Red Feather Filly (5 page)

“T
hey might as well be hounds raising their hackles,” whispered Mrs. Allen as she watched the two boys.

She needn't have whispered, Sam thought. Neither guy was paying attention.

“That may be, but I won't tolerate a dogfight in my kitchen.” Gram gave an exasperated sigh and moved between them. “Well thank you, Ryan.” Gram whisked the tray from his hands. “I can't imagine where these came from.”

“Honestly, I do not know,” Ryan's British accent made him sound a bit bewildered.

“Jake, please find a place for these in the refrigerator.” Gram shoved the tray of shrimp in his direction.

Sam heard Mrs. Ely smother a laugh as Jake,
frowning, accepted the tray and opened the refrigerator.

As he did, Ryan nodded, and left the crowded kitchen for the yard.

Jake wedged the tray into the refrigerator then followed after Ryan.

Gram caught Sam's eye.

Sam held her breath. Every woman in the room looked at her expectantly.

“I have no idea what that was all about,” Sam admitted, waving her hands as if erasing something before her. “They just don't get along.”

The women laughed and the kitchen clatter resumed.

“Go have fun and don't worry about them,” Gram said, smiling.

Sam didn't have to be told twice. She wanted to know Jake's secret. Now. And grilling Jake about Ryan wouldn't help. Jake had never said straight out why he disliked Ryan. He used excuses, like his scorn for English riding.

That was a weak explanation. Jake admired all good riders.

Sam was pretty sure Jake was jealous of Ryan's easy life, but he was ashamed to admit it.

Ryan could have anything he wanted: cars, horses, vacations to the tropics. Jake saved every penny he earned. His parents poured thousands of dollars into the Three Ponies Ranch and hoped a good upbringing would put their sons on the right track. There was little left over for movies, dinners out, or even college.
Each boy had to earn what he got.

Just as she came out to the porch, three riders, shadowy in the dusk, clattered over the bridge. It had to be Jen's family.

As she moved out to meet them, Sam passed the Ely men. They stood like redwood trees around the wood piled for the bonfire, as Dad prepared to light it.

When Dad squatted near the house-high pile of firewood, Sam slowed down. She really wanted to see this. She wasn't the only one. Nearby, Pepper, River Bend's youngest cowboy, fidgeted as if he were waiting for Fourth of July fireworks.

“Shall we wait for full dark?” Dad shouted over to Luke Ely, Jake's dad.

Luke glanced toward his sons. Thumbs slung from the pockets of clean jeans, they shrugged, leaving it up to the older men.

“Plenty of fuel, there,” Luke said.

Dad's broad smile said he didn't want to wait, either.

Linc Slocum, in a royal-blue shirt with fancy fringe, hovered nearby. He wore a bolo tie with a silver slide shaped like a buffalo's head. It had sparkling red eyes. A leather belt encircled his barrel-shaped body. Its buckle was cast to look like the entire body of a buffalo. This one had little green eyes.

Linc shifted from foot to foot as if his boots were too tight.

If he'd been anyone else, Sam would have
laughed. Linc Slocum looked like a comical rich guy playing cowboy, but he could be dangerous. He'd tried underhanded tricks to get the Phantom. He only wanted the stallion as a trophy, but the Phantom's silver-white neck wore a scar inflicted by Slocum years ago.

Lately, Slocum seemed to have given up on catching the stallion, but Sam didn't trust him. He considered the range his playground and cared nothing for those who called it home.

Dad glanced up in time to catch Sam's glare. He gave her an understanding smile and lifted one shoulder. Linc Slocum was a neighbor, so they put up with him.

“Ya might want to pour a little kerosene on that pile of sticks,” Linc suggested. “That'd get things goin' in a hurry!”

Sam had seen one fire threaten River Bend Ranch. Linc's idea would almost guarantee another.

Luckily, everyone ignored him and, as Sam watched, streamers of orange flame began twisting through the wood. With a whoosh, the bonfire started and everyone watching clapped.

Sam rushed to help the Kenworthys with their horses. Before she reached them, she recognized the familiar smell of exercised horses and breathed deeply. Amid the aromas of homemade food, freshly washed clothes and shampoo, the scent of horses was the best perfume of all. She guessed anyone who would say that must really love horses.

