| Subject: Big Blue Sky Part Seven |
Author:
Karen
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Date Posted: 18:46:43 06/12/06 Mon
In reply to:
Karen
's message, "Big Blue Sky" on 20:35:06 04/21/06 Fri
A/N: Sorry for the delay. I think I finally have Texas under control. My they have big bugs here don’t they? LOL.
Hopefully I can find the end to this story and provide some entertainment as well. The next few chapters will be a little heavier but the togetherness will remain.
Thanks to everyone for your support your comments and your good wishes for my move.
Big Blue Sky
Part Seven
Brookes Ranch
Western Montana
Wednesday, 7 Nov 2007
1045 hours
Harm turned the Lexus into the front gate of the ranch and slowed the car to a stop. Just inside the fence, to one side of the road, the young girl sat bareback on her palomino paint. His cream-colored mane and tale moved with the breeze, his eyes matched the blue of the sky.
Her face might have been carved of stone, and Harm would have bet that she’d still not shed a tear for her loss. Her body was held so tight that stress cracks were nearly visible in her demeanor. She was at the same time both hard and fragile. The slightest touch would cause her to crumble.
“Hi, Harm,” she greeted solemnly.
“Hi, Sam.”
“Who is she?” The slight inclination of her head targeted Mac.
“She’s a very good friend.”
“Is she your wife?”
“No.”
“Then she can’t sleep with you, Grammie won’t allow it. She can sleep in the bunkhouse.”
Something in Mac stirred. The child had waited for her cousin. Possibly the last pillar of strength left in her world, and he’d come with an interloper. Sam needed to distance them from each other. Her resentment was outrageous and overwhelming. And perfectly understandable.
Mac was startled from her thoughts by Harm’s reply.
“Is there a preacher around?”
The child eyed him for a moment. “In town,” she shrugged.
“Will he come out here?”
“If Grammie calls.” Her resentment was growing as the seconds passed.
“How about it, Mac?” he turned to her. “Can’t have you sleeping in the bunkhouse.” There was a sublime ridiculousness about this conversation, but Harm was treating every phrase with the utmost sincerity.
“Harm we can’t plan a wedding in two weeks,” she was dismayed, though she understood what was happening.
“I’m not talking about a wedding, Mac. A wedding is a party. We’ll have that later. I’m talking about getting married. It will solve a lot of things, starting with any further paperwork. No sense changing things again in a few months.”
“Are you going to argue all day, or are you coming to the house?” the brittle child challenged, her patience at an end.
“Mac?” Harm pled with his voice and eyes. She understood and responded, but in a different way than he expected. Climbing from the car, she addressed the child.
“My name is Mac. I guess you’re Sam.” She walked around the front of the car. Slowly but steadily she approached the girl on the horse. Holding out her hand so the horse could get her scent, she stroked his neck with a firm hand. He barely moved with the breath he took, but suddenly gave a great huffing sound and a small shake of his head before returning to his statue like pose.
“Yes,” was the only answer.
“What’s his name?”
“Frankie.”
“Interesting name.”
“Grammie named him after some old singer because of his eyes,” her voice changed slightly. The horse was obviously a soft spot with the child
“He’s beautiful. I’ve never seen a paint this color.”
“He’s different,” Sam allowed, curiosity creeping in about this stranger who knew paints.
“Would you like to ride up to the house with Harm? Maybe you have things to talk about. I could ride Frankie back for you,” Mac offered.
“He might not let you,” Sam resisted with a small motion of one shoulder.
“Does he do that often?”
“Not really,” she backed away abruptly. “He’s really very sweet. I…I don’t have his saddle.” She threw up another roadblock, but Mac could see her weakening.
“I can ride bareback.” She could feel Harm’s eyes questioning her.
“Really?” The young girl hovered somewhere between impressed and disbelieving.
“Yes. I can. If he’ll let me. Do I just follow this road?”
“Yes.” She wavered a moment longer then slid to the ground. “Show me,” she challenged.
