Mountain Mare (10 page)

“Truck stalled,” Jed told her.

“It does that all the time,” Sam said, “and dad always gets it going again.”

Jed gave a slight shake of his head, resigning himself to giving the whole story if he wanted her cooperation.

“Got to the middle of your bridge, engine died and wouldn't start again. Brynna's BLM truck's got no trailer hitch. Now come on down, Samantha, and maybe we'll get home before daybreak.”

“Thanks for coming after us,” Sam said as she
slipped from the saddle.

It wasn't quite an apology, but that was because she hadn't finished irritating Jed. She hadn't turned into a cooperative young lady, and she didn't want to get his hopes up.

I
f animals could have instincts, why couldn't people have intuition?

Sam knew she wasn't just worried about the truck. Ever since she'd returned home from San Francisco, Dad's truck had suffered from breakdowns.

Sam fingered a lock of Ace's coarse black mane. New trucks cost money, and she was sitting astride a lot of it, but she wasn't just worried about money, either.

No, something else was gnawing at her. Her intuition insisted she'd missed some hint of trouble. She had to go back and check on the chocolate mare.

Jen and her dad were way too logical and level-headed to follow hunches, even hunches that
wouldn't take no for an answer.

So Sam didn't try to explain.

“Sam?” Jen said as she finished loading Silly.

Jen was a good friend, as well as a perceptive one. She could read Sam's face as clearly as if Sam had handed her a note.

“You want to go back,” Jen said flatly.

Sam nodded and Jen stepped aside, nodding toward her dad.

“I'm really sorry,” Sam said to Jen's dad. “But I need to run back to the barn.”

As Jed's astonished expression turned into a frown, Sam ground-tied Ace and edged a step away.

“I left something in the barn and I am so sorry. I'll race over there as fast as I can and load Ace the instant I get back—”

Jed snagged Ace's reins. “I'll get him in the trailer, but hurry. And I'm only doin' it 'cause you're wearin' your dad's stubborn look.” Jed clucked his tongue and Ace followed him as Sam turned to go.

She heard Jed say, just loudly enough that she knew he meant for her to hear, “Jennifer, just remember what I told you: Only a fool argues with a skunk or a Forster whose mind is made up.”

Sam ran as fast as her leather boots would allow.

The fairgrounds lay quiet around her. A paper cone from cotton candy blew across her path, dancing away in a late night breeze when she tried to pick it up.

Just before Sam reached the barn, she passed
Linc Slocum. Thumbs hooked through his belt loops, he stood with some other men. One was a rodeo security guard wearing a white shirt, fingers fiddling with the volume knob on his walkie-talkie.

Along with the other men, he was laughing a little too loudly. They acted like raucous boys instead of grown-ups. Sam guessed Linc Slocum had found his clique.

The barn was just yards away when Sam noticed the mare wasn't looking over the top half of her exterior door. Sam almost growled. There went her great idea of just giving the mare a pat on the neck and jetting back to the waiting Kenworthys.

Standing out here staring into the dark stall would probably be less productive than going through the end door and walking down the aisle until she reached the mare.

Hurry, Sam reminded herself, then jogged to the end and opened the door.

As she did, Sam caught the quick flash of light on an anxious equine eye.

But the gleam came from the fairgrounds lights outside. Illumination had followed her in as she opened the door. The stable lights, which had been on just half an hour ago when she and Jen had saddled up, were now out.

Still standing in the doorway, Sam breathed the comforting scent of cedar shavings and horses. She listened to the restless shifting of hooves.

If she were watching a movie, Sam knew she'd think the on-screen character was stupid to even consider going into the unfamiliar barn when she couldn't make out anything in the darkness.

But this was real life. She had no good reason to be scared.

The fairgrounds must have some master computer that doused the lights at ten o'clock.

Sam tried to remember what was inside the barn. A tack room on this end and a feed room down at the other end, with only an aisle down the middle and stalls on each side, right? There was no place for anyone to hide, unless they stretched out flat behind a hay bale or one of the costume trunks.

