The Wild One Read Free Page A

hurried in for lunch. Except for Sam.
    She stalled, thinking Ace might come to her if the others left. She was wrong. Ace looked at her, shivered his skin as if shaking off a fly, and yawned.
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    Mashed potatoes sat next to a mound of green beans fragrant with onions and bacon. Dad ploppeda slab of beef on Sam’s plate. All this for lunch.
    Sam glanced around the kitchen. White plastered walls and oak beams made it cozy and bright at the same time. She wondered about the cardboard boxes stacked against the wall.
    â€œI know he doesn’t look like much, Sam,” Dad said. “But Ace is a great little horse.”
    Before she answered, Sam noticed Jake kept a sidelong glance aimed her way as he reached for a platter piled with biscuits.
    â€œI’m sure he’s super,” Sam said.
    It wasn’t that she minded Ace’s size. She was barely five feet tall, herself. She could mount a small horse more easily. But that scar. And his attitude …
    â€œWhat about that mark on his neck?”
    â€œThe freeze brand?” Jake held his butter knife in midair, and Sam knew she’d surprised him.
    Sam looked from Jake to her father.
    â€œThat’s what it is,” Dad agreed. “Ace is a mustang. He used to run with the herd you saw today.”
    Gram made a hum of disapproval, but Sam didn’t try to decipher it.
    â€œAfter wild horses are rounded up and vaccinated, they’re branded with liquid nitrogen,” Dad explained. “That freezes the skin temporarily, the horse’s fur turns white and—”
    â€œReally? He was wild?” Sam’s mind replayed the gelding’s attitude. Ace hadn’t been rude. He just had pride.
    A stab of disloyalty deflated Sam’s excitement as she remembered her lost colt.
    â€œI wonder if he could’ve known—” Sam hesitated. “If he could’ve run with Blackie.”
    â€œThat’s a fool thing to say.” Jake rocked his chair onto its back legs.
    â€œIt’s not, is it?” Sam appealed to her father.
    Dad blew his cheeks full of air and shook his head.
    â€œJake, put all four chair legs back on the floor, if you please,” Gram ordered.
    Jake’s chair slammed down, but his face was flushed crimson. Did he hate her for losing the horse they’d worked so hard to train? Or did Jake’s blush mean what Linc Slocum had implied: some folks blamed Jake for Sam’s injury?
    It didn’t matter. The accident had happened years ago. She wanted to know where Blackie was now.
    â€œWhat about that stallion we saw turning the herd away from the helicopter?” Sam’s hands curled into fists. She kept them in her lap. “That was the Phantom, right? What if Blackie’s running with the Phantom?”
    Were they just going to let her babble until she ran out of breath?
    â€œNow, Sam, first off, there’s no such thing as the Phantom. There’s been a white stud on this range as far back as I can recall. Dallas—you remember Dal, our foreman?”
    Sam nodded, but her fists tightened with impatience.
    â€œWell, he claims sometimes, when he’s up late playing the guitar in front of the bunkhouse, he’s seen a shadowy horse just across the river. He thinks it’s the Phantom, drawn by the music.” Dad shrugged, but Sam felt chills at the picture his words painted.
    â€œFolks always call him the Phantom. But it’s not the same horse year after year. He’s a…” Dad put down his fork and rotated one hand in the air. “You know, like a local legend.”
    I know that, Sam wanted to interrupt, but Dad was trying to be nice, so she just listened.
    â€œThere’s fast blood in one line of light-colored mustangs, that’s all,” Dad continued. “They haven’t been caught because they run the legs off our saddle stock. Not because they’re ‘phantoms.’”
    â€œBut aren’t white horses