Panic and fear raced through the terrified young woman’s mind as she ran; chest heaving and dragging breath hissed through her lips.  The shadows from the dark foliage of the aspens and pines blocked her view and she couldn’t see the sides of the mountain trail.  The dense coverage of tree leaves kept the night air cold and damp; too wet and too heavy.  She couldn’t get a deep breath and her lungs begged to be filled with air.

Behind her, she heard the flat sounds of his boots landing on dirt and rock and following at a steadily consistent pace.  No matter how fast she ran he was gaining on her, and there was nowhere for her to hide.  All she could do was follow the narrow trail up the mountain, travelling forward.  She was confused and sensed a feeling of loss; she knew she was leaving someone behind.  She could not remember who or why, and it scared her.  All she knew was that she had to go on, push her exhaustion aside and move up the trail… get away.

Far behind her on the plain she heard the distant thunder of horses’ hooves.  She ran on, up, and still further up the mountain until the trees thinned.  On her left loomed a solid rock wall, and to the right was a sight that chilled her.  A cliff fell away into blackness, and she felt herself drawn close to the edge.

The rumble of the galloping horses seemed louder, and she pictured the herd funneling to single file between the trees marking the beginning of the ascent.  The sound distracted her from the pull from the ledge, a moment before she stepped off.  She trembled as she watched scattered pebbles roll over the edge, clattering off the side until they landed at the bottom of the ravine.

Ahead, she heard a wolf’s wailing cry into the starlit sky.  It was answered by a deeper howl from behind her on the path, obscuring the sound of the man chasing her.  The gut-wrenching call of the wolves did not frighten her.  Instead, they seemed to pull her nervously forward, simultaneously emptying her soul and filling it with mourning for the past.

The trail ended abruptly, opening to a large clearing with a dirt tract weaving through patches of grass.  She looked to the left, to a wall of rocks and caves.  In the middle of the open space, a small fire glowed.  Bursts of lit ash floated into the sky above the flame, and within the circle of its golden illumination, she saw a small wolf.  It sat facing away from her and she stopped, trapped.

The footsteps behind her slowed to a walk and she flinched when a hand rested on her shoulder.  It held firmly, keeping her in place while lips brushed her ear.  “It's alright.  You’re alright, now.”  His whispered words sent a chill of want and dread through her.

She turned and tilted her head to look up at the man.  He was tall, with long wavy dark hair and gray-blue eyes reflecting the light of the fire.  The man was smiling at her, and with his hand still on her shoulder, he guided her towards one of the caves.

The opening faced the fire, washing the cavern walls with dim light.  Blankets were strewn across the dirt floor and she felt brimming tears when she looked up into the man’s shadowed face.  “I can’t do this.  I can’t be here,” she argued, still confused and feeling she left something behind.  The incessant clamoring of hooves was so near now, she could hear the individual sounds of the horses snorting and whinnying as they charged ever closer.

She drew back against the cool cavern wall and he stepped closer, embracing her with one arm and holding her still.  “Calm down, you’re alright,” he repeated.  His deep voice floated passed her fear and uncertainty.  “This is where you’re meant to be.”  He leaned down, and she was shadowed by the brim of his black hat when he kissed her.

Despite the unusual situation, she was disoriented by a calmness filling her, and she realized her panic and fearful dread were subsiding.  A part of her sensed the man holding her felt right, and her feelings of loss were going away.  Slowly, her arms reached up around his neck and her fingers trailed through his silky hair.

Stroking gently down her back, the man felt her relax and surrender.  He guided them down onto the blankets and caressed her cheek with his thumb.  Staring into her eyes, he murmured, “I didn’t know you would be so beautiful.”

Outside the cavern the horses charged into the clearing.  A stallion reared, pawing the air in a victorious dance.  His long mane and tail whipped in the breeze, silhouetted by the flames of the wolf’s fire.

Lexi woke up sweating in a tangle of sheets.  The dream …or perhaps it was a nightmare… was always the same.  Every night for the past two weeks, she had awoken anxious and confused with her heart pounding so hard, she could feel it through her chest wall when she laid her palm over it.  Blinking wide eyes in the darkness, the red numbers on the clock showed her it was the same time, 2 am, and she turned on the bedside lamp.  Lexi picked up the journal and the pen she left on the nightstand and waited for her hand to stop trembling.  Staring at the blank page, she chewed on the end of the pen in thought, preparing to write down what little she could remember.  By morning, even that faint memory would be gone.

She wrote furiously, scrawling sweeping thoughts across the page until the fleeting dream finally dissolved and she could not recall anything else.  She tried to pry open heavy doors to blanketed memories and finally reached only darkness.  There was more, she was certain of it.  But the elusive thoughts could not be grasped, so Lexi closed the journal and turned off the light.  It was a long time before she was able to sleep.

