Moonrise Read online

  Sam’s sensible side knew Dad was right. She’d seen the Phantom strike out with flashing teeth and lashing hooves.

  But it was the time of year that wild stallions fought to add to their herds. Could a stallion watch for challengers every minute and still protect his mares and foals?

  Sam loved dogs, but she wanted that pack off the range. Whoever had turned them loose was irresponsible and not very smart.

  Dad’s sigh snatched Sam’s attention back. Even if he wouldn’t admit it, Dad hurt from that fall. She knew that from experience.

  “I’ll put Jeep away for you, Dad,” Sam said as the horses clopped across the wooden bridge to the ranch.

  “Naw,” Dad said, “I’ll take care of both horses. Looks like you’ll be cleaning that saddle till lunchtime, at least.”

  Sam gave Dad a sidelong glance. His expression was hidden by the shade from his Stetson, but it would have been hard to read anyway. Dad didn’t like admitting he needed help.

  Still, he was tougher than she was. Maybe she was exaggerating how shaken up he was by the fall.

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  As they rode into the ranch yard, Blaze frisked around the horses’ legs as usual.

  Sam watched the horses for residual fear.

  Ace only snorted, and though Jeep’s back hooves clattered out of rhythm for a second, neither horse acted scared.

  “That’s a relief,” Sam said, and Dad nodded.

  Clearly, the horses didn’t connect Blaze with that growling, snapping pack.

  Sam dismounted and stripped off Ace’s saddle. Balancing the saddle against one hip, she placed a hand on the warm, damp hair of Ace’s back.

  “Good boy,” she whispered to the little mustang. Red-brown hairs stuck to her hand as she stroked him, but she didn’t care. “You could’ve gone nuts when those dogs showed up, but you took care of me.”

  Ace’s head swung around and his lively eyes peered at her past his forelock. She made a kissing sound and he answered with a nod.

  As she set off to work, Sam felt a rush of affection for Ace and her ranch life. So what if she didn’t want to clean her saddle? It was better than cleaning her room.

  The worst part of the chore was the way her damp jeans rasped her legs as she arranged herself and the saddle on the front porch, but she didn’t want to go inside and tell Gram what had happened. She’d leave that up to Dad.

  Blaze sniffed at her boots. Loudly.

  “Don’t ask why I smell like pond scum,” she told him.

  He didn’t, but his nose continued to investigate as she washed mud from the leather with soap and water, then scrubbed it with a semidry sponge and more soap.

  Blaze lost interest and trotted off to find Dad while Sam’s stomach rumbled at the scent of Gram’s cooking. It felt like a long time since breakfast.

  Eager to finish before Gram called them in to eat, Sam wiped all the leather with neat’s-foot oil and rubbed until the leather was glowing and supple once more.

  She glanced up and saw Dad over by the barn. What was he doing with that pitchfork? Looking kind of off balance, he pressed one hand to the small of his back as he extended the tool.

  He’d dropped a saddle blanket, Sam realized, and he was pulling it closer with the fork.

  He must be stiff already. Or maybe it hurt to bend over, as he usually would, to pick it up. Dad needed to take the afternoon off or at least swallow a few aspirin.

  Dad wouldn’t admit his discomfort to her, but Gram was his mother. She didn’t miss much. She hoped Gram would talk some sense into him.

  It wasn’t long before Gram called them in for lunch.

  “That’s what smelled so good,” Sam moaned as she saw Gram’s brown-sugar baked beans. She wanted to spoon some into her mouth now, not waste time going upstairs to change.

  Gram smiled as she glanced at Sam. When Gram turned back to the ham sandwiches on the cutting board, Sam felt relieved. Gram hadn’t even noticed her bedraggled clothes.

  “They do smell good, don’t they?” Gram used the back of her wrist to push away a lock of gray hair that had escaped her tightly pinned bun. “It’s a shame you won’t be having any until you go change.”

  So she had noticed.

  “I’m not that dirty,” Sam protested as she spotted a big blue bowl of potato salad.

  “Not for someone who’s been rolling in the mud,” Gram said. “But too dirty to sit at the table.”

  “Okay,” Sam said, giving in.

