Ghost Horses (7 page)

So this was the range that the Bureau of Land Management was sworn to protect. Fence posts made from stripped, narrow tree trunks held miles of barbed wire strung across the tops of the posts, and rows of telephone poles carried their own miles of electrical wires. To where? Jack couldn't see any houses. Not a single “home, home on the range.” So who needed all that electricity?

Olivia rattled the map and said, “I think this is it. We're supposed to meet Art at this crossroad. Looks like we're right on time.”

It was close to sundown—around seven in the evening. Orange and rose-colored clouds streaked the horizon.

“There he is,” Steven said, “in that flatbed truck parked on the side of the road ahead of us.” When they got closer, Art waved an arm out the window of the truck cab.

“Gus is with him, too,” Ashley said. “But what's all that stuff in the back of the truck?”

“That's the corral they're going to set up at the water trap,” Steven answered. He waved back at Art, who started his vehicle and motioned for Steven to follow him.

After a mile of dusty, unpaved road, Art stopped and Gus got out to open a gate. Once both vehicles had driven through, Gus closed the gate and got back in the truck.

“Worst thing you can do,” Steven said, “is leave a gate open on rangeland. Sure as shootin', the cattle will find it, and they'll all get out and take a stroll along the highway.”

“I haven't seen any cattle,” Ashley said.

“They're around. They move a lot. It takes plenty of acreage to feed a cow.”

They were no longer on any kind of road, but bumped along over the dirt and low brush, jarring the kids in the tailgate of the SUV. The sun was nearly gone, leaving only a faint smear of color along the horizon. Finally Art came to a halt, and Steven stopped right behind him.

“Hi, Olivia, hi Steven, hi kids,” Art said all in one breath. “Gotta hurry. Gotta set up these panels before it's too dark. Good thing there's so much manpower here—me and Gus, Steven and the two boys.”

“Me too,” Olivia said. “I may be short, but I'm pretty strong.”

“And us too,” Ashley said. “Me and Summer can help.”

“Tell you what,” Gus answered. “You girls see that stand of junipers over there?” He gestured to a clump of trees whose foliage looked almost black in the waning light. “That's where we're going to hide while we wait for the mustangs to come to the watering hole. Why don't you two go and clear the ground inside the trees so we can set there. We brought a couple little camp stools and some tarps.”

“You want me to make a blind?” Summer asked.

“You really know how to make a blind?” Gus seemed surprised.

“Sure. I'm an Indian, you know.”

“Then go right to it, honey,” he told her. “There's a lot of us here, and we need plenty of cover to stay hid from those mustangs.”

The men had begun to unload railed panels from the back of the truck, setting them upright around the small enclosed spring where the horses would come to drink. Each panel stood higher, even, than Steven's head, which was pretty high. The half dozen metal rails that made up the panels were unpainted to keep them from reflecting moonlight or even light from the stars, which would shine thick and bright overhead in that dark, isolated desert. Where one panel joined the next, the men slid bolt-like fasteners to hook them together.

Jack tried to help, but mostly he seemed to be in the way until Art told him, “See this here rope? One end'll be tied to the gate, but the gate's gotta stay open till the horses come inside—if we're lucky and they do come in. The rope's gonna stretch over to that bunch of junipers where we'll be hiding. When the horses get into the trap, we'll pull the rope and shut the gate on 'em.”

“I get it,” Jack said.

“So I'm gonna lay this rope down across the ground now, and you boys cover her up with dirt.”

That didn't sound like a very exciting job, considering that the men got to set up panels around the spring. And since the trees stood about a hundred feet distant from the water trap, Jack and Ethan would have to do a lot of digging and covering up. As they got close to the blind, the last of the light faded, but not before Jack had noticed how skillfully Summer was weaving broken branches through the spaces between the trees. All of them would be well hidden.

By the time the full moon rose over Chloride Canyon, everything was in place.

“Now,” Art said, “we wait. And we must stay
ab-so-lute-ly
quiet while we wait.”

