Scarecrow on Horseback (12 page)

Chapter
Twelve

Whatever Jeb's idea for her had been the
night he took Mel down to see the mustangs remained a mystery. He
said nothing in the next week, and she was too proud to pester him.
Instead, she spent the early morning hours helping Sally. Later in
the day, she hitched a ride down the mountain to watch the mustangs
in Jeffries' field. Some guest or staff member was always heading
to town to pick up supplies. After a couple of hours of hanging
around the pasture, she'd start walking home. If no one she knew
stopped to give her a ride, Mel hiked the whole way back to the
ranch. As she told her mother, who wanted to know why she so
frequently missed lunch or was late to dinner, a five-mile hike up
a mountain was good exercise.

Her spirits rose so high, Mel even wrote an
e-mail for her mother to send to Tanya.

“So what's new with you? The big excitement
around here is there's three wild horses down the road. The one I
like best has a look in his eye like he's someone I could get to
know.”

Maybe Tanya would think I’m crazy to say
that
, Mel thought, but she asked her mom to send the message
anyway.

Denise understood. On the first Saturday
Denise rode Lily down to meet Mel at Jeffries' field to watch the
mustangs, Denise told Mel the story she'd read about a boy who had
tamed one.

“You could do that, Mel. I bet you'd get
those horses tamed in no time.”

Mel laughed. “Nobody's asking me to even get
near them,” Mel said.

“But you'd like to, wouldn't you?” Denise
guessed.

“Yes, more than anything,” Mel said. The
daydream of taming the mustangs had been running unbidden through
her head since the first night when Jeb had brought her down to see
them.

“That paint's pretty, isn't he?” Denise said.
“Which one do you like best?'

“That one.” Mel nodded at the mahogany
colored horse that was watching them, head up, ears at alert.

“I don't know,” Denise said. “He looks like a
fighter.”

“He's big and strong, and that's what I
need.”

“I'll wish for you that you get him.”

“Probably better for him if I don't,” Mel
replied.

“You think you're jinxed, but you're not,”
Denise said. “You've just had a long run of bad luck.”

“Too long,” Mel said.

“Well, it's going to change.” Denise sounded
as positive as if she had the power to make it happen. Mel only
wished her friend did.

For the first week and a half that Mel hung
out at Jeffries' pasture, she didn't see him or any other human.
But the mahogany colored horse became accustomed to finding her at
the same place along the fence every day. His head would come up.
Slowly, he'd drift away from his companions and walk toward her. At
first, he stopped to graze fifty feet, thirty feet, twenty feet
away. When he finally got within earshot, she began talking to him,
making her voice purr and rumble. She told him all kinds of
things—that he was beautiful, that she wished she had a horse like
him. She warned him not to eat anything poisonous like ragwort or
viburnum or yew—plants she'd come across in a book on horses she'd
found in the ranch's library.

“I don't know what the yellow and white
flowers in this field are,” she said. “Did you have the same kind
where they caught you? I bet you could run for miles and miles
there on the plains. You must feel like you're in jail in this
pasture. But you don't act too unhappy. You must be bored though
because you wouldn't be so curious about me if you weren't.” She
waved her arms at him to see his reaction, and his ears stiffened
on alert. Head up, he watched to see what she'd do next.

She leaned against the fence and continued
talking. “What're your buddies like? Are they good company? You
don't seem to hang around them much. Don't you fit in with the
gang? Maybe you're too smart for them. You look smart.”

She had observed that curious horses tended
to be the most intelligent. They had a brightness in their eyes
that other horses lacked. The mahogany colored horse's eyes had
that inner light. Frequently, he would jump as if something had
startled him, although she couldn't see what from where she stood.
Then he'd run, kicking up his heels. Before reaching the fence,
he'd stop and turn to gallop back the other way. Mel suspected that
he ran for the sheer joy of it, that he was just pretending to be
startled to give himself an excuse to flee.

“I think we belong together,” she told him.
“I'm kind of a loner, too. Sometimes I even want to be alone so I
can think things all the way through without getting distracted.
Thinking's hard for me, so I distract easy. Are you like that, too?
Maybe we're soul mates, you and me. What do you say?”

