Third-Time Lucky (5 page)

“Yes, you can,” Lisa insisted. “Matt will be here, won’t you?”

He nodded without speaking, unable to meet Kirstie’s gaze as she looked up at him with tearful eyes.

“Moonshine knows Matt better than anyone,” Lisa said, more gently than before. “He’ll be OK if Matt stays with him.”

It was true. Kirstie had a sudden picture of the healthy little palomino trotting after her brother across the corral, shadowing his every step. His coat had shone gold in the sun. Matt had stopped and turned to stroke him, had called him a cute little guy, had grinned at the prancing, dancing steps the foal had taken. “Scoot!” he’d laughed, shooing him off, laughing again when Moonshine had ignored him and kept on trying to follow him into the tack room.

That had been Friday, before this whole nightmare had begun.

Slowly, letting her hand linger for a few more seconds on the foal’s neck, Kirstie stood up. “I’m going with Lisa,” she told her brother. “We’ll be at the house if you need us.”

“Grandpa says he’s real sorry about Moonshine,” Lisa told Kirstie. She sat with her in the shade of the porch swing, sipping orange juice, looking out at the snowy summit of Eagle’s Peak in the far distance.

Lost in a long series of regrets that came out as sighs, Kirstie didn’t respond. If only they hadn’t ridden Lucky and Snowflake up to Deer Lake. If only Dan Stewart had continued fishing instead of stopping to tell them about the runaway horse … Her gaze drifted down from the mountaintops, across the dark-forested slopes, along the green ribbon of flat pasture land in the valley bottom to the red roofs of the ranch buildings. Finally, she fixed her attention on two tiny brown hummingbirds who came to sip sugar water from the clear plastic dish hanging in the porch.

Lisa talked on to fill the silence. “According to Grandpa, horse flu has been bad news as far back as he can recall. Way back, before they invented a vaccine, a horse would get real sick with it. You got so much as a cough out of one of the cutters or reiners used by the old cowboys and, boy, that horse was off the ranch quicker than you could blink.”

Kirstie closed her eyes and sighed.
Don’t give up, Moonshine!

“Once a horse caught flu, he was no earthly use. A cowboy needs a strong, healthy horse he can rely on, not one with a breathing problem or a weak heart. And Grandpa said quarter horses didn’t cost a whole lot when he was young. A cowboy needed a good, well made saddle, but a horse could be bought and sold real cheap.”

“What’s money got to do with it?” Kirstie murmured.
Fight this, Moonshine! Prove them wrong!

“Oh sure, I agree. And sometimes, even in those days, a cowboy would love his horse. I mean, really love him!” Lisa hurried on. “I remember Grandpa told me once about a guy he knew here at Half Moon when your grandpa ran it as a cattle ranch. The guy’s name was Red Mitchell and he owned a black-and-white paint named Bandit. Red worked Bandit on roundups, spring and fall, for ten years or more. Then the horse got sick.”

Gradually Kirstie tuned in to Lisa’s story. Mention of her grandfather, Chuck Glassner, made her recall the endless summer days when, as little kids, she and Matt had visited Half Moon Ranch. They would leave the choked, dusty streets of Denver where they used to live and drive out here for the summer with their mom and dad. That was before their dad had left them to start a new family with another woman, before their mom had sold the Denver house and moved them out to the ranch for good. “What did this Red Mitchell do about his sick horse?” she murmured, her gaze fixed on the darting, hovering hummingbirds.

“He took Bandit west, deep into the Rockies, to see some special horse doctor. Red was part Native American. The horse doctor he knew out there had connections with an ancient tribe. He used cures dreamed up by the old medicine men, herbs and stuff.” Lisa hesitated as she saw Matt’s tall figure appear in the barn doorway and she felt Kirstie suddenly sit forward. But she went on trying to distract her friend as he walked slowly toward them.

“The point is, Red Mitchell cared enough about his old ranch horse to take two weeks out of work to drive Bandit hundreds of miles looking for a cure …”

Kirstie stood up with a jerk of the swing. She took a couple of hollow steps across the porch, raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. Matt’s face was in shadow, the brim of his Stetson pulled well down. But she knew without him having to say a word what had happened.

He crossed the yard at snail’s pace, put one foot on the porch step, then stopped. Unable to meet Kirstie’s burning gaze, he grasped the handrail and let his head sink forward.

“Moonshine,” Kirstie whispered. Not a question, a terrible statement of fact. “He didn’t make it.”

There were a few things people always said when an animal you loved died.

“Never mind, honey. It’s something you have to get used to.”

“You did everything you could. He wouldn’t have suffered.”

“Remember, it’s not the same as when a person dies.”

“You’ll soon get over it.”

It was the last one that Kirstie hated the most. She would yell at any person dumb enough to say that. In fact, after Lisa had left for Lone Elm, Kirstie had avoided going out of the house all day, just so no one could try it. Come evening, as it grew dark and there was less risk of bumping in to anyone, she grabbed her hat and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Sandy asked. She’d driven back from Denver with a bunch of new guests to be greeted by the sad news about Moonshine. It had upset her almost as much as Kirstie and Matt, but she’d had to press on. There were cabins to allocate, late arrivals to check in, a hundred and one tasks to make changeover day run as smoothly as it ought. But now at last she had time to talk.

“Out to Red Fox Meadow,” Kirstie told her.

“It’s too late to ride.” Her mom followed her to the door and looked out at the bands of dark clouds gathering over Eagle’s Peak. The rest of the sky was indigo tinged in the west with pink.

