Secret Star Page 3

  “I have a small kitchen in my camper,” Inez finished for Sam. “You’ve been very hospitable, Samantha. Now, enjoy your ride.”

  If that wasn’t a dismissal, Sam didn’t know what was, so she swung into Ace’s saddle and rode toward the bridge.

  She only glanced back over her shoulder, once. When she did, she saw Bayfire, the movie star, following at his trainer’ heels, no more fiery than a well-trained dog.

  Sam didn’t have time to brood over the stallion’s melancholy, because Ace was being a brat.

  The gelding fought the reins, disgruntled by her decision to keep him at a walk as they crossed the wooden bridge.

  “Just ready to run, are you?” Sam asked, but her little bay gelding snorted, crab-stepped, and tossed his head.

  “It’s not like you’ve been neglected,” she muttered to Ace as he swung his front hooves onto the dirt on the far side of the bridge. “I’m allowed to have a life outside this saddle,” she added when no amount of weight-shifting and leg pressure made him behave.

  Last week, she’d worked at Deerpath Ranch with Mrs. Allen’s grandson, Gabe, who was recovering from a serious car accident at the same time a colt from the Phantom’s herd was recovering from an awful burn.

  “So, you weren’t worked for one week. For a really good reason. That’s not such a big deal,” Sam said, scolding the horse. Still, she was glad he couldn’t remind her that the week before that, she’d spent most of her time at the fairgrounds during the rodeo.

  Ace mouthed his bit and Sam sat hard into the saddle, hoping he’d get the message that it was not okay for him to bolt, though the open range was in sight.

  His black tail lashed from side to side, stinging her leg through her jeans, but Ace didn’t lunge into a gallop.

  Sam patted his sleek neck in appreciation, then made a clucking sound. Ace swiveled one black-edged ear back to listen.

  “Where do you want to go, sweet boy?” Sam asked the bay gelding once they were off the bridge.

  Ace stopped. He lifted his head and listened to the La Charla River’s rushing. Then his ears pricked left.

  “You got it,” she told him.

  Sam leaned forward in the saddle, firmed her legs, and let the reins droop from their straight line to Ace’s bit. As competent as Bayfire had been with Inez, Ace read her silent signal and vaulted into a gallop. Wind snatched Sam’s hat from her head and she leaned her cheek against Ace’s warm neck. It wasn’t a full-out run, but the gelding was having fun, loving the breeze of his own making, savoring each scent filling his nostrils, stretching the strong sinews in his slender legs.

  When Ace seemed willing, Sam slowed him. They loped alongside the river. Out in midstream, several boulders showed dry, sandy tops. The river was low. It would take that wet winter Dad had talked about to bring the water level back up.

  While she rode, Sam thought of the listless Bayfire. Growing up on River Bend Ranch, she’d gotten to know lots of horses. Some of them, especially those in the HARP program, had had problems.

  She thought of Dark Sunshine, trapped, tricked, and abused. The mare still hadn’t recovered completely, but her wariness lessened each day and Sam knew the buckskin trusted her more than she had six months ago. Popcorn had been abused, too, but the gentle albino had responded to good food and kind treatment. So had Tinkerbell and Jinx. But she’d bet her saddle Bayfire hadn’t been abused.

  And if he’d been traumatized, like Firefly, the mustang colt who’d been burned in the brushfire, Inez wouldn’t be trying to guess what was wrong with the stallion.

  At first Sam thought a bird had made Ace hop sideways in mock fear. Her teeth clacked together at his sudden movement, but she didn’t lose her stirrups as she would have a year ago. By the time she’d resettled herself, she realized it wasn’t a bird at all, but the same little white plane she’d seen earlier that morning.

  What was going on with that plane, anyway? Sam glanced up in annoyance.

  The plane waggled its wings.

  Did the pilot see her? She hoped so, because he was skimming way too low over the range and he’d frightened a knot of red Hereford cattle into a reckless run.

  Sam shook her fist skyward. Those were River Bend cattle! She’d helped gather them herself. She didn’t want them panicked. What if a calf became separated from its mother and ran over a dropoff, or into a gully and broke its delicate neck?

