More Than a Horse Read online

  "Well, he should have a helmet," Leeann said.

  "Oh, right." Mrs. Childs made Joy dismount and go to the barn to get one. Leeann wondered why Joy couldn't be the second sidewalker and do her own riding after Joey was finished. But since neither Joy nor her mother seemed to think of that, she decided it wasn't her business to suggest it.

  "Can you sit straight in the saddle so you won't slide off, Joey?" Leeann asked as Joey leaned sideways to look ahead of Sassy.

  Joey tried, but his cheeks were flushed with excitement and his wide-set eyes were wild. Sassy patiently stood still as if he understood the instability of his rider. When Joy had delivered the helmet and her brother had it on, Leeann led Sassy around the ring. Joey chortled and squealed. His mother had to struggle to keep him upright in the saddle.

  "Again?" Leeann asked Joey when they'd returned to where they'd started.

  "Leeann," Joy protested. "He had his ride. Come on. Ride with me."

  "Again. Again," Joey said.

  "One more time," Mrs. Childs said. "You'll get your turn, Joy."

  Leeann blocked out Joy's complaints and busied herself reminding Joey how to hold the reins. "Don't pull on them or you'll hurt Sassy's mouth," she said.

  Immediately, Joey clutched the reins to his chest, looking scared. "I hurt horsey?" he asked after they'd circled the ring again.

  "No, you were a good boy, Joey."

  "Come on, Leeann. Let's go," Joy called impatiently. She was waiting at the corral gate.

  Suddenly Joey's face changed and he looked ready to cry. "Down," he said. "Down, down, down."

  He slumped off the horse, not listening to Leeann, who was trying to teach him how to dismount onto the block. "He didn't sleep a lot last night. And anyway he gets tired really fast," Mrs. Childs explained. She caught him as he tumbled onto the mounting block. "Thanks, Leeann," she said. "You gave him a real treat."

  She took Joey into the house. Leeann adjusted the stirrups back to suit herself and mounted Sassy. "Okay, I'm ready," she told Joy.

  They walked their horses to the edge of a dry river wash, the rocky banks of which were studded with bushes and occasional palo verde trees, green even to their trunks and branches. Joy said when the seasonal rains filled it, the river ran through the middle of the Childses' forty-acre property.

  "We can run the horses full out here," she said. "How about it?"

  Leeann grinned. "Sounds good to me." They sat back in their saddles and let the horses pick their way down the steep bank to the flat wash, which made a wide road of pale sand. "I'll race you to those big white tree trunks down there." Leeann pointed toward a bend in the river a quarter of a mile away.

  "The sycamores? Fine. Let's go!" Joy said. She kicked Dancer and screamed when the horse reared up, but she kept her seat and Dancer took off at a wild gallop.

  It was the stuff of Leeann's dreams She leaned forward in the saddle and loosened the reins some. Without any further encouragement, Sassy took off after Dancer at a controlled canter that felt smooth as riding a magic carpet. What a horse Sassy was! Leeann's grin nearly jumped off her face. She'd never been happier.

  "Whoa, ho up, ho," Joy was yelling at Dancer as she tugged on the reins to slow him. Dancer tossed his head as if he wanted to rip the reins from Joy's hands. When Sassy drew alongside him, Leeann pulled Sassy back into a trot and Dancer slowed to keep pace. The two animals stepped along smartly side by side.

  "Boy, did he scare me!" Joy said. "I thought he was going to run away with me. It's a good thing you were here, Leeann."

  The two horses were bumping against each other companionably now and walking along like old friends.

  "This is so wonderful. This is the best," Leeann exulted.

  "Even though it's just you and me and Zach's not here?" Joy teased.

  "It couldn't be better," Leeann said.

  "But you like Zach a lot, don't you?" Joy asked.

  "Sure. He's a nice kid."

  "I'm glad. You know, he used to like Kristen, but she never liked him back. So it's just Alan and me and it feels kind of weird being the only couple in our class. It's nice that there'll be you and Zach, too."

  "Joy," Leeann said, "don't plan on anything."

  "Why not? You said you like him and he's obviously crazy about you."

  Leeann sighed. As they turned the horses around and headed them back, she told Joy about her mother's job offer.

