"Danged horse is costing me money!" Ned sipped his evening coffee, his grizzled mustache catching some of the crema off the top. "Can't keep any campers at the lake."

"I know." I spooned the whipped cream off my latte. "Dancing Wind has a problem with visitors."

"Cassie, that blasted creature's so onery that even the spook hunters won't stay more than one night." He wiped his mouth with a napkin, his eyes flinty under his graying brows.

The legend of Dancing Wind attracted many thrill seekers, wanting to catch a glimpse of the ghost horse. Either they found nothing and left bored. Or Dancing Wind would haunt the lakefront so badly that no campers would tough it out for even one night. Either way, the campsites stayed empty most of the time.

"Cassie," Ned's hard eyes became sad, "yah know I love yah, but I can't keep the ranch if it don't make no money, lass."

I moved his gnarled hand from his drink and gripped it, my heart bursting with love for the ol' codger. He took me in on the ranch when my parents died during my teenage years. The ranch and the horses became my life.

But Dancing Wind's constant harassment ruined business. Recently a development company offered Ned a lot of money for the ranch.

Covewell Estates, country living at the edge of town. I snorted at the thought.

Ned squeezed my hand in return and then let go as we leaned back to make room. Busy Maudie bustled out to clean our table, her blue eyes flirting with Ned. He winked back at her, but his grizzled face remained serious as he said, "You know I'll have to sell."

I nodded, but kept silent. I stared at the table where Maudie's white rag swirled as she polished the burnt oak table.

The dining room had quieted for the evening and the numbers on the digital clock behind the coffee bar flipped to indicate 10:00. I downed the last of my coffee drink and stood to pull on my rain slicker. "I'll see you later, Ned. I think I'll check out the lake before going to bed."

"Don't understand how you ain't afraid." Ned handed Maudie the money for our coffees, telling her to keep the change. She smiled a thank you and shuffled her plump body back behind the counter with our cups.

"Dancing Wind doesn't seem to mind me. I'll see if I can talk to him."

He chuckled. "You may have a knack for live horses. Can't imagine talking to a dead one's the same though."

I threw him a smile, "Tomorrow, Ned," and went outside, the door hitting the bell that gave a light ring.

The evening rain had left the town of Nesthold, so I didn't bother buttoning my slicker and left my hood down. Stars dotted the sky and the light from the street lamps bounced off of wet sidewalks and streets.

I walked along the western edge of town, the slow area. A few cars still zipped through, most going faster than the posted 20 mph.

I waited at the intersection for the speeders to hurry through and then quickly crossed. As I brought my feet down, my Ropers beat a rhythmic beat on the asphalt. Once I slowed down and hit the trail at the edge of town they quieted.

The night crickets' song replaced the cars engines. The trail led me to Saddler's Ridge and I stood there, overlooking Covewell Lake. The moon peeked out and illuminated the water in a glassy sheen. A white mist appeared and then disappeared at the lake's edge where the empty campsites were.

I smiled. Dancing Wind was there. I loved seeing him, but another thought sobered my mood. I believe for a ghost to haunt someplace, there had to be something wrong. And it was up to me to find out what that something was. He needed to go cross over wherever it was that horses go, or I'd see my home destroyed.

I left the ridge and walked down the trail to the campground. The dull grey posts for electric outlets and black gaping maws of fire pits were the only things visible. It should have been tranquil, but it just felt sad.

The mist formed at the lake's edge, shaping into a horse. A nicker echoed and Dancing Wind walked towards me. He solidified as he approached until it was as if he was a live horse. I hugged his neck and buried my face in his mane, breathing in a rich horse scent that should not have been there.

I stepped back and ran my hands down his neck and shoulder, savoring the silky feel of his hair as I've done countless times for the stable horses.

"I know you hate it when I try to make you think of the past, boy, but I need you to tell me what happened." I moved forward to his head, caressing his face and looked deep into the liquid brown pools of his eyes. "I need you to tell me why you won't leave."

His nostrils flared and he snorted, but he held his ground, not running away as he had many times before when I pressed him to remember.

Images came to my mind. A form of telepathy from the ghost horse to me. The images were familiar ones he had shown me before. He used to be a trick horse, showing at many of the local fairs.

This was the part of the legend I knew. Over a hundred years ago, Dancing Wind was a well-loved trick horse. He was found dead of a gunshot wound halfway up the trail I had used to come down to the campsite. No one ever found out who shot him.

Dancing Wind had shown me images of him performing tricks many times before, but this time was different. This time he let me see the person showing him and I gasped.

The young woman was tall with long blonde hair and green eyes set in an angular face. She stood on his back without a saddle as he cantered around in a circle, her arms outstretched and her body undulating gracefully with his gait. After the trick ended, she dismounted and hugged his neck, just as I do each time I visit him.

