Firefly (10 page)

Sam took the first peach she touched, though it felt kind of soft. It might have been around for a little while, Sam thought, but she didn't care. It was cold enough that she could rub it on her sunburned cheeks, if nothing else.

“Now, my outside lights are on a timer,” Mrs. Allen said, touching Sam's arm before she made it through the door. “And since I don't keep hens anymore and don't need those lights to keep away coyotes, they go off at midnight. Is that going to be okay with you?”

“Fine,” Sam said. “I like to be able to see the stars.”

“Nighty night, then,” Mrs. Allen said.

 

At last, Sam was ready to sleep. All the commotion she'd made climbing into the hammock disturbed the horses, and Pirate was trotting circles around and around the corral.

Knowing her voice probably wouldn't soothe him, Sam just listened. She heard a cow with a hooting moo far off on the range, and the colt's frantic hooves. She heard the silken rustle of an owl swooping overhead, and circling hooves. She heard a lone coyote's howl, followed by a chorus of yaps. Even the wildlife couldn't sleep in this heat.

Then she realized the colt had stopped circling.

She tried to believe Pirate had just grown weary. She told herself it was silly to imagine the Phantom was near. But some instinct crackled like electricity through Sam's veins. He
was
here. She just knew it.

The hammock rocked crazily as she sat up. With one hand on each side of the hammock, she balanced and listened. Nothing. She opened her eyes as wide as they could go, staring through the darkness toward the corral.

The moon didn't lend much light, but she saw the colt's dark outline and almost felt his trembling as he nickered toward the open range.

C
oyotes were still out romping. That meant mustangs could be, too.

Grabbing each side of the hammock, Sam slung one leg over the edge, balanced, then dragged the leg out without falling.

Glad she'd gone to bed in shorts and a T-shirt but frustrated that she had to waste precious seconds putting on shoes, Sam grabbed the sneakers she'd stashed beneath the hammock. Mrs. Allen's warning had made Sam nervous, but it was her own gruesome fantasy of stepping on a fangs-bared rattlesnake that kept her from rushing into the night barefooted.

As Sam sat down and pulled on the sneakers, she had a moment to think.

Where was the stallion? What kind of terrain would she have to sprint across to get to him? She didn't know the anthills, rabbit brush, or dry, pebble-filled washes of Deerpath Ranch one tenth as well as she did the landscape of River Bend. She pulled the laces tight and double-knotted them.

Sam glanced over at the yearling.

The glowing half-moon showed everything in shades of gray. In silhouette, Pirate looked a lot like the Phantom. Loosed from the corral, Pirate could lead her to his home herd and she could ride behind him on Calico, or—

No. Sam couldn't believe that selfish thought had even crossed her mind. She wanted to apologize to the colt as he stood, head held high, amid a cage of shadows from fence posts and cottonwood branches.

Because his lungs had been damaged by smoke inhalation, he wouldn't survive the high desert winters. Letting him lead her back for just an hour or two would have been cruel.

The colt sniffed loudly, searching the still night air for clues to what he'd heard.

Shoes tied, Sam stood with hands on hips and wished she could ask him for a hint.

The mustang pasture seemed the most likely place to find the Phantom, but was the presence of other horses enough to make the silver stallion forget the fire, exploding paint cans, and a week of captivity?

Pirate was proof that horses could have bad
memories, so maybe the Phantom wouldn't return there. Where else could she find him?

Sam remembered the week she'd stayed on Deerpath Ranch watching over Faith, the blind filly. One night the Phantom had hidden in the overgrown brush flanking the road and charged Jake. But the tall weeds had been cut back long ago.

Sam tapped her fingertips against the shorts covering her thighs. If she didn't hurry, he'd be gone.

The only other place she'd seen the stallion was the hot springs beyond the tree house. That had to be a mile away. She wasn't certain she could find it. She'd ended up there in a snowstorm because Calico had been attracted by the stallion as he stood guard over Faith.

Now, darkness cloaked the landmarks she might remember.

“Do something,” Sam muttered to herself.

As she took a step, Sam caught a whiff of the peach from Mrs. Allen's kitchen.

