The Shining Stallion (6 page)

W
ith Navigator turned out and some time left before dinner, Darby began walking uphill to see Hoku. She wanted to try out the idea Navigator had given her.

She knew there were other things she was supposed to do. Jonah had told her she would be in charge of Luna and Francie, the goat.

Since Jonah was nowhere around, she sprinted to catch up with Kit.

He was matter-of-fact as he told her how to care for Luna.

“First, keep your eyes open for a second stallion. Wild horses I know don't fight over territory and here, there's no shortage of water. But there's a load
of mares down there. Them, they
will
scrap over.”

Kit said Jonah expected her to clean Luna's pasture, hand-graze him, and “pony” him—Kit said that meant leading the stallion alongside the horse she was riding—for exercise until she felt confident she could ride him.

“Thought you started with him this morning,” Kit said. Then, before Darby could make an excuse, he asked, “When do you go back to school?”

“I don't know,” Darby told him. “Jonah hasn't told me.”

Kit's dark features didn't change expression, but his eyes widened for a second. That was the only sign he gave that he was surprised a bookworm like her wouldn't press Jonah for a date.

Kit had always lived on a ranch, Darby thought, so he wouldn't understand that she was making a total mess of this “simple” country life. How would she survive Lehua High School? She might be smart enough, but what if they had different kinds of classes? She kept trying to read that course catalog Megan had brought her, but every time Darby opened it, she only saw one thing:
Eighth grade was in the high school.

Were they even allowed to do that? In Pacific Pinnacles, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades were together in a middle school. She'd be going from upperclassman to bottom-feeder. Why hadn't someone—like her mother!—told her that before?

Darby thought about calling her mother and demanding an answer, but that wouldn't make sense. Either her mother hadn't known—the school system might have changed since she'd graduated decades ago—or she'd known but didn't want Darby to worry.

After all, it wasn't like she had a choice.

“Are you cold?” Kit asked. He'd been looking past her, so Darby glanced over her own shoulder to see Auntie Cathy approaching, but then Kit said, “You.”

“Me? I'm not cold.” Darby loosened the arms around her body, then glanced up at Kit's friendly brown eyes. “Have you ever heard of eighth grade being part of high school?”

Kit rocked back on his bootheels as if shocked.

“Never,” he said.

Even if he was just trying to make her feel better, it worked.

Cathy waved as she came toward them.

“After you check on Hoku,” Auntie Cathy said, calling to Darby while she was still yards away, “I need you to go up to the house and help Megan. You two are doing dinner.”

“Auntie Cathy, can you show me how to take care of Francie?”

“Give her goat chow and water, move her chain every so often, and don't—” Auntie Cathy shook her head. “She's fine. I'll show you in the morning. Right now, I get to teach Kit about wild pigs.”

“She gets all
da kine
jobs, the fun ones, yeah?” Kimo asked as he swaggered by, tapping his flowered hat.

“Can you teach me, too? About wild pigs?” Darby asked.

“Dinner,” Auntie Cathy reminded her. “But you do need to learn to recognize places where pigs have been rooting. They damage crops and grazing areas and they…can be dangerous.”

Although he inclined his head no more than an inch toward Auntie Cathy, Kit looked oddly sympathetic. Kimo, headed for his maroon truck, glanced back with a sad expression, too.

Darby might have stopped to wonder about Kit's and Kimo's reactions if Auntie Cathy hadn't begun firing off instructions.

“There's a roast in the oven. Rice is in the steamer. Don't let it burn. Make a salad, set the table, and that's it. Now, we're off to find pigs.”

Darby went to feed Hoku and pretended to hurry, because she didn't want Auntie Cathy thinking she was leaving the dinner preparations to Megan. But as soon as the two adults were out of sight, Darby smooched to Hoku.

Although the filly was busy eating, she rolled one eye toward Darby. She knew her human was up to something.

“Just eat your hay, baby,” Darby urged Hoku and, with hay in reach and no men in sight, the filly did just that.