The mustang kept grazing, looking up to eye
her occasionally, chewing as he studied her. She wondered if he
could be as attracted to her as she was to him. The other two
horses kept their distance. Only her horse apparently found humans
interesting. At least he found her interesting.

“You could call him Cheyenne,” Denise
suggested on her visit the next Saturday. “We studied western
Indians in fifth grade, and the Cheyenne were tall and brave. They
roved the plains and were good fighters.”

“Cheyenne.” Mel liked the sound on her
tongue. “Thanks, Denise. That's who he is.”

One day Mel arrived to find Cheyenne charging
down the entire length of the field, rearing at the fence and
racing back the other way. She was thrilled by the graceful abandon
of his movements—muscles rippling, tail flying. She clapped her
hands as if he'd performed just for her, and he stopped. Just like
that in the middle of the field. He stopped and turned to face her.
She was eating an apple. She held it up for him. Then she tossed it
as far as she could toward him. He ignored it and loped away from
her, but halted to graze and circle slowly back. With his eye fixed
on her, he approached the half-eaten apple. He nudged it with his
nose, licked it, and left it. She laughed as he sauntered off as if
he couldn't care less about anything she might have to offer.

The next day on a sudden impulse, Mel slipped
under the fence. She walked as far into the field as Cheyenne had
stood the day before. Her heart began a tom-tom beat of danger. He
was a wild horse, and she was invading his territory. If he
attacked, could she run fast enough to make it back over the fence?
Not likely. But she didn't believe he could want to hurt her.

She planted herself in the field like a tree
and let the wind toy with her hair and clothes. It curled around
her cheeks and rippled the grass. A hawk sailed by dark against the
sun, rising with the currents. She watched it spiral higher,
growing smaller as it went. Meanwhile, Cheyenne stood watching her.
Mel waited patiently. It seemed like an hour before he left the
other two mustangs. He wandered her way, pretending not to notice
her standing there, although he was obviously approaching her. A
few feet from her he stopped.

“So did you eat the apple after I left? I bet
you did. Anyway, it's not here anymore so somebody ate it. I
brought you another one.” Mel held it up for him. “This one's all
yours. I didn't even take a bite yet. Want it?”

He bent and chewed some grass at his
forefeet. At least it didn't upset him that she had entered his
area. The other two horses seemed to be playing tag at the far end
of the field. The paint reared as if he was going to bite the other
horse's neck, but it ducked and ran and the paint chased it. Mel
took a deep breath and squatted, wrapping her arms around her
knees. Cheyenne snorted and widened his eyes at her.

“Wondering what I'm up to?” she asked him.
She rolled the apple out a few feet in front of her. He stepped
back and tried a patch of weeds on his other side. She waited until
her knees began to ache and the muscles in her legs cramped from
being squeezed. The wind fiddled with Cheyenne's tail, trailing
hairs out sideways and stirring the tangled mane that lay every
which way on his neck. She yearned to comb out those tangles, to
stroke his neck, to touch him.  She wanted him to feel how
much she liked him.

A butterfly landed on a flower the size of
Mel's thumbnail, a yellow butterfly on a yellow flower. Mel waited.
It took Cheyenne what seemed like forever to sidle up to that apple
and nose it. His lips lifted as he took it in his teeth. She had to
giggle. He looked so funny. His jaw moved loosely from side to side
as he chewed the apple, regarding her all the while with his large,
intelligent eyes.

A grasshopper jumped next to her. She
started, and so did Cheyenne. “It's just a bug,” she said to him.
“Or was it me that scared you? Because I moved? You don't know what
to make of me, do you?”

She talked to him until he lost interest and
stepped away from her. He began to run back toward the other two
horses, picking up speed as he went until he got to them and
scattered them. Then he planted himself in the shade of a tree that
overhung the far side of the pasture. There he turned his head to
watch her. She waited, but he didn't come again. Finally, she got
up and climbed back through the fence.

