The Renegade Read Online Free PDF Page A

mice. How’s that for excitement?”
    Sam gave Ace’s nose a kiss, then turned on the radio in the tack room and considered her job.
    For as long as she could remember, Dad had talked about pouring a cement floor in the feed room. Until then, mice could burrow up from under the wooden floor in search of tasty grain.
    Dad kept grain and corn in shiny aluminum garbage cans with tight-fitting tops. They should be mouseproof, but the mice remained hopeful some grain would be spilled or someone would be in a hurry and not wedge a lid on tightly.
    While she worked, Sam’s mind gnawed on her own problem.
    Where was the Phantom? What would Slocum do if the stallion he’d always wanted was nearby? She’d looked away from him so Rachel wouldn’t see him and tattle.
    But looking away had worked too well. When she’d looked back, the Phantom had vanished. Was he still on the ridge trail above the Gold Dust? Would whatever lured Rachel up there in the first place make her return and notice him?
    Sweating and troubled, Sam was trying to distractherself by singing along with the radio when she heard footsteps.
    Dallas stood in the doorway. Just behind him, stood Ace.
    “Sam, you’re going to have him right in here with you if you let him wander like this. It’s a bad habit.” Dallas shooed Ace with a brush of his hand, and the gelding drew back, insulted. “If a lid’s ever left off one of these cans, he could get in here and eat himself to death.”
    Sam knew it was true. Horses were grazing animals. Most would eat as long as there was food.
    “But I didn’t let him out.”
    “The inside corral gate is open and unlatched. And here he is,” Dallas said.
    Sam approached Ace and touched his neck as if he had the answer. He probably did, but he just swished his tail and looked up at the rafters.
    “I did hug him,” Sam admitted. “But I didn’t go inside the corral, so I couldn’t have left the gate open, even accidentally.”
    Dallas gave her a frown full of disappointment.
    “Well, who’m I supposed to believe, Samantha? You or my lyin’ eyes?”
    Even if Dallas’s arthritis was making him cranky, he had a point.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, and hustled Ace back into his pen.
    Sweetheart gave them both a scolding look.
    “Yes, you stayed in like a good girl,” Sam told Gram’s pinto. “But how did this bad boy get loose?”
    She considered the inside latch. It was open, all right. She supposed Ace might have rubbed against it, scratching an itch, until the latch opened. Or it was barely possible Gram had forgotten to lock the pen when she put Sweetheart inside.
    With both latches in place, Sam tugged at the gate from outside. It held.
    Ace nudged the finger she shook at him. He knew she was joking. “No kidding, Ace. Don’t go getting us both in trouble.”
     
    Just after midnight, a horse woke Sam. She sat up in bed, fingers curled into her quilt, waiting for the sound to come again.
    A joyous whinny drifted through the night. She knew it was Dark Sunshine because she’d heard that sound before. When the mare first came home from running with the mustangs, she’d used that same greeting to Popcorn.
    But Popcorn and Dark Sunshine were both in the ten-acre pasture.
    Sam’s heart thudded. It was him.
    Cautious not to make a sound, she slipped from bed and tiptoed downstairs. The stove clock and refrigerator hummed in the dark kitchen as Sam let herself out into the night.
    Across the ranch yard, Blaze stood and shook.Then he decided he was too sleepy to come along, and flopped back down.
    Good. Sunny’s racket was enough to wake Dad and Gram, but they might roll over and go back to sleep. If Blaze started barking when he saw the Phantom, they’d both be up and notice she wasn’t in bed.
    The moon was a smudged thumbprint, offering little light, but Sam had made this midnight expedition to the river often enough that she knew where to place her bare feet to avoid rocks. The dirt underfoot felt powdery and