  "Tell her not to take it," Joy urged. "Leeann, you tell her you'll die if you leave here now. You can't go. What would happen to the Therapeutic Riding Program?"

  "Your mother will keep it going just fine without me. Don't worry."

  "But Joey would miss you, and so would I. Maybe you don't believe me because you haven't been here that long, but you fit. You really fit here, Leeann. You know what I mean?"

  Tears stung Leeann's eyes. "Yes, I know," she said. Joy had said it just right. She fit. She fit perfectly in this place.

  "Did you tell Zach?" Joy asked.

  Sassy stumbled and Leeann pulled up on her reins. "No. And don't you. Don't tell anyone, Joy. I'm not sure we're going yet anyway."

  "But you think your mother wants to go?"

  "Probably."

  "That rots. Poor Zach. Poor everybody. That really rots." They had come to soft ground, and Joy led them up a gully in the riverbank onto the cactus-studded desert.

  "Zach's really a lot nicer than Alan," Joy mused after she'd wearied of lamenting the possibility of Leeann's leaving. "You know what Alan did to me?"

  "No, what?" Leeann was relieved to stop talking about herself and settle into listening, which was the role she was most comfortable playing in her relationships with other kids. Joy unwound an endless story about how Alan had invited her to his house and then forgotten she was coming and gone somewhere else. "I was so embarrassed. I had to tell his mother he'd asked me to come, and then I had to go back to the car and tell my mother he wasn't there. He's really going to have to crawl to make me forgive him for this one," Joy said.

  I like her, Leeann thought in the midst of her listening daze. True, Joy was a little spoiled and self-centered, but she was lively and goodhearted. Were there any friends left in Charlotte she had liked better? No, Leeann realized. Not one.

  Dancer spooked as a roadrunner dashed in front of him. The tall, stiff bird disappeared behind a thorny bush, but Dancer had reared up and Joy was nearly unseated. "Down, boy," she ordered shrilly. "Down, Dancer."

  The palomino took off at a canter back toward the river. Leeann turned Sassy and kicked him into a gallop that cut across Joy's path so as to Keep her and her horse from getting hurt crashing down the riverbank. Sassy snorted and stopped sideways to the edge. Dancer braked to a stop just short of banging into him.

  "Whew!" Joy said when she'd resettled herself on the saddle. "That was scary. You saved my neck, Leeann."

  "Sassy did. He did that like a cow pony, didn't he?"

  "Yeah, you've got a smart horse there."

  "Sassy's not my horse," Leeann said soberly.

  "I know. I mean..." Joy sounded embarrassed. "Oh, Leeann, you can't leave us."

  Leeann bent over Sassy's neck and buried her face in the coarse black mane. She wasn't one to cry, but she felt close to tears now. How could everything so right be so close to going wrong?

  That night in bed Leeann looked out at the sliver of lemon moon and tried thinking about how it had been in Charlotte. She flashed on a memory of a sleepover with the two good friends who'd moved away. They'd practiced kissing and told each other their secrets and stayed awake so long they'd watched the dawn come up. If it could only be like that again, she wouldn't mind so much having her mother take that partnership Lydia had offered. After all, she'd spent some really happy years in Charlotte. Only now her happiness lay here.

  The horse project group worked hard in class Monday. Each had written between five and ten pages on his or her subject. That is, except for Alan, who had filled up his pages with a few very brief parag
raphs about his sisters' horses and a lot of clever pen sketches of his sisters on their mounts. Leeann had had so much to say about Sassy's escapades that she'd had to cut some of it to keep to the ten-page maximum Ms. Morabita had decided to impose.

  Joy asked if Leeann would bring her camera over that afternoon to take pictures of her riding Dancer to use for the project report. She invited Kristen, too.

  "I can't come," Kristen said. "I have to go visit sick people in the nursing home with my mother and grandmother." She wrinkled her nose as if she wasn't looking forward to it.

  That afternoon, Joey was much more relaxed when Leeann put him on Sassy for a brief ride. It was his third riding experience.

  Mrs. Childs said to Leeann, "You know, at Joey's school, there's so much interest in our therapeutic riding sessions that I had to put people on a waiting list. Too bad we can't get Amos and his wranglers to help us so we could have a bigger group."