When she opened her eyes, she could tell by the sunlight washing across her bedroom that she had overslept again.  Eyeing the journal nervously, Lexi re-read the short passage she wrote the night before, and then she tugged on her clothes and hurried to the kitchen.

“Girl, you look like something rode hard and put away wet.”  The tanned, weathered face of her father smiled at Lexi from across the kitchen table.  His long gray hair was in its usual shaggy disarray, waiting to be squashed under his old cowboy hat.  Lexi walked to the counter and missed a step, when he asked, “The dream again?”

She poured herself a cup of coffee, feeling slightly guilty she had not gotten up early enough to make the pot.  “Dad, I wrote some of it down last night.”  Her eyes narrowed in concentration while she stared into her coffee.  “It's so weird.  I mean, now that I see the words, I remember the part I wrote.  But nothing before or after, if there is anything.”  She looked over at her father and shrugged.  “I think maybe that’s when I wake up.”

“Wanna’ talk about it, or is it one of those ‘Michelle only’ discussions?”  Jacob leaned back and took a sip of what Lexi discovered was very potent brew.

She frowned and pursed her lips around a mouthful of coffee, managed to swallow, and asked, “Gosh Dad, how many scoops did you use?  I need a knife and fork to cut through this.”  Lexi braced herself and took another sip.  Sometimes she wondered if he made it so badly just to encourage her to get to the kitchen before him.  The color rose in her cheeks at his suggestion her dream might be a ‘girl-talk only’ discussion, and she tried to ignore the fact that he had figured that it must involve a man.  “I’m running up a path on a mountain with a guy chasing me.  When we get to the top, there’s a fire with a wolf sitting near it.”  Lexi shrugged and offered an evasive reply in an attempt to sound indifferent.  “I guess I figure out the man is someone I should know, because I end up not being afraid of him.”

Jacob rocked forward, feeling a haunting panic while he studied her.  There were shadows circling beneath her eyes, and his thoughts flew to his wife, Vanessa.  With Lexi’s long, thick auburn hair and indigo flecks shot through her gray eyes; the full lips and high cheekbones… Jacob sighed.  Lexi looked so much like her mother it made his heart ache, sometimes. “Where do you think you are in this dream?  We’re in Florida and I haven’t taken you to the mountains since your mom was with us.  Do you recognize any of it?”

Her father’s gray eyes were unusually bright, and the intensity of his stare seemed odd to her.  “No idea.”  Lexi had vague memories of camping when she was young.  It was so long ago, and she could only capture small bits of the time spent with her mother.  “Maybe I’ll go through some of the old photos tonight and see if anything looks familiar.  It would be great if this is just some crazy fantasy about a place we used to camp.  The dream seems so real, though.”  Lexi put her cup in the sink, giving up on the sludge.

Jacob shook off the depressing thoughts of Vanessa.  Those remembrances consumed enough of his time when he was working on tack… or at night when he climbed into bed alone.  “Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if it's ‘cause of the way you got that room of yours fixed up.”  He scowled and his thick wiry brows knit together.  “Why you couldn’t have gotten fixed on horses, I’ll never figure out.”  Jacob made no secret he was uneasy with her wolf obsession.  Her walls were covered with posters of them and she must have fifty little statues stashed on every surface.  He tipped his cup at her and added, “It amazes me those pictures didn’t give you nightmares long before this.”

“I see enough of the horses all day, Dad.  You know I’ve always had a thing about wolves.  I don’t know, I guess they’re like my totem.  This morning I looked at the posters, and none of the cliffs in them match my dream.  I think it's something else.”  Lexi plopped down in the railed chair across from him and pulled on her worn boots.

“After you feed the horses, McMillan wants you to call.”  Jacob smiled and waited for his daughter’s reaction.

“Don’t tell me.  He wants to get rid of Brutus again.”  Lexi laughed, the dream temporarily forgotten, and she rose and put her hands on her hips.  “What did he do this time?”

“Broke through the fence to get to that fancy new mustang mare.  The mare’s so wild she kicked the hell out of the old stud and almost gelded him.”  Jacob was laughing now, as well.  At least once a week, Mac called him with some frustrating crime his favorite stallion had perpetrated.  Sometimes it was kicking through planks in his stall, other times it was balking at having his hooves trimmed.

“Seems like the poor guy paid for his visit in spades.  I’ll calm Mac down when I finish feeding and working with the horses.  We both know he’ll never really get rid of that old guy.”  Lexi grabbed a muffin and headed to the door to start her chores.

She stepped off the porch, looked across the pasture, and smiled.  Their twenty-year-old double-wide mobile home, sat pretty much in the middle of the ten acre mini-ranch she shared with her dad.  On the fence-line stood a small barn with a tack room and three sturdy corrals were on the right.

