Changes of Heart (8 page)

“A good, confident
hand
on the reins,” Tessa corrected.

Maggie’s move was totally spontaneous, as was the heat she felt in her eyes, as she put her arms out to the girl and Tessa moved to her hug. The contact with another body, the sensation of the child’s arm around her, the faint, sweet scent of bubble gum and shampoo and the deeper animal smell of horse on Tessa’s Levi jacket were almost too much
for Maggie to bear. She stepped back from the girl. “I’m sorry...”

“We know about your husband, Maggie,” Sarah said quietly. “Ellie Traynor has been friends with my folks back in Boston forever. I always called her Aunt Ellie, and I still do. Tessa and I moved here from Boston a few weeks ago. Aunt Ellie told us about you.”

“She also told us that you have the best quarter horses in the world,” Tessa added.

“Actually, she said the best in Montana,” Sarah said.

Maggie stepped back and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “Turnip is in the third stall on the left,” she said. “There’s a good Western saddle on a sawhorse just inside the barn—you can use that. How about if you tack up Turnip and bring him out here? His bridle and bit are hanging on his stall door.” She turned to Sarah suddenly. “Oh—Sarah. I’m sorry. I mean, if it’s OK with you that Tessa takes a look at the horse. I could go in and get him, if you like.”

Tessa looked imploringly at her mother, then at Maggie. “I brought my own saddle. It’s a Martha Josie model—made for running barrels. Is it OK if I use that?”

“Go on,” Maggie said. Tessa wasted no time hustling into the barn. “What a wonderful girl. She’s precious, Sarah.”

“I won’t argue with you on that point. She was ten when she lost her arm in Kenya, on a safari with her father. We’re divorced. He’s a surgeon too. Tessa was bitten by some sort of bizarre insect, and gangrene set in and the doctors there had no choice. The thing is, she never said a thing to her dad
about her arm. She wore long-sleeved shirts, and he never noticed it until it was too late to save it. She didn’t want to ruin the safari for him.” Her voice broke slightly in her final sentence. “That’s the type of kid she’s always been.”

“You must be very proud.”

“I am, but I’m also concerned that my daughter may be suffering because so much of my time is spent elbow-deep in someone’s chest.” Sarah took a deep breath. “That’s a big part of why I agreed to buy a horse for her. There are so many traps for teens with too much time and not enough to do. She loves horses, Maggie. I think having her own to be responsible for would be good for her.”

Maggie nodded. “When I look at Tessa I see myself at her age, horse crazy and very happy, with dirt under my fingernails and calluses on my hands from shoveling manure and tossing bales of hay. It’s a great way to grow up.”

The sharp ring of steel horseshoes on cement drew the attention of both women from their conversation. Tessa led the saddled and bridled Turnip from the barn, walking on his right side, reins in her left hand.

Turnip gawked at the unfamiliar Rolls-Royce, snorted, and stopped when Tessa did, his muzzle a foot or so behind her head. He stood 15.2 hands, a hand being four inches and the standard equine height measurement, gauged from the withers to the ground. His coat was a light butterscotch color—buckskin—and his tail and mane were darker, approaching black. His chest, broad and hard, flowed to strong, tightly muscled legs and decent-sized hooves. His ears, perked like those of a curious fox, flicked from Tessa to
Maggie, and then back to Tessa. His back was straight, and his withers not prominent but well formed. His rear end was wide and smooth, and he shagged an imaginary fly with his tail, as if showing off its length and thickness.

“Wow,” Sarah said.

“Yeah,” Maggie agreed. “Isn’t he the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen? He knows it too—look at him preening like a prom queen.”

Tessa led the gelding closer to the women. The girl’s eyes told far more than her words could convey. She’d fallen deeply in love with the handsome and arrogant animal, and she completely believed that he was the finest, noblest, most perfect horse in the world. “Where’d he get the name Turnip?” she asked, then quickly added, looking into the horse’s eyes, “Not that I don’t like the name, of course.”

