by Terri Farley
“Then there’s no question. Ryan will do it, too. But the good part of that is, he wants me to ride Sky Ranger!”
Sky Ranger was a Thoroughbred cross that Linc Slocum rode for endurance work, like chasing mustangs. Once, soon after Sam had arrived, Linc had ridden him after the Phantom. If the stallion and his herd hadn’t disappeared into their secret valley, Sky Ranger might have kept pace with them. He was fleet and tireless.
Just then, they heard the chugging sound of the school bus drawing near.
“Do you want to come watch me get on him for the first time after school?” Jen asked.
It wouldn’t be a rodeo, Sam knew. If Linc Slocum could ride him, Jen certainly could. Still, Sky Ranger was high-strung and Linc kept him full of grain. It would be worth watching.
“Sure—” Sam had barely pronounced the word when Jen interrupted.
“Ryan could drive you home afterward.”
Jen frowned as soon as she said it and Sam wondered if her best friend was mirroring her expression. With Ryan hanging around, watching Jen wouldn’t be as much fun.
“I’ll have to see,” Sam said.
They both looked left. A tiny slice of bright yellow showed as the bus crested the hill. An instant later, its front windows glittered in the spring sun.
Jen and Sam stood quietly, waiting.
“This isn’t going to be awkward, is it?” Sam blurted. “I don’t want us to be all aggressive about this race.”
Jen’s smile started slow, then spread until her lips curved in a grin.
“We’ll leave that to our partners,” Jen said.
The bus stopped. The air brake hissed and the door opened.
The girls hurried down the middle aisle to their usual row and took their usual seat. All around them things looked the same and smelled the same. But Sam felt the change.
Maybe neither of them liked the tension of competition, but they both wanted to win.
Chapter Ten
Sam was entering Mrs. Ely’s history class when Jake grabbed her elbow.
“Ow! What?” she asked. It didn’t hurt, but he’d surprised her. She’d been gloomily watching Jen walk away toward her own first period class.
“She riding with Slocum?” Jake nodded after Jen.
“I’m not going to be your spy,” Sam snapped.
Jake gave her a bland look, waiting. At last Sam sighed. Jake would find out soon, anyway.
“With Ryan,” Sam said, though of course that was who Jake had meant. Linc was a cruel and inept rider and Rachel thought horses were smelly and boring. Besides, she was in France.
Jake stood solid amid the students dodging around him and sprinting toward classes. He stared at the place in the hall where Jen had been, though she’d turned a corner and vanished.
“He doesn’t go to school,” Jake said.
Sam was used to mining Jake’s remarks for their meaning and she thought she knew what he meant this time.
“So he’s got more time to work with Roman,” Sam suggested. She went on after Jake nodded. “But it will all even out, because Jen’s riding Sky. He’s flighty and it will take her a while to get comfortable with him. I’ll be riding Ace. We know each other inside and out. And”—Sam raised her voice when Jake shifted impatiently—“Roman’s never been haltered, let alone ridden, but the pinto filly has some experience with a rider.”
“All bad,” Jake said.
“But she’s not going to think you’re trying to wrap a snake around her head when you approach with a bridle,” Sam said. “And don’t forget she was raised by nice people.”
“Maryann Pete,” Jake said, nodding.
“Until she was a yearling, she was happy around humans,” Sam insisted.
As the tardy bell rang, Sam stepped back inside the classroom. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Mrs. Ely. Blond hair curled and bouncing, she clicked into the classroom’s back door on her high heels.
She pointed a finger at Sam and motioned her into class.
Sam knew she’d be counted present and on time, but Jake would be late.
“Oh, man.” He sighed.
“Ask your mom for a pass,” Sam whispered.
“I’d have a better chance getting that hundred dollars from her,” Jake sounded sour, but sure.
As he started away, he shouted back over his shoulder. “We’ll talk after school, okay? And drive the Scout out to Monument Lake.”
