Galloping Gold (13 page)

“You didn't chase me,” Darby congratulated the horse. In all that commotion, she would have expected him to stampede after her, but he hadn't.

“Hey, boy,” Darby said as she approached. The paint just glanced at her, then swung his muzzle toward the pig as if he was encouraging Darby to watch, too. “I know,” she said as she caught his reins. “It's pretty exciting out here, isn't it?”

Sugarfoot was learning. Maybe he was even cured. Her spirits soared and though Sugarfoot was reluctant to leave the piggy sideshow, she led him at a trot back to the group.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Guess what…,” but her voice trailed off.

First she saw Megan, ducking out of her mom's hug.

“Mom, I'm fine!” Megan insisted as she took Tango's reins. “I'll stay with our guests while you check these two.”

Megan talked to the wide-eyed guest riders while Aunty Cathy knelt next to Tyson.

“What hurts?” she asked.

“Did you fall?” Pauli shouted.

“No, man,” Tyson said. He started to get to his feet, but Aunty Cathy gave a warning shake of her head. “I'm okay.”

Aunty Cathy pointed her index finger in his face, nearly touching his nose.

“I didn't fall,” Tyson repeated. “I bailed. When Jewel slewed sideways like that—”

“In the horse world, we call that shying,” Megan joked for the entertainment of the guests, but Tyson didn't notice.

“I heard something,” Tyson insisted. “There between her neck and her back. Like a bone breaking.”

Darby's elation vanished. Pauli gasped. Aunty Cathy was gently touching the mare, eyes half closed as she concentrated on finding a sensitive spot.

“Found it,” she said after just a minute. “Not a broken bone, I don't think.”

“It's that stupid Shan Stonerow,” Darby snapped. “The way he had her head tied to her tail, I bet she pulled a—I don't know, like a ligament or tendon or something.”

“Sounds about right,” Aunty Cathy said, but she was already handing Pauli the end of the mare's neck rope. “I think she'll follow you back okay.”

The words were unspoken, but Jewel's stiffness and the relief with which she nuzzled Pauli said the rest: don't count on racing her.

“Ann, honey? Why are you standing like a flamingo?”

Caught
, Darby realized. Just when Sugarfoot had given up his bad habit, just days before the race, Aunty Cathy had noticed that Ann was injured.

“She's okay,” Darby yelled, because once Aunty Cathy saw that knee, it would be the end of their
secret, the end of practicing for the race, the end of saving Sugarfoot.

“She certainly is not,” Aunty Cathy said, and she flashed Darby a look of disbelief. “Why would you say such a thing?”

Darby just shook her head.

And maybe it was Aunty Cathy's suspicion that made her stay with Pauli, Tyson, Ann, and Darby while Megan continued the guest ride.

Once Aunty Cathy had boosted Ann back onto Sugarfoot, she led him herself. Pauli and Tyson followed behind, leading the stiff Appaloosa, letting her set her own pace, and Darby was so sad and disheartened, she felt like a cloud of crows flew above them all the way back to the ranch.

I
t was too depressing to go stand with Pauli as Jonah examined his mare.

The boy who usually looked as perky as his cockatoo-crested hair didn't understand half of Jonah's diagnosis, but each time Jonah shook his head and frowned, Pauli's hands went to his chest as if Jonah had plunged in another knife.

“She already told my mom,” Ann said dully. She still sat on Sugarfoot, and the gelding had picked up her mood. His head hung level with his chest and he didn't even roll his eyes when Bart, the youngest Australian shepherd, bounced up and tried to get him to play.

“I know,” Darby told Ann. “I heard her on her cell.
It sounded like your dad was on his way. I really think Sugarfoot's cured, though.”

“That's good. Really good,” Ann said, “and I'm sure I'd be jumping up and down celebrating if I could.”

They both sighed, and it was their sudden silence that allowed them to overhear a conversation they shouldn't have.

Behind them in the construction site, Tyson was talking to his father.

“We're gonna cut down on practice, Dad. We might not even do the race, I guess. So, want me to help out, since I'm here anyway?”

Darby winced. Bitter, sharp-tongued Tyson sounded about six years old as he talked to his father. And she knew that wouldn't count in his favor. Darby felt the chill of George Mookini's answer even before he uttered it.

“What do I need with a quitter on my crew?”

Why didn't Tyson say something? He hadn't quit!

Tell him what happened to Jewel
. Darby tried to send him brain waves that would help.

“We're right here,” she whispered to Ann. “We could back him up!”

“And isn't that a sad comment on a father-son relationship,” Ann said.

Darby stared at her friend. “You sound about forty when you talk that way.”

“I feel about eighty,” Ann moaned. “If I didn't hate
myself for falling off and giving away our secret, I'd be glad I could stop walking on this. It really does hurt.”

 

While they waited for Ed Potter to come pick up Sugarfoot and Ann, they sat in the ranch office. Aunty Cathy brought them glasses of iced tea, but the frosty glasses were still untouched when Cade came in with Pauli.

Cade had left ‘Iolani Ranch at four thirty in the morning to go work at the Royal Hapuna hotel. His long-sleeved blue shirt and jeans were powdered with dust. He pushed Peach off the office couch and collapsed onto it.

