She looked at the rest of the horse statues filling a pine shelf on the wall over the cot. This stall also had twinkling lights draped over all the walls. Curtains made from old flannel cowgirl sheets hung on the window.
“Hey, Mr. Turner,” she hollered. “Thanks for helping me hang these curtains and all these lights and lanterns. Misty thanks you, too. I think she likes her stall a lot.”
Pickle’s dad stood next to the stall door and laughed. “How many times do I have to remind you that when you say Mr. Turner, I think you mean my dad. You know you’re supposed to call me Willie.”
He held a big box wrapped in brown paper and tied with heavy string. “Anyway, UPS just delivered this, and it’s for you.” He put the box on the cot.
“Who’s it from?” Moxie asked.
“Don’t know,” he said. “I guess you’d better open it.”
“Thanks, Willie,” Moxie called after him, as he walked out. “Please say hi to Pickle!”
Moxie Wyoming and Misty gazed at the box, which seemed to glow slightly. Maybe it’s just from the twinkle lights shining on it, she thought.
Searching for scissors, Moxie glanced at her desk. By the time she looked back at the cot, the package had stopped glowing. Misty still stared at it.
“There sure are some funny-weird things going on today, Misty.” Moxie cut the brown paper. “The return address is smudged, I can’t read it...hmmm.”
Moxie pulled off the paper, opened the flaps of the box, and pushed aside white tissue paper. When she saw what was inside, she caught her breath.
Moxie Wyoming carefully lifted out a pair of old, but beautiful, two-toned, pink-leather cowgirl boots with dark-pink stitching in the shape of flowers. A silver star decorated the center of each flower.
“Oh, Misty, look!” She kicked off her sneakers as the mare continued peering from her stall door and watched her mistress slowly slip her feet into the boots.
Testing the fit of her new boots, Moxie walked across the hooked rug. “They feel so soft, like my fuzzy slippers!” She admired them every which way on her feet. “I wonder who sent them?”
Moxie rummaged around in the box and pulled out a small brown leather pouch with beautiful turquoise and coral beading. “Hey, what’s this?” She opened it.
Moxie uncoiled a gold chain with a gold whistle hanging on it. “Cool!” She put the chain around her neck and tooted softly on the whistle. Misty immediately kicked once loudly on the stall door with her left leg.
Startled, Moxie dropped the whistle from her mouth. “Was that a do-not-whistle kick?”
Misty pounded the ground twice with her right leg.
“Hmmm. So you don’t want me to blow it?”
Misty again pounded twice.
“That must mean you know something about this whistle.”
Misty pounded yes once more.
“Is it...magic?” Moxie Wyoming whispered, and Misty answered with two stomps.
“So what kind of magic exactly?” Moxie examined the whistle more closely, tapping it with her fingernail. “It looks like a regular whistle.”
Misty snorted a couple of times, as if saying, Don’t kid yourself.
“So I have to wait to find out more?” Moxie asked, and Misty pounded yes.
Moxie looked inside the box again, and this time she pulled out a card.
Dear Moxie Wyoming,
Here’s a present for you to go along with your new horse! The boots and the whistle belonged to your Granny Rose, so take good care of them. You’ll discover they are one of a kind, and Misty is, too!
Lots of love,
Grandpops
Moxie turned her attention back to the boots. She stretched her legs and toes so she could get a better look. Then she jumped up and dashed out.
Once inside the house, Moxie stood on her tippy-toes to examine the painting of Granny Rose sitting on her pretty black horse. She looked closely at her great-grandmother’s feet and saw she was wearing a pair of pink boots. Moxie looked at the pink boots on her own feet and knew they were the very same pair.
Moxie Wyoming pulled a chair over to the painting and climbed up to get an even better look. She thought she saw the hint of a gold chain hanging around her great-grandmother’s neck. She felt the gold chain around her own neck, jumped down from the chair, and rushed into her room.
Chapter Eight
Moxie Wyoming sashayed back into the barn. “How do I look, girl?” she asked as she twirled her way up to Misty’s stall. The mare opened her eyes from yet another nap.