Did horses like peaches? She'd find out. If its sweet scent carried to the Phantom, maybe she wouldn't have to know where to find him. Maybe he'd come to her.

Sam walked toward the mustang pasture, hoping they'd give her a sign. If the stallion had brought his entire herd, the captive horses would definitely be looking at them.

Dry grass crunched under Sam's shoes. She
hurried, jogging, walking, then jogging again. When she stopped to catch her breath, a crunch sounded nearby.

What was out here with her?

Nothing but her imagination indicated that the Phantom was nearby.

Maybe Pirate hadn't heard horses at all. He was a prey animal. He could have heard a cougar, a bobcat, or even a lone coyote that had strayed from the pack she'd heard howling.

Mrs. Allen's bluish yard lights were supposed to keep coyotes away, but they were off for the night. Sam strained, listening for canine pads moving over the dry grass.

Then Sam recalled the colt's longing nicker and she almost laughed with relief. He wouldn't signal a predator. He had to be calling to another horse.

What if the Phantom had come looking for Pirate? Sam drew a deep breath and released it in tiny increments. What if the silver-white stallion had been neighing across the fire-blackened range, looking for his son?

It made a pretty picture in her imagination, but Sam wouldn't breathe a word of the idea to anyone who knew horses. Jen and Jake would gape at her as if she'd lost her mind. Brynna the biologist would regret the hours she'd wasted explaining everything she knew about wild horses to her mush-minded stepdaughter.

Don't be silly,
Sam lectured herself. No stallion would come searching for a young male. The Phantom would have driven the colt from the herd in a year or two, anyway, before he could make a challenge for supremacy.

Sam approached the mustang corral with determined steps. Only a few horses were in sight. Just before she reached the pasture fence, she heard a squawk. It must be breezier than she'd thought, because that sounded like the creaky hinge on Mrs. Allen's garden gate.

The sound worked like a lever to raise the grazing mustangs' heads. They all came up at once and stared at her.

“Nothing's wrong,” Sam told the horses. “I'm just out on a wild goose chase.”

Then she smiled to herself. Correction: a wild
horse
chase.

She had to start thinking like a horse. Now.

Sam closed her eyes to pretend she had four long legs and a tail that brushed the ground.

You're a horse, she told herself. It's been a long, hot day. Finally, the sun's gone down. The earth is cooling beneath your hooves. It's night and you can move about more freely. What do you do next?

Eat? Always.

Sleep? No, she'd feel frisky after dozing in brushy ravines during the heat of the day.

Drink? Yes!

That was it. Most times she'd seen the Phantom had been at the La Charla River as he led his herd to drink.

But the La Charla was behind her and Pirate had been looking in the opposite direction.

The hot springs?

Sam turned the idea over again in her mind. Maybe. She'd have to ask Brynna if wild horses drank warm water. Until she could, she'd head in that direction.

The smell of burned grass was bitter even to Sam's human nostrils as she neared the rangeland scorched by the lightning-strike fire. Could the Phantom smell this peach over the black stench?

Something scurried nearby, but Sam didn't see it. It might have been a mouse or a night bird leading her away from its nest. Sam kept walking, rolling the velvety fruit between her palms.

Wait, what about the pit? Sure, the stallion's strong teeth could crush it, but she could accomplish two things at once if she took it out.

Cupping the peach in both hands, Sam bit through the skin, pushed her teeth toward the pit, then used her fingers to grab it and pull it out.

Now the sweet aroma should be strong enough for a horse to smell.

When he didn't magically appear, she kept walking. She wasn't sleepy, anyway, so she'd search a little longer.

Ahead, Sam saw a pale mesa so smooth and curved,
it didn't seem to be made of rock and dirt. Instead of being hardened by centuries of weather, it looked like it had been sculpted from ice cream, then flattened on top and scooped smooth on each side.

Scalloped black wings tumbled toward Sam, then veered away and vanished. A bat searching for a bug dinner, she thought.

The howling hadn't come again for some time. She heard nothing but her own footfalls, but she kept feeling as if she were being followed.

