The Wildest Heart Read online

  “She couldn’t stay alone,” Brynna said thoughtfully. “And didn’t you say Jen was tied down this week, Sam?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Oh.” Mrs. Allen’s voice seemed to run downhill. “I was counting on the two of them. Well, then.” Mrs. Allen stared at the coffee shop clock as if it held a solution.

  “Wait, what about Callie?” Brynna said. She raised an eyebrow and looked at Dad.

  Sam’s excitement soared as Dad nodded.

  Although she’d only been around Callie for a few weeks, she counted the quirky girl, who was as nuts over horses as she was, a friend.

  Dad and Brynna had been on their honeymoon when she’d gotten to know Callie, but Aunt Sue, who’d stayed with Sam, had given them a full report on the older girl.

  “That would be great,” Sam said, “But Callie has a job.” Sam knew how much she needed it, too. Though Callie was only Jake’s age, she lived on her own, supporting herself and the wild mare she’d adopted. “And she’s gentling Queen. I don’t know if she could leave.”

  “She drives,” Dad pointed out. “No reason she couldn’t work durin’ the day and stay out with you at night.”

  “And tell her she can bring her horse,” Mrs. Allen said. “There’s plenty of room in the saddle horse corral, or she can turn her mare out with the mustangs. She can even borrow my horse trailer if she wants. Heaven knows those old beauties of mine haven’t been inside it for a decade. I’m not sure Judge ever has.”

  Mrs. Allen’s tongue moistened her lips, as if she were trying to think of more incentives to lure Sam and Callie to Deerpath Ranch. Before she could, Gram leaned close enough to hug her shoulders.

  “Trudy, all that’s for us to worry over. Now, what time’s that flight of yours?”

  “Eight o’clock, which means I’ve got to leave home in the middle of the night. They want me checked in ninety minutes early. Can you believe that?”

  “One of us can drive you in,” Dad said.

  “No sir,” Mrs. Allen snapped back at him. “I’ll come and go on my own schedule. Letting Sam help out is more than enough.”

  “We really don’t mind driving you,” Gram insisted.

  “I know exactly what you’re thinking, Grace, and you can stop worrying,” Mrs. Allen said as she pushed her chair away from the table and stood. “I’ll drive careful. Real careful. I want to be there for my daughter, and this summer I’m getting Gabe up on a horse, no matter what.”

  Since Gram had baked buttermilk shortcakes and left berries sweetening, they decided to have dessert at home. As she watched Dad climb into the BLM truck with Brynna, leaving Sam to ride with Gram in the Buick, Sam kicked herself for thinking Dad had chosen Brynna over her. How stupid. Still, the thought lingered.

  “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” Gram asked after they’d driven a few miles.

  “I’m not that surprised,” Sam said. “I guess I should have congratulated them, but Mrs. Allen came in….”

  “I’m sure they understood. Besides, this isn’t a social occasion. It’s a change in your life. They know that.”

  It wasn’t such a bad change, Sam thought. Her spirits perked up as she wondered if the baby would be a boy or a girl.

  “We’re all proud of you for wanting to help Trudy. After all, no one really asked you if you wanted to.”

  “I do, though,” Sam said. “I just didn’t say much because, you know, under the circumstances, it seemed awful to say it would be fun if Callie got to come over.”

  “You handled it just right, dear,” Gram said.

  Miles ahead on the dark highway, the red brake lights of Brynna’s truck flashed on, then vanished as the truck turned left at the bridge over the La Charla River.

  As they drove into the ranch yard, Sam thought she heard loud music, but when she climbed out of Gram’s car, she realized Blaze sat near the hitching rail, howling.

  “What on earth?” Gram said.

  Brynna stood near the Border Collie, talking to him, but he only threw his head back further, showing his white throat and ruff. Brynna rubbed her arms, though it wasn’t a bit cold.

  “Isn’t that the eeriest sound?” she asked as Sam approached.

  “He looks okay,” Sam said, hesitantly.

  “What has gotten into you, dog?” Gram asked, then shook her head. “I’ve seen him do that when he hears sirens.”

  “That’s what Wyatt said. He went in to phone Luke Ely.” Brynna shrugged.

