Like The River Running Wild
Chapter 1 - Open Mind
Omar Rhodes' plane taxis down the dirt runway, heavy-laden with guns and rucks and men. Three men, to be exact, and twice as many guns; a hunting trip to the mountains requires an excessive amount of testosterone and firepower.
Vic sits in her truck, heater blowing hard as the Hunting Guide to the Rich and Boring throttles up the single-engine and lifts into the cold mountain air. Everything around her is cold. It looks cold. It smells cold. Its fucking freezing. Who the hell goes on a bear-hunting trip in the middle of the freezing ass winter, anyway?
Men.
Men do this kind of shit.
Men do stupid shit like walk around in blizzards and knee-deep snow with guns and fifty pounds of survival gear and call it hunting. Whatever, if it makes him happy, she thinks with a shiver and a shrug. It was her idea, but it's still crazy as hell.
Jesus, it's cold!
But Walt wasn't cold. None of the men were, and that kind of idiocy still baffles the crap out of her. He had practically danced his way out of the cabin with all his gear. Even after misreading the stuttering approvals and wrinkled brow that gave her the appearance of a reluctant Little Woman who really wasn't looking forward to missing Her Man.
No poker face finally comes in handy. Ha!
Walt had smiled and said she would be surprised with how content she'd be with the cabin to herself for a week - that a break from him would be a relief; she'd see as soon as Omar's plane was out of sight. But, she didn't need a break. She wasn't going to suddenly feel relieved he was gone, except that she had work to do.
Despite the effing cold ass temperature outside the cab of her truck, she is eager to get the rest of the surprise started. Well, sort of eager. And more like 'to get it over with' than 'to get started'. Kind of like the anticipation and anxiety she had right before the academy. Sure, the end would be worth the effort, but her ass was gonna pay for it. That was a less-than-awesome prospect.
At least she'll be able to limp around the cabin without an audience. By the time he's home again, maybe she won't be limping and sore anymore. Maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe she'll nail it like she nailed qualifying, and her detective's exam.
Maybe.
She puts the truck in gear and heads north, the clear Wyoming sky above, the frozen earth beneath and the reality of possible broken bones in front of her.
Sarah Two Feathers stands in front of the big barn at the 4-S, her hands hidden inside the burnt umber hair of the buffalo cape she holds closed at her breast. Black and silver braids drape across each shoulder, folds of butter-colored leather flow from beneath the cape and dark-tanned moccasin boots cover her legs, disappearing as they rise along her calves. If the Cheyenne woman is cold, Vic can't tell. She's not even blinking against the crisp Wyoming wind.
"Jesus, aren't you freezing?"
Vic is zipped inside the insulated Carhartt coveralls purchased exactly four and half hours into her first Wyoming winter, layered over sub-zero thermals and her heaviest jeans. The down-filled collar of her department coat is pulled up to her ears and she buries her nose behind the zipper. Still shivering, she might as well be naked, dammit. Being from Philly doesn't matter; Wyoming cold is different. She has said it to Walt a thousand times - it's just freaking colder.
Sarah smiles without parting her lips.
"No. Soon, you won't be either."
"Yeah, well, unless you plan on teaching me to ride this thing in your living room, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be freezing my ass all week."
The woman's smile fades slightly. Regret thickens Vic's tongue. She hasn't even said a proper hello to Walt's friend's wife and she's already bitching.
And insulting.
"Shit. I'm sorry. I just really really hate being cold. Look, I appreciate this. Really. So, thank you. I'm Vic Moretti."
"Sheriff Walt is a friend. He has known much sorrow, but I see the joy has returned to his eyes. My husband and I saw it when he came to buy your horse. We are happy to be a part of something that will bring him happiness."
Vic smiles and a tear nearly spills down her frozen cheek; the compliment is unexpected.
"Well, um, this is probably a really bad idea."
Sarah Two Feathers smiles again.
"Doing something that is hard, especially for the benefit of another, is never a bad idea, Miss Victoria. You will do what you need to do, for Sheriff Walt. And also for yourself."
"Vic. Please, it's just Vic. And I hope you're right."