  What an idiot, Sam thought. The pilot pulled up then. He banked toward the Calico Mountains. Wisps of dust blew, but Sam didn’t think they’d been stirred by the plane. There, by the stairstep mesas, dust drifted like smoke amid the high tangles of pinion pine and sagebrush and suddenly, on the ridge top, Sam saw a horse.

  It could be the Phantom.

  Or maybe another horse, she told herself, trying to be sensible.

  Someday she’d spot the mustang stallion when she had binoculars in her saddlebags, but today she had neither binoculars nor saddlebags, so Sam dropped her knotted reins over the saddle horn.

  “Just give me a minute, Ace,” she said, then pulled at the corners of her eyes, trying to improve her vision.

  The pale blur that might have been the Phantom was just coming into focus when the plane zoomed overhead and Ace spooked again.

  Did the pilot think this was his own private recreational area, or was he looking for something?

  “Glad to see you go!” Sam shouted as the plane finally flew on toward Alkali.

  Sam and Ace were nearly to Three Ponies Ranch and Sam was mulling over what Inez meant when she’d said Bayfire wasn’t himself, when Ace’s lope slowed to a hammering trot and his head swung right.

  In the quick silences between Ace’s hoof beats, Sam heard an equine snort. Someone was over there.

  She found Jake sitting on the riverbank. He lifted one hand in greeting, but he didn’t look at her. His eyes stayed fixed on the silvery river rills as the water found its way around the rocks.

  So, what else was new? Actually, Jake’s stillness was sort of a relief. Unlike the half hour she’d just spent with Inez Garcia, Sam didn’t have to work to figure out why he was acting the way he was.

  Jake had settled here on the riverbank and become part of his surroundings. That was just Jake. And he wasn’t a chatty guy. Ever.

  Witch, Jake’s black Quarter Horse mare, leaned forward to touch noses with Ace. Well-trained and devoted to Jake, she stood ground-tied nearby.

  “Hi,” Sam said.

  Beyond the tumbling, gurgling waves, she heard a magpie’s call and saw a flash of black-and-white feathers.

  “Hi,” Jake said.

  And because she knew he’d tell her to keep on riding, if he didn’t want company, that greeting was as good as an invitation to stop for awhile.

  Without shading his eyes, Jake squinted up at Sam as she dismounted. Jake wasn’t wearing his hat, but something else was different.

  Something was making him look older and more serious. Suddenly, Sam realized what had changed.

  Jake Ely had cut off his hair.

  Chapter Four

  Sam forced herself to look at Jake more closely.

  He hadn’t cut it off. Not even short, really. It still grazed his shirt collar, but no strip of leather bound the thick hair that was the same night black as Witch’s gleaming coat.

  “Got somethin’ to say?”

  Sam shook her head, but Jake wasn’t fooled.

  When he actually had the nerve to laugh at her shock, teeth flashing white, she wasn’t a bit surprised.

  “Why, Samantha,” he teased with the phony drawl he knew she hated. “You’re as quiet as a horse thief at a hangin’.”

  Sam plopped into the sand a few feet away from him. Deliberately, she leaned over and looked out at the river, just like he’d been doing. If he thought she was going to burst into the outraged reaction he seemed to be fishing for, he was out of luck.

  “It’s your hair,” she told him.

  “Darn right,” Jake said.

 
; Sam realized they were both sitting up with their arms crossed, though, deadlocked.

  Sam really did want to know why he’d cut off the hair that seemed—at least to her—like a symbol of his Shoshone heritage. If only he didn’t have that teasing gleam in his eyes.

  No way, she thought again. She would not give him the satisfaction of believing she was taking this more seriously than he was.

  “It’s no big deal, Brat,” he said.

  “Who said it was? It’ll grow back.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jake said.

  But Sam’s curiosity was like an itch. The longer she ignored it, the worse it got.

  She ordered herself to wait an entire minute before asking a single question. Because she wasn’t very good at patience, she decided to count to sixty.

  One, two, three…

  Ace’s hoof, clacking against a river rock as he moved toward the water, distracted her.

