Moonrise Read online

  Phantom Stallion 14

  Moon Rise

  Terri Farley

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Mustangs weren’t supposed to pout.

  Chapter Two

  Jake Ely was no evil horseman. The youngest of six…

  Chapter Three

  “It’s just wind in the canyon. Now that the trees…

  Chapter Four

  The La Charla River glinted sapphire blue and its rills…

  Chapter Five

  “Horse on the porch.”

  Chapter Six

  Something big and metal jangled as it was jarred around…

  Chapter Seven

  “Black as midnight with two fine mares running alongside.” Linc…

  Chapter Eight

  Gram looked at Sam with open curiosity.

  Chapter Nine

  Figuring she’d need every minute of sleep, Sam went to…

  Chapter Ten

  Hooves pounded across the ten-acre pasture.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the kitchen’s midnight quiet, the refrigerator hummed. The cooling…

  Chapter Twelve

  Wondering if she’d ever been so tired, Sam sucked the…

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next morning came way too soon.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The hounds surged up the hillside from behind them.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Oh no. Sam didn’t gasp aloud.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Clouds lay like snow on the plateau as Sam rode…

  Chapter Seventeen

  The stallions dropped their heads, herding Moon’s mares, pushing them…

  Chapter Eighteen

  Under a pearl-gray sky full of heat, Sam and Jen…

  About the Author

  Other Books by Terri Farley

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Mustangs weren’t supposed to pout.

  They didn’t brood over unfairness or store up bad days in their equine minds until they spotted a chance to pay someone back.

  It just wasn’t the sort of thing mustangs did, but no one had told Ace.

  “You’re not a sea horse,” Samantha Forster told her bay gelding. “We can’t stay out here in the lake. If someone comes riding along and spots us, it will be really embarrassing.”

  Once, Ace had been a wild mustang whose black mane and tail flew back from his red-gold coat as he galloped across the range, but he sure wasn’t running now.

  Instead, Ace stood in the middle of the shallow lake on War Drum Flats. He stared toward the horizon where the white desert floor met the broad blue Nevada sky.

  He splashed one hoof in the water. The droplets felt cool as they soaked through Sam’s jeans, but any experienced rider would agree with her: She couldn’t let her mount get away with this.

  “Come on, Ace. Jen will be here any minute.” Sam sat straighter in her saddle. She used her legs, heels, and hands to urge her horse forward. Again.

  Her best friend, Jennifer Kenworthy, was supposed to meet her here at ten o’clock.

  Sam glanced at her watch. Jen was almost always on time. That meant Sam had eight minutes to convince her horse he belonged ashore. The only reason there was no audience for Ace’s stunt was because they’d arrived early.

  There was almost no audience. That squawk from a blue jay gliding overhead sounded a lot like laughter.

  Sam blamed herself for trusting Ace. She knew he had a mischievous nature, especially when he hadn’t been worked enough.

  After a lope across the range, she’d allowed Ace a long drink at the lake while she thought about the overnight campout she and Jen were planning.

  If she’d been paying attention, Ace might not have fooled her into believing he was just wading out for a drink. He’d gone a few steps farther than she’d expected. And then a few more. Her first clue that the tricky bay was headed for the middle of the shallow lake had come when he’d given such a lunge that water spattered her stirrups.

  Just as she’d tried to turn Ace, his hooves had lifted, and she’d experienced the uncanny feeling of riding a swimming horse. Excitement and worry had played tug-of-war in her brain, as Ace’s legs surged and pulled and she floated along with him.

  Finally, he’d settled his hooves so that he stood chest-deep in muddy water. Only by holding her boot toes up was she keeping her polished leather stirrups clear of the muck he’d stirred from the lake bottom.

  He’d ignored her instructions since then. Because orders weren’t working, Sam tried bribery.

  She rubbed Ace’s favorite spot at the base of his mane. “Doesn’t that feel good, boy?” she said. “As soon as we get back to shore I’ll do it some more.”