  Just before she turned to go, Sam noticed that though Gram had been talking to her, she’d also been eyeing Dad as he washed up for lunch.

  “Your back’s aching,” Gram said, not giving Dad a chance to deny it. “What happened?”

  Sam stopped with one hand on the swinging door to the living room.

  “Couple dogs ran down from one of the trails and spooked Jeep.”

  Sam couldn’t believe how Dad minimized what had happened. A couple of dogs? Spooked?

  She crossed her arms and sent Dad a look. She’d be in big trouble if she did what he was doing.

  “You go on upstairs and get into clean clothes,” Dad said, but Gram hadn’t missed their exchange.

  “Out with it, Wyatt.”

  Sam kept moving, but just before the door swung closed she heard Gram say, “Tell me what happened, and I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer.”

  Sam smothered a giggle and bolted up the stairs. It was so cool when Gram treated Dad like a kid, she didn’t want to miss any more of his scolding than she had to.

  By the time she’d changed and hurried back to the kitchen, Gram was sitting at the table. She wasn’t sitting in her own chair, and the fingers of one hand touched her brow.

  “My Lord, Wyatt,” she murmured.

  “It could have been bad,” Dad agreed, then he and Gram stared at each other.

  To Sam, it seemed as if they were picturing many outcomes for the attack, all of them violent.

  Shaking her head, Gram stood, then began putting lunch on the table. As soon as she’d finished and Sam and Dad sat, Gram shook her head again.

  “I’m calling Trudy,” she said.

  Trudy Allen had a wild horse sanctuary not far away and she was one of Gram’s best friends.

  “I’m thinking of that blind filly,” Gram went on as she dialed.

  “Faith,” Sam gasped. Suddenly Sam knew Gram had pictured the dogs attacking the blind filly or Penny, her stepmother’s blind mare. And what about small children? She couldn’t think of any little kids in the area, but she’d bet there were some.

  “Those yappy little dogs are no protection,” Gram muttered, referring to Mrs. Allen’s pets.

  “There’s Roman,” Sam suggested, thinking of the liver-chestnut gelding who counted himself boss of the “unadoptable” mustangs roaming Mrs. Allen’s pastures.

  Dad was resolutely eating lunch, acting untouched by all of Gram’s fuss.

  “Dad?” Sam said.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “You can count on it.”

  Chapter Five

  “Horse on the porch.”

  Sam and Dad stared at Gram. Had she been talking to Mrs. Allen?

  No. With the telephone receiver clamped between her ear and shoulder, Gram pointed toward the kitchen door.

  As she did, hooves clopped on wood.

  Then Sam heard hooves on dirt. Many hooves.

  Once before, on the night of the fire, River Bend’s horses had been freed from the ten-acre pasture. The horses had been gone all night, but in the morning, one had shown up on the ranch house’s wide wooden porch. Ace.

  He must be the horse on the porch now.

  Grimacing, Dad pushed up from his chair at the table, but Sam darted past him.

  “Go ahead,” Dad said, “but take it slow.”

  Sucking in a breath, Sam took smaller, quieter steps, instead of bursting out the door as she’d been about to do.

  It didn’t help. The horses still spooked.
r />   A sudden stomping—like the pounding at a pep rally in the school gym, when everyone stomped their feet—erupted on the porch. Ace couldn’t be making all that noise by himself.

  Sweetheart, Gram’s aged pinto, had been right behind Ace, but now both horses backed off the porch, just missing the roof support posts.

  Ace retreated so fast, he rammed into Sweetheart and she scolded him with a bite. The gelding cried out in surprise, then whirled toward the ranch entrance and bolted into a run. Sweetheart followed, limping on a foreleg for an instant before she loosened up and galloped after him and the other horses.

  “They’re all out,” Sam called back to Dad.

  Dad was at her elbow by now. Together they stared after the fleeing saddle horses. Ace and Sweetheart sprinted toward Popcorn, Jeep, and Strawberry.

  Five horses were headed for open country.

  Sam knew what she was doing with the rest of her day.

  “Help me catch Amigo and Penny,” Dad said.

  She hadn’t noticed the two sorrels milling next to the barn corral, uttering distressed nickers to Dark Sunshine and Tempest.