Earlier, Darby had left the tangerine-striped lead rope over the fence and she hoped the filly had gotten used to it.

Humming tunelessly as she concentrated on Hoku's reactions, Darby held one end of the lead rope in her right hand and passed the other end behind her back to her left. Then she swung it back and forth, letting the rope bounce against the back of her legs.

Hoku flattened her ears in annoyance, but kept eating. Darby knew she had to launch this experiment before the filly ran out of hay.

Darby stepped away from the fence and began jumping rope.

A squeal burst from the mustang. She flinched back from the fence and bolted for the far side of her pen.

“Not last night, but the night before,”
Darby recited just loud enough for the horse to hear over the swishing rope and skipping feet.
“Twenty-four monkeys came knockin' at my door…”

Darby felt breathless, not from exertion or asthma, but because Hoku wasn't really scared. Her head tilted to one side as if she wanted to look away, but her ears pointed directly at Darby.

“As they ran in…”

Hoku stopped pretending disinterest and fixed Darby with an unblinking stare as she moved back toward her hay.

“I ran out,”
Darby said, and when she didn't do anything more alarming, Hoku walked closer. Hay, not her human's sanity, was really her number-one priority.

Finally, neck outstretched, the mustang lowered her head.

“And this is what they said to me…”
Darby let her voice trail off and, because Hoku was still watching her, but lipping up hay and swallowing it at the same time, Darby rewarded her by stopping.

As the rope landed softly in front of her, Darby said, “More later, you good, sweet girl.”

Darby coiled the rope in slow, easy movements and arranged it back over the fence the way it had been all day.

For a second, Darby thought she heard the feathered rush of wings overhead, but she was wrong. The owl hadn't landed in the ohia tree since she'd come back from Crimson Vale with Hoku.

“Dinnertime,” Darby reminded herself. She backed away from the corral, pretending not to hurry. “Hoku, if I don't see you before morning, tell your owl friend I said hi.”

Hoku swished her tail and jerked her chin in Darby's direction.

The filly was sending her home, Darby thought with a smile. And then she found herself laughing. There was more than one way to teach a wild horse not to fear a rope. She'd just proven it.

 

After dinner, Darby saw Megan carry in the clutter of brown grocery bags that had been in the ranch office into the living room.

She caught the flash of scissors as Megan inflicted serious damage on a sack, then tossed it aside with a moan.

Hovering in the hall as if she were headed toward her bedroom, Darby asked, “What are you doing?”

“My book has to be covered,” Megan said. “I have a notebook and textbook check.”

“Oh,” Darby said.

Megan set about cutting again. Her creation looked more like the fold-and-snip snowflakes you made in elementary school than a book cover. At last Megan sailed a vaguely human-shaped wad of paper at Darby.

“Paper dolls. Want 'em?”

Darby tried not to laugh. “When is your book check?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I could help,” Darby said.

“You don't have to.” Megan's overly patient tone hinted she thought Darby was still trying to make amends.

“But I like this kind of stuff,” Darby said. “Do you have a ruler?”

Megan did, and she scooted out of the way to let Darby rescue the remaining brown bag.

Darby had marked, cut, and folded, then neatly written the book's title on the cover when Megan disappeared upstairs for a few minutes. She had no clue what was going on, until Megan returned with stickers.

“It was kind of plain,” Megan said, adding the stickers as a final touch.

Next, Darby helped Megan organize her notebook, filing vocabulary tests, quizzes, handouts, and notes behind section dividers.

“It looks great,” Megan said. “But you've set my teacher up for a big disappointment. He'll expect me to do stuff this well all the time.”

It was quiet.

Darby was tempted to fill the silence by showing Megan her good-luck charm. The older girl had been born in Hawaii, so there was a good chance she'd have a clue as to what it was. The more Darby thought about it, the more she thought it might be some kind of surfer's amulet. To bring big waves, maybe?

But before she could show her, Megan stood up and walked toward the kitchen where her mother was finishing the dishes.

“Thanks,” Megan said over her shoulder.