"Hope is a very good thing, Miss Vic. I am called Sarah Two Feathers."
She extends her gloveless hand. Vic wrestles her own free from the insulated pocket of her coat and takes Sarah's warm and gentle grasp. The Cheyenne woman's soft smile and unbroken gaze stir an unnamable emotion inside Vic, and all she can do is blink away another tear and nod.
While Walt and Henry and Omar were at the airfield, loading and laughing and leaving, Jack Simmons drove out to Walt's and loaded up the mare. Ruby made all the arrangements, at Vic's request; department dispatcher and Walt's oldest and dearest had relished the idea of being in on the plot.
Jack brought all of Baby's tack, including the saddle Walt had taken Vic to pick out right after Christmas. As usual, she had been frustrated and short with him, snapping that she didn't know the first thing about horses, much less saddles. Less than twenty minutes inside the shop and she had barked that she wouldn't know 'the right one' if it had actually bit her in the ass.
But, he had been Classic Walt. And he was patient and spoke quietly and suggested one after another until she finally stabbed her finger at one with a sharp Fine, this one. It might have been a monkey's saddle for the damn circus for all she knew. Except she knew it wasn't - because Walt would never have let her pick the wrong one. Jesus, why had she made it so hard?
The whole ride home she brooded, staring out the window of The Bullet and refusing to speak. She could feel him every time he turned his eyes from the road to the back of her head. He hadn't expected her to know which saddle was the right one. What he had wanted was for her to be able to choose for herself. Something for herself. Of course he made sure they were the right size. The right type. The right kind of saddle. All he wanted was for her to pick one she liked the looks of the best.
Seeing it on the saddle rack in the tack up stall pulls a catch in her throat. Dammit, but she can be a real piece of work. Thank God he loves her; love breeds forgiveness and she will need a hell of a lot of it in the years to come.
If he stays. He might enjoy the break…
Sarah's voice interrupts the intrusive thought.
"She has been waiting for you."
"Excuse me?"
"Your mare. She has been waiting for you."
Vic looks at Sarah with unbridled confusion. After seven years, she still isn't used to the way the Indians talk. In the slow motion way a cup tips over, hot coffee or cold milk erupting over the lip and falling like artist's paint to the floor, the Philly-accented 'whatever' forms in Vic's throat, begins to roll across her tongue. As the word pushes against her pursed lips, heavy with judgment and disregard, she's hit with the memory of a phrase her grandfather used often and loudly.
If you do what you've always done, you'll get the same shit you've always gotten.
Sarcasm.
Bravado.
Her M.O. practically since birth.
She's tired of the same shit. It's been a less-than existence. Sure, there have been moments of Good - of Happy, even. But not enough. And it's not what she wants anymore. She wants the Dream, dammit. She pushes the same ole' shit back down her throat.
"Tell me what to do, Sarah."
Chapter 2 - Failure is Inevitable
The first few days are a blur of basic horsemanship - grooming, picking, feeding, leading, tacking - over and over again. With purpose and determination, she approaches every step as if she has something to learn, not something to scoff at. When Sarah talks about burs and hot spots and hoof-rot, Vic listens.
She goes with the grain, knows the difference between a stiff brush and soft brush and when to use the curry comb. She can tie a quick-release, knows where the saddle belongs across the horse's back, and how to tighten the cinch. The bridle was a little trickier than she expected, but it likely had something to do with the paralyzing fear of getting her hand bitten off.
At the end of the third day, she feels pretty damn proud of herself; she can take her horse from pasture to full tack with minimal input from her Cheyenne teacher. It surprises her to feel genuinely comfortable in her new skills. The swagger in her step is small, but she's not going to hide it. She deserves a little strutting, dammit.
She's also praying the strut is hiding the Scared Shitless just under the surface. Time to shit or get off the pot. She has just under ninety-six hours to seal this deal before Walt comes home, and the real work hasn't even started. Stepping from the truck on the fourth morning, Vic sucks in a bone-chilling Wyoming breath and holds the wind in her lungs, willing the frigid air to harden her resolve.
It's Riding Day.
