Red Feather Filly (9 page)

How could he have materialized out of the desert air?

Every single step from the bus stop, she'd watched for him.

He couldn't be there, and yet she knew he was. She could smell his leathery sweet scent. She felt heat radiate from his big body. Her thoughts couldn't have wished him into being, and yet…

She studied the shadow again. The horse's outline showed no rider.

Her pulse beat fast and wild. No mustang except the Phantom would have followed her.

“Zanzibar,” she whispered.

The low nicker said he knew his secret name. She felt his warm breath through her shirt.

Could she turn and face him? Sam ached to look at the horse close up and see how he'd come through the hard winter. Was he too close? Would he shy and gallop away? It had happened before, but Sam had to risk it.

Moving an inch at a time, she turned her head right, letting it lead her shoulder and her foot. Measuring each movement by the sound of the stallion's breathing, she managed to turn three-quarters of the way toward him before he backed off.

Sam froze. She swallowed. In the silence she thought she could hear the mares' teeth grinding on the hillside and then, in a flurry of pounding hooves, the Phantom was right in front of her.

“Hey, boy,” Sam whispered. She barely got the words out through her smile.

He backed a few steps, snatched a quick glance at his mares, then huffed through his nostrils and tossed his thick forelock from merry eyes.

Sam looked him over quickly.

No one would mistake the stallion for a barn-sheltered show horse. Most of his hair was white and clumpy. From his fuzzy ears to his shaggy fetlocks, he
looked like a mustang who'd kept himself warm with no help from humans.

“Still got on your winter woollies, don't you, boy?”

At the sound of her voice, the stallion shivered. His eyes opened wider and he leaned forward with an avid look just before he closed the space between them.

Sam's sigh came out shaky and satisfied. She raised her hand to touch his neck. When he didn't shy away or bowl her over, she stroked his shoulder. Then, holding her breath, she let her fingers skim over his barrel.

She couldn't see his ribs, but she felt them. Beneath his winter coat, in patches, she saw the gleam of fine silver hair.

All at once, the Phantom lurched forward. Sam side stepped.

“What's wrong, boy?” Sam's heart thundered as the stallion fell to his knees. She remembered that awful night in the rodeo arena when the stallion had been drugged and dizzy. This didn't look the same.

Sam scanned the terrain around her. For one weird moment, she wondered if he'd been darted with a tranquilizer gun. He'd gone down that fast. But he wasn't unconscious.

Groaning, he slammed to his side on the desert floor.

“I get it,” Sam chattered, jumping out of the way of the stallion's thrashing legs. “Scare me to death, why don't you?”

Moaning so loudly that his mares must wonder
what she'd done to their king, the Phantom rolled. He was rubbing off his winter coat, scratching his back on the bone-white alkali flat, and loving every second of it.

Sam laughed. The most magnificent animal in the world, squirming like a puppy.

For those few seconds, he was totally vulnerable to attack from another stallion. He trusted her to stand guard.

His vacation only lasted a few moments. He lurched to his feet, shook off a snowstorm of loose hair, then launched himself away. His back hooves scraped, dug in, and Sam blinked against the dirt peppering her face.

The stallion burst into a gallop. Stretching and turning, he ascended the zigzag path up the hillside to his mares.

They saw him coming, slinging his head in a herding motion. They ran.

The mares vanished over the crest of the hill. Sam waited for the Phantom to run into sight. He should be just behind them. She waited, waited, and finally let out the breath she'd been holding. He must have taken a shortcut she couldn't see from here.

No wonder the horse seemed magical.

She looked at her watch. She couldn't believe she'd looked at it just three minutes ago.

A
t five o'clock in the morning, Sam stood in the kitchen, dressed and ready to go.

Luckily she'd left her backpack by the front door last night before she went to bed, because she wouldn't have been able to get everything together now.

She barely had the energy to stare out the window, waiting for the Scout's headlights to pierce the darkness.

She'd almost ignored her alarm. Her eyes had refused to open and her sleepy body had nearly convinced her mind it was the weekend, not Tuesday. Her mind had won the battle. She'd tumbled out of bed and made it down here. Now Jake was late.

When he finally pulled up and she opened the
passenger's side door, the aroma of hot chocolate floated to her.

“Oh,
yes
.” How could she scold Jake for being late, when he'd taken extra minutes for this? She took the mug, wrapped her cold hands around it, and inhaled.

They sat quietly until the Scout jounced off the highway, taking the road toward Monument Lake.

“Yesterday, did you see anybody looking at the bumper sticker?” Jake asked.

