More Than a Horse Page 9

  "I don't know," Zach said. "The canyon's farther than I remembered. I guess when my father rode me up there on the cow ponies, the going was easier. Peter and Paul are meant for pulling, not climbing."

  "Should we turn around?" Leeann asked. She didn't want to, but she didn't want to harm Paul either.

  "If we don't see the canyon once we get around this butte, maybe we'd better start back," Zach said. "It's a long way."

  But when they got around the butte, there was just one more little hill to get around and then another and another until finally, they saw the horsehead-shaped formation Zach was looking for. "It's maybe another mile," he said, "but it should be easy riding. Looks like there's nothing but plain old mesquite and creosote bush from here to there. Let's stop and have lunch."

  A snake slid out from behind the rock Leeann had picked to sit on and she jumped back.

  "Yeah, rocks aren't too good an idea around here. They're shelters for snakes and scorpions, not to mention lizards." Zach took the blanket off Paul's back and spread it on the ground for her. Leeann laid out the lunch, glad to be off the Percheron for a while.

  The chicken made Zach's eyes brighten. "A feast!" he said, rubbing his hands together and looking so carnivorous she laughed.

  She left most of the chicken for him. Water was what she needed to satisfy her. The peanut butter sandwiches were so dry and sticky, she only ate half of one. Instead she had two peaches.

  Zach ate heartily of everything. "Great lunch," he said, licking the cake frosting off his fingers. "I can see why your mom got hired to cook."

  "Oh, she's not a professional cook. She's just learning. But Rose can do anything, except paperwork, which she hates."

  "My mother used to work in an office," Zach said. He stretched out his arms and cracked his knuckles. "I don't remember those years too well, except that my dad seemed young then. He acted like a kid most of the time. You lost your father, Kristen said."

  "Yes. He died of bone cancer when I was almost nine."

  "That must have been hard for you," Zach said.

  It had been. She remembered her ninth birthday as the worst of her life, not so much because she missed her father as because her mother had been so sad. "It must be hard for you now, Zach, taking care of your mother."

  "No, we've got it down to a science, Pop and me. And the lady from the county health department helps a lot. The only thing is it keeps getting worse. Like now she's hardly talking. I mean, she tries, but—" He swallowed and then went on. "About all she does is watch TV. It's sad. I mean, to think about how it is for her. I talk to her, tell her stuff about my day ... like, she knows about you."

  "She does?"

  "Yeah." He looked embarrassed. "I told her you were my girlfriend. I thought she'd get a kick out of that. See, Pop teases me that no girl's going to want an ugly mutt like me."

  "You're not an ugly mutt," Leeann protested loyally. "Why does he say a thing like that?"

  "Because, you know, he was a good-looking guy. Still is. But he doesn't say it to be mean. I guess he thinks I don't care about how I look."

  "Alan's handsome, but I'd pick you over him anytime," Leeann said.

  "You would?" Zach's eyes glowed with pleasure. Then he swallowed hard.

  "Leeann," he began, and hesitated. She could tell he was going to ask her for something, and she tensed because she wasn't ready to give him anything like a kiss or the promise that she'd go steady with him.

  "I feel so sorry for Kristen," she said quickly. "I wonder how long she's going to go on mourning Moley."

  Zach sat back on his heels abruptly, as if he were aware that she had put him off. "Don't know," he said.

  "I wish Kristen's father would come back," Leeann said. "Maybe he'd get her another horse."

  "Not while that grandmother's running things," Zach said. "She's a real fruitcake. She came into school last year with a list of books. The librarian thought she was just taking them out to read or something, but that old lady burned them, right in front of her own house, with a sign saying something like, 'Protecting young minds is our moral duty.'"

  Paul shuddered and stomped his foot. Instantly, Zach turned his attention to his horse. When nothing seemed to be wrong, he continued, "Yeah, so then the school called the sheriff's office, and I guess they spoke to Kristen's grandma, but she never went to jail or anything. I don't even know if she paid for the books."

  "And Kristen's mother's religious, too?" Leeann asked.

  "Not like the grandmother. Kristen's mother's just normal religious. She does a lot of church work. But she's not, you know, going to pound her beliefs into everybody else."

