Palomino

6

In the morning as Samantha poured her aching body out of bed, she only felt its pain for the first few instants. After that she remembered her conversation with Caroline, and nothing hurt anymore as she ran to the shower and stood there, with the hot water pounding down on her shoulders and her head. This morning she wasn't even going to take the time for breakfast. She didn't care about breakfast. Not today. All she needed was a cup of coffee from Caroline's kitchen, and after that she would sail out to the barn. Just thinking about it made her smile. It was all she could think of this morning. And the smile was still dancing in her eyes as she ran the last steps to the barn. Two of the men were talking quietly in one corner, but other than that there was no one there. It was still much too early for most of them to be there. They were eating breakfast and trying to wake up as they gossiped about the local news and the usual ranch talk in the main dining hall.

Quietly, almost stealthily, Samantha picked up Black Beauty's saddle and walked toward his stall. But as soon as she had done so she saw the two men eyeing her, one with raised eyebrows. They had both stopped talking and were watching her with a silent question. Just as silently she nodded and slipped into the stall. She made soft murmuring noises to soothe him, running a hand down the long graceful neck and patting the powerful flanks as he eyed her nervously at first, backing and sidling, and then stopping as though to sniff the air near where she stood. She rested the saddle on the stall door, and then slipping the bridle over his head, she led him from the stall.

“Ma'am?” The voice surprised her as she looped the reins around a convenient post so she could saddle Black Beauty. She turned around to see who it was. It was one of the two men who had been watching her, and she realized then that he was a good friend of Josh. “Miss Taylor?”

“Yes?”

“Uh… do you… I don't mean…” He was mortified, but clearly worried, and Sam smiled her golden smile. This morning her hair was loose down her back, her eyes brilliant, her face pink from the chill December air. She looked incredibly beautiful as she stood beside the coal-black Thoroughbred stallion, like a tiny palomino at his side.

“It's all right.” She was quick to reassure him. “I have Miss Lord's permission.”

“Uh… ma'am… does Tate Jordan know?”

“No.” She shook her head firmly. “He doesn't. And I don't see why he should. Black Beauty belongs to Miss Caroline, doesn't he?” The man nodded, and Sam smiled the dazzling smile again. “Then there shouldn't be any problem.”

He hesitated and then backed off. “I guess not.” And then with a worried frown, “You ain't scared to ride him? He's got one hell of a lot of power in those long limbs.”

“I'll bet he does.” She looked at his legs with pleasure and anticipation and then swung the saddle onto his back. For Black Beauty, Caroline had also acquired an English saddle, and it was this that Samantha was strapping to him now. It was as though he knew the feel of the smooth brown leather, unlike the cumbersome Western saddle Samantha had been riding for two days. This was a saddle she knew better, and a breed of horse she had often ridden, but a horse as fine as this one was a rare gift in any horseman's life.

A few minutes after she had saddled him, she tightened the girth again, and then hesitantly one of the two ranch hands moved closer and gave her a leg up onto the gigantic black horse. At the feel of a rider on his back, Black Beauty pranced nervously for a moment, and then with the reins well in hand, Samantha nodded at the two ranch hands and walked Black Beauty quickly away. He pranced and sidestepped quite a lot on the way to the first gate, and then as she let him through it, she allowed him to break into a trot, which rapidly became a swift canter as they made their way across the fields. The sky was by then streaked with the first signs of daybreak, and the light around her was pale gray becoming almost gold. It was a magnificent winter morning and she had beneath her the most magnificent horse she had ever ridden. Unconsciously a broad smile broke out on her face and she let Black Beauty gallop as she moved with him across the fields. It was the most extravagant feeling of freedom she had ever known and it was almost like flying, as together, like one body, they sailed along. It seemed hours later when she forced herself to make him change direction, and slowing him only a little, she began to head home. She still had to ride with the men that morning, and what she had done was forfeit breakfast to ride this magnificent horse across the fields. It was only a quarter of a mile from the main complex that she finally succumbed to temptation and jumped the huge horse across a narrow stream, which he cleared with ease, and only after they had passed it did she notice that not far from them Tate Jordan was riding his own handsome black and white pinto and glaring at her as she raced along. She reined in a little, veered and rode toward him, wanting, just for one moment, to rush him and show him how well she rode. But instead she resisted the temptation and just allowed herself to gallop gaily in his direction on the back of the handsome beast. She slowed him down to a canter, and Black Beauty was prancing happily as they reached Tate.

