Black Hills

  “It’s in the eyes,” Sam told him. “In the body, the ears, the tail, but first it’s in the eyes. What he sees in yours, what you see in his.” He held a lead line on a fractious yearling colt who reared and pawed the air. “Doesn’t matter what you say so much, because they’ll see what you’re thinking in your eyes. This one wants to show he’s tough, but what he is is a little spooked. What do we want from him, what’re we going to do? Is he going to like it? Will it hurt?”

  Even as he spoke to Coop, Sam looked into the colt’s eyes, kept his voice soft and soothing. “What we’re going to do is shorten up on the line here. A firm hand doesn’t have to be a hard one.”

  Sam eased in, got that firm hand on the bridle. The colt quivered and danced. “Needs a name.” Sam stroked a hand over the colt’s neck. “Give him one.”

  Coop took his eyes off the yearling to gawk at Sam. “Me?”

  “What kind of a name’s Me for a horse?”

  “I meant . . . Um. Jones? Can it be Jones, like Indiana Jones?”

  “Ask him.”

  “I think you’re Jones. Jones is smart and brave.” With a little help from Sam’s hand on the bridle, the colt gave a decisive nod. “He said yes! Did you see that?”

  “Yeah, you betcha. Hold his head now, firm, not hard. I’m going to get the saddle blanket on him. He’s used to that. Remind him.”

  “I . . . It’s just the blanket. You don’t mind the blanket, Jones. It doesn’t hurt. We’re not going to hurt you. You’ve had the blanket before. Grandpa says we’re just going to get you used to the saddle today. It doesn’t hurt either.”

  Jones stared into Coop’s eyes, ears forward, and barely acknowledged the saddle pad.

  “Maybe I can ride you some, after you’re used to the saddle. Because I don’t weigh enough to hurt you. Right, Grandpa?”

  “We’ll see. Hold firm now, Cooper.”

  Sam hefted the training saddle, eased it onto the horse. Jones jerked his head, gave a quick buck.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay.” He wasn’t mad, wasn’t mean, Coop thought. He was a little scared. He could feel it, he could see it in Jones’s eyes. “It’s just a saddle. I guess it feels funny at first.” Under the afternoon sun, with sweat he barely noticed dampening his T-shirt, Coop talked and talked while his grandfather cinched the saddle.

  “Take him out on the lounge, like I showed you. Just like you did with him before the saddle. He’ll buck some.”

  Sam stepped back to let the boy and the colt learn. He leaned on the fence, ready to intervene if need be. From behind him, Lucy laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “That’s a sight, isn’t it?”

  “He’s got the touch,” Sam acknowledged. “Got the heart and the head, too. The boy’s a natural with horses.”

  “I don’t want to let him go. I know,” she said before Sam could respond. “Not ours to keep. But it’s going to break my heart a little. I know a true thing, and that’s they don’t love him like we do. So it breaks my heart knowing we have to send him back.”

  “Might be next summer he’ll want to come.”

  “Might be. But oh, it’s going to be quiet between times.” She heaved a sigh, then turned at the sound of a truck. “Farrier’s coming. I’ll go get a pitcher of lemonade.”

  IT WAS the farrier’s son, a gangly towheaded boy of fourteen called Gull who, in the late-afternoon shadows of the barn, gave Coop his first—and last—chaw of tobacco.

  Even after he’d finished puking up his breakfast, his lunch, and everything else still in his system, Coop remained what Gull assessed as green as a grasshopper. Alerted by the sounds of retching, Lucy left her work on her kitchen garden to hustle to the back of the barn. There Coop, on his hands and knees, continued to heave while Gull stood, scratching his head under his hat.

  “Jesus, Coop, ain’t you done as yet?”

  “What happened?” Lucy demanded. “What did you do?”

  “He just wanted to try a chaw. I didn’t see the harm, Miss Lucy, ma’am.”

  “Oh, for—Don’t you know better than to give a boy his age tobacco?”

  “Sure can puke.”

  Since he seemed to be done, Lucy reached down. “Come on, boy, let’s get you inside and cleaned up.”

  Brisk and pragmatic, Lucy hauled him inside. Too weak to protest, Coop only groaned as she stripped him down to his jockeys. She bathed his face, gave him cool water to drink. After she’d lowered the shades against the sun, she sat on the side of the bed to lay a hand on his brow. He opened bleary eyes.

  “It was awful.”

  “There’s a lesson learned.” She bent over, brushed her lips on his forehead. “You’ll be all right. You’ll get through.” Not just today, she thought. And sat with him a little, while he slept off the lesson learned.

