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  Arms spread, speaking calmly, he approached the blind mare. “Whoa, there, whoa.”

  Sam heard him make a clucking sound and so did Penny. Brynna hung on the fence, panting for breath. The short sprint and total panic had taken everything out of her, but she trusted Dad to help her horse.

  Sam stood frozen. One of the pipe panels veed out from the weight of the mare’s body, crashing her delicate forelegs into the metal.

  The cuts on Penny’s front legs began to bleed. Sam longed to cover them with her own hands, but that would only frighten the mare more.

  Before Dad reached Penny, another sound set her off. Pushed by the wind, the tarp scuttled along the ground.

  Penny galloped around the pen. Her shoulder struck one panel and she ricocheted toward the far side of her pen. At last, she stood, ears back, ribs working in and out. But when Brynna called her name, Penny pricked her ears toward her mistress’s voice.

  “You’re okay, Penny. We’ll help you.”

  What should I do? Sam wondered. Go gather the tarp and fold it so it couldn’t do more damage? Or would that sound cause the mare to hurt herself more? And just what was it that had been so important that she couldn’t do what Dad had asked?

  Penny pawed with a front hoof, then stood, holding it clear of the ground. Dad stood back. Tense and watchful, he braced, ready to dart forward and catch Penny’s halter.

  Sam edged close to the corral.

  “Dad, should I get the tarp?” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “Thanks, honey, but leave it for now.”

  Thanks, honey? Had he forgotten…? And then Sam realized he had. Dad didn’t remember telling her to deal with the tarp.

  Dad’s mouth drooped at each corner and his shoulders sagged. Not now. If she confessed now, she’d only drag him down farther.

  A crow flew overhead, giving a raucous caw. Penny shied, but stayed near Brynna.

  Sam clung to the fence with hands like claws. She watched Dallas come with first aid supplies and bandages. She heard Dad swear it was a bad luck day all around. He’d found Buttercup dead and spent all afternoon searching for her calf.

  “Two lost,” Dad muttered, referring to the cow and calf. Then he looked at Penny. “At least it wasn’t three.”

  Brynna’s eyes swung to Sam. Dad had been talking about Penny, but she knew her stepmother was thinking about Caleb Sawyer. He hadn’t been dangerous, but what if he had?

  Brynna didn’t tell Dad what Sam had done, not yet. She held Penny’s halter, petting and crooning to her while Dad cleaned, medicated, and bandaged the sorrel’s legs.

  The kitchen was quiet when Sam went inside the house. Not until then did she remember Gram had her garden club meeting at the Darton library tonight. Dinner wasn’t made. She and Brynna were supposed to bring home pizza for Dad.

  Sam sighed. She’d messed that up, too. Why wouldn’t they send her away? She hurried upstairs. Before anyone could come after her, she ran a deep bath.

  She took off her horsehair bracelet and sank in up to her collarbone. She stared at the bathroom ceiling. After a while, she realized she was singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

  How dumb was that? She’d lied to her stepmother. She’d hurt a sweet, defenseless horse, and here she was, nearly fourteen and singing a baby song. And then she remembered why.

  She couldn’t have been more than three or four when she had a high fever and the doctor had advised Mom to keep her in a cool bath. She’d hated it. Even now she remembered how she’d shivered, teeth clacking together, but Mom had sung to her. How many verses did “Itsy Bitsy Spider” have, anyway? Or had Mom been making them up to comfort her?

  She tried not to remember what Jake had said the other day. He’d been talking about Brynna trusting him to go check out Caleb Sawyer’s complaint.

  If people believe in you, you can either disappoint them or measure up.

  In trying to please her mom, she’d let everyone around her down. She didn’t know how to fix it, because she wasn’t all wrong and she couldn’t say she was.

  A sharp rap sounded on the bathroom door and Dad called through it. “You come on down and eat.”

  “I’m not hungry,” she said, then grimaced at her own lame excuse.

  “Come out anyway. Other people need to shower, and you and I need to talk.”

  His angry voice told Sam that Brynna had told Dad everything.