Her papered name is Boss Lady's Baby and Vic has wondered more than once if Walt picked the horse for that very reason. It's no secret across half the continent that Vic The Terror is as strong-willed as they come. The potential double meaning was not lost on her when Walt bestowed the horse upon her their first Christmas together.
However, up until Walt's hunting trip and her immersion therapy with Sarah, Vic had only referred to the horse as "the mare". Over the last three days, the relationship between equine and law-woman has evolved; Vic now calls the Appaloosa 'Baby'. Actually, she calls her all manner of variations.
Baby Girl. Big Baby. Baby's Butt. Maybe Baby. The climate-controlled arena at the 4-S is pure heaven compared to the cold-ass elements outside, but Sarah says Walt won't only want to ride in the spring, so she better teach Vic to work the horse in the snow, too. When that happens, Vic and Baby both do a little growling and snarling at their Cheyenne mentor. That's when Vic calls her Big Ass Baby, just to make herself feel better.
She had never been the horse-crazy little girl some of her schoolmates were. When they were prancing around the playground with syncopated steps and invisible reins and squealing whinnies, she was clearing the jungle gym with a stick gun and wearing her brothers' hand-me-down jeans.
When Walt insisted she run the Running Eagle Challenge against the better judgment of both herself and the Tribal Council, she felt only fear and distrust of Walt's Horse. After falling off, walking for miles, and finally lying down to die in the dirt of the Rez, she would have felt Right if she hadn't been so scared - the leather-tied bag of bones had run off and left her. She still doesn't trust that horse.
But that doesn't matter today. That was then and this is now. That was Walt's Horse and Baby is hers and today Vic walks to the barn with purpose. Today, it's time to make the big steps happen.
Finished tacking, horse and cop walk side by side into the arena where Sarah stands waiting. The closer they get to her, Vic can feel the nervous energy rise inside her as if it's coming up from the damn dirt. Every step heightens her senses, the tingling on the back of her neck intensifying. By the time they reach Sarah, she feels like she's about to puke her guts up.
"Take your place, Miss Vic."
Deep breath.
Vic moves to face the saddle on Baby's left, left hand clutching reins and saddle horn, right hand gripping the roll at the rear of the saddle. Her knuckles are white and her palms are sweaty and she can feel the stupid, rumbling fear in the pit of her stomach.
C'mon, deep breath.
Her vision blurs, inside corners to the outside, and then rising from bottom to top. Tears? What the hell?! She's busted down doors in crack houses, dodged bullets from all directions, and even survived Chance Gilbert and his circus-freak-side-show family's fetish for baseball bats and bologna. Her chest tightens as the memory triggers the sickly-sweet smell in her mind.
BREATHE DAMMIT!
"Shit!"
Eyes squeezed tightly shut, she swallows against a desert-dry mouth. Her tongue is glued to the roof of her mouth, her cheeks, her lips won't part to let air inside her lungs.
CAN'T BREATHE! CAN'T BREATHE!
Something burns her insides, a firestorm from so deep she thinks it must be from hell itself. The blood rushing through her veins roars in her ears and she's deaf to the scream she can't even feel ripping from her chest. She can't breathe and she can't move and the helmet and the baby and no control. She doesn't feel herself letting go of the saddle.
Chapter 3 - Fear Falls Apart
Buried under years of practiced denial, Hidden Pains escape the healing and the moving on. They burrow deep, festering and blistering in the dark. Like savage, light-phobic creatures they lay in the depths waiting for the worst possible moment to devour their host.
She's on her knees in the dirt, barfing and cursing and crying.
Everything she thought she'd left behind. Everything. Philly and IAB. Donolato's suicide and Gorski. Even the time her dad took two in the chest. Ancient shit. Fucking childhood memories. Who needs all that? Who carries that kind of shit around?
Branch's blown-apart face, bloated and grey and so fucking dead. Nighthorse and Hector and Ferg getting abducted by that mick, Eddie Harp. Holy hell, what is happening to her? It feels like Baby is standing on her chest, iron shoes and red dirt grinding into her bones.
Like rogue waves in the ocean, more memories rise up inside. The helmet and the bat and that fucking bologna. Walt is shot. Henry is beaten. Her baby is dead. Her daughter is dead. Her daughter is fucking dead.
She grabs hand-fulls of arena dross and launches them in a wide arc. A rusty haze colors the air around her, and the freshly raked arena becomes dotted with small and medium sized craters from the flying, falling earth. Debris strikes Baby's flanks, her shoulders - the mare's muscles tighten, ears pin back, and she crow-hops away; red confetti mixes with hot tears and Vic is blinded by more than pain and fear.
Sightless, her hearing choked by the ragged breaths choked sobs she can't seem to slow, Vic barely registers Sarah's movements; the old woman soothes the mare, moves her to the fence and whispers in a tongue only horse and woman can hear or understand. Without binding her to the fence, Sarah walks back to Vic and kneels.
"Let your tears wash away the dirt, Miss Vic."
Trying to regain her dignity and a little self-control, she swipes at the mud trails on her cheeks and shoves a mound of earth over the puke pile.
"I don't know what the hell is happening to me."
"You are like the river that runs down from the mountain. The river is strong. Wild. It goes wherever it wants to go. No one can tell the river it cannot go here or there. But you have tried to force yourself to go where you are not ready."
Vic scoffs. She's learned a lot from Sarah over the last few days, but Indian wisdom still baffles her. And right now, it's irritating the shit out of her. And she's less than interested in having a therapy session while lying in the damn dirt, surrounded by horse shit and her own puke..
"What? What the hell does that even men? And what does it have to do with me getting on my damn horse?!"
Her volume rises, the tone more indignant even though she doesn't mean to make it so. Dammit, why is this becoming so much harder all of a sudden? She was doing so fucking good before today. Why does riding a damn horse scare the shit out of her so badly?
"What is it you are afraid of, Miss Vic?"
Without thinking, Vic answers.
"Falling off!"
The Indian shakes her head.
"No."
What the hell, lady?!
"Oh really?!"
"Falling off your horse can only hurt your body. Physical pain does not scare you."
Well, you're not wrong there. But…
"What are your tears falling for?"
What are my tears falling for?! NO! This is NOT happening! This is about the horse, DAMMIT!
"I don't want to fall off the damn horse, alright?! Jesus! What are you, some kind of red-skin psychotherapist now? Not everything is all deep-rooted psycho-babble bullshit. I don't want to fall off the fucking horse, okay?!"
In the clumsy way a newborn foal stands for the first time, Vic hauls her still-shaking body up from the arena floor and moves as fast as her wobbly ass on soft dirt will let her - its slow as fuck and even less graceful but dammit she can't get away from Sarah fast enough. Anger and fear and frustration boil through the pores of her skin. Who the hell does that old, shriveled-up Indian think she is? What the hell gives her the right to stick her nose in?
Just breathe, dammit!
The closer she gets to Baby, the more uneasy the mare becomes. Vic doesn't notice her pinned-back ears or the frantic way her tail swishes back and forth. She doesn't pick up on Baby's rapid breathing, too consumed in her indignation and panic.
The Appaloosa's whole body tightens when Vic grabs her reins; the horse stamps a hoof in the dirt and throws her broad head up and down.
"What the hell, Baby?! Stop it, dammit!"
The horse pulls against her; Vic tightens her grip and returns the pressure. For a few milliseconds it's a tug-of-war between the 120 pound cop and 1200 pound animal. Vic counters with a snapping jerk downward. For the first time in Sarah Two Feather's memory, Boss Lady's Baby bolts. With astounding grace, agility and speed, the full grown mare pulls Vic violently off her shaky legs, 4S arena dirt defying gravity in a skyward explosion of rusty snowflakes and one Absaroka County Undersheriff.
The reins pull friction burns across the palms of her hands and Vic cries out in pain, dropping the leather straps as she flies spread-eagle through the air. Free of her anchor, Baby stops her retreat, chest heaving, nostrils flaring and eyes trained on the woman lying prone in the dirt. For a few seconds she lays still, the anger and wind having escaped in a great WHOOSH when she landed on the arena floor.
Now she's lying in the dirt like the piece of shit she feels like, literally sobbing in front of a Cheyenne woman she hardly knows. She can't remember being this unhinged since the night she told Walt she had killed her daughter. At least that had been in front of someone she trusted. Someone she loved - at least more than any other living being. Remembering that night, almost crawling out of her skin with the hollow pain of her daughter's death, Vic rolls to her side and curls into herself and searches for the safety of Walt's arms around her once again.
Instead, it is Sarah who is kneeling in front of her, the velvety suede of her dress pulled tight across her knees, tucked behind and covering thick her moccasin boots. With a gentle hand, she pushes the splayed strands of Vic's hair from her face. The tears won't stop and her heart hurts and all she wants to be held. For something to fix the shit that seems to stay broken inside her.
Sarah slides her hand under Vic's head, gently lifting her from the dirt. The two women settle, Vic's tears running trails down the buckskin dress to the earth underneath them. Neither speaks. There is only the sound of Vic's weeping and Baby's breathing and the gentle rhythm of Sarah rocking back and forth.
There's no way to know how much time passes before Vic wakes to the gentle blow from Baby's velvet muzzle against her cheek. She tries to raise off of Sarah's lap; the Indian's gentle pressure across her shoulder stills her effort. There is a strange sensation inside, a safety in the embrace Vic has only ever felt with Walt; she abandons her escape and relaxes.
"I fell asleep."
"Yes. You and your horse. Did you dream?"
Vic takes a minute to clear the fog; did she dream? She remembers remembering so many things before Baby picked her up like a dishrag and threw her halfway across the barn. But did she dream? She doesn't know, and she's afraid to wonder for too long; what if she freaks the hell out again? Instead of being vague, or just flat out lying she decides to give an honest answer to the woman holding her.
"I don't know if what I'm remembering is a dream or memories. Like, from earlier, you know?"
"Yes. When you are ready, you will know the difference."
"Why can't I get on my horse, Sarah?"
A contemplative hum floats from Sarah's throat as she continues to stroke Vic's hair. Where Indian wisdom has confused and frustrated her before, Vic now finds herself eagerly awaiting her new friend's insight. The woman obviously has a better handle on the bat-shit-crazy woman laying in her lap than Vic has recently.
"Because you do not trust her."
"Why don't I trust her?"
"Because you cannot control her."
Vic stares at the dark trails in the suede and dark circles in the dirt, reading the tear stains like tea leaves. How she couldn't see it before will probably always piss her off. Or maybe Sarah has reached inside her and finally turned something over that Vic couldn't find. Whatever the hell just happened, Vic can finally put a name to the pain.
"My whole life…all of it, every terrible thing I've ever been through. All the things that have happened - I couldn't stop them. I couldn't stop any of them from happening. I had...I had no control."
"We can only control that which is ours alone and no one else's."
"What is that?"
"Ourselves."
Chapter 4 - Of The Things Which Kill a Lesser Man
Before Kevlar vests and gun control and kids killing anything other than time and brain cells, Philadelphia Senior Detective Victor Moretti was shot twice by a fifteen year old kid. Both Moretti and the kid died at the scene. Two slugs from a 9mm hit the Detective in the chest - the first was a through-and-through that missed all the important parts of his anatomy.
The second shot killed him.
Twice.
The full-metal jacketed round entered his chest half an inch below his left collarbone, spread on impact and nearly split the subclavian artery in half. It came to a shuddering stop embedded in his shoulder blade - the impact dropped his body to the floor and sent his heart into arrest. Miraculously, his partner's pathetically shitty CPR managed to get his blood pumping again, but Moretti coded a second time in the box enroute to Penn-Presby.
After eight hours of surgery to repair the artery and remove the slug, over half his blood slopped between the scene and the OR floor, and two solid weeks in a drug-induced coma, the wounded cop remained in ICU fighting the odds for 27 days.
It was two and half months after leaving the ICU before he slept in own bed again.