  "It's funny," Leeann mused. "I've only been here a little while, but I feel as if I know you guys so well. It's wonderful to talk things over with someone who'll listen. I missed that back in Charlotte after my friends moved away. I'm glad you're helping me look for Sassy, Zach." She smiled at him, hoping she hadn't said too much.

  Zach smiled back. His jaw didn't seem too long anymore. In fact, his homeliness had become appealing. She stood up. "Come on," she said. "We'll never get there and back in time if we don't move it."

  "Okay, let's go," he said. They remounted Paul, who was able to go more quickly now that the ground was harder, although his "more quickly" was still plodding.

  "Can Percherons gallop?" Leeann asked into Zach's ear.

  He laughed. "Not if they can help it. Slow and steady is their pace."

  The horsehead shape at the top of the butte got closer and closer until Leeann finally saw the cleft in the hill where the canyon was. She wondered if Sassy could possibly have come this far. After all, a horse couldn't disappear into thin air. He had to be somewhere past where Amos had looked for him, unless he'd been stolen. That was possible; someone could have found Sassy wandering and just led him off.

  The entrance to the canyon looked like a giant keyhole in the rock. It was, as Zach had said, so narrow Paul could barely fit through it even after they dismounted. In fact, the horse resisted being led between the rock sides. Zach kept encouraging him, "Paul, step up. Step up," but the Percheron didn't move.

  Leeann was so absorbed in the operation that she was taken by surprise by a whinny from inside the canyon. There on the far end, where a ribbon of water was falling onto flat rocks before disappearing into the sand, stood a horse.

  "Sassy!" Leeann yelled. She ran to where Sassy was standing—awkwardly, with one leg stretched out—near a dishpan-sized pool of water. The horse was shivering and he didn't look well. It took only a glance to discover his hoof was wedged in a crevice in the rocks where a fallen boulder lipped over the space.

  "That's why you didn't come home. You couldn't," Leeann said to Sassy as she hugged his neck.

  Zach stepped up beside her. He'd left Paul stuck in the entryway with just his head in the canyon. Paul snorted. Sassy answered. Zach knelt next to the hoof and tried to feel down under it and tug up. "It's wedged in pretty good," he said.

  "Zach, why don't you go back to the ranch on Paul and get Amos while I stay here with Sassy?" Leeann said.

  "We should ride back together. Sassy's not going anywhere. Amos can come up tomorrow and chip away the rock or something."

  "I'm not leaving him alone here," Leeann said flatly.

  Zach looked at her and sighed. "Okay, maybe we can lift the boulder off so he can pull the hoof out himself."

  Leeann crouched and tried to heave up the boulder. Zach laughed. "You can't budge that," he said. "Neither can I. We could try to rope Paul to this rock and then back him out of the canyon maybe."

  They stripped everything but the bridle off the Percheron. Zach had a length of rope tied to the saddle bag and they also had the bridle and reins from the saddle Amos had lent Leeann. It was Leeann's idea to fit the extra bridle around the boulder, tie it to the rope, and tie the rope to Paul's reins.

  "This is never going to work. It won't hold when he starts pulling," Zach said. And he was right. "Back step," Zach ordere
d his horse, who promptly obeyed. As soon as the Percheron moved back, the metal ring connecting the reins to the bridle opened. Once again Zach tried to talk his horse into coming all the way into the canyon.

  Meanwhile, Leeann stroked Sassy, who seemed to take comfort from her attentions. He kept giving her gentle nudges with his head and nickering softly.

  "At least you got stuck where there was plenty of water, didn't you?" Leeann told him. "And we'll get you out. Even if Zach has to go and get Amos to help, we'll get you out. And then you can have a big bucket of oats. You're hungry, aren't you, Sassy? I bet you are." There was no vegetation within reach. "Too bad we didn't save some of the lunch. Unless you want a peanut butter sandwich." Leeann offered him one. Sassy chomped at it and then looked foolish trying to lick the peanut butter off his teeth with his thick, clumsy tongue. Leeann laughed at him.

  Zach called, "Leeann, I can't convince this critter to come in. He's probably scared he won't ever get out. We've got to leave Sassy here and go for help."