J
ack had never before been in a situation like this. Eight people sat waiting in that blind made from juniper trees and broken branches, all of them in touching distance of one another, but no one spoke a single word. Not even a whisper. It had to be hard on Ashley, who was a nonstop talker, but she seemed content to lie on her back and watch the stars weave themselves into the bright, shining carpet of the Milky Way.

All through the first hour, Jack strained his ears to listen for whinnies in the distance, but he heard nothing except the rustling of the grass as the breeze played with it. Halfway into the second hour, he stopped looking at his watch, and his thoughts drifted. Drifted…. Maybe he was falling asleep. In his half-awake state he heard it—the same whinny he'd heard echoing off the cliffs the night before.

Now there were more whinnies—real ones, not dream ones. A sense of movement beside him pulled him into wakefulness. Even in the dark, he could tell that the other people waiting with him had become tense. The mustangs were coming to drink!

They were graceful shadows in the moonlight, flowing leisurely across the range, knowing where they were headed. An even dozen of them—Jack could count them, although he couldn't tell their colors because all he could see were silhouettes.

They came closer, whinnying and nickering constantly as though holding a horse conversation of vital importance. Now Jack could see that three of them were white, the rest darker in color. The white ones kept close to the others, actually touching their noses to the darker horses' flanks. One white mustang laid its head on the rump of the horse in front of it. When the herd stopped abruptly, the white mustangs whinnied long and loudly, as though questioning what the problem might be.

The herd had noticed the panels erected around the spring. Circling cautiously outside the trap, they snorted and sniffed, examining this new contraption that stood between them and their nightly drink. The white horses shuffled impatiently, shaking their heads so that their black manes tossed.

Earlier, while the Landons and the others had waited for the mustangs to arrive, time had dragged. Now Jack didn't even think about checking his watch; his eyes stayed riveted on the restless, nervous herd. The mustangs knew that their accustomed source of water lay very near, beyond those metal rails, but this strange barrier puzzled them.

There was a way to reach the water—they'd figured that out, too. The gate stood wide open, inviting them inside. Yet they hesitated, because something so strange and unknown might be a threat. One heavily muscled dark brown stud, the obvious leader of the herd, stamped the ground fretfully. Wary, with his head lowered and his legs spread wide, he stuck his nose inside the gate, then backed up quickly and snorted. The other mustangs continued to mill around. Again, the dark mustang nosed past the gate; this time he took a few steps forward. Nothing happened. He took a few more steps.

The people crouched inside the blind held their breath. The night was still, except for a slight rustling in the juniper trees as the breeze drifted among the branches. Now the dominant stud approached the water. Lowering his head, he began to drink, but he raised his head frequently to look around.

Outside the gate, the other horses nickered restlessly. Another darker-colored horse moved toward the water; behind it, nose against flank, came one of the white horses. A fourth mustang, smaller and not quite white, followed. Jack imagined Art's hand reaching for the rope that would swing the gate shut and trap the animals. Soon, now….

Suddenly Summer cried out, “Ethan, they're ghost horses! Don't let the ghost horses get trapped!”

Almost instantly Ethan was on his feet, breaking through the shrubbery of the blind. Waving a branch in his hand, he yelled, “Hi yuh! Get out of here! Run!”

Pandemonium broke loose. Like shadows exploding in the moonlight, the mustangs scattered every which way. The four horses inside the metal-rail trap crashed against the railings, and in their panic to get out, knocked over two of the panels. Art and Gus rushed out from the blind to try to keep the whole structure from toppling over; Steven hurried after them to help.

The whinnying crescendoed as all the dark-colored horses galloped away, flank to flank, while three white horses ran in tight, panicky circles, their heads high, their ears laid back. One, a white stallion, broke away from the other horses and raced toward the juniper blind, where Olivia, Jack, Ashley, and Summer were still half hidden.

“Look at that horse!” Jack yelled.

The white stallion ran forward a little way, reared up, turned, and ran again as though unsure which direction to take. Then he turned once more toward the blind and began to gallop.

“It's coming to get us!” Summer screamed.