As he sprinted down the empty hallway, Sam was filled with disbelief. First, he’d assumed she’d be his partner. Now, Jake assumed she’d hang around with him after school.
Was she supposed to just ditch Jen?
“Miss Forster,” Mrs. Ely’s sarcasm snapped Sam back to history class. “Were you planning on handing in your weekend homework or are you acting as hallway sentry, today?”
Sam let the door slam. Her classmates smiled as she headed for her desk.
“I’ve got it,” Sam said, as she slipped into her seat. At least Rachel was out of the country instead of sitting in the desk behind hers, rolling her eyes.
Sam unzipped her backpack and rummaged through it.
“It’s here, really,” Sam said as Mrs. Ely tapped her toe in annoyance. “I found it!”
Sam passed the paper forward and hoped it would be that easy to find an excuse to tell Jen.
During their lunch hour, both girls stood outside, munching sandwiches and apples. For months, the weather had been so harsh, they’d had to eat in the cafeteria. Now it was cool and sunny.
They were enjoying the warmth of sun on their cheeks and talking as usual when Jen mentioned she’d received a message in her last class.
“I forgot, I have a dentist appointment,” she said with a pout. “I guess riding Sky will have to wait until tomorrow.”
“Do it when you get home, Jen. I don’t have to be there to watch. We have less than two weeks.”
“Yeah, I know. I wouldn’t be worried, except for Roman. What do you remember about him?”
“Not that much,” Sam said slowly. “He’s dark chestnut with a pretty extreme Roman nose and he acts like a stallion.”
“I was just thinking—oh, forget it. I’m beginning to sound like you.”
“Oh, now I really have to hear it,” Sam said. “Spit it out.”
“Well, the race runs over the Phantom’s territory, right?” Jen asked. “And this is the time of year herd stallions guard their mares against other stallions. They’re superjealous, right?”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Sam wondered aloud. “There are bound to be some stallions in the race. What if the Phantom challenges them?”
“I don’t think it will happen,” Jen said as the bell rang for the end of lunch hour. “The noise and riders would scare off the usual mustang.”
As she walked toward Journalism, her last class of the day, Sam was thinking that she and Jen both knew the Phantom was a very unusual mustang. She’d raised him from birth and he’d lived as a domestic horse until the accident that had put her in a coma and set him free.
While Sam lived in San Francisco, recovering, the young stallion had run wild, but he hadn’t forgotten her.
He might have been easy to recapture and gentle, if his encounters with people hadn’t taught him fear.
The silver mustang’s beauty had drawn humans who wanted to capture him. Some, like Linc Slocum, hadn’t cared if they’d scared and injured him.
Suddenly a charge of excitement flashed through her. Of course the Phantom hated some humans, but he trusted her as much as a wild thing could.
The situation could be exactly the same for Jake and the filly.
Sam couldn’t get her mind off horses. The current events quiz in Journalism didn’t do it and neither did typing her story for the next issue of the Darton Dialogue.
Her fingers lifted right off the computer keys when an idea struck her.
Saturday night, she’d dreamed of the Phantom. This morning, she’d noticed she’d scratched her wrist
. Even in her sleep, she’d been checking her wrist for the lost bracelet woven of the stallion’s hair.
What if he’d come to the river Saturday and Sunday nights, but she’d been sleeping too deeply to wake completely? Could she have half heard him, and woven his call into her dreams?
It was possible.
Sam typed another sentence, then stared into the computer screen. Jen wouldn’t get off the bus with her today. She’d be walking home alone. If the Phantom was nearby he might come to her.
“Forster! Take a nap on your own time. I need that story!” Mr. Blair shouted.
Frowning at the screen, as if she was concentrating, Sam waved one hand to let Mr. Blair know she’d heard.
She glanced at the classroom clock. Fifteen minutes until she could leave. Another twenty-five, or so, until the bus dropped her off.
Sam’s fingers danced on the keys, faster than ever before. She had to finish this story now. If Mr. Blair kept her in and she missed the bus, she’d miss a chance to see the Phantom.