“You look like you already put in a full day's work,” Aunty Cathy said. “Let me get you guys some tea.”

For a few seconds, the boys said nothing. Pauli must have told him all that had happened, Darby thought, because both looked like they were in shock.

“No thanks,” Cade said, but Pauli raised his hand and gave a formal smile that said he could use one.

Where's Tyson?
Darby wondered, but she didn't ask and she tried not to care. And then she had another, even worse thought.

“Jewel's okay, isn't she? Jonah didn't say—”

“Just a pulled muscle,” Pauli said. “But he says we've got to scrap her.”

Cade's head turned in slow motion toward Pauli, and Darby couldn't believe what she'd heard. Scrap
her? Did that mean put Jewel down?

“Could it have been ‘scratch her'?” Ann asked. She gave a low laugh that fell somewhere in between amusement and misery. “That means cross her off the list of horses in the race.”

“That's probably it,” Pauli said.

Darby shot a quick glance at Ann. Her friend gave a firm nod.

“You could ride with me,” Darby suggested.

“Whoa!” Pauli said, holding both hands out as if Darby was the one known to charge. “I'd for sure wipe out if I tried to ride him.”

“He's sweet!” Ann insisted.

“Look at his kind eyes,” Darby said, but Pauli wouldn't back down.

“Well, we oughta be able to salvage one team outta the two we had,” Cade said. Shielding a yawn, he let his gaze wander toward Tyson, who had just entered the yard.

“No way!” Ann snapped, as if she'd been waiting for someone to make such a suggestion. “Don't even say it.”

“Say what?” Pauli asked, glancing between Cade and Ann. Then he raised his shoulders in a mystified shrug.

It was an uncomfortable moment, and Darby was glad when she heard Ed Potter's truck and horse trailer rumble over the cattle guard.

Cade and Ann's stare-off was so intense, Darby
doubted either of them heard the truck's approach.

“He already injured Jewel's mouth,” Ann said without breaking the gaze.

“Not on purpose,” Cade answered.

“I'm not letting that kid take my place on Shug.”

“Well, I can't do it and neither can Meg.”

“You two aren't the only riders on the island.”

“No,” Cade agreed. “Kimo and Kit can ride with the best, but they're not exactly joggers.”

“So?”

“So,” Cade lowered his voice, “he's the obvious choice if you want Sugarfoot to win.”

For a minute, Darby thought Cade had persuaded Ann, but she was wrong.

“He's heavy-handed. He doesn't know anything about horses.”

Pauli broke in, “But he rips through the air like a freakin' shark zooms through water.” Hands flattened together with matched fingertips, Pauli swooped an imaginary shark toward Darby.

“He's not riding my horse,” Ann said finally.

Darby didn't ask,
How much longer will he be yours, if he doesn't perform like a champion?
Minutes later she was glad she hadn't. Ann's dad did the job much better than she could have.

“Annie, I'm so sorry you're hurt. I know you were doing your best, but you're showing really good judgment, not goin' ahead with this crazy idea.”

Not going ahead? Darby wondered what Aunty
Cathy had told Ann's mom, Ramona, and what kind of conversation Ramona and Ed had conducted before he left Heart of Hawaii Ranch to come collect his daughter and Sugarfoot.

Darby couldn't see Ann's face because, despite the rising heat of the day, Ed Potter wrapped Ann in a bear hug and pressed his graying red hair against his daughter's wild curls.

Then he kissed her cheek and added, “Some things just aren't meant to be.”

“But this was meant to be. I mean it
is
,” Ann insisted, but her voice was muffled until Ed pulled back.

The corners of his eyes drooped to match the corners of his lips as he said, “I don't see what we can do between now and July fifth. Those straight-laced individuals at our insurance company want him reformed or recycled.”

“I'm pretty sure he is reformed,” Darby began.

“But can you prove it?” Ed gave the paint a loud pat. “We just need to find old Shug a good home.”

“Let me think,” Ann said to Darby and Cade. She allowed her father to carry her to the truck cab and fuss over her to the point of fastening her seat belt.

By the time the truck door slammed with Ann inside, Darby had stripped the tack off Sugarfoot and stowed it in the trailer trunk, and Cade had led the gold-and-cream gelding inside.

Ed thanked them, looked sorrowfully at the paint, then nodded across the ranch yard where Pauli and
Tyson stood with Jonah.

“Say, who's that boy that looks like a sad little monk?” Ed asked.

Tyson's gray hood was raised again and his hands were jammed into his pockets. He didn't look like a monk to Darby. Still, even standing with Jonah and Pauli, he looked lonely and hopeless.

When she didn't answer, Cade did. Darby didn't stay to listen; instead she went to Ann's window to say good-bye.

Ann grabbed her hand.

“Expand this teammate search to anyone you could stand working with,” Ann said, “and I'll do the same.”

With a wave, Ed began driving, but Ann still wasn't finished talking. “I wish my mom didn't have a bad Achilles tendon, or I know…”

The breeze snatched away the rest of Ann's sentence, but Darby knew what she'd said, and she immediately began her hunt for a new partner.

