Untamed Read online

  Phantom Stallion

  11

  Untamed

  Terri Farley

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Samantha Forster had made a huge discovery at school. It…

  Chapter Two

  “Samantha!” Gram’s exasperated tone said this wasn’t the first time…

  Chapter Three

  “We’d better get going,” Jen said, glancing toward the sun.

  Chapter Four

  “Stop!” Sam shouted.

  Chapter Five

  Copper chestnut and fine-boned as a Thoroughbred, Penny took careful…

  Chapter Six

  Hurrying, Sam hung her saddle on its rack in the…

  Chapter Seven

  Sam was finishing up washing the dinner dishes. For once,…

  Chapter Eight

  Sam felt dizzy.

  Chapter Nine

  How could a horse make her so happy? Penny wasn’t…

  Chapter Ten

  The sheriff’s office was tucked into a corner of a…

  Chapter Eleven

  “Whose land are the mustangs on? Caleb Sawyer’s?” Sam demanded.

  Chapter Twelve

  After dinner, Brynna helped Gram with the dishes while Dad…

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sam didn’t know whether it was excitement or fear that…

  Chapter Fourteen

  “This is rather exciting!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Caleb Sawyer greeted Brynna as if he knew her, then…

  Chapter Sixteen

  Had she really heard him? Or had she wished so…

  Chapter Seventeen

  Daybreak showed Sam a valley full of foals.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sam’s feet in their sloppy-fitting barn boots told her she’d…

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sam’s family stood statue still.

  About the Author

  Other Books by Terri Farley

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Samantha Forster had made a huge discovery at school. It wasn’t a good discovery, but it might benefit humankind to know a girl couldn’t die from embarrassment. Otherwise, she’d be dead.

  As Sam trudged into the kitchen at River Bend Ranch, she heard the vacuum cleaner sucking at the rugs in the rooms upstairs. Outside, only the horses had greeted her. Dad and the cowboys were out on the range. Her stepmother Brynna was at work, and Gram was vacuuming upstairs.

  For a while, she was alone with her humiliation, and she was glad.

  Sam slumped into a chair. She closed her eyes. Next, she buried her face in her hands. Nothing helped. She could see the scene in Journalism class as if it were still happening.

  Mr. Blair, her Journalism teacher, had ordered everyone who wanted to be an editor next year to apply for the position. Sam had sort of wanted to be photo editor and Rjay, the editor in chief, had urged her to apply. So she’d filled out the form. But that wasn’t enough for Mr. Blair.

  He’d insisted applicants explain to the class, aloud, why they should get the jobs.

  Today, when Sam had gasped at the announcement, someone nearby had whispered, “It’s not like he didn’t tell us.”

  Sam hadn’t turned to see who it was, because the British lilt in that voice meant it could only belong to Rachel Slocum. Wealthy, conceited, and unfairly pretty, Rachel loved seeing Sam suffer.

  Sam tried not to give her that pleasure.

  Besides, it wasn’t like she was afraid to give a talk. Just a couple of weeks ago, Sam had overcome her fear of public speaking to make a presentation to the student council. This should be even easier. At least that’s what she told herself.

  True, she wasn’t prepared, but all she had to do was think of three main points. It had worked before.

  Easier still, she could just listen to what everyone else said, and do something similar.

  Then Mr. Blair had called on her first.

  Quickly, she’d flipped her fingers through her auburn hair, and straightened her shoulders inside her teal-blue sweater.

  She glimpsed Rjay giving her a thumbs-up signal across the room as she began.

  “I want to be photo editor because I’m a visual person, a hard worker, and…” She’d taken a deep breath and pictured herself at a football game on a gray, sleety afternoon. “And I don’t mind being kept outside.”

  Kept outside? She’d bitten her lip.

  “With the horses?” Rachel Slocum pretended to be confused.

  Sam glared at her, but Rachel didn’t notice. Dressed in a champagne-colored jumpsuit made of raw silk, Rachel should have looked like she was draped in a parachute. She didn’t.

  Head tossed back with her furry, mink-brown eyelashes half lowered, Rachel was soaking up the appreciative giggles of the rest of the class.

  Eager to explain, Sam had blurted, “What I mean—is that I don’t mind after-school photo shoes.”

  That mistake had turned the giggles to outright laughter.

  “Photo shoots,” she’d said, raising her voice, nearly shouting, but by then even Mr. Blair and Rjay were chuckling. “Obviously, I’m better with pictures than words.”

  Wasn’t that just a little bit funny? Apparently not, because the laughter dwindled. As it did, Sam saw Rjay pointing forcefully at a clipping tacked to the class bulletin board.

  Got it.

  Rjay’s support had helped erase a bit of her embarrassment. She’d smiled and opened her mouth to remind her classmates she’d not only had a photograph published in a real newspaper, but she’d won second prize in the Night Magic contest.

  But before she pronounced a syllable, Rachel spoke up again.

  “Quit laughing. She was kicked in the head by a horse, you know.” Rachel’s words had oozed with false sympathy and the entire room had gone silent.

  “Not funny, Slocum,” Mr. Blair snapped. “Let’s go on to the next applicant.”

  “That would be me,” Rachel said, smoothly. She walked to the front of the classroom instead of speaking from her seat. “I’m sure someone is bound to point out that I’m not an experienced photographer.” Rachel tilted her head Sam’s way. “But working with advertising, I’ve developed a sense for how things look on the page.

  “More importantly, I’ve got big plans for dispensing with that old-fashioned photo lab…” Rachel gestured toward the class darkroom.

  Sam’s spirits had fallen even more. The darkroom was old-fashioned, but it was a great place to escape for secret conversations.

  “Next year, we’re going all digital,” Rachel said, as if she’d already won the position. “The school newspapers winning national prizes work that way and so should we.”

  “We can’t afford digital cameras,” RJay reminded her.

  But Sam had known what was coming and her eyes had darted briefly to Mr. Blair’s. His expression said he, too, knew how Rachel would answer.

  “I’m sure something will turn up,” Rachel assured the class, then strode confidently back to her desk.

  Mr. Blair had called up other students, one by one, but Sam hadn’t really heard any of them. She could stand competing with Rachel. She could stand messing up in front of the class, too. Neither of those things was half as bad as all the faces that had turned the other way when she caught them staring.

  Running against Rachel’s money and an accusation of brain damage, how could she possibly win?

  Sam glanced at the kitchen clock at the same time the vacuum cleaner sighed to silence upstairs. She only had forty-five minutes before she was supposed to meet Jen for their ride.

  She hadn’t told Jen about the episode in Journalism and she didn’t want to tell Gram.


  Gram was almost psychic when it came to Sam. If they spent five minutes together in this kitchen, she’d weasel the whole story out of her.

  Sam shot to her feet, moving so quickly she accidentally stepped on Cougar’s tail.

  The brown-striped cat squalled.

  “I’m sorry, kitty,” Sam apologized, but Cougar darted out of the kitchen.

  Once your day started downhill, it was hard to push it back up. But Sam was determined to send it in a better direction.

  She and her best friend Jennifer Kenworthy had talked all the way home on the hot, stuffy bus about riding out to Aspen Creek. There, they hoped to see a young black mustang she’d named New Moon.

  Moon was the Phantom’s son and last year, before winter set in, he’d managed to steal one red bay mare from his father’s herd. There was no guarantee he still had the mare or that warmer weather had brought him back to the aspen grove, but they were willing to take a chance.

  One thing could improve my luck, Sam thought.

  She felt silly and superstitious letting the possibility cross her mind, but what if she could find the braided horsehair bracelet she’d woven from strands of the Phantom’s mane?

  Not that it was magical. Not really. Somehow, though, it always improved her understanding of horses, especially wild ones.

  The bracelet had been lost for months. And the way things were going, it wasn’t likely to resurface today.

  Sam was halfway up the stairs to her bedroom when the tension that had gripped her since Journalism suddenly relaxed its hold.

  “I know where it is,” Sam muttered in amazement.

  The revelation was like falling through a trapdoor. She’d hidden the bracelet. She knew exactly where it was.

  Sam skipped over the last two stairs and nearly collided with her grandmother.

  “Hello, dear,” Gram said, tucking a strand of gray hair back into the red bandanna tied over her head. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Sam kissed Gram’s cheek.

  “You must be having a good day,” Gram said, chuckling.

  “Getting better every minute,” Sam said, and she meant it.

  Cougar had taken refuge from her tail-tromping clumsiness in a sunbeam that was warming the patchwork star on her white quilt. He kept his eyes determinedly closed as Sam moved a stack of books balanced atop her dresser and dropped them onto the floor.

  The books had served as a barricade in front of a dusty tin box.

  “I found it!”

  Her shout was too much, and the cat jumped down from his napping place.

  “I don’t feel a bit sorry for you,” Sam said as Cougar gave an insulted hiss and ran for the door. “It’s your fault it was lost.”

  From the first day her friend Jake Ely had given her Cougar, the cat had been curious and energetic. When he’d spotted the bracelet on her wrist, he’d pounced.

  She’d tried to turn the kitten’s attention to dangling yarn and Ping-Pong balls, but he refused to be distracted.

  Gently, she’d tried to discourage him, by setting him in another room. Every time, Cougar had leaped for her wrist, batting and scratching, treating the bracelet like a live creature.

  Finally, she’d decided the bracelet was too precious to be a cat toy.

  Sam lifted the tin box and blew the dust from its top.

  The hiding place she’d chosen was a button box that had once been her mom’s. The round tin was a tarnished gold color.

  Sam pried the lid off and set it aside. There, atop hundreds of multicolored buttons, sat the bracelet. She slipped it over her wrist.

  It had been right here in her bedroom, all along.

  Sam held her arm high. Late afternoon sunlight turned the scratchy circlet the same silver as the Phantom. It was hard to believe the wild stallion had actually allowed her to run her fingers through his mane.

  Before she pressed the button box lid back into place, Sam let her fingertips trace its raised black-and-gold pattern. The decoration showed a running black horse. He pulled a sleigh carrying a man and a woman. A child sat snuggled between them.