“Nothing too romantic about it, I’m afraid,” Maggie said. “A neighbor dropped off a little basket of turnips from her garden when he was a foal. I gave him a small one, and he loved it. We even did a comparison test—let him have his choice between a piece of turnip and a piece of apple. He always went for the turnip first. The name just stuck.” She turned to Tessa’s mother. “Sarah?” Maggie asked. “Can Tessa try him out in the arena? Poke around on him a little, get a feel for him?”

Sarah laughed. “It’s either that or have my daughter disown me, I guess.”

Maggie walked toward the gate to the arena, Tessa and Turnip slightly behind her. “He hasn’t been out in a couple
of days, and he’ll be a little antsy. He’ll probably do some crow-hopping. Can you ride to that?”

Tessa grinned. “Like a burr on a saddle blanket.”

Maggie swung the gate open, and Tessa led Turnip inside and stepped easily into the saddle, reins held loosely. She centered her weight on the horse and clucked him into a walk. Turnip took a few strides, snuffed, shook his head, and tried to skitter into a faster gait. Tessa’s left hand moved almost imperceptibly on the reins, barely touching the low port bit in the horse’s mouth. He snuffed again and danced sideways, arguing with his rider, testing her. Tessa gathered him in and again started him forward at a walk. Turnip, frustrated, launched his body off the ground, arching his back, and landed heavily on all four hooves.

“That’s crow-hopping,” Maggie said to Sarah. Sarah didn’t answer. She stood transfixed, hand to her mouth, as if her daughter were walking on a tightrope above a vast chasm. “Relax,” Maggie added. “Tessa knows what she’s doing.”

Turnip jumped again, this time more closely approximating a bronc-type buck. Tessa reined his head to the left and forced him to walk in a tight circle, his nose pointed at his tail. After a pair of revolutions Tessa straightened him again and applied some leg pressure, putting him into a jog. His action was initially stiff but quickly smoothed to the lazy-looking fluidity of a pace he could maintain for miles without tiring.

Tessa used the entire arena, following the fence, and her turns at the corners were wide sweeps. The young girl rode
confidently, naturally, without the quick, jerky movements of legs and body that indicated someone new to the sport. “She’s very good, Sarah.”

Tessa’s mother had relaxed considerably. Her hand was no longer at her mouth, and a proud smile brightened her face. “They look... what?... natural together, don’t they? Like they’re partners somehow.”

Maggie waved, caught Tessa’s eye, and held up three fingers—the judge’s sign in a Western show for riders in the ring to lope their horses. Tessa nodded and clucked at Turnip. He responded in a half heartbeat, flowing into an extended gait, several notches down from a gallop. Tessa guided her mount through broad, almost geometrically precise figure eights, using most of the arena. Turnip changed leads at the center each time. When he faltered Tessa used a slight shift in her body weight to guide him into taking the proper lead. The girl’s face was a study in innocent, totally articulated joy.

“Can you keep him here until I can get a stable built? I’ll pay whatever the boarding fee is, of course,” Sarah said. “And I was wondering... are you working with students? I know that you did before Rich’s accident. If it’s too soon, I completely understand.”

Maggie waved Tessa in and began to open the gate. “If you hadn’t mentioned it,” she said with a smile that actually felt real to her, “I’d have insisted that it be part of the deal.”

Tessa dismounted inside the arena, her eyes riveted to her mother’s face.

“He’s all yours, honey,” Sarah called to her daughter. “Turnip is your horse.”

The August sun hung in the Montana sky like an immense bronze disk, already exerting its stultifying power and drawing the overnight dew from the pastures of Maggie’s ranch the way a parched sea sponge draws water: greedily, hungrily. There was no breeze, and the air, at barely 7:00 in the morning, was already sultry and weighty with humidity. The sky, a deep cobalt, completely cloudless, held the oppressive heat between itself and the earth like a cosmic blanket. The early couple of hours were the best to trail ride. The heat wouldn’t yet drain horse or rider, and the clouds of insects that plagued both animals and humans weren’t quite ready to begin their day of buzzing harassment.

