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Informationen zum Autor Marguerite Henry (1902–1997) was the beloved author of such classic horse stories as King of the Wind, Misty of Chincoteague, and Stormy, Misty’s Foal, and her work has won several Newbery Awards and Honors. Klappentext This classic story! now in a specially priced edition! is the enthralling true tale of Wild Horse Annie! who almost single-handedly saved Nevada's herds of wild mustangs from extinction. Mustang 1. Saved by a Mustang IF GOD has a kind of plan for all of us, I like to think He coupled me with horses right from the start. It is not just my own mustang, Hobo, that is part of me. All horses call to me. We sort of belong together. This could not be just an accident. I remember the first time I saw a band of wild mustangs. It was only a flash. My Pa and I were freighting a load of wool over the mountains to California when suddenly he reined in and pointed. I saw the reason. Far off on a mesa a string of mustangs was running into the wind. It must have been into the wind, for their tails streamed out behind and their manes lifted like licks of flame. And just by looking I was out there with them, and I could hear their snortings and their hoofs ringing, and I could feel my own hair blowing and my lungs gulping for air, and I shivered in joy at such freedom. I remember whispering, “Whose are they, Pa?” And Pa saying, “They’re runaways—gone wild.” There was a look of wanting in Pa’s face, but excitement too at the free wildness. “Will they always live there, free like that . . . and then their colts and grand-colts?” Pa startled me with his sudden stern tone. “They could! If men don’t get too grabby for every smitch of land for their cattle.” Even as he said it, a cow bawled nearby. And in the distance a fading line of dust was all that remained of the wild ones. Pa clucked to his team and we drove off. For miles of mountain turns we rode in silence. We were still holding onto the beauty we had seen. I could still hear the echo of faraway hoofbeats. I could listen to nothing else. Yet even as I sighed in joy I felt a vague, uneasy worry. I didn’t want anything ever to happen to them; I wanted them always to be free. But could they? That was the first time horses called to me. But now I know that God had a plan for me long before that. On clear, cold nights when the stars are all in their rightful places I know He had me in mind as long ago as that time when my Pa was just a baby and almost died on the desert. But he didn’t die because . . . “Oh, the cowards never started And the weak ones died by the way . . . ” That’s how my Grandma always began the true story of how my Pa was saved. Then she’d clear her throat, moisten her lips, and with a look of joy upon her face she’d plunge into her covered-wagon days. “Our wagon rolled through dust. A choking, sneezy wilderness of dust . . . from nowhere to nowhere.” She paused a moment, her small bright eyes remembering. She stared over my head as if the whole panorama of her pioneer days was flashing on the wall behind me. “Our four horses made furrows through it, kicking up great clouds of dust that turned the brown-coated ones to gray and the gray ones to white. Even Nelly’s colt tagging along beside her was fuzzy-furred with dust, and its whiskers white like a goat’s. “Annie!” she’d say. “Your Pa couldn’t of come into this world at a worser time.” “Why, Grandma?” I’d ask. Even when I got to be ten or eleven, I’d still ask “Why?” right there. And she’d say:
