Moonrise
Authors: Terri Farley
Phantom Stallion 14
Terri Farley
Mustangs weren't supposed to pout.
Jake Ely was no evil horseman. The youngest of sixâ¦
“It's just wind in the canyon. Now that the treesâ¦
The La Charla River glinted sapphire blue and its rillsâ¦
“Horse on the porch.”
Something big and metal jangled as it was jarred aroundâ¦
“Black as midnight with two fine mares running alongside.” Lincâ¦
Gram looked at Sam with open curiosity.
Figuring she'd need every minute of sleep, Sam went toâ¦
Hooves pounded across the ten-acre pasture.
In the kitchen's midnight quiet, the refrigerator hummed. The coolingâ¦
Wondering if she'd ever been so tired, Sam sucked theâ¦
The next morning came way too soon.
The hounds surged up the hillside from behind them.
Oh no. Sam didn't gasp aloud.
Clouds lay like snow on the plateau as Sam rodeâ¦
The stallions dropped their heads, herding Moon's mares, pushing themâ¦
Under a pearl-gray sky full of heat, Sam and Jenâ¦
M
ustangs weren't supposed to pout.
They didn't brood over unfairness or store up bad days in their equine minds until they spotted a chance to pay someone back.
It just wasn't the sort of thing mustangs did, but no one had told Ace.
“You're not a sea horse,” Samantha Forster told her bay gelding. “We can't stay out here in the lake. If someone comes riding along and spots us, it will be really embarrassing.”
Once, Ace had been a wild mustang whose black mane and tail flew back from his red-gold coat as he galloped across the range, but he sure wasn't running now.
Instead, Ace stood in the middle of the shallow lake on War Drum Flats. He stared toward the horizon where the white desert floor met the broad blue Nevada sky.
He splashed one hoof in the water. The droplets felt cool as they soaked through Sam's jeans, but any experienced rider would agree with her: She couldn't let her mount get away with this.
“Come on, Ace. Jen will be here any minute.” Sam sat straighter in her saddle. She used her legs, heels, and hands to urge her horse forward. Again.
Her best friend, Jennifer Kenworthy, was supposed to meet her here at ten o'clock.
Sam glanced at her watch. Jen was almost always on time. That meant Sam had eight minutes to convince her horse he belonged ashore. The only reason there was no audience for Ace's stunt was because they'd arrived early.
There was almost no audience. That squawk from a blue jay gliding overhead sounded a lot like laughter.
Sam blamed herself for trusting Ace. She knew he had a mischievous nature, especially when he hadn't been worked enough.
After a lope across the range, she'd allowed Ace a long drink at the lake while she thought about the overnight campout she and Jen were planning.
If she'd been paying attention, Ace might not
have fooled her into believing he was just wading out for a drink. He'd gone a few steps farther than she'd expected. And then a few more. Her first clue that the tricky bay was headed for the middle of the shallow lake had come when he'd given such a lunge that water spattered her stirrups.
Just as she'd tried to turn Ace, his hooves had lifted, and she'd experienced the uncanny feeling of riding a swimming horse. Excitement and worry had played tug-of-war in her brain, as Ace's legs surged and pulled and she floated along with him.
Finally, he'd settled his hooves so that he stood chest-deep in muddy water. Only by holding her boot toes up was she keeping her polished leather stirrups clear of the muck he'd stirred from the lake bottom.
He'd ignored her instructions since then. Because orders weren't working, Sam tried bribery.
She rubbed Ace's favorite spot at the base of his mane. “Doesn't that feel good, boy?” she said. “As soon as we get back to shore I'll do it some more.”
Too smart for bribery, Ace twitched his skin as if she were a fly.
Next, Sam tried peer pressure.
“Let's go, boy. I think Silly will laugh at you.”
Silk Stockings was Jen's palomino mare. Jen called her horse Silly, and claimed she only rode the mare to study horse neuroses for her future career as a veterinarian.
Sam could imagine Silly jigging and pulling at her reins trying to swim after Ace, but she couldn't imagine
Jen
giving her mount enough rein to pull the stunt Ace had.
All at once, Ace tensed beneath her.
An eerie howl raised chills on Sam's arms in spite of the summer warmth.
Lost Canyon wasn't too far away. It was supposed to be haunted, but she didn't believe that.
“Coyotes?” Sam asked Ace.
The gelding's ears pointed toward the mountains. He answered with an inquiring snort.
Coyotes howled at night, singing before a hunt and yapping their excitement afterward. Sam heard them almost every night and she knew what they sounded like. These howls were different.
Then she saw dust swirling on one of the mountain paths.
“Are those horses?” she asked Ace.
Wild horses rarely ran during midmorning, but if they had a reasonâcould coyotes be stalking the Phantom's newborn foals?
Sam's heart thudded crazily.
Mustangs were born to run. If they outdistanced their pursuers right away, the foals would be fine. For a time, they'd keep up with the herd as it fled, but those delicate legs had to take two running strides to match each of their mothers'.
Sam wished she had binoculars. She wanted to
see what was going on, but it was just too far away.
If the mustangs had been coming down to water, wouldn't they keep running this way?