When he was well enough to testify from his ICU bed, Victor Moretti stated that he had been outside the house when the first shot was fired, but couldn't recall the events in the immediate aftermath. He had no memory of entering the dwelling, where he was found in a pool of blood a full fifteen feet from the body of the teenage boy. Ballistics from the scene matched his accounting of the events, despite the holes in his memory.
By the time he came home from the hospital, there had been a full IAB investigation into the shooting.
The department had been watching Philadelphia Detective Danny Conlon, Moretti's partner of 8 years, for about three months leading up to the shooting. Recent intelligence in the Organized Crime Bureau put Conlon on the Irish Mob's payroll. According to sources, he split his time behind the shield playing Good Cop/Dirty Cop; when he wasn't making collars and closing cases with Moretti, he was shaking down the precinct and giving the heads-up when OCB and Vice started sniffing too closely.
The day his partner was almost murdered, the dirty double life had finally caught up. Because Moretti's memory of the lead-up never returned, the reason for the knock at the kid's address was never established. But IAB surmised it was another shakedown, this one going south in the worst way, and Conlon had accidentally killed the teenage son of a mob lieutenant. In a desperate attempt to cover his ass, the Detective staged what was nearly written off as a cop killing followed by a clean shoot of the perp by the fallen officer's partner.
Before the investigation was complete, Danny Conlon was found in a muddy South Philly alley with a single gunshot to the back of his head, and a point blank shotgun blast to the face. OCB and IAB knew a retaliation hit when they saw one - just desserts for the scumbag. Case Closed.
Danny's wife was the only one to attend his closed casket funeral.
The attempted murder of her father was Vic's first experience with dirty Philly cops. She was fifteen, already knew she wanted to be on the job, and hadn't needed another excuse to idolize her father. Hell, the old man had named her after himself.
A decade and half later, when Bobby Donolato turned out to be another bent bastard with a shield, she remembered the smell of that ICU room and the sound of her mother's crying and never thought twice about turning Bobby in. It didn't matter that he wasn't a mob rat; he was as dirty as Conlon had been, and she wasn't having any of that shit.
Of course, if she'd known he was gonna eat lead, or that Ed Gorski would blame her and then go full-on stalker, she might have done it in a less-visible way. Maybe. But that was then. And this is now. And she knows she can't go back.
Standing next to Baby, Vic runs her fingers through the mare's mane.
"I'm sorry, Baby Girl. I'm sorry."
Swaying like the hanging branches of a weeping willow, the gentle motion of her mare's breathing soothing as a lullaby, Vic opens her heart wide and deep and confides in the beautiful soul holding her up.
"I never regretted turning Bobby in. He was a piece of shit sonuvabitch and he was hurtin' good people and I never regretted it. Not even a little bit. But, fuck me, why did it have to turn out like that? And I had to go after Chance. I couldn't just let him disappear and never know who he was gonna hurt next. What if he came after me again? What if he came after Walt?"
So many decisions. So many hurt in her wake.
"But it cost me my baby…"
Tears fall in a trail down Baby's dappled shoulder, and Baby drops her velvet muzzle to the middle of Vic's back. With tender care the horse holds her close, and Vic's inside softens a little more.
"That's what terrifies me, Baby. Every time I make a choice, even the right ones...things always go to shit. We won't even talk about my fuck ups. What if I've already done it again, huh? What if I made a choice - like this trip I made Walt take? What if it was the wrong choice and the shit is just waiting to hit the fan? I mean, who else is there for me to hurt...except Walt? Fuck..."
She can't breathe again. There are days when all is right in her world. When the coffee is hot and the air is clean and everything about Walt fills the holes in her heart. Even the one left by her baby. Even that one.
But there are just as many days when the blackness of pain and fear surrounds her like a Wyoming snow storm, blinding and cold and each snowflake shatters every moment of peace she's stored up. Like a great hurricane-force gust, the arctic chill of fear consumes her from the inside; he's gone on that fucking trip and it was all her idea. What if…?
More tears. More ragged breaths and eyes squeezed tight. But Baby holds her and her hands and arms aren't empty.
We can only control what is ours alone. We can only control ourselves.
That's it. That's what Sarah meant the first day Vic came to the 4S.