“Hey, Misty, check me out!” If Granny Rose always wore pink when she rode, then Moxie would, too. She modeled a completely pink riding outfit—a pink rain slicker, pink riding tights, and the pink cowgirl boots. Misty snorted her approval.
“We should go for a ride so I can try out my new boots. What do you think?” Moxie twirled around again, and Misty neighed yes and stomped her right hoof twice.
Outside, Moxie saddled up her elderly friend and climbed on board. The two headed across a scrubby field in the direction of the foothills below the Snowies. They walked slowly and enjoyed a perfect blue-sky afternoon.
As Moxie watched large brown grasshoppers jump around the brush, she gave Misty a gentle kick with her new boots. The old mare trotted and then moved into her familiar lope.
But this time, a funny thing happened. Instead of huffing and puffing and slowing down as she usually did, Misty turned frisky, throwing her head around and neighing loudly. Moxie’s expression changed from surprise to interest as Misty picked up her pace.
She also noticed that the gray flecks all over Misty’s body were disappearing, and her black coat had become shinier and smoother. “What’s happening to you? Where did all your gray go?” Moxie reached down to touch and stroke the hair on the horse’s neck. “It can’t just go away, can it? What’s going on here?”
Moxie Wyoming spotted a coyote fifty yards away, near the bank of a stream. “Hey! Let’s take a look.” The creature was larger than a fox, but smaller than a wolf.
She gave Misty another slight kick with her pink cowgirl boots. “Let’s go!”
Misty loped faster and faster. The coyote didn’t move, but watched them with pale, glowing eyes. Moxie noticed a barbed wire fence right behind the animal, as her horse picked up more speed. Moxie cried out, “Whoa! Stop! Whoa!”
Before they could smash into the fence, Misty jumped and sailed over it as if she were a young colt instead of an old horse. Instead of landing near the bank of the stream, she continued lifting higher and higher.
“Yikes, Misty!” Moxie shrieked. She looked around her. They were flying! “Ooohhh, nooooo!” With her one hand locked around the horn of the saddle and gripping the reins, the other clutched a huge chunk of Misty’s mane. As they soared well above the ground, everything down there became very small. The coyote now looked about the size of a mouse!
Suddenly, the wind knocked Misty back, and they dropped thirty feet. Moxie Wyoming screamed the entire way down, knowing they were going to crash. But Misty threw her head up, flicked her tail, and recovered instantly to once again lift them both into the air.
The rollercoaster ride continued, and after three more bumpy ups-and-downs of Misty trying out her flying skills with a rider on board, Moxie’s face turned a funny shade of green. “Misty, pleeease can we land? My tummy’s doing tumble-saults.” She hung over Misty’s neck like a limp noodle.
Misty threw out all four of her legs, which started horse and rider twirling and floating light as feathers down to the ground in a perfect helicopter landing. Moxie barely felt them touch down.
They stood quietly, the girl not quite believing what had just happened. Finally, she spoke in a shaky voice. “Am I dreaming?”
The little mare pounded no with her left foot. “So I’m not going to wake up?”
The hoof pounded no again.
“Misty, is this the first time you’ve done this, uh, flying thing?”
The mare answer
ed no a third time.
“Wow!” Moxie looked at her horse curiously. “You mean you’ve been flying around for a long time?”
Misty snorted and pounded yes.
“Has anybody ever seen you fly, besides me, I mean?”
Misty looked up at the sky.
“Okay, I’m not sure what that means.” Moxie paused. “Has anybody else ever flown…with you?”
The mare stomped yes.
Moxie’s face filled with surprise and curiosity. “I wonder who else got to fly with you?”
The horse nickered softly.
Moxie leaned over Misty’s neck. “I guess you’re a little out of practice carrying a rider while you fly, maybe because you’ve been at the Darwin Ranch a long time,” Moxie said. “That’s why it felt so bumpy, you know, all up and down?”
Misty pounded yes again.
Then Moxie Wyoming leaned over smiling, laid her head along Misty’s neck, and reached down both sides with her arms to give the mare a huge hug. “You’re amazing, Misty.”
As they walked back to the barn, Moxie noticed that Misty slowed down and huffed and puffed a bit. She stopped acting frisky, and gray hairs once again flecked her coat.
