Secret Star (6 page)

“Rules?” Inez said.

Though Sam was eager to see the demonstration of hatred Inez had promised them, she explained, “Lots of the time stallions kill the foals of their rivals.”

“That's right,” Inez said, nodding. “I've read about that. I guess she can't take a chance. I wouldn't.”

For the first time since his arrival, Bayfire struck out in a showy gait, performing for Dark Sunshine.

“Look at that,” Sam said. “He looks better to me.” When Inez didn't smile, Sam asked, “Does he to you?”

“For the moment,” Inez said.

They watched as the stallion quit parading and lowered himself to the ground. He rolled, kicking his strong legs while showing his vulnerable belly. Finally he stood, shook, and blew breath through his lips.

“Now watch,” Inez said. She touched her index finger to her temple and though the stallion clearly saw her, he turned away.

“Bayfire,” she said, then touched her temple again.

He walked toward her stiff-legged, begrudging each step. Still, he obeyed.

When he was within six feet of the fence, his robot walk changed. His brown eyes rolled white,
like a shark about to attack, and then he came straight at Inez, mouth agape, teeth aimed to rip her flesh.

He slammed into the board fence with such force, Sam wondered if it would hold. It wouldn't have if Pepper and Ross hadn't just renailed it.

In just a few seconds, though, the attack ended. The stallion trotted away, shaking his black mane.

“I don't think it's you,” Sam started.

Inez pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, then dropped them and glared at Sam. “What?” she demanded. “Do you think he was after the fence?”

“No, but—”

“I think Sam's right,” Jake said.

“Then I'm afraid neither of you can help me. Whatever's wrong is between me and this horse,” Inez said, and her voice held both irritation and regret.

“He's charging you all right, but if I went out to—well, watch this,” Jake said. He hurried back to the barn, snatched up the first lead rope he came to, and approached the pasture.

“Don't go in there,” Inez warned.

“I won't have to. Watch.” Jake climbed to the second rung on the fence and leaned forward, dangling the lead rope. “Gonna getcha,” Jake said playfully. Bayfire wheeled, arched his neck, pranced in a fiercely threatening manner, then bolted toward Jake.

Once more, his eyes rolled white and his black
edged ears, so like Ace's until now, flattened against his head. This time, he swerved before he struck the fence.

“So what have you proven? That he hates everybody?” Inez demanded.

“I don't think so,” Sam said. “Maybe he hates leaving the pasture, and he's doing whatever it takes to make you let him stay.”

Sam's words sounded so hollow, Inez didn't answer. Clearly, she hadn't shown Sam and Jake what she'd hoped to.

“All done,” Inez said, flashing a sign to the stallion. Though she used words, she spoke as she would to a deaf person, depending on quick-fingered signals as much as words.

“Are you okay with leaving him out there while we eat?” Jake asked.

“I'm willing to do that, even though I shouldn't. Bayfire is a very intelligent horse and he's thinking about what earned him the right to do what he wants,” Inez said.

The stallion looked cocky as he paced the perimeter of his new corral. He sniffed the top edges of the fence boards, then a patch of dry grass. In between, he stopped and tossed his forelock back from eyes that flashed a challenging glare.

The trainer was right. Bayfire's equine brain was used to learning. They'd just taught him if he acted vicious, he'd get his way.

“But when we return later,” Inez said, “I'll need your help. Both of you.”

“No problem,” Sam said. “We should have lots of daylight left.”

As they walked toward the house, Jake stopped at the pump to wash up.

“Give you two more room at the sink,” he said.

Sam wasn't sure she wanted Jake to lag behind. She could feel Inez watching her, not as if she'd done something wrong, but as if she was wondering if Sam could be trusted.

“I know on a ranch you have a different relationship with animals than I do, but they still have to behave and bend themselves to what you require of them—perhaps cutting a calf out from a herd and putting you in position to rope it. If your Ace refused—”

“He has,” Sam said, “and we've worked through it.”

“But he's never charged you like that.”

“No, Ace hasn't, but I think that's a stallion thing.” Sam swallowed and looked toward the Calico Mountains. “There's this mustang called the Phantom…”

“Maxine told me you had a favorite colt that went feral.”

Sam nodded. “Sometimes I'm still lucky enough to see him. And three times, when he's been under incredible stress, he's charged me like that.” Sam stopped to take a breath, then said, “It's pretty scary.”

