Winter of the Crystal Dances by Angela Dorsey

Author:Angela Dorsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horse, animal rescue, animal adventure, girl and horse, best horse books for kids, best horse series, magical girl talks to horses, telepathic magic animal communication, wild horses mustangs, wilderness adventure mystery
Publisher: Enchanted Pony Books

Chapter 12

The next day, after the horses had their breakfast and the first chill was out of the air, we rode out looking for the nasty creature that had attacked Twilight. It was more than curiosity that made me want to be sure it was gone. Something about the attack didn’t make sense.

For a predator to stalk the same horses long enough to know where to wait along their trails seemed odd. The predators around here usually range far and wide to find prey. They don’t usually follow one group around, hoping for an opening because that group knows they’re there after a while. The element of surprise, a huge part of any attack, is lost. And to make things more suspicious, this predator hadn’t chosen a very good time to go after Twilight. Attacking her when her sire and dam were right there to save her was a major blunder.

So it was a mystery, and Kestrel and I love mysteries. Our first step in solving this one was to go where Twilight was attacked.

The snow was trampled and discolored with old blood, as if someone had sprayed it with rusty brown paint. I could see where Twilight had thrashed in the snow, and where I had, too, before I’d learned how to push her panic and pain to the back of my mind. Embarrassed, I turned my back on the flattened snow and hoped Kestrel wouldn’t notice.

“So what are we looking for?” she asked, staring down at the old blood with distaste.

“Tracks? I don’t know. Anything that looks interesting.”

She looked around at the battered snow, and farther out, the myriad tracks. “Well, there are lots of horse tracks.”

I started to scout around. Rusty followed me, his nose almost in my jacket hood, then suddenly he stopped. Wolf this way, he said. So he thought it was a wolf too. He snorted and walked to my right, pulling me gently and firmly along with him at the end of his reins.

“What’s he doing?” asked Kestrel.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to sound surprised. Rusty stopped and sniffed at the snow in a relatively untrampled spot – and there they were. Tracks.

“It’s a wolf,” I said for Kestrel’s benefit, seeing the large canine prints in the rumpled snow. “A big one.”

“Wow, cool. Good job, Rusty.” Kestrel was already mounting Twitchy. “Let’s follow them.”

The tracks led onto the snow crust where they were harder to see, but not impossible, and then to a spot nearby where the wolf had waited for the mustangs to pass.

“There’s no point in backtracking it,” I said. “We need to see where it went, not where it came from.”

“I agree,” said Kestrel. We rode around the place where Twilight had been attacked until we reached the untouched snow and eventually the wolf’s tracks again, arrayed in the skiff of snow over the snow crust. Great spaces stretched between each stride, as if it was running for all it was worth. And alongside it were a horse’s tracks.

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