Wild Honey Read online

  “A senior citizens mixer, Grace said.” Mrs. Allen pronounced the words as if they were a newly discovered virus. “Can you imagine anything more depressing?”

  “It might be fun,” Sam encouraged her.

  “Maybe it would start out that way, but Grace and my daughter both seem to think I need rescuing. They don’t like me living out here all by myself.” Mrs. Allen flashed an accusing stare at Sam, as if she’d agree.

  “You have all the animals,” Sam said.

  “Right,” Mrs. Allen snapped. “I don’t need a white knight galloping in to take me away from all this. I like where I am just fine.” Mrs. Allen gave a nod so sharp, the palomino sidestepped away.

  “Not that I’d turn down a couple strong backs and some hands that aren’t afraid to get dirty doing something worthwhile,” Mrs. Allen added.

  “I just know there are kids—adults, too, I bet—all over the country who love horses and would work to save them if they could,” Sam said, but she refused to be led off the subject of the Phantom’s injured lead mare. “This horse—”

  “If those dedicated folks lived next door and worked as hard for the horses as you do, I wouldn’t have any problems at all,” Mrs. Allen mused.

  Delight buzzed through Sam. Mrs. Allen couldn’t have given her a greater compliment. And she meant it. She wasn’t throwing praise around to get Sam to do something for her. In fact, Mrs. Allen wasn’t even looking at Sam.

  Her hands were on her hips as she glared toward the road leading into the ranch. “Can you believe someone filed a complaint against me with the Humane Society?”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. Someone said I wasn’t caring for the horses properly and my sanctuary should be shut down.”

  “But who?” Sam asked as images of the rescued horses flashed through her mind.

  She thought of Faith, a Medicine Hat filly blind from birth, of the pretty young mare with crippled front legs, and the black horse with bumps scarring its body from an untreated allergy. Where would these horses go without Mrs. Allen?

  “The Humane Society wouldn’t tell me who reported me, but that’s another thing I went to thinkin’ about late last night. It could have been these tourists who stopped in and wanted to see wild horses. They were disappointed because I didn’t have a chuck wagon breakfast waiting for them. Then they decided the horses must be sick because they weren’t running around.” Mrs. Allen tsked her tongue. “In this heat? I ask you, what kind of dumb animal would be galloping just for fun?

  “And then there’s Linc Slocum. He still wants to get his hands on about sixty of my acres, to make a dude ranch or some such nonsense.”

  Mrs. Allen’s eyes wandered to the honey-colored mare. Sam held her breath, waiting. If Mrs. Allen really looked at the palomino, she’d be hooked.

  Sam watched Mrs. Allen’s eyes dart from the mare’s flaxen forelock to her glossy muscled shoulders, to her injury, then back up to the mare’s brown eyes. Mrs. Allen took a deep breath, not as if she’d speak, but wistfully, as if she imagined the mare free.

  When Mrs. Allen sighed, crossed her arms in surrender, and nodded, Sam knew she had a partner in crime. She didn’t dare dance in delight, but she felt like it.

  “My, she’s a beauty,” Mrs. Allen said. Her eyes skimmed over the horse with reluctant admiration once more. “A mustang, you say? She looks mighty fit. Must have wintered well and had plenty to eat this summer.”

  “She’s been running with the Phantom’s herd. She’s his lead mare,” Sam said.

  Mrs. Allen gave a faint hum of interest. The Phantom’s herd often crossed onto Deerpath Ranch. “What happened to her leg?”

  “I’m not sure. I think she got kicked by another horse. I just found her at Aspen Creek, and then Jake came along, and your ranch was the closest, safest place for her.”

  “She can stay ’til you’ve called Brynna to trailer her up to Willow Springs,” Mrs. Allen consented. She glanced south, toward BLM’s Wild Horse Center. Then, noticing that Sam didn’t respond, Mrs. Allen used the edge of her hand to shade her eyes and studied her. “You do want to call Brynna?”