  ON THE BIG flat rock by the stream, Coop stretched out with Lil.

  “She didn’t yell or anything.”

  “What did it taste like? Does it taste like it smells, because that’s gross. It looks gross, too.”

  “It tastes . . . like shit,” he decided.

  She snickered. “Did you ever taste shit?”

  “I’ve smelled it enough this summer. Horse shit, pig shit, cow shit, chicken shit.”

  She howled with laughter. “New York has shit, too.”

  “Mostly from people. I don’t have to shovel it up.”

  She rolled to her side, pillowing her head on her hands, and studied him with her big, brown eyes. “I wish you didn’t have to go back. This is the best summer of my whole life.”

  “Me too.” He felt weird saying it, knowing it was true. Knowing the best friend of the best summer of his life was a girl.

  “Maybe you can stay. If you asked, maybe your parents would let you live here.”

  “They won’t.” He shifted to his back, watched a circling hawk. “They called last night, and said how they’d be home next week, and meet me at the airport and . . . Well, they won’t.”

  “If they did, would you want to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You want to go back?”

  “I don’t know.” It was awful not to know. “I wish I could visit there and live here. I wish I could train Jones and ride Dottie and play baseball and catch more fish. But I want to see my room and go to the arcade and go to a Yankee game.” He rolled toward her again. “Maybe you could visit. We could go to the ballpark.”

  “I don’t think they’d let me.” Her eyes turned sad, and her bottom lip quivered. “You probably won’t ever come back.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Do you swear?”

  “I swear.” He offered his hand for a solemn pinky swear.

  “If I write you, will you write me back?”

  “Okay.”

  “Every time?”

  He smiled. “Every time.”

  “Then you’ll come back. So will the cougar. We saw him the very first day, so he’s like our spirit guide. He’s like . . . I can’t remember the word, but it’s like good luck.”

  HE THOUGHT about it, how she’d talked of the cougar all summer, had shown him pictures in the library books, and the books she’d bought herself with her allowance. She’d drawn pictures of her own and hung them in her room, among her baseball pennants.

  In his last week on the farm, Coop worked with his penknife, and the carving tool his grandfather let him borrow. He said his goodbyes to Dottie and Jones and the other horses, bade a not very fond farewell to the chickens. He packed his clothes, along with the boots and work gloves his grandparents had bought him. And his beloved baseball bat.

  As he had on the long-ago drive in, he sat in the backseat and stared out the window. He saw things differently now, the big sky, the dark hills that rose up in rocky needles and jagged towers and hid the forests and streams and canyons.

  Maybe Lil’s cougar prowled in them.

  They turned in the far road to the Chance land to say another goodbye.

  Lil sat on the por
ch steps, so he knew she’d been watching for them. She wore red shorts and a blue shirt, with her hair looped through the back of her favorite ball cap. Her mother came out of the house as they pulled up, and the dogs raced from the back, barking and bumping their bodies together.

  Lil stood, and her mother came down, laid a hand on her shoulder. Joe rounded the house, stuffing work gloves in his back pocket, and flanked Lil on the other side.

  It etched an image in Cooper’s mind—mother, father, daughter—like an island in front of the old house, in the foreground of hills and valleys and sky, with a pair of dusty yellow dogs racing in madly happy circles.

  Coop cleared his throat as he got out of the car. “I came to say goodbye.”

  Joe moved first, stepping forward and offering a hand. He shook Coop’s and still holding it crouched to bring them eye-to-eye. “You come back and see us, Mr. New York.”

  “I will. And I’ll send you a picture from Yankee Stadium when we clinch the pennant.”

  Joe laughed. “Dream on, son.”

  “You be safe.” Jenna turned his cap around to lean down, kiss his forehead. “And you be happy. Don’t forget us.”

  “I won’t.” He turned, suddenly feeling a little shy, to Lil. “I made you something.”

  “You did? What is it?”

  He held out the box, shifting his feet when she pulled the lid off. “It’s kind of stupid. It’s not very good,” he said, as she stared at the small cougar he’d carved out of hickory. “I couldn’t get the face right or—”

  He broke off, stunned, embarrassed, when she threw her arms around him. “It’s beautiful! I’ll always keep it. Wait!” Spinning around, she dashed into the house.

  “That’s a good gift, Cooper.” Jenna studied him. “The cougar’s hers now, she won’t have it any other way. So you’ve put part of yourself into her symbol.”

