Mountain Mare (4 page)

“W
hose horse is she?” Sam asked.

As the mare searched for graze, sun danced on her dark brown coat. She stretched her neck to reach, bite, and chew. She clearly hadn't chosen a reunion with humans on horses over the Phantom. The mare seemed content on her own.

“I don't know,” Jen said slowly. “I'm still trying to figure out what breed she is. What do you think?”

“I'm no expert compared to you, Jen,” Sam said. “I'm not even sure what color she is! Would you call her a chestnut? I mean, she has a dark body with a flaxen mane and tail.”

“I guess,” Jen said. “But that coloring is distinctive.
It's just—shoot, I've lived in the sticks for so long, I just don't know.”

“Wait,” Sam said, remembering the sound of the horses running side by side. “Didn't you notice something about her gait?”

“Yeah,” Jen said, “but we need to talk with someone who's been around different breeds. Maybe Katie Sterling.” Jen sighed. “I'll tell you, Sam, I'm disgusted by my own ignorance. If I'm ever going to be a vet, I have to study horses, not just ride them.”

“Don't be so hard on yourself,” Sam said, but she didn't say the rest of what she was thinking.
You're a fourteen-year-old girl who's lived in northern Nevada your entire life.

“Since I'm a student by nature,” Jen said, blinking slowly behind the shiny disks of her glasses, “and we don't have the HARP girls this week, I'll go to the library, load up on books, and cram some horse information into my brain. Not like that will be unpleasant.”

Silly lowered her head and blew out a long breath.

“Yes, girl,” Jen joked with her palomino. “We're both relieved to have a plan. Now, let's get back to the campground before Hal thinks we've defected.”

“But what about her?” Sam asked. “She's obviously someone's horse. We can't just leave her there.”

The mare looked quite satisfied, but that didn't mean someone wasn't looking for her. Any horse
would enjoy similar surroundings.

Even Ace.

Sam rubbed her horse's neck while she tried to erase a totally immature thought. The idea refused to vanish. What if Ace “escaped” and returned to the Phantom's herd? He couldn't be sold as a therapy horse then, could he?

No. No way would she duck her responsibility. That would be so selfish, so juvenile, so…

“Ridiculous.”

“What is?” Jen asked.

Sam bit her lip. She hadn't meant to say the word out loud.

“Nothing,” Sam said. “I was just thinking it would be pointless to try to rope her and bring her in now. She'll probably see all the other horses as we drive the herd through here, and join up.”

For a second, Jen hesitated.

She's not reading my mind,
Sam told herself. Jen had been asleep this morning when she'd told Jake about the offer to buy Ace.

“Good point,” Jen said, proving she was just weighing the logic of Sam's statement. “Even if she doesn't fall in with the herd, we can report her to Sheriff Ballard.”

And it was settled. But thinking about this morning had stirred another worry. What about the accident Lynn Cooper had rushed off to cover?

Jake was a very careful driver, but if an animal
had run into the road in front of him, he'd surely swerve to miss it.

“Jen, you don't think that accident with the horse trailer…?” Sam couldn't force herself to finish the sentence.

“No way,” Jen said. “He's towing your dad's trailer. He'd never risk Wyatt's good opinion of him. Besides, if Jake were in trouble, he wouldn't call the sheriff.”

Sam couldn't help giggling as she pictured Jake walking for help, muttering that buckaroos should never do anything except on horseback.

“Sam, it wasn't him. Don't even think about it,” Jen said.

At a touch, Jen had Silly swinging into an about-face, headed back toward camp. Sam turned Ace and followed.

 

As they rode down, the herd of cattle was coming up the trail.

The horned heads of the leaders marked them as steers used in the rodeo's bulldogging event, but most of the others were Hereford cows and calves, which would be used in the roping competitions.

Two outriders wearing black shirts with blue-green script spelling out “Ryden Rodeo Productions” flanked the herd.

They don't look like they need a bit of help,
Sam thought.

“Hal's riding drag, waiting for your report,” one of the riders called out as they approached.

Jen touched her hat brim like the experienced hand she was, but Sam just smiled as they rode past.