“It won't—” Olivia began, but before she could get out any more words the stallion had crashed into the trees right in front of them. He screamed and twisted, rearing up and slashing at the sky with his front hoofs while the kids dove out of the way. In her fright, Ashley tripped over a tree root. She fell to the ground just beneath the stallion's flailing hooves.

Jack didn't think; he reacted. Grabbing Ashley's feet, he yanked her out of the way just as the stallion's front hoofs hit the ground, so close to her head that her hair got caught beneath one forefoot. Her shrieks merged with the screams of the stallion into one shrill cry of terror. As the mustang danced, Jack gave a mighty tug to pull Ashley clear just before the horse crashed down again. Whinnying, bleeding from the places where broken branches had torn his hide, the stallion turned and burst out of the blind. He circled to reach the rest of the herd, then galloped off with them into the night.

Ashley was so terrified that for once she couldn't talk at all. Neither could Olivia, who held her daughter tightly in her arms, her head buried against Ashley's for a long moment before she looked up at her son.

“Jack,” she began, “you—Ashley—” She couldn't go on.

“It's OK,” Jack answered, patting his mother's arm. “Ashley isn't hurt.”

Steven had started running toward them when he saw the stallion closing in on the blind, but because of the shadowy darkness of the juniper trees, he'd been unable to tell the seriousness of the situation. “What happened?” he cried when he reached them.

Olivia could only answer, “We're all safe, thank heavens.” Art and Gus, who'd righted the panels around the water trap, now came stomping back toward the kids.

“What the crud did you two think you were doing?” Art demanded loudly, standing in front of Ethan and Summer, his hands on his hips.

“Yeah, Ethan,” Jack began, but his father caught his eye and shook his head.

Summer was crying; more than crying—she was sobbing. Ethan stood with his shoulders hunched, his eyes squeezed shut and his head lowered, as if waiting for a beating to begin.

Stepping between Art and Ethan, Steven said, “I'll deal with them. I'm really sorry about what happened.”

“Well,” Gus said, “there's still a chance the mustangs will come back. They gotta drink! Wild horses need about ten to twenty gallons a day. Those mustangs won't want to go through the whole night without water.”

“Will you stay here?” Olivia asked, her voice so strained Jack wouldn't have recognized it if he hadn't seen her speak.

“Yeah, me and Art. We'll wait through the night. Maybe we'll get lucky, and they'll come back.”

Firmly grasping Ethan and Summer by the arms, Steven led them across the hundred yards of brush to where he'd hidden the SUV behind a clump of juniper trees. Olivia followed with Jack and Ashley but lagged behind so she could talk to them without being overheard.

“Jack, you saved your sister's life,” she said, and had to stop so she could hug him. “Do you realize what you did? She could have been killed if it hadn't been for you.”

Suddenly Jack felt wild elation. He
had
saved Ashley! Never before in his life had he done anything like it. A few times they'd been in tight scrapes together when he'd probably kept Ashley from harm, but this was the closest they'd come to an actual threat of death. Those flailing hoofs would have crushed her skull. He felt his chest swelling as though his lungs had doubled. He'd done it!

“I just don't understand what was wrong with that stallion,” Olivia was saying. “In all my years of being a vet, I've never seen a horse behave like that. He ran straight into the trees—not
between
them, but
against
the trees, like he could pass right through them without harm, as though he were invisible.”

“Ghost horse,” Ashley said, and shuddered.

Pursing her lips, Olivia shook her head. “No, he was very real. I saw him, I heard him, I smelled him, and he nearly trampled you. He was no ghost.”

Ahead of them, Steven was talking sternly to Summer and Ethan but was focusing more intently on Ethan. Jack wished he could hear what his father was saying. He hoped Steven was chewing Ethan out, telling him how crazy he'd acted and how awful he was to put Ashley's life in danger. He watched his father waving his arms as he spoke, as though he were conducting music instead of having a conversation.

