by Terri Farley
“I don’t think that’s likely. I’m afraid something else is going on,” Jen said. She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Take a look at this.”
Wrinkling her nose, Jen squatted and moved her index finger in a floating circle above the speckled brown body of a ground squirrel.
As if her mistress had reawakened her early terror, Silly squealed and yanked at the reins, pulling Jen over backward.
Jen rolled on her side and shoved to her feet.
“Just knock it off!” she shouted, giving the reins a sharp tug.
Surprised, Sam started to tell Jen that hurting Silly was no way to make her settle down. But Jen knew that.
“You’ve already proven you’re the dumbest horse around today,” Jen said as Silly’s hooves scrabbled and her forefeet lifted a few inches off the ground. “Do you know what she did?” Jen said over her shoulder. “We were within yards of Rose, and idiot girl here pinned her ears, lashed her tail, and started backing around like she wanted to kick!”
Maybe Silly was jealous, Sam thought, but she only said, “And Rose took off?”
“Of course she took off!”
While Jen continued to scold her mare, Sam looked away. Jen would never hurt Silly, but she might take out her embarrassment over her scream on the palomino.
“Do you really think that’s helping?” Sam asked. Then, she returned her gaze to the ground squirrel, but she heard Jen’s frustrated sigh.
What could kill both horses and ground squirrels? Sam wondered.
The skeleton was from a horse long dead, but the squirrel must have died recently. Very recently, she thought, or it would have been eaten by a coyote or other scavenger.
“I’m not bringing you next time. Do you hear?” Jen asked Silly.
Next time, she might know exactly where to find Golden Rose, Sam thought. Next time, the mare might be standing in a stall, just waiting for them to take her home.
“Jen,” Sam said, touching her friend’s arm. “I know where Golden Rose has been all this time.”
“Oh sure, where?” Jen asked skeptically.
“In the Battle-Born Saloon.” Sam gestured toward Nugget’s main street.
Jen’s pale eyebrows rose higher than the top of her glasses frames.
“Really,” Sam said. “I know where, and I know how she was kept there,” Sam said smugly.
Just then a rock tumbled down from the highest point in the ravine. When Sam looked up, she saw a rider silhouetted on the rim.
“And now,” she said on an indrawn breath, “I think I know by who.”
Chapter Eleven
Ryan Slocum rode tall in his English saddle. He swayed only slightly as Sky picked his way down through massive boulders that looked like a frozen avalanche.
“Are you all right?” he inquired. “I happened past and thought I heard a cry for help.”
Jen groaned with embarrassment, but Sam ignored her.
All of this weird stuff had an explanation. That explanation was Ryan Slocum. When the ghost town’s school bell had rung yesterday to distract her and Jen, Ryan had rung it, then taken some back way out. When the beautiful Kenworthy palomino had inexplicably hung around Nugget, she’d been kept captive by Ryan. And the booby traps—
Sam’s thoughts were stopped by a red wall of anger.
Although she was on foot and he soared above her on the dark brown gelding, Sam shook her fist at Ryan Slocum.
“It’s you!” Sam shouted. “Admit it!”
“I’m not certain I understand,” Ryan’s lilting English accent only made his fake puzzlement more irritating.
“Oh yes, you do!” Sam yelled.
Brightness broke through the clouds, and afternoon sun shone directly behind Ryan’s head. No matter how much she squinted, Sam couldn’t quite focus on his face because of the glare. It made her madder still.
“Sam,” Jen’s tone cautioned her friend not to go completely nuts.
It didn’t help.
“Don’t fall for this innocent act, Jen. I can’t believe how brazen he’s been!” Sam shook her head in amazement. “He’s living practically next door to you, right on the very same ranch. The Kenworthy ranch, from which the last of the Kenworthy palominos disappeared, and all along, he’s had her.”
Ryan sat his horse quietly, allowing Sam to hear the flaw in her argument.
“Uh, Sam?” Jen said quietly. “Rose has been missing two years. He’s only been here two months.”