Dancing Wind puffed, stomping a foreleg and the images changed to the woman being dragged by a man down to the lake. She struggled, but he hit her on the back of the head with something and she went limp. He tossed her down close to the water's edge.

Within the scene, a screaming Dancing Wind charged at the man, knocking him away from the woman. The man stumbled, but regained his footing and Dancing Wind reared up. The man pulled a gun from his side and shot the horse in the chest.

Dancing Wind screamed and nearly went down. I felt the horse's need to get help for his lady. A house stood on the ridge, a light in a window, but still too far away to see as a copse of trees and brush hid the woman and man from them.

The woman moaned and the man was on top of her now, raping her. Dancing Wind's life was leaving his body and he couldn't help her. He stumbled to the trail with blood coming from his nostrils. Halfway up, he collapsed.

From his prone position, he still faced the man and woman. Dancing Wind recorded the rest of his lady's fate with his dying breaths. The man finished raping her, dragged her under a bush, slit her throat with a knife, and left. Before the horse's life failed, the man returned with a shovel and started digging a hole next to the woman.

Dancing Wind screamed, became a misty ghost once again and ran away. I stood there, immobilized, for a long time after his thundering hoof beats and screams dissipated into the chilled air.

Eventually, I walked to the lake's edge, stumbling from the quaking in my legs. Kneeling down, I splashed my face with the water, losing much of the liquid as my hands shook. I regained my composure and stood up, barely noticing how my jeans stuck to my knees from the wet sand.

So, that was Cheryl Cartwell. I knew she had been Dancing Wind's owner, and that she disappeared the same time the horse had been shot. Legend said she ran away, never to be seen again.

I had never seen a picture of her, at least not one where I could see her face. It was always covered by the rim of her cowboy hat or the pictures I saw showed her back. Another shiver ran across my back. Suddenly the night air I loved so much became deathly cold.

I didn't want to be there anymore. I carefully stepped around the area in which I thought the man had dug a hole next to Cheryl's body. I wasn't sure that it was a grave he dug, but I couldn't get near it. If I got more than a few feet to it, my chest tightened, my eyes watered, and fear gripped me.

I turned and headed back up the trail, trying to walk calmly but knowing I came close to a run. When I hit the area where Dancing Wind had fallen, I nearly fell over as another contraction hit my chest. I barged through it, trying to fling away the hands gripping my heart and stumbled into safety at the top of the ridge.

Keeping my back to the nightmare behind me, I stood for a few moments, catching my breath and willing my heart to beat a regular rhythm again. I collected my thoughts as I stared at the trees and brush to the right. Fifty years ago, the Cartwell home had burned down there, the one I saw through Dancing Wind. Ned wanted to make it another campsite. If he could get campers to stay.

Calmed, I turned around. I was half afraid to see some other atrocity of that moment in history, but only found the familiar serene lake. Except it wasn't so serene to me anymore, cause I now knew its secret.

And I knew what kept Dancing Wind from passing on to whatever place horses go to when they die. His last moments were about getting help for his mistress in her time of need. He still had a task to finish, and it was up to me to help him.

After spending the rest of the night staring at the flames in my fireplace, unable to sleep, I visited old lady Gerty, the town librarian and historian. Stifling a yawn, I waited for her to finish helping a grade school girl in blond braids look for a history book.

Gerty, nearly 100 years old, still moved her lithe body gracefully with only the slightest indication of the arthritis in her hips. She styled her gray hair in a sweeping cut, laying close to her scalp, as if proud of the fact she still sported a full head of hair at her age.

"Cassie, dear," Gerty hugged me. "How are you? You look pale today." She put her hand on my forehead as if checking for a fever.

"I didn't get any sleep last night, is all." I assured her and said, "I need your help finding information about Cheryl Cartwell."

She pursed her lips thoughtfully, creating deep lines around her mouth. "Cheryl Cartwell… oh yes, the trick horse rider. My mother would tease my father, saying he had a crush on her. Wish I could have seen her perform."

I laughed. "That's her. I need to find information about her life and her disappearance. I thought maybe you'd have something here on file."

"Well, I'm sure we do!" Gerty pulled me past the cherry wood bookcases to the line of computer terminals by the west wall. "They had about fifty people here last year putting all our historical records on files." She snorted and frowned. "Afraid you just have to look for yourself. Can't seem to get the hang of these old machines. Give me a good ol' solid newspaper anyday and I can find anything for yah."

I smiled, understanding, as she motioned me to a seat. "I bet if you look for Cheryl's name in there, you'll find what you need, love."

"Thanks, Gerty."