  “Just tell me,” Sam shouted back. She hoped he didn’t hear the sound of her hands coming out of the water to cover her eyes for the second time today.

  “If that’s the way you want it,” he said. “You’re staying home tomorrow. We’re riding out at dawn and expect you to have dinner on the table when we get home. Then we’ll talk about what happens next. I’m giving myself twenty-four hours to think, because right now—”

  Dad broke off. Sam kept listening.

  “Samantha!” Dad snapped. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes sir,” she said. “I’ll do what you said.”

  After Dad’s boots clomped back down the stairs, Sam climbed out of the tub, dried off, and went to her room.

  Even though her room was warm from sunlight streaming through the window all day, she pulled on sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Not her emerald green Darton High sweats, but the faded, washed-a-million-times, red ones from her old San Francisco middle school.

  When she could hear the television downstairs, Sam replayed the tape very quietly. What could she find to put Caleb in jail, to prove she’d done the right thing by going there?

  The part about being a bison guide wasn’t illegal. The part where he discussed creasing and water trapping wild horses was illegal now, but had it been when he’d done it?

  Wait. Was Caleb Sawyer old enough to have done it when it was legal? And what if he’d lied?

  In despair, Sam played the tape over again. Someone who knew a lot more about law needed to listen. Even that part where Sawyer admitted giving Linc Slocum advice about catching wild horses wasn’t a sure thing.

  He could be an accessory to Slocum’s crime. Still, even though everyone around knew Slocum was responsible for that scar on the Phantom’s neck, no one had been able to prove it.

  Sam sighed. She had to find a way to get Brynna and Dad to listen to the tape.

  She was still awake when she heard Gram’s yellow Buick come over the River Bend Bridge and park in the yard. She heard Gram talking with Brynna, but only caught a couple of words about how early they’d get up in the morning.

  The house grew silent and Sam kept staring at the ceiling. She didn’t imagine prancing horses on it tonight. She felt heartsick and hopeless.

  “I can’t go back,” she whispered into the darkness.

  It was all she thought about until midnight, when she heard a stallion call from the wild side of the river.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Had she really heard him? Or had she wished so hard for the stallion to come that she’d imagined his neigh?

  Sam sat up. For hours, she’d been lying on top of her covers, staring at the ceiling, seeing nothing. Now, she closed her eyes, focusing on the silence.

  Cougar mewed from outside her closed bedroom door. When she didn’t answer his summons, he batted at the door, trying to slip his paw beneath it. Could she have been dozing and heard that?

  No. She hadn’t been asleep. She noticed the glow from her wristwatch. Twelve twenty-seven. Whenever the Phantom came to the river, it was about this time. And yet no neigh followed the first.

  Sam drew a breath. She was going down there.

  She glanced around her room for her horsehair bracelet. She’d left it in the bathroom and it would cause too much commotion to go after it.

  She was looking at the little tape when she heard Cougar complain again. What if he thought the tape was a toy? She could imagine him batting it across the floor, so she slipped it into her pocket and stepped toward her bedroom door.

  A floorboard squeaked. So did her door hinge. She
was three steps down the staircase when she heard the rustle of sheets. Then came Dad’s voice, not a bit sleepy.

  “Let her go. She can sleep tomorrow when we’re gone.”

  Sam swallowed her sigh. She knew why Dad hadn’t stopped her. Last summer, he’d told her that when she was a fussy baby, Mom had taken her to listen to the rush and gurgle of the La Charla River. The river’s age-old conversation with the river rocks had always lulled her to sleep.

  Since Dad had told her, she’d often gone down to the river and its magic always worked.

  She had to believe that was why. Otherwise, it was possible Dad was letting her say good-bye.

  With something like permission on her side, Sam didn’t worry about the sound of every footfall. Once in the kitchen, she snagged a muffin from Gram’s bread box and two packets of string cheese from the refrigerator. She’d missed dinner, hiding out in her room, and she was starving.

  If it turned out that the Phantom really wasn’t at the river, she’d sit there and have a lonely picnic just the same.