  "Maybe if you talk to Mr. Holden, Amos could be persuaded." Leeann remembered that Amos had given her good advice about putting Sassy in the barn, although lately Sassy had been around anyway when he was needed. Still, the advice had been positive, the first positive thing Amos had ever said to her.

  The therapeutic riding session went well that Thursday. Brent wouldn't brush his horse, but he took the reins and turned the horse left and right as his sidewalkers suggested. "You're a regular jockey," Kristen told him. "Now what you have to do is tell the horse when you want to stop, Brent. You can say, 'ho,' can't you? It's such a little word. Just 'ho.' Say it, Brent. Come on, say it for me."

  Joey was yelling "ho" every other minute. Sassy would come to a halt and Joey would laugh as if it tickled him to have the big animal obey him.

  Alan actually coaxed Barbara onto the gray horse this session, although she somehow ended up sitting backward in the saddle and Alan and Zach had a hard time getting her turned around one leg at a time. It was funny to watch the two boys encouraging Barbara to move. All three of them were so awkward and earnest at the same time.

  Zach had been subdued all week. Leeann kept waiting for him to tell her what was wrong, but he didn't. He did ask her if they could try to go see the petroglyphs next Saturday and she had agreed. Maybe when they were alone he would share his problem, whatever it was. She might be ready to share her news with him by then as well.

  On Friday Zach told the lunch group that he had a great idea. "Why don't we put on a rodeo with the kids?"

  "A rodeo?" Joy said. "Zach, they're not exactly expert riders yet."

  "A rodeo that fits what they can do," Zach persisted.

  "Like?" Leeann asked.

  "Oh, like that exercise Joy's mother was telling us about where they pick up a ring and carry it on horseback to someplace else and put it down. That could be one event. And leading the horse around a barrel could be another."

  "And just sitting right in the saddle all the way around the ring, that could get them points," Kristen said with immediate enthusiasm.

  "And everybody wins," Leeann said. She nodded. "That is a great idea, Zach. Let's do it."

  Mrs. Childs said the parents on her waiting list would want to attend the rodeo, and all the interest might help persuade Mr. Holden to go into the program in a bigger way. The rodeo was set for the last Thursday of the month.

  Friday evening Leeann was eagerly telling her mother how she expected Joey to shine when Rose said, "I guess we could wait until after the rodeo to leave."

  "To leave?" Leeann went into shock.

  "Honey?" Rose looked startled. "You knew we were going, didn't you?"

  "No. How would I know? You didn't say anything. I thought you were still thinking about it."

  "But Leeann." Rose bit her lip. "You realize I don't have any choice. We don't have any choice. I've got to make a living for us, and I can't depend on making it here. You knew that, honey. Didn't you?"

  "But couldn't you wait a while? I mean, at least until they shut down Lost River Ranch for the summer. Then school would be over and I wouldn't have to change in the middle again. Couldn't we stay just until then?"

  "The thing is, Lydia can't handle things back in Charlotte by herself much longer, and Hanna's healed so fast. She doesn't need me, and it's not fair for Mr. Holden to pay for two cooks when he can only afford one."

  "Oh, Mama," Leeann sighed. "Oh, Mama." She felt as grieved as she had when Big John had left them, as grieved as when her best friends had both moved away from Charlotte in the same year. Why couldn't things work out well for her, just once?

  CHAPTER 16

  Saturday Leeann awoke to a cloudless sky so blue it hurt her eyes. It was winter back East, but even in the cool of morning she didn't need a jacket here. The day couldn't have been more perfect for the picnic ride to see the petroglyphs. She wasn't as eager for it as she might have been, though, weighed down as she was with bad news. She couldn't decide whether to unload it on Zach immediately and risk ruining the day, or not tell him she was leaving Arizona and maybe make him angry at her for deceiving him.

  Everything started out well. Rose packed four different kinds of leftover meat and vegetable salads for her. Zach arrived on Paul and turned the Percheron loose in the corral. He trotted the lively bay mare Amos had saddled for him around the corral to see how she behaved and thanked Amos enthusiastically for her. Meanwhile, Leeann secured their picnic lunch bag and a gallon of water to Sassy's saddle and mounted him.

