Rain Forest Rose (11 page)

Everyone nodded, and though Darby longed to watch Megan's reunion with her rose roan mare, she knew the older girl was probably right.

“So, why didn't Jonah come?” Darby asked as she tethered Navigator while Megan loosened his cinch.

Before Megan answered, Cade interrupted, pointing at Darby's elbow.

“What did you do?”

“Gosh, is that down to the bone?” Megan gasped.

“It's nothing,” Darby said.

Cupping her hand over the scrape to hide it, she could feel that it had started bleeding again.

“We can fix it real quick,” Cade said.

“It doesn't hurt or anything,” Darby protested, but she realized Cade had been looking at Kit, assuring the foreman that first aid wouldn't take long.

When Kit nodded, Cade stopped listening to Darby.

Working as quickly as Tutu had while making her antiasthma potion, Cade used his knife to gather some of the fern velvet Jonah had made her touch. Then he pressed it to Darby's elbow and left her holding it in place while he searched for a ti leaf.

“Jonah got into a squabble with his sister, Babe. Your aunt,” Megan muttered.

Darby remembered Tutu using her fingertip to draw a line on the tabletop, showing how she'd divided the family lands between Jonah and his sister.

“And then poor Jonah had to stay at Babe's five-star resort to talk things out,” Megan said, smirking.

“Oh yeah,” Darby said. She vaguely remembered the Sugar Bay or Cove or Something Else Resort that Kimo had pointed out on their drive from the airport to the ranch.

Cade returned holding a broad green leaf and told Darby, “Your tutu did this for me, and it worked real well.” He bound the ti leaf over the fern velvet. “Just leave it to heal for a week and you won't even know you were hurt.”

“Thanks,” Darby said.

Since she'd been banned from watching the execution of plan A, Darby groomed Hoku. It didn't soothe the filly as it usually did, but Darby kept at her brushing for over an hour before she stopped.

Hoku stood with her head low. Sweat darkened the golden hair around her white-starred chest to a yellow-brown.

“This is all just too much, isn't it, girl? First the pig, now all these people, and horses on the other side of the fence while you're inside.”

But Hoku's ears didn't prick up to listen to Darby's voice. The mustang just looked at her, dull-eyed.

Megan had settled by the stream with Tango's old halter, hoping the mare would recognize its scent. She blew bubbles, too, and every now and then, the breeze brought Darby the sound of Megan talking.

Cade perched in a tree overlooking the stream, so he could alert Megan if the rustling she heard coming toward her wasn't Tango, but the boar. And though Darby knew which tree he'd climbed, Cade was so still, she couldn't spot him.

Kit rode the perimeter of the
kipuka
without saying if he was looking for the boar or the rose roan. And Darby forgot all about him until she left the corral.

“Come ride with me,” Kit said as Darby locked the corral gate behind her.

Without a second thought, Darby agreed. More nervous than achey, she hurried, as fast as her sore legs would carry her, over to Navigator, and resaddled him.

For one moment she was afraid her muscles were too sore to lift her foot into the stirrup, and she yelped as she swung her right leg over Navigator's back, but once she was settled in the saddle, she felt okay.

As they rode, she noticed Kit checking out her scraped elbow, the way she rolled her shoulders to keep them from stiffening, and the careful way she held Navigator's reins to keep them from rubbing her tender palms.

“Is this a setup?” she asked him, surprising herself with her ability to joke with the foreman. “Did you ask me to ride so that you could see if I did something stupid to get myself all banged up?”

“Naw,” Kit said, squinting at the landscape ahead. “You can tell me now, or later. I don't care when, exactly, but you're by golly gonna spill the beans.”

So Darby told Kit what had happened yesterday.

Maybe he pointed out hoofprints from Hoku and Tango and the pig just to keep her talking longer, Darby thought, or maybe he was trying to teach her something, but she found herself excited to tell someone about her adventure.

When he didn't scold her, she kept talking.

And even though she meant to leave out the part where she rolled down the hill and came to rest in the middle of a family of pigs, she didn't, because then she couldn't have bragged about Hoku coming back to her.

They rode up a hill and rested the horses at the summit. From there, they could see the entire
kipuka
. It really wasn't very big. In fact, when Kit pointed at a tiny valley that funneled past the stream and into the clearing, Darby gasped, “That's Tango!”

“Yep,” Kit said. “Standing right where she can watch Megan, but not going any closer. We're wastin' that terrain,” he added, but Darby didn't understand what he meant.