“Good morning! Want to run with us?” In her eyes was victory beyond measure, and the answering look in Tate Jordan's eyes was fierce.

“What the hell are you doing on that horse?”

“Caroline said I could ride him.” She sounded like a petulant child as she slowed him further, and Tate fell into step beside her as they rode back. She was remembering everything he had said to her the day before and she was enjoying her moment of triumph as he fumed. “Remarkable, isn't he?”

“Yeah. And if he'd stumbled at the stream back there, he'd have a remarkably broken leg, or didn't you think of that when you raced him toward it to jump it? Didn't you see the rocks back there, dammit? Don't you know how easily he could slip?” His voice carried across the early morning silence, and Samantha looked at him with annoyance as they rode on.

“I know what I'm doing, Jordan.”

“Do you?” He eyed her with unbridled fury. “I doubt that. Your idea of knowing what you're doing is showing off and going as fast as you can. You could ruin a lot of horses that way. Not to mention what you could do to yourself.”

As she rode along beside him she wanted to scream. “Do you really think you could do better?”

“Maybe I know enough not to try. A horse like that should be a racehorse or a show horse. He doesn't belong on a ranch. He shouldn't be ridden by people like you, or me, or Miss Caro. He should be ridden by highly trained people, Thoroughbred people, or he shouldn't be ridden at all.”

“I told you, I know what I'm doing.” Her voice rose in the stillness, and without warning, he reached out and grabbed her reins. Almost instantly both horses and their riders came to a full stop.

“I told you yesterday, you don't belong on that horse. You'll hurt him or kill yourself.”

“Well.” She looked at him angrily. “Did I?”

“Maybe next time you will.”

“You can't admit it, can you? That a woman can ride as well as you. That's what galls you, isn't it?”

“The hell it is. Damn city playgirl, you come out here to have a good time and play at ‘ranch girl’ for a few weeks, ride a horse like that, jump him on terrain you don't know-dammit, why don't people like you stay where they belong? You don't belong here! Don't you understand that?”

“I understand it perfectly, now let go of my horse.”

“Damn right I will.”

He threw the reins at her and rode off. And feeling somehow as though she had lost rather than won, she rode back to the barn, but more sedately. She didn't know why, but his words had hurt. And there was one grain of truth in his tirade. She had been wrong to jump Black Beauty headlong over the stream. She didn't know the country she was riding, at least not well enough to take chances like that. But on the other hand, it had felt wonderful, flying over the countryside on a horse with the speed of the wind.

She could see the men gathering in the yard of the complex and hurried back into the barn to put Black Beauty in his stall. She was going to rub him down just for a moment, cover him with his blanket, and then leave. She could give him a good rubdown that night, but when she reached his stall, Tate Jordan was already waiting, his green eyes like smoldering emerald fire, his face harder than she had seen it before, but he was looking taller and more handsome than any cowboy on a poster and for an insane moment she thought of her agency's new car ads. He would have been perfect as the male model, but this was not a commercial, and this wasn't New York.

“Just what exactly are you planning to do with that horse?” His voice was low and taut.

“Rub him down for a minute and then cover him up.”

“And that's it?”

“Look.” She knew what he was saying and now her delicate skin flushed to the roots of her golden hair. “I'll come back later and take care of him properly.”

“When? In twelve hours? Like hell you will, Miss Taylor. If you want to ride a horse like Black Beauty, you'd damn well better live up to the responsibility. Walk him, cool him off, rub him down. I don't want to see you out with the others for another hour, if then. Is that clear? I know you're not much on taking advice or suggestions, but how are you on orders, do you understand them? Or is that a sometime thing with you too?” As she looked at him she almost wanted to slap him. What a hateful man he could be, but he was also a man who loved horses, and he was right about what he had just said.

“Fine. I understand.” Her eyes dropped, and she took Black Beauty's bridle in her hands and prepared to walk away.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, dammit! Yes!” She turned back to shout at him, and there was an odd light in his eyes. He nodded and walked back toward his own horse, the reins looped easily over one of the hitching posts outside. “By the way, where will you all be working today?”

“I don't know.” He strode past her. “Find us.”

“How?”

