The Wild One Read online

  “Stop!” she shouted.

  The stallion faltered a step, struck Ace a glancing blow, then turned to lay his muscled neck over Ace’s back.

  The horses stood together and the stallion’s head was so close, Sam could have touched him—but she didn’t. She was a little afraid. This must be some sort of dominance move, because Ace didn’t fight.

  The stallion was big. And this close, Sam couldn’t deny he was real. He smelled like an animal who’d run long and hard. Though his hide glowed silver with an overlay of dapples delicate as gray lace, much of his fur was rough with dried sweat.

  The horses drew apart. Together, they tossed their muzzles skyward. It must have been a signal of agreement, because suddenly, they were running.

  With a peculiar rocking movement, the two horses ran side by side. Sam had ridden galloping horses before, but this was a faster gait, unnamed by man. Ace flung his legs out to their limits, and the stallion matched each movement.

  I’m being kidnapped, Sam thought. It would be foolhardy to jump, but she couldn’t catch a breath.

  Night wind roared into her face, sealing off her nose and lips, ripping the hat from her head and flinging it to the end of the stampede string, where it flew like a kite.

  Ace ignored the gentle pressure on the reins. Sam increased the pull and settled hard in the saddle. Nothing worked. Ace was running away.

  Sam’s feelings between fear and enchantment battled within her. She didn’t dare fall. At this pace, she’d break an arm, leg, or ribs for sure. The sharp and heavy hooves might miss her, but her head would crash against the desert floor. Again.

  And yet, Sam couldn’t suppress her excitement.

  Eight hooves pounded like a tribal drumbeat. Night wind sang past her ears and pulled her hair. The scents of sagebrush and horse flooded her senses. This was the wildest adventure of her life. She only hoped she lived long enough to brag to Jake.

  When the stallion put on a burst of speed and cut across their path, Ace followed. The ground beneath grew steeper and rockier. The Phantom swerved onto a secret trail.

  If they turned back now, could Ace find his way to the herd? They’d galloped at least three miles, maybe five. Could she return alone, if Ace dumped her and traded his bridled days for life as a mustang?

  As the stallion crowded in front, his hooves rang on smooth rock. If she could see her surroundings, Sam thought she’d wheel Ace and force him back toward the herd. But she couldn’t see. They might be on the edge of a meadow or a cliff.

  The darkness broke. Moonlight glowed on the stallion’s muscled haunches, but just for an instant. The trail had become a tunnel. Stone grazed Sam’s knuckles as Ace pressed against the rock wall on the right.

  In a shaft of light, Sam saw the stallion’s pale head lower. Ace ducked, too.

  Just in time, Sam imitated them before a cold stone ceiling scrubbed her shirt back and grated over the bumps of her spine.

  Ace moved slowly, carefully, but the Phantom bolted ahead. The sounds greeting him told Sam exactly where they were, though she’d been here only in her dreams.

  One neigh was followed by another, and another. A foal squealed and horses rustled through grass. The stone ceiling ended. When Sam stared up, she felt dizzy. It looked as if a huge bowl full of stars had been clapped over the top of this mustang hideaway.

  She had only seconds to marvel, before Ace bucked.

  “Steady,” Sam said, but she gave up without a fight.

  As Ace came to a nervous stop, Sam knotted her reins together. Then she scrambled down, kicking free of her stirrups before he bolted away.

  Dark horse shadows rippled against the moonlit cliffs, looking huge, then merging with the night. Sam knew it was too dark to try to leave. She didn’t want to, anyway.

  Sam worried about getting back to camp. She worried the cowboys would come searching, find her and call her worse than a tenderfoot. But Sam believed few humans would ever experience a night like this, and she wouldn’t give it up.

  As she settled against a boulder, hoofbeats told Sam that the Phantom was circling his herd, checking. She heard a foal nursing and the quiet rushing of a stream.

  Sam snuggled deeper into her coat. She felt surprisingly warm and satisfied. Ace was home. It was only fair she give him a chance to enjoy it.

  Faint sunlight shone through Sam’s closed eyelids, but she didn’t open them. As soon as she did, the dreamy valley of wild horses would probably vanish. She’d be back in the tent she shared with Gram. Maybe even back in Aunt Sue’s San Francisco apartment.