Sam put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. If some creep had hidden inside one of the trunks, they'd give her a great head start with all the racket they'd have to make getting out.

“Hey, girl,” Sam called out, feeling a little braver.

Two overlapping nickers and a snort came back and Sam almost smiled.

Her lips froze when she heard another sound. There, in the heartbeat of silence that followed the horses' greeting, she heard an indrawn human breath.

Maybe.

You're imagining it,
Sam told herself.

She cleared her throat loudly.

If there was someone inside, it would be a member
of Hal's staff. But that didn't make sense. Anyone with a reason to be here would have long since called out to her.

No, it was just her and the horses.

And horses were silent by nature, so the snorts and low whinnies told her they were nervous.

“Probably because I'm lurking here in the dark, huh, guys?” Sam filled her voice with bravado.

Accustomed to the darkness now, her eyes finally made out shifting shadows of horses looking over the interior stall doors.

She was about to go striding in when a floorboard creaked.

No kidding?
Sam chided herself. With a few tons of horses standing on it, a floor might creak?

Do it,
Sam told herself.
Count down the stall doors to the fifth on the right. Touch her muzzle to make sure she's still there. After that, you can stop acting crazy and go home.

Sam stepped inside.

If she were home, there'd be a flashlight on a shelf just inside the door. There'd be a lantern in the tack room.

Sam took a long step and trailed the fingers of her right hand against the first stall door. She heard the rustle of a horse moving in its bedding.

She took another step, counting off the second stall door as hooves thudded, startling back when the horse realized he didn't know her.

“It's okay, baby,” she crooned.

At stall three, relief flowed through her. The welcome scent of a horse standing very close was followed by the velvet brush of its nose, extended in greeting. A frightened horse wouldn't be checking her out like that.

Something scuffed behind her. A shoe?

Sam looked over her shoulder. Though her brain insisted there had been movement, her eyes saw nothing.

She passed stall four.

When she reached five, there was a snort of recognition. Sweet alfalfa breath tickled her neck.

“Hi girl,” Sam said, and her hand found the mare's cheek, sleek and smooth. “Were you patiently waiting for me to get down here and visit?”

Then everything happened at once. The mare's head jerked. She squealed in alarm. Outside the barn, Jed Kenworthy's irritated voice called, “Samantha!”

And a hand slammed between Sam's shoulder blades, driving her down the aisle.

“Hey!” she yelled, trying to dig in her heels.

But a second push propelled her a few steps before she stumbled through the feed room's open door.

She had to turn around. She had to get a look at him.

She had just enough breath to make a threatening sound as she wheeled toward the open feed room
door, widening her eyes and filling them with nothing but shades of black.

A man's voice, but not a voice either, an almost apologetic mutter in his throat, made Sam hesitate. Should she jump at him? Try to tackle him down, since she'd just heard Jed Kenworthy who would surely back her up?

The flurry of thought only took a second, but it was long enough for the door to slam in her face.

She staggered backward until her spine slammed against the far wall. For a second, all was quiet and she was surrounded by the comforting smells of hay and grain.

But she had to get out of here. What was he doing? What was he keeping her from seeing? Did he mean to hurt the horses?

Sam pushed off from the wall, hard, and collided with the door. It budged just an inch before she heard something heavy scooting across the barn floor.

He was blocking her inside!

She felt dizzy and a little crazy. She thought of mustangs slamming themselves against wooden fence rails as she raced back to the wall again, gave herself a running start, and rammed into the door; but the stranger was stronger and he pushed back.

Sam cried out in surprise. She pounded, felt a sliver jab into the side of her fist, and yelled, “Let me out of here!”

She shoved with her shoulder, then listened.

The panting must have been hers, she realized, because the footsteps were running away.

He was gone.

She had to go out there, and yet something besides the weight against the door kept Sam trapped inside the feed room.

Four words flashed in her mind. She imagined they were scrawled in jagged scarlet letters across the black air in front of her.

Curiosity killed the cat.

T
he fear that had grabbed Sam by the throat loosened its grip.

It had to be Slocum who'd shoved her in here, didn't it?

