Scott hurried out of the house after breakfast on Saturday morning. The weekend had finally come and Mr. Wagner would be coming with it. He’d called from Great Falls last night to say he’d arrive this afternoon around four.
Now, more than ever, Scott wanted to get Kaylah out for another run with the drag so he could show Mr. Wagner how well they’d been training. Maybe Mr. Wagner would have some advice to give him. He’d been champion so many times, almost as many as Dad.
As Scott fastened Kaylah to the drag, he wondered again about Mr. Wagner’s visit. Why was he coming? It sure was out of the way.
Scott gave Kaylah extra weights to pull this morning, then released the brake and let him go. Quickly they ran to the north meadow behind the barn. The extra weights didn’t slow Kaylah for a second; he pulled easily and barked himself silly, besides.
Bruno ran, too, barking in answer to Kaylah. Rusty followed, though running well behind. But he was gathering strength each day even if it would be a while before he could do any serious running.
What a team they’d make, Scott thought, watching the three dogs, admiring the beauty of their being together. If only … if only all three of them belonged to me.
Scott sighed as he ran beside Kaylah, feeling damp air brush his cheeks. No use thinking about having my own team for a few years, he thought. I’ll just have to use Kaylah and a couple of pickup dogs. Maybe Amos will let me borrow his again. But I’m going to race. I’m going to race again.
Scott loosened the zipper of his lightweight jacket, feeling warm already, even though the air was cool. Now he looked at the slate-colored sky. Clouds, with soft edges to them, looked puffy full. They’d dump their rain before tonight.
By the time Scott returned forty-five minutes later, he was sweating hard and the dogs were panting as they went inside the barn.
They sound like a locomotive, Scott thought, easing Kaylah out of harness. The dog threw himself beside his bowl of water and began to lap quickly. Bruno and Rusty looked like a couple of kids, waiting in line behind him.
Mr. Hartfield stepped into the stall opening. “Have a good run?”
“Great,” Scott managed to say.
“Wonder if you’d have time to give Brad some help with the horses?” Mr. Hartfield asked, petting Rusty now.
“Sure.” Scott tried to sound interested, but he really wanted to work on his sled some more. He had so many things to ask Mr. Wagner.
“The horses haven’t been exercised for the last couple of days, so we need to get them out for some trail time before the storm hits. Brad’s hitching up his Appy right now, and you can take the quarter. I’ll follow along in a few minutes with mine.”
Scott walked into the stall where the quarter horse waited, wondering if a horse was anything like a dog to harness up.
Brad hurried in and took a bridle and bit from a peg on the wall. “Ginger, here, is a lot older than Georgia O’Keefe and doesn’t have as much pep either. He’s a good horse for a dude like you to ride.” He worked as he spoke.
“I’ve ridden horses before.” Scott got hot inside. Brad didn’t have to call him a dude. But he was secretly relieved that Brad had started the bridle and bit, and finally the saddle. Scott noticed a kind of belt thing hanging under the horse’s stomach. It was attached to the saddle so it must fasten here, on this side.
“You’d better cinch up the girth belt tighter than that,” Brad began. “You can’t fool old Ginger and …”
“Stop telling me what to do every second,” Scott said. “The way you talk, you’d think I’d never seen a horse before.”
“All right, all right.” Brad put his hands up in the air in surrender. “You want to do it your way, so go ahead.”
They worked in silence a moment before Scott asked, “Who’s Georgia O’Keefe?”
“My horse.” He leaned against Ginger’s neck. “She’s named for Mom’s favorite artist.”
“Did your mom give the horse to you?”
“Kind of. Georgia was Mom’s special horse before … before she went away. When she decided not to come back, she wrote and said that I could have Georgia.” Brad paused and Scott waited, feeling his need to say more. “I’ll bet Mom misses her though. I’ll bet she’d like to have Georgia back.”
Brad led Ginger from the stall and Scott followed them outside. Georgia O’Keefe was tied to the handle of the barn door, waiting.
