Run Away Home (16 page)

A
t the same time, both Sam and Jake heard water dripping outside. Jake walked to the door, opened it, and stood staring out for a minute. Sam was about to order him to close the door because he was letting out all the kitchen warmth, but she didn't want to sound like Gram.

“Snow melting off the roofs. It's thawing already,” he said. “Better hope it doesn't freeze up overnight, or it'll be darn icy and they still won't open the roads.”

Sam was eager to have Dad home. He didn't even know about Cody yet. He must be going crazy, wanting to call.

Sam heard one horse neigh—she thought it was Strawberry—and another snort. They probably
welcomed the warming temperatures.

When Jake closed the door, he looked thoughtful. Sam would bet he was still thinking about Kit and Three Ponies.

“'Course Dad told Mom that Kit's mulling over an offer to be head wrangler on his friend Pani's ranch.”

“And your dad told you?” Sam asked.

“Well, no. Nate was puttin' a blade on the front of the tractor to use as a snowplow, and—”

“Your dad didn't see him while he was telling your mom?” Sam guessed. She shook her head. “And I bet you guys would say
girls
gossip.”

Jake helped Sam carry the baby's cradle downstairs. It was bigger and heavier than it looked, and tough to manage when you were the one walking backward down the steps, but Brynna had said the stairs up to her bedroom looked insurmountable.

It wasn't until Maxine said she didn't mind sleeping in Dad's big chair and Jake said he was headed out to the bunkhouse that Sam knew for sure that the Elys were spending the night. It was a weird sort of slumber party, but Sam was glad they were staying. What Jake, Dallas, or Ross couldn't handle, Maxine probably could.

Sam had turned off all the kitchen lights, but left on the one on the porch when the telephone rang.

“Got it!” she shouted, then grabbed it quick before it could stop functioning. “Hello?”

“Sam, at last! Honey, we almost made it home.
They've got the road closed at Alkali. At least we're in out of the truck and Clara says she's willing to stay open all night for the six customers who're stuck here.”

“Dad! You were right—” Sam began.

“No,” Dad cut her off, but then there was a moment of silence before he whispered, “She didn't.”

“His name is Cody,” Sam said. “But you probably knew that.”

“We're—we
were
still discussin' it. Guess ‘Karen' was out of the question, huh?”

Then Dad let go with a cowboy yell that almost deafened Sam. She heard a muddle of voices, one of them Gram's, and Dad announcing he had a son, before she realized Brynna was standing beside her.

Brynna's hair was wound up in a messy topknot with a pencil stuck through it. She wore a gray sweatshirt that might be Dad's and she looked more alert than she had since breakfast. She waved a hand in front of Sam's eyes as if breaking a trance.

“Oh! I should have waited and let you tell him,” Sam said. “But it just slipped out.”

“I'm glad it was you,” Brynna said, patting Sam's arm.

“B?” Dad yelled as Sam handed Brynna the phone.

Sam eased out of the room so her parents could talk, and she realized she really did feel like Brynna was hers.

“This is working out just fine, isn't it?” Maxine
asked as Sam entered the living room.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed.

She stared down at Cody. Brynna had dressed him in a fuzzy yellow sleeper and Sam pictured him walking someday, following her around like a baby duck.

Weariness and contentment enfolded Sam. She plucked Cougar off the couch from the warm spot Brynna had temporarily abandoned, and held him against her shoulder.

“I think we'll sleep in tomorrow morning,” Sam whispered to the purring cat.

“Sam?” Brynna's voice carried to her.

Sam stiffened. Brynna didn't sound happy.

Cougar struggled to jump from Sam's arms. She let him, then hurried past Maxine, who watched her with raised eyebrows.

“Your dad wants to tell you something,” Brynna said, but she didn't leave. She held on to one of the kitchen chairs as she waited.

“Dad?” Sam asked.

“First, I need your promise you won't go anywhere tonight, no matter what.”

“What's wrong?” Sam demanded.

“Swear to me, Sam,” Dad insisted, “or you'll just have to wait until I get home. Tomorrow.”

That's not fair,
Sam thought. How could she make a promise based on nothing but Dad saying she had no choice?

