The Wild One Read online

  Phantom Stallion

  1

  The Wild One

  Terri Farley

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to

  Barbara and Bob Sprenger,

  who let me talk to horses

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  AT FIRST, SAM THOUGHT she was seeing things. The windshield…

  Chapter Two

  BOARDS RUMBLED UNDER Dad’s tires as he crossed the bridge…

  Chapter Three

  SAM COULD HAVE SWORN the roast beef wiggled in her…

  Chapter Four

  GRAM PULLED THE PILLOW off Sam’s head and kissed her…

  Chapter Five

  THE JOSHING STARTED after dinner, as Sam swallowed a last…

  Chapter Six

  SAM TURNED UP the collar of her fleece-lined jacket. She…

  Chapter Seven

  JAKE HAD A LOT of nerve. He’d “stick to her…

  Chapter Eight

  FRIGHTENED BY THE BRINDLE cow’s bellows, the rest of the…

  Chapter Nine

  “NO ONE LIKES housework, young lady,” said Gram. “That’s why…

  Chapter Ten

  THE FIRST STALLION was the color of orange sherbet mixed…

  Chapter Eleven

  DAD REFUSED TO HEAD for home. He said Gram wanted…

  Chapter Twelve

  IT TOOK SAM MORE than a few steps to shake…

  Chapter Thirteen

  LAY LOW.

  Chapter Fourteen

  SAM SWUNG HER sleeping bag over one shoulder.

  Chapter Fifteen

  SAM STOOD BESIDE the telephone, twirling the cord around her…

  Chapter Sixteen

  SAM’S HEARTBEAT pounded in her throat, in her arms, and…

  Chapter Seventeen

  IF SHE DIDN’T COUNT the time her first grade teacher…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Terri Farley

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  AT FIRST, SAM THOUGHT she was seeing things. The windshield of Dad’s truck was pitted by years of windblown dust. Maybe she’d been away from the ranch so long, the desert sun was playing tricks on her eyes.

  Suddenly, she knew better.

  Mustangs stampeded over the ridge top. They ran down the steep hillside. As their hooves touched level ground, a helicopter bobbed up behind them.

  It hovered like a giant dragonfly.

  As she watched the herd, Sam saw one creamy mane flickering amid the dark necks of the other horses. She saw a black horse shining like glass and two roans running side by side. Here and there ran foals, nostrils wide with effort.

  Sam wondered if the men hovering above could see each running horse, or only a flowing mass of animals.

  The mustangs ran for the open range. Sam knew the horses would find little shade and less water ahead, but they seemed to think of nothing except outrunning the men and their machine.

  The herd swung left. The helicopter swooped, ten feet off the sand, to block them.

  The herd galloped right. With a whirring sound, the helicopter followed.

  Then, from the back of the herd, a silver stallion raced forward. Sam never imagined a horse could be so beautiful, but there he was. He nipped and screamed, turning the mares in a wide U back under the helicopter’s belly, running back to the hills and safety.

  The helicopter pulled up. It banked into a turn and followed, but it was too late.

  “Wow! Where did they go?” Sam’s thigh muscles tensed. She sat inside her dad’s truck, but her knees shook as if she’d been running with the wild horses.

  “Mustangs have their secret getaway trails. They go places even a chopper can’t.” Dad took one hand off the steering wheel to pull his Stetson down to shade his eyes.

  Sam cleared her throat and looked out the window at dull, brown Nevada. Could she have felt homesick for this?

  Yes. Every day of the past two years, an ache had grown under her breastbone.

  She just wished Dad would talk more. She wanted to hear about the ranch and the horses and Gram. But the nearer they got to the ranch, the more he acted like the dad she remembered. Relaxed and quiet, he was completely unlike the awkward man who’d come to visit in Aunt Sue’s polished San Francisco apartment.

  Since he’d picked Sam up—literally off her feet in the middle of the airport—their conversation had bumped along just like this old truck. Slow, but sure.

