Pebblehoof

Ten-year-old Maria Browning, the American-born daughter of German immigrants, never asked to be dragged from her friends in Chicago to the tallgrass prairie of the Nebraska Territory. Yet in the spring of 1863 that's exactly where she finds herself-working hard to eke out a life with her family on the 160 acres Uncle Sam has promised them, should they last the requisite five years.
She isn't alone for long. A wild prairie horse becomes her unexpected friend in the sea of grass surrounding the family's Platte River homestead.
But a young girl, riding alone through the wilds, without so much as a saddle?
Her parents surely wouldn't approve, if they knew.
What neither Maria nor her parents know is that corrupt railroad boss Silas Seymour has a greedy eye of his own on the Browning's idyllic stretch of riverfront. Soon the family is beset by a dirty-tricks campaign to drive them and their neighbors off the land they've worked so hard to make their own.
Amid several near calamities, Maria discovers she and Pebblehoof hold the key to upsetting Seymour's nefarious plans-if only she can find a way to defy the most powerful man in the territory.