But the next voice she heard wasn't Linc Slocum's.

“I'll be—” Jed Kenworthy's exasperated mutter told Sam that he was pretty angry. “What do they think? A man can see in the dark like a danged cat?”

Sam heard Jed slapping at the wall, searching for a light switch; then he bellowed, “You in here, Samantha?”

“Yes!” she shouted. “I'm trying to get out.”

“Out of—?”

“I'm in the feed room, but something's pushed against it.”

Sam tried shoving again. With a scraping sound, whatever it was budged just a little.

“Got it,” Jed said with a grunt, and Sam realized he was helping from the other side. “How'd you get stuck in here?”

“In the dark, someone—I don't know who—but he pushed me in and I couldn't get out.”

“Jen told me there'd been a boy hangin' around,” Jed said in a joking tone. “That's why I came after you when the minutes kept tickin' off.”

“I couldn't get out,” she said again. “I kept trying and trying—”

“Samantha.” Jed's tone was sympathetic, but he clearly thought it was time for her to settle down. “It only coulda lasted a minute.”

Impossible,
Sam thought.

“Well, I'm going to find whoever it was,” she said, but she hadn't taken a step when a flashlight beam bisected the aisle.

Sam caught her breath, then recognized the security guard she'd seen outside talking to Linc. What a big help he'd been!

“Everything okay in here?” he shouted.

“Fine, just dumb kids and their pranks,” Jed said.

A prank? Sam was about to ask Jed how he'd like to be stalked in the darkness, then shoved into a feed
room. But of course she didn't.

Maybe she was being a little dramatic, but she hated the fact that no one cared enough to go after the guy.

Not that they could catch him now.

When the mare nuzzled her, Sam's hands loosened from fists she hadn't even known she'd made.

The security guard stood there looking awkward and useless as Jed lifted a stepladder off a wall hook, set it up beneath an overhead light, and stood on it.

“Someone was in here when I came in,” Sam said, though neither man seemed too interested. “I don't know if he stole something or if he—”

Brightness filled the stable and Jed squinted as he finished screwing in a lightbulb and climbed down.

“Just got loosened with all the activity, I bet. Okay then,” the guard said, heading for the door. “I'll let Mr. Ryden know everything's okay.”

“Someone unscrewed that lightbulb. It didn't come loose on its own,” Sam grumbled. “And it didn't feel like a prank.”

“Don't blame you for feelin' that way,” Jed said. “But I'll tell you, there's nothing on the face of God's green earth that's dumber than a teenage boy tryin' to get a girl's attention.”

Jed was wrong.

Guys laughed when they were teasing, and they pulled pranks in groups.

Someone had shoved her into the feed room to get her out of the way, not to play a trick on her.

Frustrated by his response, Sam almost told Jed what she thought. But maybe he
did
believe her, because Jed was striding down the aisle, checking inside each stall.

“Horses look okay,” Jed said. “This showy one's a little jumpy.”

The chocolate mare rolled her eyes and backed away as Jed came near for a second look. She looked past him, head swinging toward the feed room, then back to the door that stood open to the night. She sniffed loudly and sweat darkened her neck.

“Let's take her with us,” Sam blurted. “I just know that guy was trying to steal her.”

“Not going to happen,” Jed said. “Gettin' stolen, I mean. That fella”—Jed jerked his thumb toward the spot where the security guard had stood—“is gonna have his eyes open, now. Besides, Hal don't allow threats to his rodeo stock.”

“She—the mare—isn't his, exactly. She just followed us in from the mountains when we were at the end of the drive.”

“That so?” Jed's response wasn't really a question. “Tell me then, how Sheriff Ballard would see it any different if
we
took this here horse and loaded her up and hauled her off, compared to this fella that pushed you in with the oats?”

Jed's good sense and the long day's work settled like a concrete collar around Sam's neck. She gave in and led the way out of the barn.

She'd talk to Dad about this in the morning.

 

In Sam's dream the Phantom followed her.