  “Shouldn’t use helicopters and trucks,” Dad muttered. “They just don’t savvy mustangs.”

  Translated, that meant he had no respect for men who didn’t understand the wild horses they were capturing and taking off the range.

  Dad really talked like a cowboy. And his first name was Wyatt, a cowboy name if she’d ever heard one. Plus, he walked with the stiff grace of a man who’d ridden all his life.

  When he’d first sent her to the city, Sam had been so angry, she’d tried to forget Dad. For a while, it had been easy.

  After her accident, the doctors had said Sam might suffer “complications.” When a girl fell from a galloping horse and her head was struck by a hoof, that was bad. When she lost consciousness as well, they explained, it was far worse.

  Fear made Dad agree to send Sam away from the ranch, to live with Aunt Sue. In San Francisco, she was only two minutes away from a hospital, instead of two hours.

  First Sam had begged to stay, then she’d turned stubborn and refused to go. But Dad was just as stubborn. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. Since she’d barely turned eleven, Dad had won.

  After a few lonely weeks, she’d learned to love San Francisco. Aunt Sue’s willingness to take her everywhere and show her everything eased the pain of leaving home, but it couldn’t make her forget Blackie.

  Blackie had been the first horse who was all her own. She’d raised him through a rocky colthood, gentled him to accept her as his rider, then made a terrible mistake that injured her and frightened him into escape.

  Each time Dad called her in San Francisco, Sam asked for word of Blackie. But the swift two-year-old had vanished.

  In time, Sam stopped asking. She and Blackie had hurt each other. She’d been unable to go after him and touch him and explain. So, Blackie had followed his mustang heart back to the wild country.

  Although Aunt Sue didn’t ride, she did share Sam’s passion for movies. Sam made friends at her middle school, too, and played basketball in a YMCA league. It wasn’t long before the months had added up to two years.

  Still, movies and basketball couldn’t measure up to Sam’s memories of riding the range, fast and free. Sam never stopped loving horses and missing them. When Dad announced it was safe to come home, Sam had started packing.

  Now, Sam sneaked another look at Dad. In San Francisco, she’d been embarrassed by him. She’d worried that her city friends would hear his buckaroo slang, or take a good look at his face, all brown and lean as beef jerky. If they had, they would have known Dad for what he was: a cowboy.

  But here in Nevada, he fit in and it was easier for her to see she had a lot in common with him. They were both skinny, tanned, and stubborn.

  “You really liked living in San Francisco?” Dad asked.

  “After I got used to the fog and traffic, I loved it. I jogged in Golden Gate Park with Aunt Sue and we saw at least three movies every weekend.”

  Dad glanced her way with eyes as cold as a Hollywood gunfighter’s. He hated the city.

  Sam shrugged as if she didn’t care. If he’d left the ranch more often to visit her, this wouldn’t be so awkward. She and Dad might have a lot in c
ommon, but when he asked questions like that, hard-eyed and expecting a certain answer, Sam felt like a stranger.

  She crossed one knee over the other and jiggled her foot. She ignored Dad’s frown, which said he was disappointed that his daughter had become such a city slicker.

  “Not far to River Bend, now,” Dad said.

  As if she didn’t know they were near the ranch. She couldn’t wait to see if it was the horse paradise she remembered. She only hoped she could still ride like she had before the accident.

  She remembered so little of that moment. Falling. Breathing dust. Impact just over her right ear. The sound of Blackie’s hooves galloping away, fading, gone. The accident wouldn’t keep her from riding, because she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t.

  Sam fanned herself, wishing she hadn’t worn black jeans and a black tee shirt. What was fashionable in San Francisco might be considered weird in rural Nevada.

  She blew her bangs out of her eyes. Using Aunt Sue’s sewing scissors, Sam had cut off her reddish-brown ponytail. She didn’t want to look like the child Dad had sent away.

  She straightened to look at herself in the truck’s mirror. She’d accomplished her goal, all right. She didn’t look like a little kid; she looked like a teenager with a bad haircut.

