by Terri Farley
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. She took a while to put together an explanation. “A man with two teenagers—” she began.
“Understandable,” Dad said, but Sam thought he let the woman off the hook too quickly.
Sam couldn’t believe Miss Olson didn’t just slink off to her office. She didn’t. She hadn’t finished trying to find homes for the horses. Next, she sized up Jake.
“That buckskin filly is quick as a cat. I bet you could school her into a fine cutting horse.”
Jake shook his head and the woman sighed.
“If I didn’t have two mustangs and a wild burro already, I’d take her home with me.”
Sam considered the woman’s freshly pressed uniform and short, scrubbed fingernails. Sam couldn’t imagine her working in a dirt corral with dust settling on her perfect French braid.
Dad squinted toward the corral, not the woman. When he nodded, Sam considered the horses again.
The buckskin had clean lines, a sloping shoulder for smooth gaits, and she wanted to belong. Separated from other mustangs, she might allow a human to substitute for her herd.
Grudgingly, Sam admitted to herself that Miss Olson had some horse sense. And she was trying to get these mustangs out of their pen and into real homes.
Sam scanned the newly arrived mares. If she were going to pick one for her own…
Then she caught herself. She had a horse. Besides, she didn’t approve of the BLM. Wild horses should be running free.
Dad looked restless. Sam checked her watch and found they’d left home nearly two hours ago. Dad never spent this much time just hanging around.
“Best be going,” Dad said. “Sam, Jake,” he nodded toward the truck.
“Before you leave, I should introduce myself.” The redhead extended her hand. “I’m Brynna Olson, director of the Willow Springs facility. Bring a horse trailer, next time you visit, Mr.—”
“Wyatt Forster,” Dad said. As he shook the redhead’s hand, Sam thought his tone was too friendly for a man who criticized the BLM so often.
Miss Olson leaned toward Sam. “Call me if you have more questions.” Her voice dropped, as if the two of them might conspire against Dad. “Willow Springs is in the phone book under ‘U.S. Government.’”
Back at the truck, Dad held the door so Sam could slide inside. As she climbed up, Sam saw Dad look back toward the corrals. Something told her he wasn’t picking out a mustang.
“She only mentioned ‘our mother’ to find out if you were married.” Sam couldn’t believe the sneering voice was her own.
Still, she knew she was right. And even though Mom had been dead for eight years, she didn’t like strangers bringing it up.
Dad’s face turned crimson, and his expression looked more angry than embarrassed. Dad didn’t speak to her, though; he just looked across the truck cab at Jake and said, “I’ll drive.”
Jake glared at Sam as if it were her fault he’d been demoted to the position of passenger. Once inside, he leaned against the door, as far from her as possible.
As they rattled along the road back to the ranch, Sam felt ashamed. If Brynna Olson had been flirting with her dad, why should she care?
Sam looked sideways at him. Dad’s amused expression had turned into a frown. His hands gripped the steering wheel, hard, and his hat brim cast his face in shadow. He didn’t look her way, even when Sam sucked in her breath as they drove through the narrow, dangerous pass Jake called Thread the Needle.
She glanced to her right. Jake wouldn’t meet her eyes, either. He had one arm on the open window, and his face leaned into the wind.
As soon as the truck reached pavement and they picked up speed, Dad let her know he hadn’t liked her remark.
“It wasn’t a museum or a movie, but I thought you’d get a kick out of those horses,” he said.
“I did.”
She sure hadn’t acted like it, his silence told her.
Sam knew she owed Dad an explanation. Just because she felt worried and confused over the Phantom, she didn’t have to drag Dad down with her.
She thought of the quicksand. That afternoon, she’d acted like an adult. She’d given Dad a reason to be proud of her. It was time to do it again.
“Please pull over, Dad,” she said. “We need to talk.”
Sam told Dad and Jake everything. She listed each time the stallion had come to her and described the way he’d acted. She revealed everything except the hidden valley of wild horses and the Phantom’s secret name. By the time Sam finished, even Dad suspected she was right.
“So you think it’s Blackie,” Dad said.
“It has to be.”