When they reached the SUV, Olivia said, “Jack, you ride up front with your father. I want to sit in the backseat with Ashley.” Without a word, Ethan and Summer climbed into the tailgate and disappeared into its shadows. Jack was really glad they'd rented an SUV with three rows of seats; right then he wanted to be alone with his dad. Maybe Steven would thank him for saving Ashley's life. It would be the two Landon men, just the way it was going to be tomorrow when they hiked The Narrows together.

No one spoke as the SUV bumped along across the tufts of grass, occasionally zigzagging around sagebrush. Jack pulled down the visor so he could look into the mirror and see what was going on in back of him. Ashley was sprawled out across the backseat, her head in her mother's lap as Olivia stroked her hair. Summer and Ethan were whispering together in the tailgate, with Ethan's arm draped awkwardly across his sister's shoulders.

Jack decided to get the ball rolling. “I hope Art and Gus aren't too mad,” Jack said quietly to his father. “I couldn't believe Ethan wrecked their trap. What a total jerk he is.”

“Who?”

“Ethan! He ruined everything tonight, and he could have killed Ashley.”

“I don't know about that.”

“Dad, that stallion almost cracked Ashley's head like a walnut. If I hadn't pulled her out of there, well, Mom says I saved Ashley's life!”

“You were very brave, son.”

Jack twisted in his seat so that he could get a better look at his father. Steven's strong hands gripped the steering wheel hard, and in the faint light from the dashboard, Jack could see a stubble of blond hair on his father's chin. This discussion wasn't going the way Jack had planned, but he didn't know what to say to get the conversation on track. It almost seemed as though his dad was on Ethan's side. But that was impossible. If Jack had done half of what Ethan did, Jack would have been grounded for a month. Maybe the whole year.

“So—did you yell at Ethan?”

“We had a talk. But I really think that's between Ethan and me.” He stole a quick glance at Jack. “OK?”

“Fine,” Jack said woodenly. The SUV's headlights cut through the darkness, and overhead the stars seemed to hang heavy in the night sky. Disappointment gnawed at his insides like tiny teeth. He was sure his dad was taking Ethan's side.

“You all right, Jack?” Steven asked softly.

Jack shrugged.

“Come on, what's up?”

“Dad, don't you think this whole thing is really strange? I mean, first you almost get crushed by Hal, then there's a bunch of rocks that almost crash down on our heads, and now Ashley almost gets squashed by a wild mustang.”

“So?”

“So I think it's weird that ever since we've been around the Ingawanups, we've had bad luck.”

“I don't believe in luck, Jack. Other than the kind you make for yourself.”

“Right,” Jack said, his voice rising. “Maybe Ethan has done some of this on purpose. Maybe he planned to yell at the horses to get them to stampede. Maybe it really was Ethan who sent the rocks down the mountain at Angels Landing. Dad, I think—I think we should send Ethan back.”

Steven was silent for so long that Jack thought he wasn't going to answer. Then, out of nowhere, he said to Jack, “I picked up a newspaper this afternoon in the lobby of the lodge. There was an article in it about a herd of mustangs that ranged not too far away from here, over on BLM land about a hundred miles to the east.”

What did this have to do with Ethan? Jack waited for his dad to continue. After a minute he asked, “What about them?”

“There were 27 horses in that herd,” Steven said. “They'd always watered at the same place, at a spring. But because the weather this past summer was pretty hot and dry, the spring dried up.”

Again Jack had to wait until Steven continued, “There was another water source about six miles away, and six miles is nothing to horses. But these mustangs had always watered at the same spring, and when the spring dried up, the herd just stayed put. Stayed there and waited. And waited.”

Jack was beginning to wonder about the point of all this. “So what happened?” he asked.

“They got weaker and weaker until they died of dehydration.”

“All of them?” Jack asked, startled. “All 27?”

“Most of them. Four lived. The BLM folks are nursing them back to health, and when they're well enough, they'll be put up for adoption.”

Jack felt a wrenching in his gut because the story was so awful. Why was his dad telling him this?

“If they'd only gone a little farther,” Steven said, “they'd have found all the water they needed. But they wouldn't look over the next mountain. They were stubborn. Or foolish. They stayed with what they were used to.”