Read Online Red Feather Filly by Terri Farley - Free Book Online Page A

apparently Ryan was ready for it.
    â€œYeah?” he asked, with little trace of his British accent. “Well I just reckon we’ll see, won’t we, pardner ?”

Chapter Seven
    S am sat straight up in bed.
    Cougar mewed a complaint and jumped down. With each tiny thud of paw on hardwood floor, her dreams fell away more completely.
    Sam stared through the darkness toward her bedroom doorway. Something out there had moved.
    â€œI didn’t mean to wake you. You’ve got about twenty more minutes to sleep,” Dad whispered. “On my way down to make coffee, I just looked in to make sure you were covered up. Sometimes it gets sorta chilly toward dawn.”
    Sam sighed and pulled her blankets up over her shoulders.
    â€œI’ll be down when my alarm…” A yawn muffledthe end of her sentence.
    She closed her eyes, but her brain kept churning. What had she been searching for in her dream? She couldn’t remember.
    The Phantom. She’d dreamed of chasing the Phantom.
    Sam wiggled down lower in her bed, contented and warm. Oh, how easily she and Jake would win the race if she rode a mustang stallion and he galloped alongside on a wild Indian pony.
    But she’d been looking for something more.
    Sam’s fingers touched her wrist and she knew. Her horsehair bracelet, braided from strands of the Phantom’s silvery mane, was missing. When had she worn it last?
    Mikki, the girl who’d piloted the Horse and Rider Protection Program at River Bend, had borrowed it for a little while, but she’d sent it back. Sam was sure she’d worn it since the Phantom’s disappearance because he’d noticed it, that day he’d let her ride him. That wonderful day.
    She swung her legs out of bed, turned on her bedside lamp, and donned the clothes she’d laid out the night before. Dressed, except for her boots, she pushed her bangs out of her eyes and started searching. She opened each of her drawers and slid her hands under her folded clothes. She closed her eyes, hoping her fingertips would be more sensitive without sight to guide them.
    She found nothing in any of her clothes drawers.Hands on hips, she turned and stared at her room. Silently, she demanded it give up its secrets. When the room wasn’t intimidated by her brain waves, she kept searching. It was not on the shelf with her model horses. Not on the bookcase. It wasn’t on her desk or in the blue mug she used to hold pencils and pens.
    In the top right-hand desk drawer she had a few keepsakes. A gold-colored tin button box that her mother had used when she was sewing. A ribbon from the bridle she’d first used on Blackie, long before he’d grayed into the Phantom. The glossy red-brown feather she’d found on the desert floor on the day she’d watched the Phantom run free after his awful rodeo captivity.
    She picked up the feather and smoothed it through her fingers. One day, she and Jen had followed a red-tailed hawk, hoping she’d drop a feather in time for Jake’s birthday. She’d wanted to give it to him along with the split-ear headstall.
    It hadn’t happened that day, or on the day she’d heard the hawk’s rasping cry and spotted it when she was riding with Jake. It had been a blustery, stormy day, the day he’d broken his leg, but he’d told her hawks were supposed to carry hopes and prayers to the sky spirits and bring back blessings.
    But the hawk hadn’t dropped the feather that day, either. She’d waited until Sam needed assurance that the Phantom wouldn’t forget her.
    Sam jumped as her alarm went off. She dropped the feather back in her desk drawer, slammed itclosed, hit the “off” switch on her clock, and waited for her heart to settle down.
    Four-thirty. Time to go downstairs and, as much as the idea grossed her out, eat. Dad had insisted she have breakfast before she go, or she wouldn’t be allowed to leave the house. It