At least we're speaking to each other,
Darby thought as she walked to her room and flopped down on her bed to make a few notes in her dictionary-diary.

She half listened to Megan and her mother talking in the kitchen, but their voices were blurred.
Darby was surprised when she heard Megan's footsteps coming down the hall.

“Hey.” Megan knocked with the back of her knuckles on Darby's open bedroom door. “Mom said I could take you down and introduce you to Francie. It's not completely dark yet.”

“Okay, it's not like I have homework to do,” Darby said, trying to make it sound like a joke. “Besides, I've never met a goat.”

Megan didn't hear her, because she was already rushing out of the house as Darby pulled on her tennis shoes.

Once she was ready, a door opened at the end of the hall and Jonah appeared.

Darby's grandfather had been missing all afternoon, so she hadn't had a chance to tell him she hadn't found the horse with the wavy hoof. He'd probably figured it out for himself. He'd barely spoken at dinner, simply grumbling as he shoveled down his roast and rice while Auntie Cathy talked about pig damage.

“I didn't see any of those hoofprints,” Darby said quietly.

“He cut through the fold,” Jonah said, and his guess sounded more ominous now that she knew about Old Luna's death. “Did I just hear you're going out to check on the goat?”

Darby nodded and Jonah looked pleased. “You've put in a long day. That's what it takes.”

Darby ducked her head, accepting his words like a trophy.

“You'll need this.” Jonah handed her a flashlight.

“Thanks,” Darby said, and then she hurried after Megan.

“F
rancie, here Francie goat,” Megan called as she and Darby tramped through the warm twilight across the ranch yard.

Megan had already shown Darby where the barley goat chow was kept and demonstrated how to measure out the kid's breakfast.

“You probably knew that baby goats were called kids,” Megan said as they came around the back of the house.

“Yes,” Darby said. She heard the jingle of a chain being pulled across the grass just as Megan held out her hand for Darby's flashlight.

She turned it over and Megan spotlighted a small black-and-white goat, not much bigger than the dogs.
Soft ears flopped at the sides of Francie's head, then waved toward the girls.

“Won't something eat her? Staked out like this?” Darby asked.

The goat made a bleating sound, as if protesting Darby's question.

“Shhh,” Megan said. “Of course not. Walk up to her slowly until she gets to know you.”

“Oh, you are the cutest animal I've ever seen,” Darby whispered. She bent to pet the small goat. Francie's black-and-white coat felt silky. In the flashlight's beam, the goat's shiny little lips were thin as a pink pencil line.

She bumped her tiny horns against Darby's hand.

“She wants you to scratch her head,” Megan said quietly.

Darby did, feeling more at ease than she had all day.

“We can't let Jonah eat her,” Darby told Megan.

With an alarmed
naaa
, Francie bounced unbending front legs at Darby.

“Shh. You need to be quiet with her so she can settle down for the night,” Megan put in quickly.

Darby knelt next to Francie and stroked the white curve of her throat. It was one of the softest things she'd ever touched.

“In the morning, she's frisky,” Megan said, and Darby could tell she didn't like the idea of the little goat being meat, either. “You can play with her.”

“I will! That's cool!” Darby said.

“Just be careful,” Megan said. “Francie will eat your shoelaces if she gets a chance.”

Megan returned to the house alone while Darby used the flashlight for one more trip down to see Hoku.

Once she finished checking on her filly, Darby's eyes were accustomed to the darkness and she clicked the flashlight off.

The sky was so star-filled, it had turned from black to charcoal gray. Endless and overwhelming, it almost seemed to be lowering.

Soon she'd be able to touch it, Darby fantasized as she meandered back toward Sun House.

A movement caught her eye. Off the bluff, in the pastures down below, something seemed different.

It was probably just a ranch horse, not the Shining Stallion, but Darby flicked on the flashlight.

Darby caught sight of Jonah, still as the stone he leaned against, with a rifle resting over his forearm.

