Secret Star by Terri Farley

Author:Terri Farley
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

Where was the Phantom?

As Sam lay in bed that night, staring at the swoops and bumps in her plaster ceiling, she couldn’t stop thinking of the wild silver stallion who’d once been her own. Had those been dust wisps she’d seen along the ridge top that morning just before she’d seen Jake? Had they been stirred by the stallion and his herd as they climbed the stairstep mesas and hid in the pinion and sage thickets?

What if Violette’s aerial acrobatics had stirred up the mustangs?

Maybe the Phantom would come to the river tonight. Sam shivered at the thought. Every moment she spent with the wild horse was a gift.

But the plane could have had the opposite effect, too. The snarling, swooping thing could have spooked the mustangs. The Phantom might have decided to elude the strange mechanical creature by returning his band to the security of his hidden mountain valley.

Sam rolled on her side and stared at her white curtains. The light wind billowing them inward was chilly.

Summer was ending. Wild animals usually came down from the cool mountains to graze the lower, warmer range in winter.

She didn’t know the altitude of the Phantom’s valley. She’d ridden to it, heading sharply uphill and steeply downhill, squeezing along a tunnel that cut all the way through a mountain. The horses had sought refuge there in all weather.

Of course it wasn’t a magical place, even though it felt like it. She’d heard Gram talk to her gardening club friends about microclimates, though. Sometimes, due to air currents or something, one little piece of earth could be warmer than the land around it.

Sam yawned, but she wasn’t sleepy.

She missed the Phantom. A lot.

Sam sat up in bed, pulled her knees against her chest, and circled them with her arms. She longed to hug the stallion’s neck as she had when he was a colt. But he was an adult now, and wild, and if she could just sort out her thoughts, she had a feeling that he could help her figure out what was wrong with Bayfire.

The Phantom and Bayfire were stallions of about the same age. They lived in totally different worlds, of course. Still, what if Brynna was right? Maybe the nature of horses didn’t change all that much because of where they lived.

A snort sounded outside. A stallion’s snort.

Sam swung her legs out from under the covers. Her bare feet barely grazed the floor before she was at her window, pushing her curtain aside.

Be him, she pleaded silently.

She stared into the darkness, toward the bridge.

Nothing moved except the river.

She couldn’t see much of the ranch yard from here, so she listened. She heard restless hooves and the snort came again.

It was probably Bayfire, tense and puzzled, on this first night in a strange place with unknown horses. Only Inez was familiar to him, and he’d decided she was no longer his friend.

What was the bay stallion thinking, Sam wondered.

Horse thoughts, about food and family? But Inez was his only family.

That’s it, Sam thought, yawning.

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