More Than a Horse Read online

  She hesitated with her tray, regretting the loss of the first friends she'd made. Then she spotted Kristen waving at her. Kristen wasn't sitting with the group either but at the far end of a table of rowdy boys. Leeann took the seat across from her.

  "Did you have fun at Joy's Saturday?" Kristen asked wistfully when Leeann was settled.

  "Yeah, I did. Until afterwards. I got in trouble for borrowing a horse without permission and now I'm not allowed near any horse on the ranch."

  "You took a horse? You did that? Wow!" Kirsten's eyes widened.

  "Don't ask me why," Leeann said miserably. "I don't normally do stuff like that. Anyway, I should have known I'm not the type to get away with anything."

  "Me neither," Kristen said. "I'm always getting in trouble, and I don't even do anything wrong. I mean, not like stealing a horse."

  Leeann winced. "You're making me sound like an outlaw, Kristen."

  "Well, I don't mean to. I mean, the stuff I get in trouble for is just ... like you know, not speaking in the right tone of voice or not looking grateful about something."

  To have a grandmother like Kristen's would make life really miserable, Leeann thought.

  They ate their lunches in companionable silence until Kristen said cheerfully, "I know what. You could stop over after school and meet Moley today. My house is back there behind the teachers' parking lot." She pointed at the window.

  The whole town was visible past the parking lot. It consisted of a cluster of small houses, a church, a convenience store with gas pumps in front of it, an auto repair shop and a stop light.

  "My mom would drive you home," Kristen said. "She never minds driving people places."

  "I don't know about today," Leeann said because Rose expected her to come home on the bus. "Maybe tomorrow?"

  "No." Kristen shook her sleek cap of dark hair sadly. "It has to be today. See, Grandma doesn't let me have friends over. She wants us to keep ourselves to ourselves. That's what she says. But today she's driving my grandpa to the doctor in Tucson and they won't be back until suppertime."

  "Won't your mother let you have friends over, either?"

  "Well, my mother does what Grandma says. See, we're living with my father's parents because my dad's working in Antarctica on a weather station. Even my grandfather does what Grandma says. That's just how it is."

  Sadness leaked from Kristen's every word. Leeann felt so sorry for her that she changed her mind. "I'd love to meet Moley," she said. After all, Kristen's gesture toward friendship shouldn't be rejected. Leeann could call the ranch and leave a message for her mother with whomever answered the phone.

  There was no time allotted for projects that day. Ms. Morabita had a headache and told the class to read silently and not to talk. When a few students started chatting with each other anyway, she immediately slapped them down with detentions. A lot of notes were passed back and forth instead. Leeann thought Ms. Morabita might not excuse her to make a phone call in her bad mood, but the teacher readily gave her permission.

  Mrs. Holden took the message for Rose. She sounded unfriendly. Leeann wondered if her horse thievery had turned Mrs. Holden against her, too. There must be something she could do to make the people at Lost River Ranch forgive her for borrowing Sassy. It would probably have to be something pretty spectacular. But what?

  CHAPTER 8

  Kristen's house, like other desert homes Leeann had seen, was as hidden as a well-wrapped box by the thick, roof-high adobe wall around it. Without inviting Leeann inside, Kristen hurried her past the house to the corral behind it. Leeann was shocked when she saw the swaybacked gray horse there, drooping like an unwatered plant outside a shed.

  "Moley," Kristen sang out, "I'm home."

  The animal didn't respond. His knobby-kneed legs barely seemed able to hold him upright. Kristen put her fingers to her lips and whistled piercingly. That made the horse look up. He roused himself enough to amble stiffly toward Kristen, who bent to slip through the rails of the corral. Leeann followed her.

  Kristen put her arms around Moley's bony head and murmured endearments to him. In return he muttered softly. "He talks to me," Kristen said to Leeann. "We understand each other, Moley and me."

  "He certainly knows you, Kristen," Leeann said. It was the only positive comment she could honestly make about the horse.

  "Yes. Moley loves me and I love him." Kristen's face was bright with pleasure as she stroked his neck.

