Tracks in the Sand (Ally O'Connor Adventures Book #1) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Mark Littleton

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69 pages

English

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Believable characters, lively and contemporary dialogue, and fast-moving story lines quickly draw 8- to 12-year-old readers into the first book of the Ally O'Connor Adventure Series.Summer vacation brings Ally and four friends to North Carolina's Outer Banks. The kids have heard stories about the wild mustangs living on the island and would do almost anything to catch a glimpse of the majestic animals. While following tracks in the sand, Ally and Nick, both fourteen, accidentally uncover a cruel plot to kill the mustangs. Their determination to protect the horses leads to excitement as a mystery unfolds. Who are those two dirty men following the horses? Why is one of them carrying a rifle?Finding themselves in grave danger, Ally and her friends learn to depend on God and each other for help.

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	15 novembre 2001
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781441243997
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0173€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Tracks in the Sand
Mark Littleton
© 2001 by Mark Littleton
Published by Baker Books a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakerbooks.com 7
Ebook edition created 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-4399-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
The information on page 126 is taken from Outer Banks Magazine, 1991–92 Annual, P.O. Box 1938, Manteo, NC 27954
To Nicole and Alisha Littleton,
my favorite daughters.
I hope you will read this
someday
(when you have time).
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Cast of Characters
1 Stumbling over Trouble
2 Something Isn’t Right
3 “We Want to Go, Too”
4 In the Crow’s Nest
5 Advice from Mr. Tomoro
6 Making a Plan
7 Destination: the Unknown
8 Waiting for Action
9 No Rabbit Hunt
10 Caught in the Act
11 Molly Gets Away
12 Tied and Gagged
13 Ally Stays Close
14 Stuck!
15 The Flat Tire Trick
16 Boys in Danger
17 Molly’s Rescue Mission Stalls
18 Nick and John Begin Their Escape
19 Where Are the Keys?
20 Molly Escapes
21 The Crash
22 Mustangs to the Rescue
The Wild Horses of the Outer Banks
About the Author
Other books for youth by Mark Littleton
Cast of Characters
Ally O’Connor: A fun-spirited, fourteen-year-old eighth grader with a zest for life and a love for horses.
Mr. O’Connor: Ally’s father, a tall, lean man with bright green eyes and a walruslike mustache.
Mrs. O’Connor: Ally’s mom, who has the same blue eyes and auburn hair as her daughter.
Nick Parker: Ally’s tall, strawberry blond, teasing friend, also fourteen and an eighth grader, who has an obvious crush on Ally.
Molly Parker: Nick’s earnest little sister, an eleven-year-old blond with freckles and a pure heart.
Mr. and Mrs. Parker: The fun-spirited parents of Nick and Molly.
John Debarks: A smart, sarcastic twelve-year-old with light red hair who wants to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer.
Kelly Debarks: A precocious ten-year-old with a mop of flaming red hair.
Mr. and Mrs. Debarks: Parents of John and Kelly.
Mr. Tomoro: A naturalized American citizen of Japanese descent who speaks with the accent of his parents; a widower and beloved neighborhood storyteller, who houses the largest shark tooth collection in the Outer Banks.
Dunk: Mr. Tomoro’s playful and beloved black Labrador.
Mrs. Newton: Known to the children of Outer Banks as “Widder Newton” because her husband passed away long ago. She lives at the end of the row of beach houses at Outer Banks on Pine Woods Lane and keeps a great garden.
Pack: The short and squat follower of a criminal duo.
Lug: The tall, lanky, muscular leader of the criminal twosome.
One
Stumbling over Trouble
Ally O’Connor knelt in one of the valleys between the dunes of the Outer Banks. She studied the marks in the sand as June sunlight poured down, an avalanche of heat on her slender body. Mustang hoofprints etched the beach on these islands off the coast of North Carolina but not one of the beautiful creatures was in sight. Ally breathed the hot air and sighed, wishing a breeze would kick up cool air off the ocean for the horses’ sake, if nothing else.
The Outer Banks offered mounds of dunes for miles, along with plenty of tourist shops, restaurants, and a wide shoreline with frisky waves to play in. Houses jutted up off the ground on stilts, crowded together in pockets and lazy-mazy streets, bending in all directions. Everywhere new houses were going up. Ally regretted the way the area had developed with building projects. The only place that hadn’t been disturbed was the wild horse sanctuary.
The wild Mustangs had been brought to America, north on Chincoteague Island, by Spanish explorers in the 1600s. Somehow the horses migrated south and ended up on the Outer Banks. Over the centuries, they had almost been wiped out by long winters with little food. Sixteen had survived and were now protected by law. Legally, no one could attack, corral, or even touch them.