Jen gestured for Sam to ride down one side of the herd while she rode down the other. They split up, Sam figured, because a single rider disturbed the herd less than two of them would. Cattle, like most prey animals, responded to possible danger by moving away from it. Wild cattle perceived even faint hand movements from a rider on a ridge as a hazard. Sam had learned that the hard way.

But this herd stayed calm.

Nodding and plodding, the cattle moved at a steady pace, ignoring the chatter of less experienced riders ranged along the side of the herd.

Ace danced with impatience. He obeyed her hands and legs, heading steadily for the rear of the herd, but if a horse could trot on the tips of his hooves, he was.

“They're getting along fine without you,” she told the bay, but the words were no sooner out of her mouth than she heard what she'd said.

Sam leaned down until her chin touched Ace's coarse black mane, and whispered, “They are, but I could never get along without you.”

Just the thought of losing Ace made her heart feel empty, but the gelding was in no mood to think of anything but cows.

As they jogged past two riders, Sam overheard them talking.

“What are those little white-faced ones with the perpetual ‘Huh?' expression on their faces?” the dude asked.

“Them's Herefords, ma'am. And the rest of the herd is kinda mixed. We've got Charolais, Brahma, and Angus, but mostly crosses of some kind.”

Suddenly Ace's head tilted right, as if he were listening. But he wasn't eavesdropping. He'd noticed a horse ridden many lengths out from the herd. Ace sucked in a long draught of air, analyzing it for the horse's scent.

The other horse was a huge bay. He moved at a walk, but his ears pricked forward with eagerness. He'd come a long way from the neglected animal with a tangled mane and bleeding poll who'd almost been sold for pet food, but Sam recognized him.

“Tinkerbell!” Sam gasped, then turned Ace toward the giant horse.

On the first day she'd seen Tinkerbell, he'd acted clumsy and ashamed of his size. The men handling him had called him a “big oaf” as they unloaded him from a too-small trailer. None of the tack at River Bend had fit him, and even when Sam had led him into the biggest box stall in the barn, he'd filled it up.

But those days were over. Grooming, good food, and gentle care had helped, but when Tinkerbell had shown Sam that jumping was what he was meant to
do, everything had changed. Now the gelding moved at a rocking canter. He looked proud as a circus horse circling the center ring in the big top.

“Katie!” Sam called out to his rider.

Katie Sterling always dressed in the practical clothes of a working horsewoman, yet she managed to look like a fashion model. Sterling Stables was known for its select Morgan performance horses, but Katie's knowledge of all things equine was practically famous. Sam wished she could tell Katie about the mare on the mountain.

But there was no time. As Sam looked over the heads of the massed cattle, she saw that Jen's tan cowgirl hat had almost reached the rear of the herd.

Sam gave a quick wave at Katie and rode on.

At the back of the herd, Hal rode with a group of men. Sam recognized most of them, including Linc Slocum, Duke Fairchild, and Mr. Martinez.

Duke Fairchild's mount was an iron-gray Quarter Horse, and Mr. Martinez rode Teddy Bear, the part–Bashkir Curly gelding who'd been schooled for him by Jake and Dad. But Linc wasn't astride his palomino, Champ.

For a minute Sam wondered where the sedate dun Linc rode had come from. Then she noticed the black-and-teal halter the horse wore under his bridle and remembered that Hal Ryden required all inexperienced riders to ride his horses.

Ouch
, Sam thought. Linc Slocum wanted everyone
to think of him as a true Westerner, but a member of Ryden Rodeo Productions had determined that Linc wasn't a skilled enough horseman to ride his own horse.

If Linc was embarrassed, though, you'd never guess it from the way he was acting. He leaned back in the saddle as if it were a recliner in front of a television. His grip on the reins was the only thing keeping him from falling back over his horse's rump.

“Why, I guess I am somethin' of a newcomer,” Linc was saying to Duke Fairchild. “But I swear I've been out here, horseback riding across this great land of ours so often, I know all the lizards by their first names!”

Caught up in his performance, Linc probably didn't notice the dun's gaping mouth as he fought the bit's pull.

