved white blouse and her red hair was clipped into a low ponytail instead of her workday French braid. She swayed in the polished Western saddle and the one hand that didn't hold her reins fluttered in the air, punctuating her conversation.

In a pearl-snapped shirt so faded that Sam couldn't tell if it had originally been green or blue, Dad looked like his usual self. He was a cowboy through and through, tough and lean as a strip of beef jerky, with a face marked by sun and weather. But since he'd married Brynna, just before Christmas, Dad looked content most of the time.

Right now, Dad was considering the saw in Jake's hands. He looked surprised, but he didn't have a chance to ask questions.

“It seems we're having company,” Brynna said as she halted the Appaloosa and swung down to the ground.

“We are?” Sam felt a little lurch of excitement. “When?”

“Few hours from now,” Dad said.

Brynna laughed, holding her hands palm up as if she couldn't explain how it had happened. “I guess
because it's the first nice day in a while, everyone was out for a ride. Once we'd invited the Kenworthys and Slocums, we couldn't wait to ask your family, too, Jake.”

“We'll double the number of places you need at the table,” Jake said.

Sam did a quick calculation. She might be weak in algebra, but she could add three Kenworthys, plus two Slocums—Rachel was in France on a two-week exchange program—and eight Elys. Oh, and she should probably count Jake's grandfather.

Before she reached a total, Dad changed the equation.

“Might as well see if Trudy and Helen wanna come, too,” Dad said.

It took Sam a second to realize he meant Mrs. Allen and Helen Coley, Gram's friend who worked as a housekeeper for the Slocums. With those two, she was up to seventeen. With the River Bend cowboys and the Forster family, where would they put everyone?

“Isn't that like, twenty-four people?” Sam blurted.

Brynna and Dad laughed.

“It won't be a sit-down deal,” Dad said.

“It's a potluck. Everyone will bring anything they feel like cooking. Beans, biscuits, buttermilk pie—whatever. We'll drag a table out here.”

As Brynna gestured vaguely to the ranch yard, she grinned and Sam thought her stepmother looked as excited as a girl.

“And the best part,” Brynna went on, “is we all have scrap wood from earthquake damage and no one's taken the time to burn it yet, so we're going to have a bonfire!”

“Cool,” Jake said.

“That is
so
cool,” Sam echoed, but she really meant “unbelievable.”

Her predictable ranch family never did spontaneous things like this.

Dad shook his head, but his smile said it had been way too long since he'd allowed such fun.

“And Jen's coming, too?” Sam asked, just to be sure.

“Yes, in fact her family's riding over together,” Brynna said.

Sam felt a glow of satisfaction. Jen's family would make a pretty picture, each riding one of the famous Kenworthy palominos. But that wasn't even the best part. Jed and Lila Kenworthy had suffered through a few tough months. Sam had feared her best friend would be forced to move away, since her parents had seemed on the verge of a divorce.

It had taken a horse to get them back together.

Rosa d'Oro wasn't yet ready to ride, so she probably wouldn't be coming to the party, but the long-lost palomino had helped mend the Kenworthy family.

“I'd better get going,” Jake said, dusting off the saw blade before he set it aside.

“But I need to tell you something,” Sam protested.
She had to tell Jake about Mrs. Allen's race.

“Mom will be—” Jake began.

“What about Gram's cake?” Sam tried to tempt him into staying just a little longer.

Her efforts had nothing to do with Gram's yellow cake, either. She couldn't stop thinking how cool it would be if she had a race partner right now.

She didn't want to make Jen jealous, Sam told herself sternly. But she didn't want to give Jake too long to think, either.

“Mom will be asking for everyone's help,” Jake continued in spite of her interruption. “And if I'm not there, who knows what kinda chores they'll leave for me.”

“I just—”

“You'll have plenty of time to talk tonight,” Brynna said. She used such a candy-sweet tone, Sam knew Brynna had misinterpreted everything.

“But there's this thing…” Sam kept her voice calm and reasonable.

“It'll wait,” Dad said.

