<return to Bookstand Archive main page

SUMMER READING CORNER

Mustang Fever, by Stephen B. Gladish

©2007 Stephen B. Gladish
Published by Koboca Publishing
Reprinted with permission

Order: www.kobocapublishing.com
www.amazon.com

CHAPTER 1:
Trapped By Runaway Mustangs

     The bitter high-desert chill held Chance Chisholm hostage during the first night on the Nevada Test Site. His tall frame was pitched slightly forward. At least five big balloons with lights attached were tied to shrubs around him. Each hour, he would release one lucky balloon and track its little red light with a surveyor’s instrument mounted on a tripod—a theodolite. He called out wind speed and direction as he scribbled down the information on a pad of paper. Then he’d get into an old green pickup truck, grab the radio microphone, and call numbers into home base.

     Afterward he’d try to warm himself up. Quantum energy surged through Chance, giving him two forward speeds and no reverse. His first speed was a vibrating hum similar to that of a flying saucer poised motionless in midair. His second speed could be seen only in a blur of motion. If you blinked, he was gone, only to reappear in another location. If not for his size and muscularity, one would think he inherited the genetic blueprint of a hummingbird.

     Chance frequently moved fast to keep warm. During his all-night duties, he was accompanied only by the bitter wind chill that grips the high desert six thousand feet above sea level. He seemed to perform an aerial dance among the flowers and shrubs on the desert floor, a living prismatic gem changing colors with every turn, catching the early morning sun, capturing the eye just like a hummingbird. Tradition associated the hummingbird with vision, rainbows, jewels, flowers, and the mystical world; if we let him, the hummingbird would fly directly into our souls. If a Native American totem animal makes its appearance in our lives, we have just embarked on a vision quest. For some, like Chance, the hummingbird is the totem that opens the heart. By assuming hummingbird consciousness, one’s life will become a wonderland of sense-related delights. We will begin to live for beauty, delighting in fragrances and flowers, aromatic mists, and delicate tastes. The hummingbird will teach us to laugh, enjoy creation, and appreciate the magic of being alive. Hummingbirds awaken us to the beauty of the present moment, yet teach us fierce independence and simple courage. They teach us to fight in such a way that nobody gets hurt. Then they disappear.

     Like Chance. Instinctively, he knew this.

     The green Chevy was gone, too.

     The next night, Chance operated again on the test site. He sent up pilot balloons every hour, tracking their little red lights with the theodolite. He marked down and computed speed and direction until the balloons reached 3,000 feet. This time he saw a particular band of mustangs, his magnificent seven; they had become part of his routine. The band had continued their journey of survival all day, taking a few bites of wild rye and winter annual here, a long drink from a puddle of water there, then leaving a cloud of dust on the horizon rising against the setting sun.

     Chance imagined himself riding the mustangs as they gingerly moseyed in to keep him company. They would form a semi-circle of casual protection upwind and he’d avoid looking at them head on, knowing they’d either charge or flee. Then he’d smile and sneak a sideways look at them while he checked his watch, released and tracked the balloon, filled out the report, and called it in:

     “This is Snowstorm Twenty-Three. Midnight, Greenwich Standard Time. Surface winds NNE at 18 miles per hour— Winds at 1,000 feet: SSW at 17 miles per hour—Winds at 1,500 feet: WNW at 23 miles per hour—Winds at 2,000 feet: W at 14 miles per hour—Winds at 2,500 feet: NW at 11 miles per hour—Winds at 3,000 feet: WNW at 15 miles per hour.” The radio crackled as home base acknowledged his transmission. He turned on the ignition and tried to warm up near the heater. By jumping into the green pickup every hour after the balloon release, Chance found reprieve from the wind and its cutting sand. But he couldn’t keep the engine running for more than twenty minutes at a time.

     He climbed out of the pickup and prepared for the next balloon launch, singing softly. He shook his head, ruing the mistake he’d made in talking about the mustangs at camp to a Chinese cook who he’d thought was a friend. Now Sergeant Ochs was on his case for being a mustang lover. “Don’t you have any limits to that bleeding heart?” he’d ask Chance whenever the subject came up.