Doing something that is hard, especially for the benefit of another, is never a bad idea, Miss Victoria. You will do what you need to do, for Sheriff Walt. And also for yourself.
Chapter 5 - Where the Water is Clear and Cold
"Miss Vic."
Sarah's practiced hand reaches, her wizened head nods, and Vic offers the reins as the Cheyenne horse whisperer moves in front of Baby. When her teacher gently squeezes her hand as she takes the leather from it, Vic feels a warm glow of hope she doesn't dare acknowledge.
"You have opened your heart and given her the truth of your pain. She knows now why you are afraid and she will not allow you to be hurt by those fears while you are with her. Not ever. It is the sacred trust between horse and man."
Indian and horse face each other and Sarah begins to whisper-chant in her native tongue. As her breathy words intensify, she moves to Baby's side and begins to unsaddle her. Vic's eyes close, her ears tune out anything beyond the old woman's chant and the mare's chuff chuff breathing.
She feels Sarah's hands; they take her own and gently pull her closer. The smell of horse sweat fills her nostrils. Horse sweat and moist arena dirt and the sweet heat of a freshly dropped pile of shit. She almost chuckles. At least Baby has calmed down enough to let go of a gopher.
As her hands explore the length of Baby's untacked back she is keenly aware that she doesn't care about the missing saddle - she doesn't give a single shit about where it is; why it's not on the horse's top-side. There's no incessant need to know every detail of the situation.
In a complete turn around from who Victoria Moretti has been since the day her father nearly died, she isn't asking a million questions. She doesn't want to know. Doesn't need to control the moment. To control the outcome. To always be in control.
In a moment of pure instinct, and one she will never be able to explain to anyone, Vic grabs two great handfuls of Baby's mane. The unceremonious push-pull-leap that follows probably looks more like an unfolded lawn chair flying from the back of a speeding pick-up, but she doesn't think twice. All she cares about is that she wants to ride.
Right now.
She wants to feel Baby beneath her, to move like the mare moves and share her horse's strength. Somehow, miracle of all miracles she lands astride and not in the dirt, and it's like Horse and Rider have finally been reunited, not joined for the first time ever. Baby's hooves remain planted in the dirt, her weight never shifting the way Vic has seen horses do ever since she moved to Wyoming. Vic strokes her neck as a fresh tear streams down her face and a smile spreads across her lips.
"It feels like I've known her my whole life. I don't understand it. But I feel it."
Two Days Later
"You have learned to ride well. Now that you have found your peace, she is at peace with you. That is the bond between you."
Both women smile as Vic slides down from Baby's unsaddled back. She has ridden in the saddle, too, but after that first bareback ride this is her favorite way. She and Baby connect the best when there is nothing between them but the fabric on Vic's ass. In the spring and summer, Walt will be shocked when he finds out she plans to try riding stark ass naked at least once. The thought makes her chuckle - again.
"I don't know how to say 'thank you' in Cheyenne, Sarah. I mean, I know what the word sounds like but my Philly mouth can't form it correctly. I've been trying in the cabin for two days."
"The Cheyenne do not always use words to express their emotions, Miss Victoria. Many times, we do not. And the honor is for me to have been a part of your healing."
Sarah Two Feathers pulls a bundle of dried sage and sweetgrass from the pocket folded into her buttery leather skirt and kneels into the red dirt one last time. Vic smells the earthy aroma as the smoke ghosts in front of her. The Cheyenne woman pulls the smoke over her own face, over and behind her head, and down the braids that hang across her curved shoulders.
Then she nods to the woman kneeling across from her. Victoria Moretti pulls the smoke into her own face, past her cheeks and over plaits of hair Sarah tied with braided strands of Baby's mane and tail. She's careful to do this the same way Sarah did and then holds herself in absolute stillness as her Cheyenne mentor speaks.
"You will no longer be held back by fear. You will go forward in your life in a good way. The way ahead is the way of Courage and Strength. You will choose your own way from this day forward. You are strong, like the river that comes down from the mountains. Your heart is pure, like that water. Just like that clear, cold water you bring life to those around you now. The river goes wherever it choses, and so will you."