As they headed back downhill, Kit said, “Yesterday? That was a lot to handle on your own.”

It wasn't quite a reprimand, but Darby told him, “I didn't want to. I tried to go tell Tutu, but Hoku wouldn't leave her corral.”

Kit nodded. “Even mustangs get that way, thinking home base is the only safe place to be.”

“And when I thought of that pig coming back and trapping her inside…” Darby looked over at Kit, but he made no sign of agreement, so she added, “I know I should have gone for help, but I just couldn't leave her.”

But maybe Kit had stopped listening.

“That's it,” he said, pointing at Darby. “We'll trap Tango just like we trapped that bronc at the Salinas rodeo.”

“We will?” Darby asked, but Kit just motioned for her to catch up.

“Let's go,” he said. “It's almost noon and I want to cut those two off before they move on to their crazy plan B.”

Darby nudged Navigator with her heels and joined Kit in a lope, but then she shouted, hoping he could hear her through the breeze the horses made,
“There's no plan B without Navigator!”

From the shade of his black hat, Kit flashed her a grin. He gave her a thumbs-up sign, too, but they let the horses continue loping, just for the joy of it.

K
it squatted in the dirt, drawing with a stick. It didn't take long for him to explain that one of the easiest ways to catch a panicked horse was by cornering it.

“All you need's bait—and for that we can put all the saddle horses in the pen with Hoku and feed 'em early—and enough people walking side by side to make a human chain to cut off her escape.”

On the map he'd drawn in the dirt, Kit showed them how the little valley funneled past the stream, then opened into the clearing.

Cade, Megan, and Darby nodded in excitement.

“We just lay up real quiet until she has her drink of water at the stream,” Kit said, “and when she starts smelling that hay and going to investigate, we
move after her, slowly. And when the corral's in sight and Tango's deciding what to do, you”—Kit nodded his head at Megan—“just mosey up and put her halter on.”

“Piece of cake,” Megan said, and with that reminder, each of the horse trappers grabbed something to eat, then returned to the rain forest to wait for Tango.

 

It was late afternoon, three o'clock at least, Darby thought. Her thigh and calf muscles trembled as she crouched in the foliage.

And then Hoku warned them that the rose roan was coming.

The filly let loose a ringing neigh that made birds rise crying from the trees. Then Darby felt the ground beneath her tremble as something crashed through the rain forest, coming toward them.

Skittish but excited, Tango loped right past the stream and the humans in hiding. Her ears pricked forward with almost coltish interest.

“Fall in,” Kit said in a stage whisper, but Tango's lope had already carried her out of earshot.

The pink mare didn't look back as Cade, Megan, Kit, and Darby walked after her, leaving six feet or so between them. They followed the mare closely enough that they saw her shy at Darby's shelter, then startle at the sight of the corral. She stopped, then sidestepped as Hoku pressed her sorrel face against
the corral fence rails.

Navigator, Conch, and Joker joined Hoku at the fence and stared, transfixed by the other horse.

Tango threw her black mane and it slapped back down on her neck. Her nostrils distended as she sniffed the bottom of the gate.

With a frown and silent shrug, Megan looked over at Darby.

“What's she doing?” Megan mouthed, but when Darby curved her index fingers on either side of her nose in—she thought—a perfect imitation of boar tusks, Megan just shook her head in confusion.

Tango raised her head, trying to see the hay inside the corral, until she looked seventeen hands high.

“Now,” Kit whispered, gesturing Megan forward.

She carried the leather halter and strolled toward the mare. Tango glanced over her shoulder and turned back to the corral and then she shied, as if she hadn't believed her eyes the first time.

Megan stopped, held her hand out for the pink mare to sniff, and waited. In just a few minutes, the mare approached close enough for Megan to ease the halter on her head. In a few more, Megan led her toward the gate, where Cade, the only other person the roan knew from her captive life, opened it.

Darby watched all of this from the back, but it seemed to her that Megan walked with pride as she gave Tango an openhanded pat on the rump, telling her it was all right to join the other horses.

Tango bolted forward. She looked back as Cade and Megan closed the gate together, but the pink mare didn't seem to mind. She shouldered past Conch and Joker, then stretched her rosy neck to touch noses with Hoku.

Once the lively horses were inside the fence and the humans were outside, Megan and Darby stared at the horses, discussing every move they made.

“She's pretty peppy, but not wild,” Darby said.