  "Don't lather the horses up too hard," Amos said. "Take it slow and easy. It's gonna be hot later." He checked Sassy's cinch belt and nodded approvingly. Leeann even thought he might be about to smile at her, but he didn't quite.

  "Thanks, Amos. I hope you have a good day," she told him.

  "I got to go to town," he said. "Got to see a dentist."

  "Oh, well, I hope he fixes you up fast then," she said.

  "Only way to fix the holes I got is to pull the teeth."

  Leeann swallowed and said cautiously. "I hope he doesn't do that."

  "Don't matter. I'd just as well be rid of them. What's gone can't ache."

  Leeann gulped and gave up trying to encourage him. She just waved goodbye, and she and Zach set off side by side toward the mountains.

  The landscape that had seemed to take so long to cover on Paul rolled past them with ease now that they were riding Sassy and the frisky bay. The horses moved at a brisk pace, as if taking a trip on a morning like this was their own idea of a fun time. Sassy's ears turned forward to hear the wind through the tall grasses near the riverbed and back to hear Leeann's murmurs of encouragement. He dipped his head sideways at the family of Gambel's quail that rushed across their path in line with each other like windup toys, the single feather at the top of each head aquiver. His nostrils flared at the sweet scent of some desert plant that Leeann couldn't identify. "Happy?" Leeann asked him. "Of course you are."

  The question was, how was Zach doing? He was so quiet, and Leeann didn't know him well enough to guess if that meant something was wrong or if he was just enjoying the peace of the morning. They splashed through a shallow but fast-running stream and climbed a rocky bank to the desert, where they rode past one sculptured hill after another. Zach would talk when he was ready, Leeann thought, and like Sassy she concentrated on opening her senses to the magic of the ride.

  They got to the canyon so quickly that it wasn't quite eleven when they secured the horses to a boulder near the basin of water where Sassy had gotten his hoof caught. "Should we eat lunch now?" Leeann asked.

  "Fine with me," Zach said. "I can always eat."

  They found a rock flat as a tabletop, where Leeann laid the food out, and then they set to. Today Zach barely commented on the lunch. He seemed so lost in himself that Leeann wondered if he even knew what he was eating. When they'd finished, he helped her pack their leftovers into the picnic bag. Leeann fed Sassy the apple she'd saved for him. Sassy relished it with a happy chomping that showed more pleasure in the treat than Zach had displayed at his whole feas
t.

  They left the horses and climbed up the spill of boulders to the ledge where the petroglyphs were painted in red and black on the wall of a natural cave. It was open along its length on the canyon side and ran fifty feet or so before it diminished to nothing. It was shaded from the sun most of the day, but even in the dim light Leeann was amazed to see dozens of running deer chased by a few solitary stick figures that obviously represented the hunters.

  "It's wonderful," Leeann said. She was awestruck by this vision of human beings who might have been living when Columbus set sail on his voyage of discovery, or even before, at a time when the United States belonged solely to the Native Americans who inhabited it.

  "See the antlers on this one?" Zach said. "And the way this deer's looking back over its shoulder? I couldn't draw them that well on paper, and he carved it on a rock wall."

  "Or she," Leeann said.

  "Yeah, but it was probably a he. Males were the hunters. The women stayed home and made baskets and grew corn and stuff like that."

  "You think women can't do art as well as men?"

  "I didn't say that. I just said mostly males did the hunting," Zach said. "Listen, I admire the females in my life more than the males. Except for my dad. Are you an artist, Leeann?"

  "No, not really. The only kind of art I'm any good at is photography, and I'm just a beginner at that." They studied the wall a while longer, taking note of the twisting heads and kicked-up rear hooves of the deer, and the spear poised to be thrown above a stick figure's shoulder.

  Leeann had brought her camera. She took a whole roll of pictures, telling herself that she'd probably never see this spot again. Still Zach hadn't confided what was bothering him, and she hadn't told him that she was leaving.

  There was a moment when she stepped back to get a better angle and bumped into Zach, who grabbed her arm to steady her. He might have pulled her to him and kissed her then, but he didn't.