“I've got to say, you don't seem as intimidated by it as I am,” Inez said.

“It's a mock charge,” Sam explained, feeling like an expert. “Wild stallions do it to weed out challengers who aren't worthy. When the young males are driven out of their home herds, it's one of the things they practice in their bachelor herds, and—”

“A mock charge,” Inez interrupted. “If only it were.”

They were almost at the house when Inez glanced back to see if Jake was still at the pump. He was.

Then, as Sam watched, Inez Garcia unbuttoned a button at her neck and lowered her white blouse to show Sam the top of her shoulder.

Black and purple bruising covered the top of the woman's arm, from back to front.

“He grabbed me with his mouth, lifted me from the ground, and shook me,” Inez said quietly. “Samantha, there was nothing ‘mock' about it.”

A
s Inez hurriedly adjusted her collar and smoothed her blouse back into place, Sam thought about the discolored flesh around the horse bite. Bayfire had inflicted that bite with crushing power. It was no nip and no accident. He'd lifted Inez off her feet.

“I see what you mean,” Sam said. “He meant that bite.”

“That's why I was sure something must be hurting him. I have been with this horse every day of his life for five years and he's never harmed me, not intentionally. My friendship with him was as strong as that with my best friend, with family! But something has changed.”

The bump-bump of tires crossing the bridge made them both turn. As they did, they noticed Jake had left the pump. He was just a few steps behind them, giving a wave to the approaching car.

“Here's Mom,” Jake said.

Since she had no advice to offer Inez, Sam was relieved when Mrs. Ely drove into the ranch yard, parked her Honda, and hurried over to hug Inez.

“It's so good to see you!”

Both women spoke in unison, then laughed and fell to chattering with such speed, Sam couldn't follow the conversation. Since it really wasn't her conversation to follow in the first place, Sam went inside and left Jake standing there, hands in his pockets, unsure what to do next.

“I was wondering when you'd come lend a hand,” Gram said.

Though Gram was teasing, Sam hurried to help, setting the table with silverware and heavy pumpkin-colored napkins. Sam shuddered. The pumpkin-colored linen made her think of autumn, even though it was still summer outside.

In two weeks she'd be back in school. She liked school and was looking forward to seeing her friends, but why did she have to let go of summer?

She'd carried a huge wooden bowl of green salad to the table and poured glasses of milk or iced tea for everyone by the time Jake came in and stood fidgeting near the door.

When Brynna and Dad came downstairs, Gram said, “It's about time.”

The screen door creaked as Jake leaned out to call, “Mom, they're ready to eat.” Jake's mother and her friend crossed the porch with hurrying steps and Sam was amazed to hear Mrs. Ely giggling like a girl.

Gram put a cold platter lined with ruffled lettuce and layered with sliced ham and Swiss and cheddar cheeses on the table. She asked Jake to bring over a basket of bread she'd sliced off the morning's loaves, and a blue ceramic bowl full of pasta salad.

Sam looked at the table with approval. Almost.

It would have been a perfect summer dinner except for the sliced and steamed zucchini Gram had mixed with tomatoes from her garden.

Sam tried not to shudder. Plenty of times, she'd been told that she was too old to feel revolted by certain foods, but she hated cooked zucchini with tomatoes. Yuck.

And she knew exactly what she'd be told to do if she complained: take just a little.

While the adults talked about work, about the differences between city and ranch life and what Mrs. Ely and Inez had been doing since they saw each other last, Sam watched Jake. He'd taken lots of vegetables.

Quit acting like a baby, Sam told herself. At least the zucchini and tomatoes were sprinkled with toasted almonds. Using the silver serving spoon like a
cutting horse, she tried to navigate around the zucchini and cooked tomatoes and take a scoop that was mostly almonds.

She looked up when Inez mentioned that after three years teaching eighth grade science, she'd taken on a job as nurse's aide, too.

“We only had a school nurse three half days each week,” she explained, “so a couple of us teachers took up the slack. Mostly I was called on to diagnose sniffles and flu for kids who should've stayed home. And there were a few fakers, too, who showed up in the nurse's office to dodge quizzes and tests.

“For big excitement, there was the occasional P. E. injury. Dislocated fingers from basketball, bloody noses from slamming face first into the wrestling mat, twisted ankles from soccer, and a few broken bones from general fooling around. Actually, it was kind of fun.”

