Western Star (8 page)

“T
HIS IS
M
ARSHMALLOW
,” John said, introducing Lisa to a dappled brown horse.

Lisa patted the horse’s neck and looked into his sweet, dark eyes. “I get it,” she said. “He’s the color a marshmallow is supposed to be when it’s perfectly toasted over a campfire.”

“That’s right,” John said, smiling warmly at Lisa. She felt her insides melt a little bit, like a perfectly toasted marshmallow.

As her friends had suspected, Lisa’s tack was in perfect shape. She hadn’t fooled anybody, especially not herself. She’d just wanted to spend some time in the barn with John. He was feeding the horses that were stabled indoors, and she was helping him.

“We usually have a few horses that need special care, ones that are lame or recovering from something. Those are the ones we house in the barn through the winter.”

“What’s the matter with Marshmallow?” Lisa asked.

“Nothing,” John said. “He just doesn’t like the cold. Every year, come winter, he practically knocks on our door for cover. Dad’s an old softy when it comes to sweet-natured horses like this fellow. So we let him board here until spring.”

One of the things Lisa loved about people who loved horses was the special affection they seemed to have for various horses’ peculiarities.

“I sure hope he doesn’t spread the word,” she said. “You’d have a hundred horses knocking at your door!”

“And then we’d find a way to take care of them all,” John said. Lisa knew he meant it.

Together they mucked out three stalls, gave all of the horses grain and fresh hay, and tidied up the tack room. Lisa decided that the only thing nicer than doing something for a horse was doing it with a friend like John.

When they’d finished with the indoor horses, Lisa and John hefted a couple of bales of hay out to the horses in the corral near the barn. They clipped the wires and broke the hay into flakes so the horses could feed easily.

There was a nip in the air, colder even than it had been during the morning ride. A brisk wind cut across
the meadows and seemed to go right through Lisa’s warm, fashionable jacket.

“Oh, it’s nasty out here today,” she said.

John stood up and looked at the sky. “It’s going to get worse, too,” he said. “Snow’s coming.”

Lisa looked at the clouds. They were low and threatening. They seemed to be heavy with moisture, ready to burst. John was right. Snow was coming. It was just a matter of time.

“What about the herd?” Lisa asked. “What do they do when there’s a big snowstorm?”

“They usually find some protection. Often we’ll locate the herd huddled by a hillside, away from the wind. They paw at the snow to find grass for feed. They make out, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t use a hand. Want to give them one?”

“Of course,” Lisa said. “What do we do?”

“Well, we put a dozen bales of hay in the pickup truck and we go look for the herd. You saw them earlier today, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Lisa said. “They were past Parson’s Rock, to the east.”

“Can you show me the way?”

“Of course. Can you drive?”

“Of course,” John said. “I mean, I’m not old enough to have a driver’s license, but out here in ranch country it’s common for kids like me to learn to drive early so we can
drive the ranch equipment and be helpful. Dad taught me to drive when I was twelve, before I could reach the pedals easily. I’m not allowed to drive on roads where it’s easy. I can only drive on the Bar None. Frank tested me himself. He says I’m as good as he is and he allows me to drive everywhere on the property. Why don’t you let Phyllis know where we’re going so nobody will worry about us? I’ll tell my dad, and then I’ll meet you out back in five minutes.”

Five minutes later the two of them were piling bales of hay into the back of the truck.

“What’s that?” Lisa asked, pointing to a folded-up piece of nylon.

“That’s the lean-to we’re going to put up to protect the hay from the snow. It won’t keep it perfectly safe, but if we get it in the right direction, it will at least guarantee that no matter how much it snows, the horses will be able to find the feed we’ve left for them. Ready?”

She smiled and nodded. It seemed like an adventure to be going off across the high meadows in a pickup truck with her friend John. It wasn’t just an adventure, though. It was also a rescue mission. They were doing something for the horses.