After class, Jake was waiting outside.
Sam fiddled with her backpack, adjusting it to sit just right. She wasn’t sure what to tell him.
“Ready?” he shifted from foot to foot as if she’d been stalling for hours.
“Excuse me,” she said, slipping past him. “I’m taking the bus home.” She paused, feeling guilty because he looked so surprised. “You know Gram will go nuts if I just take off without asking permission.”
It was true, but it wasn’t the reason she didn’t want to go with him. Somehow, Jake seemed to know.
“Okay,” he bit the word short and headed down the hall.
“What if…” Sam said, before he got too far.
Jake turned and Sam hurried after him. They were outside now. She could see the bus idling, waiting.
A gust of warm spring wind blew from behind her, sending her red-brown hair into a frenzy around her face.
Frustrated, she pushed it back with both hands, then ordered her brain to come up with something.
“Since we saw the filly in the morning at Monument Lake—”
Sam stopped, filled with disbelief for what she’d nearly said. Jake raised his black eyebrows, but he didn’t meet her gaze. In fact, he seemed focused on her hair. Probably so she wouldn’t see the disappointment in his eyes.
“Why don’t we go tomorrow before school,” she blurted.
Say no, say no, say no, she begged silently.
“Good idea.” Jake nodded slowly. “Dad won’t complain about undone chores, either, since I’m not doin’ anything at five A.M. Pick you up then.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Sam wondered if she was weaving with shock as she started toward the bus.
“Hey, Brat?” Jake called after her.
Sam whirled, hoping no one had heard the babyish nickname.
“What?” she hissed.
Jake used one hand to make a vague smoothing gesture at his hair. “Do somethin’. You look kinda like, uh, what’s that flower with the petals goin’ every which way? Like a chrysanthemum.”
If she hadn’t already been so embarrassed her face hurt from blushing, Sam would have screamed.
With a little planning, she could have picked a better friend than Jake Ely. A friend who didn’t mock her or force her to get up early.
Civilized human beings didn’t get out of bed at five o’clock in the morning twice in one week, she thought, as she trudged up the steps, onto the bus. The rooster didn’t crow that early. It was still night!
She found a seat and squinted at her reflection in the windowpane. She couldn’t see much except her outline, so she smoothed both hands over her hair, then leaned her forehead against the cold glass.
She could probably catch a catnap now, and store up sleep. But there was no way she was going to take a chance of missing a glimpse of the wild horses.
Once the bus had stopped at the junior high school to pick up a few more students, it rolled out of Darton. They passed the mall, the scattered gas stations, mini-marts, and most of the other bus stops and rolled onto the highway, then Sam began searching the far hills.
She couldn’t see much without binoculars, but she watched for movement. When the bus stopped at Clara’s Diner to let off a few students, Sam sat up straighter. Lost Canyon, Arroyo Azul, and War Drum Flats were east of here and she’d seen the Phantom’s herd here before.
There! Sam bounced up in her seat. Below the ridgeline, in a clump of juniper that was starting to green up, she thought something moved. Somethings.
“Did you see those antelope?” crowed a voice behind her. “My dad says there’s enough of ’em to crowd out the nags this year.”
Sam twisted and glared over the seat back. If looks could kill, whoever was back there was dead meat.
“The what?” she demanded.
Two younger boys shrank away as far as their seat would allow, then stared up at Sam, openmouthed.
“The, uh—” His chin ducked as he swallowed. “I don’t know any nicer names for ’em, honest.”
“Mustangs,” Sam said, carefully. “Wild horses.”
“Okay,” the boys said, together.
Sam turned around. It would be mean to lecture the boys, since they looked so scared.
She didn’t hear another peep from them for several miles. When her stop came up, Sam stood and held the seat in front of her for balance. As the bus slowed, she pulled on her backpack. Two loud whispers came from behind her.
“She got real fierce about those horses.”
“Yeah, with all that crazy red hair, she looked like a lion!”