  Leeann wondered if Kristen realized how fragile Moley was. He appeared to have used up all but the husk of his life. Could he even see anymore out of those filmy eyes?

  "Want to help me groom him?" Kristen asked.

  "Sure." So long as Kristen didn't mean to ride the animal, Leeann was willing.

  Moley perked up some as Kristen brushed and buffed his clean, mottled gray hide. His long black tail swished while Leeann combed his mane. "There," Kristen said with satisfaction when she'd finished and had hung a feed bag of oats over his head.

  "Now would you like something to drink?" she asked Leeann. "Grandma says soda's bad for you, so we don't have any, but we have apple juice. Or I could make lemonade. And Mom usually bakes cookies on Mondays. That's the one day she doesn't work at the church."

  "Apple juice sounds great," Leeann said.

  The butter cookies had been left to cool in a pan on the counter in the small, neat kitchen. Beautifully shined copper-bottomed pots hung over the stove and small plants flourished on a stand near the window of the cheerful room.

  "I like your house," Leeann was glad to be able to say. She could see the living room, which was smaller than the one Rose and she had had in Charlotte before Big John made them sell it. But it looked cool and comfortably furnished with a couch and chairs full of pillows.

  "It's my grandparents' house," Kristen corrected her. "Someday, if my father changes his job, we might get a place of our own again. Meanwhile, I sleep with my mom and we try to keep out of the way."

  "I sleep with my mother now, too," Leeann said, "in a really tiny cabin." She wondered if Kristen and her mother had an easier time of it than she had with Rose, who flung her warm body about at night and woke Leeann up with her groans. But she didn't know Kristen well enough to discuss something that intimate.

  "Joy and Alan have their own rooms," Kristen said. "Their families are pretty rich. But Zach—his mother's been sick so long, and they're pretty poor. So Zach has to do the wash and the housework and stuff. I mean, I do housework too for my grandma. But he's a boy. Not that that matters, of course, but..." Kristen showed her dimples in a rueful smile, as if she'd been caught out in old fashioned male-chauvinism. "Anyway," she continued, "Grandma says scrubbing floors is good for your soul."

  Leeann wrinkled her nose in disgust at that idea.

  Kristen chuckled and confided with another play of dimples, "When I grow up, I'm going to have a maid."

  Leeann laughed. "A maid and a cook, and a horse of my own," she said.

  "Well, I'm lucky. I already have my horse," Kristen said, "but I want a dog and some cats, too, and maybe a rabbit. I love animals."

  "Me too." Leeann felt comfortable with Kristen, so comfortable that when they were eating cookies and drinking apple juice at the kitchen table, Leeann risked asking, "Kristen, do you ride Moley much?"

  Kristen stiffened as if the question were barbed. "Not much. I'm too busy. I rode him yesterday around the corral. He's okay if I don't make him go very far. I think he's got arthritis or something." Her intense blue eyes sought Leeann's. "He's pretty old, you know."

  "I guessed he was."

  "But he's the sweetest horse in the world," Kristen said. "And he could live lots more years. Some horses live till they're over thirty. I read that in a magazine at the vet's office."

  "You have a vet to treat Moley?"

  "No. Grandma doesn't believe in doctors—not for people much either. But when Mom took me to Tucson for shopping, I went to a vet's office and asked her what I could do for Moley. She said j
ust keep him comfortable, with lots of fresh straw to lie on and plenty of water, and give him oats once in a while."

  Leeann nodded. She hoped for Kristen's sake that Moley survived for years.

  "My father got Moley for me," Kristen said. "He used to have a horse when he was little. That's when Grandpa built the corral and the shed. So Dad said we might as well make use of it, since it was there."

  They played Crazy Eights on the double bed in the bedroom Kristen shared with her mother. The room was neat and bare. Apparently mother and daughter put their clothes away, unlike Leeann and Rose, whose furniture was littered with garments clean enough to be worn again.

  "My mother should be back by five," Kristen promised when she saw Leeann looking at the clock.

  "If she's not, I'll call the ranch and ask Rose to send someone for me," Leeann said. She hoped Rose would be able to do that easily.

