Ghost Horses Read online

  Now Steven and Olivia hung back beside the Jeep, their heads close together as they spoke in low voices—talking about Ethan and Summer, Jack figured. His father kept rubbing the back of his neck with his hand, a sure sign that he was worried.

  Jack felt awkward just standing there at the cemetery entrance, so he finally called out, “Come on, Mom and Dad, what are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

  “Why don’t you kids go on ahead?” his mother answered. “Your father and I need to talk for a minute.” Wisps of dark, curly hair escaped from underneath a baseball cap Olivia had pulled low on her forehead. She often wore T-shirts with pictures of animals on them. Today, she had on a green shirt with the footprints of different extinct species scattered across it.

  “Go on, son,” Steven told Jack. “Ask Ethan and Summer to show you the Sacagawea monument. We’ll join you in a bit.”

  Great, just great, Jack fumed. Well, the faster he went, the faster he could get this whole thing over with. “Summer, do you know where the grave is?”

  She looked up at him, her dark eyes wide. Jeez, she can’t even answer a simple question, Jack thought.

  “I’ll take you.” Spinning on the tips of his running shoes, Ethan led the way. Now that Ethan was out of his dancing regalia and in a white T-shirt and jeans, Jack could tell how compact yet strong he really was. His arms moved loosely at his sides as he hurried up the hill, so fast Jack and Ashley had to scramble to keep up. As he moved, shoulder-length black hair flew off his face, revealing a strong jaw set in a hard line. Although Summer looked delicate in her yellow-flowered sundress, she had enough energy to follow her brother with no apparent problem.

  “Slow down,” Ashley called out, but Ethan kept moving at top speed up the narrow path. Determined not to let them beat him, Jack began to jog up the incline, leaving his sister to tag behind. Gravestones dotted the wild grass like scattered teeth, some of them tipped to one side, others with the surface worn to a smooth polish, the letters rubbed bare. Many of the markers were simple slabs of wood. Although some seemed neglected, most of the graves were adorned with bright plastic flowers in every color of the rainbow, as though someone had scattered a giant bag of candy across the barren ground. It was a wind-blown, dusty place. Hardly what he expected to see as the final resting place of someone as famous as Sacagawea.

  Ethan and Summer had stopped in front of the largest tombstone. More plastic flowers adorned the grave, along with nickels, dimes, and quarters that had been pressed into the baked earth. The coins caught the sunlight and threw it back like tiny mirrors.

  Casting a wide shadow, the large rectangle of granite showed the probable dates of Sacagawea’s birth and death, along with a bronze plaque that detailed her life.

  “Thanks for waiting, Jack,” Ashley panted when she joined him.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s OK. Wow, here it is. I’ve heard so much about her, how she was the guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition even though she was really young. I can’t believe I’m standing right at Sacagawea’s grave.” Ashley took a breath and added, “She was a Shoshone too, right?”

  “Yes. But she’s not buried here,” Summer answered in a small voice. “Sacagawea died in the mountains. No one knows where her body lies. They made this to honor her.”

  Ashley shot Jack a triumphant look that seemed to say, “See, she talks!” Placing her hand on Summer’s arm, Ashley said eagerly, “I think Sacagawea was a real hero.”

  “To you,” Ethan said sharply. “Not to me. Not to my sister.”

  Jack and Ashley looked at Ethan in surprise. “Why don’t you think she was great?” Ashley asked.

  Ethan’s thick brows knit together. “She helped the white man, and the white man took all our land. My grandmother said Sacagawea should not have helped anyone but her own people.”

  Nodding, Ashley tried to get him to keep talking. “I bet your grandmother taught you a lot of things, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. She taught us the old ways,” Summer answered for him. “She taught us the traditional way to dress. She taught us how to cook and hunt and even how to dance, like we did today.”

  Ashley beamed, triumphant over the fact that Ethan and Summer Ingawanup were finally opening up. “Do you think sometime, maybe later, you could teach Jack and me how to dance like that? I’d really like to learn.”

  Ethan snickered loudly. His eyes rolled to the sky as he muttered, “I’m not teaching no white guys.”