“I don’t care,” Sam insisted. Thinking of the awful instant when she’d feared she’d fallen into a hundred rattlesnakes’ hibernation den, she didn’t back down. “You didn’t just happen by here yesterday, did you?” Sam demanded. “You’re the one who’s been keeping Jen’s horse in that makeshift stall.”
Ryan sighed. “Actually, I thought that for an improvised pen, it was rather clever.”
He’d admitted it.
Sam whirled to look at Jen. Her friend’s studious expression was better suited to the mysteries of mathematics than Ryan’s revelation. True to his Slocum bloodlines, he was obviously an unscrupulous jerk.
In the silence that followed Ryan’s admission, Ace’s lonely nicker rang out from down below. With a cautious glance at Jen, Silly answered. Her call echoed from side to side in the ravine.
“In the old days, they used to hang horse thieves,” Sam snapped.
Ryan gave her the kind of half smile you’d give an amusing child.
“Shall we continue our discussion down below?” Ryan formed it as a question, but he was already leading the way.
Sam huffed. She would have stomped, too, but she didn’t want to fall. She took a last look at the horse skull and ground squirrel corpse and wondered how they fit into all this.
Ace trotted around the corner of the schoolhouse to greet Silly.
So much for ground-tying, Sam thought. But she couldn’t blame Ace. A lot of strange stuff was going on and when Silly called, he’d acted like the social animal he was.
She didn’t scold him; just let him touch noses with Silly, then snagged his reins and followed the others back to Nugget’s main street.
Once they were down, Sam walked right past Ryan. She couldn’t help but notice that Jen lagged behind, nearer Ryan than she was to her best friend.
You’ll see, Sam thought. Ryan Slocum may be cute, but he’s a big fat liar.
Sam stood beside Ace. She stroked his neck as she watched slimy Ryan Slocum try to wriggle out of a full confession.
“Surely you aren’t saying I’ve rustled your horse?” Ryan nodded toward Silly.
“Not that palomino,” Sam snapped. “The other one. Golden Rose.”
Again, Sam glanced toward Jen and waited for backup.
Jen tidied a few tendrils of her blond hair, tucking them back into her braids. She straightened her pink parka and wet her lips.
“I really have no idea what’s come over her,” Jen said in a bewildered voice.
Her. Her who?
Jen couldn’t be apologizing to Ryan for her, but it sounded as if that’s exactly what she was doing. So, Sam stood up for herself.
“All that’s ‘come over’ me,” Sam said, “is the realization that he’s been keeping Golden Rose in a stall in the Battle-Born Saloon, and he booby-trapped the entrance so that I fell.”
For the first time, Sam glanced down at the leg that had been quietly aching.
“He made me rip my newest boot-cut jeans, and I could have broken my leg, or my neck or…” Sam ran out of breath before she could finish.
Apparently all the facts she’d thrown at him convinced Ryan to surrender.
“The palomino mare is yours? The dark-skinned one that’s been hanging about here?”
Jen’s mouth was agape.
Why am I doing all the arguing here? Sam wondered. And why is Jen swallowing Ryan Slocum’s lies?
Ace faced Sam, sending her equine ESP with his intelligent, wide-set eyes. If she hadn’t been so angry, Sam would have laughed. Ac
e’s expression urged Sam to keep after the unashamed horse thief.
“Don’t give me that, Ryan Slocum,” Sam reprimanded him. “Rose wasn’t ‘hanging about.’ You kept her in that stall.”
“I thought she was a mustang,” he said, but Sam noticed he studied his rein hand as he said it. “I admit she seemed an awfully tractable wild horse.”
“And you dug that pit and—”
“I wasn’t trying to steal her.” Ryan lifted his chin, then flushed to the roots of his shining coffee-brown hair. “Honestly.”
“Maybe you weren’t certain she belonged to someone,” Sam said. “But I bet you suspected.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jen rushed in.
“Doesn’t matter?” Sam yelped.
“I just want her back, so I can give her to my dad.” Jen sounded as if she might cry. Sam looked away.
The winter sun that had shone so brightly above the rim of the ravine looked cold and flat as an old dime. It was slipping down toward the horizon. As it did, Nugget fell into shadows and Sam could have sworn the temperature dropped ten degrees.
“Jen, we’d better get going,” Sam told her.