Someone had to say something. Sam remembered playing in the tack room as a child, putting a bit in her mouth and holding it there so that she could feel the cold weight of it. How old had she been? She couldn't remember that—just that it hadn't been so bad until she'd asked Jake to tug on the reins so she could see how it felt. Maybe he'd been a little too enthusiastic at the task, because even now, she recalled the gagging sensation and the ache, as if her jaw joint was parting from her skull.

Enough
, Sam thought, but Hal Ryden acted more quickly than she did.

Urging his black gelding forward, Hal reined in beside Linc and winked at him.

“Ease up a little bit there, partner,” he said. “That pony's used to loose cow horse reins.”

Thank goodness,
Sam thought. And she hadn't said a word—so why was Linc giving her a glare?

Just because she was a witness to his embarrassment? That didn't make any sense, especially when he was riding with people he'd consider a lot more important. Duke Fairchild's auction yard had made him affluent, according to Dad, and Mr. Martinez was a bank officer in Darton. He collected exotic horses, just like Linc did. Of course, he actually rode them, while Linc just boasted he possessed rare animals, like his imported Shetland ponies.

Maybe Linc thought he'd cemented their good opinion of him when he'd earned a place on the rodeo association board. Sam would bet he was wrong.

“Everything okay, girls?” Hal called, spotting Sam and Jen before they reached him.

They were nodding, ready to tell him all about the mare, when he gestured them back toward the herd.

“Go where you're needed, then,” he said. “And keep your eyes open.”

Sam and Jen looked at each other and gave faint shrugs. Before each could return to her side of the herd, Linc echoed, “Yeah, you'd best keep your eyes open, little ladies. Everythin' out here bites,
scratches, or spits. And I'm not just talkin' about the cowboys!”

Ace bolted and Sam let him go. She heard the sandy soil churn under his hooves and knew her quick departure was bad manners, but if Ace was too smart to stick around when Linc started running his mouth, shouldn't she be, too?

As Ace fell in beside the herd, Sam smiled. She'd missed the spring cattle drive this year because she'd had to stay home with Dark Sunshine, who had been about to give birth. It had been a good choice, because she'd been the only one there when Tempest was born, but now she realized how much she loved the steady, even pace of the cattle and their individual personalities.

There, walking against the tide of the other animals, a tender mother cow lowed in her own special voice, calling to her calf. Sam and Ace passed another mother, summoning her baby with a trumpeting sound that might have been an elephant's. A third sounded just like the air horn her friend Pam's mom had taken to basketball games at her old middle school. The babies sounded more alike, making a chorus of
maaa
sounds.

Responding to some sign Sam didn't recognize, half the herd stopped.

White-faced calves nursed.

Up ahead, the rest of the herd moved more
slowly. Now was the time she should ride back up to the front, Sam thought, but she had to stay and watch this peaceful moment. When things were this still, you could hear the buzzing of a few flies and the whisking of tiny tails.

Sam expected the calves to nap after they'd filled their tummies. Instead, they broke into a frisky, heel-swiveling stampede.

“Psycho time,” said one of the dudes, but the burst of energy faded quickly.

Five minutes later, all the babies were walking drowsily beside their mothers.

During this lull, Sam suddenly remembered something that eased her worry over Jake.

This morning as they'd been driving toward Pinion Pine camp, Jake had thought he'd heard a siren.

Sirens on the range were rare. That's why Jake hadn't even been certain he'd heard one. The sound of a coyote or calling bird would have been more likely. But Jake's senses were acute, trained to help him as a tracker.

She'd bet he'd been right about the siren. And if he was, it must have been Sheriff Ballard's car going to the accident even before Jake had dropped them off.

The trail started downhill. There was no sign of the chocolate-brown mare, but far in the distance, a field of lupine looked like a purple cloud.

Jake was safe. She just knew it.

“Oh yeah,” Sam said, spinning the ends of her reins in delight.

Spotting the blur of reins from the corner of his eye, Ace shied.

“I'm sure you're terrified,” she teased the horse.

Feeling her elation, the little mustang lowered his head and gave a crow-hopping buck.