by Terri Farley
“You might like being with Jinx and Teddy Bear,” Sam told Sunny. Totally unaware of Sam’s melancholy, Tempest nuzzled her neck with tickling whiskers. “And I’ll stay with your silly girl.”
Sam wrapped her arms around the little buckskin’s neck, buried her face against her black mane, and breathed in its leather and straw sweetness. Though Dark Sunshine struggled against the hug, Sam gave her one more squeeze.
“Tempest will be safe with me,” Sam promised, and then she let Sunny pull away.
On Monday afternoon, Sam thought she was probably seeing things.
It would make sense that she was having hallucinations. No one on River Bend Ranch had been able to sleep Sunday night, after Dark Sunshine had been taken away and Tempest had realized she was truly alone.
Sam had fought dozing off in class all day. She’d longed to, but it was a good thing she hadn’t. Every teacher seemed determined to jam-pack the last few days of class before winter break with all the work that hadn’t been accomplished the rest of the semester.
After school, Sam had trudged up the steps and onto the school bus, but the driver had turned up the heater as they’d driven along, and Sam had finally fallen asleep.
Slumped against the shoulder of her best friend Jennifer Kenworthy, Sam had only just started awake when the bus driver put on the loud air brake and jerked to a halt at Jen and Sam’s stop.
“C’mon, sleepyhead,” Jen had said, shrugging her shoulder under Sam’s ear.
“Huh?” Sam had licked her lips and looked around the bus. Several people seemed to be staring at her. “Did I just yell? Is that why everyone’s staring at me?”
“Yeah,” Jen said, lifting Sam’s backpack along with her own, “but I think it was the drooling that really caught their interest.”
“You’re awful,” Sam muttered. She kept her eyes downcast as she followed right behind Jen, practically stepping on her heels.
“Me?” Jen said. “I wasn’t the one snoring.”
“Really?” Sam asked, horrified, as she hopped off the last step and watched the yellow bus depart.
“No, not really. Here, take this,” Jen said. She helped Sam shrug into her backpack, then started walking. “And hey,” she said, looking over her shoulder and motioning Sam to catch up, “just before you fell asleep, I asked you to go ride with me this afternoon and you made some excuse involving Kit Ely.” Jen waggled her white-blond eyebrows suspiciously. “It got kind of garbled because you were babbling against my sweater.”
Sam blinked, stared at the range spreading away from them, then hefted her backpack higher and hurried after Jen.
“Oh, yeah! Let’s ride tomorrow. Because, since Kit is a Darton High graduate and he nearly made it to the National Finals Rodeo, Mr. Blair thinks I should interview him. I already called from Journalism class and I’m going to ride over there this afternoon.”
Jen gave a breathy imitation of a wolf whistle, then added, “Cool! And are you taking pictures, too?”
“You have a boyfriend—”
“Just looking, Samantha—”
“—and though Kit Ely is cute—”
“Guys over twenty are handsome, attractive, or maybe even fine-looking, but not cute,” Jen corrected.
“That’s my point,” Sam said, but a yawn erased most of her sarcasm. “Kit’s twenty-five or twenty-seven, something like that, and he’s way too old for you.”
“Uh-huh, whatever, as long as he still has all of his teeth.” Jen pretended to brush away Sam’s advice.
Laughing, they’d nearly reached the spot where Jen cut left toward Gold Dust Ranch and Sam walked on to River Bend, when two things happened at once.
The powder-blue Mercedes driven by Mrs. Coley to take Rachel Slocum back and forth to school passed them and Rachel ducked out of sight. Next, a mechanical racket roared across the range.
Turning practically in a circle to find the source of the sound, Sam asked, “Am I hallucinating?”
“Doubtful,” Jen said. Raising the frames of her glasses by their hinges and repositioning them, she gazed after the Mercedes. “I saw Rachel playing duck-duck-goose, plus I hear that noise. And, though I’ve read of mass hysteria with shared hallucinations, they occurred during the Middle Ages and were attributed to a mold peculiar to rye bread. Still, we did both eat in the cafeteria—”
“Shut up,” Sam said, grabbing her friend’s arm. “Look!”
