by Terri Farley
Today, Gram drove right on through Alkali.
“I thought about stopping for a soda,” Gram said, nodding at the diner, “but we’ll get lunch at the mall.”
“Great,” Sam said, then turned on the car radio. One thing you could say for Gram’s old Buick: Its antenna picked up every radio station for hundreds of miles around.
Sam found herself humming along with the oldies station Gram favored. Even if funds were short, and they were, Sam liked shopping. She’d been in sixth grade last time she’d gone to the mall in Darton. From what she’d heard, it had grown.
“Samantha?”
Sam turned. When Gram kept her eyes on the road, Sam knew it was a bad sign.
“I won’t lock you in your room at night, but I’m serious about staying away from that stallion. If I catch you sneaking out, you’ll be grounded.” Gram looked at her then. “I mean that literally. There’ll be no riding until you’ve learned your lesson.”
What could she do? Sam looked down and saw her hands shaking in her lap. She put them out of sight, tucking her fingers between her thighs and the car upholstery.
Gram was making her choose between Ace and the Phantom. It wasn’t fair. She couldn’t stand even the idea of giving up her long daily rides on Ace, but it would break her heart if she never saw the Phantom again.
Chapter Two
CRANE CROSSING WAS a fine mall. It wasn’t San Francisco, but Sam had never adored sidestreet specialty shops the way Aunt Sue did. Crane Crossing was more her style. It had a big department store where Sam got a backpack, jeans, socks, Darton High’s green-and-gold gym clothes, and a skirt Gram insisted on buying. The mall’s three casual-wear stores were hard to tell apart, but Sam bought two shirts in one and a blouse to match the skirt in another.
The worst part had been looking at her goofy hair in the bright fluorescent lighting that spotlighted the dressing room mirrors. Sam decided she could plead temporary insanity for cutting it to look older right before she returned to the ranch, but it was growing out weird. She needed professional help, but she couldn’t ask Gram to pay for a haircut when it was a stretch to afford clothes.
The best feature of the mall was a Western wear and tack store called Tully’s. There, Sam saw a split-ear headstall that was a work of art. With delicate care, Sam touched a flurry of feathers hand-tooled on smooth, mushroom-colored leather. How beautiful it would look on Jake’s black mare, Witch.
If a good fairy flew down and sprinkled her with silver dollars, she’d buy it. Jake’s birthday was October first.
Gram came up behind her.
“Gracious, that’s more than we spend on groceries in a month,” Gram tsked.
Sam almost snapped that not everything was about money. She was glad she hadn’t when Gram added, “Wouldn’t Ace step proud wearing that on his pretty head?”
Sam could not guess what Gram would do or say next. Frustration made Sam decide that adults—Dad and Gram included—were more unpredictable than horses.
At a table in the mall’s food court, Gram chowed down a huge plate of Chinese food but didn’t show a flicker of excitement when Sam pointed out Crane Crossing’s multiplex theater and suggested they go to a movie.
“Maybe next time,” Gram had said as they loaded their purchases into the Buick’s backseat, but Sam didn’t have high hopes.
The television in the ranch house living room was ten years old. Gram and Dad didn’t own a VCR. Dad watched the news every night, but rarely anything else. She knew Dad did tiring, physical labor each day, but Sam couldn’t imagine going up to bed at eight o’clock if you weren’t sick. And all Gram did after dinner was read novels and piece together quilts.
They were driving back toward the ranch, when Sam shivered. Something told her the Phantom was nearby. Sam studied every bush moving in the breeze and every dark rock in the distance.
But it was Gram who spotted the Phantom first.
War Drum Flats spread out like a beige tablecloth below them. From the road, Sam saw a basin scooped from the sagebrush and piñon landscape. Gram glanced at where the brush faded to dusty green and gave way to a trampled-bare area around a pond. A dozen thirsty horses jostled for room at the water’s edge.
“That’s a fine-looking band of mustangs,” Gram said. Then she added, “Oh look, there on the ridge.”
Sam sucked in a breath, following Gram’s gesture. Sam stared past the pond and up the hillside. On a ridge marked by wind-twisted pine trees, the silver stallion stood guard.