“Those scars.” Megan winced. “And she's got to smell pig all over this place, but she still let me walk right up to her.”

There was no way Darby could say what she was thinking. It was too embarrassing, but that didn't mean it wasn't true.

Love could be stronger than fear.

By the look in Megan's eyes, she already knew that.

“Change of plans,” Kit said, startling them both. “We're staying put 'til morning.”

No one protested or asked questions as Kit explained. “This boar's still moving around. If he has rabies—and it's not a sure thing—he's in the furious stage. What they do then, mostly, is roam. And lose fear. They get real irritable, too. Want to attack anything that moves. Jonah was hoping—”

Kit broke off and Darby wasn't surprised. The foreman rarely said as much as he already had.

“Point is, with it getting dark, those horses”—he
nodded toward Hoku and Tango—“would be too fractious to take through the woods, even on lead lines.”

“Fractious? What's fractious?” Megan asked.

“Restless?” Kit suggested.

“So we'll leave them all in the corral together,” Cade said, “and hope the boar's not crazed enough to try to get in.”

“Yep,” Kit agreed.

With Tango, Navigator, Joker, and Conch for roommates, Hoku would be in heaven, Darby thought. She just hoped the filly didn't remember she preferred the tight crush of horses to her human herd of one.

Megan clapped her hands. She looked excited by the unexpected night of camping. “We didn't really plan this as a slumber party, so we didn't bring that much food,” she said. “But we can pool what's in our saddlebags with Darby's supplies!”

“Ain't no slumber party,” Kit mumbled, looking surprised by Megan's enthusiasm.

“I'll stand watch,” Cade volunteered.

“We'll take shifts,” Kit said.

“I'm sure we can make a decent dinner, even if”—Megan put her hands on her hips and looked pointedly at Cade and Kit—“the diners are touchy.”

Megan was giddy with joy at the reunion with her horse, Darby thought, and she refused to let the grim situation depress her.

Darby shared her jerky and the freeze-dried Peach Pie Pak but kept enough food to last her the rest of the week when she saw Kit breaking two protein bars into halves and Megan mixing up envelopes of powdered drink mix with water from their canteens.

The biggest surprise came from Cade's saddlebags. He'd brought mochi, a dessert he said was made with sweet bean paste and fruit.

“These don't taste like any beans I've ever had,” Darby told him. “They're delicious. If strawberry ice cream wasn't cold, this is what it would taste like.”

“You're weird,” Megan told her.

“They're better when they're just made,” Cade said.

Kit stood and prowled around the camp with his rifle, but before Cade could join him, Megan said, “We're like a team of superheroes,” she looked at their faces in the brassy light of the lantern.

“Right,” Darby said.

“Really,” Megan insisted. “You're a horse charmer. Cade can see in the dark—”

“Night vision isn't a superpower,” Cade said, lowering his voice as if the praise embarrassed him. “It's mostly hereditary, like my pupils dilate more than some people's, and there's stuff I've learned to do.”

“Kit can track anything on four feet, or two, or—have you tried snakes?” Megan called to him.

“Not lately,” he said.

“What's your superpower?” Cade asked Megan.

“I'm a superior athlete, of course,” Megan said, yawning.

Then she sagged against Darby's shoulder.

Looking down at her friend, Darby thought it was like someone had blown out a candle. Megan was already asleep.

But Darby felt totally awake.

Kit must have noticed, because he assigned her and Cade to take first watch.

“Wake me at midnight,” Kit said, then looked down at Megan. “And I'll wake her at four. Hey, Wonder Woman”—Kit jostled Megan's shoulder—“that okay with you?”

Megan mumbled agreement, then squirmed into her sleeping bag.

Left alone, Cade and Darby were quiet until he said, “Do you care if I turn out the lantern?”

“No, but why?” Darby asked.

“To help my night vision. The longer it is since I've looked into light, the better accustomed I am to seein' in the dark.”

“Will it work for me, too?” Darby asked, turning the key on the lantern to Off.

“For anybody,” Cade said. “Besides, then we can watch for firebugs.”

“Like, fireflies?” Darby asked.

“I don't know.
I've
never seen one, but Jonah says he used to see them all the time when he was a kid.”

Cade gazed silently into the night for so long, Darby felt compelled to ask, “Cade, if the pig comes, what are you going to do? I mean, in the old days—well, according to Jonah, you're not supposed to kill anything in this forest, right?”