A black helicopter bobbed up over the ridge to their right, bringing with it a hurricane of dust. Jen cupped her hands over her glasses. Sam held down her wind-crazed hair and tried to keep the blowing dirt out of her eyes, nose, and mouth.
The chopper was so low to the ground, Sam could see two men in the cockpit. The pilot wore mirrored sunglasses and the man beside him pointed excitedly, stabbing his index finger downward, straight at Jen and Sam.
Chapter Six
Sam had never studied the skilike things—skids, she thought they were called—that acted as helicopters’ feet, but when this one banked away from her and Jen, and swung toward War Drum Flats, she got a closeup view. Too close.
Jen grabbed Sam in a hug.
“What—?” Sam began.
“I-i-if I can’t hang on to someone, I’ll be screaming like a k-kindergartner, so just humor me, okay?”
“Sure,” Sam said. She’d rarely seen Jen frightened. Jen was so logical and levelheaded, Sam wondered if it was a mistake that she wasn’t scared, too. A few seconds later, when Jen’s trembling ended, Sam said, “Crazy, huh?”
Jen shook like a wet dog. Then she flipped her white-blond braids back over her shoulders and asked, “Do you know what that was?”
“A helicopter flying for BLM?”
“No,” Jen said adamantly.
“I’m pretty sure it was,” Sam said gently. “The guy sitting next to the pilot was Norman White.”
Sam could practically see her friend’s thoughts come together. Jen blinked owlishly, then said, “That may be, but the insignia on the helicopter says it’s part of the predator and rodent control unit, and what scared me is—well, there are lots of rumors….” Jen looked up and wrapped her arms around her ribs, as if she were trying to hide herself. “At least I hope they’re rumors—about them spraying poison and using automatic weapons.”
Sam felt a lurch of alarm, then told herself she shouldn’t give in to her friend’s fears. It was her turn to be the sensible one. She tried a joke.
“Regardless of how some senior boys act, we don’t look like rodents,” Sam teased. “Probably not predators, either. Besides, you’re almost home.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll hustle toward River Bend, but from what I know about Norman White, I think I’ll be safe. He’s been a total jerk to Brynna and will be even worse to the wild horses, but he’s also a by-the-book bureaucrat. He’d faint if he sprayed two innocent high school girls with—”
“Malathion?” Jen suggested.
“Right,” Sam said, guessing Jen had named some kind of poison.
“Okay,” Jen said, and Sam’s common sense had erased the quaver in her voice.
Then, winter sun glaring on the helicopter’s rotor blades made both girls squint after it.
“He’s headed into Lost Canyon,” Jen said.
First War Drum Flats and now Lost Canyon, Sam thought. Both areas had wild horse watering holes.
“He’s coming up. Wait, no, he’s dropping back down,” Jen said, standing on her toes as the helicopter vanished. “Probably to check out Arroyo Azul.”
Sam pictured the helicopter flying between the adobe-colored cliffs, following the turquoise stream twisting below. It was the first place she’d ridden the Phantom. The idea of the helicopter invading that place made her sick.
But wild horses were fast and elusive. She’d seen them outsmart humans many times, starting with the day she’d returned home from San Francisco.
She’d been riding with Dad in his old blue truck when a helicopter appear
ed, herding a band of wild horses. That day she’d felt herself running with the mustangs, feeling their fear, their determination to escape, and their excitement as they evaded capture.
That day, she hadn’t known the names War Drum Flats, Lost Canyon, or Arroyo Azul. Now she did. Clearly she wasn’t the only one. This helicopter wasn’t flying random patterns.
“They’re after mustangs,” Sam said, feeling defeated.
“Not in that helicopter,” Jen insisted.
“I hope you’re right,” Sam said.
Jen stopped at the path she’d follow to her house at Gold Dust Ranch. Before she said good-bye, Jen promised to call Sam if she discovered what was up with Rachel. In turn, Sam vowed to hurry home just in case the black helicopter really was spraying something toxic over the range.