She was getting frustrated. Dad and Brynna were going to leave her with a permanent stutter if they didn't stop cutting her off in midsentence. Come to think of it, why was it she got in trouble when
she
interrupted?

“It won't wait,” Sam said. “I need—”

“For cryin' out loud, Samantha,” Dad chuckled. “Let the boy go.”

Jake made an amused sort of snort, but when
Sam turned to glare at him, he had the good sense to keep quiet.

 

Gram loved the idea of a spring celebration.

“We'll put off the lasagna lesson for today,” Gram said. “It's about time there was a party around here.”

Sam felt her spirits sag a little. All the talk about family traditions had her hoping a lasagna lesson would stir up memories of her mother.

She had plenty of other things to think about as she helped Gram spend the afternoon cooking.

They sprinkled salt on some things, sugar on others. They chopped and fried onions and beef for an enormous pot of chili Gram planned to keep hot on a camp stove outside.

Gram did much of her cooking with the telephone clamped between her ear and shoulder and Sam heard her give Mrs. Allen, Helen Coley, and Jake's mom all the same advice—” Just double the recipe!”

Sam and Brynna tripled the usual dinnertime salad order. They made three big wooden bowls full of salad—one green, one pasta, and another full of early spring fruit.

“I'll have to go back into town all over again on Monday,” Gram said, as the supplies she'd just bought vanished under knives and into pots. “But who cares? I bought it to eat!”

By the time dusk settled, the ranch was alive with friends. Car doors opened and neighbors shouted “Hello!” Truck tailgates slammed down to release
their cargo and the crack of splitting wood echoed everywhere. Planks, boards, and rafters ruined by the earthquake became a pyramid of wood for a spring bonfire.

Boots tramped across the yard and up to the white, two-story ranch house. The kitchen door opened over and over again and voices asked, “Is there room for this in the refrigerator?”, and “Can I stick this in the oven?”

While Sam slathered loaves of sourdough bread with butter and garlic, she watched over her shoulder for Jen and Jake. Not that she expected either of them to come help in the kitchen, but anything was possible.

Jake's mom, who also happened to be Mrs. Ely, Sam's history teacher, bustled in and began working on a dish she called Indian tacos.

“I make it whenever Luke's dad comes to visit,” Mrs. Ely said as Gram made room for her at the kitchen counter. “He says I have a knack for fry bread. Jake's supposed to be bringing the dough.” She glanced toward the door. “I'd just put it out to rise when Luke came in saying he'd seen Brynna and Wyatt.”

Sam smiled as she finished wrapping the loaves in aluminum foil. Jake had been afraid he'd get the leftover chores, and here he came into the kitchen, crowded with all females, carrying a cookie sheet full of dough lumps the size of small apples.

“Yeah, laugh at me,” he grunted as he slipped past
Sam. “You're gonna eat your heart out when you hear Grandfather's idea.”

“I will?” Sam dodged along at Jake's heels. “What is it?”

She didn't care if she looked like a bothersome puppy. “You're gonna eat your heart out” had to mean horses. She wouldn't let him ignore her.

Sam tugged on Jake's sleeve. It looked like a new shirt. Blue-gray and crisp, the shirt was nice, and she didn't care one bit.

“Tell me,” she insisted.

“Later,” he mumbled and started for the door.

He didn't get very far.

Ryan Slocum stood in the doorway. Politely, he bowed Mrs. Allen through ahead of him. Then he remained there, balancing a tray heaped with pink shrimp on a bed of crushed ice. He was blocking Jake's way and he made no attempt to step aside.

“'Scuse me.” Jake said the words quietly, but there was a challenge in them that made Gram and Jake's mother look up.

Sam couldn't see Jake's face, but the blue-gray shirt tightened across his back. He squared his shoulders and let his arms float out an inch or so from his body.

She
could
see Ryan's face. Head tilted to one side so that the kitchen light glinted off his sleek, coffee-colored hair, he wore a mocking smile.

Sam wasn't sure why she should think such a thing, but it looked like Jake and Ryan were ready to fight.