 

Cade wasn't the sort to say “I told you so.” However, when Darby reported that besides picking up every piece of paper, every feed-sack string, and every animal dropping on the two-thousand-acre ranch—or at least that was how it seemed—and that she had begged about a dozen people to be her teammate in the ride-and-tie race and they'd all said no, he wasn't sympathetic.

She told him that Aunty Cathy, Jonah, Kit, and
Kimo had each claimed they couldn't run ten miles. Even when Darby swore they'd only have to do five miles and she'd do the rest, they'd insisted it was too much, especially in such heat. Besides, there was the luau to prepare for, too.

She told Cade that she'd almost phoned Patrick Zink for suggestions, but she knew he'd feel sad that he couldn't run since he'd injured his leg.

She told him she'd even called school acquaintances.

“But Cheryl Hong is spending the next two weeks with her grandmother on Santa Catalina Island. Monica Davis told me the only creature she's ever bonded with is her computer mouse, and at Miss Day's house I got a lady who was watering the plants because Miss Day's doing teacher training someplace in New Mexico!”

“Hmm,” Cade said, and he was so unsympathetic that Darby didn't tell him how, as a last resort, she'd called Sugar Sands Cove Resort and asked for her cousin, Duxelles Borden. Although she was as unpleasant as Tyson and had no use for horses, Duckie was, as Pauli might say, a primo athlete.

“Don't I wish,” Duckie said when she finally came to the phone.

“You do?” Darby sat up straight. She'd expected another refusal. “Then why not?”

“This whole place is on lockdown until Phillipe comes home for the polo match! Everything has to
be perfect. Can you believe I even had to clean the glass on the giant aquarium?” Duckie gave a disgusted groan. “We have people for that, but no, I have to do it. You would think he was like royalty, like his home-coming was a condemnation or something.”

Coronation
, Darby had corrected silently, but she hadn't contradicted Duckie.

“Just ask Aunt Babe. I know she'll say yes. She has to!” Darby begged, but Aunt Babe wouldn't even discuss the possibility.

“Don't be so stubborn. Ask Tyson,” Cade said when Darby ran out of breath.

“You heard Ann,” Darby told him.

“He's hot to do this.”

“Well, then maybe he—” Darby broke off, and she admitted to herself that she was searching for a way to blame this all on Tyson. “His mother started all of this.”

“I think he knows that.”

“But does he care? Has he tried to talk her into forgetting her lawsuit?”

Cade removed his hat, brushed off the day's dust, and glanced back toward the growing frame of Darby's new house.

He's thinking the same thing I am,
Darby decided. For Tyson, this race was about impressing his critical father. But instead of hinting at that, Cade said, “Could you get
your
mom to call off a lawsuit?”

Darby ignored him. Cade knew how easy it was
to get ensnared in Manny's web. And he knew what it was like to have a mean father. That's why he tried to understand Tyson. Fine, but he sure wasn't being much help to her.

“I'm going to go eat dinner,” Darby said, “and when I phone Ann tonight to tell her how bad I am at persuading people to join me, she can decide what to do.”

 

As she dialed, Darby hoped her friend was asleep. The only good thing she could tell Ann was that Jonah and Aunty Cathy had promised to leave Darby free of chores both tomorrow and on race day, just in case she came up with a partner.

“I don't have good news,” Darby said as soon as Ann came on the phone.

“Well, I do. Kinda,” Ann said.

“Tell me!” Darby pleaded.

“So, first Pauli called to tell me how competitive Tyson is. He admitted Ty wasn't a team player, but he'd been a lot nicer to Jewel since he'd taught him”—Ann's tone turned ominous—“how she felt.”

“What does that mean?” Darby asked.

“I had no idea what he was talking about, either, until he said, ‘He's lucky I didn't hit 'im in the mouth.'”

“He gave him that black eye,” Darby said, and heard the bewilderment in her own voice. Kimo had been right.

“Pauli hurt Tyson because he hurt Jewel,” Ann agreed. “‘No heavy hands,' he said, or something like that.”

“He rides with really light hands now, holding on to the horn more than the reins,” Darby agreed.

“Oh, and today he bailed off and went rolling across the ground when he thought Jewel was hurt, according to Pauli,” Ann continued.

“He told you all that?” Darby asked.

“Yeah, but he had an ulterior motive. He wanted me in a better mood when Tyson called me.”

“Tyson called you?”

“Granddaughter,” Jonah shouted from the living room, “is that you screeching?”

“Sorry,” Darby shouted.

“Yeah,” Ann said, yawning. “And you want to know how nice I am?”

“You said
yes
?” Darby asked, and though her fingers were crossed on both hands, she didn't know what she was hoping for.

“Better than that. I didn't blackmail him. It just flashed across my mind to say, ‘Yes, you can ride my horse if your mom drops her idiot lawsuit.' But I didn't say it.”

“I guess that's good,” Darby said.

“I told him yes, under the condition that he practice with you all day tomorrow and you approve. Is that okay? My dad said he'd call Jonah.”

“I think it's okay,” Darby said. She tried to swallow
the uneasy feeling of having to depend on a guy who'd mocked her by calling a haole crab.