Synopsis
Samantha and Jen are out camping when they meet Nicholas, a boy traveling cross–country on a beautiful Gypsy Vanner mare, learning about his gypsy ancestry.
His caravan also includes a young colt. Nicholas says it's a stray, but the colt looks a lot like a missing mustang. When people start getting suspicious, Sam wants to stick up for her new friend. But has she put her faith in an untrustworthy drifter?
Children's Literature
Samantha and her friend Jen are lying quietly in the meadow when their horses are spooked and run away. The girls quickly clean up their campsite and set off in search of their mounts. As dusk falls, the girls venture off the trail, lured by the faint sounds of music wafting on the breeze. Following the sound, they find their horses, who stand as if mesmerized, watching a strange boy beside a brightly painted cart softly playing his violin. Standing next to the boy is a beautiful pinto horse—with her thick forelock veiling a half dark/half light face, and her mane draping her shoulders, like a swath of night sky that has a beam of white starlight running through it—who looks as if she has just stepped out of a fairytale. The boy, Nicholas, tells the girls that the horse is a Gypsy Vanner mare, and he is traveling across country with her to discover his gypsy roots. Completing the caravan is a young colt who Nicholas says is a stray. Sam and Jen strike up a friendship with Nicholas, and he accompanies them back to Sam's house at River Bend Ranch. Nicholas' gypsy heritage, however, makes some of the lesser informed citizens of the region immediately suspicious of him. They accuse him of stealing the stray colt. Part of the "Phantom Stallion" series, this is not only a nice horse story but one of friendship, prejudice, trust, and dealing with stereotypes. "Phantom Stallion #23."