“Jen!” Sam called.

All three Kenworthys turned. Their palominos looked, too. The horses had Quarter horse conformation, dark golden hides, and snowy manes and tails. Jen's Silly was the tallest and Sam knew she was nearly sixteen hands high. Jed Kenworthy's stallion Sundown and Lila's mare Mantilla were about half a hand shorter.

Just as Sam was wondering whether she should tether the three high-strung horses next to each other, Ross appeared. He was the biggest and shyest of River Bend's cowboys.

“Rails are up on the barn corral,” Ross said, then looked up expectantly.

He must be waiting for the Kenworthys to swing down from their saddles, Sam decided, so he could put the palominos together in the barn corral.

As they dismounted, the palominos looked around restlessly, wondering what would happen next.

“I've got to get these, first.” Lila opened her saddlebags and slid out a box. “Your Gram said we could come empty-handed, since we were riding,” Lila said. “But I'd just finished dipping some chocolates.”

“Wow,” Sam said. She could imagine the candy melting on her tongue.

“Don't open them,” Jen cautioned her mother. “You'll make Sam drool.”

Sam gave Jen a shove and Jen pushed back, but they both stopped when they realized Ross was still waiting.

When the Kenworthys had turned over their reins, Ross nodded and trudged away.

“Thanks,” Lila called after him.

Jed turned to Sam, shook his head, and said, “He's still as a stone wall.”

“That's probably the last we'll see of him for a while,” Sam agreed. It was actually kind of funny that Jed noticed. He was almost as quiet as Ross.

While the adults walked ahead, Jen took off her ponytail holder and ran her fingers through her hair. Ripply and white blond, it glowed as they neared the bonfire. But Jen looked so self-conscious, Sam hesitated to tell her she looked nice. Jen would deny she'd gone to some extra trouble for Ryan.

Then Sam thought of something she
could
say.

“Hey, you really want to win, don't you?” Sam asked. When Jen looked surprised, she added, “You look great.”

Jen flushed, then put on a fake drawl. “Yep, I'm going to get me a partner, one way or t'other.”

Giggling, they passed through the crowd of neighbors. They edged past Mrs. Coley as she explained her recipe for fresh salsa and whispered that it was like a vacation with Rachel out of town. They watched Bryan and Adam Ely sit on the edge of the porch to tune their guitars. They took the hot pink paper flyers Mrs. Allen handed them with a wink.

THE SUPER BOWL OF HORSEMANSHIP the brochure announced in big block letters. The outline of a
running horse was centered just beneath it. It looked almost like a photograph, and as she noticed that, Sam remembered Mrs. Allen was an artist.

The rest of the flyer was worded just like the draft she and Jen had read. The only thing that was different was the entry fee, printed clearly at the very bottom.

Sam thought again of how hard Jake worked and how much he'd love to win money for a new truck.

“All I have to do is show this to him…” Jen was looking down at the flyer and muttering when she collided with Jake.

“Watch where you're—” Jen began, but when she noticed Jake wasn't alone, she apologized. “Sorry!”

Next to Jake stood a man who must be his grandfather, MacArthur Ely.

He looked just like Luke, Jake's dad. He had the same angled cheekbones and the same healthy bronze skin. The lines around his mouth swooped back toward his jawline, carved there by a customary half smile.

Only two things about him were really different. He had steel-gray hair trimmed into a crew cut, and an expression that showed where Jake had gotten his lively mustang eyes.

Before Jake could introduce his grandfather, Jen bolted.

“Nice to see you again, Mr. Ely. I'm sorry,” she said breathlessly, and gestured across the bonfire. Sam would bet Jen had seen Ryan and wanted to get him as her partner before anyone else did.

Mr. Ely clearly didn't mind Jen's quick exit. He smiled after her, seemed to listen to a few bars of strumming from his other grandsons' guitars, then faced Sam. He met her eyes as if he knew her.

“Samantha Forster, I haven't seen you since you were seven years old.”

He didn't tell her she'd grown or changed or any of the obvious things adults usually said as they shook your hand. In fact, he didn't even shake her hand, exactly.