  Sam shifted against her seat belt, stared out the truck’s back window, and blinked.

  Half-hidden in dust stood a horse. His powerful shoulders glittered in the sun, convincing her he was the silver stallion who’d turned the herd, but he had the dished face and flaring nostrils of an Arabian. She hadn’t seen a horse that perfect since—

  “Sam?” Dad’s voice hit like a bucket of cold water. “What are you staring at, honey?”

  Sam looked at Dad. Then, before she told him, Sam turned back around to make sure of what she’d seen.

  “Uh, nothing,” she said. The horse had disappeared. Had it been a mirage?

  Never mind. In minutes she’d be at River Bend and she’d have a horse of her own, again.

  Still, Sam couldn’t help glancing back over her shoulder one last time. The first place she’d ride would be here, wherever here was, to find that ghost horse.

  Sam saw a metallic glint against the sky. The helicopter was still searching.

  Sam worried about the mustangs. Even a city girl knew how some cattle ranchers accused mustangs of eating all the grass and drinking water holes dry. A newspaper article she’d taken to class for Current Events had told how wild horses roaming Nevada’s range were rounded up with government helicopters, then penned until they were adopted.

  Sam remembered that half the girls in class had waved their hands over their heads, volunteering to take wild horses into their apartments or carports. Now here she was, with wild horses practically in her front yard.

  “I can’t wait to get you up on Ace,” Dad nodded, smiling. Apparently he wasn’t holding a grudge because she liked San Francisco. “You two are a match for sure.”

  Ace. Could there be a more perfect name for a cow pony? Sam had to smile. Dad said Ace “stuck to a calf like a burr on a sheep’s tail.” She supposed that meant Ace was a good cutting horse, able to separate the calves from the herd.

  “I wish you had a picture of Ace.”

  Dad laughed. “And have him get conceited around the other horses? That’d mean trouble for sure.”

  Dad squinted through the windshield as a flashy tan Cadillac drove straight at them, honking.

  “Speaking of trouble…” Dad shook his head and coasted to a stop.

  “Who is it?” Sam tried to read Dad’s face. “Don’t you want to talk to him?”

  “I’d rather take a shortcut over quicksand.”

  The Cadillac’s window eased down, revealing the driver.

  “Hey, Wyatt.” The driver had slick hair and a toothpaste-commercial grin. His cowboy hat was as big as one of dad’s truck tires. “This must be Samantha. Welcome, little lady.”

  No one called her Samantha—just Sam—but one thing Dad insisted upon was being courteous to adults. Sam smiled and wondered if she was supposed to recognize this guy.

  “On your way to town?” Dad sounded neighborly, but his back looked stiff.

  The man slumped back in his seat, all relaxed, and Sam nearly groaned. A horse of her own waited at the ranch. She wanted to see Ace, run her hands over his neck and smell the alfalfa sweetness of his soft nose. And this guy looked like he’d settled in for a long chat. When he lit a cigarette and threw his match on the desert floor, she knew she was right.

  “Sam, this is Linc Slocum.” Dad sighed.

  “I’m your new neighbor, Samantha.” He nodded. “Even though we’ve never met, I’ve heard lots of stories about you and that one-man horse of yours that escaped.”

  One-girl horse, Sam corrected silently. Blackie had bonded with her, because she’d used the Native American horse taming tricks her pal Jake Ely had taught her. She’d breathed into the colt’s nostrils so he’d know her scent, she’d mounted him for the first time in water, and she’d called him by a secret name.

  After the accident, lying in a hospital bed, Sam had worried that no one could call Blackie back. Her mind kept replaying the sound of his hooves galloping, then fading away, but she’d told no one the colt’s secret name.

  How could a stranger know Blackie had been a one-girl horse?

  Dad’s voice interrupted her memories. “Nice seein’ you, Linc, but we’d better head on.”

  Even when Dad started to drive, Linc kept talking. That’s when Sam knew Linc Slocum was no cowboy. Real cowboys hardly talked, even when they had something to say.