  Then Ace whuffled his lips across her hand and Sam opened her eyes. She took a deep breath, let it out, and for the first time, she understood what it meant to “feast your eyes.”

  She couldn’t count all the mustangs, but she tried to memorize them. Bays and blacks, red sorrels and honey chestnuts grazed beside buckskins, duns, and grays. More lean and muscular than even hardworking ranch horses, they looked wild, but their coats gleamed with health.

  As if he felt her watching, the Phantom strode forward, standing between Sam and his mares and foals.

  Protective and wary, the stallion squared off, ready to fight for his family.

  Sam knew she should leave. Dad and Jake were probably looking for her and they could find this haven. Worse, Linc Slocum could find it—Dallas had told her that Slocum had the nighthawk shift after hers.

  Sam stood and the mares scattered. Reins trailing, Ace moved along behind her, willing to carry her home. But Sam had to try one thing before she mounted up.

  She walked toward the stallion.

  “Zanzibar,” she whispered.

  His neck arched until his chin bumped his chest, but his eyes stayed fixed on Sam. His ears strained so far forward, they nearly touched at the points. His skin shivered as if he felt the same goose bumps she did.

  “Zanzibar, remember me?”

  The stallion tilted his head, listening. A clump of silver mane fell aside, exposing a scar on his neck.

  Pitying him for whatever accident had caused the scar, Sam held out her hand.

  “Poor boy,” she murmured, but her move was a mistake.

  Too much, too soon.

  The stallion backed away. As his band scattered, Sam noticed a buckskin with a black dorsal stripe and a dun mare and foal, with dark slanted stripes on their legs.

  They could be throwbacks to ancient horses. Prehistoric horses had such markings, but Sam didn’t know horses lived in this valley. Sam felt a surge of affection mixed with loyalty. She’d come here by accident, but now it was her duty to protect these animals and their home.

  She must leave without startling them into a stampede. Ace stood nearby, apparently willing to go, but she’d misread his equine mind before. If he put up a fuss, the herd might run from the valley—right into Slocum.

  Sam decided to lead Ace instead of mounting.

  “Ace?” She patted her leg to get his attention. The gelding stepped forward.

  His willingness tugged at Sam’s heart. Ace still had welts from the bites in the camp corral. He couldn’t want to return. Yet here, too, Ace was an outsider.

  Sam caught the reins and vowed to talk with Jake about horse behavior. She’d help Ace if she could.

  Sam moved as if she wore ankle weights. She had to go, but longed to stay. She stepped carefully and kept her eyes fixed on the passage ahead. That tunnel would lead her out of the valley. Ace lagged at the end of his reins as she led him.

  Ace stopped, and Sam heard the thudding of other hooves. She looked back in time to see the Phantom touch noses with the gelding.

  Entering the passage was easy, but the rock tunnel closed around her, dark and creepy. Sam blinked, wondering how Ace walked without hesitation. She could see nothing. It smelled damp, like a cave. She imagined bats sleeping just overhead and her boots slipped on the smooth stone underfoot.

  By the time Sam and Ace emerged from the tunnel, daybreak had turned the sky peachy-pink. The high deser
t lay silent and calm, but Sam wasn’t sure what to do.

  They stood atop a hill. Not a huge hill—it was about the size of three houses piled one on top of another—but it was steep and she could see no way through the sharp-edged shale covering it all the way down to level ground.

  There must be a way down. In last night’s darkness, the horses had jogged up with so little hesitation, they might have been traveling on a bridle path.

  Sam decided to trust Ace. She swung into the saddle, gave the horse his head, and prayed he wouldn’t fall.

  As Ace started down, Sam stared between his ears and swayed in the saddle, trying to ride loose. Even when Ace’s hoof made something skid away, starting an avalanche that sounded like a crash of dropped dishes, she didn’t tell Ace what to do.

  Dad had taught her horses were prey animals: Their brains believed that something fast and hungry was always lurking nearby. If a horse shied at a blowing branch, it was because a crouching cougar might have caused that movement. If a horse refused to cross a creek, it was because his legs moved slowly in water and something on the bank might notice and come after him.