  That did it. Jack felt irritation surge through him. “Look, Ethan, whether you like it or not, the four of us are stuck together. Do you think it would kill you to stop being a jerk for a couple of weeks?”

  “Jack—don’t—” Ashley began, but Jack didn’t care. He moved right in front of Ethan, staring him down, eye to eye. “You know, we didn’t ask for you to stay with us, but you’re here with our family. So why don’t you give up the attitude, OK? Then maybe we can get through this until your big sister comes back, and then you can go home and forget about us white people.”

  Ethan stood with his legs spread apart, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes hard. Wind began to blow over the hill, bending the grass toward the ground like stalks of wheat, moving Summer’s hair in dark wisps across her face. Jack wasn’t about to back down, and neither, it seemed, was Ethan. Finally, like clouds parting, Ethan’s face cleared. With what looked almost like a smile, he said, “OK.”

  Nothing Ethan could have said would have taken Jack more by surprise. “OK…what?” he asked, still not believing Ethan’s turnaround.

  “OK, I’ll try to be friends.” Smiling slyly, he said, “So you want to learn how to dance?”

  “Sure,” Ashley answered, nodding eagerly.

  “Then I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you and your brother the Ghost Dance.”

  Summer pushed the hair off her face, saying, “No, Ethan—”

  “Yes. It’s a good dance, very old. Gotta be danced around a cedar tree.” Ethan looked completely different when he smiled. His teeth were white and square in his dark face, but the smile didn’t make it all the way up to his eyes—they still glittered coldly. “Don’t worry,” he told them. “You’ll like the Ghost Dance.” Without another word Ethan spun around and began running through the gravestones, higher and higher in the cemetery grounds until he veered off at the top of the hill. Summer followed him, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she went.

  “I guess we’re supposed to go after them,” Ashley said.

  “Except there’s no way I’m going to dance. Not here. Not with Ethan.”

  Ashley’s voice rose half an octave. “What do you mean? We can’t tell Ethan ‘no’ when he’s finally trying to be nice. You’ve got to.”

  “You dance. I’ll watch.”

  “No way!” Grabbing the edge of his sleeve, Ashley tugged hard. “Please!” she begged. “Maybe it’ll make us all friends! Besides, at the powwow you said you wished you could dance like them.”

  “That’s not the same thing. They had costumes and drums. Out here I feel stupid!”

  “No one will see! Besides, our whole trip to Zion will be ruined if we don’t get along with them.”

  That much was true. He looked around the cemetery. His parents, still talking, were finally making their way up to Sacagawea’s marker, but beyond them the grounds were completely empty. Jack heaved a sigh. “OK. But if any stranger shows up, I quit. And let go of my sleeve. You’re stretching my shirt.”

  As they climbed toward the Ingawanups, Jack noticed that Ethan seemed to be searching for something. After a few minutes he began kicking rocks away from the ground around a small green tree that stood no more than two feet high.

  “Hey, watch where you’re kicking those things,” Jack yelled. “One of them nearly hit my sister.”

  Summer murmured, “Ethan, maybe we shouldn’t do the Ghost Dance…”

  Her brother ignored her. “I just needed to clear some space around this cedar tree. I told you that’s what we’
re supposed to dance around—a cedar tree.” Impatiently, he gestured for Jack and Ashley to come closer. “Go ahead,” he told Summer, who asked him, “You sure, Ethan?”

  When Ethan nodded, Summer said in her soft voice, “Stand around the tree. Boy, girl, boy, girl. Take hands.” Jack grasped Summer’s hand as if in a handshake, but she shook her head and said, “No, like this,” and twined thin fingers through his.

  Since there were only four of them, the circle was small—Summer, Jack, Ashley, Ethan. His voice low, Ethan began to sing:

  I’yehe’ Uhi’yeye’heye’

  I’yehe’ ha’dawu’hana’ Eye’de’yuhe’yu!

  Ni’athu’-a-u’ a’haka’nith’ii

  Ahe’yuhe’yu!