Smaller than racing thoroughbreds or the Budweiser Clydesdales seen on TV, these horses were majestic. This Mustang herd, led by a gallant black stallion, was like those found on the Great Plains, sporting several colors, but mostly ebony black, rusty brown, and dappled white with gray. What mattered most to Ally was that these horses were wild. No one had ever ridden them. To her they were exotic and mysterious.
She had drawn pictures of the stallion several times from the magazine photos plastered all over her room at home. Now, as she bent over to touch the surface of the hoofprint-dappled beach, Ally heard footsteps crunching behind her. She glanced back and smiled.
“Hey. Goofing off, as usual?” Her friend Nick Parker waved. Nick was the oldest of the kids whose families vacationed together each year on the Outer Banks. He trudged toward Ally in his blue-and-white surf trunks.
“Any sign of them?” Nick shouted.
Ally peered at the hoofprints, wisps of auburn hair sticking to her sweaty face. “I think I’ve found tracks,” she said. “They came out of the grass up there.” Ally pointed to a spot about one hundred feet away.
The two fourteen-year-old kids had wandered far from the beach houses onto a lonely strip of sand that was part of the horse sanctuary. Nick stooped next to Ally. He was tall for his age, like her. “So they went surfing?” he suggested.
“Yeah, or maybe they’ve been playing beach Frisbee!”
Nick laughed at Ally’s comeback and checked out the round pockmarks scarring the dunes. “I’d say they were hanging ten,” he grinned.
“In your dreams.”
Ally squinted down the beach, watching the heat billow off the sand in waves. She knew Nick had a crush on her, but she wasn’t about to encourage it. After all, Ally thought, I have goals. Like…like? Well, becoming a concert violinist. Drawing pictures of every animal I’ve ever seen. Becoming a world-class veterinarian. Things like that don’t allow much time for boys, not even Nick.
But if Nick could help me find the Mustangs, she mused, maybe he wouldn’t be such a distraction.
Ally noticed the horse tracks were mixed up, shooting off in different directions. Some were small, others large and gashed deep into the sand. Some looked as though they’d been punched by a cookie cutter. Between the tangle of tracks were two lines of human footprints, one made by work boots, the other by running shoes.
Nick exhaled solemnly. “It’s them,” he said definitively. He closed his eyes like a magician reading minds. “This one is Snoop Horsey Horse. And this one is Poof Daddy. This one let’s see, I smell a waft of fragrance in the air. What is it? Ah, something new and dashing. Should I tell John Klein?”
Ally gave Nick a push. “You mean Calvin!”
Ally had always wanted to see the wild horses. “What about these human tracks?” she asked, worry in her voice.
“Maybe somebody’s trying to capture them for the circus. The ringmaster will announce, ‘And now our lovely Lady Ally and her seven hundred Spanish Mustangs. Come out and take a gallop, girls!’”
“You’re cracked. Besides, there are only sixteen Mustangs left in the herd.”
“Lady Ally and her sixteen…” Then Nick was suddenly serious. “Somebody’s tracking them,” he offered. “Work boots, right?”
Ally read a twinge of concern in Nick’s gray eyes. The boy’s sun-bleached strawberry hair looked salty in the searing light. He ran his hand through it, throwing the tousled strands back like a cool surf-jockey. “Let’s see where they go.”
The two friends plodded off. The horses apparently had meandered, several darting toward the crashing surf. Nick stopped and pointed. “Looks like one of them went swimming.”
“Wouldn’t it be awesome to see that?” Ally said, staring toward the frothy waters. “Like that scene in Black Stallion where the horse goes splashing through waves like he owns the ocean.”
“You’ll see it,” Nick said confidently. “I ordered it up for the show tonight when I and my new love will be having a dinner of steak and Cheez Whiz. Want to come?”
“Get off it,” Ally said, giving Nick an annoyed look. “Come on, I have a feeling we’re going to see the horses any minute.”
But something about the human tracks worried Ally. “Most people walking this beach were barefooted or wearing sandals,” she wondered out loud. “Why would someone wear boots on such a hot day?”
“Oh, probably it’s the people who take care of the area,” Nick said. “Maybe a clean-up crew or something. Or maybe a chain gang!”
“A chain gang of two guys?”
“The jail down here only holds two,” Nick countered.
“And where are the men with rifles guarding the chain gang?” Ally asked.
“Ah, that is the mystery!” Nick joked. “They float above the surface on anti-gravity boots.”
Ally glanced at the trees above the beach. “Look,” she said suddenly, “the tracks go off into the brush up there.”
Ally followed them, running.
Nick caught up. “So when will you be my girlfriend, Ally?”
“When the stars fall from heaven.”
“Aw, that’s no fun.”
“Best I can do. After all, we’re only in eighth grade, Nick, and my dad won’t let me go out with a boy until I’m in tenth.”
“So you’re saying…?”
“Bug off!”
“Thanks a lot!”
The kids followed the tracks into the tinder-dry bushes. Small scrub pines, poplars, brambles, and lush dune grass were everywhere. Ally noticed a trail carved through the trees. Inside the overgrowth, dragonflies and horseflies buzzed about in crazy arcs. “Why did they go in there?” Ally asked, setting her hands on slender hips.
“Maybe it’s a girl and a boy horse,” Nick said. “Maybe he wants to kiss her, but they’re hiding out here because, after all, they’re