She patted me on the back as her head whipped around and she stalked off. A teenage boy quickly put a pencil back in his pocket, but not before Ol' Gerty's sharp eyes caught him writing something in a jacket cover. "Now see here, young man …"

I laughed and turned my attention to the monitor, clicking an icon for Nesthold History Files. It took me to a screen, offering various choices of date and names to search. I typed Cheryl Cartwell's name in the box and sure enough, nearly a hundred articles were listed for me. I settled into the chair. This would take awhile.

It was after noon before I tore my watery, fatigued eyes from the screen and paid for the sheets I printed off. At ten cents a copy, it came to a lot of money. But I needed to go over the stuff that seemed important in detail, and I wasn't used to staring at a computer screen for that long of a time.

I adopted a table for four at the diner and poured over the pages while eating my BLT and sipping my latte. I made it through three mochas by the time I was finished. What I found reinforced the scene Dancing Wind showed me, and I wonder if I had found that Cheryl was actually murdered and by whom.

Dancing Wind made this possible and I almost didn't catch it, but there he was. Paul Rickers, Cartwell's ranch foreman. His picture was recorded with his testimony about the last time he saw Cheryl. The man I saw raping and killing her and Dancing Wind. I shivered from the chill that ran through me.

There was no indication of what happened to Paul. I only found a mention where he left Nesthold shortly afterwards, claiming the place wasn't the same without her and that it held too many memories of the girl he watched grow up. Sicko.

No one was ever put under investigation for Cheryl's disappearance. The police said she left. Stupid, really. Her loved horse shot and they assume nothing happened to her. But they claim to have evidence that she shot the horse herself. The horse was shot with a gun like her own that she kept at the ranch.

I couldn't do anything about bringing Paul to justice. Even though Dancing Wind showed me the truth, there just wasn't anything there that would help me convince someone else. But I could help find Cheryl and maybe gain Dancing Wind some rest.

A short time later, I stood looking at the Sheriff's station two blocks down from the diner. The two toned brick building towered over the wooden shops alongside it. People passed through the glass doors, busy with their own business and barely giving me a glance.

I needed help and I hoped Roger would be in a helpful mood. Only two weeks before I had broken up with him and knew asking him for help was risky, but I needed a friend right now, and since he was the Sheriff, he was the friend I needed most. I was not going to try to find Cheryl's bones alone.

Taking a deep breath, I walked through the doors. A neighbor, greeted me on his way out. He looked as though he wanted to chat, but I made it clear I was in a hurry and went straight in and down the tiled hallway to Roger's office. His door was closed with a sign "Roger Hallwood Nesthold Sheriff" at eye level. Through the side window I watched him. His back was to me, his feet propped up on the window sill as he talked in the phone.

My life was pretty dull without him. I broke up with him because I felt smothered by the relationship because it took me away from the horses and the ranch so much. But I realized I was wrong. My relationship with Roger added to my life at the ranch. It didn't take away. And it had been two weeks since I felt joy in my work. I missed him.

He lowered his feet and turned partly in his seat. His mustache wavered as he talked and my eyes traced the strong bone of his face, remembering how wonderful his aftershave smelled. I closed my eyes, remininscing about the time we rode Hercules, the Percheron stallion, down the west trail. His arms wrapped around me and he leaned his face forward to lay it next to mine as we rode.

I opened my eyes to see him looking at me, his phone call finished. His hazel eyes showed surprise, perhaps happiness to see me. He motioned for me to enter. I coughed, using it as an excuse to touch my face and hopefully hide the blush that was surely rising.

"Cassie, are you all right?" He moved from behind his desk and greeted me with a slight kiss on the cheek. "You look done in."

I smiled and glanced at his clock. "I'm all right. I haven't quite made it to 24 hours without sleep yet." In truth, it was later in the day than I thought, almost five pm.

He set me down in a chair. "What's going on?" All concern, no reproof clear in his face and manners. And I felt guilty.

"I need your help." He pulled up a chair and sat opposite me as I continued. "I think I found bones, human bones down by the lake."

He frowned and relaxed a little. "Bones? Is that all that's got you in this state? It's probably animal bones. Nothing to worry about."

I sighed, playing it out and feeling guilty. Roger was great, but even he wouldn't believe me if I told him why I thought there was bones at the lake. "You're probably right, but I want to be sure. Would you come with me and check?"

Coldness gripped me as I pictured the exact location where Cheryl should lie, and I shivered. Roger saw this and took my hand. "Of course, I will. I have a meeting to take care of right now, though. Can you meet me in an hour?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I'll be at the ridge."

An hour later, I stood at the top of the trail, with a small garden spade sticking out of my back pocket. Going back down it made me nervous and a little scared, but determination to help Dancing Wind also gave me courage. And the fact that Roger would be with me. I always felt safer around him. I guess that comes with being with a Sheriff, but it always seemed to be more than that.