  Four, five, six…

  Sam’s fingers gathered into fists, but she concentrated on the creaking of saddle leather as Ace lowered his head to drink.

  Seven, eight, nine…

  Sam tightened her crossed arms, trapping her fingers against her ribs instead of looking at Jake, who pretended he was on the verge of dozing off.

  Ten, eleven—

  Sam focused on Witch as the black mare walked over to join Ace. They drank quietly, as if they weren’t really thirsty.

  Then, suddenly, the words came tumbling out of Sam’s mouth.

  “Did your mom make you do it?” She demanded.

  Jake gave a “gotcha” laugh.

  “Mom suggested it,” he admitted. “Since I’ll be talkin’ to folks about scholarships.”

  “Okay,” Sam said, releasing a sigh.

  “Glad I got your consent.”

  “Shut up,” Sam told him, but she was smiling as she leaned back against her hands and lifted her face to the sun.

  Now she remembered. Before school started, Jake and his mother were taking a road trip to visit colleges. Nevada only had three four-year colleges, but they were going to check out a couple of northern California schools with good agricultural programs, too.

  “You’ll be back in time for the BLM auction, right?” Sam asked.

  “’Course,” Jake said.

  It was a good thing, Sam thought, because Brynna expected the two of them could help the Bureau of Land Management wranglers sort the wild horses that were available for adoption.

  “I’m not leavin’ for a year,” Jake said, and Sam wondered why he’d suddenly jumped ahead. “I might not even go to college.”

  “Don’t say that,” Sam told him. “You’ve been saving money for college ever since I’ve known you.”

  Jake stared past her, filling his eyes with the brown ridges that soared against the blue sky. He gave a slow shake of his head.

  “I could get there and hate it.”

  “You need to go to college,” Sam insisted, but he wasn’t listening to her. He was studying his horse.

  “Maybe you’d like to have Witch while I’m gone,” he said.

  Have Witch? Take Jake’s horse? A panicky pulse pounded in the side of Sam’s throat, but she just said, “She’s too much for me, Jake. You know that.”

  “Couple hours in the saddle and she’d know you were the new boss.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s that ‘couple hours in the saddle’ part that would slow me down,” Sam said.

  Jake smiled. “You could handle her.”

  “Yeah, right,” Sam said. Sam glanced at Witch and for once the black mare’s ears pricked forward in anticipation, instead of flattening in annoyance.

  “Why do you talk like you’re not brave?” Jake asked.

  Sam’s head whipped around from watching Witch.

  Brave was an awfully solemn word, but Jake just stretched as if he’d gotten a kink in his back sitting there at the riverside.

  “I’m not brave,” Sam said.

  Some dangers had crossed her path, sure, but usually when she stood firm, it was to help a horse. And for each time she’d faced a threat, there were two times she’d hidden or used her head.

  Jake weighed her protest, then said, “Well, if you’re not, at least you’re stubborn.”

  “Like I haven’t heard that before,” Sam said with a laugh.

  “Stubborn can make you determined,” Jake told her. “Sometimes, bravery and determination can take you the same place by the end of the day.”

  “Just remember you said that,” Sam told him, but she felt uneasy.

  Jake’s out-in-the-open honesty—about college and about her—felt weird. And he’d cut his hair. Maybe the three years’ difference in their ages really did count.

  “Can we quit talking about this?” she asked.

  Jake gave a short laugh, probably because she was always trying to pry more words out of him, not fewer.

  She watched Witch and Ace in the river. Ace pawed at a leaf swirling on the river’s surface, then stopped, hoof still raised. Water dripped from the wispy feathers at his pasterns. Sam pictured Bayfire, thinking that every extra hair had been trimmed to give him a sleeker look.

  Bayfire. She hadn’t said a word to Jake yet about the stunt horse.

  “Hollywood crew at your place yet?” Jake said.

  Sam knew she should be used to it by now. How many times had Jake’s careful observations and tracker’s instincts made it seem like he could read her mind?

  “Not the crew, but Bayfire and your mom’s friend Inez.”