With slow, light steps, the stallion and the girl crossed a bridge of magenta and lavender lights set on strands that were as thin as spiderwebs. Swaying above a black and immeasurable ravine, the delicate bridge supported them because together, their magic was strong.

Halfway across the span, Sam raised a flute to her lips. Enchanted notes floated up, iridescent as bubbles, and the Phantom playfully snapped them to tinier bubbles that drifted to his mane and clung to it like jewels. Prancing a unicorn dance, the stallion's moon-glow hide shone with dapples like ripples spreading on a silver pond.

Ace—mystical and wild, with crow feathers plaited into his mane—joined them as they stepped off the bridge of lights. Shoulder to shoulder, the threesome, with Sam in the middle, followed a tiny trickle of river through a concrete cavern with high sides. Confined, the river could never overflow into the city beyond.

The dream Phantom whinnied a worried call. Sam saw herself leading the horses on, as if she didn't know she led them into danger. But she knew.

When a cell door slammed behind them, Sam slipped through the bars like smoke, leaving the horses rearing inside, but her fists were the ones pounding to be free and her voice was the one screaming, “Let me out!”

Sam sat up with staring eyes. She had to go to the river. Now. She knew the Phantom was waiting for her in the moonlight. She knew—

It was morning.

She was home in her own bed at River Bend Ranch.

So why was she panting? Why did she feel so certain the Phantom was near?

Sunlight crept between her curtains, illuminating her patchwork quilt. Her open bedroom window let the smell of wild sweet peas float in, but she sure didn't hear the Phantom splashing in the river. The only sound was much nearer.

Cougar gave a disgruntled yowl because Sam had risen up and displaced him from his sleeping spot on her chest. He glared at her with yellow eyes before leaping off the bed.

As Sam watched her cat huff away, her breathing returned to normal.

The dream didn't mean anything.

Outside, Blaze the Border collie was barking. Maybe some sound from the ranch yard had found its way into her dream.

Someone was on the front porch, stamping dirt from their boots before coming into the kitchen.

Sam swung her legs out of bed. She grabbed a handful of nightgown and held it up so she didn't trip on her dash to her doorway. She listened down the stairs.

She heard Dad and Dallas, the ranch foreman, talking in the kitchen, but mixed in with their voices was a patting sound, like men pounding each other on the back in greeting. And there was a third voice she didn't quite recognize.

“Hal, let me get you some coffee, and I remember you always liked my pancakes.” Gram's voice cut across the others. “With a little extra sugar sprinkled on top, am I right?”

Hal Ryden was in their kitchen!

Dad's boyhood friend had come to breakfast and she was missing it,
Sam thought as she snatched up her jeans from her bedroom floor, then rummaged in a drawer for a fresh T-shirt.

Had he heard what had happened to her last night? Was he worried over the chocolate mare? Or had he just driven out to the ranch to say hi to his old rodeo pal?

She heard a door close and really hoped nothing interesting had ended before she'd even gotten out of bed. Why hadn't someone wakened her?

Barefoot, Sam ran down the stairs with Cougar beside her.

“This isn't a race,” she told him, but Cougar didn't listen.

She grabbed the banister to keep from tripping as the tiger-striped cat cut her off, leaped the last three stairs, and careened into the kitchen ahead of her.

Hal Ryden sat at their kitchen table with a plateful of pancakes. He gave her an apologetic smile as she came in.

Sam was wondering why, but then she noticed Gram's and Dad's eyes fixed on her with concerned, accusing stares.

“What?” Sam asked.

“Samantha,” Gram said, “why didn't you tell us you were locked into a stall—”

“Feed room,” Sam corrected.

“—when you got home last night?”

“Because it was so late and everyone was asleep.” Sam paused and glanced at Dad. “I figured—” she began, then stopped.

She couldn't explain how the notes Gram had left on the kitchen table—all with vague messages from Amelia's grandmother—had combined with the guilt she'd felt seeing Dad's broken-down truck.

“I figured…” She tried again, knowing the offer for Ace would help pay for a new truck.

Dad's brown eyes watched her over the rim of his coffee mug. If she mentioned the truck, would Dad be embarrassed in front of Hal Ryden?