Without speaking, Brad and Scott mounted up and the horses moved off at a brisk trot. Scott tried to relax, but his grip on the reins was white-knuckled. The back of a horse was so much higher off the ground than the runners of a sled. And bumpier besides.
“Where are we headed?” Scott asked a few minutes later when he could think of something else besides his sore butt.
“Toward the north meadow.”
“In the direction of the mountains?”
“Right. I used to ride out this way a lot, and once I went up there into the pass.”
“You really know the territory.”
“It’s easy when you’ve lived here all your life.”
Scott glanced up at the low-lying range crouching on the horizon. Its look was totally different from the Sierra peaks at home. Rather than being pointed and ragged edged, these mountains looked as if they’d been shaped with a spoon, maybe a giant ice cream scoop.
“What range is that?”
“Bear Paw mountains. Not really all that high, but you can ski in them. Our family used to go together a lot. All of us.”
Brad paused, but it was like the time before, in the barn. Scott knew he had more to say, that he’d chosen Scott to say these things to, as if Brad realized how much Scott had struggled with similar memories of his own.
Either he’s finally decided I’m a human being, just like him, Scott thought, or he’s setting me up for something. I wonder which it is?
“How far is it up to the pass?”
“Maybe five or six miles.”
“Did you drive up that way when you went skiing?”
“There’s no road from here. You have to go on horseback or hike. When we went skiing, we took the hard road to the other side of the mountain.”
“Must be pretty neat.”
“Nothing like it.” Brad gave Georgia a nudge and she took off suddenly, following the fence line along the meadow’s edge. Ginger followed, lunging quickly, and Scott felt himself slip sideways off her back. Something was wrong.
“Whoa, stop,” Scott yelled. Ginger stopped, but Scott didn’t. Grabbing for Ginger’s thick mane, he tried to slow his fall, but the saddle slipped crazily to Ginger’s side and dumped Scott to the hard ground.
For a moment he was too stunned to move or speak. He sat on his cold rear, clutching clumps of meadow weed as if that would stop his head from pounding.
Then he heard Brad and Georgia returning, and he struggled to get up. So far everything worked, but barely.
“What happened?” Brad asked, leaning down to look at him.
“That darn saddle slipped.” Scott brushed himself off, then glared at Ginger. “How could that be?”
“Old Ginger played you for a fool and had his belly all puffed out when you cinched up his girth belt.” Brad sounded as if he was giving a speech or something. “He made it nice and loose for himself the way he likes it.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw him do it, back in the barn.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Scott was really blazing now. “I could have been killed.”
“I tried to, but you were Mr. Know-It-All, remember?”
Scott remembered, all right. “But you could have said something anyway. Especially if my life was in danger.”
“Your life in danger?” Brad yelled back. “Mine was in danger, too, the way you were coming at me.” Now he hopped off Georgia. “Here, let me show you.” He began to work at the girth belt, tightening it around Ginger’s belly.
“Thanks,” Scott managed to say when Brad had finished.
“No sweat,” Brad answered. “Do you want to quit?”
“No.”
“Okay, okay.” Brad was trying hard not to smile and Scott knew it. “So let’s go.”
Scott was still fuming as he climbed back on Ginger, but he tried to think of other things now. He knew that what had happened was his own fault. He only hoped that Brad wouldn’t broadcast it all over school on Monday.
Kaylah and Bruno suddenly appeared beside them, running easily to keep the pace.
“Look who’s caught up with us,” Scott yelled, watching Bruno pace Kaylah. Dogs were something he knew about, and he knew Bruno showed plenty of strength for pulling a sled. His shoulder muscles were building nicely and Scott would love to hitch him up with Kaylah. But he couldn’t, not without Brad’s say-so.
Brad pulled Georgia O’Keefe to a halt at a promontory point near the edge of the path. Scott hadn’t realized how steadily they’d been climbing until he looked back at the house and barn below. From here they looked doll-sized.
