She played ball, and didn’t spend all her time giggling like a lot of the girls he knew. She didn’t listen to New Kids on the Block all the time and make girly eyes over them. That was a plus.
She did better on a horse than he did, but she didn’t rag on him about it. Much. After a while, it wasn’t like hanging out with a girl. It was just hanging out with Lil.
And one week-not two-after the talk at the kitchen table, a brand-new TV showed up in the parlor.
“No point in waiting,” his grandmother said. “You held up your end just fine. I’m proud of you.”
In all of his life, he couldn’t remember anyone being proud of him, or saying so, just because he’d tried.
Once he’d been judged good enough, he and Lil were allowed to ride, as long as they stayed in the fields, within sight of the house.
“Well?” Lil asked as they walked the horses through the grass.
“What?”
“Is it stupid?”
“Maybe it’s not. She’s pretty cool.” He patted Dottie’s neck. “She likes apples.”
“I wish they’d let us ride up into the hills, really see stuff. I can only go with one of my parents. Except…” She looked around, as if to check for cocked ears. “I snuck out one morning, before sunrise. I tried to track the cougar.”
He actually felt his eyes bug out. “Are you crazy?”
“I read all about them. I got books from the library.” She wore a cowboy hat today, a brown one, and flipped a long braid over her shoulder. “They don’t bother people, hardly at all. And they don’t much come around a farm like ours unless they’re like migrating or something.”
Excitement poured off her as she shifted to turn more fully toward the speechless Coop. “It was so cool! It was just so cool! I found scat and tracks and everything. But then I lost the trail. I didn’t mean to stay out so long, and they were up when I got back. I had to pretend I was just coming out of the house.”
She pressed her lips together, gave him her fierce look. “You can’t tell.”
“I’m not a tattletale.” What an insult. “But you can’t go off by yourself like that. Holy shit, Lil.”
“I know how to track. Not as good as Dad, but I’m pretty good at it. And I know the trails. We hike a lot, and we camp out and everything. I had my compass, and my kit.”
“What if the cougar had been out there?”
“I’d have seen it again. It looked right at me that day, right at me. Like it knew me, and it felt like… It sort of felt like it did.”
“Come on.”
“Seriously. My mother’s grandfather was Sioux.”
“Like an Indian?”
“Yeah. Native American,” she corrected. “Lakota Sioux. His name was John Swiftwater, and his tribe-his, like, people-lived here for generations and stuff. They had animal spirits. Maybe the cougar was mine.”
“It wasn’t anybody’s spirit.”
She just continued to train her gaze on the hills. “I heard it that night. Late the night we saw it. I heard it scream.”
“Scream?”
“That’s the sound they make because they can’t roar. Only the big cats-like lions-can roar. Something in their throat. I forget. I’ll have to look it up again. Anyway, I just wanted to try to find it.”
He couldn’t help but admire what she’d done, even if it was crazy. No girl he knew would sneak out to track down a mountain lion. Except Lil. “If it’d found you, maybe you’d be breakfast.”
“You can’t tell.”
“I said I wouldn’t, but you can’t sneak out and go looking for it again either.”
“I think it would’ve come back by now if it was going to. I wonder where it went.” She looked off again, into the hills. “We could go camping. Dad really likes to. We take like a nature hike and camp overnight. Your grandparents would let you.”
“Like in a tent? In the mountains?” The idea was both terrifying and compelling.
“Yeah. We’d catch fish for supper and see the falls, and buffalo and all kinds of wildlife. Maybe even the cougar. When you get all the way to the peak, you can see clear to Montana.” She shifted to look back as the dinner bell rang. “Time to eat. We’ll go camping. I’ll ask my dad. It’ll be fun.”
HE WENT CAMPING and learned how to bait a hook. He knew the rush-up-the-spine thrill of sitting by a campfire and listening to the echoing howl of a wolf, and the shock of watching a fish he’d caught more through luck than design flash silver in the sunlight at the end of his rod.
His body toughened; his hands hardened. He knew an elk from a mule deer and how to care for tack.
He could ride at a gallop, and that was the biggest thrill of his life.
He earned a guest spot on Lil’s baseball team, and brought in a run with a strong double.
Years later, he’d look back and realize his life had turned that summer, and would never be the same again. But all Coop knew at the age of eleven was he was happy.
His grandfather taught him to carve and whittle, and to Coop’s utter joy, presented him with a pocketknife-to keep. His grandmother showed him how to groom a horse, top to bottom, how to check for injury or illness.
But his grandfather taught him how to talk to them.
“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.”