  “Tell you what,” Dad said. “Saddle up Amigo and trail them. With any luck, Ross and Pepper will run across ’em and push ’em on home, but if they don’t, you can take a try at it.”

  Goose bumps pricked her arms and legs like a thousand cold, tiny needles. Dad was sending her out alone to bring back the saddle horses. Did he really expect her to be able to do it?

  She tried to look confident, but Dad must have seen her hesitation.

  “Only one way you learn to be a buckaroo,” Dad told her, “and that’s the hard way.”

  Sam almost stopped breathing.

  A buckaroo wasn’t just a cowboy. A buckaroo never drove when he could ride, never lost pride in his skills, and never let his ranch become a farm.

  Sam only knew three buckaroos and they were all men: Dad, Jed Kenworthy, and Jake.

  Being a buckaroo wasn’t a matter of bloodlines, either. Jake’s dad, Luke, was a good rider and rancher, but he also worked for a mining company in town. Luke wasn’t a buckaroo, but Jake definitely was.

  Once, Sam had heard Dad tell Brynna that he knew Jake for a buckaroo the first day he saw him mount an unbroken horse.

  “He was so good, so soon, it was amazing,” Dad had said. And that’s why he’d hired Jake to help with horses.

  Sam wondered if she’d misunderstood Dad when he said she could be a buckaroo.

  There was no time to ask.

  She grabbed the halter and lead rope hanging over the hitching rail and strode toward Amigo. The old gelding tossed his graying muzzle skyward and rolled his eyes, but he didn’t resist.

  Penny, Brynna’s copper-bright mare, was another story. Confused by the chaos, she squealed and rose into a half rear when Dad stood before her.

  “Hey, little girl, you get back now. You’re going nowhere. Brynna’ll have my hide if I lose you.”

  The blind mare’s ears pricked forward. Was it Brynna’s name that made her stop rearing and shift from hoof to hoof?

  While the mare calmed down, Dad kept talking to Sam.

  “I’ll be along on Penny, soon as I check the lock on that gate,” Dad said as he slipped a rope around the mare’s neck and led her into the barn stall.

  Sam grabbed the tack that was still sitting out on the porch. With luck, it would fit, so she wouldn’t have to go to the barn in search of Amigo’s gear.

  Close enough, Sam thought as she adjusted the headstall to Amigo’s larger head. She smoothed on the saddle blanket, hefted the saddle, and grunted as she boosted the saddle onto Amigo’s back. The cinch had to be fastened on a looser notch, but the saddle fit fine.

  Sam managed to mount, in spite of feeling as if a giant hand held her by the ribs and waggled her back and forth. Was it her heartbeat? Her runaway pulse? Or the realization that Dad thought she could be a buckaroo?

  He hadn’t made any big deal over it. In fact, he acted as if he hadn’t said it at all, but Dad touched his hat brim and lifted his chin toward the range.

  See you out there, his gesture indicated, but as she rode away, Sam heard Dad mutter, “I know I closed that danged bolt.”

  Amigo was taller than Ace, and narrower. Although Sam knew the gelding was well fed, age had whittled him down. He was about fifteen years old and, according to Dallas, the best cow horse in the state.

  There. Just as they jogged off the bridge, Sam saw the brown-and-white blur that was Sweetheart. Gram’s mare trailed the dust raised by the other horses, and Amigo was eager to catch up.

  It looked as if the saddle horses were slowing, spreading out, meandering with indecision. Would they follow the river toward the Three Ponies Ranch or cross the highway and head for Deerpath Ranch?

  “Whoa, boy,” Sam told Amigo. “Let’s wait a minute and see what they do.”

  If the horses made a break for the road to Deerpath Ranch and the Blind Faith Mustang Sanctuary, they’d be easier to catch. Mrs. Allen’s road was fenced on both sides. Sam knew, because she’d helped build that fence.

  But a sprint for Deerpath Ranch meant the horses would cross the highway. Though there wasn’t likely to be much traffic, five horses could get into a lot of trouble if there were.

  No, even though it would be tougher to gather them, Sam hoped the horses would keep moving along the river toward Three Ponies Ranch.

  Amigo tossed his head against the reins, eager to follow the other horses.