  Horses knew pursuit could happen anytime. Speed was their secret weapon. They fought to stay on all four fleet feet. So Sam trusted Ace to pick his way down the hillside, safely.

  Just the same, Sam didn’t notice the approaching rider until she had reached level ground.

  “Samantha!” Linc Slocum’s bellow surprised two sage hens into flight.

  Sam ran a hand over her short hair. Its tousled appearance was a dead giveaway that she hadn’t just gone out for an early ride. Sleeping against a rock had left her hair mashed in some places, sticking out in wild swoops in others.

  Sam hoped her hat would cover the worst of it.

  “Where have you been?” Slocum yelled, when he was still a city block away.

  Sam cupped her hand at her ear, as if she couldn’t quite hear, giving herself time to think.

  “Where were you?” Slocum asked. “If Jake hadn’t said he knew where to find you”—Slocum smirked, glad to have proven Jake wrong—“your Dad would have sent out a search party.”

  Sam still didn’t answer, because she was distracted. With their horses just feet apart, Sam saw Slocum’s big palomino chew at his bit. Foam had gathered at the corners of his mouth, and he rolled his eyes.

  “This is pretty rough country for a newcomer,” Slocum added.

  “I was born here, Mr. Slocum.”

  “So, where have you been?” Slocum squinted past her, but Sam didn’t turn to see if the silver stallion had followed.

  If he had, she’d chase him away herself. The Phantom was one trophy Slocum would never have.

  “I woke up and decided to go for a ride,” she said. That much was true. She hadn’t mentioned where she’d awakened.

  Sam’s chin lifted as she waited.

  “No one came to wake me for the four o’clock shift,” Slocum said. He sized her up, then looked Ace over. “I think you were out looking for trouble.”

  “Sorry, sir.” Sam shrugged. “I wasn’t looking for anything but the way back to camp.”

  Slocum shook his head. “You expect me to believe that?”

  Why was Slocum so suspicious? Sam wondered. Unless he was stalking the stallion by night, he couldn’t know the Phantom had come to her. She wouldn’t give Slocum any reason to think such a thing.

  “I’m a lousy liar. Ask my dad.” Sam looked away from Slocum as another rider came toward them at an easy lope. “Or ask Jake.”

  Sam watched Jake approach. Her friend rode with a fluid grace she could only admire. If she rode for another fifty years, she wouldn’t look that natural on a horse.

  Jake’s mount slowed, stopped. Jake flashed her a look that said she had some explaining to do.

  “Morning, Sam,” he said. His voice was lazy.

  “She says she was just out for a ride,” Slocum sounded like a tattletale.

  “That’s pretty much what I figured,” Jake said.

  “The way she was speaking up for mustangs the other night, I figured she went looking for some,” Slocum said.

  Sam’s heart hammered so hard, she could feel it in her throat.

  Slocum winked at Jake. “Better bait than hay with sweet molasses, that’s how young girls work on horses.”

  “You sure that’s not with unicorns?” Jake asked without cracking a smile.

  “I hope Gram wasn’t worried,” Sam blurted.

  “No problem. Grace put some biscuits aside for your breakfast. I told Wyatt I’d get you a fresh horse and help you catch up with the herd.”

  Jake’s expression didn’t change. His high cheekbones and hard jaw might have been carved of redwood, but the heat in his eyes told Sam that Dad had taken lots of convincing.

  Slocum looked between the two as if he expected an argument. Sam knew that might come later, in private, but not in front of Slocum, who seemed to yearn for division between then.

  When nothing happened, Slocum gave a disgusted grunt.

  “I’m headed back. You two can ride in together.” Slocum jabbed ornate spurs at the palomino’s sides and galloped away.

  “No reason to run,” Jake yelled after Slocum, then mused to himself. “He’s just the sort who’ll cuss his horse if it steps in a ground squirrel hole.”

  Sam and Jake sat in silence, broken only by the creak of saddle leather.

  “Ever hear your dad call me a good tracker?” Jake asked, finally.

  He stared off at the horizon. Sam knew Jake wasn’t bragging, just hinting he knew the truth, and giving her a chance to confess.