“Hey, what’s going on with you?” Sadly, Moxie realized that Misty was back to her old self.
She leaned over a second time, reaching her arms down both sides of Misty’s gray-flecked neck, and gave her another huge hug. “I love you both ways—the other way and this way, too,” she whispered.
~~~~~
As Moxie and Misty walked up to the barn, Pickle waved from the corral fence, his dusty ATV parked nearby. The boy chewed on a piece of straw. “Hey, where have you been? We haven’t played detectives or gone riding in a while—”
“Pickle, it’s only been a few days.” Moxie gestured toward Misty. “I’ve been very busy.”
“Me, too,” he grumbled. “So how’s Misty?”
“Pretty good.” Moxie smiled. “She’s new—”
“She doesn’t look very new to me!” Pickle snickered.
“Not funny, Pickle Turner,” Moxie shot back, climbing down from the saddle. “You don’t know anything about her.”
“Well, one thing I do know, Moxie Wyoming. Your horse may be kind of cute, but you can’t ride her in barrel races.” Pickle jumped off the fence. “She’s too old!”
“Actually, Misty’s very special!” Moxie insisted.
“Yeah, right.” Pickle rolled his eyes. “Well, I hope you aren’t busy forever, Moxie Wyoming.” He hopped on the ATV and drove off, leaving Moxie and Misty sneezing in a cloud of dust.
Chapter Nine
During the next week, Moxie Wyoming rode Misty daily. The two practiced the flying part in secret. Whenever Moxie said, “Let’s go,” it was the start of a new adventure!
The girl and the mare had ironed out a lot of the bumps. Since that first ride, Moxie hadn’t turned green too often, just different shades of purple or blue. She quickly learned not to practice flying right after lunch on a full stomach.
But she did like to imagine the places that Misty might take her, places that she and her mom had read about together or had watched on TV—the Serengeti National Park in Africa to see the great migrations of wildebeests and zebras; Florida to watch the dolphins and visit the Ringling Brothers’ clown school (How cool, Moxie thought, to go to clown class instead of math); the South Pole to catch sight of penguins and check out the monster icebergs; and Hollywood to see where the old TV shows were made about the famous collie, Lassie, and the cowboy, Roy Rogers, with his trusted horse, Trigger.
At the moment, Moxie was daydreaming about cuddly kangaroo babies in Australia. “Whew! The sun’s really hot,” She and Misty scuffed along a dusty trail at the far corner of the ranch. “Let’s ride where it’s cool.”
Gathering up Misty’s reins, Moxie looked up at the Snowy Range. “Like over there, up in the mountains, Misty. I bet it’s cooler in the shade of all those trees.” She gently kicked with her pink cowgirl boots.
Turning frisky, Misty threw her head around, neighed, and launched into a smooth lope. Her coat lost its gray flecks and became shiny and pure black.
Moxie Wyoming rode Misty confidently, and at just the right moment, she said, “Let’s go.” The mare pushed off her back legs, and they sailed effortlessly into the sky.
The two friends flew over the neighboring ranches where the buildings now looked like dollhouses. A majestic eagle soared next to them. He was so close Moxie could almost reach out and fluff his feathers. The eagle cut to the right and looped around Moxie and Misty.
“Hey, Mr. Eagle, looking good! Mind if we join you up here?!” Moxie laughed as the powerful bird dove down and away like a plane.
The mare and her rider flew over the foothills and canyons of the Snowies, and Moxie enjoyed the alpine scenery of rocky cliffs and evergreen trees. As they sailed over one canyon, Moxie noticed a flash of movement.
“Go back, Misty! There’s something down there,” she said with urgency. “It ran into the cover. Go back!”
Misty banked to the side and circled back, dropping down. They glided within the walls of the canyon at fifty feet above the ground to get a closer look.
“There!” Moxie cried out, as she and Misty sailed above a herd of horses led by a palomino-colored stallion coming out of the woods into the open. Misty slowed her speed to stay a little behind the herd.
“Those have got to be the wild Mustangs that Willie’s friend saw up here,” Moxie said. “There must be almost twenty horses, and look! Some mares with their foals! They’re so cute!”