  "Fine. You go. I'm staying."

  "No. No way. It'll get cold and dark in a couple of hours. You've got to come with me."

  It was while they were arguing that Paul suddenly shoved his broad body through the narrow entrance into the canyon. Once he was in, he stood there swishing his white tail over his dappled haunches and huffing as if he were still scared.

  "Okay, feller. Now you do what you're built for," Zach said. He slung the rope around the boulder and tied the ends into a loop which he fitted around Paul's neck. It wasn't possible to turn the animal around in the narrow canyon. "Paul, back step," Zach ordered. "Back step."

  Leeann yelled when the boulder flipped up and over. She was scared it would fall against Sassy, but it didn't. Immediately, she reached down the horse's slim leg and under the horny hoof to try tilting the rock. "If I could just get it sideways..." she said.

  "Let me try." Zach knelt beside her. His big hands were already knotty with a man's strength. Sassy was muttering anxiously and his side felt hot as he leaned against Leeann, but in a minute his hoof came free.

  "There we go," Zach said.

  Leeann hugged him and then she hugged Sassy, who was tossing his head as if he relished his newfound freedom. "Now let's get out of here and go home," Leeann said.

  "The petroglyphs are up that way," Zach said regretfully. He was pointing at a cave opening halfway up the canyon wall. There would be a steep climb over a pile of fallen rocks to reach it.

  "We can come back to see them next week," Leeann said. She was tired and anxious to get Sassy home to be fed and cared for. "Anyway, we still have to get Paul out of here."

  "Yeah, you're right." Zach looked at his horse with concern. "Oh, boy, this isn't going to be easy." But Paul was more cooperative at backing out of the canyon than he'd been at squeezing into it. When the horse felt the stone girdle closing around his ribcage again, he didn't panic but backed out steadily at Zach's command. Sassy came through headfirst with ease. He'd thinned down some in the two days he'd been gone from the ranch.

  "Do you think Paul could carry us both home?" Leeann asked when Zach had resaddled him. "I don't know if Sassy's feeling up to taking me."

  "Listen, you're a lightweight for him. It'll go a lot faster if you ride him," Zach said.

  Sassy was busy eating leaves off a bush. Leeann saddled him and mounted. She pressed her heels into his side, and after some persuasion to get him to forsake the bush, they got underway.

  "What do they look like?" Leeann asked Zach, who was so high up ahead of her on Paul, she felt as if she were riding a pony. "The petroglyphs?"

  "Pictures of deer and sort of stick figures of men and the sun. The deer are the best."

  "I'll bring my camera when we come back," she said.

  "You really will go back with me?"

  "Sure I will," Leeann said. "I want to."

  "Next Saturday?"

  "Fine," she said.

  Would he kiss her in the cave in front of the petroglyphs? She thought he might. She thought she might even encourage him to try. She'd never enjoyed any boy's company as much as she enjoyed Zach's, and he was solid. He had a strength of character that had begun to seem beautiful to her.

  CHAPTER 13

  They were so late getting back to the ranch that on the last hill they saw Amos and Mr. Holden riding toward them against the backdrop of a pink and purple sunset.

  "You found Sassy!" Mr. Holden said. "I thought sure that horse was a goner. Where was he?"

  "Stuck in the canyon with the petroglyphs," Zach said. He added proudly, "Paul here pulled off a boulder that was trapping his hoof."

  "You don't say! Well, I owe you for saving my animal's life. What can I do for you?"

  Without hesitation Zach said, "Leeann helped as much as Paul and me. How about letting her ride Sassy whenever she wants?" He looked at Amos. Everyone looked at Amos. He was sitting on his horse in unsmiling silence, his lumpy face as forbidding as a desperado's on a wanted poster.

  "That agreeable with you, Amos?" Mr. Holden asked.

  The head wrangler shrugged. "The girl can do what she wants so long as I don't have to chase that blamed horse no more."

  "Fine," Mr. Holden said. He smiled broadly at Leeann. "Looks like anytime you can catch him, you can ride him, Leeann—unless Amos needs him for one of the guests. Now you and I have another matter to talk about."

  "What?" Leeann held her breath, hoping her sudden good fortune wasn't about to reverse itself.