  “He says you’re a world-class tracker,” Sam admitted.

  “I was ten when I trailed Smoke to a wild bunch.”

  “I know,” Sam said.

  “And you remember Buck Henry.”

  “Sure.” Sam swallowed hard.

  Buck Henry was a hermit who’d broken into Jake’s dad’s meat house and made it look like the work of a bear. Only Jake hadn’t been fooled. He’d trailed Henry to his mountain cabin and knocked on the door before the man could fry a single stolen steak.

  “I don’t suppose you know about the cattle thieves.” This time Jake gave her a quick, sideways glance.

  “Dad told me you were in Darton, after school one day,” Sam said, “and identified tire prints from a truck that had driven off with some of our stock. You got them arrested.” Sam urged Ace toward camp. “So, what’s your point, Jake?”

  She wouldn’t lie to him, but she wouldn’t give away the Phantom’s hiding place, either.

  “You think I don’t know what happened?” Jake asked.

  “I think that if you bothered to look at our tracks, you know exactly what happened,” Sam snapped.

  For Jake, it would be as if she’d left a note saying she’d galloped off with a wild horse.

  “You want to talk about it?” Jake pulled his fingers through his rein ends.

  “Not now,” Sam answered.

  “That’s what I figured, but there’s two things I need to tell you. First, if you’ve seen the Phantom, you know he has a scar on his neck. Slocum put it there.”

  Sam caught her breath and felt dizzy. “How?”

  “Slocum roped him from the back of a moving truck. The other end of the rope was tied to a barrel full of hardened cement.”

  Sam covered her lips to keep a gasp inside. She thought of her colt’s delicate neck, of the concrete snubbing him to a stop.

  “He couldn’t get away, but he tried, flinging himself against the rope, even though it was choking him.”

  Sam could almost hear the echo of the stallion’s terrified scream.

  “But Slocum got greedy. He left Phantom fighting the barrel, and went after an Appaloosa mare running with the herd. By the time he got back, the Phantom was gone.”

  Sam thanked the instinct that had forced her out of the valley and away from the wild horses, before Slocum found her.

  “Slocum asked me
to track the Phantom.” Jake gave a cold smile.

  “But you didn’t,” Sam said.

  “The blood drops would’ve made it easy and he offered me a couple hundred dollars,” Jake said. “But I was too busy with school and stuff like that.”

  Sam wanted to tell Jake she was proud of him, but her mind kept replaying the stallion’s screams. She rode beside Jake in silence, wondering what kind of monster would leave a wild horse alone and fighting, with every chance of breaking his neck.

  Only the plastic corral and Gram’s chuck wagon marked the place where camp had been. The herd of red and white cattle had moved on.

  Before they rode in, Sam pulled Ace to a stop. “You said you needed to tell me two things. What’s the other one?”

  “Just this: you got hurt before because I wasn’t watching you close enough.” Jake raised his voice, refusing to let Sam contradict him. “This time, I’m going to stick to you like glue, Samantha Anne. Slocum’s dead serious about catching that horse. He’ll do whatever it takes—including using you as bait. But I’ll do whatever I have to, to keep you safe.”

  Then Jake touched the brim of his hat and galloped away, before Sam had time to say a word.

  Chapter Seven

  JAKE HAD A LOT of nerve. He’d “stick to her like glue,” would he? In Sam’s opinion, she’d proven herself halfway to being a cowgirl.

  As she rode drag on Strawberry, Sam wondered why Jake still worried over a fall that had happened years ago. She thought about it because it had, after all, been her head Blackie had kicked as he escaped.

  You got hurt because I wasn’t watching you close enough, Jake had said. Had someone blamed Jake for her accident or was he blaming himself? Sam made a mental note to ask Gram.

  Sam glanced up toward the front of the herd, but couldn’t spot Jake’s black hat and paint cow pony. After the drive, she and Jake must talk this out. She wanted a friend, not a watchdog.

  They’d ridden for about an hour when Strawberry’s gait changed. Had she picked up a rock? Sam stopped, ground-tied the mare and patted down her leg to lift a rear hoof and examine it.