Mac stepped close to the horse, stroked his sides and back gently but firmly, then grasped the reins and a handful of his mane, and sprang to his back. It wasn’t easy; fortunately, Frankie wasn’t a tall horse. She’d not done it in years and only sheer determination allowed her to succeed.
The child stepped back and looked up at her with grudging admiration.
“Does he respond to leg pressure?” Mac questioned her.
Nodding, Sam backed towards Harm’s SUV still watching this strange woman who seemed to know things. Mac flexed the horse’s neck to judge resistance, then walked him in a tight circle in each direction. Frankie responded beautifully.
“I’ll go on ahead. You follow when you’re ready,” she told Sam, then watched as the girl ran around the car and climbed in beside Harm. Mac turned Frankie down the road and nudged at him with her body movement. As the horse stepped into a smooth canter Mac glanced back, then looked quickly away only seconds after she saw Sam collapse into Harm’s arms, sobbing against his neck.
It wouldn’t have been fair to make the little girl release her grief in front of a stranger. She and Frankie would ride ahead and wait at the house. Harm and Sam would be along in time.
“What do you think Frankie, should I marry the man?” The beautiful gold and white animal gave another rumbling huff. “Yeah, I think so, too,” Mac replied, as she and the animal continued towards home. She didn’t need to work at it, he knew the way to his barn.
Mac and Frankie fell to a walk as they approached the sprawling old ranch house that had obviously seen many additions over time. Harm told her it had been in Joan’s family for over one hundred and twenty years. She was still more than two hundred feet away when the front door banged open and a teenage boy sailed off the porch heading straight for her. A medium sized dog with a tightly muscled body jumped up and followed quickly at his heels. Sliding to a stop at Frankie’s head, he took hold of the horse’s reins and challenged her.
“What are you doing with Frankie, and where’s Sam?”
“She’s with Harm. I think she needed to talk to him,” Mac explained, not wanting to give up Sam’s need for comfort.
“Oh. Yeah.” Shaun Reed pulled back slightly. “She’s been waiting for him. Wouldn’t even let Grammie comfort her. She’s wound up so tight she’s ‘bout to break,” he shook his head in a good imitation of what Mac imagined the adult reaction had been in the last few days.
“Who are you?” He remembered his challenge a little too late for his sense of protection.
“Colonel Sarah Mackenzie. I’m a friend of Harm’s,” she informed him.
He digested that information, “I guess they’ll be along soon. I’m Shaun. You can help me put Frankie away until they get here.”
“Shaun?” a wiry older woman called from that porch. “Who’s that with Frankie?”
“Harm’s friend, Grammie. We’re going to put Frankie away. Sam’s with Harm.”
“Nonsense, young man. Where are your manners?” she started across the yard. “Guests don’t take care of the horses.”
“Sorry, Grammie. This is Colonel Sarah Mackenzie. She’s a friend of Harm’s,” he repeated the explanation with the introduction.
“Pleased to meet you, Colonel. I’m Elizabeth Brookes.” To Mac’s practiced eye the older woman also looked ‘wound pretty tight’.
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Brooks. Please call me Mac. Everyone does.”
“Okay, Mac, you call me Beth,” the woman told her with a warmer look. “Sam’s with Harm?”
Mac just nodded
Gail returned the nod. “She’s needed him. Glad he could get here so soon.”
“We’d have been here sooner, but he only flew in Friday afternoon, and his ship docked Saturday evening…”
“You did the best you could, and I thank you for it. She was inconsolable, wouldn’t let it out.”
Mac swallowed a small lump in her throat for the child, for both of them really, and turned to Shaun as he started to lead Frankie away.
“I’d really like to help Shaun with Frankie, if you don’t mind Mrs.…Uh…Beth. After all,” she glanced at the boy, “I rode him, and I should see to his care. Harm and Sam will be along in a while, but not soon, I think.”
The woman nodded her assent. Shaun could probably use someone to talk to as well. Someone not immediately affected by this sudden loss.
“I’ve got cold drinks in the house when you’re done,” she replied turning abruptly away.
Mac fell in step beside Shaun, the dog padded quietly behind. They walked in silence across the yard and around behind the house to a small horse barn in back.