“Jake, you’ve had a look.” Dad stared past Sam to Jake. “What do you think?”
Jake looked uneasy with the burden of Dad’s trust.
“Couldn’t say, based on the look I got. But if even half of what Sam says is true, I’d bet my college fund on it.”
“Are you exaggerating?” Dad asked.
Sam thought hard. “I can’t read his mind or be sure he recognizes me, but he’s come to the river twice. And I saw him two times on the cattle drive.” She remembered the magical night ride with Ace and the Phantom racing side by side. “Once, he was almost close enough to touch.”
“At the ranch and out there, it was the same horse,” Dad said. “You’re sure?”
“The same exact horse,” Sam insisted. “Silver-white with gray dapples and a scar on his neck.”
“I rarely see mustangs. Once in a while around the water hole, and then I run ’em off,” Dad mused.
Sam felt startled, until she reminded herself that Dad might like wild horses, but he was a cattleman first. Every meal on the table and tank of gas in the truck depended on fat, healthy cattle. River Bend would die without them.
“If you’ve seen the same horse four times in a couple weeks,” Dad continued, “that’s just too often to be chance.”
They all sat quietly. The smell of hot sage blew in the truck window. A meadow lark caroled liquid notes. A minivan from Vancouver rushed by and a crow jabbered as it hunted among weeds at the roadside.
“And there’s not a darn thing we can do to get him back,” Dad said.
“Not according to Miss Olson, but maybe some BLM hotshot could help,” Jake suggested. “Do you know anyone, Wyatt?”
“Never had much use for the BLM,” Dad said, then threw Sam a guilty look. “They’re all just doing their jobs, but they make it tough to keep doing mine.”
“I don’t want him back,” Sam blurted.
“What?” The word erupted from both Dad and Jake.
Sam had even surprised herself. She’d never thought it through, this far. But suddenly, Sam knew it was true.
“That’s right,” she said. “I don’t want to tame him. I’ve got Ace to ride. I had a chance to make Blackie mine and I blew it. Now, he’s learned to be free.”
Sam smiled at Dad, too worried about sounding sappy to wonder why Jake’s eyes closed as if she’d socked him in the stomach.
“You want him to stay on the range,” Dad said.
“Unless Slocum—”
“Call him Mr. Slocum,” Dad said. “Or Linc Slocum, at least.”
Sam couldn’t believe it. Just when she got to thinking how cool Dad was, he reverted to some code of the Old West. On this issue, she could not go along with him.
“Slocum doesn’t deserve my respect,” Sam insisted. Then, in spite of the confinement of the truck cab, she folded her arms.
Dad prepared to wait her out. His eyes stayed steady and Sam folded her arms even tighter.
Not for a second did she wonder which of them would win the stare-off. They might be equally stubborn, but she was right.
She would have outlasted Dad if Slocum’s flashy tan Cadillac hadn’t appeared just ahead. Honking a long blast, it swerved across the street’s white center line and stopped beside Dad’s truck.
Western music thumped from the car, even though the windows were
closed. Then the driver’s window slid down, releasing a blast of air-conditioning into the high desert heat.
Linc Slocum’s slicked-back hair and toothpaste-commercial grin reminded Sam of the day she’d met him on her arrival home. This time he wore mirrored sunglasses and held a cigarette in one hand.
“Been up to Willow Springs?” He shouted over the music, instead of turning it down, and he didn’t wait for an answer. “Find any range rats worth the drive?”
Range rats. Oh, sure. If that’s what Slocum thought of wild horses, why had he spent two days chasing the Phantom?
Sam glanced out the truck’s back window. Black asphalt stretched off to a heat-wavering horizon. They’d come a long way since they turned off the dirt road from Thread the Needle and the BLM corrals. How could Slocum know where they’d been?
“’Fraid we’re coming home empty-handed,” Dad said. “Just wanted to show Samantha what the government’s built since she’s been gone.”
“There’s nothing up there I want,” Slocum said. “Even if they bring that white stud in—”
“Gray,” Sam muttered to Jake.
