black stallion, trying to force her to ride horses like Lady and Rusty. She grinned to herself. Hell, he had left her. She could ride anything she wanted to now. And as she thought of it the full pain of having lost him ripped through her once again; she took the leg up the old ranch hand gave her, pulled the reins taut, and let the huge gray stallion dance her around. She didn't let him get out of hand, and his two efforts to toss her were fruitless, much to the old man's delight.
Slowly she walked past the big barn, toward the old corral. By then several of the men had seen her, at first they watched with interest, and then they began to cheer as they saw how she controlled the prancing gray beast. As though everyone nearby suddenly sensed an intriguing performance, they turned to watch Samantha as she rode Gray Devil through the ranch's main compound, past her crew, and Charlie, and Henry and his friend and the poodle; and then sensing her own passion for horses and the countryside surge within her, she forgot them all and began cantering out into the fields beyond. She cantered for only a few moments and then she gave him what he wanted, letting him free to gallop at his own speed, racing until it felt as if he were flying, his hooves beating hard on the ground. As Sam rode Gray Devil she was smiling, with the wind on her face and her heart pounding as they rode along. Riding this horse was like waging a special kind of battle, against the horse's strength and his mind, with only her capabilities and her skill on her side. But she was an even match for Gray Devil, and although several times he tried to throw her, he didn't succeed, and she felt all the tension and anguish and disappointment of not finding Tate well up within her, and she began to press Gray Devil forward, urging him to go even faster than he had before. She would beat him at his own game, if she could.
It was then that the crowd watching grew silent. Until then she had been a beautiful sight to see, her golden hair stretched out behind her, in sharp contrast to the black mane and tail of Gray Devil, as they flew across the fields. She moved as one with the giant stallion, her every muscle in tune with his. But now one of the ranch hands jumped off the fence to stop her, several others caught their breath, and the foreman shouted, as though she could hear him. But it was already too late. There was a hidden narrow stream out in the field she had just sailed into. It was narrow enough to jump with ease if she saw it, but it was also very deep, and if the horse stumbled, she would be thrown into a rocky ravine. The foreman was running now, waving wildly, and Charlie saw him and began to run too. It was as though both men knew what was coming, but at precisely that moment they saw her. The stallion stopped dead as he reached the stream he had seen before Sam did, and Samantha, unprepared, flew through the air with a wild, fearful grace, hair fanned out, arms extended, until she silently disappeared.
As Charlie saw it happen he ran for the station wagon, turned the key in the ignition, shoved it into gear, and surged forward-he didn't give a damn who he ran down. It was too far to run. He signaled wildly to the foreman, who hopped in, and they drove” off with the tires screeching on the gravel and then bumping terribly as they crossed the fields. Charlie made horrible guttural sounds as he muttered to himself, praying all the way. “What's over there?” he asked the foreman, without taking his eyes off the field. He was going almost sixty, and Gray Devil had flashed past him only moments earlier, hell-bent on the barn.
“A ravine.” The foreman looked tense as he answered, straining to see what was ahead. They could still see nothing and a moment later he shouted “Stop!” which Charlie did, and the foreman led the way through the grass, down a little incline to where Gray Devil had balked at the stream. At first they saw absolutely nothing, and then Charlie saw her, her white shirt almost torn from her body, her chest and her face and her hands lacerated almost beyond recognition, her hair fanned out around her, as she lay there broken, bleeding, and terribly, terribly still.
“Oh, my God… oh, my God…” Charlie began crying as he rushed toward her, but the foreman was already kneeling beside her, with two fingers pressed gently to the side of her neck.
“She's still alive. Get in the car, go back to the house, call for the sheriff, tell him to bring the helicopter out here right away. And if he can get one, bring a paramedic, or a doctor, or a nurse.” The town of Steamboat Springs was not heavily endowed with medical personnel suited to the occasion. It was obvious from the position in which she lay, Sam had probably broken several bones, and possibly even her neck or her back. “Go on, man, get going!” he shouted at Charlie, who wiped his face on his sleeve and ran back to the car, shot back a little distance, turned around, and pounded on the accelerator, wondering frantically if Samantha would live. “Fucking horse,” he was shouting to himself as he drove back to where the others waited tensely. And then he jumped out of the car and gave orders.