True to her word, Sam took long steps and set her shoulders against the straps of her backpack as if she were a plow horse—not because she was afraid, but because she couldn’t wait to talk to Brynna.
Sam scanned the winter range and shivered. Patches of snow showed in the shade of boulders. Clumps of sagebrush looked more gray than green. Though high desert plants were hardy, below-freezing temperatures tested them every night.
Winter was here. Sam missed the Phantom, but she hoped he was safely tucked away in his secret valley for the winter.
Glancing up, she saw that the ice-blue sky was empty. She didn’t hear the helicopter, either.
Maybe Norman White had just been surveying the territory he was taking over, Sam thought. Or maybe the predator and rodent control guy was a friend, taking him for a ride.
Yeah, right, Sam thought.
Just two days ago, she’d heard Norman call the Phantom a troublemaker. Then he’d declared that the gray stallion should be taken off the range. As that conversation resurfaced in her mind, Sam stopped walking.
There was a flaw in her plan to use her college money to pay the Phantom’s adoption fee.
Norman White had said the Phantom was feral, not wild, and he said BLM should hold the Forsters responsible for trespass fees that had been adding up over the years the stallion had roamed public lands.
Sam sucked in a breath of chilly air and resumed walking. There was no way Dad would let her take that much money from her college account. After all, she’d be graduating in two and a half years.
Whup-whup-whup.
The chopper had not gone home and landed. Sam heard it again.
The machine had managed to navigate the eastern canyons, and now it was circling back from the direction of Deerpath Ranch.
“No!” Sam shouted.
Two horses galloped below the helicopter. They crashed through the sagebrush side by side, veering around slippery snow spots, jumping thorny brush, and swerving around boulders.
A bay and a chestnut. Not from the Phantom’s herd, but they looked familiar. Why did she recognize the horses?
The bachelors! When New Moon, the Phantom’s midnight-black son had been evicted from his father’s herd, he’d found companionship and safety with these two young stallions.
Yellow Tail and Spike, Mrs. Coley had called them, and though it had been a long time since Sam had seen Spike—a bay whose black mane stuck straight up—she’d seen Yellow Tail last fall.
Sam had a quick impression that Spike looked more filled out and male, but Yellow Tail had turned slim and graceful. His flaxen mane and tail rippled like silk. His coat was the color of gold in the heart of a flame.
Last year he’d looked pretty ragged from watching out for his two mares. He’d challenged the Phantom for a drinking place at the river and they’d fought. The battle had been confined to kicks until the stronger and more experienced Phantom had feinted a bite at Yellow Tail’s foreleg and the golden stallion had tripped.
Sam couldn’t imagine the chestnut confronting the Phantom now. Then the horses did something that intensified Sam’s confusion.
With the helicopter right behind them, why were the young stallions slowing from a gallop to a lope? Why, with heads high and froth blowing from open mouths, were they slackening their pace even more, lifting their knees in a nervous trot?
Because the helicopter was herding them toward the highway, Sam realized. The horses knew that danger screamed by on that asphalt river and they didn’t dare cross it.
Or maybe, Sam thought as she noticed the horses’ alert expressions, Yellow Tail and Spike had seen her and judged her as a nearer and more dangerous threat. Should she hide?
She was about to, when the two stallions displayed their strategy for escape. They turned sharply right, accelerated into a swift run, then skidded down the bank of the La Charla River.
A flock of wild geese burst up from the river. Disturbed by the stallions, the black-and-gray geese spread their wide wings and gave a few honks. Then they coasted on air currents above the water before climbing and banking away from the helicopter, making the manmade flyer look clumsy by comparison.
Running toward the river with her backpack slamming against her spine, Sam listened past her own panting. She didn’t hear a splash or the clash of hooves on river rocks, not even the lash of willow branches on sweaty horsehide. She heard nothing but the hovering helicopter.