“Yeah,” Jen said, but she didn’t mount up.
“Briefly, I’ll tell you how it came about,” Ryan said. “Just after I arrived, I rode up here, exploring, and glimpsed the most exquisite palomino. She was almost Arabic in her lines.” Ryan paused when Jen nodded in recognition. “At first, it was difficult to get near her. She was running with another horse, a big piebald, probably a cold-blood, judging by her feathers.” Ryan gestured in the direction of his mount’s hooves. “And the piebald was quite wild.”
A tingling sensation danced down Sam’s forearms. She realized she was clutching one of her saddle strings as if it was the only thing keeping her from falling to her knees. She was getting a bad feeling from Ryan’s description, but she had to be sure.
“Piebald?” she asked.
Absorbed by Ryan’s story, Jen whisked Sam’s question aside with a wave of her hand and muttered, “Pinto or paint, you know.”
Sam’s fingers went numb as she held on even tighter.
“Until two weeks ago, they stayed together. Chums, you know, and then one day, I rode up here to find she hadn’t eaten all the feed I’d left. And she was alone.”
As Ryan went on, Sam felt dizzy.
Golden Rose had been running with the big paint mare who’d become the Phantom’s lead mare. Or had she?
The timing was right, but a lead mare was skilled at managing the herd.
Sam shook her head. Whatever her status in the Phantom’s band, the danger remained. In all the months she’d been watching mustangs, Sam had only seen one free-roaming pinto mare with feathers like a draft horse.
And that mare was dead.
Sam kept her fears to herself as she and Jen rode toward home.
Even though she’d told Jen about the dead mustang, she’d been too concerned with her excitement over Golden Rose to do more than say it was too bad. Sam didn’t want to crush her friend’s excitement, or worry her unnecessarily. Tonight, Brynna might tell her how the big paint had died. If it was something contagious, then it would be soon enough to tell Jen.
When Jen twisted in her saddle to look back over her shoulder for about the hundredth time, Sam couldn’t helping looking, too. Ryan had told them that Golden Rose usually returned to Nugget at sundown, for her dinner.
My father rarely tracks my comings and goings, he’d said, So I’ll wait for her and make sure the bars are up on the stall, so that you can return tomorrow. If you like, I’ll try to help you halter her and lead her home.
As if she could read Sam’s thoughts, Jen said, “Ryan’s being pretty nice about this, under the circumstances.”
Sam couldn’t believe Jen’s generosity. “Under the circumstances, I think you’re being pretty nice. Your family has been searching for that horse and he’s kept her from you. Whether he knew she was yours or not, he’s a horseman, Jen. He had to know she belonged to someone.”
Jen shrugged. “How could he tell? Are you positive you could?”
When Jen put it that way, Sam couldn’t swear she’d be able to tell. But she still didn’t trust Ryan.
“You have to admit the whole thing is pretty weird,” Sam insisted.
Jen’s mouth curved in a sad sort of smile. “You know what I think? He’s been his mother’s perfect little English gentleman for years. Now, he’s in the Wild West. So, he did something kind of naughty, and he got caught.”
What Jen said was possible, but Sam didn’t agree.
Ears flicking sideways toward Lost Canyon, Ace shied. Inadvertently, Sam’s legs tightened and Ace lunged forward. Silly joined him, and for a couple seconds, the horses moved with choppy, irregular strides.
Both Jen and Sam looked around. In this place of mirages and lost horses, anything was possible. Suddenly, they saw what the horses had sensed.
Hooves rang like slaps against the playa, as two horses exploded out of Lost Canyon. Cream and dusty brick-colored in the dusky light, they might have been primitive figures daubed on cave walls.
“It’s her!” Jen gasped.
“With the Phantom.”
At first, Sam thought the stallion was driving the mare ruthlessly. His ears lay flat against his lowered head as he sped after her. But then the golden mare gave a playful buck. With ears pricked forward, she ran around a black boulder. Legs leaning in imitation of hers, the Phantom followed. Speed building, their legs slid to the side, but they weren’t falling, just taking their zigzag patterns in another direction.