From here, he was just a proud outline against the blue summer sky, but Sam recognized her horse. The pine ridge looked so high, windy and far away, Sam wasn’t sure the drinking band and stallion were together.
Gram swerved to the roadside. She shut off the engine, opened her car’s glove compartment, and withdrew a pair of binoculars.
Distance made him no more than a sparkling toy, but Sam knew the Phantom by his kingly stance. She could hardly believe Gram recognized him.
“Oh my, it’s him, isn’t it? Your little lost colt, all grown up.” Gram’s voice held a mixture of awe and disappointment.
Had she been hoping Sam would really give in to that old idea of out of sight, out of mind?
Gram sat up straighter and angled the binoculars down. Sam figured Gram was studying the mares and foals. Though they looked like miniatures from here, Sam recognized two distinctive blood bays and a mouse-colored horse she’d noticed in the Phantom’s band before.
“And who’s this, I wonder?” Gram asked.
At Sam’s mew of frustration, Gram passed her the binoculars.
“I’ve never been able to focus these silly things,” Sam muttered.
“Take your time,” Gram said.
Easy to say. Mustangs could vanish as you stared right at them. It had happened three times with the Phantom.
“Oh, come on,” Sam growled at the binoculars. She pressed them too hard against her eye sockets, then held them too far back, so her eyelashes ticked across the eyepieces.
This was important. Who’s this? Gram had asked and her voice had sounded suspicious.
The first horse to come into focus had tiger-striped front legs.
“Yeah.” Sam sighed. She remembered the dun with the prehistoric markings from her visit to the Phantom’s secret canyon.
The mare stared across the pond and shook her ears. The other horses moved into a tighter bunch around her, then fell back as she trotted around the end of the pond. She must be the herd’s lead mare, Sam thought.
Then, the mare proved it. She flattened her ears, bared her teeth, and made a threatening run at an intruder.
“The hammer head!”
“The what?” Gram’s dubious voice told Sam she’d spoken aloud.
“That other horse.” Without lowering the binoculars, Sam pointed at the heavy-headed stallion. “I’ve seen him before.”
She didn’t dare say she’d seen him at midnight the night before on River Bend Ranch, but she was almost sure he was the same horse.
His big head, long mane, and stocky conformation were unusual. By daylight, she could see he was the color of jeans that had been washed about a million times. A blue roan.
“Whoever he is,” Sam said, “he thinks he’s pretty hot stuff.”
The stallion pranced toward the lead mare as if she should bow down and kiss his hooves. The tiger dun wasn’t impressed.
As the mare attacked, the stallion dodged. He moved like a cutting horse, removing the troublesome mare from the herd as he headed toward the other mares and foals who stood watching, wide-eyed.
Suddenly, he was distracted. Sam had to hunt with the binoculars to see what had made the blue roan swing away from the mares.
The Phantom trotted off the ridge and down a hidden path. He seemed to float toward the herd. Head tilted to one side, tail swishing, he looked only curious. Sam guessed he didn’t see the other stallion as a threat.
Full of confidence, the blue bowed his head in a move th
at puffed up his already thick neck. He pawed the sand, glanced back at the watching mares, then strutted a few steps like a bad boy showing off for the girls. Then he charged.
The Phantom stepped aside. The blue stumbled in surprise, but he didn’t fall—just ran a few steps and swung back around to face the silver stallion.
A breeze caught the Phantom’s white silk mane and it fluttered around him. The blue’s head bobbed in three fierce nods, then he launched a second attack. Once more, the Phantom stepped aside, but when the heavy horse gathered for a third try, the Phantom lost patience.
His ears flicked back and he planted each hoof with determination.
The blue stallion stopped. He lowered his head, and swung it just above the dust. The Phantom had treated him like an unruly youngster, and the blue roan looked ashamed. Finally, without another glance toward the mares, he sprinted away.
Sam saw him go over a hill. She waited. The disgraced stallion had to emerge on the other side, didn’t he?
“They vanish just like that,” Gram said, snapping her fingers. “Don’t they?”