If the stallions headed upstream and veered west toward Aspen Creek, they could wend through white-barked trees and frosty black boulders. They’d be hard to pick out against that background, wouldn’t they?
And if they traveled downstream…
Sam sawed her teeth against her lip, hoping they wouldn’t. There’d be little camouflage and they’d end up crossing the highway, after all, presenting themselves right into the sight of the men above.
But wait, Sam thought. She could guess where the horses were going because she knew this land. Norman White didn’t. To him, the creeks and gullies were lines on a map.
The helicopter floated above the river for a few minutes, then lifted higher and hovered. At last, it soared higher yet, drifted southwest, then flew toward Willow Springs Wild Horse Center.
Sam sighed in relief. For now, the two young stallions were safe.
“Brynna!” Sam yelled as she collapsed into a kitchen chair. “Gram?”
Sam heard only the grandfather clock’s pendulum. Then there was a thump, followed by soft footsteps. The swinging door between the living room and kitchen opened. Brynna, in stockinged feet but otherwise dressed just as she’d been last night at dinner, wandered into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Sam apologized. “Were you napping?”
Brynna stared at Sam with a droopy smile. Then her eyelids fluttered closed.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Sam said. She pushed out of her chair so quickly, its legs squeaked on the kitchen floor.
Just last week, Brynna had actually fallen asleep standing up. Outside.
That time, Dad had caught her, but she and Brynna were almost the same size, and Sam wasn’t sure she could.
“Try this,” Sam offered, slipping a chair behind Brynna.
“I’m fine. Just sleepy,” her stepmother insisted, but she sat. Her eyes were open and alert as she tightened the holder around her low ponytail and asked, “Was I dreaming or did I really hear a helicopter?”
“I wish you’d been dreaming, but you weren’t,” Sam said, and then she told Brynna what she’d seen.
Brynna shook her head vigorously. “I don’t see how he could have received clearance for a gather yet. Not that it’s my job anymore, but I’m calling my boss—my old boss,” she amended, “in Reno to double-check.”
“Good,” Sam said.
“It’s interesting that you saw Yellow Tail with his bachelor buddy,” Brynna said.
“What do you think happened to his mares?” Sam asked.
Brynna gave an unconcerned shrug. “Few wild stallions under five years old actually win mares. They find them wandering and then a more mature stallion usually steals them. The Phantom is a rare exception.”
“What about New Moon?”
Sam asked. “The last time I saw him he had two mares—a red bay and a bald-faced mare with a foal.”
Sam didn’t say she’d mentally named the foal Night the time she’d spotted the wild bunch up by Cowkiller Caldera.
“He might be like his daddy and hang on to them,” Brynna said, but a shadow crossed her face.
Was Brynna thinking about Norman’s plan to remove half the wild horses from the range?
“He wouldn’t take New Moon and the Phantom, would he?” Sam felt dizzy with dismay, and it only got worse when Brynna didn’t answer.
If the Phantom and New Moon were rounded up, they’d probably be gelded, to make them easier to handle and more likely to find adoptive homes.
If Night was brought in, too, and the herds of both stallions were dispersed to adopters all over the country—and that was the best she could hope for, Sam realized—the bloodlines of the legendary Phantom Stallion would hit a dead end.
It would be as if the silver mustang had never existed.
Chapter Seven
“Don’t be surprised if it looks like the North Pole in there,” Jake told Sam as she rode into the ranch yard at the Three Ponies Ranch an hour later.
“It’s cold?” Sam guessed as she dismounted, casting a glance at smoke curling from the ranch house chimney.
“No, decorations. For Kit,” Jake said. “I’ll take Ace. You go on into Santa’s workshop and do your interview.”
“Okay,” Sam said. She didn’t trust Ace to many people, but Jake could take better care of her bay gelding than she could.
She started for the stone ranch house, then took a quick look back over her shoulder.
Jake had put a weird emphasis on that last word, but why? He’d sometimes implied he thought it was cool that she was on the Darton Dialogue staff. He’d even hinted that she’d done a good job on a locker vandalism story. So he wasn’t putting her down.