John slid in behind the wheel of the pickup and turned the ignition key, and the engine sparked to life, coughing against the cold air outside. He shifted into gear and eased the truck forward. Lisa couldn’t believe
how grown up she felt, riding high in the cab of a truck, next to John Brightstar. It was a nice truck, clean and comfortable. There was a toolbox behind the seat, a radio, and, Lisa noticed with amusement, a compass. It was hard to think that they could get lost enough on the Bar None’s land to need one. It struck her as rather quaint.

When they reached Parson’s Rock, Lisa told John to bear left. He turned as she directed, but she realized he hadn’t needed her direction. He could see the hoofprints from their early-morning ride.

“Who got turned around?” he asked, pointing to a set of prints that led to Parson’s Rock.

“Oh, that was Gary,” she explained. “He wanted to climb Parson’s Rock before dawn.”

“He’s a fool,” John said.

“Just what I thought,” said Lisa. “He told us he made it to the top and he said he’d watched the sun rise from there. But Kate says you can’t see the sun rise from there in the winter.”

“Kate’s right,” John said. “And you shouldn’t ask your horse to climb a steep trail when you’re riding bareback and it’s still dark.”

“He’s sort of a dude, isn’t he?” Lisa asked.

“Oh, you never know about the people who come here,” John said. “That couple, Mr. and Mrs. Katz—I kind of thought they were dudes, but then it turned out they are both extremely experienced riders. They’ve
both been riding for years. They know what they’re doing. You can’t judge riders by how they look or what they say, or even how long they’ve been riding. I’ve seen some excellent beginners who just—I don’t know—they
get
it. I’ve also seen people who have been riding for years who never learned a darn thing. What it comes down to is, the only reliable way you can judge riders is by how they ride.”

“Gary rides pretty well,” Lisa said, recalling his style. “Maybe he’s better than we think.”

“And maybe he’s just good at pretending,” John said.

“Look! There they are!” Lisa said, pointing straight ahead. The herd had shifted its position only slightly from where they’d been at dawn. They’d moved closer to the hill. It was as if they knew bad weather was coming and they wanted shelter from the storm.

“Do they actually know what direction the snow will come from?” Lisa asked, looking up at the sky to see if she could tell.

“Probably,” John said. “I try not to make the mistake of underestimating a horse’s instincts. Here. This is where we can put up the lean-to.”

He drew the pickup to a halt and climbed down out of the cab. The first thing out of the back was the tent material. It was a simple enough structure, barely more than a single sheet to protect the herd’s emergency feed.
Lisa and John worked together to pound in the stakes and secure the nylon.

“This isn’t exactly a weathertight shelter,” Lisa said.

“Doesn’t have to be,” John said, tossing his mallet and the extra rope into the back of the pickup. “It just has to keep a small area more or less free from snow.”

At that moment, as if John’s words had invited it, the snow began. In Lisa’s experience, snow started slowly. At first just a few flakes would fall, then, within fifteen or twenty minutes, there might be noticeable flakes drifting down from the sky. After half an hour, even the casual observer would see that it was snowing.

That wasn’t the case this time. The first flake of snow was accompanied by fifty million exactly like it. One moment it wasn’t snowing. The next it was snowing hard. Lisa looked up and across the meadow. She could see the herd of horses lifting their heads to the snow and then turning away. Here a tail flicked. There a horse shook his head. They drew toward one another. And then Lisa realized she couldn’t see them all. A few of them were completely lost from sight in the blur of snow.

“We’d better hurry,” John said.

They pulled the bales out of the back of the truck, snapped the wires, and broke the bales into flakes. They worked together efficiently and were done within a few minutes. When Lisa climbed back into the cab of the
truck, she was surprised to see that she was covered with snow. She brushed it off and turned up the heater.

John slid into the seat next to her and shifted the truck into gear. There was a haste to the way he did it that startled Lisa. She realized that he was hurrying because he was afraid.

“Is this a whiteout?” she asked.

“Not yet,” John said ominously. He flicked on the headlights and wipers and turned the truck around. Lisa squinted through the blur that was the world beyond the windshield. All the landmarks had disappeared in whiteness. She could no longer see horses, trees, or outcroppings of rocks. She couldn’t even see which part of the sky the sun was in. She could barely make out the tracks on the ground in front of them that the truck had laid not fifteen minutes earlier on the way out. That would be how they would find their way home—as long as they weren’t filled in by new snow.