The bus braked, stopped, and Sam stepped out into the aisle. Before she left, she turned and fixed the two boys with the most threatening glare she could manage.
A lion. A chrysanthemum.
As she left the bus, Sam wondered what she really looked like. She didn’t want to care.
Why couldn’t she live like a horse? A horse didn’t give a thought to the way it looked.
As she stepped off the last step of the bus and reached the ground, Sam took in a deep breath of desert air. The next best thing to being a horse was being with them.
The bus pulled away, leaving her alone in wild horse country.
Slow-footed and loose-jointed, Sam started walking for home. If the Phantom was watching, she wanted him to see no threat from her.
She peered at each clutter of boulders and cluster of sagebrush. She studied the eastern hills. From here, she could see the winter-grayed sagebrush was turning green, but she saw no horses.
Every few steps, she thought she heard a faint scuff. She stopped, listened, and looked back. She saw the high desert, beige and gray and white. She heard the fretting of quail, but there were no leaves to rustle and no insects to buzz.
She took three more steps, before she felt a warm, itching sensation between her shoulder blades. Then came a crunch. As she whirled to look again, she saw the horses.
Tiny and far off, the mares were scattered over the hillside like wildflowers. Half-grown colts and fillies moved among them. But they were too far away. The sound couldn’t have been them.
Sam cupped a hand on each side of her face, around her eyes, trying to block out the desert’s glare.
The horses were eating, moving slowly over the rock-strewn slant, grabbing mouthfuls of short spring grass wherever they spotted it.
She looked higher on the hillside. The Phantom usually kept watch instead of eating, but she didn’t see him.
Sam glanced at her watch. It was a silly thing to do. She was going to cross the road and walk toward the hillside whether she had time or not.
A snort, loud and accusing, made her stop.
The snort hadn’t carried to her on the wind. It came from behind her. She didn’t move, but the horse did.
A hoof struck the alkali flat.
Sam looked down. Her shadow showed black on the white playa, but she wasn’t alone. A bigger shadow overlapped hers.
&nbs
p; How could he have materialized out of the desert air?
Every single step from the bus stop, she’d watched for him.
He couldn’t be there, and yet she knew he was. She could smell his leathery sweet scent. She felt heat radiate from his big body. Her thoughts couldn’t have wished him into being, and yet…
She studied the shadow again. The horse’s outline showed no rider.
Her pulse beat fast and wild. No mustang except the Phantom would have followed her.
“Zanzibar,” she whispered.
The low nicker said he knew his secret name. She felt his warm breath through her shirt.
Could she turn and face him? Sam ached to look at the horse close up and see how he’d come through the hard winter. Was he too close? Would he shy and gallop away? It had happened before, but Sam had to risk it.
Moving an inch at a time, she turned her head right, letting it lead her shoulder and her foot. Measuring each movement by the sound of the stallion’s breathing, she managed to turn three-quarters of the way toward him before he backed off.
Sam froze. She swallowed. In the silence she thought she could hear the mares’ teeth grinding on the hillside and then, in a flurry of pounding hooves, the Phantom was right in front of her.
“Hey, boy,” Sam whispered. She barely got the words out through her smile.
He backed a few steps, snatched a quick glance at his mares, then huffed through his nostrils and tossed his thick forelock from merry eyes.
Sam looked him over quickly.
No one would mistake the stallion for a barn-sheltered show horse. Most of his hair was white and clumpy. From his fuzzy ears to his shaggy fetlocks, he looked like a mustang who’d kept himself warm with no help from humans.
“Still got on your winter woollies, don’t you, boy?”
At the sound of her voice, the stallion shivered. His eyes opened wider and he leaned forward with an avid look just before he closed the space between them.
Sam’s sigh came out shaky and satisfied. She raised her hand to touch his neck. When he didn’t shy away or bowl her over, she stroked his shoulder. Then, holding her breath, she let her fingers skim over his barrel.
She couldn’t see his ribs, but she felt them. Beneath his winter coat, in patches, she saw the gleam of fine silver hair.