  Too smart for bribery, Ace twitched his skin as if she were a fly.

  Next, Sam tried peer pressure.

  “Let’s go, boy. I think Silly will laugh at you.”

  Silk Stockings was Jen’s palomino mare. Jen called her horse Silly, and claimed she only rode the mare to study horse neuroses for her future career as a veterinarian.

  Sam could imagine Silly jigging and pulling at her reins trying to swim after Ace, but she couldn’t imagine Jen giving her mount enough rein to pull the stunt Ace had.

  All at once, Ace tensed beneath her.

  An eerie howl raised chills on Sam’s arms in spite of the summer warmth.

  Lost Canyon wasn’t too far away. It was supposed to be haunted, but she didn’t believe that.

  “Coyotes?” Sam asked Ace.

  The gelding’s ears pointed toward the mountains. He answered with an inquiring snort.

  Coyotes howled at night, singing before a hunt and yapping their excitement afterward. Sam heard them almost every night and she knew what they sounded like. These howls were different.

  Then she saw dust swirling on one of the mountain paths.

  “Are those horses?” she asked Ace.

  Wild horses rarely ran during midmorning, but if they had a reason—could coyotes be stalking the Phantom’s newborn foals?

  Sam’s heart thudded crazily.

  Mustangs were born to run. If they outdistanced their pursuers right away, the foals would be fine. For a time, they’d keep up with the herd as it fled, but those delicate legs had to take two running strides to match each of their mothers’.

  Sam wished she had binoculars. She wanted to see what was going on, but it was just too far away.

  If the mustangs had been coming down to water, wouldn’t they keep running this way?

  “Come out here,” she urged the horses. “You’re safer in the open.”

  Sam dropped her reins. Ace wasn’t going anywhere, anyway, and she’d read once that you could improve your vision slightly and temporarily by pulling the corners of your eyes.

  She tried it. It helped a little bit, sharpening her view of faraway horses that were crashing through thickets of sagebrush. It didn’t look like many horses. They might even have riders. And she still couldn’t see what was after them.

  Sam groaned in frustration. Even if Ace moved, would it help to go galloping up that hillside into the midst of an attack?

  Ace shifted nervously, so Sam took up her reins again.

  “Why don’t they come down here?” Sam asked.

  Horses had a better chance of kicking and biting their attackers, instead of each other, if they weren’t crowded together like they were in that steep, brushy ravine.

  If she knew that, the Phantom had to, as well.

  “It can’t be him,” Sam told Ace.

  Even though he was young for a herd stallion, the Phantom was experienced. The fleet silver mustang had protected his band for at least two yea
rs. He wouldn’t allow his foals to be cornered and struck down by predators.

  An angry neigh shrilled down from the hillside and Sam caught a flash of blue-black hide.

  “Oh my gosh,” Sam gasped.

  New Moon. Of course there were other black mustangs on this range, but it could be him.

  Last summer, the Phantom had been captured and forced to buck in a rodeo. In his absence, New Moon, the Phantom’s son, had tried to take over.

  His reign hadn’t lasted long. Once the Phantom had returned, he’d driven New Moon away from the family herd. In the fall, the young black stallion had challenged his father and lost. Sam hadn’t seen him since.

  Now, Sam struggled for a better view, but there was nothing to see.

  Just as suddenly as it had begun, the commotion ended. No manes showed above the thicket. Dust drifted on the morning breeze, spinning into threads, thinning, then disappearing.

  Sam listened intently. She heard no possessive yaps from coyotes with a meal to protect and no yelps from subordinate coyotes being driven away from a kill. Sam closed her eyes to concentrate, but all she heard was tires, as a vehicle passed on the highway, beyond the lake and over the ridge.

  Suddenly, she heard a voice.

  “…you doing?”

  It was Jen.

  Sam waved. She’d been so focused on the horses, she hadn’t seen Jen ride up to the edge of the lake.