  They talked about what kind of music they liked. Kristen preferred country and western, which she said was most of what was on the radio here.

  "I like any kind of music that isn't too loud," Leeann said.

  Kristen turned on her radio, and they played cards to the sounds of plaintive singers lamenting their lost loves.

  "Have Alan and Joy been boyfriend and girlfriend for a long time?" Leeann asked.

  "Forever. They always fit well together because they're both so rich and lucky and good looking."

  "You're pretty, too, Kristen."

  "No, I'm not. I look like a mouse. Anyway, that's what my grandmother says. She says I look like a little blue-eyed mouse."

  "Maybe she means you're cute. Is Zach your boyfriend?"

  "Zach? No way. Anyhow, my grandma would kill me if she thought I even looked at a boy. No, Moley'll do me until I grow up and get married and have a bunch of kids. Or I might become a vet and have a ranch with exotic animals like llamas and ostriches. I read about a place like that in California. I don't know if you can get rich from that, though."

  Kristen didn't ask about Leeann, which was just as well, Leeann thought, because what could she say? She liked boys, some of them anyway, but none whom she'd liked had ever seemed to like her back. She hadn't even been kissed yet, except for a quick touch to her cheek once. It had happened during a kissing game in a dark closet at a party in Charlotte. The boy had been short and they'd bumped heads when Leeann bent down to allow his lips to reach her.

  At the sound of a door shutting, Kristen whisked the cards back into their box and slipped it behind the headboard of the bed. "In case Grandma's come back first," she whispered in explanation. "Grandma doesn't approve of card playing."

  Leeann wondered if the grandmother approved of anything besides church going. She was glad when it turned out to be Kristen's mother who had come in. The woman was as small and sweet-faced as her daughter, but not as pretty.

  "Of course, I'd be happy to drive Leeann home," she said as if she really were pleased to see Kristen with a new friend.

  In the car on the way to Lost River Ranch, Kristen's mother asked Leeann how she felt about school and living on the ranch.

  "I've always liked school. And I always wanted to live on a ranch," Leeann said, leaving out her disappointment in the one she'd come to.

  "That's nice," Kristen's mother said. Hesitantly she asked, "Has your family joined a church here yet?"

  "It's just my mother and me," Leeann said. She glanced at Kristen, who was in the back seat keeping them company on the drive. "And my mother's not much for church going." She saw Kristen wince and hurried to add, "Rose was Episcopalian, and so was my father. He used to go to church, I think."

  "You call your mother by her first name?"

  "I always have. I did it when I was little and my parents thought it was cute, so we just got in the habit."

  "And your father? Was there a divorce?"

  "No. He died of cancer. It took a long time." Six years out of her childhood. Leeann had added them up in a bitter mood once. "When Daddy was well enough, he used to take me out for breakfast while my mother slept in. It made me feel pretty special. I guess I was only three or four then."

  "It must be hard, not having a father," Kristen's mother said sympathetically.

  "Oh, I don't know. I've got a great mother," Leeann said.

  "How nice to hear you say that!" Kristen's mother said.

  "I've got a great mother, too," Kristen said. She snapped open her seat belt and leaned over her mother to give her a hug while she was driving.

  "Careful," Kristen's mother said, but she was smiling.

  "Thanks for driving me," Leeann said when she got out of the car in front of the ramada. "Maybe Kristen could come home with me tomorrow?"

  "Oh, I don't know about tomorrow. We'll see." Kristen's mother smiled some more and said, "You be good now."

  As the car pulled away, Kristen turned around in her seat and waved energetically out the back window at Leeann. Somehow Leeann had the feeling she wasn't going to see Kristen much outside of school, unless the grandmother started having to do extended errands more often. Or unless she and Kristen could figure out a way to get around both the grandmother and the distance between their homes.

  CHAPTER 9

  To Leeann's surprise, she found that she had a phone message from Joy waiting for her. "She left a number for you to call," Hanna said and gave Leeann a slip of paper.

  Leeann used the telephone in the empty office. "Hi. How's it going with Dancer?" she asked when Joy answered.