  Luke Ely, Jake’s dad, was the chief of the volunteer fire department. If an emergency involving sirens had been called in, he’d know all about it. Still, the situation made Sam smile, then laugh.

  “I love it that we’re all wondering what he means,” she said. “In Aunt Sue’s neighborhood in San Francisco, someone would just tell him to shut up.”

  “Well, then, they might miss out on some kind of doggy forecast.” Gram’s tone was only half joking. “There are lots of stories about animals predicting trouble, especially bad weather. Not that I believe all of them.”

  Sam did. Sort of. She thought of how Tinkerbell, the draft horse that had lived briefly at the ranch, had acted up just before the earthquake a few months ago.

  “How do they do it?” Sam asked.

  Blaze stopped howling to take a breath and pace in a circle. Sam tried to rumple his ears, but he dodged away and kept walking.

  “I know cattle will go around to the protected side of a hill to graze before it storms,” Brynna said. “Do you mean that sort of thing?”

  “Yes, and field mice fill in the entrances to their burrows, bees hurry home to their hives when the sky turns cloudy, and stay there if a storm’s brewing,” Gram added. “Oh, and cats are supposed to pay special attention to cleaning over their ears before a storm.”

  “That sounds like they’re feeling barometric pressure,” Brynna mused, but then the screen door creaked open, and everyone looked expectantly at Dad.

  “False alarm,” he said. “No fire or reason for sirens anyplace between here and Reno. Although Luke agrees the weather’s ripe for one.” Dad looked thoughtful for a minute, then turned to Sam. “Keep an eye out for fire over at Trudy’s. She’s got the brush cut well back from the house and that’s good, but there’s an old burn up there….”

  “An old burn,” Sam repeated, trying to figure it out. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a place where a fire has burned through,” Gram said. “Two—or was it three?—summers ago, someone threw a cigarette out of a car passing by on the highway. It started a brush fire that burned from the road, all the way to the foothills.”

  “It took out all the plants and grasses, but most of it’s come back. Especially the cheatgrass. But if another fire should come through, it’d burn fast. It acts like kindling when fire reaches it,” Dad said. “First thing to do when there’s a fire is get the cattle out of those little gullies….”

  Sam pictured the gullies and ravines off the path leading up to the Phantom’s secret valley. The mustangs grazed in them because they were hidden. But they were also steep-sided and green at the bottom. Could that grass be fuel for flames?

  She missed part of what Dad said, but what she had heard was scary enough.

  “If a fire starts on the flat and gets a western wind behind it, it’ll race over the range and those canyons will act like chimneys.”

  Sam thought of Mrs. Allen’s pastured mustangs. Would they be trapped by the fences meant to protect them?

  “There’s a lot of dry yellow grass next to where I’ve been painting the fence,” Sam began. “I think it’s cheatgrass.”

  “Don’t worry, Sam,” Brynna said, reading her mind. “The horses in the sanctuary will be fine. They’re not like people, who hang around and gawk when they see fire. They run, and they’ve got lots of room to get away.”

  Sam pictured the rolling pastures that had once held the beef cattle of Deerpath Ranch. Picturing the open space made her relax. There were hundreds of acres in w
hich the horses could hide.

  “Can I call Callie?” Sam blurted.

  “Go ahead,” Dad said. “I guess we can spare you for a couple days.”

  It took her a while to figure out how to contact Callie.

  Although Callie Thorson was only seventeen, she was an emancipated minor. As Sam had learned last Christmas from Aunt Sue, that meant her parents had given her permission to live alone and do as she pleased, when they moved away.

  Callie had taken a high school equivalency test and graduated early from Darton High. Then, she’d earned a scholarship and work-study job at a Darton beauty college. Although Callie—whose real first name was Calliope—was different from most northern Nevadans with her pierced nose, ever-changing hair color, and interest in the supernatural—she was the sort of hard worker ranch folks admired.

  Word got around if you were lazy or didn’t pay your bills. Sam remembered Callie explaining that she’d saved most of a cash gift from her grandmother. By scrimping on her own meals and buying a Jeep that had been stuck nose-down in a ditch during a flash flood instead of the new car her grandmother had hoped she’d buy, Callie had saved enough money to adopt Queen.