It took Sam a few seconds to realize Jake was referring to the Columbus sticker on the Scout's back bumper. And she knew why. Most people would probably think it was funny, but it seemed to proclaim the driver as Indian.

“No,” Sam said, but didn't point out that she'd only been in the parking lot for a few minutes before and after school.

“I don't want anyone to know about the initiation stuff.”

“Okay,” Sam said.

“I'm not, like, embarrassed to be Indian. Everyone knows, after all. But I don't want to talk about it. They'll think I have to climb a mountain and catch an eagle or something.”

Quick as a light switch snapping on, then off, Sam saw a mental image of the red-tailed hawk's feather sitting in her desk drawer at home.

“That's fine,” Sam said. “I'm not going to make a big deal of it.”

She'd wanted that feather for Jake, but now she wasn't sure he'd appreciate it.

“Grandfather's got my brothers all ticked off about Slocum's buffalo,” Jake said with a sigh. “He says the Indian, wild horse, and buffalo all lost their freedom at the same time. He's making a big symbol out of it.”

Jake glanced over for Sam's reaction. She didn't move a muscle. She wasn't sure exactly what he meant about symbolism. That sounded like something her English teacher would say.

But she did know that in history, Mrs. Ely had told of trains carrying tourists west in the early 1800s. As the visitors steamed along, they shot buffalo by the thousands. For fun.

Mrs. Ely had described a curly brown carpet of dead buffalo alongside the train tracks. The wounded buffalo were left to suffer, die, and decay. The tribes who'd depended on them for food and clothing had suffered, too.

But Sam didn't say anything. Jake had always been touchy about his heritage. Unless he asked her a direct question, she'd keep quiet.

“Grandfather's going to give us the entry fee.”

“What?” she yelped. That news demanded a reaction.

“He says it's an early graduation present.”

“I guess,” Sam said. Jake was only a junior. “Way early. Is he that sure you'll graduate?” she teased.

“Yeah,” Jake said. In the dark car, his smile shone white. Jake got all A's and B's, and he was a track star. Most ranch boys with his heavy responsibilities couldn't claim so much. He had a right to look proud.

Jake turned off the car key and coasted into the same lookout his grandfather had used on Sunday. Inch by silent inch, he pulled on the parking brake.

Shivering against the morning cold, they followed the path down to the shore. Gulls were gliding above the lake and bobbing on its surface, but they took little notice of the humans. Jake and Sam found the little cave they'd sheltered in before, sat down, and waited.

Sam wiggled the fingers of each hand up the cuff of the opposite coat sleeve. It was relatively cozy, here, but for a minute, she wished that Jen were sitting beside her instead of Jake.

To Jen, she might confide her secret about Dad and Brynna riding in the race. They'd been planning it last night, all giddy and excited, as if it weren't an insult.

Dad planned to ride Nike. Brynna couldn't decide between Jeepers-Creepers and Penny, the blind mustang she rode to get from place to place at Willow Springs.

Neither of them had apologized for riding herd on her.

She must have made some sound of disgust, because Jake frowned at her.

Jake was yawning when Sam heard the horses.

“Here they come,” she whispered.

A smooth clinking sound, as if someone stirred a vat of marbles with a bare hand, made one of the gulls rise off the lake, screeching.

The tribal herd moved through the mist.

This time Sam saw the bay stallion lunge ahead of the mares. He studied his surroundings before cautiously lowering his head to drink. He must be their leader. She'd seen the Phantom do exactly the same thing, making sure all was safe before he allowed his band to drink and took his place on a rise to watch over them.

Jaunty and sure, the paint filly trotted ahead of the rest of the herd. Surrounded by the other horses' shades of brown, her black-and-white markings were dramatic.

Wind cleared the mist and the spring morning was bright enough to see the night black that crowned the filly's ears, covered her eyes, then curved to make a dark throat latch. A broad white blaze showed on her slender face. From her throat, the shining black formed a shield across her chest, swooped along her belly, and covered her to all four knees. Both her mane and tail were variegated with black and white.

Sitting shoulder to shoulder and leaning forward with Jake, Sam felt him shake his head in disbelief.

Elegant yet strong, with spark in her eyes and
energy in her stride, the filly was everything a horse should be. And Mac Ely had said she was Jake's for the taking.

“We're going to start talking, quietly, so they know we're here,” Jake said.

The filly skittered into the water at the sound of Jake's voice. The broad-chested sorrel snorted and stopped.

“Okay,” Sam said.

The dun broke from the herd and actually walked a few steps closer.

“At least half are domesticated. See the rub marks on their noses?”

“From halters.”

“And the dun. Look at his legs.”