  “Ace won’t move!” Sam shouted back. She was eager to tell Jen what she’d seen, but right now she had to get Ace out of the water.

  Jen shook her head. Her white-blond braids flipped around her shoulders and sunlight glinted on the lenses of her glasses. Then she pointed to one ear.

  She hadn’t heard.

  “He’s getting back at me for neglecting him!” Sam bellowed this time.

  Jen seemed to hear, but not agree. She tossed a braid back over the shoulder of her magenta blouse.

  “You’re giving him more credit—or blame—than he deserves,” Jen called.

  Sam shrugged. Jen teased her for attributing human emotions to horses. But Sam had spent two weeks paying more attention to her new filly, Tempest, and to Jinx, a bucking horse in need of a second chance, than to Ace. Why wouldn’t Ace show his jealousy?

  Jen rode Silly a few steps into the lake. Now that she was closer, she didn’t have to yell.

  “If I were any kind of a roper, I’d try to rope him and lead him out,” Jen offered.

  Sam shook her head.

  “That’d just make him mad,” she said. “I could get off and lead him.”

  Sam looked down. Her legs were trembling from holding her boot toes up to keep them, and her stirrups, out of the water.

  If she climbed off, she’d be soaked. Remounting—she sure wasn’t going to walk home—would make her saddle so filthy that she’d have to spend all afternoon cleaning it.

  “Wait,” Jen said, looking away. She shielded the lenses of her glasses from the sun’s glare. “Someone’s coming.”

  “My dad,” Sam said, though she only hoped it was. Actually, she’d settle for Jen’s dad, or Dallas, the foreman of River Bend Ranch. She’d rather it wasn’t Pepper, their youngest cowboy. It was pretty embarrassing to be stuck in the middle of a lake because your own horse was ignoring you.

  Sam shaded her eyes and stared in the same direction Jen had turned.

  Dad had ridden out early this morning in search of stray cattle. But the horse coming this way was too stocky to be Jeepers-Creepers, the Appaloosa he’d ridden. The rider’s silhouette wasn’t Dad’s, either.

  Ace’s ears pricked to catch the sound of hooves. His long neigh vibrated through his barrel.

  “Oh no,” Sam muttered with a sigh.

  Of all the people she’d rather not see, this rider topped the list.

  Jen had obviously recognized him, too.

  “What is it with him?” Jen called to Sam. “We’re surrounded by hundreds of acres of open range and he has to show up exactly where we are.”

  “He likes to humiliate me,” Sam explained.

  “Maybe he won’t see you,” Jen suggested, but she didn’t sound hopeful.

  Maybe.

  If they were surrounded by a cloak of invisibility.

  If they hadn’t left a single hoof print on the desert floor.

  If Ace grew little gold wings and flitted high into the sky.

  Sam leaned forward against Ace’s neck.

  “This is all your fault, you know.”

  The bay gelding shook his mane and nickered as the dark rider loped closer.

  With his black horse, black Stetson, and relentless approach, he looked like a bad guy in an old Western movie. And he was definitely coming their way.

  Chapter Two

  Jake Ely was no evil horseman. The youngest of six sons, he lived on Three Ponies Ranch, which bordered the Forsters’ River Bend Ranch, and he’d been Sam’s friend since childhood. Jake understood her love for horses better than anyone except Jen, and he’d stood beside her when she needed help.

  But the price of Jake’s help was merciless teasing, and her predicament, right this minute, couldn’t have been more perfect for the mockery cowboys called “joshing.”

  She still had a minute until Jake reached the pond.

  “Ace, be a buddy,” Sam begged the horse. She settled into the saddle, let her boots drop to a normal position, then firmed her legs against him.

  Silly nickered nervously when she saw Jake’s Quarter Horse. Witch considered herself a queen among mares and she didn’t mind proving the point with kicks and nips. But she got along fine with Ace.

  “Let’s go see Witch,” Sam said, encouraging her gelding.