     Chance warmed his hands deep inside his Air Force parka, trying to keep his fingers supple for operating the theodolite. The mustangs were gone. He checked his watch; it was 0150, almost two hours past midnight. He listened intently, hearing something on the wind that didn’t belong—a far-off bumping.

     A chopper? Naw...only in emergencies. Must be another pickup on that old washboard road.... Nah, nobody but me belongs in the northwest quadrant.

     Two hundred yards away, the mustangs braced against the cutting wind, heads up, flanks quivering, ready to flee. The unknown sound roared closer. The mustangs shot out into the desert at right angles to the approaching pickup. As the truck left the road, the headlights veered.

      Chance’s heart bolted. That truck is after the mustangs! He heard shots and cursed. Instead of dying out, the hoofbeats banged louder and louder against his eardrums, numbing them.

     He stood transfixed, afraid for the horses. They weren’t being driven away as he had thought. They were being driven...toward him! Right over him! He ran to his theodolite, hoping to protect it. “You break it, and you pay for it! These ain’t cheap,” Ochs had warned him. The mustangs were bunched up in fear, the enemy pickup bouncing crazily behind them.

     Suddenly, shots rang out. Just ahead of the mustangs, Chance stood immobile, frozen like Orion above the darkness of the night. He tucked his head, knowing it was time for prayers. God, have mercy on me!

     Out of the northeast, the mustangs were seconds away from trampling him. The green Chevy haven of safety was parked twenty-five feet beyond his right shoulder. The four-legged banshees were only seventy feet away and moving faster than arrows launched from Crazy Horse’s bow. Chance raised his eyes. He unconsciously lifted his arms skyward, praying that his adoptive band of mustangs might remember him. He knew enough to fear the fatal flaw in these magnificent creatures: When spooked, horses were capable of any sudden action, including hurting or even killing themselves and any creature unfortunate to be in their presence.

     He held his breath...

     The earth trembled beneath him. He could feel the thundering approach and knew there was no chance for the mustangs to sit on their haunches and yank their emergency brake handles. Their kinetic energy gave them the force of a freight train. Nothing could stop them. Nothing could stand up to them.

     Chance’s last image flashed on the retina of his memory: his little sister leaning over to hand him a fresh cookie. Sadness coursed down his shoulders like the sweat on the flanks of the driven steeds. I’m going to miss her. At the last moment the lead mares split apart, narrowly missing him. They suspended him in a pocket of air pressed between them, a sonic boom of passing wind. The mustangspounded by him on either side, leaving forty-mile-an-hour tailwinds and a cloud of dust and bowling him over with their tidal wave of atmospheric current. He rolled backwards like tumbleweeds.

     Finally, the world stopped turning. Chance rose to his knees in the rough sand, coughing and clawing at his eyes, unable to see. The mustangs pulled up and stopped a couple hundred yards away. Seconds later, Chance heard and felt the renegade pickup truck skid to a stop next to him. On his right, Sergeant Ochs jumped out, laughing. “Sorry, Chisholm. I was trying to run them damned glue factories off! Looked like they were getting in your way. Thought ya might be needing help.”

     Chance got up slowly, head up, ears back, nostrils flared. He too was wary of the enemy. He suspected Ochs had tried to get him killed or injured. He had no clue why. It didn’t make sense; back at camp, it would be his word against Ochs.

     “Hoo-yeah!” he exclaimed, ignoring Ochs. “Help like that I don’t need! Leave me alone!”

     He dusted himself off and climbed into his truck, angry. He knew Ochs had a sidearm.

     For once, Ochs kept his tongue in check. Then he walked over to Chance’s truck, and shouted through the window, “You did not see me out here, airman! Those mustangs were just a bunch of nightmares... Your word against mine.”

     Ochs walked over to his truck. Seconds later, his two red taillights bounced and disappeared over a distant rise in the desert floor. Chance stood clear of the road and watched the red-eyed monster as it snorted away from him.

• Mustang Fever Lead
• In the Author's Words
• To order Moonlight, Missiles & Moana