  Sam had dreaded the question, and now that Mrs. Allen had asked it, she wasn’t sure how to answer. If she called Brynna, her stepmother would bring in Dr. Scott to tend to the mare. That would be great, except that Brynna would have little choice about what happened next. Even if she let Mrs. Allen foster the mare for a few weeks—something Mrs. Allen didn’t seem eager to do—the horse would soon be turned over to BLM for freeze-branding, vaccination, and, eventually, adoption.

  “No, I don’t want to call her,” Sam said. She swallowed hard. Hoping she could trust Mrs. Allen to understand, she explained, “What I’d really like is to patch her up and keep her here until she’s well enough to turn back out.”

  “Ah, Sam.” Mrs. Allen rubbed her fingertips against her eyelids.

  “You’re right at the edge of wild horse country.” Sam talked as fast as she could, so that Mrs. Allen couldn’t protest. “I’ll do everything I can to help. You said I was a good worker,” Sam reminded her. “And then, before the horses go hole up somewhere for winter, we’ll set her free. I know she’ll find her way back to the Phantom’s herd.”

  Mrs. Allen’s wrinkled hands dropped from her eyes.

  “I’ll tell you a secret, Samantha. I don’t know how to keep this whole operation afloat. If the Humane Society decides I need to make a lot of improvements—” She broke off, unwilling to spell out what would happen next.

  “We’ll help,” Sam said.

  “We?” Mrs. Allen asked wearily.

  “I know I can get Jake and his brothers, probably Callie, and Jen, of course—”

  “Sam, doesn’t the Kenworthy girl have a broken rib?” Mrs. Allen demanded.

  “Well, yeah, but she’s getting better, and Jen’s my best friend—”

  “Still,” Mrs. Allen said dubiously, and then she laughed. “She’s the little bookworm, isn’t she?”

  “And a math genius,” Sam insisted.

  At that, Mrs. Allen looked faintly hopeful. “Even though she’s young—”

  “She’s brilliant,” Sam finished for her.

  “That may be, but I was thinking her fresh eyes might look over my finances and see if I’ve overlooked any buried treasure.”

  “She’ll find something worth noticing. I just know it,” Sam said, though she had no idea what she was talking about.

  “You’re whistling in the dark, Sam,” Mrs. Allen said. Then, before Sam could ask exactly what that meant, she added, “For now, we need to treat that injury. If you don’t want to call Brynna, I suppose you won’t phone Dr. Scott.”

  Disapproval lowered Mrs. Allen’s brows and the corners of her mouth.

  “No, but if I can use your phone to call Jen, she’s got lots of books on—”

  “This will cause me grief, I just know it, but go ahead. First, get the mare into the box stall where I had Belle and Faith, if you can. You know the one. Then skedaddle in and call your friend. I’ll help you, Samantha, but I won’t let the horse suffer for your fantasy of how grand it is to be free.”

  Sam gritted her molars together to keep from arguing that freedom, the way the golden mare had enjoyed it, had been grand.

  “All right,” Sam said. She firmed her legs against Ace. As he stepped out, Sam ignored the nagging suspicion that she wasn’t doing the right thing.

  “And speaking of dreams,” Mrs. Allen said with a lopsided smile, “if I’m going to pursue my dream of having a wild horse sanctuary, I’d better keep shoveling.”

  The honey-colored mare didn’t seem to mind the stall.

  What does that mean? Sam wondered as she walked toward Mrs. Allen’s house and saw Jake coming toward her.

  Sweat sheened his face. With both hands full, he couldn’t push back the black hair that was falling over his brow, so he tossed his head like a restless horse, reminding her that when she’d been a child, she’d thought Jake h
ad mustang eyes.

  Then Sam noticed the garbage bags he carried. One tinkled and the other looked empty, except for a single lump in the bottom.

  Sam didn’t ask if the broken window had been as much of a mess as Mrs. Allen had said, because Jake’s expression warned her that it had. She still had to ask him something.

  Quickly, before he strode on past her, Sam asked, “Are Mrs. Allen’s horses in bad condition?”

  Jake stopped and blinked. Standing there in his running shorts and school jersey, with a bag full of broken glass in one hand and a sack of dead quail in the other, he considered her question. Sam guessed he was mentally reviewing the horses they’d seen as they rode in.

  “The old ones,” he began.