  Lil bolted out of the house, skidded to a stop in front of Coop. “This is my best thing—before the cougar. You take it. It’s an old coin,” she said, as she offered it. “We found it last spring when we were digging a new garden. It’s old, and somebody must’ve dropped it out of their pocket a long time ago. It’s all worn so you can hardly see.”

  Cooper took the silver disk, so worn the outline of the woman stamped on it could hardly be seen. “It’s cool.”

  “It’s for good luck. It’s a . . . what’s the word, Mom?”

  “A talisman,” Jenna supplied.

  “A talisman,” Lil repeated. “For good luck.”

  “We’ve got to get on.” Sam gave Cooper’s shoulder a pat. “It’s a long drive to Rapid City.”

  “Safe trip, Mr. New York.”

  “I’ll write,” Lil called out. “But you have to write back.”

  “I will.” Clutching the coin, Coop got into the car. He watched out the back, as long as he could, watched the island in front of the old house shrink and fade.

  He didn’t cry. He was nearly twelve years old, after all. But he held the old silver coin all the way to Rapid City.

  3

  THE BLACK HILLS

  June 1997

  Lil walked her horse through the morning mists along the trail. They moved through high grass, crossed the sparkling waters of a narrow stream where tangled vines of poison ivy lurked before starting the upward climb. The air smelled of the pine and the water and the grass while the light shimmered with the delicacy of dawn.

  Birds called and chattered. She heard the burry song of the mountain bluebird, the hoarse chee of a pine siskin in flight, the irritable warning of the pinyon jay.

  It seemed the forest came to life around her, stirred by the streams and slants of misty light sliding through the canopy of trees.

  There was nowhere in the world she’d rather be.

  She spotted tracks, usually deer or elk, and noted them on the tape recorder in her jacket pocket. Earlier she’d found buffalo tracks, and of course, numerous signs of her father’s herd.

  But so far in this three-day jaunt she’d given herself, she’d yet to track the cat.

  She’d heard its call the night before. Its scream had ripped through the darkness, through the stars and the moonlight.

  I’m here.

  She studied the brush as the sturdy mare climbed, listened to the birdcalls that danced through the sheltering pine. A red squirrel burst out of a thicket of chokecherry, darted across the ground and up the trunk of a pine, and looking up, up, she spotted a hawk circle on his morning rounds.

  This, as much as the majestic views from the clifftops, as much as the towering falls tumbling down canyons, was why, she believed, the Black Hills were sacred ground.

  If you felt no magic here, to her mind, you would find it nowhere.

  It was enough to be here, to have this time, to scout, to study. She’d be in the classroom soon, a college freshman (God!), away from everything she knew. And though she was hungry to learn, nothing could replace the sights, the sounds, the smells of home.

  She’d seen cougar from time to time over the years. Not the same one, she thought. Very unlikely the same cougar she and Coop had spotted that summer eight years ago. She’d seen him camouflaged in the branches of a tree, leaping up a rock face, and once, while riding herd with her father, she’d spotted one through her field glasses as he took down a young elk.

  In all of her life she’d never seen anything more powerful, more real.

  She made note of the vegetation as well. The starry forget-me-nots, the delicate Rocky Mountain iris, the sunlight of yellow sweet clover. It was, after all, part of the environment, a link of the food chain. The rabbit, deer, elk ate the grasses, leaves, berries, and buds—and the gray wolf and her cats ate the rabbits, deer, and elk.

  The red squirrel might end up lunch for the circling hawk.

  The trail leveled off, and opened into grassland, already lush and green and spearing with wildflowers. A small herd of buffalo grazed there, so she added the bull, the four cows, and the two calves to her tally.

  One of the calves dipped and shoved, and came up again with his head draped with flowers and grass. Grinning, she paused to pull out her camera, take a few pictures to add to her files.

  She could title the calf Party Animal.

  Maybe she’d send it, and copies of some of the shots she’d taken on the trail, to Coop. He’d said he might be coming out this summer, but he hadn’t answered the letter she’d sent three weeks before.

  Then again, he wasn’t as reliable about letters and e-mails as she was. Especially since he was dating that coed he’d met at college.

  CeeCee, Lil thought with a roll of her eye. Stupid name. She knew Coop was sleeping with her. He hadn’t said so, in fact had been pretty damn careful not to. But Lil wasn’t stupid. Just like she was sure—or nearly sure—he’d slept with that girl he’d talked about in high school.

  Zoe.

  Jeez, what happened to regular names?

  It seemed to her that guys thought about sex all the time. Then again, she admitted, shifting in the saddle, she’d been thinking about it a lot lately.