Ghost Horses Read online

  “Yeah,” Jack nodded, “I like them, too.”

  “Not the same way. We don’t break their spirits.”

  “What do you mean? If you want to ride a horse, you’ve got to break it first. Show it who’s boss. That doesn’t mean hurting their spirits or anything. Don’t your people ride horses?”

  “Shoshone are the best riders anywhere. But we’re partners with the horse. We don’t need to be master.”

  The excitement of the roundup was starting to seep out of Jack. Leaning back in his chair, he eyed Ethan. “So, now you’re saying white folks hurt wild horses?”

  Ethan pressed his fists against the table. “Grandmother told us white people try to conquer anything that gets in their way. Listen to what you said—you want to ‘break’ Mariah. ‘Control’ her. That’s not what we do. Shoshone people honor their horses.”

  “So you think my dad should have left Mariah alone?” Jack asked, his voice rising. “That way, she might have been shot dead instead. Would that have honored her?”

  “Mr. Landon is a cowboy. They’re all cowboys.” With a toss of his head, he indicated the men at the next table. “Cowboys against Indians.”

  Summer quickly scooted her chair closer to her brother. “Ethan, do you want a root beer?” she asked at the same time Jack felt a tug on his T-shirt sleeve. Ashley was trying to get his attention in the same way Summer was trying to get Ethan’s, but Jack refused to look at his sister until she put her face right in front of his. “Will you guys stop?” she hissed. “I’m trying to listen to Mom and Dad. They’ve been talking about Mariah, and I want to hear.”

  “Sure,” Jack agreed. “I don’t have anything more to say.”

  Ethan and Jack stared at each another, eyes locked, as the conversation from the next table filtered over to theirs.

  “…here for your meeting tomorrow,” Art was saying to Olivia, “which is why I was lucky enough to be on the scene for the roundup. The park wants to keep everything natural, with no interference from humans. But we folks at the BLM have to manage rangeland so the ranchers can graze their cattle there, and at the same time preserve and protect wild mustangs like Mariah. Sometimes those two goals clash.”

  “You mean crash together like a train wreck,” Gus added. “You know, Dr. Landon—”

  “Remember, call me Olivia.”

  “Right. Anyway, Olivia, there’s an interesting story about that horse Mariah that you took such a likin’ to just now. She belongs to the Chloride herd that runs on the range about 30 miles from our headquarters. We had to thin out that herd because the ranchers complained the wild mustangs eat too much grass.”

  Len Pelton broke in, “Two and a half million cattle graze on BLM land in the West, and only 46,000 mustangs, but the mustangs supposedly eat too much. Go figure.”

  “Well, like I said,” Gus went on, “when we captured Mariah, there was another white horse with her, a mare. Looked just like Mariah, only several years older; I’m judging that Mariah’s about three now. Maybe the older one was Mariah’s mother, ’cause the two of them seemed real close, touching and whinnying when we penned them together in the corral. But the next morning, the older horse turned up dead. Her neck was broke.”

  Beside Jack, Summer gave a quick little gasp.

  “Why? What happened?” Olivia asked.

  “Looked like she ran full-tilt into the panels of the corral. Horses’ necks are fragile; it happens sometimes. But she must have hit that panel at top speed, like—a suicide. It’s a mystery why she done that. And then—it happened again.”

  “The same thing? Again? Tell me,” Olivia demanded.

  Gus scraped back his chair and leaned forward. “See, the horses of the Chloride herd do behave kind of peculiar. No one knows why they act so strange. They whinny a lot more than most mustangs, and they do a lot of stuff I’ve never seen horses do before. Some of the local folks are even afraid of ’em, tellin’ scary stories about that herd.”

  “Like that newspaper fellow,” Art said, rubbing the faint stubble on his chin.

  “That man had no more sense than a rock,” Len added with a shake of his head.

  Gus nodded slowly. “What turns my crank is that I told that reporter fellow what happened to Mariah’s mom. Told him not to try to trap a white horse since we lost one that way. Didn’t make a whit of difference. Mr. Reporter wanted a story, so he did what he did.”