  Sam sighed. She’d been almost five when her mother died. Now she was almost fourteen.

  “And I’m over it,” Sam said aloud.

  Still, she kept the button box on her lap a few minutes more. She shook the tin—Gram said it had once held a Christmas fruitcake—and watched the buttons shift around.

  There were a few wooden spools of thread and stray sewing needles inside, along with hundreds of buttons in shades of brown, black, gray, green, white, and blue.

  Sam spotted a tiny yellow button painted with violets. She’d bet it was from some outfit she’d worn as a baby.

  She smiled at the idea of the bracelet hiding inside her mother’s button box.

  “Thanks, Mom,” she said, then slapped her hand over her mouth.

  That’s crazy, Sam thought.

  She couldn’t believe she’d said it. She held her breath, listening for footsteps. What if Gram had heard her?

  As the thought popped into her mind, she heard the phone ring and Gram answer it.

  Sam took a deep breath. She should get downstairs and have a snack if she planned to have one. She had to get moving if she was going to meet Jen on time.

  There were a lot of things she should be doing, but she couldn’t pry her fingers from this box that her mother had touched.

  And then she knew why. Something pink and out of place was nestled among the sewing supplies.

  Sam shook the box, then fished out a scrap of crumpled pink paper. It looked like stationery, folded into a small square.

  Slowly, Sam unfolded it. It wasn’t a letter, but a list.

  Sam sucked in a breath. Her heartbeat echoed in her wrists and temples. The handwriting was her mother’s.

  Something like magnetism drew her eyes past the items on the list. Five words stood alone at the bottom edge of the paper.

  There Sam read, in her mother’s firm, scrolling handwriting, No harm to the horses.

  Chapter Two

  “Samantha!” Gram’s exasperated tone said this wasn’t the first time she’d called up the stairs.

  Sam actually had to turn her head to force her eyes away from her mother’s words.

  “Yes?” Sam couldn’t put the pink paper back inside, but she pressed the lid back on the button box and stood up.

  “Jen called to say she was leaving her house,” Gram said. “If you’re riding to meet her, you’d better hurry.”

  “I’m coming,” Sam said. Her hands trembled as she stared at her mom’s handwriting.

  She shouldn’t take the time to read this now. But how could she stop? This list offered her what she hadn’t had in eight years: a few moments with her mother.

  Besides, that last line had the ring of a vow.

  No harm to the horses.

  Which horses? River Bend’s? A band of wild mustangs? What had Mom meant? Had she lived long enough to protect the horses she obviously loved?

  Although Sam’s eyes lingered on the words, she knew she had to look away. The rest of the list might help her understand what her mother had meant.

  She skimmed it once, quickly.

  Was it a shopping list? A to-do list?

  Sam read it carefully.

  Grace m.d. (cool apron?)

  Sam try on summer clothes (new shorts/sunsuits?)

  Antelope season/Crossing/horses??? check w/NDW? BLM? Bow/rifle?

  Wh forage

  Caleb crim record ????

  Darton Deli: ham, Swiss ch, past, lasag. stuff, aspirin and chili rub for Dally

  No harm to the horses

  Her mother’s note was riddled with personal abbreviations. Not all of them made sense to Sam, but there was no mistaking that last one.

  The note was too important to rush and too precious to leave behind.

  Carefully, Sam folded it into a neat square, then eased it into the front pocket of her jeans.

  She hurried down the
stairs, grabbed the brownie Gram offered, then jogged toward the barn.

  The saddle horses in the ten-acre corral lifted their heads from grazing to watch her. Buddy, her nearly yearling heifer, ambled up to the fence chewing. Ace, Sam’s pretty bay mustang, neighed in three short bursts.

  “Coming, Ace,” she told her horse, but she didn’t stop to reassure him or to rub Buddy’s head. It would be faster to just grab her tack and hurry back.

  After weeks of reconstruction following a scary earthquake, the barn still smelled like freshly sawed lumber. Sam grabbed her saddle and bridle from the tack room and hefted them against the front of her, trying to balance and walk fast at the same time.

  She’d almost reached the pasture when Jeepers-Creepers trotted across the wooden bridge, with Dad astride.

  “You thinkin’ about doin’ any chores before you go out to play?” Dad called.

  With a jean jacket pulled over his shirt and his Christmas-new gray Stetson, Dad looked like every kid’s mental picture of a cowboy.

  “When I get back,” Sam shouted, as she led Ace from the pasture and began saddling him.

  As Dad rode closer and she saw the smile white against his darkly tanned face, Sam decided Dad wasn’t serious about making her work. She released a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

  Thinking of the note in her pocket, Sam tried to look at Dad as if she weren’t his daughter.

  Dad had been a college student when he’d fallen in love with Mom. How had he looked on the day he’d proposed? And on the day Mom had died?

  Sam shook her head as if she could dispel the awful image.

  One thing was sure: he hadn’t been the thin, dusty man he was today. And his heart had belonged to her mother, Louise, not to her stepmother, Brynna.

  Sam tightened her saddle cinch and tucked in the loose end. She slid her hand between the cinch and Ace’s warm belly.