When the blue roan still didn’t appear, Sam felt suddenly hot and sweaty. The backs of her legs stuck to the Buick’s upholstery.
She’d wanted the Phantom to win, but it hadn’t been a fight. More of a scolding. Sam remembered the blue roan’s huge hooves slamming the fence in a burst of temper and wished he hadn’t lost to the Phantom so completely. What if the blue roan’s pride was hurt? Would he return for a rematch?
Sam shivered, though the August heat rippled through the open car window.
The Phantom’s band milled around the pond as if nothing had happened, but the stallion didn’t return to the ridge.
“I wonder if that was a bachelor stallion, looking to steal mares,” Gram mused, “or just a young horse trying out his moves.”
“He looked serious, but the Phantom didn’t,” Sam said.
“The Phantom. Why do you call him that, even though you, Jake, and Wyatt all think he’s Blackie?”
“He doesn’t look like ‘Blackie’ anymore.”
“That’s true, but if he was your colt, he’s not the Phantom.”
Chills scurried down Sam’s arms. Gram couldn’t believe in the legendary white stallion, could she? He was imaginary. When cowboys told ghost stories around the campfire, they wove tales about a pale spirit horse that melted through fences. He floated above the ground, outrunning any mortal horse. He passed through lassos and moved with cloudlike silence. But everyone knew the stories sprung from a family of fleet gray mustangs that lived in the Calico Mountains.
Still, Sam wasn’t sure what to say. She couldn’t remember Gram doing anything more superstitious than crossing her fingers for luck.
Down below, the Phantom lifted his head and stared toward the road, as if he’d finally noticed them.
“He is a beauty,” Gram said.
“Then won’t you let me go out at night and wait for him? He always comes by midnight, and I promise I won’t try to ride him, and—”
“Samantha,” Gram’s tone cautioned her.
“But Gram, if I planned to ride him, I would have tried to get Dad to adopt him.” Sam thought she sounded quite sensible. “I wouldn’t have encouraged the BLM to turn him loose.”
“Dear, I know you believe that now. But if you go out and see that horse every night, if he lets you get close, pet his neck and maybe he even starts to follow you around, the next natural thing is trying to ride him. And you cannot tell me,” Gram said, pointing her index finger at Sam, “that it isn’t exciting to think of riding through the night with the wind in your hair on a mustang stallion no one else can even touch.”
Gram was right. Sam couldn’t say the idea wasn’t thrilling. She’d probably risk being grounded, for one wild night ride.
“You know I have a soft spot for animals, but I have a softer spot for you.” Gram’s blue eyes looked into Sam’s brown ones. “I hope you never have to sit in a hospital waiting room, head in hands, praying a child will live. After that horse threw you and kicked you in the head, I made a vow you’d never ride him again. And I’ll keep that promise with the last breath in my body.”
If Gram had been weepy and emotional, Sam might have reminded her that he hadn’t hurt her on purpose. She’d fallen from Blackie, and he’d been running away in fright when his hoof grazed her head. But Gram was speaking in a level tone, without a hint of tears. Sam knew, today, she couldn’t win.
Sam looked down the two-lane asphalt road ahead and saw a car coming toward them. It glittered like glass and that was the hint that told her it was Linc Slocum’s big beige Cadillac.
The city slicker had purchased everything from a cattle ranch to spurs, trying to fulfill his dream of being a cowboy. Still, he had the Cadillac washed every day by a ranch hand, instead of driving a car coated with desert dust like a real cowboy would.
Slocum didn’t mind folks calling him a show-off or frowning at the rodeo trophy belt buckle he’d purchased, not won. The thing that did drive Slocum crazy was his inability to buy the best Western trophy of all: the Phantom.
Two weeks ago, instead of putting the Phantom up for adoption, the BLM had freed him. The government agency was protecting the Phantom, hoping the stallion would mate with wild mares and improve the mustang breed.
But why tempt fate? Sam didn’t want Linc Slocum to even see the Phantom.
“Gram, go,” Sam said. “Here comes Linc Slocum and I think it would be really bad if he saw the—uh, Blackie.”