  With intense interest, Olivia looked from one weathered face to another.

  “See, Olivia,” Art broke in, “a couple of months ago this newspaper guy hears about our ghost horses and decides to see for himself. He hides in the bush, waiting until one goes inside a trap. Luckily, it was just one—all by itself. Well, as soon as he slams the gate shut, the ghost horse starts acting crazy, banging against the panels just like Mariah’s mom did.”

  “And then the dang fool runs off and leaves it!” Gus finished. “By the time we found out about it, it was too late. Another dead mustang, all because some reporter wouldn’t listen.”

  “So what do you make of all of these stories about the ghost horses?” Olivia pressed.

  Art studied his fingernails. “I don’t pay them no mind,” he said finally, “but still, there’s something spooky about those white horses—”

  At that, Summer clutched her brother’s arm, but Ethan just shook his head to signal her to remain silent.

  Art broke in suddenly, “Why don’t you come on out and see those mustangs, Olivia? You’re the expert. How about it?”

  “Hmmm, spooky white horses that whinny and touch each other a lot and kill themselves by running into wall panels. Sounds like mysterious behavior. You say the herd’s called the Chloride?”

  “Yes ma’am. Named after the canyon where they run, past Cedar City.”

  Nodding, Olivia said, “OK, you’re on. I think I’d like to get a look at these unusual mustangs.”

  Ashley couldn’t contain herself any longer. Jumping up, she begged, “Can we go too? Jack and Ethan and Summer and me?”

  Jack held his breath, hoping his mother would say yes. Even though he sent her an appealing look, Olivia still shook her head no, telling them that it was too big an imposition for Gus, since there were too many of them, and it was far out in the wild country—

  Gus interrupted with, “Hey, I’d be happy to take the whole kit and caboodle of you folks. The real question’s how patient the kids are. We’re gonna try to trap a few more of the Chloride mustangs tomorrow night, but it means waiting by the water hole, sometimes for hours and hours. And you can’t talk or move when the horses get close, ’cause it’ll spook them.”

  “We’re patient,” Jack said eagerly, “and Summer and Ethan hardly talk at all. The only yacky one is my sister—”

  “Jack!” Ashley protested.

  “You want to come, don’t you, Summer? Wouldn’t you like to see the ghost horses?” Steven asked.

  “Say yes!” Ashley told Summer, grabbing her hand.

  “Yes.” But the word sounded soft and uncertain.

  Neither Jack nor Ashley asked Ethan whether he wanted to watch: In the excitement, none of the adults seemed to notice him.

  “Well, sounds like we got a plan,” Art and Gus agreed. “We better get Mariah back to those two ranch ladies now, since they’re probably wantin’ to get on their way home.”

  After the good-byes were said, the Landons began to unpack their luggage from the SUV. “That was an exciting start to our trip, catching the mustang and meeting those guys,” Steven commented. “Now we’d better lug this stuff up to our rooms and then get some dinner. Look how dark it is already in this canyon. Len was right. Once the sun gets behind these canyon walls, everything’s in shadow.”

  Ethan objected strongly when he was told he had to share a room with Jack. “Why can’t I stay in the same room with my sister?” he asked.

  “We think it’s better for the boys to be in one room and the girls in another,” Steven explained.

  Hey, it�
��s not like I want to be in a room with you, either, Jack thought. While they unpacked, both boys stayed silent, avoiding eye contact, and kept as far apart from each other as the small room would allow. It was going to be a long couple of days.

  Dinner at the lodge restaurant was a quiet affair, with each of them lost in thought. As they finished their desserts, Ashley asked, “Can we dance the Ghost Dance again tonight?”

  “No,” Summer answered, but Ethan said more loudly, “Yes. We need to find another cedar tree, and we need to wear blankets. It’s part of the magic.”

  “I’m not dancing this time,” Jack announced.