Sam jumped when Jake's grandfather enclosed her hand in both of his. He held it a second, as if warming it. His palms were surprisingly soft considering that the back of his hands were scuffed and rough from work.

Seven years old.
Her mom had died that year, but Sam didn't ask if Mr. Ely had seen her before or after her mom's death.

“You have your mother's heart for animals, I'm told.” Mr. Ely's smile didn't look sad. “And I can see you have her eyes.”

“And Jake has yours, Mr. Ely,” Sam answered. It was a brash thing to say and Sam had no idea where she'd gotten the courage. It had just popped out.

“Call me Mac.”

“Thanks,” Sam said.

Jake began shifting and looking at the noisy group around the bonfire as if Sam ought to go join them, and Sam realized she'd been staring at the old man. Would he think she was rude?

If so, he must be used to it. Mac Ely looked like a blend of the old West and the new.

He wore modern boots and jeans, but his soft chamois-colored flannel shirt draped over him like deerhide.

“I want to show you a horse,” Mac said suddenly.

“Me?” Sam asked. There really didn't seem to be any question that Jake's grandfather was addressing her, but she snatched a quick look at Jake just the same. Jake stared at Mac as if he wanted to ask the same question.

Mac nodded. “The horse is for Jake. She's running free on tribal lands and he will catch her.”

Sam's pulse hummed with excitement. Canoes and sweat lodges were fine, but this was more like it. Capturing a free-roaming horse would be the kind of challenge she'd like.

Jake smiled, but he looked more resigned than excited.

“Where is she?” Sam asked.

Brynna had told her that the Bureau of Land Management and local tribes sometimes clashed over horses. If mustangs ran on tribal lands, they were governed by a different set of laws than if they lived on public lands. A little line on a map could make a big difference.

“One finger of tribal land stretches east between Lost Canyon and Arroyo Azul,” Jake said. “On the other side of the mountains there's a high desert lake.”

“Monument Lake,” Sam said. “Isn't that it?”

Mac nodded. “That's home to the tribe's horses.”

She hadn't been there since she'd returned from San Francisco, but Sam had a vague memory of a lake set like a turquoise stone in the sage and sand desert. She imagined horses running there and felt chills. It would be beautiful.

Suddenly, she wondered if Mac knew how good his grandson was with horses. Catching one, even a wild one, wouldn't be that hard for him.

“Has she been ridden before?” Sam asked.

“Not successfully,” Mac said.

Oh boy, this just kept getting better and better!

“‘Ain't a horse that can't be rode,'” Jake said, quoting an old saying, but Sam knew the rest of the rhyme.

“‘Ain't a cowboy that can't be throwed.'”

Mac smiled, indulging them.

“Jake will catch her and run her in the race,” Mac said.

“I will?” Jake was clearly surprised by the second half of his grandfather's statement. “The race is soon. If I caught her tomorrow, even counting in spring vacation, which would help, I'd only have two weeks to work with her.”

“What do you do that's hard?” Mac asked, and his solemn voice stopped everything.

All at once, Sam felt like an outsider. Jake's world and his grandfather's had shrunk to just the two of them. Mac's head jerked just slightly to one side,
silencing Jake before he said something defensive.

“Think before you speak,” Mac ordered. “Then tell me what you do that's so hard you're not sure you can succeed?”

Jake's eyelids drooped and he went still. His grandfather's words hadn't shamed him. He was really thinking.

Sam did the same. Studying made good grades possible. Daily attention to everything she set down made her room stay neat. Meeting her friends' and family members' eyes each time they spoke to her made communication lots easier. The only thing she needed to really work on was convincing Dad—and herself—she could ride.

As a wave of warmth gusted from the bonfire to surround her, Sam had a feeling that not even
that
was really out of reach.

Jake must have come to a similar conclusion.

“Not that much,” he said at last.

Mac nodded. “Before I pass over, I want to know my son's sons can handle the heart-busting days that will come.”

Had her flesh just hugged tighter to her bones? Sam shivered. Mac didn't look sick, but when he said, “Before I pass over,” could he be talking about anything but dying?

Whatever he meant, his satisfied smile said he was pleased with Jake's response.

Suddenly the world expanded again, to include Sam, the wooden table full of food, and the other guests.