  "Enid Childs is coming tonight to discuss a riding program for disabled kids that she wants to start here on the ranch. Says you and your friends will help her with it."

  "Yes. Five of us want to volunteer, including me," Leeann said eagerly.

  "Well," Mr. Holden cleared his throat as if he were uncomfortable. "The thing is, Amos doesn't want any part of the program, so I don't see it working out too well." Again all eyes went to Amos, who gave nothing back.

  "On the other hand," Mr. Holden continued, "it's hard for me to say no to the Childses. Gordon Childs's daddy was my best friend. I know you've got to be tired, Leeann, but I'd appreciate if you would sit in to hear what Enid's got to say."

  "I'd be glad to." Leeann was relieved that that was all he wanted.

  "Any chance you can stay for supper and join us at the meeting, Zach?" Mr. Holden asked.

  "Thanks, I can't. Pop expected me home long since. Leeann'll keep me posted." He waved and thanked Mr. Holden again as he set off for home.

  The meeting was in the library. Leeann was impressed at the way Joy's mother presided. She stood in front of the fireplace facing Mr. Holden, Amos, Leeann, and Hanna, all of whom were sunk deep into the cushioned leather couches lined up on three sides of the Navajo area rug.

  "It's good of you to be here," Mrs. Childs began, "because I'm sure you're tired after your hard workdays. Well, I promise not to keep you long. I'll just tell you what I learned in Tucson, where they've got this Therapeutic Riding Program going. Apparently it's being done all over the country. Heaven knows how I missed hearing about it, but I'm delighted that, thanks to Leeann and her friends, I'm aware of it now."

  She beamed at her audience and continued enthusiastically, "This program gives special-needs kids, kids who are physically or mentally impaired, experiences to make them stretch and grow."

  From a large handwritten chart, she began reading aloud to them the benefits of assisted horseback riding. "First, sitting on a powerful animal and controlling its movements makes a child feel powerful. Just being up on a horse's back is a unique experience for a lot of kids who are used to looking up at the world from wheelchairs." Mrs. Childs glanced at each of them in turn to make sure she had their attention. "And special-needs kids who walk have to look up, too, because they tend to be small," she said.

  Her second point was that riding stretches and exercises the muscles needed in walking because it simulates walking. It educates disabled children's muscles.

  "Three," Mrs.
Childs read aloud. "It teaches coordination. Many of these children have trouble learning their left from their right, and by directing a horse which way to go, they get a sense of it themselves."

  Amos was sitting with his arms folded across his chest and his lower lip rolled out. Leeann saw his eyelids fall shut. Mrs. Childs looked his way, but she pushed on determinedly, "Four. There's a natural bond between a horse and a child who grooms and rides it. Some children who can't connect with people will connect with their horses. A child who can't even talk may learn to use voice commands with a horse."

  She took a deep breath and smiled at her audience as she read the last item, which seemed to move her particularly, "Five," she said so fervently that Amos opened his eyes and straightened in his chair. "A child who is riding a horse is doing something special and privileged, and our children don't do much that makes them feel that way."

  There were tears in her eyes as she concluded, "Now, I've already got a list of interested parents from the Bow Lane School for Special-Needs Children. These folks are enthusiastic about having their kids in this program and are willing to pay the costs for the special equipment."

  "What special equipment?" Mr. Holden asked.

  "Oh, like riding helmets or bike helmets approved for riding. Possibly some kind of braces. Things like extra mounting blocks, maybe one with a ramp for wheelchair-bound kids."

  "You're going to put kids in a wheelchair on horseback?" Mr. Holden sounded alarmed. "How are you going to keep them from falling off?"

  "Well, I was getting to that. You see, we'll need a lot of volunteers, because not only does the child need help mounting, but there should be a sidewalker on either side of the horse and someone leading the horse. Of course, the child's parent can be one sidewalker, but then Joy or Leeann or one of their friends can be the other. And if we could get a wrangler to lead the horse..."

  "My boys already got enough to do," Amos objected. "There's no way we can free up cowboys for this." He turned to Mr. Holden and growled, "This is a guest ranch. We're not going into the business of renting out horses by the hour, are we?"