“And yet you quit,” Maxine Ely said. She didn't sound critical, Sam thought, just amazed as she added, “I can't imagine liking any other job the way I do teaching.”

“Bayfire was born,” Inez said helplessly.

“I remember your voice when you called to tell me,” Jake's mom said. “I could tell it was love at first sight.”

“Absolutely,” Inez agreed, then turned to explain to everyone else. “Just after Bay was foaled, Dad got a call for a newborn foal to wobble around in a TV
sitcom and he asked me to take Bayfire. Everyone on the set adored him and he was a natural in front of the cameras. The screenwriter wrote him into the script for six episodes and that took us to the end of the school year.” Inez shrugged. “Dad's seventy-two and, uh, semiretired, so when he asked me to take charge of all the equines, I said yes. Since then, I've never looked back. It's the best job in the world. Most days.”

Inez didn't have to tell anyone at the table that she was worried about Bayfire. They all knew.

“What makes your horse so special?” Gram asked. “Sam and Brynna tell me he's won some awards.”

Inez considered the question for a second. “What makes him special is what's missing right now. There are lots of pretty trick horses—most of them white if they're ridden by stars—and lots of stunt horses. For those, they like bays or browns, so they can blend in and do their trick—falling is a big one in historical battle scenes—over and over again without the audience noticing it's the same horse.”

“They do that?” Sam said, and just as she asked, she realized many times when Inez began discussing Bayfire, she veered away from his problems and talked about moviemaking instead.

“They do that, and they use computer generation,” Inez said. “Usually when you see a huge battle scene with hundreds of horses, it was shot with a few dozen horses and then they're”—Inez moved her hand in a
rolling motion, still holding her sandwich—“replicated. Don't ask me exactly how.”

“Technology,” Gram said, and the way she tsked her tongue sounded slightly disapproving. “But your horse doesn't need computers to help him look good, does he?”

“Bayfire can do almost anything,” Inez said. “But actually, technology's helped movie horses. In the early days, horses were considered almost expendable.”

Expendable. Sam turned the word over in her mind, not certain what it meant. It sounded as if you could spend them like dollar bills.

“In the old cowboy movies,” Inez went on, “if they needed a horse to fall, they'd whip him into a gallop, then run him at a trip wire.”

Sam caught her breath aloud.

“That's sickening,” Brynna said. “They must have broken their legs.”

“And necks,” Jake added.

“Jake,” his mother said, with a settle-down gesture.

“You're right,” Inez confirmed. “Some horses died. I don't know if it's true, but legend says that at the end of filming the chariot races in that old movie
Ben Hur
, over a hundred horses had died or been destroyed.”

“Since then, the humane societies have stepped in, haven't they?” Brynna asked. Inez nodded.
“They're on every movie set or they notify a local vet to show up and do a check. That helps, but so does intensive training.”

“Like you've done with Bayfire?” Sam asked.

“Yes,” Inez said briefly. “And of course there are special effects, makeup, remote control animal robots, and stuffies.”

Sam realized she'd been so interested as she listened to Inez, she'd actually eaten some of the horrid vegetables. And she wasn't the only one who was fascinated. Dad leaned both forearms on the tabletop and Gram's sandwich lay half eaten on her plate. Sam wanted to kick Jake under the table and say, “See?” She wasn't the only one who wanted to know more about the movies.

“Robots I understand, but what are stuffies?” Mrs. Ely asked.

“Another Hollywood secret,” Inez said, sipping her tea.

“Please tell,” Gram encouraged her.

Inez sat back in her chair, head tilted to one side as she explained.

“Let's say the screenwriter describes a scene in which the horse has to slip on an icy trail and go hurtling down a mountainside. We might start with a stunt horse taking the fall, then cut in scenes of a life-sized stuffed model of a horse—sort of like a dummy—sliding down that hillside.” She paused to be sure everyone understood. Sam noticed that even
Jake nodded. “So, we'd intersperse frames of the real horse acting like he's struggling, with pictures of the stuffie. It can look pretty realistic.”

“Wow,” Sam said. “Will you use those for this movie?”

“Sure. Those scenes have already been shot for
The Princess and the Pauper
. Oh, they used retractable swords and jousting lances, too.”

