Just hours after the late-night shooting at the Mack place, the sun rose into the blue of a cloudless summer day.
Twenty miles up the road near the old western town of Sisters, Meg Harris and her best friend, Josie, carried a saddle and blanket out into the middle of a covered, open-sided arena. Meg pitched the saddle upright on the ground. Josie set the saddle blanket on top of it, then helped Meg adjust her clip-on wireless microphone.
“Nervous?” Josie asked, her voice low.
“A little.”
“You’ll be all right.”
Meg nodded. “Thanks for coming.”
“You think I’d miss a show like this?”
“I hope I don’t get a horse I can’t handle.”
Josie gave Meg a quick hug and headed over to the stands to sit with Meg’s family and their other friends from 4-H. Meg was glad they were all there. She didn’t want to mess up in front of them. But that was what a 4-H public demonstration was all about—learning by doing. Delivering on your ideas. Still, a horse could be unpredictable, even dangerous, especially if it’d been abused or neglected.
Please, please, please…no risky horses.
The view on one side of the arena was of high-country forest below a line of sharp-edged mountains called the Three Sisters. Meg let her gaze rest there as she tried to calm her breathing.
Air in.
Air out.
Long, deep breaths.
Could she really do what she’d promised in her flyer?
4-H demonstration. Thirteen-year-old girl will put a saddle on any horse anyone brings her, broke or not. Just don’t bring a biter…she might bite back.
She’d put that last part in as a joke.
I can do this, I can do this.
But Meg had a secret—she had yet to put a saddle, or even a halter, on one of her own horses, a half-wild mustang she called Amigo.
She turned back to look at the people in the bleachers.
She smiled, seeing her brothers looking so serious. Even though her mom had to drag them out of bed, Meg didn’t care. Jacob, seventeen, and Jeremy, fifteen, were giving her their full attention.
Mom waved, and Meg lifted her chin.
“Learn by doing,” Meg whispered. The 4-H slogan. She and Josie had learned most of their life skills at 4-H—head, heart, hands, and health.
She’d tacked flyers up all over town and even put a few up over in Bend, Redmond, and Prineville, and at the store in Camp Sherman. Sisters was only about ten blocks long, but in the summer it was crammed with tourists and cars and RVs. Maybe that’s why so many people were here today—around fifty. She’d expected ten to fifteen.
Meg tapped the small wireless microphone clipped to her shirt.
“Thank you for coming to my demonstration,” she said, hands trembling.
Jeez! Get hold of yourself.
“My name is Meg Harris. Today I’m going to show how anyone with a little patience can put a saddle on a difficult horse.”
As the crowd waited, her heart thumped; she could actually feel it thundering in her ears.
“So…uh…did anyone…bring a horse? I mean…an ornery one?”
People laughed, turning to see if there were any takers.
Meg stood straight, smiling. Her amplified voice made her feel bigger than she was.
“Heck, yeah,” a man in a tan hat called. “I’m just not so sure I should turn him loose on you. He’s a real doozy. You could sooner saddle a jackrabbit.”
Louder laughter.
Now Meg grinned. “Bring him on in.”
The man went out to his trailer and returned with a bug-eyed gray horse. The gray tossed its head and pranced when the man led it into the area. Not a big horse, but skittish.
“Are you really thirteen, miss?” the man said. “You look awful young.”
“I’ll be fourteen in seven months.”
He rubbed his chin.
“I can handle him,” Meg said, trying not to let the nervous horse make her nervous.
The man leaned into her microphone. “If you can get a saddle on this volcano, I’ll eat my hat.”
He lifted his Stetson as everyone cheered and hooted.
The noise made the gray rear up. He crow hopped sideways, and the man slapped its flank with the end of the lead rope to keep him in line.
He looked at Meg. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
“I wouldn’t be in here if I didn’t.”
He shook his head. “You’re one brave girl.”
“Call me Meg,” she said, and reached for the lead.
The man in the tan hat walked away, leaving Meg with the gray horse. “My daughter rode him for about a month,” he said over his shoulder. “Then she went off to college. He ain’t been saddled in three years.”
He let himself out of the arena and leaned his arms on the rail to watch. “His name’s Mr. Gray Hat,” he called. “Should’ve called him Mr. Gray Wolverine.”