“—I’m not sure I’d buy him. Although,” Slocum took off his glasses and settled back in his seat, “there might be some Quarter blood in him. And maybe some Arab.”
Sam felt a pang of surprise. Slocum was right. Blackie’s sire, Smoke, had been a full-blooded mustang with the build of a Quarter horse. His mother Princess Kitty had been a racing Quarter horse, but she’d had the fine-boned head of an Arab. Somehow, she hadn’t expected Slocum to know that much about horses.
Even though Smoke had been Dad’s horse, even though he knew Slocum was right, Dad didn’t encourage the man’s speculation.
“Hard to say.” Dad’s response sounded like a dismissal, but as he started the truck’s engine, Slocum kept talking.
“Not that I’d put him to my registered mares,” Slocum mused.
Dad shifted uncomfortably.
“Still, he’d be good for breeding cow ponies. Those mustangs have good hard hooves, don’t they?”
“Yeah,” Dad said.
Why didn’t Dad speak up and say there was more than hard feet to admire in a mustang? Why didn’t he ask why Slocum needed cow ponies when he had more land and fewer cattle than any rancher in northern Nevada?
But even if Dad didn’t want to chat, Slocum did.
“You heard what I’m doing, just before school starts?” Slocum rambled on, as if Dad had begged for details. “I’m getting both my kids new horses.”
Sam made a mental note to ask Jake about Slocum’s kids. How old were they, she wondered, and did they take after their dad?
“Yes sir,” Slocum continued. “An Irish heavy hunter for Ryan and an English thoroughbred with blood lines from Queen Elizabeth’s own stables for Rachel to use in dressage.”
“That’s great, Linc,” Jake said. “But I thought Ryan was learning to rodeo.”
“Not if his mother has anything to say about it. And, she does.” Slocum frowned.
Did Slocum scowl because of the topic, or because he didn’t like talking to Jake, a teenager who’d stood up to him?
Aunt Sue had always advised Sam to give people a chance. The better she got to know Slocum, though, the worse he got.
“…keep that jug-headed range rat away from the real horses—” Slocum sneered.
“If ‘jug-headed’ means dumb, Mr. Slocum, I can’t help thinking how much smarter a mustang would have to be.” Sam kept her voice sweet, not mentioning how often the Phantom had outsmarted Slocum. “A mustang has to provide food, water, and shelter all for himself.”
He was unprepared for the interruption. The way Dad’s eyebrows shot up to disappear under his hat, so was he. But Sam had heard enough about range rats.
Sam took a breath, hoping her use of mister would keep Dad from punishing her.
“You’d think it would work that way, wouldn’t you, little lady?” Slocum said. “But it just doesn’t. Still, I could turn a good old-fashioned bronc buster loose on that Phantom. In an hour, he’d be thrown, hog-tied, sacked out, and taught some manners. Then I might make something of him.”
Sam only understood half of what Slocum suggested, but she knew it was evil. He wanted to terrify her horse into obedience.
What she wanted was to dive headfirst out the driver’s window and make Slocum shut up. But Dad moved to block her view of Slocum and Jake muttered, “Cool it,” just loud enough for her to hear.
“You might have a good point, Samantha,” Slocum said. “Dumb or not, those horses are tough. And cheap.”
When Slocum pretended to contemplate their combined wisdom, Sam felt sick. And Slocum’s scheme only got worse.
“Since my wrangler, Flick, is working up at Willow Springs, trying to earn a few extra dollars, I’ll have him watch for that stud.”
Now she remembered the cowboy with the droopy mustache. On the cattle drive Flick had joked that even dudes with “good bloodlines” scared easily.
In the lull between two guitar-twanging tunes on the radio, Sam heard Slocum chuckle, and now she knew he was baiting her.
“Yep, that guarantees I’ll be the first to know the stud’s been captured, and the first to show the legendary Phantom who’s boss.”
Chapter Eleven
DAD REFUSED TO HEAD for home. He said Gram wanted the entire day alone to work in her garden. Dallas, as foreman, could see that the evening chores were done.