Lexi loved the corrals and she remembered back to when each one had been built.  She smiled and thought about how hard she had campaigned for that last one… the nine footer… the mustang corral.  So far, they hadn’t jumped out of that.  She sighed.  Lexi had lived here almost all her life and she still loved the place.

Parked by the porch, their faded red pick-up truck rested under the branches of an oak.  It was old, but Jacob kept it carefully maintained.  Between the barn and the house, the horse trailer sat with the back ramp opened and laying in the grass.  It could carry as many as six horses back and forth to the monthly auctions and was most expensive thing they owned.  Sunchaser Ranch was painted proudly across the back and down the sides.

It was Friday, and Lexi figured she could get the current five auction horses out for one last ride before they were loaded up to sell early the next morning.  Her dad was a whiz at picking which untrained horses they’d buy.  After they brought them home, it was Lexi’s job to work with them so they could be sold at the next auction.

Jacob made money on the sale of rideable, well trained, and well-mannered horses.  Lexi made a percentage for both starting and finishing the horses, and then riding them in the ring.  Other owners had her ride for them because the horses always brought more money when the pretty girl easily put them through their paces before prospective buyers.  She also did private training on the side for people and gave riding lessons.

When Lexi graduated, there was a brief mention of college while they stood outside the high school gym.  With cheerful commotion surrounding them, Lexi and Jacob stood still in an awkward silence.  Their short conversation consisted of two uncomfortably spoken sentences.

Jacob looked down at his dusty boots.  “Lexi, I got some money saved if you want to go to college.”

“No, I don’t think so, Dad,” she replied, looking down at the toes of her own worn boots sticking out from under her graduation gown.  They never spoke of it again, even when her best friend, Michelle, left for school in Gainesville.  She missed Michelle’s company, but the thought of not being around the mustangs was too depressing.

Lexi inhaled the warm air and raised her head to the sun before crossing the yard to a small paddock.  She smiled and climbed over the pipe railing.  Standing completely relaxed and holding out her hand, she watched the nervous three-year old mustang.  Lexi had been working with the filly everyday now, first driving it around at a walk or trot, until finally, after many patient hours, the filly joined up.  Even now, after almost nine weeks, the filly stood halfway out of the stall door, trying to decide if she trusted Lexi enough to walk forward.

“Come on Daisy-May.  Come on, sweet thing,” Lexi crooned softly.  The mustang rescuers had brought her to the ranch two months ago.  The half-starved horse had put on enough weight so her ribs could no longer be counted, however the scars from where the halter had grown into her nose and the sides of her face would always be a tragic reminder of the abuse she had suffered.  Lexi had cried when the Vet had cut the halter off, peeling fur and skin with it.

The man who had won the bid at the wild horse and burro auction and adopted the mustang, was up on charges for animal cruelty.  His impulsive two hundred dollar purchase for his daughter’s newest infatuation was going to cost him thousands and probably jail time.  Lexi considered turnabout fair play, and she wished they would tighten a strap across his face and let him starve for a while.  Not very charitable, but she was always on the horses’ side.

Over the years, she had patiently tamed many of the traumatized horses.  Sometimes she could almost feel their panic and fear.  She had read every book at the library she could get her hands on about mustangs, though there weren’t very many.

When Michelle’s folks bought her a laptop for college, she gave Lexi her desktop computer.  It opened a whole new world of information for her.  With only a landline the connections were slow, but Lexi patiently waited for sites about mustangs to load, and she read every article on the internet she could find about them.  Michelle shared her obsession, and they would angrily read over the accounts of the mustang roundups.

First, the beautiful feral horses were frightened by the loud chopping sounds of helicopters, chasing them down from the mountains and the only home they had ever known… the BLM lands out west… lands where they were able to play, breed, and run wild.  Then, the wranglers took over.  Strange man-beasts the mustangs did not recognize, waving hats, yelping, and twirling lassos like flying snakes.

The horses were rounded up, roped, thrown down, pushed into corrals and forced into chutes to be branded.  After the terrifying roundup was over, the mustangs were dragged into trailers or sent by train to a life in captivity.  The fear caused some to withdraw and spiral into depression.  Others panicked in the confining quarters, while the familiar scent and sight of their homeland disappeared along with their freedom.

According to the BLM rhetoric, the sanctioned lands were overgrazed through overpopulated herds, and the auction adoptions were meant to provide a humane existence and home for the animals.  Even with a rigid application, including a drawn map of the acceptable lodging for the horse, some made their way to slaughterhouses… and some made their way to places like Harry Timbleton’s fancy ranch estate.

The horse had been quickly forgotten when his daughter could not catch her to ride the day after she arrived at Timbleton’s ranch.  With a shrug of her shoulders, Harry’s daughter took off in her other Mustang, a cherry red convertible.  Two months later, an anonymous neighbor called the SPCA.  They found auction horse 4805 barely able to stand, with glazed eyes from the pain of the ingrown leather halter.  No one had even bothered to name her.