  "Not so good. He's not settling down at all," Joy said. "He wasn't this high strung when we bought him. Dad says maybe the guy had him on tranquilizers or something. Dad says we can make the guy take Dancer back if I want, but he's such a pretty horse. I mean, I'd really like him if he'd settle down."

  "Yeah, I guess you'll just have to spend a lot of time with him and keep talking to him and stuff like that," Leeann said.

  "Right, that's what I wanted to ask you. Dancer acted better when there were other horses around, and Dad said if you'd bring Sassy over, he'd pay you to ride my brother Joey around the ring."

  "I can't, Joy. I told you that. I got into so much trouble for borrowing Sassy without permission that I'm not allowed near any horse on the ranch now."

  "That rots," Joy said. "I mean, who am I going to get to ride with me?"

  "Alan?"

  "Oh, Alan's so unreliable, and he'd rather play his video games than ride, anyways."

  "Well, Zach maybe."

  "What, with those big old Percherons he's so proud of? Those aren't riding horses. They're work animals."

  Leeann listened to Joy complaining for a while, then reminded herself that the problem was nothing she could help with. "Joy? Were you mad at me about something in school today?" Leeann interrupted to ask.

  "I wasn't mad. Well, I was, sort of. Because you acted like I was making a fuss about nothing. But it's not nothing to me, Leeann."

  "No, I guess not."

  "Leeann, you have to ride with me," Joy said. "Maybe my dad can think of a way to get the Holdens to let you borrow a horse."

  "It would be nice if he could," Leeann said, but she put down the receiver without hope. Joy was a moody girl. She'd been cold to Leeann in school all day, and then over the phone she'd talked as if they were already friends. It was hard to know how to take her. Of course, she did have a problem with Dancer, but at least she had a beautiful young horse, and that was a lot more than Kristen or Leeann had.

  "Rose," Leeann said when she found her mother rolling out pizza dough at the kitchen table, "I'm going to take my camera and go for a hike, okay?"

  "Just stay on the trails, love, and be sure you know how to get back."

  "And if I should happen to see a horse, I could take a picture of it from a distance, couldn't I?"

  Rose laughed. "I can't imagine how Amos could object to that."

  "Do you think he'll ever stop hating me and give me another chance?"

  "Oh, Leeann!" Rose stopped rolling the dough and rub
bed the back of a floury hand across her eye. "I'm so sorry, honey. If we weren't short on cash, I'd just quit and take us out of here this minute."

  "You can't do that. Hanna needs you. I'm not complaining. It's just that I need to do my horse project for school, and I'm afraid I'll get in trouble somehow even just taking pictures of Sassy."

  "If you do, I'll say I gave you my permission. But see you're back before seven. I don't want you roaming around in the dark."

  "Love you," Leeann said, kissing her mother's round red cheek.

  She was halfway out the door when Rose said, "You didn't tell me about your visit with Kristen, or anything about school."

  "I will tonight. Right now I need to catch the last of the daylight." Leeann ran for the cabin. Luckily she had a roll of film left in her camera.

  Most of the horses were in the corral, but Sassy wasn't among them. Leeann skirted the fenced-in field and walked down to the wash without seeing any animal other than a single hawk riding a thermal on spread wings. The cloudless sky didn't look as if it could ever get dark, but she knew it would and quite suddenly.

  She climbed the horse trail, stepping past mounds of dry manure and sending a lizard scuttling for safety under a small bush. Higher up, there was even less vegetation, but she could see farther, all the way to the bare rock hills that were shaped by wind and weather into a phalanx of mythological beasts. Shadows lay deep in the creases of their lumpy bodies. She'd need a horse to get as far as those hills. On foot she'd never make it even if she started early in the morning and walked all day.

  A long-eared, angular rabbit that looked made of muscle hopped across a bare space between cactuses. Most plants here were armed to sting and prick. Leeann thought briefly of snakes and decided not to worry about them. They'd be more scared of her than she was of them, according to what she'd read. At the top of the next rise she looked back over the low roofs of the ranch house and its outbuildings and the barn and sheds, all the way back to town. Lights were just coming on like a sprinkle of fireflies in the distance.