  But it was already too late. Jake had drawn rein just a few feet away from Jen.

  “Hey Jake,” Jen said.

  “Jen,” Jake said, and he actually sounded friendly.

  What’s this? Sam wondered. Usually, Jake and Jen were rivals, sparring with words while Sam tried to keep them from actual arguing.

  Jen had a great, sarcastic sense of humor, but she couldn’t actually be enjoying the fix her best friend was in, could she?

  “Ace won’t come out of the water,” Jen told Jake, and her voice carried to Sam much too clearly.

  “Jen.” Sam tried not to sound as if she were pleading. Couldn’t Jen have made something up? Like, Sam was giving Ace a mud bath? As therapy for sore legs, or something?

  “That a fact?” Jake asked.

  “Keep riding, cowboy,” Sam shouted at him. “I don’t need your help.”

  Instead of jogging away, Jake leaned his forearm against his saddle horn. Beyond the cuff of his faded blue shirt his fingers tapped one at a time, as if pressing piano keys. Was that a sign of impatience or was Jake just thinking? The rest of him was still as he sighted past Witch’s neck, studying Sam’s situation.

  “It’d be no trouble at all,” Jake offered.

  “We’ve got it handled,” Jen said, but since she was a terrible liar, Jen’s voice tilted up, like a question, and she gave a grimacing shrug in Sam’s direction.

  Then, both Jen’s and Jake’s voices dropped to inaudible levels.

  Unfair! They were muttering, plotting her rescue without consulting her!

  “Excuse me?” Sam shouted, but they didn’t stop scheming.

  Jake often called her “Brat.” Sam bit her lower lip, thinking he should take it back for all the self-control she was showing now. A brat would have bragged that she could ride out of this silly mudhole whenever she felt like it, even if the logical part of her brain knew otherwise.

  Jake rolled one shoulder, flexed his fingers, then unsnapped the leather loop that held his rope.

  He was going to try to lasso Ace.

  Sam’s heart did a nosedive. Jake never missed. He’d rope Ace, then lead him from the water. She’d just sit still, along for the ride, like a child on a pony.

  “Don’t bother,” Sam called to him.

  “It’s no bother
,” Jake replied. “Settin’ a loop on him should be easy as lickin’ butter off a knife.”

  Sam gritted her teeth.

  Jake’s dad was Shoshone, a native Nevadan. Jake’s mother had been born in California. Jake had never lived anywhere he could have picked up that drawl. He only did it to make her crazy.

  But she would not give him the satisfaction of scolding him. Instead, Sam closed her eyes as the loop sung in her direction. She only flinched when, at the last minute, Ace ducked his head.

  “Why, you—!” Jen’s gasp of disbelief could have been aimed at Jake or Ace.

  All Sam knew was that the rope tightened around her arms, pinning her elbows against her ribs. Her legs clamped closed. Her wrists cocked up and her fingers scrabbled for the reins as Ace shied sideways and the taut rope pulled her from the saddle.

  “No, no, noooo!”

  Sam pitched face-first into the lake. Water gushed up her nose.

  Boots down! she told herself. Now, push up. Up. A deluge of lake water rushed off her shoulders. Her boot soles slipped on the slimy footing, but she managed to stand.

  The length of rope leading back to Jake flipped. The loop loosened. Sam bent forward, clawed her fingers through the circle of rope, and widened it.

  She pushed it up over her head in time to glimpse Witch trying to bolt from the watery commotion.

  “You better run!” Sam sputtered.

  When she shook her head to clear her nose and ears, locks of wet hair splatted against her cheeks.

  Unsteady on her boot soles, Sam staggered as she shouted, “You did that on purpose!”

  Jake was an excellent roper. If he’d meant to lasso Ace, he would have done it.

  “He dropped his head!” Jake shouted in denial.

  Sam slogged through the water. She was almost ashore and Jake must have seen the fury in her eyes because he added, “No horse shies like that. How’d I know he was going to?”