  “You said you would!” Ashley protested. “Yesterday, at the cemetery, you said—”

  “I changed my mind.”

  Carefully folding his napkin, Steven began, “Um—I don’t think the lodge would appreciate it if you kids took the blankets off the beds and carried them outside. How about towels? Would that work?” When Ethan reluctantly agreed, Steven continued, “So why don’t you three go and get the things you need for the dance. I want to talk to Jack for a minute, and then we’ll join you.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Glancing at his father, Jack waited. Steven looked tired. The skin under his eyes was shadowed, and his shoulders seemed to slump. Straightening himself, he said, “Son, I know you don’t want to do this dance tonight, but I’d like you to make things as easy for Ethan as you can. If he wants to share some of his Shoshone background with you, then you ought to be happy about it. Culture exchange can be a rewarding, two-way street.”

  “Culture exchange?” Jack exploded. “That’s a joke. You don’t know what it’s like being stuck with him—he’s always grumbling about something, saying white people are bad and all kinds of stuff. Why am I the one who has to go along? Why don’t you make Ethan do what I want?”

  “Jack, I want you to step back from the situation and realize something. You have been given everything. You’ve got parents who love you, a comfortable home—Ethan’s needs are far greater than yours are right now. You may not know what it feels like to have everything taken from you, but I do. So I’m asking you….” He sighed, then continued, “Would you please try?”

  “We’ve all got to give a little here,” his mother added, placing her spoon and knife in perfect alignment with her plate on the tablecloth. “The truth is, your father and I would rather call it a night right now—we’re both tired, and I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow. But the dance seems to be important to Ethan; therefore, by extension, it’s important to all of us. Can you be a good sport and go along with it once more?”

  Jack looked at the wooden walls, which had been coated in a thick varnish that cast a golden glow throughout the restaurant. He knew his parents were right, even though he didn’t want to admit it. He needed to remember how it would feel to be Ethan, to walk around in his world, or as the saying that he’d heard so many times went, to walk a mile in his moccasins. Maybe Jack would have turned out the exact same way if he’d been raised the way Ethan had. Still, doing the right thing was hard.

  Yet there was something more, something that tugged at his mind, something that whispered that maybe he ought to give in and dance once again with Summer and Ethan. Yesterday, at the top of the Shoshone cemetery where a stark gray monument honored Sacagawea, Jack had danced the Ghost Dance. And while he danced, he’d smelled smoke from burning trees. Only there weren’t any trees burning, not on the entire Wind River Reservation. He remembered how weird it was. If he danced tonight, would he smell smoke again?

  He frowned, which made his parents look at him questioningly. No, it must have been his imagination yesterday, triggered by Summer’s grandmother’s grandmother’s story. Forget it. Jack faced his parents and said, “All right.”

  “Thanks, son,” his dad told him. “Here come the other kids now.”

  Ashley thrust a towel at Jack and said, “I brought you one anyway. I figured maybe you’d change your mind again.”

  “I guess. Thanks,” he said, folding it over his arm. The towels provided by the lodge weren’t very large—Zion Lodge was nice, but not the kind of luxury hotel where the bath towels were as big as beach towels. Jack didn’t know why they had to wear them anyway. Pretending the towels were Indian blankets seemed pretty stupid to him, but he’d told his parents he’d cooperate, so the best thing he could do would be to go along and get it over with. It just gave Ethan another chance to show off, with his hey-ya ya-ha stuff that he probably made up as he went along.

  When they got outside, Jack caught his breath. A huge full moon rose over the red cliffs, casting moon shadows on the front lawn of Zion Lodge. He wished he could take a picture of the scene, but without a wide-angle lens, his camera couldn’t begin to capture that canopy of nighttime splendor.

  “There’s a cedar tree,” Ethan said, gesturing toward the center of the lawn.

  “You know, they’re not really cedars,” Jack said, “although people around here call them that. They’re actually junipers.”

  “Whatever,” Ethan muttered, tossing his head. His hair swung thick and black and long in the moonlight.