It took Gram a minute to remember Sam’s conflict with Slocum, but then she revved up the Buick’s engine. She looked back carefully before pulling from the roadside onto the street.
Run, boy, run. Sam stared at the stallion and sent her thoughts winging toward him. Go, now. The Phantom circled his mares at a nervous trot and the tiger dun followed.
Sam stared down the road. Slocum’s Cadillac was gaining on them, about two city blocks away. If he looked over the edge now, he’d see the mustangs for sure.
Gram pulled onto the road, and still the horses stayed clustered by the pond. Sam had to do something.
She’d never uttered the stallion’s secret name within human hearing. Jake had taught her techniques from generations of Shoshone horse tamers. He said a secret name bonded one horse to one rider. Sam could see no harm in thinking the name, so she did.
Run, Zanzibar, run.
As if she’d screamed the words, the stallion bolted. The tiger dun wheeled away from the water and darted toward the hills. In a tight knot the other mares followed. The Phantom circled behind, nipping their haunches, pushing with his mighty chest until the last mare crested the hill.
Just like the blue roan, the horses vanished. A plume of dust rose, then drifted on the desert air.
Chapter Three
LINC SLOCUM MADE sure Gram stopped. He stepped into the street and waved his arms frantically.
By the time Gram pulled back onto the shoulder and halted directly across the street from him, she and Sam could see his emergency was minor. Slocum was squatted next to his Cadillac’s rear tire and it wasn’t even flat.
Sam shook her head in disgust. In San Francisco, the crime rate was high. People were suspicious. They’d see this for what it was: a setup.
In rural Nevada, folks lived by the code of the West, which said you had to be neighborly to everyone. That included a villain like Linc Slocum.
Even the U.S. government agreed Slocum was bad news. The BLM had denied Slocum the right to adopt a mustang. Slocum had admitted he hadn’t reported the harassment of a wild horse. That was grounds for denial.
What Slocum had really done was worse. With a truck, he’d chased the Phantom for miles. As the stallion began to tire, Slocum roped him. The stallion might have won the tug-of-war, except that the end of the rope was tied to a barrel full of concrete. Only luck kept the Phantom’s neck from snapping when he hit the end of the rope. The stallion fought and bucked and lunged un
til, at last, the rope broke.
Though local ranchers scorned Slocum, no one could confirm what had happened. They believed it happened, but no one had seen it with his own eyes.
Now, Slocum looked at Sam and Gram and waved.
Slocum was a big man, at least six feet tall and egg shaped. His hair was slicked back, flat and shiny. His jeans and plaid shirt pulled tight as he squatted. He probably hoped the position made him look like a cowboy ready to brand a calf. But it didn’t.
Slocum flashed his toothpaste-commercial grin as he called across the road.
“If it ain’t my two favorite ladies come to rescue me.” He gestured with a little metal tool. “This tire keeps on going flat, so I’m checking how much air I’ve got.”
Slocum stood, wedged the tool into his pocket, and walked across the road. He jingled as he walked and Sam wondered why he wore spurs to drive a car.
Slocum put both hands on the Buick’s driver-side window frame. Gram drew back a little.
“Hi there,” Slocum said. His fake smile flashed across to Sam, but it showed a little confusion. “Haven’t seen you for a month of Sundays, little lady. How long’s it been?”
Slocum’s outdated Western expressions made even his own cowboys laugh, but he didn’t care.
Sam shrugged as if she couldn’t remember either.
Slocum kept a hand on Gram’s window frame as he glanced back toward his polished Cadillac. “It’s time to replace that car. I don’t like wondering if I can make it all the way home.”
Sam pictured Slocum trying to walk the ten miles from here to Gold Dust Ranch in his high-heeled boots. Then she imagined him squeezing into Gram’s car.
Oh no. No way. Sam wished Gram could read her brain waves as well as horses could. Gram glanced in the backseat at the bags of new clothes. Sam was afraid Gram was about to ask her to move them into the trunk.
“That tire does look low,” Gram sounded as if, for the first time in her life, neighborliness would be a chore.