“Retractable,” Dad said, nodding. “Well, I'll be. So, when it looks like a horse is gettin' stabbed, really the blade's goin' back into the handle of the sword. Is that it?”

“That's it,” Inez said. Her smile said she enjoyed showing off the mysteries of her business. “Add that to the convincing wounds you can make with morticians' wax and makeup and even though it's all illusion and harmless to the horses, it can look pretty realistic.”

“But you still have to train horses to do things that run counter to their instincts, like slamming into those retractable lances,” Brynna said.

“True,” Inez said. “Some won't do it, but any movie horse has to, at the very least, answer his name every time, without fail, and follow hand signals in case there are loud special effects. Everyone's safety depends on that part of his training.”

“We use lots of Quarter Horses for ranch work,” Maxine said. “Are there any particular breeds you folks use most?”

“Thinkin' of startin' a sideline in movie horses, Mom?” Jake asked, and everyone laughed at his unexpected joke.

“Of course not,” Mrs. Ely said, “but I
was
thinking of helping Grace clear the table. I guess I'll let you do that, since you've got enough energy to tease me.”

Jake didn't complain, so Sam stood and helped him, but she kept listening so she could hear Inez's answer.

“My dad's always used Arabs,” she said. “He likes to get them young, before anyone's messed them up, or breed them himself. He says Arabs will do anything once they understand what you're asking.”

“And yet Bayfire's not an Arab,” Brynna said.

“No, Bayfire was a magnificent experiment,” Inez said, but in the seconds of silence that followed, the clink of Sam clearing silverware filled the kitchen and Inez's smile faded.

“Speaking of amazing horses,” Gram said, suddenly, “Brynna and I saw some this morning in Darton.”

Sam and Jake both stopped, as if they couldn't focus enough while carrying dishes.

“The school district's trying to open a small riding therapy center,” Brynna explained.

“For kids like Gabe, who've been in accidents?” Sam asked.

“Gabe's the grandson on one of our neighbors,” Gram explained to Inez. “He was in a terrible car
accident that left his legs paralyzed. Thank goodness it wasn't permanent. Working with horses has helped him toward recovery. Now he's regaining movement in his legs—”

“Thanks to Firefly, his adopted mustang,” Sam interrupted.

“And a riding therapy program near his home in Denver,” Brynna added.

Sam welcomed the memories of Gabe and Firefly, but how could Gram and Brynna have known about this new Darton program, when she hadn't, Sam wondered. And why had they gone to check it out and left her behind?

“Actually it was Gabriel who got me interested in this,” Gram said. “And then I talked with Amelia's grandmother.”

“Amelia?” Jake's mother asked.

“One of the HARP girls,” Gram explained. “Her grandmother wanted to buy Ace and donate him to a therapy program. It seems he's just the sort of horse they look for—bomb-proof is what they call them.”

“That pony still has a few tricks,” Dad said dubiously.

“
He
does, yes,” Gram said. She tucked a strand of silvery hair back in her bun, and her eyes took on a determined look that made Sam a little worried.

“The Darton program will be for children with a variety of problems,” Brynna explained. Sam couldn't help noticing her stepmother was looking
at everyone except her. “Sadly, most of the conditions are longer lasting than Gabe's. But the horses seem to help with things like trunk control”—Brynna demonstrated by placing her hands on her rib cage and moving side to side as she might on a gentle horse—“cerebral palsy, things like that. The horses not only teach balance, but riders have to remember the process of putting on a helmet, how to put their feet in the stirrups, how to hold the reins—things like that.”

Suspicious chills covered Sam's arms with goose bumps.

This was an awful lot of detail for Brynna to know without a purpose. And she couldn't be thinking about donating newly captured mustangs for this. That just wouldn't work.

When had Gram talked with Amelia's grandmother? And why?

Sam glanced at Dad in time to see his sad expression.

“What sorts of horses do they use?” Inez asked.

“Kind, understanding horses,” Gram said. “They have to be gentle with a rider who sometimes can't stay upright without volunteers walking on each side of the horse.”

“In fact…” Brynna started, watching Gram as if she should finish the sentence.

Here it comes,
Sam thought.

“In fact, I volunteered. Starting in September, I'll
be helping there two days each week.”

Was that all? Gram was going to help out in the riding therapy program?