  “So?” Jake asked.

  “So, she’s gorgeous and smart and loves her horse, and he’s—” Sam paused. Of course the horse was beautiful, but that hadn’t been her strongest impression of him. “Jake, his trainer’s right. There’s something wrong with him.”

  “Like…?” Jake encouraged her.

  “Like, if I knew, I’d be a Hollywood horse psychiatrist.”

  Sitting here with Jake, Sam tried to be more sensible about Bayfire. The stallion could just be feeling lazy.

  “I promised Mom I’d go check him out, but tell me what he’s like,” Jake said.

  “Beautiful, half Andalusian and half Thoroughbred,” she said. “He has amazing conformation, sleek but powerful, and a mane and tail so full, you’d call them bushy, if they weren’t so well-groomed. But he does seem kind of burned out.”

  “Mom thinks he’s shot so many scenes on some studio lot in Hollywood, he’s sick of pretending.”

  And Jake must think there was a possibility that was true, or he wouldn’t have mentioned it, would he?

  Even though she was surprised, Sam didn’t rub in the fact that Jake was always teasing her about imagining horses had human feelings.

  “Hey, so why are they shooting it here? Do you know what the movie’s about?” Sam asked.

  “Mom’s got this idea we’ll get starstruck if she tells us too much,” Jake said.

  “Oh, right,” Sam chuckled. She couldn’t think of any guys less likely to turn into groupies than the Ely brothers.

  “All I know’s TriMax Studios is bringin’ one horse and some cameras—”

  “But is it, like, an Old West movie, or a story that’s supposed to take place in, I don’t know, Switzerland or something and—” Sam broke off when Jake tilted his head to one side. “Okay, keep going. I’ll be patient.”

  But Jake didn’t keep going. He glanced up as if he were looking for the little white plane that had been creasing the sky all morning, but it had disappeared.

  As usual when she was patient, Jake finally went on.

  “The movie’s ‘working title’—which means it could change, I think—is The Princess and the Pauper.”

  “That sounds familiar,” Sam said.

  “It should. It’s a takeoff on Mark Twain’s Prince and the Pauper, only since Violette Lee’s going to be in it—”

  “Wow! Really?” Sam sat back as if she’d been pushed, then closed her mouth when she realized her jaw had actually dropped in di
sbelief.

  Having a stunt horse at River Bend made some kind of sense, but Violette Lee was a rising young actress who’d been in lots of cool movies.

  Sam didn’t really know much about her, but she could picture Violette Lee’s yards of satiny blond hair and her delicate hands darting in little fairy movements.

  Wait, her memory needed to be updated, Sam realized, because she was picturing Violette from a TV show she’d starred in as a little girl.

  “What was the name of that show she used to be on, Jake? Violette played Santa Claus’s youngest kid,” Sam reminded him, but Jake was pretending he didn’t know. “Come on,” she urged. When Jake rolled his eyes at her excitement, she jabbed him with her elbow. “Jake, I can tell you know. What was it?”

  “Why didn’t I let you keep on ridin’,” Jake grumbled, but when she continued watching him, patiently, he added, “It was called Meet the Clauses or Everyday is Christmas—something like that.”

  “I loved it,” Sam said, although now that she thought about it, it was a mystery that the program, which showed how Santa Claus’s family spent the rest of the year, had lasted more than a season.

  “So does The Princess and the Pauper take place during, you know, knighthood days?”

  “If you mean during the medieval period,” Jake corrected with mock patience, “yeah.”

  “So they’ll be putting the horses in armor and Violette will probably be wearing big poufy skirts,” Sam said as she imagined the scene.

  “Don’t talk to me about the costumes and sets,” Jake ordered her. “Because I’ve heard enough. I was barely awake this morning when I heard Mom instructing Dad in all the ways Hollywood botches history. I bet he was late for work.”

  “Well, history is her thing,” Sam said, though it was funny to imagine little blond Mrs. Ely following Jake’s towering dad around, lecturing him like she would a student.

  “I wonder why they’d shoot a medieval movie here,” Sam mused. “We’re kind of short of castles.”