Sam looked, but it took her a few minutes to see what Jake was talking about. The rust-colored barring on the horse's legs almost hid the marks on his front pasterns.

“Hobbles?” Sam asked. “You think someone kept him hobbled at night instead of penning him?”

Jake shrugged and stood up. Sam did, as well.

Most of the horses shied. They were still half a football field away, but they paid close attention to the humans.

The bay shambled down from his lookout to stand between the herd and the humans. His nostrils flared. Open, closed, open.

Sam realized she was breathing with him. Wet
rocks, sage, a mossy green scent. He must have sucked all those smells in with their human ones.

“They're not running,” Jake sounded triumphant. He rummaged in his pocket, then said, “Let's walk a little closer.”

Even Sam could smell the sweet grain he'd taken from his pocket.

The dun and sorrel nickered in unison. When the other horses, all but the pinto, took a few steps forward, the dun's curiosity and hunger overcame shyness.

Holding his head high, placing his hooves with caution that could turn to an about-face, he came so close, his extended nose could reach Jake's hand.

Whuffling loudly, he took the grain, then tossed his head. Heeding that signal, the other horses crowded forward.

Jake dug into his other pocket. There couldn't be much grain in two jeans pockets. He was just keeping their interest. He had it. Only the pinto stayed by the lake.

Jake scraped the last sticky grains from his left pocket and moved toward the filly.

Her head went higher, then turned to face him. Her dark eyes glinted, sizing him up. Though he moved toward her with horses all around him, as if he were part of the herd, the filly wasn't fooled.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked, but Jake pretended he was already out of earshot.

With the spell broken, Sam looked at her watch. It was six thirty. They still had plenty of time to make it to school, but she'd been hoping they could stop at Clara's for a muffin or something.

Jake must have crossed some invisible boundary, because the filly lifted her knees in a stately walk away from him. When he kept coming, she broke into a lope and the other horses joined her.

“Careful!” Sam shouted.

Why didn't Jake stop? He knew horses. He knew it was idiocy to try to run with a herd. When the bay stallion surged up from behind and clipped his shoulder, it was a warning.

Jake ignored it.

The band had a quarter-mile lead on Jake now, but he kept following.

“You are
such
an idiot,” Sam muttered.

He'd left her here to go chasing after them. And the worst part was, Jake could run for a long time. His training runs were seven to ten miles, every day.

This made absolutely no sense. It was completely opposite to what he'd advise anyone else to do.

Sam paced along the shoreline. Hands in fists, teeth set against each other, she took ten strides to the left, then turned. Stomach growling, she counted ten steps back the other way, then stared.

The horses had vanished over a rise at the far end of the lake. Where was Jake?

She looked at her watch again. Seven o'clock.
Classes started at eight. They could still make it.

Low-hanging clouds had turned the yellow sunlight watery. The air had turned colder, and the pale triangular rock in the middle of the lake blocked much of her view.

At eight minutes after seven, Sam looked up at the Scout. If she could drive, she'd leave Jake here.

That would be justice. How hard could it be, anyway? There was nothing out here to hit. It wasn't like she'd drive into the lake.

Sam sprinted up the path and stood panting next to the car. She wouldn't steal his grandfather's car. Just drive it away a little bit to scare him. It would serve him right.

She peered through the driver's side window. He hadn't left the keys in the ignition. Maybe they were under the seat.

She stared a minute. There were
three
pedals on the floor of the car. What could they all be for?

“D-don't,” Jake's breathless words carried from the lake shore. “Don't e…”

His footsteps covered his words, but Sam didn't back off. Leaning against the driver's side of the car, arms crossed, she sneaked a look at her watch.

Seven fifteen. They'd be cutting it awfully close.

Jake's black hair stuck to his forehead and neck. He wiped his forearm across his brow.

“Don't even think about it,” he managed at last.

When she didn't move, he opened the car door
anyway, reached into the door pocket, and retrieved a plain silver ring holding two keys. Why hadn't she thought to look there?

Jake put his hands on his hips and drew a deep breath, then expelled it loudly.

“I know how we're going to catch her,” he said.

“That's great,” Sam sputtered. “You had some brainstorm while I was up here freezing.”

“Let's go,” Jake said. He took another deep breath and smiled.

She'd read about runners experiencing a relaxed sense of well-being. She'd never expected it to be so annoying.

“Jake, I suppose you're not going to give me any explanation of why you did such an immature, dangerous…”

Jake sighed. “Sam, we can talk about this later.” Jake shook his head in a paternal way. “But can you please just get in the car? You're about to make us late.”