  Sam smooched to Amigo. He swiveled one ear to listen, but she could feel his impatience.

  “Let them get settled,” she told him. “Then we’ll just herd them back toward home.”

  Finally she let Amigo start toward the others. She kept him at a walk until, up ahead, Strawberry veered into the river.

  They were near enough now that Sam heard the mare blow through her lips as she lowered her head to drink.

  Sam sighed as first Jeep, then Ace and Sweetheart followed Strawberry. Finally Popcorn joined them, grazing on the soft summer grass hidden among the riverside stones.

  “Easy, easy,” Sam told Amigo.

  By the time they reached them, the horses showed no signs of bolting.

  Tree-strained sunlight dappled their backs and they barely raised their heads at Amigo’s approach.

  Popcorn lowered himself into the shallows and rolled in the mud.

  It wasn’t the first time Sam had seen the albino gelding change his coat from milky brightness to a calico of green and brown streaks from mud and river grass. Popcorn lurched upright and shook like a dog, splattering them with drops of muddy water.

  Still, Sam didn’t rush the horses.

  A taste of freedom could make them hungry for more or, if she gave them half an hour to graze and wade, they might be willing to mosey on home.

  At last she reined Amigo behind the group and gradually rode closer. The horses moved off in the general direction of the ranch.

  So far, so good. Sam scanned the empty range for distractions. No cattle, no cars on the highway.

  Strawberry snorted at the flick of a ground squirrel disappearing behind a boulder, and Sam leaned forward in the saddle. For some reason, the saddle herd followed the roan mare as their leader. If she made a break for open country, they’d be right behind her.

  The horses kept moving. If everything stayed this way, she could bring them home.

  Ace was the first to break into a jog. His bay head swung as if he were checking the mountain range for mustangs, but he followed Strawberry.

  Sam increased the pressure of her legs just slightly and Amigo lengthened his strides. All of the horses fell into a lazy jog toward home.

  Hooves made sucking sounds in the mud, struck submerged rocks, then dry dirt. Ears up, knees lifting, Strawberry began loping toward the bridge over the La Charla River.

  “Almost there, almost,” Sam murmured as Popcorn, who’d stayed toward the back of the herd, broke into a lope and caught up with S
trawberry. With a quick flattening of her ears, she told him to back off, and though he was definitely headed for River Bend Ranch, he shortened his strides and didn’t pass the invisible barrier that ran even with the roan mare’s tail.

  They were almost there when the metallic glitter of a truck, approaching from the direction of Linc Slocum’s Gold Dust Ranch, caught Sam’s eye.

  Ace stopped. Ears pricked so intently that the tips trembled, he stared at the champagne-colored truck, looked away after the other horses, then considered the truck again, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  It figured. Linc Slocum was the richest rancher in this part of Nevada, maybe in the entire state, and though he longed to be considered a real cowboy, Sam was pretty sure it would never happen.

  If there was a way to mess up the business of ranching—of dealing with the land, animals, and people who considered the high desert their home—Linc Slocum would stumble upon it. Many of his misdeeds were done on purpose, but just as many were the worst sorts of accidents.

  Like this. If Ace caused a commotion because he perceived some threat from the vehicle, if he caused the other horses to wheel and run for the mountains, she’d have Slocum to blame. Or at least Slocum’s vehicle, she thought, because now, as it inched nearer, she saw that Linc wasn’t at the wheel. The driver’s silhouette wasn’t bulky and broad like Linc’s. Could it be Ryan? Maybe, although he’d stayed so close to Hotspot and her foal, it would be a surprise.

  The dark outline seemed more familiar as it drew closer, but Sam looked away. If she played her cards right, she could have the horses across the bridge and headed for home pasture before the truck reached them.

  “It’s up to you, boy,” Sam told Amigo, and the sorrel settled into a swinging lope, the gait he used to herd cattle, which could stay placid as a rocking chair or explode into a burst of speed certain to cut across the path of any animal making a break away from the herd.

  She’d done it. The horses were trotting across the bridge, hooves hammering an announcement that she’d brought them safely home, when suddenly Sam recognized the driver.

  Jake. She straightened with such surprise that Amigo snorted and his smooth stride switched to a slower, rougher gait.