Suddenly, the palomino stopped. So did the Phantom, keeping a few yards between then. Both horses were breathing hard. Their ribs worked in and out as they watched each other.
Tail fanned, knees lifting, the mare pranced a few steps away, then turned her head to look back at him. With a snort, she stopped again, posed, and caught her breath.
The stallion struck out a slim, silver foreleg, then stood waiting for the palomino’s next move.
She swished her tail and neighed, daring him to follow, giving him a head start before she took a single step.
Ears flat, eyes forward, he was after her. His mane and tail streamed like white silk.
The mare lunged up and over, hurdling nothing but air. She touched down to the desert floor in a clatter. Her back flattened until it seemed her belly must be skimming the white alkali dust as she galloped back toward Nugget.
They’d given no sign they saw the riders. For them, civilization didn’t exist.
“Wow,” Sam breathed.
Once the horses were just a blur in the distance, she turned toward Jen. Her friend wore a strained smile. Sam thought she knew why. Jen wanted the mare and so, it appeared, did the Phantom.
“I hope she’s having a good time,” Jen said. “But she’s not going to be the mate of a wild bronc, even if he is your favorite horse in the world.” Jen urged Silly into a jog, then looked at Sam. “I hope that’s okay with you.”
“It’s fine with me,” Sam said. She stared toward home through the frame of Ace’s ears. “But you might have trouble convincing them.”
Chapter Twelve
Once Jen turned off toward Gold Dust Ranch, Sam’s mind was filled with the Phantom. Her wonderful, brave, and beautiful stallion was safe and happy.
Whether Jen liked it or not, that was all that mattered to Sam.
“I am worried about the rest of the herd,” Sam told Ace as they jogged the last mile to River Bend.
The last time the Phantom had been without a lead mare, he’d taken over all her duties himself. He’d looked ragged and exhausted, but he’d kept his herd safe. So where were they now?
Sam hadn’t come up with any ideas by the time she arrived home. And then she saw Brynna, leaning her chin on crossed arms as she watched the horses in the ten-acre pasture. Brynna knew more about mustangs than just about anyone.
At the sound of Ace clopping across th
e bridge, Brynna turned. As she did, her red ponytail whirled. In jeans and a bright blue sweatshirt, Brynna should have looked cute, for a stepmother. Instead, she looked troubled.
“I’m glad to see you,” Brynna called to Sam.
“You are?” Sam said. She drew rein so that Brynna could fall into step beside Ace.
“Can I talk with you while you rub him down?” Brynna asked.
“Sure,” Sam said, though Brynna’s tone made her wary. “You can go first.”
Brynna’s face brightened, but she didn’t rush into a conversation.
Inside the barn, she watched as Sam stripped off Ace’s tack and gave him a good rubdown, trying to dry his coat completely.
“You could be a Popsicle pony if it gets as cold tonight as it did last night,” Sam told Ace.
Though they hadn’t crossed much snow, Sam checked Ace’s feet for ice balls. While she did, Brynna forked hay for the gelding.
“Thanks,” Sam said. “Dad always feeds lots of hay in the winter.”
Brynna’s sigh moved her whole body. Sam didn’t get it. It wasn’t as if she’d said something mean.
“Yep,” Brynna said. “That’s what they need to keep going when it’s cold.” She leaned the pitchfork against the wall, then rubbed her hands together briskly to warm them. “Do you pack any of that white grease in his hooves when it’s snowy?”
“Sure. It’s in the tack room if you need it,” Sam said, giving Ace a pat.
Brynna’s hands perched on her hips and she shook her head. “I guess there’s not much you can learn from me.”
Sam laughed, then realized Brynna was serious.
“Your gram clearly doesn’t need my help with cooking,” Brynna began.
“Gram doesn’t need anyone’s help cooking,” Sam said. “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want it sometimes.”
“And she keeps the books, and Wyatt schedules chores for the hands….”
Sam thought of listing things she did for Gram, like grating cheese and coring apples, but Brynna was still talking. As she did, Sam figured out that Brynna hadn’t stayed long at work today. Instead, she’d been hanging around the ranch, trying to figure out where she fit in. And she still hadn’t come up with an answer.