Sam looked back over her shoulder. She'd walked a long way from Deerpath Ranch and there was no porch light to guide her back. She hoped Mrs. Allen wasn't a restless sleeper like Gram. If Mrs. Allen came outside and found the empty hammock, chaos would follow. She'd call out the sheriff's mounted patrol, every cowboy in the county, and the volunteer fire department.

Sam winced. How would she explain she'd come wandering out here on the advice of a horse? A hallucinating horse.

She really should start back, but Sam stalled. She stared up into the night sky, looking for more bats. She saw a pair of darting birds that Gram called nighthawks and Dallas called goat suckers.

Her eyes picked out the Big Dipper and she'd just about located Orion when a neigh floated over the blackened fields.

Yes! That raspy call had come from an adult
horse, probably a stallion.

A whinny answered from the ranch. Without meaning to, Sam gazed back over her shoulder, sighing in sympathy for Pirate.

Poor baby,
she thought.

When she turned back, a blue-white form had materialized just yards away.

The Phantom stood in the charred field, legs braced and head lowered. Like an otherworldly beast ready to charge, his muscled shoulders swelled.

She knew it was the Phantom, though his fine-boned face and intelligent eyes were hidden by his overlong forelock. One front hoof struck over and over, as if he hated the ashy smell.

Come to me, beauty
, Sam thought as the stallion stalked a few steps nearer. But then he leaped toward her.

Head level, ears flattened into a mane blown back by his lunge, the stallion's body bridged half the distance between them.

It's a mock charge. A play threat. It had to be. But as he came closer, the ground beneath Sam shuddered.

“You know me, Zanzibar,” Sam's words were half whisper, half gasp, and way too late.

Moonlight glinted pewter on his mane, silver on his back, white on the tail held straight out and fluttering as the stallion flashed by on her right.

The warmth from his body passed her, circled
behind her, and then he slid to a sand-spitting stop a few yards to her left.

A chuckling nicker came from the stallion and Sam felt weak and deflated.

“You like scaring me?” she asked.

Looking past her, the stallion blew through his lips.

“You're bored?”

Who would believe she stood out here on the open range in shorts and sneakers, joking with a wild horse in the moonlight?

Would he come to her? Would he let her ride him? Or even touch him?

Sam's fingers ached to skim over the sterling spots glimmering beneath the stallion's dusty hide.

She tried not to move, keeping even her breaths small and shallow, letting him remember he was safe.

The Phantom remembered. Just like anyone's spoiled pet, he reached his lips toward her, seeking the peach.

Sam's heart flew up, but she made the moment last. The stallion's soft nose pushed at her fingers as she wondered how many humans had made friends with wild horses.

Not many. A Native American shaman, probably. A Celtic maiden worshipped as a goddess for her power to lure wild things. And Samantha Forster, who was too foolhardy for her own good. But look what it had earned her.

“Ow! Careful!” Sam yelped.

The stallion wanted the peach and he wasn't feeling patient. Sam flattened her palm and let him take it.

“It's my own fault,” she confessed.

Bobbing his head, chewing, and strewing bits of peach and saliva, the Phantom gave her a side glance that said he'd never considered any other possibility.

Sam kept her lips closed over a giggle. The stallion was so full of himself. She loved him for his royal attitude and she didn't care that he'd splattered her with his snack.

Some girls might have shrunk away squealing, but she treasured the moment when he treated her like one of his herd.

Besides, she was creeping closer, scooting the soles of her sneakers ever nearer, without lifting her feet for a step.

The stallion wasn't fooled or frightened when she grabbed a handful of his mane.

Before she could gather herself to swing up and mount, he simply sidestepped out of reach.

Amazed she didn't fall and didn't lose her grip on his ropy mane, Sam crooned to the horse, “C'mon, boy. I'd never hurt you.”

Peach juice dripped from his mouth. He considered her plea for a minute and walked away, but he didn't shake her hand from his mane, just towed her along with him.

It was better than nothing, so Sam trotted to keep up.

“Where're we going, big boy? Hmm?”

Lengthening his stride, he moved faster and Sam feared he'd break into a trot and leave her behind.

“Now or never,” she muttered and, hopping on one foot, she threw herself at the stallion, aiming for the glowing spot of moonlight on his back.