“Your tutu already thought of that,” Cade said. Despite the darkness, Darby heard a smile in his voice.

“She did?”

“She told me there's an old Hawaiian saying about the wrongs done by man being atoned for by a pig.”

“Atoned for? Like a scapegoat or something?” Darby asked. “That's not fair.”

“It's supposed to be like a sacrifice,” Cade told her.

The wrongs done by man, Darby repeated silently. What wrongs? Darby wondered, but she didn't ask Cade. What if he thought she blamed him, too, for Ben's death?

Then Darby's attention returned to her great-grandmother. “Do you think she's like a medicine woman?” Darby felt her elbow, with its ti leaf bandage, again.

“I'd call her an herbalist,” Cade answered, without asking who Darby was talking about.

“Or a wise woman,” Megan piped up drowsily.

As the night deepened, Darby looked up through the trees. Multicolored stars showed between the
leaves. Blue, red, and gold lights shone among those that were diamond white. She knew the color differences had something to do with temperature, but right now, it looked to her like someone had tossed a handful of jewels against black velvet.

“If that pig is rabid,” Cade said, breaking the quiet again, “it's suffering.”

“I know,” Darby said. “Yesterday, it wasn't trying to be ferocious. He looked…” She drew a breath, glad it was Cade listening. He might not make fun of her for trying to read a pig's feelings from its wrinkled face. “Disoriented. Confused, but like he couldn't stop himself from crashing into the fence and stuff.”

Cade shifted. Holding his rifle across his lap, he turned away from Darby, but she could still hear him say, “And if Kit's right, soon the pig won't be able to swallow water.”

Darby shivered. If that was true, the pig's death wouldn't be a sacrifice. It would be a mercy.

 

The boar came at midnight.

Though the horses' worried whinnies said they'd heard him approaching, all four humans were startled by the pig crashing through the rain forest.

Darby hadn't meant to fall asleep, but the breaking brush was what made her eyes pop open.

“I see him,” Cade said quietly.

Except for the feverish huffing of the pig, they were all quiet, until Kit said, “You sure belong in this
owl clan, Cade. I can only hear 'im.”

He started pumping up the lantern, then said, “Forget it. That's a bad idea for keeping our eyes sharp, right?”

Even though Cade was staring toward the corral, with his rifle raised to his shoulder, he nodded.

Darby couldn't make out the boar's color or shape, but she sensed movement.

“It's at that fence again, isn't it?” Darby said.

“Why are you whispering?” Megan asked in a startlingly loud voice. “Give me a spoon and a pan to pound on. We want to scare it away, don't we?”

The pig swung around to face them, but it moved so quickly, its lack of coordination made it fall. They heard it grunting and struggling, and Megan didn't ask again.

“I'd put an end to it, if I could see well enough.” Kit sounded frustrated. “But if it's still where you say”—he watched the back of Cade's head, made visible by the pale braid, and saw him nod—“it's already too close to the horses to take a shot.”

A shot in the dark, Darby thought, and for the first time she really knew what it meant.

“If he gets in with the horses—” Darby broke off. For all her tenderhearted feelings toward wildlife, and Megan's, too, they were all thinking of the same thing. They'd seen Tango's scars. The boar's curved tusks could inflict terrible damage on silken legs and tendons.

Hearing the boar stagger closer, the horses began a captive stampede, circling their corral at a gallop. Darby couldn't see them, but she heard their hooves running, and their shoulders ramming against the fence.

“They're gonna try to break out,” Cade said. “I don't think we have much choice.”

Hoku's fierce neigh, the one she'd used on Black Lava, soared over the whinnies of the other horses. Then another neigh joined hers.

“That's Tango,” Megan said breathlessly. “I can't tell if she's mad or scared, but—”

They heard hooves hit the fence.

Kit crouched next to Cade and asked, “Are they trying to kick their way out?”

“No,” Cade said. “It's Tango and Hoku. They're—” Cade stopped.

“What?” Darby demanded.

“They're going after the pig.”

One of the horses screamed in fury, then horseflesh hit horseflesh. Teeth clacked. Darby imagined her mustang filly and the once-wild mare shoving past the geldings to get to the bristled menace coming after them.

Hooves battered against wood.

“Aw.” Cade made a pitying sound just before the pig began to shriek.

He pressed his rifle tighter against his shoulder.

The horses' hooves had found their target. The
piercing squeals raised gooseflesh on Darby's arms, but the pig was still shoving against the fence. She heard the wood creak.