Free Wild Horses by Jenny Oldfield

them down and rounding them up for the summer.”
    “So other old ranchers would know the clearing?” Matt suggested after a short pause.
    Hadley nodded. “Jim Mullins over at Lazy B, Wes Logan up at Ponderosa Pines—”
    “Maybe one of them helped the stallion,” Lisa cut in.
    “Don’t count on it,” Hadley warned, going to the door at the sound of horses returning along the trail by Five Mile Creek. “Busy cattlemen don’t take time out to rescue a wild horse. More likely to be a backwoods man, I reckon.”
    “A drifter?” Matt considered the new idea.
    Kirstie had followed Hadley to the door. She took in her mother’s group of riders returning slowly along the trail, gazed out at the Meltwater Range rising steeply from the narrow valley, then up at the sky. She saw that the clouds that had clung to the peaks for the past two days were clearing at last. There were small patches of blue, and more to come.
    “One of those guys who live in trailers up there in the mountains?” Lisa prompted Hadley for more information. “Kind of drop outs?”
    Kirstie knew the type of loner they were talking about. The backwoods men chose a lonely life of hunting and fishing. They scraped an existence from the land, lived simply, moved on.
    “Like who?” Matt asked. “Give us some names.”
    Hadley tipped his hat back on his head. “A name ain’t much use without an address,” he reminded them. “And these guys don’t stay in one place too long.”
    “But I know who you mean,” Lisa said eagerly. “Some of them come into San Luis for supplies once in a while. They call in at Mom’s diner.” Her mother, Bonnie Goodman, ran the most popular eating place in town. “Yeah, I got it; there’s Bob Tyson. He’s an ex-rodeo rider. Then there’s Art Fischer and Baxter Black; hippie types. They all live kind of rough in the forest.”
    Kirstie listened and let her imagination run on. She pictured the rescuer of the black stallion as a man who had turned his back on a life that centered on cars, jobs, and evenings in front of the television. He knew the woods and the mountains, had learned the old ways; maybe even the habits and healing methods of the Native American Indians. One thing was for sure; the mystery man cared about horses.
    “They live rough and think rough,” Hadley warned. He strode out into the corral to greet the returning riders, heading first for Ronnie Vernon on Silver Flash. He helped Vernon to dismount as he went on talking to Lisa. “Don’t go getting ideas about looking them up.”
    “Ideas about looking who up?” Sandy Scott inquired as she dismounted from her own horse. She tethered the skewbald to the nearest post.
    When she heard the news about the mysterious horse doctor and the latest theory on who he might be, she quickly agreed with Hadley. “Too risky,” she told Lisa and Kirstie. “We don’t know the first thing about those guys.”
    “Except that one of them cares enough about the black stallion to climb down into Dead Man’s Canyon and take care of him!” Kirstie objected. “Except that he’s done more for that horse than a lot of people I can think of!”
    “How do we know that?” Sandy took off her white hat, then linked arms with her daughter. She led her out of the corral, followed by Matt and Lisa. They walked together past the tack-room toward the ranch house. “Aren’t you loping ahead a little bit here?”
    “But, Mom …” Kirstie launched into her reasons for tracking down the healer. “He’d be real interesting. I reckon he knows a lot about wild horses. We could learn things from him …”
    Sandy raised her eyebrows and stared. “Too risky,” she repeated. “Hadley’s right.”
    “But …”
    “Listen.” Her mother stopped on the stretch of grass outside the house, one foot on the wooden deck that led to the front door. She spoke seriously to get her point across. “You paint a pretty picture of your horse doctor, but you gotta know that’s not