  She started to stuff the food in the pocket of her sheepskin-lined leather coat and realized her sweatpants’ pocket held the tape recorder.

  Her heart double-thumped at the idea that she might go into the river to touch the Phantom. That would definitely be bad for Mr. Blair’s tape recorder, though, so she left it on the kitchen table.

  With those moments lost, she crammed the food into her coat pockets, hurried to tug on the barn boots she kept by the door, then slipped into the warm almost-summer night.

  Diamond-bright stars and a half-moon mottled pewter and white seemed to dangle from the black sky like ornaments. With quick, quiet steps, she crossed the bridge. Blaze must be sound asleep in the bunkhouse, she thought.

  She was almost across when she saw the mustangs. They poured down the mountainside like water. Before reaching the river they stopped, bumping shoulders and making low whinnies as their leader stepped into the clear.

  I couldn’t have heard him, Sam thought. He wasn’t here.

  Sam shivered. It wasn’t the first time the bond she shared with the stallion had amazed her.

  If only she could live with the mustangs, all her problems wouldn’t matter.

  The Phantom emerged from the herd of darker horses. He stood alone, facing her across the river, but he wasn’t watching her. He focused on safety.

  Herd stallions tested the water while their band stayed back, ready to run if he encountered trouble. The Phantom was no different.

  Standing tall, he stared upstream. His ears were pricked to listen and his nostrils flared. His front hooves danced in place as he looked downstream. Sensing no predators, he lowered his nose to the water, took a sip, then swerved and returned to his band.

  With a cranky squeal, he drove them forward, snapping at the tails of stragglers.

  Sam smiled. The Phantom was in a hurry tonight, and his band knew it. They drank long and loud, until a big honey-colored mare backed from the water. The others copied her movements, then milled in confusion. For all his haste, the stallion hadn’t given the order to depart.

  Suddenly, Sam realized what the herd’s appearance meant. At least for tonight, they’d left Antelope Crossing and returned to their usual territory. On the lands bordering River Bend Ranch, the horses were safe.

  The Phantom shouldered through his herd, heading back to the river. He waded in as deep as his knees, then stopped.

  Although he wouldn’t be milk white for years, he’d shed his thick winter coat, and his skin looked silken and pearly in the moonlight.

  River rocks gleamed black as he picked around each one, making his way into deeper water, where the strong current had pushed the rocks tumbling downstream. Once he reached the smoother footing, he trotted toward Sam. Water droplets flew up around his knees, catching moonlight and sparkling before they fell.

  “Zanzibar,” Sam whispered.

  Snow-melt cold, the river surrounded her boots, flowing past, rising with each step until her sweatpants were wet and soggy to the knees. Sam didn’t care. Each stride she took matched one of the stallion’s. They’d meet in the middle.

  But then he stopped. His reflection shone on the glossy wavelets and the stallion trembled with wariness. Had he heard something, or was the Phantom reminding himself he was wild? He gathered himself and Sam felt sure he’d flee. Instead, he launched forward, creating a white-capped wave, and then he stood within her reach.

  A nicker shook him. His tangled forelock didn’t hide the stallion’s brown eyes.

  He must remember the days she’d spent schooling him in the river.

  Here, she’d mounted him for the first time. Though it had been a hot summer day almost three years ago, tension and excitement still vibrated in this place.

  But there was danger in thinking this animal was just an old friend, and Sam knew it.

  Powerful muscles showed like the fretting in a thundercloud as the stallion pawed the river, splashing her.

  “Careful,” Sam said. Was she talking to the horse or herself? He was a wild stallion. She could never let herself forget that.

  But he’d come to her tonight, when she was heartsick, when she wanted more than anything to feel part of the rangeland she might have to leave.

  Twice, the great stallion had let her ride him.

  Tonight, she’d ask him again.

  Sam held her hand palm up. Inches above her hand, Zanzibar breathed in her scent, then snorted and backed away.

  His hooves grated on river rocks as he moved off. He was about halfway back to his herd when he stopped and studied her.