“I know.” Kirstie made out a group of new guests walking down the track from Apache Hill. Their flashlight gave off a weak yellow beam as they found their way toward the barbecue set out on the grass by Five Mile Creek. “I don’t plan to ride,” she told Sandy hastily. If she ran to the meadow, she would avoid the suppertime mob. “I just want to say hi to Lucky.”

“Don’t stay out too long!”

“OK, I won’t.” She swung out through the door, just catching her mom’s last request.

“If you see Matt, tell him I’d like to talk with him!”

But Matt was one of the people Kirstie would rather avoid. She hadn’t seen her brother all afternoon, knew only that he’d volunteered to drive Lisa to her grandpa’s and that he hadn’t been back to the ranch since. He was probably driving the back roads or hanging out in San Luis, trying not to think too hard about Moonshine.

In any case, she succeeded in skirting around the corral, then crossed the footbridge and slipped past the barbecue without being noticed. She could see the meadow fence up ahead and the dark outlines of horses quietly grazing.

As she approached and leaned on the fence, she picked out Yukon, the brown and white paint, with her black colt, Pepper. A little further off, pulling hay out of the sides of the metal feeder, were Matt’s big gray horse, classy Cadillac and ugly old Crazy Horse. The two geldings went everywhere together and were recognizable at a glance.

More horses milled around in the dusk light by the edge of the creek, wandering between willow bushes or nudging each other aside. Yeah, there was Jitterbug, dancing about as usual. And Johnny Mohawk, setting off to lope the length of the field.

But where was Lucky? It was odd for him not to be here by the fence. Usually he would hear and smell her even before she came into sight. His beautiful golden head would be stretching out to greet her, making her feel she was the most important thing in his world.

Yep, there he was, standing under an oak tree at the far end of the meadow. Kirstie spotted his pale mane, and recognized his trot as he set off toward her, the way he picked his feet high off the ground and arched his neck like an Arab, instead of the plain old quarter horse that he was. She smiled as she watched him approach. After this awful day, all she wanted to do was stand with him and talk.

“Hey!” she said quietly as he made his way past Cadillac and Crazy Horse.

He tossed his head and swished his tail, slowing to a walk. Then he plodded the last few yards, head down.

“Hey!” Kirstie said again. She climbed the fence and dropped into the meadow, feeling a few drops of rain in the cool breeze blowing down the valley. “Are you feeling like me, Lucky? All washed up.”

Coming right up to her, he thrust his nose against her shoulder, licking her shirt and pulling at the pocket with his lips.

“I know!” she sighed. “We didn’t get to go out together today, did we? You missed me, huh?”

More rubbing and licking, a sideways nudge as if to tell her off for neglecting him.

“I couldn’t help it!” she grinned. “I was busy in the barn. We had a big problem which didn’t work out too good. Tough, eh?”

Lucky snorted and pressed for more affection, almost making Kirstie overbalance in his eagerness.

“Listen, you got a day off, didn’t you?” Hooking both arms around his neck, she laid her head against him. “And tomorrow’s Monday, but I don’t have to leave the ranch. It’s vacation. School’s out for summer!”

The palomino turned his head to look up at the black horizon, his nostrils flared, ears pricked.

“Yeah, you got it! We can ride all day, go where we want. What do you think? Should we try Eden Lake or Miners’ Ridge? If we go to the lake you can take a swim!”

Giving another toss of his head, Lucky nickered.

“Yeah, I know; you like swimming. Me, too. But maybe Eden Lake’s too far. You looked a little slow coming across the meadow just now, like you could do with taking things easy for a day or two.”

Taking a step back from her horse, Kirstie cast a critical eye over him. She noticed he wasn’t standing square on all four feet, but resting his left hind leg off the ground. Maybe he had a stone in his foot that was giving him a problem. So she went to lift and inspect the hoof in what was by now almost total darkness. “Nope, it looks fine!” she muttered, easing it back down. She went back around to his head and took hold of his head collar. “Hey, you’re not kidding me, are you?”

Lucky shook himself, sending his whole body quivering. Then he gave a short, sharp cough.

It’s nothing,
Kirstie told herself.
Nothing! Lucky’s fooling around, that’s all.
She patted him and told him to quit, said she would go straight back to the ranch for her chicken and fries if he didn’t behave. But that was on the surface. Deep down, she was growing afraid.

Take a proper look,
an inner voice insisted.
It’s not like Lucky to stand uneven. And he’s low in energy. When did he last trot across the meadow to see you instead of lope?

Take a look tomorrow!
Another, high-pitched voice inside her head argued.
Leave it for tonight.

Tomorrow could be too late. If there’s something wrong with the horse, he needs proper attention now!

What could be wrong? Lucky’s a strong, healthy horse.
The whining voice wanted to be right.

Caught between the two, Kirstie couldn’t move. She stood in Red Fox Meadow in the dark, with the rain coming down hard. Lucky had hung his head and was waiting quietly, but still the battle inside her head continued.

If it hadn’t been for Matt coming up to the fence and seeing her there, she might have stayed all night. He stood silently for a few seconds, hat pulled down, jacket collar turned up, hands in pockets. “You OK?” he said at last.

“Fine.” She shivered as the rain soaked through her shirt. The hand clutching the head collar shook with cold.

“How about Lucky?”

“Fine, too. Why shouldn’t he be?” That was the whining, practically hysterical voice taking over.

“No, he’s not.” Matt climbed the fence to join them. He put his hand on the horse’s shivering shoulder and looked him over from head to foot. “The horse is sick. C’mon, Kirstie, let’s get him out of here!”