  The beautiful red dun mustang had been the Phantom’s lead mare until a split hoof had forced BLM to take her off the range. Callie had even managed to get Queen the corrective shoeing she needed, by bartering her beautician’s skills with the farrier’s wife.

  Sam paged through the telephone book, but found no listing for Callie Thorson.

  Next, she tried dialing the phone number for information, but that was a dead end, too.

  “Do you think it’s possible,” Sam asked Gram and Brynna, “that Callie doesn’t have a phone?”

  “When you’re living on your own and paying your own bills,” Brynna said, “it’s amazing what you can do without.”

  “She said she was living on noodles and oranges while she was saving money to adopt Queen,” Sam recalled.

  “Oh my goodness. We can’t have that,” Gram said, and Sam could almost see Gram was dreaming up nutritious casseroles. “Let me check what I have in the freezer for you to take to Trudy’s place.” Gram gave a disapproving tsk of her tongue. “She likes those convenience foods.”

  “I know,” Sam said. She’d eaten her share of TV dinners and frozen pizza at Deerpath Ranch while she was helping Mrs. Allen with Faith.

  “You might try calling Callie’s parents,” Brynna suggested.

  Sam knew Callie’s parents had moved out of the area to open a new store, but she didn’t remember where. She told Brynna, then added, “I think Callie said she was living in someone’s garage, but it had been converted into an apartment.”

  “And they have room for her horse? Oh, I bet she’s living with the Monroes.” Gram began digging in a drawer for the church phone directory. One minute later she was dialing. A minute after that, Gram wore a satisfied smile as she handed Sam the phone.

  “They’re calling Callie to the phone,” Gram told her.

  Waiting, Sam realized she didn’t feel a bit awkward about talking with Callie, even though she hadn’t talked with her for two months. Then, Callie had called because she’d learned, to her disappointment, that Queen wasn’t in foal to Phantom, after all. Before that, Callie had answered Sam’s plea for a school fund-raiser to benefit the winterbound mustangs.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Callie? This is Sam For—”

  “Sam, I recognize your voice,” Callie said. “What’s up?”

  “Well, I’m really calling for Queen,” Sam joked, “but since you answered the phone, you can ask her.”

  “Stop teasing,” Callie ordered. “It’s the middle of summer and I haven’t done anything but work. I’ve been saving up my days off and covering for everyone at the beauty college because I’ve had nothing fun to do. At this rate, I’ll be able to take a month off to go snowboarding!”

  “Great!” Sam cheered. “How would Queen like to visit some of her long-lost cousins?”

  Chapter Four

  At seven o’clock the next morning, Sam slung her duffel bag into the pickup truck between herself and Dallas. The bag held everything from summer clothes and wet weather boots to books and her camera.

  The truck splashed through a few puddles, but the morning was already hot. Fog simmered up from the wet asphalt as Dallas drove down the highway, toward Deerpath Ranch and Blind Faith Mustang Sanctuary.

  “Thought you and that filly’d never stop sayin’ good-bye,” Dallas teased.

  The gray-haired ranch foreman smiled, but kept his eyes on the road.

  Sam and Tempest had enjoyed a long nuzzle before parting, but Sam couldn’t help it. Since she’d been training Tempest to lead, the rowdy foal had acted like a pet. Sam could hug Tempest’s black satin neck and kiss her velvety nose now.

  “I haven’t been away from her much since she was born,” Sam added, “and she’s just so sweet.”

  At a loud thump, Sam glanced back at the horse trailer hooked on behind.

  “I hope Ace wasn’t jealous,” Sam said. Ace didn’t act envious of Tempest, but sometimes he surprised her.

  “Havin’ her mama settle down has helped,” Dallas admitted.

  Dark Sunshine hadn’t acted up since the day at the riverside when she’d chosen Tempest over the Phantom.

  “Brynna said that might happen,” Sam said. “She said lots of adopted mustangs develop a sense of home wherever they foal.”

  Dallas gave a skeptical grunt. “We’ll see if that young one’s sweetness lasts after she’s weaned.”

  Sam didn’t ask the foreman why he was always so negative, but when she crossed her arms, he must have guessed what she was thinking.