  While Olivia and Steven sat nearby on the grass, the four kids wrapped their towels across their shoulders like blankets.

  “I don’t think these will stay on when we dance,” Ashley worried.

  “They’ll stay,” Ethan told her.

  They took one another’s hands as they had yesterday, but the Ghost Dance felt different at night. Ethan chanted the same song—at least Jack guessed it was the same, but since he couldn’t understand the words, he couldn’t be sure. The dance seemed to go on and on until Jack started getting tired of shuffling his feet and circling the cedar tree, which loomed dark in the night shadows. Every few minutes he sniffed the slight breeze that cooled their faces, but he couldn’t smell even a whiff of smoke. So, yesterday had been nothing but his imagination.

  They’d had a long day today, first flying from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to the St. George, Utah, airport, then driving the distance to the park, and then all those other things that had happened. Ethan and Summer should have been tired, too, but they just kept dancing, and so did Ashley. Jack wasn’t going to be the first one to admit he wanted to quit.

  Finally it was Olivia who called a halt. “We need to get to bed—or anyway I do,” she said. “Tomorrow will start early for me.”

  “One more thing before we stop dancing,” Ethan instructed them. “We’re supposed to take off the blankets and shake them like this. It’s part of the magic.”

  “They’re not blankets, they’re just towels,” Jack mumbled, but he shook his anyway, trying to copy Ethan.

  “Can’t we stay up a little longer?” Ashley pleaded. “We always tell stories around the camp-fire when we’re in a park—”

  Steven said wryly, “I don’t think the lodge owners would appreciate it if we built a fire on their lawn.”

  That wasn’t enough to deflect Ashley, who could always burrow her way around an obstacle. “We’ll just use the cedar tree and pretend it’s a fire,” she suggested. But Steven and Olivia were already standing up, preparing to herd the kids inside.

  Shyly, Summer said, “I know a story.”

  It was so unexpected that everyone paused, silent for a moment. Jack felt sure that his mother wouldn’t make them leave now, not since Summer had actually volunteered to take part in this perfect September evening under a star-filled sky—or as much of the sky as showed between the narrow canyon walls. He was right: Olivia hesitated, then smiled at Summer and said, “That would be lovely.”

  “Maybe it’s not a story,” Summer said. “Maybe it’s a poem.”

  “Even better,” Olivia told her. They arranged their towels on the grass and sat in a little half circle, Ethan far enough away from the Landons to show he didn’t want to be part of the family.

  Standing in front of them all, slowly moving from one foot to the other as she spoke, Summer began her tale in a voice so singsong it
might actually have been a song:

  Long ago, our legends told

  Of a horse no one could tame,

  Her sire, they say, was the devil himself,

  Wild Spirit was her name.

  Wild Spirit danced upon the wind,

  Luring many with her magic,

  But those who tried to ride her

  faced a death both cruel and tragic.

  Though men would dream of snaring her,

  Wild Spirit galloped free,

  Her mane flowed loose, her hoofbeats roared

  Across untamed prairie.

  Til a Shoshone woman with sun-baked hands

  Heard the legend, and the story

  Of the renegade horse, of the path she ran,

  Of Wild Spirit’s savage glory.

  To the high mountain the woman climbed,

  And when she heard loud thunder

  Cracking through a clear blue sky,

  She felt both fear and wonder.

  Out of the mist the horse appeared,

  Its eyes were wild as lightning,

  Never before had the woman seen

  A savage beast so frightening.

  The woman stood like a cedar tree

  Against those eyes of fire,

  Softly she questioned the specter’s rage

  As the smoky mane whirled higher.

  “My realm is gone!” the fierce horse roared,

  “White men have bled my earth,”

  “I too have lost,” the woman wept,

  “Cut from my land of birth.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes

  And saw a mirror there,

  The grief of losing both their worlds

  Had laid their two souls bare.

  Now legend tells of a ghostly horse,

  Stars paint Wild Spirit’s track,

  They light a path though the velvet sky,

  And a woman rides her back.