“Just gallop the hell all over the ranch. You'll love it.” He grinned sarcastically at her as he got back on his horse and rode off, and Samantha wished for only a moment that she were a man. At that precise moment she would have loved to hit him, but he was already gone.

As it turned out, it took her two hours to find them. Two hours of riding through brush, of following a few familiar trails and getting lost on others. At one point she almost wondered if Tate hadn't purposely chosen some activity that would keep them out in the more remote areas so she wouldn't find them. But at last she did. And despite the chill December air, she was warm in the bright winter sunshine after riding everywhere she could think of looking for them. She had found two other small work groups, and one larger one, but of Tate's there had been no sign.

“Have a nice ride?” He looked at her with amusement as she stopped and Navajo pawed the ground.

“Charming, thank you.” But there was a feeling of victory nonetheless to have found them at all, and she watched the emerald eyes glinting in the sun. And then, without saying anything further, she wheeled her horse and joined the men, dismounting a few moments later to help carry a newborn calf in a sling made of a blanket. The mother had died only hours before, and the calf looked as if she might not make it either. One of the men hoisted the small, scarcely breathing animal in front of his saddle and rode steadily toward the livestock barn, where he would bring her to another cow in the hopes of giving her a foster mother. It was only half an hour later when Sam spotted the next one on her own, this one even smaller than the first, and the mother had obviously been gone for several more hours. This time with no assistance she fashioned the sling on her own, hoisted the calf onto her saddle with the help of a young ranch hand who was far too intrigued by Samantha to be of much use with the calf. Then, without waiting for instructions, she began to canter at a steady pace after the other ranch hand, toward the main barn.

“Can you manage it on your own?” She looked up, startled, to see Tate Jordan riding along smoothly beside her, his sleek black and white pinto making an interesting pair with her brown and white Appaloosa.

“Yeah, I think I can manage.” And then with a look of concern at the animal in front of her saddle, “Do you think this one will live?”

“I doubt it.” He spoke matter-of-factly as he watched her. “But it's always worth a try.” She nodded in answer and rode harder, and this time he veered away and turned back. A few minutes later she was at the main barn, and the orphaned calf was taken into expert hands that worked on him for over an hour, but the little calf didn't live. As she walked back to Navajo waiting patiently outside the livestock buildings, she felt tears sting her eyes, and then as she swung her leg over the saddle she suddenly felt anger. Anger that they hadn't been able to save him, that the poor little beast hadn't survived. And she knew there were others like him out there, whose mothers had, for one reason or another, died as they delivered in the cold flight. The men always had an eye out for livestock in trouble on the hills, but it was inevitable that there were some who escaped their notice and died on the hills every year. It was common for those who delivered in winter. The others had come to accept it, but Samantha had not. Somehow the orphaned calves seemed almost symbolic of the children she could not bear, and now she rode back out to the others with a vengeance and a determination that the next one she brought back would live.

She brought in three more that afternoon, riding hell for leather as she had that morning on Black Beauty, the calves wrapped in the blankets, the men watching her with combined intrigue and awe. She was a strange and beautiful young woman, bent low over her horse's neck, riding as no woman had on the Lord Ranch before, not even Caroline Lord. The extraordinary thing was that as they watched her fly across the hills, Navajo moving like a brown streak until they saw him no more, they knew just how good Samantha was. She was a horsewoman like few others, and as they rode back to the barn that night the men joked with her as they hadn't before.

“Do you always ride like that?” It was Tate Jordan again, his dark hair ruffled beneath the big black Stetson, his eyes bright, his beard beginning to cast a shadow across his face by the end of the day. There was a kind of rugged masculinity about him that had always made women pause when they saw him, as though for just a moment they couldn't catch their breath. But Samantha did not suffer from that affliction. There was something about the self-assured way he moved that annoyed her. He was a man who was sure of his world and his job, his men and his horses, and probably his women as well. For a moment she didn't answer his question, and then she nodded with a vague smile.

“For a good cause.”

“And this morning?” Why did he want to push her? She wondered. Why did he care?

“That was a good cause too.”

“Was it?” The green eyes pursued her as they rode home after the long day.

But this time Samantha faced him frankly, her blue eyes locking into his green. “Yes, it was. It made me feel alive again, Mr. Jordan. It made me feel free. I haven't felt like that in a long time.” He nodded slowly and said nothing. She wasn't sure if he understood, or if he even cared, but with a last look at her he moved on.