  “I don’t want you disappointed, is all,” he said. “That filly has the bloodlines to be kinda unruly.”

  Sam had to agree. With mustang parents like the Phantom and Dark Sunshine, Tempest’s sweetness could be temporary.

  Sam twisted in her seat, peering back at Ace in the trailer.

  “Almost there,” she called to him as they pulled into Deerpath Ranch.

  Dallas shook his head, smiling, but Sam wondered if the ranch felt as deserted to him as it did to her.

  Sam climbed out of the truck and scanned the ranch for another vehicle. Callie had planned to drive over early in her Jeep, hook up Mrs. Allen’s horse trailer, and go back for Queen. But she hadn’t arrived yet.

  Calico, Ginger, and Judge neighed greetings to Ace as he stamped inside the trailer, but the captive mustangs, roaming far out in their pasture, remained silent.

  Dallas eased out of the truck and slammed the door. He stood listening, too.

  “I hear them little dogs,” he said.

  Sam nodded.

  Mrs. Allen had said Angel and Imp were used to being inside the house, and well-behaved, so she’d leave them there when she left for the airport.

  “I guess I should go tell them ‘hi,’” Sam said.

  The iron gate barring the path through the garden to the house still had spear-shaped uprights. Pointed and sharp, they looked as dangerous to Sam now as they had when she was a little kid and believed Mrs. Allen was a witch.

  The gate opened with a clang. After last night’s brief rain, the garden smelled more fragrant than usual. Raindrops trembled on crimson roses growing on one side of the path. On the other side, orange tiger lilies had begun to open and bees flew over them, scouting for pollen.

  Even the damp dirt smelled good, Sam noted as she approached the porch steps.

  Dallas’s boots shuffled behind her and, just before Sam started up the steps, she noticed a rosy-petaled plant Mrs. Allen called mock peach. Hanging amid its branches, a tiny spider’s web looked like it had been touched with diamonds. A plain brown spider sat at one edge.

  “You see those short little threads she’s spun?” Dallas asked, pointing at the web. “That’s because it’s gonna rain some more. Short threads don’t get all weighted down and break like the long ones.”


  “How did she get so smart?” Sam asked, but Dallas just shook his head. “Or is that just superstition?”

  Dallas looked up at a cloud-streaked blue sky. “Guess we’ll find out.”

  Imp and Angel yapped from the other side of the heavy wooden door.

  “I got no desire to follow you in, ’less you want me to,” Dallas said.

  “I’ll just check on them and come back.” Sam slowly opened the unlocked door.

  “Take your time,” Dallas said as she slipped inside.

  The house was dim, its heavy drapes pulled against the July sunlight. It smelled like coffee and flowers. Sam’s gaze fell on a green pottery bowl of roses. It sat on a round table draped with a shawl near the brass phone.

  Then she didn’t notice anything more, because Imp and Angel took turns springing off the floor, tapping her jeans with their claws.

  Their yapping sounded gruff. Had they always sounded like that, or had they barked themselves hoarse since Mrs. Allen left?

  “Hush, you two. You’re better than a burglar alarm, that’s for sure.”

  Sam spotted a yellow box of dog cookies on the counter next to Mrs. Allen’s microwave oven.

  She scooped out a handful of the tiny cookies and sprinkled them on the floor, to keep the dogs busy.

  “I’ll be back,” she told them, but they probably couldn’t hear her over their crunching.

  As Sam came blinking back into daylight, she noticed three things.

  First, she saw a cloud had drifted over the sun. Though it was still hot, the bees in the garden had vanished. And Callie had arrived bearing grocery sacks and a canvas suitcase covered with concert stickers. A silver flute was tucked under her arm.

  Dallas hadn’t offered to take anything from her, yet. He must have been dazzled by her fuchsia hair.

  Staring with cowboy openness, Dallas shook Callie’s hand and said, “It was yellow last time, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “And lime green in between,” Callie said.

  Her gray eyes sparkled behind wire-framed glasses and a gold stud glittered in her nose.

  Joining Dallas’s scrutiny, she shifted her armload of stuff and reached up to separate a lock of her own hair from the rest. She held it out in front of one eye. “This started out to be red, white, and blue, for the Fourth of July, but it looked too crazy, even for me.”