Instead of cooking, Gram planned to build wire cages to hold up gangly tomato plants. Instead of washing clothes, she wanted to kneel in the dirt and pull weeds, while the sun warmed her back. Most of all, she wanted to hollow out basins around her thirsty vegetables, so precious desert water could wait in little pools before soaking slowly to the roots.
Sam understood and promised she wouldn’t interfere with Gram’s day off.
“I just want to check on Buddy,” she told him. “I won’t get in Gram’s way or ask for a single thing.”
“Nope. I promised to keep us gone all day,” Dad said. “So, we’ll stop at Clara’s for dinner.”
Clara’s coffee shop looked like 1950s diners Sam had seen in movies. It sat next to two houses and Phil’s Fill-Up, a gas station that also stocked hardware and groceries. The settlement of Alkali had few citizens, but it was a friendly place and the only civilization between River Bend Ranch and Darton, where local kids went to school.
Inside, five tables crowded together and six round stools faced a counter. As Dad and Jake hung their Stetsons on a rack by the door, Sam read a faded banner stretched across one wall. It read HOME OF THE BEST PINEAPPLE UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE IN THE WORLD!
Dad ordered giant cheeseburgers and a mound of french fries. Sam ate quickly, but she waited for Dad to finish before asking more questions. When he folded his paper napkin, Sam pounced.
“How can we keep Mr. Slocum from getting my horse?” she asked.
“What makes you think he’ll be caught?” Jake asked.
Sam refused to be sidetracked. She needed Dad’s opinion.
“If he is caught,” she asked, “what should we do?”
Dad sighed. “We’d have to adopt him, and that means money.”
“I know, but Aunt Sue could send my birthday present early. You know she would, and she always gives me a hundred dollars.”
Dad shook his head. Without his hat, he looked exposed. He’d never accepted the embarrassment of Aunt Sue giving Sam so much money every year.
“That wouldn’t pay the adoption costs, let alone his feed,” Dad lowered his voice as the waitress brought the bill for lunch.
“I have my savings account,” Sam began, but when Dad pointedly plopped his hand down on the bill, she closed her lips.
“I’ll think about it, but if I’m going to be forking hay to an animal all winter long, he must be good for something. Handling cattle. Dragging in firewood. Riding out to check fence, even.
“On a ranch, we all earn our keep. You do c
hores, I see that the cattle operation turns a profit, and Gram does everything no one else has time for. Jake here”—Dad jerked a thumb in Jake’s direction—“does as he’s told.”
“Yes, sir.” Jake laughed.
But then Dad’s smile faded. “I don’t see a four-year-old stallion who’s been running wild doing much but causing trouble.”
Dad stood, dug in his pocket, then tossed some dollar bills on the table.
“You kids have some dessert and pay the bill. I’ll be back after I see if Phil has a part I need for the well pump. That well needs to be redrilled,” Dad said, almost to himself. “But until we can afford it, I’m going to patch it together for one more year.”
Sam thought of San Francisco, where water gushed every time you turned a handle. People complained about the cost each month when they paid bills, but the water never ran red with minerals and no one wondered if the supply would run dry.
Dad looked old and tired when he talked about money. When the restaurant door closed behind him, Sam sat looking at her folded hands.
“Just get me a candy bar,” she told Jake as he walked toward the cash register.
A candy bar was half the price of pineapple upside-down cake, but did it matter if she saved Dad a dollar? Let me think about it, he’d said, but logic wouldn’t solve this problem. She had to come up with something creative. Something no one else had considered possible.
Jake returned with two candy bars. Since the coffee shop was cool from the big-bladed fan overhead, and the only other person inside was the waitress eating her own lunch and reading a magazine, Sam and Jake stayed.
“Making that stallion useful would mean training him,” Jake said.
“You’re good at working with horses, Jake. I’ve been watching you with Pocahontas.” Sam had watched Jake with the little pinto, and realized all over again how good he was with horses. “I know you could help me school him. You did it before.”
Jake ignored the compliment. “It would mean gelding him, too.”
Sam noticed the scuffs across Jake’s knuckles as he unwrapped his candy slowly, giving his words time to sink in.
“But he would have such beautiful colts,” she said.