  “Not Ginger, Calico, and Judge,” Sam interrupted. “The mustangs.”

  Jake’s head tilted to one side. “They shoulda had their hooves trimmed. And a coupla them need wormin’, I’d say.”

  He waited a minute in silence while Sam chewed on her lip. Suddenly she remembered Brynna saying she hoped Mrs. Allen had given the mare Belle some kind of supplements because blind foals like Faith tended to nurse longer than sighted ones.

  Would the Humane Society be able to tell if Mrs. Allen hadn’t done that?

  “That all?” Jake asked.

  “Someone reported Mrs. Allen to the Humane Society and she’s afraid they’ll ask her to do something expensive.”

  Jake waited as Sam stared toward the house, but he was beginning to look impatient.

  “I’ll go call Jen, and then will you help me with her?”

  “Can’t nobody help you with her,” Jake said, and it took Sam a second to realize he wasn’t talking about the palomino.

  “I was talking about the mare,” Sam explained.

  “Why didn’t ya say so,” Jake said, lifting the bags. “That, I can do.”

  Sam had told Jen everything she knew about the palomino mare, but Jen’s first remark had nothing to do with equine medicine.

  “You’re about to get in trouble again. You know that, right?” Jen asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Sam began.

  “The queen of denial,” Jen muttered.

  Sam took a breath, squinted in confusion toward the open space where Mrs. Allen’s window used to be, and asked, “Cleopatra? I don’t get it.”

  “Not Cleopatra. Not the Nile. You are the queen of denial. Every time you’re on the verge of getting in trouble, you assume other people will understand why and just line up on your side.”

  As Sam mulled that over, she heard Jen rummaging through books. Sam pictured her friend, with crazy-colored clothes and swinging braids, searching like an alchemist in a chaotic tower for the right formula to change a wild mare into a healthy horse.

  “I’m not saying they shouldn’t be on your side,” Jen went on, “it’s just that they don’t always get what you’re doing. And it’s not because—here it is! Uh, no,” Jen said, and Sam heard a book slam closed, then the rustling of more pages. “It’s not because you’re irrational or anything. It’s just that your solutions are creative and people…”

  Sam let Jen babble as she searched.

  “…don’t pay attention, and they should, because you have a good heart and you’re my friend and I’ll defend you to the death—though I hope it doesn’t come to that—but remind me how many horses you’ve stolen?”

  “Jen!”

  “Just checking to see if you’re listening,” Jen chirped. “Anyway, here’s what you do.”

  Minutes later, Sam had taken a full page of notes on the back of a big brown envelope she hoped Mrs. Allen didn’t need.

  “So, you don’t think one of her veins has been nicked?” Sam asked.

  “Without looking, and without a degree in veterinary medicine—” Jen began.

  “I know, but you think it’s okay for us to treat it ourselves?” Sam repeated.

  “Sam, this is what happens when you spend your formative years in San Francisco. Yes, I think it’s okay to treat her yourself. My dad rarely calls the vet. Ranchers have been nursing their own stock for generations. Besides, if it happened more than twenty-four hours ago…”

  “Lots more,” Sam said. “It was the day before Ryan brought Hotspot home.”

  “Why are you so convinced it happened then?” Jen asked.

  “Because I saw her get kicked,” Sam said.

  “But are you sure that’s what caused this injury?” Jen asked. “You just told me when Hotspot kicked her, you heard a meaty thump.”

  “That’s right,” Sam agreed.

  “Legs are bony. A meaty sound doesn’t seem right,” Jen mused. “There’s all kinds of things she could’ve scuffed up against, anything from a branch to downed wire.”

  “Would that be better?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jen admitted. “We’re already past the golden hours.”

  “Whoa! The what?” Sam asked.

  “It’s what they call the first three hours after an injury,” Jen explained. “After that, the chance of complete recovery starts declining.”

  Sam had no trouble understanding that, and hope wilted.

  “So, here’s what you do,” Jen said. “Clean it up. Trim back the hair. Remove any dead tissue—”

  “Remove it how?”

  “Just clip it off with scissors and—What’s that sound?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you moaning?”

  “A little,” Sam admitted.

  “Maybe Jake or Mrs. Allen can do it without being sick,” Jen teased.