Sunday pushed his muzzle against Maggie’s leg as she stood at the fence line closest to her house, watching Dusty and Dancer in the pasture. Dusty was cropping grass, her tail in almost constant motion while shagging flies. Dusty seemed completely at peace, but Maggie noticed that the mare’s eyes never, not for the briefest part of a second, left her son as he played nearby.
Dancer, at least in his own mind, was engaged in a duel to the death with an invisible foe. The colt ran the center of the pasture at a full-steam gallop, neck extended, forelegs reaching ahead of him, deer-sized hooves glinting with dew as he raced through the grass, a mere inch ahead of the terrible enemy who pursued him. His body, still appearing angular and foal-like, was incompatible with his speed. Such foolishly sticklike legs simply couldn’t move in that unfailing precision, and his narrow chest couldn’t possibly process enough air for such a headlong run. Nevertheless, Dancer coursed across the pasture with the grace of a greyhound, the
thok
of his hooves against the dirt metronomic, an unvarying cadence.

When Dancer suddenly turned to face his awesome foe, Maggie drew a sharp breath of surprise. The colt dropped his rump almost to the ground, skidding on his rear hooves, front legs extended, and then wheeled his body back over his haunches in a training-text perfect maneuver called a “rollback” by Western riders. In a speck of time, Dancer was up on his hind legs, teeth bared, front hooves striking out again and again, battering and slashing his adversary. When the creature was dead on the grass, Dancer trotted back to his mother, head high.

Maggie shook her head in awe. Sunday bumped her harder. She turned to him and crouched down, eyes at the level of the dog’s. “What do you need, Sunny? Is your water dish empty? Little jealous of Danny spending so much time with that new horse?”

The vet’s nine-year-old Appaloosa gelding had been
boarding in Maggie’s barn since Maggie had spent a day with Danny checking out the horse. Dakota, a rangy, quiet mount, was perfect for Danny—the gelding had enough speed to satisfy the vet during the rare times he galloped but was tractable enough to put up with the mistakes of relatively new riders. Dakota’s trail manners were superb, and he was a willing animal with the friendly and open disposition that was standard in good Appaloosas.

Maggie walked toward the kitchen door, Sunday at her side. The economy-sized box of Milk-Bones she’d bought for Sunday on her last shopping trip was on the counter inside, within easy reach without tracking dirt or manure into the kitchen. She grabbed a pair of the biscuits from the box, dug a little deeper, and found a broken piece as well. Sunday sat as he’d been trained to do, awaiting his treat, his plumed tail sweeping the ground behind him. Maggie tossed the broken piece, and the dog snatched it out of the air, his teeth clacking together with a disconcertingly powerful snap.

Danny, Maggie realized, wouldn’t own anything but a perfectly trained and mannerly dog. She knew that she could put a biscuit on the ground, tell Sunday no, and walk away, completely sure that the Milk-Bone would be untouched hours later. But there was much more to Sunday than his training. He was an honest dog—an animal totally without duplicity or guile. His heart was as big as all of Montana, and when he chose a human to be a friend, he’d gladly offer his life for that person’s happiness.

Maggie stooped over to pet Sunday and heaved a sigh. For
no real reason it had been a particularly bad day for Maggie. She’d struggled to keep her mask in place until Danny had saddled Dakota and ridden off with Tessa to explore the trails, the two of them jabbering together about the wonders of their respective horses. When their voices and the hoofbeats had died out, Maggie had collapsed onto a bale of hay with her back against the barn wall. Sunday, whining softly deep in his throat, poked his elegant muzzle at his friend’s face, licking away her tears and pushing against her legs with his body. Somehow the eighty-pound dog had climbed into her lap, his paws on her shoulders and his head tight to hers, his whining now constant and louder, sharing every iota of her loss and her misery. Maggie had hugged the dog that morning as she hadn’t hugged anyone since Rich’s death, and had felt the texture of Sunday’s coarse Scottish coat and the scent of pasture grass envelop her.

Maggie knew that to an outsider, the image would have been ludicrous—an upset, red-faced woman with a dog that didn’t weigh much less than she did clumsily situated in her lap. She also knew that Sunday’s love was better medicine than any pharmacist in any drugstore could possibly offer.