“I can't—?”

“Brynna said you were amazin' today, better than anyone else, includin' me, could've been.”

Sam glanced over at Brynna. She was sketching something on the back of an envelope she'd pulled from the bill box on Gram's hutch. “Now, make me even prouder, honey, and say you'll be sensible,” Dad finished.

“Okay,” Sam said, but she didn't like it.

“Your buckskin is gone,” Dad said.

Of course Dark Sunshine was gone. Had Brynna gotten confused and told Dad that? During this mixed-up day, could she, and Dad, too, have forgotten the mare had been taken to the pasture by Clara's coffee shop during weaning?

But wait. Dad said he was in Alkali, at Clara's. Sam drew in a deep breath and let it out with shuddering slowness.

Gone
could mean more than
vanished
. It could mean Dark Sunshine was dead.

“Gone?” Sam asked, finally.

“In the middle of that snowstorm, a truck driver making a delivery at Clara's was backing up—”

Sam pulled her arms closer to herself, fighting the chill of despair. Poor Tempest. Poor Sunny.

“And he bumped into a fence post,” Dad went on. “Probably didn't even know he'd done it and neither would we, but when Teddy Bear showed up at Clara's front door, we went back there to see what
had happened and saw the tire tracks.

“Sure enough, two sections of fence were sagging almost to the ground. It's a wonder all the horses didn't follow her.”

“She got out, you mean?” Sam asked, afraid to hope she had it right. “She escaped?”

“Sure.” Dad's sigh said just what Sam was thinking. Dark Sunshine had never settled in like Ace or Popcorn or other captive mustangs. “She saw her chance and took it.”

And then Dad's warning not to leave the ranch made sense.

Dark Sunshine wasn't dead, but where
was
she on this dark December night?

She's fine,
Sam scolded herself, remembering Strawberry, just an hour ago, snorting as if it were spring.

“I won't go anywhere, Dad,” Sam promised. “Even Jake can't track in the dark.”

“But he
can
track in the snow. For him, it should be like followin' a roadmap. That's why—if everything's as it should be in the morning—you can set out at first light.”

“Thank you,” Sam said, kind of surprised.

Then, for the first time in a few minutes, her eyes wandered to Brynna. She was on the verge of sleeping standing up, again, like a horse. That couldn't be safe.

“In my mind,” Dad went on, “if the snow's as wet as I'm afraid it will be, you'll want to take a bigger
horse than Ace—Jeep, maybe, or even Tank—but that's your call.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Sam said again.

“Ninety percent of the time, you've got a good level head on your shoulders,” Dad said. “But we both know what happens when you're around that stallion.”

What did the Phantom have to do with anything?
Sam wondered as she kept her eyes clamped on Brynna.

“Now, Norman White may be a sorry excuse for a human being,” Dad went on, “but—”

“Dad?” Sam interrupted. “Brynna's fallen asleep standing up again. And she's kind of slumped over a kitchen chair.”

“Don't let her fall,” Dad said. “But you better not be fibbin' to me, young lady, just because I'm sayin' something you don't want to hear.”

“Not a chance,” Sam said, and as soon as she hung up the phone, she walked Brynna back to her baby and her comforter on the couch bed.

 

Sam had set her alarm, afraid she'd oversleep after her full day, but she came instantly awake when she remembered Dark Sunshine was out running wild.

Sam wasn't taking any chances that she'd get cold and have to head for home. Last night she'd sorted through Brynna's trunk of winter gear and come up with riding tights, a little hood thing she thought was called a balaclava that would fit under her brown
Stetson and cover her from her chin down into her shirt, and a great insulated jacket with Velcro wrists that would close down tight over her gloves.

Jake would have all the cold weather gear he needed, since he and his mom had ridden over here at the height of the storm. That's why she hadn't warned him about today's search.

Sam tiptoed downstairs, thinking that if she just sprung the idea on Jake this morning, he wouldn't have time to make up an excuse.

Not that she'd take no for an answer. With Jake or without him, she was riding after Dark Sunshine and she wouldn't come home until she had her horse.