Chapter
Thirteen

“You making any progress with that mustang?”
Jeb asked her weeks after he'd first taken her down to see
Jeffries' horses.

“How do you know about me and the
mustang?”

“Everybody on the ranch knows you been
hanging out down there.”

“He's getting to know me, I think,” Mel
said.

“Well, guess what I did for you?” Jeb said.
“I asked Jeffries how much he'd take for one of those mustangs. He
said if someone was to put in the time and effort to train one,
he'd give them a fair price, maybe a few hundred.”

“Are you going to buy one?” Mel asked in
surprise.

“Not me. They're no use to me. I don't have
any spare time. How about you? You too busy to try training a wild
horse?” His grin was knowing.

She caught her breath, remembering he'd said
he had an idea. Was this it? Did he mean to help her? “But I don't
have a few hundred dollars.”

“Well, Davis says if I can get enough work
out of you, he'd advance the money.”

“Really, Jeb? Oh, really?” She couldn't help
squealing like a little kid. “That would be so great. That would be
so cool. To have my own horse—the dark brown one. His name's
Cheyenne. Oh!” She couldn't help herself. She started dancing for
joy, and Jeb threw back his head and laughed.

That night she was in the tack room under the
single hanging light bulb dutifully stacking horse blankets when
Sally came in with a saddle. “So,” he said, “you found yourself a
new buddy I hear.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jeb says you and him are like that.” Sally
held up his two fingers crossed.

“He may fix it so I can finally really get my
own horse,” she said. “But you and Denise are still my best
friends, Sally.”

“Good,” he said with a smile. “I'd feel bad
if you dumped me for a younger feller. So you want to start off
riding Rover? You need to get used to riding again.”

“Why? I don't want Cheyenne for riding, at
least not right away. I just want him. Like Mr. Jeffries bought the
mustangs, just to have them.”

Sally shook his head. “You are one strange
little girl.”

* * * *

Jeb brought her down in the ranch's pickup to
speak to Mr. Jeffries after dinner that Sunday. They were invited
into the high-ceilinged living room of the log house where they sat
down together on the Indian design cushions of the outsized couch.
Mrs. Jeffries came in with a tray of cookies, beer for the men and
soda for Mel. Mrs. Jeffries looked a lot younger than her
white-bearded husband whose blue eyes were sunk into ripples of
weathered skin. Her pants outfit showed off her trim figure, but
Mel didn't think she was as pretty as Dawn.

“No, thanks,” Mel said to the cookies and
Coke. She was too nervous to eat. It would keep her from
concentrating on what was being said, and besides, she might spill
something. While the adults chatted about this and that, Mel stared
at the finely woven Navajo rug over the stone fireplace, then at
the Indian baskets, the pottery, and what tourists called a
katchina doll on display. The Hopi, who made the dolls, said
katsina was the more correct term. Mel remembered hearing that
katsinam meant more than one. The room was like a museum. Mr.
Jeffries was telling Jeb that his wife had no interest in horses.
She was a potter who spent most of her time on the ranch in a
special room where she had her kiln, her wheel, and shelves
displaying her experiments in glazed plates and bowls. It was Mr.
Jeffries who loved the ranch.

“I get a kick out of riding around my land,
watching the mountains put on thick white winter coats, seeing
summer come on green and fuzzy,” he said. “Nothing like watching
the seasons, nothing more beautiful.”

He was very old
, Mel thought, but he
was her kind of person. “Except the mustangs are,” she said. It was
her first contribution to the conversation since they had sat
down.

“Yes, they're beautiful when they run, and
beautiful because they're still wild,” Mr. Jeffries said. “I
adopted them last year. Had to leave them on a friend's spread near
where they were auctioned off until I got around to transporting
them here. According to the Bureau of Land Management, I own them
now. Not sure anyone deserves to own wild creatures though.” He
smiled at Mel and waited as if he expected a response from her.

“But the one, the tall brown one, I think he
likes people,” she said.

“You mean, he's been showing some interest in
you, don't you?” Mr. Jeffries said with a little smile.

“Well, I watch him a lot.”