The Mustang herd slowed down as it came to a pond, and the horses spread out for a drink. The girl and her horse landed in a clearing on the other side of some trees. They moved quietly into the trees, hidden, watching the Mustangs.
Suddenly the herd became restless and stirred nervously. The stallion reared and neighed loudly. A dark brown mare with a black mane and tail neighed, too, and took off to gallop higher into the mountains. The rest of the Mustangs quickly followed, and the stallion brought up the rear, the sun shining off his pale yellow body.
Moxie and Misty didn’t budge. “That’s what Pickle and I read in that book, Misty. That was the lead mare taking the herd up the mountain. And the stallion was at the back to protect them from danger.” She looked around nervously. “Hmmm. What kind of danger?”
Just then Moxie saw a couple of herding dogs pop out on the trail below. Still concealed by the trees, she watched as two riders in well-worn cowboy hats came up behind the barking mutts. Moxie felt goose bumps on her arms. The men rode up to the pond to study the tracks near the water.
A crusty voice came out from under a moss-colored cowboy hat and said, “Looks like that herd was here.”
Moxie couldn’t see his face, and she wasn’t sure she recognized the voice.
“Finally, after all that hunting around, we found the right canyon,” he said. She wondered if it was those Jenkins men from the rodeo and secret corral.
“We gotta get a helicopter and round them up,” the other cowboy—wait a minute—uh, cowgirl said, as her black ponytail swung into view from underneath her dark, reddish-brown hat. “Nobody’ll miss them, and a lot of other ranchers b-b-besides us will be happy to see them go.”
Moxie realized she was wrong. It wasn’t those two creepy brothers. It was the man and young woman she had seen loading the truck next to her dad’s at the feed store, the truck that said Curly T Cattle Ranch on its side.
“Forget the helicopter, Jamie. It’ll attract too much attention,” the man barked. “Listen to your old man for a change.”
Jamie’s posture wilted in the saddle as the cowboy took off his hat and wiped his brow. Moxie noticed the skin on his face was as leathery as his voice was gravelly.
“I betcha we can track them and find out where those Mustangs bed down,” he said.
Still out of sight, Moxie listened with alarm, her heart pounding in her chest. Misty’s
ears went flat and back along her head. Sounds like he’s the father and that’s his daughter, Moxie thought. Even so, she knew their plans for the Mustangs couldn’t be good after what she had heard them say at the feed store.
Misty’s ears stayed flat against her head, and she snorted in disgust.
The two riders whipped around at the sound and peered into the thicket. “Hey, Dad!” Jamie pointed toward the trees. “Do you think they went over th-there, instead of further up the mountain? It looks l-l-like the tracks go up, but—”
“Only one way to find out.” The man kicked his horse to take off, and he and his daughter rode in Moxie’s direction.
But Misty was ready for them and took off at a faster clip. As soon and she and Moxie cleared the woods, Moxie said, “Let’s go!” The horse then pushed off her back legs.
Moxie Wyoming and Misty were immediately airborne and high enough to circle around. They watched the two riders dash about below, looking for the horses.
Misty seemed to sense something going on. Moxie felt a quiver go through her when the little horse snorted once, and her ears twitched back and forth quickly. Just then, Jamie and her father looked up at the sky; Moxie froze and held her breath as she clung to her saddle.
But the two on the ground didn’t appear to see the horse and girl flying around above them. The riders finally gave up and continued up the mountain, but the Mustang herd was long gone by then.
“Misty, how come they didn’t see us?” Moxie asked. “What did you do? Did you make us invisible up here flying around?”
Misty snorted yes twice, since she couldn’t stomp at that moment.
Moxie felt another quiver and Misty twitched her ears again. “Are we still invisible?”
Misty snorted no.
“This is like being in a comic book with super heroes!” Moxie said, and she and her mare flew home.
Finally, they could see Moose Creek Ranch and began their descent.
“Jamie wants to get a helicopter to round up those beautiful horses. A helicopter buzzing around would be scary for the horses. Right, Misty?”
A Wild Ride: The Adventures of Misty & Moxie Wyoming (Girl Detective & Her Horse Mystery Story Ages 6-8 & 9-12) Page 4