“You figured what, Samantha?” Gram's voice urged Sam to go on.

Sam shrugged and finished, “That when I saw the truck sitting out there—”

“Dead as a doornail,” Dad said in a smiling aside to Hal. “And a down payment on the one I want to replace it with is three thousand dollars, so I guess I'll see if I can resurrect the old darlin' one more time.”

“—that there was enough going on without me waking everyone up,” Sam said, managing to finish her sentence.

The previous night, she'd led Ace across the bridge. The truck hadn't been pushed very far from where it had broken down in the middle of the bridge, and because Jed's cattle trailer was extra wide, it wouldn't fit.

Sam hadn't minded the late-night walk with her horse.

The La Charla River had prattled beneath them. Cool drifts of air wafted up from its surface. If Ace hadn't been pulling so hard on his lead rope, Sam would have taken him wading.

But Ace had lifted his knees in eagerness. Once they reached the silent ranch yard, his ears swiveled. Did he hear a field mouse running for its burrow as a wide-winged owl cruised overhead? Were his mustang ears sensitive enough to recognize the brush of Tempest's black muzzle, nudging her mother for a
midnight snack, all the way from the barn?

As she'd slid back the bolt on the gate, Strawberry had crowded forward, reminding Sam which horse ruled the ten-acre pasture. Ace had bobbed his head and brushed past the roan. Sam had left him grunting and rolling as if the grass of home could remove the stench of the city from his coat.

Is that what her dream had been about? Selling Ace and banishing him to the city while she stayed on the ranch? But the nightmare hadn't just made her feel guilty. Panic from the moments she'd been locked in the feed room had rushed back, along with the eerie feeling that it was no coincidence that the down payment on the truck Dad wanted was exactly the same amount that Amelia's grandmother had offered for Ace.

Suddenly Sam realized everyone's watchfulness had changed from impatience to concern.

Feeling sheepish, Sam said, “It was no big deal. Last night I was scared, but now I'm not.”

In the daylight, at home, she was pretty sure she'd been worried over nothing.

“I was going to tell you first thing this morning,” she insisted. She glanced at Gram, whose spatula was poised over a griddle filled with pancakes. “Shouldn't I wait for Brynna to come down?”

Her stepmother had been rising a little later on weekends since she'd become pregnant. Sam knew,
though, that Brynna would not only be interested, but helpful, as well.

“She's down and already out on a ride,” Dad said, and when Gram shook her head in disapproval, he added, “She a fine rider and she's on Strawberry.”

“You can tell us now, Samantha,” Gram said, “and we'll fill her in when she gets back.”

So Sam did, recounting all that had happened from the moment she and Jen had spotted the boy petting the chocolate mare and calling her his lass, to the minute Jed had hustled Sam into the crowded truck cab for the ride home.

“So it's no big deal, I guess,” Sam said, finishing her story. “Jen's dad said someone was just playing a joke on me.”

Hal met Dad's eyes across the table. When neither of them spoke, Sam glanced at Gram, surprised that Gram was looking at her, and not at the food cooking on the stove.

When Gram caught Sam's gaze, she looked down, tsked her tongue, and scooted the spatula under a smoking pancake.

“Burned to a crisp,” Gram muttered as she flipped it toward a plate.

“You mighta interrupted a robbery,” Hal said. “After the fairground security guard came and told me about the light being out and you being pushed into the feed room—well, it just sounded all wrong.”

Sam couldn't help smiling. She knew Hal Ryden was like Dad and Jake. If something didn't seem right, they'd investigate.

“I got suspicious and went out to check. No offense to that security guard, you understand, but I asked some of my own people to help me take a look around, and it was a good thing we did.

“We found a little cotton rope that no one recognized. Now that wouldn't have looked like evidence to the sheriff, but moving around the way we do, from rodeo to rodeo, we know every piece of our gear and keep track of it.

“Not only wasn't the rope ours; it was tied into a war bridle.”

“I don't know what that is,” Sam said, although she didn't like the sound of it.