Everyone downstairs was still sleeping, but Sam heard the horses nosing their buckets outside, and since it wasn't late, the noise meant the horses had spotted someone moving around and hoped they'd get fed.

Sam hadn't forgotten her chores, and her gloves were too thick to cross her fingers for luck, but she was hoping she could talk Dallas and Ross into volunteering to do them, so that she and Jake could get an early start.

Jake spotted her from the barn door. Judging from the hay stuck to his clothes, he'd been feeding Ace, Tempest, Chocolate Chip, and Witch, but he paused when he saw how she was dressed.

Sam tried not to look nervous. She took long, confident strides, and tried not to think about how
much she was taking for granted.

“Mornin',” Jake said, bumping his Stetson up so he could see her better.

In one breathless rush, she spilled out everything she knew about Dark Sunshine's escape.

“So, will you help me?” she asked when she'd finished.

“Can't think of anything I'd rather do, 'cept kiss a polecat,” Jake said with his most annoying drawl. And then he turned and walked back into the barn.

“A polecat's a skunk, right?” Sam called after him.

Jake didn't answer. All she heard was the chiming of his spurs and the short whistle he used to call Witch.

 

Two hours later, Jake had picked up Dark Sunshine's trail.

Following Dad's advice, Sam had ridden Jeepers-Creepers. Dallas thought the rangy Appaloosa was the best choice because he was fit enough to break trails through the snow and conditioned enough to be out all day.

Sam wasn't sure the same went for her. She shifted, trying to get settled, as she followed Jake on Witch. Her saddle had been too small for Jeep, so she was using whatever Dallas had cinched on the horse. She didn't ask who it belonged to, because she was in a rush, and even adjusting the stirrups seemed to take forever.

They'd passed through all kinds of snow, from sticky stuff that clung to the horses' legs to a wind-sculpted blue sea frozen in the shadow of black plateaus. The footing was surprisingly good. It was so good that her mind was wandering and she was thinking about what she'd read—that countries in the far north had dozens of names for snow—when she heard a faraway throbbing sound.

Jeep must have heard it, too, or he'd picked up her awareness, because his gait changed from an easy jog to a stiff-legged trot.

“Is that thunder?” Sam asked.

“Or hooves, or helicopters,” Jake muttered, reading the wide-spaced hoofprints in the snow. “Whatever it is has got your buckskin runnin' scared.”

She and Jake had just been here, Sam realized. This was where she'd found Singer, and though she hadn't breathed a word of her stallion's secret to Jake, he knew as well as she that Sunny was headed back to the Phantom's hidden valley.

“There she is!” Sam said.

Sunny broke from the cover of a tall stand of sagebrush. Though she was silent, she was no more than a quarter-mile away, and both Jeep and Witch shied at her sudden appearance. Sam spotted the herd of running horses that the mare was chasing.

For a second, Dark Sunshine looked bony and dejected, and Sam ached to return her to her foal. But then the mare saw the Phantom, trailing his herd,
trotting in a distracted manner as he looked back over his shoulder at the mare and the riders behind her.

As soon as she sighted the stallion, Dark Sunshine no longer looked small. She seemed to grow with each stride that took her closer to him.

Buckskin shoulders gleaming with sweat, black mane tangling in the wind, she threw her head high, flaring her nostrils to suck in the scents of wild places.

She slowed long enough to neigh.

Take me home,
she called to the stallion, and he swerved away as his herd galloped on without him.

Did the Phantom recognize Dark Sunshine? Sam remembered the times the stallion had appeared on the ridge trail that overlooked River Bend's barn.

He must remember, because he hesitated, then sidestepped, tossing his mane and snorting. Silver in the morning sun, surrounded by sagebrush and snow, the stallion thundered toward the little mare.

“Sunny!” Sam shouted. “Come back, girl!”

Sunny glanced back at the sound of Sam's voice, and for a minute it looked like she might obey. But Sam was wrong.

One glance was all it took to launch the mare into a headlong run to meet the stallion.

She's running away from me,
Sam realized.

Sunny had never stopped longing for the range. She'd never felt the pull to return to shelter, steady
food, and human companionship. She'd only stayed as long as Tempest needed her.