  Tugging Jack’s hand, Summer moved in a circle from right to left, left foot first, followed by the right one, barely lifting her feet above the ground as they moved. Awkwardly, Jack stumbled along; on his other side, Ashley had caught the motion perfectly and danced as though she’d always done it that way. Ethan’s voice grew louder, pounding each note like a beat on a tom-tom. Jack guessed he was singing the same song over and over, although the words sounded so strange that Jack couldn’t tell whether they were being repeated or not.

  He glanced down the hill to the Sacagawea monument, where his mother and father stood looking up at the kids and smiling, probably thinking how sweet it was that the four of them were doing a little circle dance together. Probably figuring that everything was all right now. But was it?

  His attention was jerked back to the dance, because Ethan had stopped his chant and Summer began to speak. Her voice soft, her eyes half shut, she murmured, “Grandmother’s grandmother saw the big fire on the mountaintop. Our people were dancing the Ghost Dance. They danced. They danced. The fire burned higher.” Summer spoke in a monotone, her voice neither rising nor falling, but for some reason it made Jack’s scalp prickle.

  “Grandmother’s grandmother saw the smoke. It rolled down the mountain. It covered the earth and the people and the animals. No one could see, but they kept dancing. The smoke got thicker. It hid the sky. It hid the earth. It hid the horses, and turned them into ghosts.”

  Now Summer spoke in a singsong. “After two days the smoke was gone. After two days the horses were gone. They became ghost horses. But sometimes, when the people danced, the ghost horses returned.”

  While she told the tale, Summer’s eyelids drooped lower and lower, while Ashley’s eyes widened until the whites showed. As for Jack, he caught the smell of—no, that was crazy. He couldn’t be smelling smoke—there wasn’t a wisp of it showing anywhere, nothing rising into the perfect blue sky, and from that high on the hill he could see all around. Then Ethan began to sing once more, louder than before,

  I’yehe’ Uhi’yeye’heye’

  I’yehe’ ha’dawu’hana’ Eye’de’yuhe’yu!

  Ni’athu’-a-u’ a’haka’nith’ii

  Ahe’yuhe’yu!

  By that time, Steven and Olivia had climbed closer to where the kids danced around the little cedar tree. They were still 20 feet away when Ethan stopped abruptly and pulled his hands away from Ashley’s and Summer’s.

  “Oh, don’t stop,” Olivia begged. “That was just—charming.”

  Ethan turned into stone man again. He didn’t say a word.

  “I loved it!” Ashley exclaimed. “Can we do it again? Maybe when we get to Zion National Park? Ethan says we need a cedar tree; I bet there’s lots of cedars in Zion. You’ll do it again, too, won’t you, Jack?”

  Jack didn’t know whether he wanted to dance the Ghost Dance again. It made him feel off balance, and not just because of the strange rhythmic words that he couldn’t understand. It was something more, something he couldn’t quite wrap his thoughts around.

  But the dance could be a way to keep things smooth between himself and Ethan, and for that reason alone he should agree to do it once more. What did it matter, anyway, if he shuffled around in a circle while Ethan sang, or chanted, or whatever you called it—Jack didn’t know whether the words had any meaning at all.

  That part about the horses, though, that Summer told—that part was different. Ghost horses. Ghost horses moving across the empty plains in search of—what? He shivered a little, even though the mid-September sun felt warm on his arms.

  “Won’t you, Jack?” Ashley’s voice broke into his thoughts.

  “Sure, I’ll dance again,” Jack answered softly. He wasn’t agreeing to make Ashley happy, or to connect with Ethan and Summer or to make the trip to Zion run more smoothly. He would dance to see if in a different setting, under a different sky miles and miles from here, he would still smell that hint of invisible cedar smoke.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Here we are, riding in an SUV made in Korea, Jack thought. Look at us: two Shoshone kids; my mom, whose four grandparents came from Italy; my dad, with a Norwegian mother and a father who could have been from anywhere, whoever he was—my dad never knew him—and us, Ashley and me. I guess this mixed-up carload is about as American as you can get.

  “Hey, what are you thinking about?” Ashley asked him.

  “Nothing. Just where things came from.” Stretching his arms, Jack asked, “Hey, Ashley, do you know what they first named this park, before they changed it to Zion?”