Just as the sun started going down, Roger's car pulled up. He walked up with a flashlight. "Okay, let's go see these bones of yours."

I elbowed him like old times. "They're not my bones, you know." I tried to be funny, but as I said the words Cheryl's face flashed before my eyes, so much like me. I felt a little green and I guess I looked a little sick too, cause he softened.

"Hey, it's all right." He hugged me and I breathed in his cinnamony smell. "Come on, show me the spot."

I led him to the place I saw Paul digging and stopped. I had told him I found bones, but didn't think about the fact that I would actually have to dig them up to show him. "I … ah… um …" It was so stupid! I couldn't think of a thing to say about why I have to dig to find them. What if I was wrong and they weren't even there? How far would I have to dig?

A breeze blew off of the lake and I felt Dancing Wind's nostrils blow against my neck, but he wasn't there. At least not that I could see. An image of Paul digging came to me again, and I just knew I had to try and hope that Roger didn't think I was too nuts.

Knowing it sounded lame, I said, "I actually found them awhile ago while digging some of the briar bushes out. I covered them back up, so I have to dig them out again."

Not bothering to see what kind of look he had for me, I pulled out the spade and started digging. Roger always had a good instinct, and it seemed that now it told him to keep quiet and just watch for awhile, because that's what he did. At least for two feet of the digging.

By that time, it was darker and he had his flashlight on. Embarrassment settled in me, my confidence beginning to shatter, and I let tears slide down my cheeks. "Honey," he said as he put his hand on my shoulder, "there's no bones there. Just dirt."

"I know," I whispered and kept digging.

He let me get a few inches further down before stopping me again. This time he gripped both shoulders and pulled me away from the hole. "Cassie, stop."

"I failed!" I cried out, with tears pouring down my face and my legs collapsed. Roger carried me to a nearby large boulder and sat with me on his lap. I gripped his denim jacket and wet his should with my anguish.

I failed. The thought rolled through me over and over. I barely felt Roger's hands soothing my hair and back or his voice trying to calm me.

Cheryl would never be found. Dancing Wind would never find peace. In that instant, I knew that neither would I. As long as I lived, I would be as trapped to this horror as Dancing Wind was.

A strong wind nearly bowled us over and we managed to plant our feet in time to stand up. Dancing Wind neighed and came tearing from the lake towards us, solidifying almost instantly. Roger's quick reflexes saved us from a trampling as he flung us both to the side and on our backs. His hand automatically went towards his gun, and I responded quickly enough reflexes to stop him before he could pull it out.

Dancing Wind reared up and came down next to the hole I dug. He kept slamming a foreleg down and scraping dirt back, making his own hole as he tossed his head at me. I knew what he wanted. "He wants me to keep digging."

Roger just stared wide-eyed and gulped. "Are…are you sure about this. He doesn't look too happy."

"He's not happy." I moved back to the hole. "But he's telling me what he needs to be happy."

As I started digging again, Dancing Wind trotted around us. Roger had been out here with me before and met the ghost horse a few times, but not like this. Dancing Wind had never solidified for him, although I told him about it, and this was not the gentle horse that normally showed up for me. Roger stayed near me with the flashlight, in a position ready to pull me out in case of another trampling.

I dug for quite awhile, refusing help from Roger, knowing it had to be me who found Cheryl. Finally, at about four feet I hit something. I quickly uncovered the area and it was a bone. "Roger, I found something."

He maneuvered so that he was half over the edge and almost in the hole with me, getting the light as close as he could. "Uncover it more there." He shone the light on one end. Rounded edges of a bone joint showed up. The visible bone was long. "Crap, Cassie! That's a leg bone, a human leg bone." For a few seconds, the flashlight wavered with his shock, but his professional calm took over right away and it steadied again. "You need to stop and come out of there now."

The Sheriff in him was back and he was all business as he helped me out of the hole. "I need to call and get a few men out here."

Dancing Wind had stopped and nuzzled my neck. I hugged him. Peace radiated from him into me. His job was done. He brought help for his mistress. Images of open meadows and mares flowed from him, and of Cheryl holding a grain bucket and calling his name. "I'll miss you, big guy."

And he was gone.

I wiped my eyes and looked at Roger. He was frowning. "What just happened here?"

So, I told him about Dancing Wind's story. He listened, never doubting me in the least, endearing him more to my heart than ever.

They ID'd the bones as Cheryl Cartwell. The forensics investigation proved that she had been murdered, and the case opened for awhile. With Roger's help they tried to find the murderer, but couldn't find enough evidence to name someone. Even though Roger knew through me that it had been Paul Rickers. Finally, it went into the unsolved files.