“Come out here,” she urged the horses. “You're safer in the open.”
Sam dropped her reins. Ace wasn't going anywhere, anyway, and she'd read once that you could improve your vision slightly and temporarily by pulling the corners of your eyes.
She tried it. It helped a little bit, sharpening her view of faraway horses that were crashing through thickets of sagebrush. It didn't look like many horses. They might even have riders. And she still couldn't see what was after them.
Sam groaned in frustration. Even if Ace moved, would it help to go galloping up that hillside into the midst of an attack?
Ace shifted nervously, so Sam took up her reins again.
“Why don't they come down here?” Sam asked.
Horses had a better chance of kicking and biting their attackers, instead of each other, if they weren't crowded together like they were in that steep, brushy ravine.
If
she
knew that, the Phantom had to, as well.
“It can't be him,” Sam told Ace.
Even though he was young for a herd stallion, the Phantom was experienced. The fleet silver mustang had protected his band for at least two years. He
wouldn't allow his foals to be cornered and struck down by predators.
An angry neigh shrilled down from the hillside and Sam caught a flash of blue-black hide.
“Oh my gosh,” Sam gasped.
New Moon. Of course there were other black mustangs on this range, but it could be him.
Last summer, the Phantom had been captured and forced to buck in a rodeo. In his absence, New Moon, the Phantom's son, had tried to take over.
His reign hadn't lasted long. Once the Phantom had returned, he'd driven New Moon away from the family herd. In the fall, the young black stallion had challenged his father and lost. Sam hadn't seen him since.
Now, Sam struggled for a better view, but there was nothing to see.
Just as suddenly as it had begun, the commotion ended. No manes showed above the thicket. Dust drifted on the morning breeze, spinning into threads, thinning, then disappearing.
Sam listened intently. She heard no possessive yaps from coyotes with a meal to protect and no yelps from subordinate coyotes being driven away from a kill. Sam closed her eyes to concentrate, but all she heard was tires, as a vehicle passed on the highway, beyond the lake and over the ridge.
Suddenly, she heard a voice.
“â¦you doing?”
It was Jen.
Sam waved. She'd been so focused on the horses, she hadn't seen Jen ride up to the edge of the lake.
“Ace won't move!” Sam shouted back. She was eager to tell Jen what she'd seen, but right now she had to get Ace out of the water.
Jen shook her head. Her white-blond braids flipped around her shoulders and sunlight glinted on the lenses of her glasses. Then she pointed to one ear.
She hadn't heard.
“He's getting back at me for neglecting him!” Sam bellowed this time.
Jen seemed to hear, but not agree. She tossed a braid back over the shoulder of her magenta blouse.
“You're giving him more creditâor blameâthan he deserves,” Jen called.
Sam shrugged. Jen teased her for attributing human emotions to horses. But Sam had spent two weeks paying more attention to her new filly, Tempest, and to Jinx, a bucking horse in need of a second chance, than to Ace. Why
wouldn't
Ace show his jealousy?
Jen rode Silly a few steps into the lake. Now that she was closer, she didn't have to yell.
“If I were any kind of a roper, I'd try to rope him and lead him out,” Jen offered.
Sam shook her head.
“That'd just make him mad,” she said. “I could get off and lead him.”
Sam looked down. Her legs were trembling from holding her boot toes up to keep them, and her stirrups, out of the water.
If she climbed off, she'd be soaked. Remountingâshe sure wasn't going to
walk
homeâwould make her saddle so filthy that she'd have to spend all afternoon cleaning it.
“Wait,” Jen said, looking away. She shielded the lenses of her glasses from the sun's glare. “Someone's coming.”
“My dad,” Sam said, though she only hoped it was. Actually, she'd settle for Jen's dad, or Dallas, the foreman of River Bend Ranch. She'd rather it wasn't Pepper, their youngest cowboy. It was pretty embarrassing to be stuck in the middle of a lake because your own horse was ignoring you.
Sam shaded her eyes and stared in the same direction Jen had turned.
Dad had ridden out early this morning in search of stray cattle. But the horse coming this way was too stocky to be Jeepers-Creepers, the Appaloosa he'd ridden. The rider's silhouette wasn't Dad's, either.
Ace's ears pricked to catch the sound of hooves. His long neigh vibrated through his barrel.
“Oh no,” Sam muttered with a sigh.
Of all the people she'd rather not see, this rider topped the list.
Jen had obviously recognized him, too.
“What
is
it with him?” Jen called to Sam. “We're
surrounded by hundreds of acres of open range and he has to show up exactly where we are.”
“He likes to humiliate me,” Sam explained.
“Maybe he won't see you,” Jen suggested, but she didn't sound hopeful.
Maybe.
If they were surrounded by a cloak of invisibility.
If they hadn't left a single hoof print on the desert floor.
If Ace grew little gold wings and flitted high into the sky.
Sam leaned forward against Ace's neck.
“This is all your fault, you know.”
The bay gelding shook his mane and nickered as the dark rider loped closer.
With his black horse, black Stetson, and relentless approach, he looked like a bad guy in an old Western movie. And he was definitely coming their way.