  He was thinking, making a decision. Sam held her breath. She’d looked into the eyes of almost every horse she’d met. Most horses acted on instinct, but sometimes, she was sure, the Phantom thought.

  He moved so quickly, then, muscles bunching and shifting beneath his silver hide, that Sam splashed, getting out of his way.

  But the stallion had evaluated her and decided she was no threat. He moved through the water in front of her and stopped, facing upstream.

  Jake had held a black colt in just that position when she’d mounted him for the first time.

  “That’s an invitation, boy,” she warned him. “Are you sure?”

  The stallion looked back over his shoulder, then swished his tail impatiently.

  Sam looked back at the ranch. Not a light shone. All lay in sleepy darkness. They had no idea what she was about to do. Even she didn’t know where the stallion would take her. But how could she say no?

  Sam leaned her weight against him. If he changed his mind, it would happen now. She smoothed her hands over his back and barrel. His skin shivered, but he stood firm.

  Sam held her breath. With a hop and a bound, grabbing a handful of mane, she vaulted onto the stallion’s back.

  He reared.

  “Oh no, boy.” Sam shifted her weight forward, burying both hands in his mane, laying her cheek along his neck until he came back down.

  His hind legs lashed out. His back rose and he bucked. The sky was a starry blue-black smear. Sam’s teeth clacked together.

  Was he playing, or fighting her unfamiliar weight?

  All at once, the stallion whirled toward shore. The far shore. Legs tight against his body, arms clamped along his neck, Sam stayed astride.

  A hoof slipped on river rock, but he didn’t fall.

  Splashing, crashing through the water, he gained the shore and then they were in the midst of the mares.

  Startled snorts greeted them.

  Both times Sam had been on his back, they’d been alone, but suddenly she was part of the herd. No more, no less.

  Hot hide brushed her legs. Muscles and heat surrounded her as she lay along the stallion’s neck, feeling the rough texture of his mane in her hands.

  Whatever sign he gave, she missed it. The herd didn’t; they settled into a smooth run, flowing around rocks and stunted piñon pines. Sam imagined she was a centaur. Half girl, half merged
into this river of horses.

  She didn’t miss reins or stirrups or even the sight of what was up ahead, beyond the horses.

  The star-smeared sky slipped by. Wind-tangled mane lashed around her with the sharp scent of crushed sagebrush. The Phantom knew where to go. Sam never wanted to stop.

  She couldn’t say how long they galloped, but when the huffing herd slowed, they didn’t stop. They trotted steadily uphill.

  Only once did her balance falter. Riding by instinct, she hadn’t anticipated the narrow ravine. When the stallion jumped, she wasn’t ready. She slipped to his right side, about to fall, and the stallion slowed.

  With a graceful sidestep, he caught her. Sam smiled as the stallion adjusted his gait and arranged his smooth back beneath her.

  Hooves echoed on rock and Sam knew where she was. She hugged closer still to the Phantom’s neck. Her cheek felt the sleek new summer coat. The tunnel closed around her.

  Ahead, the mares were streaked with moonlight sifting through the fissures in the stone above. Cold rock scuffed her right leg. When she instinctively drew away, her legs tightened against the silver stallion. He bolted against the horses in front of him.

  Squeals echoed around her, but she clung to the stallion. If she sat up, her head would strike the hard rock ceiling.

  Soon they’d be in the Phantom’s secret valley. No one could find her there. She didn’t know whether to be frightened or elated.

  Hooves thudded and moved away. They were there.

  Just as she remembered, rock walls soared up to a dizzying dome of stars. The stallion stopped and started to shake.

  Oh no. Sam slipped from his back and stumbled, catching herself against a boulder, before he sprinted away.

  Dark horse shadows moved in a meadow where the grass smelled green and sweet even to her human senses. Without her eyes to call the horses bay and black, paint and roan, her ears took over.

  Every animal had a different sound. A nicker rose high and inquisitive, but most horses talked in low snorts. Hooves shuffled as favorite spots were claimed. She heard a jumble of limbs hitting the soil as a foal settled down to sleep.