  “I don’t know,” Ashley shrugged. “What?”

  “It was Mukuntuweap National Monument, in 1909. It didn’t get named ‘Zion’ until 1919.”

  Wrinkling her nose, she said, “Mukuntuweap? Did I say it right? What a weird name.”

  “It’s Indian,” Ethan told her. He pulled his eyes away from the window long enough to say, “This used to be Paiute land. They hunted here. This land was taken from them, just like Yellowstone was taken from us. But their spirits are still here.”

  “Oh,” Ashley answered, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “Well, anyway, it sure is pretty around here, no matter what the name is.” Ethan grunted and looked back out his window, pressing his forehead into the glass.

  They’d rented the sport utility vehicle at the airport in St. George, Utah. Now, as they approached Zion, the flat, sandy earth changed into spires of red rock that brushed the sky like enormous statues. Eons of upheaval and erosion had molded the Navajo sandstone into strange rock formations, here rounded from wind and rain, there transformed into snaggletoothed summits that seemed to bite the clouds. As they neared the park, red rock monoliths rose up into the sky, so tall that even when he craned his neck, Jack couldn’t see their tops.

  “OK, stay on this road until we come to Zion Lodge, which is right in the canyon,” Olivia told Steven as she peered at the map. “The park has booked us into three connecting rooms. Isn’t that great? We get to stay in the same building where I’m giving my lecture!”

  “I never knew marrying a wildlife veterinarian would buy me a ticket into so many wonderful places,” Steven told her. “I just hope you won’t be giving your talk in a room with a big window. I mean, who would want to listen to a speech on animal pinkeye when there’s this kind of beauty all around?”

  “Excuse me?” Olivia cocked her head toward her husband. “Are you saying you don’t find my topic fascinating?”

  “Hmmm. Pinkeye in the deer population. I couldn’t sleep all last night just thinking about it.” Steven, who had a large, lopsided grin on his face, stole a quick glance at Olivia.

  “Steven Landon, you know my lecture isn’t on pinkeye—pinkeye is just one example I’m using to show how the different branches of the government handle their animal problems. For instance, Zion won’t treat the pinkeye in their deer, since it’s national park policy not to interfere with a naturally occurring disease. The Bureau of Land Management, on the other hand, treats pinkeye with antibiotics…”

  “My mom is a wildlife veterinarian,” Ashley whispered to Summer, who was sitting beside her in the very back of the SUV. “She helps rangers if there’s a problem about park animals. Lots of times we get to go with her to national pa
rks all over the country. We’ve seen wolves and manatees and grizzlies and cougars and all kinds of stuff. It’s really cool.”

  Summer nodded quietly, her eyes wide. “Are they fighting?”

  Ashley answered, “Fighting? You mean my mom and dad? No!”

  Jack turned in his seat to explain, “Dad just likes to give Mom a hard time. They tease each other, you know?”

  Summer looked puzzled.

  “…so it’s very important to grasp the different approaches.” Olivia bit the side of her lip and said, “Tell me the truth, Steven, is it boring?”

  Steven answered, “Nah. I promise, it’s riveting!”

  “I don’t know why you have to be such a brat,” Olivia told him, punching his arm.

  “Just doin’ my job, ma’am,” Steven replied with a laugh.

  Funny, Jack thought. He knew his parents well enough to tell when they were kidding, but Summer and Ethan didn’t seem to grasp that kind of banter. Had their grandmother ever joked with them? Had she taken them out to ball games or to movies or to do any of the thousand things Jack took for granted? What was their life like on the Wind River Reservation? He was about to ask them when his mother exclaimed, “Look at these canyon walls! The map says they’re just 2,000 feet from here to the tops, but they look much higher.”

  “Yeah,” Steven told them, “and this skinny little Virgin River we’re driving along sliced right through that solid rock to make the canyon. Like a hot knife through butter. Only it was not just water, but the particles of rock in the water that kind of scoured it out. Did you know a million tons of sand and rock get swept out of this canyon every year? And it only took a couple hundred thousand years for all this to happen.”

  “How about the next couple hundred thousand years?” Ashley called out. “What’ll happen to it then?”