Was her grandfather waiting for the stallion that had killed Old Luna? Was he going to make sure that this time the challenger and not the challenged would die?

Jonah's impatient voice shattered the drama of the moment.

“Turn that off and come down here,” he shouted up to her.

Darby swooped the flashlight's beam away.

“Turn it off, I said, or you'll wreck your night vision.”

Darby hurried along the gravel road, past Sun House, then turned right. Placing her tennis shoes carefully, she began the descent down to her grandfather.

She was breathing hard from exertion when she reached him. Still, she managed to ask, “Are you going to try to shoot him again?”

Jonah drew a quick breath, then let it out in a grim laugh.

“Kimo been talking story with you?” he asked.

Darby wasn't exactly sure what he meant. “He told me about the horse that killed Old Luna.”

It was exciting to have a secret with Jonah, but she hated the idea of a horse dying for no reason—or for some reason they couldn't figure out and fix.

“Sometimes I think I should have killed that horse,” Jonah told her.

But he hadn't. Jonah told Darby how he'd ridden into the forest after the horse. There he saw that his shot had creased the stallion's neck, and when the animal finally fell down in the mud it was breathing so hard, blood sprayed out on Jonah's boots.

“I was standing over him with the rifle, ready to do it, when I remembered yelling at Manny—that'd be Cade's stepdad—just a few days before, for shooting wild horses in his taro patch. Figured if Manny was to blame for running the horses off his land and
onto mine, then I killed that stallion, I wasn't much better than him. And that's a thought I couldn't tolerate. Still can't.

“So, I gave that horse—” Jonah interrupted himself. “That stud was more shocky than hurt, so I didn't put him out of his misery. Really, it looked like he was going to be okay.” Even in the moonlight, Darby could tell her grandfather thought it was wrong to leave an animal suffering.

“Yeah, I gave him a second chance, but I marked his hoof so that if he ever came back, I'd finish what I'd started.”

Darby felt chills at the same expression Jonah had used when she'd been told to get rid of the old grain sacks.

“I meant to use my knife to engrave an
X
deep on the bottom of the hoof wall, but he kicked me, then struggled up. By then I just wanted to get out of his way, so I only left a kind of a wavy line on him.”

Darby sighed.

“Do you think that's cruel?” Jonah asked.

Darby wasn't sure. She thought naming and raising a goat for food was awful, but she was no vegetarian. She'd wondered if Auntie Cathy actually hunted the wild pigs that were tearing up the horses' pasture and she knew that while Jonah had been leaning, with a knife in his hand, over the stallion, he could have done something much worse than notch his hoof.

“No, I don't think it was cruel,” Darby said, and she meant it.

But she also believed that if the stallion charged out of the darkness to confront Luna, Jonah would make sure that the wild horse didn't come back again.

 

Darby's dream was lit by firelight.

Aged Hawaiian women sat side by side, rocking in place. They sang mourning words she could not understand. They stared down at something she could not see. Their black gowns merged with the darkness behind them. Orange feather lei encircled their necks.

An old-fashioned brass skeleton key levitated up among them, but they turned their brown, wrinkled faces away from it. Their mouths drooped in profound sadness as they looked into Darby's eyes and reached toward her.

Darby woke with the sad music vibrating through her. It only took a moment to realize it wasn't golden firelight pressing against her eyelids; it was sunshine.

She'd slept later than usual, maybe because it was Saturday. Instead of rattling around in the kitchen with Auntie Cathy, or running her hair dryer upstairs, Megan must be sleeping in, too.

Darby rolled to her back and studied her bedroom ceiling. It spread smooth and white above her, an opposite to the cave in her dream.

I'd rather dream of horses,
she thought, but the
dream had been kind of interesting. Did feather leis even exist? She thought all leis were made of flowers, but she'd come straight from the airport to this ranch.

Maybe Jonah had books about Hawaiian history and culture in his library. If she knew more about the island, she might be able to figure out what the dream had meant, Darby thought as she dressed.

No, you wouldn't,
she corrected herself. Dreams were just the brain's way of processing hopes and worries.

