Samirah's Ride Page 8
“SA-A-A-M-I-I-I! SAMI GIRL! HANG ON THERE, FILLY! I’M COMING!”
I raised my muzzle, confused. A whinny piercing the rain, cutting through the thunder. Then another:
“SAMI! WE SEE YOU!”
Surely that wasn’t Magpie’s voice? And Chief?
“COME TO ME, MARE!”
That couldn’t be anyone but Buck.
I tried to neigh, and my voice broke. I lifted my muzzle higher and tried again.
“CHIEF! MAGPIE! BUCK!”
This time the triumphant voices of horses were joined by human shouts, by Red and Miz M and Peach. I stopped, bracing myself to scream out to them:
“HERE WE ARE! HERE WE ARE!”
The cavalry had arrived.
. . .
Red cried as he cut my mane free from Jasper’s fingers and lifted her gently from my back. He held her like a kitten curled against his chest, and he and Miz M pressed their faces into her tangled hair, sobbing. Everyone was crying, even Peach. I stood in the rain, my head close to Magpie’s and Chief’s, breathing in their familiar, comforting scents. Buck stood sentry before us.
Red transferred Jasper into Peach’s arms, swung up on Magpie, then Peach very carefully handed Jasper up to him. She looked so small, so young, bundled in her father’s arms with her head nestled under his chin. And suddenly my back felt very empty, and I was frightened. I took a step toward her and stumbled, almost falling to my knees.
“Sami?” Jasper could only whisper my name, but I heard her, through the rain, over her parents’ voices. I would always hear her. I raised my muzzle and nickered anxiously. Then Miz M’s arms were around me and she was crying into my mane. And Peach’s arms were there, too. Jasper reached her hand down to stroke my muzzle.
“She saved my life,” she whispered.
“We know,” her family replied. “We know.”
EPILOGUE
The effects of that fire were far-reaching—in some ways, the blaze consumed Cold Creek Ranch as surely as it had burned our mountain. Started by a lightning strike, the course of events set in motion by the flames ended, improbably, at the doorstep of Mr. Sun’s daughter, Emily.
I have a clear memory of walking back to the ranch, ponied behind Chief, my eyes fixed on Jasper’s one bare foot dangling over Magpie’s flank. I was so tired I didn’t know if I could make the distance between the outlaws’ cave and home—a distance Jasper and I had covered with wings only a few days before. Days that felt like years. But I kept my eyes on that small dirty foot, placed one hoof in front of the other, and eventually I looked up and we were home.
I remember seeing the black, ashy wreckage where the western side of the fence had been burned away by the flames, looking out over the bleak, charred pastureland, so many acres of kindling. But there the fire stopped, blocked by the river and the twin creeks that gave the ranch its name. The buildings—house, barn, and cabins—and about a quarter of the pasture had been spared the ravages of the flames.
After that, I don’t remember very much, not for a while.
I know I was treated for smoke inhalation, and that treatment was often uncomfortable. I know that I burned the frog of the hoof where I lost my shoe and it took some time for that to heal. But the worst thing about that hazy, medicine-drowsy time was the sense of being severed from Jasper. I missed her weight.
She is my next clear memory: her face, wreathed in smiles, appearing like a small sun rising above my stall door. I whinnied my joy and she gave me a carrot, tip up. We went for a long, slow walk, staying close to the house, joined at various times by Peach, who brought her water, and Miz M, who kissed us both, and Red, who gave a halfhearted lecture about “taking it easy.” Jasper’s foot was encased in a thick white boot, and she walked with a sort of hop, balancing herself on one of Mr. Sun’s canes. Mr. Sun came out to see us, too, and when we stopped to rest, he used his tools to decorate Jasper’s new white boot. I’m not positive, but I think he might have painted me.
. . .
We did lose the ranch, but we gained so much more. I think the fire showed Jasper where her real home was, with her family, and showed her parents that no matter what, we had to be together. And so when Mr. Sun called his daughter and asked if she still needed a manager for her small horse ranch and training center, I think we were all ready to say yes.
We moved to the outskirts of a medium-size city. The Munks’ house was down the road from Emily Sun’s. We all had new jobs: Red ran the barn and helped train young horses; Miz M started school (which I gathered was not exactly like Jasper’s, but involved learning things about food—though I would have said Miz M knew quite a bit already). Peach worked for another ranch, the Flying Goose, but he came to visit Chief—and us—on the weekends. Chief and Magpie and Buck helped keep order in Emily’s often tumultuous herd, but they deferred to me. They had to—I had become lead mare. It was one of the many roles I would play in my life—endurance riding champion and dam of two fine colts being another significant two—and it was very satisfying.
Even that was now long ago—twenty years, to be precise. Yesterday I felt the weight of Jasper’s daughter on my back for the first time. She is only a baby, but I will be here when she is old enough to hold the reins. Until then, her mother will hold her on the front of my saddle, and the three of us will walk our world together. It is a good world—and a world not too many miles away from Cold Creek, now a wilderness. Jasper and her husband watch the birds and the changes in the land and teach people about them. Conservation, they call it, and I like the word, for to me it means conserving life. And when we’re having an untrained day, Jasper will sneak out of the house at dawn, leaving the baby with her father, and the two of us will fly into the morning, into our world.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There is perhaps no more storied breed of horse than the Arabian, and their rich heritage could serve up plots for countless books of adventure. Marguerite Henry has probably written the best of them—King of the Wind—and, of course, Walter Farley’s legendary Black Stallion was an Arabian, too. But I took much of my inspiration for Sami’s character from older stories and nonfiction histories of the breed. In particular, I am indebted to George H. Conn’s marvelous compendium, The Arabian Horse in Fact, Fantasy, and Fiction (1959), and to the endlessly interesting and authoritative history of the Egyptian Arab, The Classic Arabian Horse by Judith Forbis (1976).
Cold Creek Ranch in the story was similarly inspired by history—the history of the American West—and is loosely based on the long-defunct Jarvie Ranch, located on the Green River in Browns Park, Utah. I spent many hours wandering the beautiful wilds of this dramatic part of the country, and visited many nooks and crannies of the Outlaw Trail. At least, in my mind.
Annie Wedekind grew up riding horses in Louisville, Kentucky. Since then, she’s been in the saddle in every place she’s lived, from Rhode Island to New Orleans, South Africa to New York. Her first novel for young readers, A Horse of Her Own, was praised by Kirkus Reviews as “possibly the most honest horse book since National Velvet . . . A champion.” She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York. www.anniewedekind.com