Buffalo Summer (Home On The Ranch)

"Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam ..." - Brewster Higley, 1873

Pony Young Bear's truck was old. It had belonged to her older brother, Steven, who had gotten it from one of the elders, who had gotten it from some government program that found used trucks for needy people on the reservation. It was an '83 Ford, standard shift, four-wheel drive. At one time it had been red. Now it was rust-colored, but it could still squeak out an inspection sticker if taken to the right place, and Pony always made sure she took it to the right place. It was cheap and reasonably reliable transportation, but this morning she wished that it didn't look so battered, that the paint wasn't peeling away to reveal big brown boils, that it didn't rattle so loudly, that the tires weren't bald.

Above all, she wished that she didn't have to be driving to a ranch called the Bow and Arrow outside of someplace called Katy Junction, Montana, to beg for a job she wasn't qualified for. But she needed the money to buy school supplies for the children. Without them the kids would be at a disadvantage, and that was just one more disadvantage they didn't need.

Pete Two Shirts had understood this. Which was why he had come to the school yesterday afternoon to tell her about this job. She'd been sitting at her desk in the sudden quiet that always descended on the heels of the departing third-grade students when a man's voice spoke her name from the doorway.

She glanced up, startled, and laid down a stack of papers, giving no reply to his greeting. Pete walked into the room in his lean, catlike way, long hair tied back with a red strip of cloth, dressed in his typical cowboy attire of blue jeans, boots, denim jacket and red plaid shirt. He kept his thumbs hooked in the broad leather belt at his waist sporting the big fancy silver rodeo buckle and stopped just short of her desk, gazing at her beneath his black, flat-crowned hat brim. "I came by to tell you about a good-paying summer job."

She dropped her eyes, picking up the stack of papers and tapping them on the desk to straighten them. Anything at all to avoid looking at him. Pete reminded her of a time in her life that she would much rather forget. "So tell me," she said, suddenly short of breath.

"I got a call this morning from Guthrie Sloane, the foreman of a rancher who's looking for someone to help with their buffalo herd. It's the ranch I worked at this past fall, when Sloane got crippled in a horse wreck and they needed temporary help. Over near Katy Junction."

"I know the place." She laid the papers down again and smoothed them with her hands, avoiding his eyes. "The Bow and Arrow. Steven told me about it." Her heart beat painfully, and her body tensed with shame and guilt even after all these years. One summer, one night, and her life had never been the same. Would never, ever be the same ...

"I thought of you," Pete said.

"I know nothing of buffalo." Her words were clipped and brusque.

"You worked for me one whole summer with the tribal buffalo herd. You know all you need to know. You can ride a horse pretty good, too. You need that money to buy school things for the kids."

She snatched the stack of papers yet again and rose from her chair, walking to the window and staring out. Her heart was hammering and her mouth was dry.

"I told him I'd ask around for someone who could help out," Pete continued. "It would be an easy job. You'd live right there, on the ranch. Room and board included. Caleb McCutcheon's a good man and the buffalo herd is tiny, nothing like the size of ours."

"I appreciate your coming," she said. "But I am not interested."

"Take the job, Pony. It pays more than what you make here as a teacher, or what you'd make hoeing weeds in some farmer's field." Pete Two Shirts turned and walked out without another word. She stayed where she was until the sound of his boot heels and the faint ring of his spurs faded from her burning ears.

One summer. One buffalo summer ...

When she finally returned to her desk, the children's papers she held in her trembling hands were hopelessly crumpled, and no amount of smoothing could flatten them. She wanted to ignore what Pete had said, but he was right. She needed the money. And if the job paid well, did she have the right to deny her students such a windfall?

Unlike many of the children she taught, Pony had been handed the best of everything, the best that any Indian born on the rez could ever hope to have. Her brother Steven had pushed her hard, pushed her to do well in school, pushed her to apply for colleges, and when the pushing had opened doors for her, he had made sure those doors stayed open by footing the bill for her education with the money he earned as an environmental lawyer. She'd graduated from one of the best schools in the country, had gone on to get her master's degree in early childhood education.

Steven had sacrificed so much for her since the death of their parents, and she loved him fiercely. She'd loved him ever since she'd been a little girl and he'd tolerated her pesky company, defended her against his taunting friends, lifted her onto his broad shoulder and carried her when her legs grew tired. Later, as she grew older, he'd driven off unwanted suitors. He'd never asked for anything in return for being the best brother a girl could ever have. That was Steven's way. Yet when he changed his name to a white man's name and chose to live in the white man's world, she couldn't understand that his needs might not be the same as hers.

Her resentment toward the lifestyle he had chosen had limited her visits to his pretty little house in Gal-latin Gateway with the name Brown stenciled in big block letters on his mailbox. It had taken her a long time to realize that her brother had the right to walk his own path.

Last night when she had had gone to see him to ask him about Caleb McCutcheon and the job at the Bow and Arrow, the neatly stenciled letters on his mailbox had read Young Bear. Unbeknownst to her, he had taken back his own name. His hair had grown long again and was drawn back the way he used to wear it. He had looked so good, so handsome, standing there in the doorway of his cozy little house, that she had been momentarily unable to speak, overwhelmed by a sudden and poignant surge of remorse that brought her to the verge of tears.

"Pony," he said. "It's good to see you. It's been a while. Christmas, wasn't it?"

She blinked the sting from her eyes. "It's good to see you, too."

He nodded. "Come in. It's not a teepee but it's comfortable." He stood to one side for several moments, and when she didn't move he reached out and drew her firmly inside, closing the door behind her. "I'm cooking supper. You can watch me and tell me all the things I'm doing wrong." He turned and walked back into the kitchen, picked up the spatula he'd left on the counter and added strips of cooked chicken into the stir-fry mix that was sizzling in the wok. He shook in a generous splash of soy sauce, added a little more water and a small mound of freshly grated gingerroot. He stirred for a few minutes before turning off the gas burners beneath both the wok and a pot of steamed brown rice. "There's plenty here for both of us," he said, taking two plates from the cupboard.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Buffalo Summer by Nadia Nichols Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.