Suddenly the truck tracks veered to the right. They had come to the point where they’d turned by Parson’s Rock. John followed the track. As he turned, Lisa noticed the compass on the dashboard shifting positions. They were now going due north. She knew it was a straight path to the Bar None. It was a comforting feeling, and then Lisa remembered how she’d been amused by the compass only half an hour earlier. She’d learned a lot in half an hour.

John held the steering wheel tightly and stared straight ahead. Every once in a while there would be an ever-so-slight break in the sea of white and he could find a landmark. He talked as if to himself.

“Yes … there’s that tree. And the rut. Where’s the rut? Do you see?… There it is.”

Lisa stared at the blur. She couldn’t help, and that frustrated her. Then there was a small flash of light behind them. She saw it in the side mirror outside her window. It was a white light, so it couldn’t be their own taillights, but she didn’t see it again. It was gone. She lowered her window, listening. For a brief instant she thought she heard a horse. She called out. No answer.

She shook her head, trying to clear her ears. Nothing. Nobody was there. The light had been her imagination. After all, who could be out in a storm like this?

They drove on, inching forward at a rate slower than a walk. There was an intimate silence between them. It was as if the world had suddenly become immeasurably smaller. Nothing seemed to exist beyond the three feet that they could see in front of the truck; and when they passed that three feet, there was another three feet—an endless progression of tiny little worlds. Lisa watched the compass. North, it said. They were going home.

Something moved in the white darkness in front of them. John stopped the truck and peered ahead. It moved again. There was a swishing; then it disappeared.
John waited. Then a large, dark figure came into the truck’s lights. It was a horse with a rider. The swishing had been the horse’s tail flicking nervously.

John rolled down his window. “Hello!” he called into the dim whiteness.

“John, is that you?” It was Frank Devine. He rode to the truck’s window and peered in. “Lisa?” She nodded.

“Wow! Are you okay?” John asked Frank.

“Now that you’re here, I am,” Frank said. “Hold up a bit, let me come in with you.”

Frank rode to the back of the truck and used his rope to make a lead for the horse. He tied it to the back of the pickup. In short order he slid into the seat next to Lisa.

“In all my years, I’ve never seen a storm come up that fast,” he said.

“It’s a good thing we spotted you,” Lisa said. “I think two people could be five feet apart in this and never see each other. You know, I think I saw your flashlight a few minutes ago. I should have said something then.”

“Not me,” Frank said. “I’m not carrying a flashlight.”

Lisa thought that was odd, but she knew that the constant motion of the flakes could have made her think she’d seen a light. At least they had Frank warm and safe with them now. They were together. They’d find their way back to the ranch.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Frank asked.

“North,” said John. “We took some hay out to the
horse herd and the storm came up as we were headed back. We knew we were on the right path when we got to Parson’s Rock. We made the turn and I checked the direction right before the road totally disappeared. Since then I’ve been following as straight a line as I could, due north. I think we’re about a half mile away from the Bar None.”

“Sounds about right to me,” Frank said. “I thought I was going north, too, and you came up behind me. Let’s just hope that two great minds won’t be wrong.”

John looked at the compass for reassurance and began proceeding again, very slowly. When he was satisfied with the truck’s speed and direction, he spoke.

“Excuse me, sir, but what on earth were you doing out here by yourself in this storm?”

“I didn’t come out in the storm, John, any more than you two did. I came out to mend the fence and examine the problem myself. I thought I’d be home in plenty of time before the storm began. But I had something of a surprise.”

“You mean the snow?” Lisa asked.

“Well, I guess I mean I had two surprises. I took a look at the breaks in the fence. They weren’t accidents. Somebody used a saw and a pair of wire clippers on our fence.”

“Why would somebody do that?” Lisa asked.

“I intend to find out,” Frank said. “As soon as we get home.”

“I’m trying, sir,” John assured him.

Lisa blinked. A huge, dark shape loomed directly ahead. She couldn’t make it out, she just knew it was there. And then she knew what it was.

“The barn!” she declared.