He went back to Sam then and knelt beside her, trying to hold her and stanch the flow of blood from the cuts on her face with a towel he'd found in the car. And when he got into the helicopter beside her twenty minutes later, his face was grim. The two assistants were left to wrap up with the others. They were all to meet him in the hospital in Denver later that night.
It seemed to take forever for the helicopter to reach Denver, and by the time it did, it was obvious that Samantha's life was in grave danger. A paramedic had traveled with them, and for the last ten minutes of the trip he had given her artificial respiration as Charlie had sat anxiously by. He was aching to ask the paramedic if he thought she would make it, but he was afraid, so he said nothing and just watched them and continued to pray. They set her down as gently as they could on the lawn of St. Mary's Hospital, having alerted all air traffic that they were coming through and coming down with a code blue. Charlie desperately searched his mind for what that meant, and thought he remembered that it meant someone was literally almost dead.
A doctor and three nurses were waiting on the lawn with a gurney, and she was rushed inside as soon as they landed, with Charlie left to follow as quickly as he could. He never thought to thank the young paramedic or the pilot, all he could think of was Samantha, so broken and so still. The only thing still recognizable about the long narrow form he saw draped in sheets a few minutes later was the tangled mass of golden palomino hair. It was then that he finally made himself say it, as two nurses stood by monitoring her vital signs while they prepared to take her to X ray and possibly surgery. They had already decided that the lacerations on her face were only superficial and could wait.
“Will she make it?” His voice was barely a croak in the brilliantly lit white hall.
“Excuse me?” His voice had been barely audible, and the nurse spoke to him without taking her eyes off of Sam.
“Will she make it?”
“I don't know.” She spoke softly. “Are you the next of kin? Her husband?”
Charlie shook his head dumbly. “No, I'm-” And then he realized that maybe he should be. That if they thought he was family they'd tell him something more. “I'm her brother. She's my sister.” He barely made sense as he stood there, feeling suddenly dizzy and sick as he realized that Sam might not live. She already looked as though she might be dead. But she was still breathing faintly, the nurse told him, and before she could say more, two residents, the doctor, and a whole flock of nurses in what looked like blue pajamas came to whisk Sam away. “Where is she going? Where is she…?” No one listened and he just stood there, once again with tears coursing silently down his face. There was nothing they could tell him, they just didn't know.
It was an hour and a half later when they came back to find Charlie sitting frozen like a lost child in a waiting- room chair. He hadn't moved, he hadn't smoked, he hadn't even had a cup of coffee. He had just sat there, waiting, barely daring to breathe himself.
“Mr. Peterson?” Someone had taken his name when they had asked him to sign the admission forms. He had continued to claim that he was her brother, and he didn't give a damn if he lied, if it helped her, not that he was sure what difference it made.
“Yes?” He sprang to his feet. “How is she? Is she all right?” Suddenly he couldn't stop talking, but the doctor nodded very slowly and looked Charlie full in the face.
“She's alive. Barely.”
“What is it? What happened?”
“To put it to you simply, Mr. Peterson, her back is broken. Her spine is fractured in two places. Bones are shattered. There's a hairline fracture in her neck, but we can work around that. The problem right now is her spine. There are so many small broken bones, we have to operate in order to take off some of the pressure. If we don't, there could be permanent damage to her brain.”
“And if you do?” Charlie had instantly sensed that the sword had two edges.
“If we do, she may not live.” The doctor sat down and indicated to Charlie to do the same. “The problem is that if we don't, I can almost guarantee you that she'll be a vegetable for the rest of her life, and probably a quadriplegic.”
“What's that?”