“No wonder I didn’t know about the pass into the mountains,” Scott said. “You can’t see it from down there.”
“When you know how to ride better, maybe I’ll take you all the way up,” Brad said.
“I could probably handle it right now.” Scott’s temper flared inside him again.
Brad looked around at the sky. “Too chancy today.”
“You said you rode up there once by yourself?”
“Well, I wasn’t totally alone,” Brad said. “I was with my mom.”
Scott felt a quickening inside. Why was Brad talking so much about his mom? Must be this place, he decided. Everything reminds him. It sure hasn’t got anything to do with me.
“Like Howdy said, Mom is an artist and she likes to paint scenery best. One day she wanted to ride up to the top of the mountain and paint the view, so she asked me to come along because she’s afraid of snakes.”
“So what happened?”
“Nothing. She painted all day and I went exploring. I found this old falling-down cabin that must have belonged to a prospector a long time ago.”
“Yeah, we’ve got a bunch of those in California left over from the Gold Rush.”
The wind stirred suddenly around them, and the horses shifted uneasily on the path. “We’d better turn around,” Brad said. “That storm is just about here.”
Scott nosed Ginger around to the right. “Gee,” he yelled automatically and Kaylah turned sharply right at the word. “Good dog,” Scott said. “Mr. Wagner’s gonna be impressed with you.”
The clouds settled around them like old gray blankets and Scott snuggled deeper into his jacket. He was glad that he’d grabbed his knit cap at the last second.
He felt needles of wetness on his cheeks now, sharp and icy at first, then softening gradually to a more gentle touch.
“Hey, Brad,” he yelled. “It isn’t raining, it’s snowing.”
“I noticed.” Brad zipped up his jacket. “Pardon me if I don’t go into orbit, but I’ve seen a lot of snow.”
“Does it always snow this early in November?”
“Sometimes we have snow for Halloween,” Brad said. By the time spring comes it’s pretty old stuff.”
Would this be the time to say something? Scott wondered. “Maybe you’d feel different if you raced sled dogs,” Scott said.
“Well, I don’t. I’ve just got Bruno, who’s your average dog with a mouth on one end and a tail on the other.”
“He’s strong enough to pull a sled.” Scott felt he was pushing his luck saying that.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been watching him. Maybe he could train with Kaylah, just for the fun of it.”
“No, that’s your department.” Brad looked off toward the mountains. “Maybe, though, I’ll go to some of races, just for the fun of it.” Then he nudged Georgia O’Keefe and she began to lope, pulling ahead of Ginger on the trail.
Like the one down in Billings, Scott thought. I know you’ll go to that one.
The horses understood they were going home now and strained hard at their bridles. Scott felt Ginger’s eagerness gather under him as they cut through the meadow and sliced neatly through the chilly wind. Scott kept his head down, chin tucked into his collar, wishing he had gloves for his brittle fingers.
He saw Kaylah range up beside him, then hurry past and stop as they came to the ridge just before the land dipped into the barnyard. Kaylah paused, nose up, tail in a perfect circle above his sturdy back.
“Lookin’ good, Kaylah,” Scott called, wishing Mom was here with her camera.
Suddenly Kaylah bounded down ahead of him. He’d seen something. What? A jackrabbit, driven to cover under the brush?
Scott stared hard, past the snow that spat in his face, and then he saw what had excited Kaylah.
“Chinook! It’s Chinook!” he yelled. “Come here, boy.”
The great giant of a dog ran toward them, a kaleidoscope of black and silver flashing through the driving snow. He and Kaylah bounded together in a tangled frenzy, rolling, leaping, jumping together.
“Hey, Brad,” Scott yelled. “Mr. Wagner’s here.” He kicked Ginger into a trot, wishing he dared to gallop the horse. Now, maybe, he’d find out why Mr. Wagner had come to visit them, and why he’d brought Chinook, who was only the best lead dog in the world—after Kaylah.