  “If it hadn’t been for that danged Jake—”

  Confusion nipped at Sam’s memory. She’d let Jake down, failing to ride Blackie right, but it sounded like Mr. Slocum blamed Jake for the accident.

  Clearly, Dad didn’t like Linc’s implication.

  Dad bumped his Stetson up from his brow and faced Linc Slocum head-on. Sam couldn’t see Dad’s expression, but Slocum pulled back like a turtle jerking his head in.

  “Old news,” Slocum said, but his smile slipped.

  Sam shivered as if someone had sprinkled a handful of spiders down the neck of her shirt.

  “Maybe he’ll come home,” Linc said.

  Sam bit her lip. She knew better, but Dad’s words still hurt.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Dad said. “The wild ones never come back.”

  Chapter Two

  BOARDS RUMBLED UNDER Dad’s tires as he crossed the bridge over the water that gave River Bend Ranch its name. Sam breathed the scent of sagebrush as they rolled under the tall wooden rectangle marking the ranch entrance.

  A brown dog ran barking toward the truck.

  “That’s Blaze,” Dad said. “He sleeps in the bunkhouse most of the time, but it looks like he’s come to welcome you.”

  A cowboy yell split the summer silence.

  Sam glanced left. She saw only a huge grassy pasture and horses grazing peacefully.

  “Come on, now!” the same voice shouted again.

  To her right, Sam saw the ranch house, white with green shutters. White curtains billowed from the upstairs window of her bedroom.

  But all the racket was coming from a round corral, straight ahead.

  As Dad pulled up next to the corral, Sam heard thudding hooves. She climbed down from the truck in time to see her old buddy Jake fly over a horse’s buck-lowered head. Jake cartwheeled through the air and skidded to a stop on the seat of his jeans. Dust rolled around him.

  Sam peered through the log fence rails, then planted one shoe on the lowest one and climbed until she saw over the top.

  A sassy paint mare stamped and snorted in the corner. Her intelligent eyes studied the rider she’d thrown. Then she blew a whuffling breath through her lips.

  Jake ignored the mare and looked toward Sam. The instant after she realized he’d turned handsome, Sam remembered how Jake used to trick her, tease her, and stare down his nose as if she wer
e a lower life-form.

  And she’d deserved every bit of bullying. Jake lived on the nearby Three Ponies Ranch and only put up with her because he liked riding. Jake was the youngest of six brothers. At home, the oldest boys had dibs on fun chores, like working horses. As the youngest, Jake would have to collect hens’ eggs and mend wire fences. So he chose to ride over to River Bend each morning where Dad let him train young horses.

  Something about Jake just brought out the pest in her. There he sat, bucked off before her very eyes. Sam was usually speechless around cute guys, but she couldn’t resist teasing him.

  “Oh Jake, what’s wrong?” Sam said in a singsong voice, like the little kid she’d been.

  Dad slouched against the fence rails beside her and chuckled. “I’d say you just missed a good chance to keep your mouth shut, Sam.”

  Behind her a screen door closed. Hens scratched and cackled. The scent of cooking wafted on the wind.

  When Jake stood up, he looked a lot older than sixteen. He was almost smiling as he whomped his cowboy hat against his leg, knocking off dust. Then he resettled it on the Indian black hair he’d pulled back with a leather shoelace.

  “Indian black” wasn’t just an expression. Jake Ely was half Shoshone.

  “Well, if it ain’t Samantha.” Jake walked toward the fence. He wore chinks, fringed leather leg coverings like short chaps. “Still skinnier than a wet weasel, aren’t you, Sam?”

  How weird that Linc Slocum’s respectful “little lady” made her bristle and Jake’s insult made her laugh.

  “Jake, you leave Sam alone ’til she’s had a chance to catch her breath.” Grandma Grace slipped around the side of the corral. She wore a denim skirt with a pale blue blouse. Sam noticed its pattern of little red hearts, just before a hug closed around her.