The morning was already hot and Darby would have put on a tank top, except that would expose her good-luck charm. Still, she didn't want anyone to see it and think she was superstitious, but she really needed to show it to someone who might know what it was. Because, to tell the truth, she was getting sort of unbalanced about it.

Right then, for instance, she had the eerie thought that the old ladies in her dream were reaching out to her, asking her to return the necklace—that's what it had to be, didn't it? Since it wrapped around her wrist three times?—or they'd keep sending the Shining Stallion after it.

Darby shook her head and looked at the braids.

It was a lot more likely the dream sprang from the “Mary's bracelet box” story, instead of the thing's paranormal powers. If so, why couldn't she make herself get rid of it? Why was she pulling on a long-sleeved white T-shirt instead of something sleeveless?

“It's a mystery,” Darby muttered to herself, but she didn't change her mind.

Darby darted out onto the lanai before she left the house. From here, she had the best view of ‘Iolani Ranch.

Jonah wasn't still standing guard with a gun down by Luna's compound and she saw no equine corpses.

Everything was fine this morning. Sky Mountain presided over the horizon, looking down on acres of green pastures. It reminded Darby of being a little kid, rolling down grassy hills in the park with her dad until they were both dizzy and their sides ached with laughter.

She should call her father and tell him how wonderful the ranch was, Darby thought as she released the dogs from their kennel. She waved at Kit as he rode past.

But he was leaning forward, frowning, as he set his horse out at a far-reaching jog, and Darby wondered if something was wrong down in the pastures, after all.

Darby headed for the goat chow bin in the tack room.

“Morning,” Cade greeted as he bent to use a pick on his Appaloosa's hooves. Darby noticed that Cade's loose brown shirt was collarless and buttonless. With just a slash for his head to go through, it looked primitive, but it had pressed lines down both sleeves.

Just like Jonah, Darby thought, then guessed that the last time she'd ironed anything had been in September, for the first day of school.

“Hi,” she said, slipping past.

When Cade asked, “How soon do you want to work with Hoku?” Darby pretended she couldn't hear him over the rush of goat chow pouring into Francie's bucket.

She wasn't avoiding Cade. She just didn't want him watching her with Hoku. She was pretty sure jumping rope wasn't a paniolo-approved method of horse training.

“After your chores?” Cade went on as Darby emerged carrying the bucket.

“Okay,” Darby said.

Cade nodded.

Ninety percent of Cade seemed like a tough, uncomplicated guy. He wore that paniolo shirt. He yearned to live the paniolo life, taking all the roughest, open-country chores Jonah gave him—and he didn't mind making sacrifices to do it. He clearly loved Joker and the Appaloosa loved him back.

Left to her own conclusions, Darby guessed she would have decided Cade was just the strong, silent type of cowboy. But Megan had warned Darby that she “didn't know what Cade was capable of.”

Still, when Cade had been edgy yesterday, Kimo hadn't taken offense.

Maybe, Darby thought as she swung the bucket
to attract the attention of the little goat, it was just that the return of the wild horse had stirred up Cade's bad memories of his stepfather.

Francie made a
naaa
of recognition when she saw Darby.

In the daylight, the goat's markings looked like a melted hot-fudge sundae, Darby thought, smiling.

Megan had told her Francie was frisky in the morning, and she seemed to be, darting to the end of her chain, then bucking, as Darby sprinted her way.

I'm dancing with a goat,
Darby thought.
This time last month, who would have guessed!
She laughed and zigzagged. At first Francie mirrored her. Then a bark and the sound of running paws told Darby the dogs were joining in her scatterbrained antics.

The goat ran to the end of her chain, looking frantically for an escape.

“No!” Darby yelled. “Bad dogs!”

They slowed to a walk and hung their heads.

As Darby turned to calm the goat, she realized Francie had suddenly gone quiet.

Francie's legs stiffened like broomsticks. Her head pitched back, staring skyward, and then the little black-and-white goat collapsed.