  “I won’t be sick. I just feel sorry for her. She’s been through a lot,” Sam said.

  “If you don’t want her to have to go through any more, take care of her. And don’t be fatalistic. Just because it’s been more than three hours doesn’t mean there can’t be a complete recovery. Mustangs are tough. You tell me so all the time. Now hustle on out there and get started and I’ll try to work out a way to come see her tomorrow, unless you give in and let Dr. Scott check her out.”

  “I won’t,” Sam said, but she wasn’t as sure as she sounded.

  Sam took about two minutes to rinse the empty ice cube trays Mrs. Allen had left in her sink. She refilled them with water and stuck them in her freezer. Then she headed for the door and the decision waiting for her in the box stall.

  She felt like a human scale, and imagined herself standing with arms outstretched. In one hand, she held the lead mare’s freedom. In the other, the mare’s physical well-being. In Sam’s imagination, her arms were exactly level.

  Maybe, she thought grimly, when they cleaned up the mare’s wound, they’d see she was in danger and needed a vet’s care to survive. Survival outweighed freedom, didn’t it?

  Or maybe, under all that dirt and old blood, they’d see the mare’s injury was no big deal.

  “Sure, she’s just been faking,” Sam grumbled as she closed Mrs. Allen’s door and walked past flowerbeds where limp stalks had replaced the straight stems of orange day lilies. “And any minute now, she’ll suddenly burst into the wild horse boogie and just dance right on out of here. That’d tip the scales, all right.”

  But with my luck, Sam thought, neither of those things will happen.

  The horse couldn’t choose for herself, and so far no one had stepped forward and wrested the choice away from Sam.

  Right then, she almost wished someone would.

  Chapter Five

  “Not one of us is going to crouch down inside that box stall with a wild mare,” Mrs. Allen warned as she dropped an armload of alfalfa in the corner.

  Sam nodded in grudging agreement. Being next to those hooves on the hillside above the creek, where she could roll away if she had to, had been risky enough.

  Mrs. Allen formulated a plan as she watched the mare. The palomino sniffed the alfalfa, then sidestepped away, as if it were unsafe to do even that much.

  “Now what was it we did when we worked on Belle right after we got her?” Mrs. Al
len mused. “Oh yes, we improvised a squeeze chute by using an air mattress. You know, the kind you slip under your sleeping bag so that your back won’t kink up while you’re camping?” Mrs. Allen shrugged when Jake looked skeptical. “We brought Belle out of the stall and led her next to the barn wall, then used the air mattress against her body to give the impression of being contained.”

  Jake’s hands rested on his hips and Sam could tell that if he’d been wearing jeans instead of shorts from Darton High’s green and white cross-country uniform, he’d be hanging his thumbs in his pockets. He wasn’t sold on Mrs. Allen’s plan.

  “Do you have any other ideas, Jake?” Sam asked, and it must not have sounded sarcastic, because he thought for a few seconds, then shook his head.

  “Not a one,” he said.

  The mare seemed to go on tiptoe as they led her out of the box stall and tied her to a ring in the barn wall.

  “I know you’re not supposed to tie a wild horse,” Mrs. Allen said, “but how else are we going to get this done?”

  The mare didn’t shy or bolt, just remained cautious as Mrs. Allen sorted through her first aid box and Sam and Jake took turns blowing up the air mattress.

  The mare’s curiosity was a sign the doctoring could be accomplished, but it didn’t do anything to bolster Sam’s insistence that the horse was wild.

  Even though their hands and brains were busy, Sam caught Mrs. Allen and Jake giving her confused looks. It made her feel weird because their expressions were really easy to read and said they couldn’t believe someone with her horse savvy really thought the mare was wild. But she’d seen it with her own eyes!

  When the air mattress was inflated and the mare had been given a chance to sniff it and bump it with her nose, Sam suggested drawing straws for the task of working on the wound. Mrs. Allen and Jake believed Jake should do it.

  “I’ve known her longer. I don’t see why it should be you,” Sam said.

  “If anyone’s gonna squat down there and get his brains kicked out, it might as well be me,” Jake said in a long-suffering tone.