“Does he stay in the barn all the time?” she asked to make conversation more than anything.
“Naw, he stays mostly in that pasture beside the barn.”
Mac glanced up and saw at least three other horses in a pasture that looked like it might be about ten acres. There were a few trees and some sparse grass that the animals nibbled at lazily.
“You in the Army?” he eyed her curiously.
“Marines,” she shook her head, hiding her amusement at his surprise.
“Marines, huh?” He cocked an eyebrow at her somewhat like Harm when he found something hard to believe, then wisely decided she wouldn’t be likely to lie. He was trying very hard not to be impressed. After all, he was almost fifteen.
They had reached the open door of the barn and Shaun led Frankie inside tethering him to a ring on a post. He rooted around in a small room beside the door and returned with a worn nylon halter and several brushes.
“You know how to put this on?” he asked Mac.
“Let me try,” she offered. Taking the piece of equipment, she slipped it around Frankie’s neck, and fastened it, then tied the lead rope to the same ring on the wall. Quickly, with a practiced hand, she slipped the headstall off the horse and gently removed the bit from his mouth before bringing the soft halter up over his nose and around the top of his head, re-tying it in place.
Turning to Shaun, she saw by his look that he approved of her ability to handle a horse.
“We don’t really have to tie Frankie. He won’t go anywhere, but I wanted to see if you knew what to do,” he admitted matter-of-factly.
“I’ve been around a horse or two,” her lips twitched briefly. “Do I pass?”
“Yes, ma’am, you sure do,” he smiled sheepishly. He handed her a brush and they began working on opposite sides of Frankie, brushing the dust from the horse’s coat. “We have to take special care with his mane and tail,” he cautioned Mac. “Sam won’t have him getting tangles. I remember once when she was sick, she threatened Mom…” he stopped cold and Mac waited. “She…uh…threatened to get up…out of bed…and…and…uh…go…go…brush… Mom did it for…for three…days…” Silence ensued for several long minutes.
“It’s hard ma’am, real hard.” His voice shook when he finally spoke.
“I know it is, Shaun. We can’t change it. I’m sorry,” she spoke so softly it was hard to hear, then she walked a few steps and looked around Frankie’s neck. Shaun was standing, leaning his head into the animal. The movement of his shoulders was the only indication that he was crying.
“Shaun?” she said softly. She half expected him to turn away and she would have left him to his privacy, but instead he turned towards her and came into her arms. This fourteen-year-old boy, so close to being a man, but not quite, not yet. When he finally regained himself, he looked up at her. “You won’t tell?” he asked.
“No, Shaun, I won’t tell. Let’s put Frankie to bed, shall we?”
He turned away and dried his face with his hand. When he turned back, he was the stoic teenager again. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“You’re welcome,” she accepted seriously. To diminish his thanks would be to diminish his grief, something she could never do. It wasn’t the same circumstances, but she knew what it was like to lose a parent. She couldn’t begin to understand what it was like to lose them both at the same time.
Together they led Frankie to his pasture, took off his halter, and turned him out into the field. The horse took off at a run and circled the field before stopping at the fence-line closest to the front yard.
Standing on the bottom rung, leaning over the top, was Sam. Harm walked slowly across the yard towards Mac.
“Did you brush his mane and tail?” Sam called.
“Course we did, Sam,” Shaun called back, in a voice that indicated the question was just dumb.
“I’ll tell Grammie you’re here,” he spoke to Harm after a brief manly hug. Then with a shy look at Mac, and a returning look of encouragement from her, he headed to the house.
“Everything okay?” Harm asked, reaching out and gently taking her arm.
“Just fine. You?” She looked up at him.
He turned to glance at Sam then back at Mac. “It will be, in time.”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Let’s go in, we’re expected for cold drinks.”
Slipping his arm around her waist, he guided her towards the house. “You didn’t answer my question. You want to get married, or you want to sleep in the bunkhouse?” he chuckled.
“I’m not sure,” she answered impishly. “I haven’t seen the bunkhouse.”
End of seven
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