Midnight Lady (5 page)

Lisa’s two summer days at the ranch took the girls out at dawn, when the sky was eggshell blue, before the sun touched Hummingbird Rock. With fingers still slow with sleep and heads dozy from the warmth of their beds, they fumbled with buckles to get saddles on Lucky and Cadillac. The horses nudged at them for a handful of special oat feed from the tub inside the barn door, which Kirstie would bring in two big handfuls. Crested jays perched on the corral fence would watch greedily for spilled crumbs, then, with a flash of vivid blue wings, dart to the ground to pick up seeds.

Then, with the horses’ cinches tightened and bridles on, the girls would head out along Five Mile Creek, past the jeep road. They would choose the climb up Bear Hunt Trail, through the tall ponderosa pines to Red Eagle Lodge, where they could turn and look down on Half Moon Ranch in miniature. It was fun to spot the red roofs of the log cabins, the handkerchief-sized square of green lawn, the long barn and tack room, and the bunkhouse where Hadley and Charlie slept.

Or they might take a different route, the favorite Meltwater Trail, which took them through the narrow pass called Fat Man’s Squeeze, where granite rocks formed a tall ravine then opened out onto Dead Man’s Canyon and, towering above that, the sheer gray cliff of Miners’ Ridge.

Whatever they decided, Lucky and Cadillac bore them steadily. No track was too steep to climb, no creek flowed too fast for them to cross. Kirstie’s palomino led the way, while sturdy, stately Cadillac followed. Stopping to rest in the midday sun, coming home in the cool of the evening, Lucky’s almost golden coat shone like silk. Beside him, passing quietly through the shadow of an overhanging rock or under the thick branches of dark pine trees, Cadillac’s cream color made him seem ghostly and strange.

“It’s hard to believe Cadillac was ever like Midnight Lady,” Lisa murmured. It was Tuesday evening; her visit was almost over. Tomorrow she must go back to town.

“Huh?” Kirstie closed the gate of Red Fox Meadow and leaned on the fence to watch Lucky and Cadillac lower their heads to graze quietly. Working out the connection, a flicker of a frown appeared on her face. She didn’t want her head filled up with pictures of Donna Rose’s horse. Right now she would rather concentrate on nice, easy things.

“Or Lucky either,” Lisa persisted. “I mean, can you imagine them before they were broken?”

“I hate that word!” It was no good; she was seeing flashes of Midnight Lady bucking and kicking, of ropes and tarps, and of Leon Franks’s cold gray stare. “Broken means beaten. I hate it!”

“Hey, it wasn’t me; I didn’t invent it!” Lisa set off suddenly toward the ranch house. She stuffed her hands into her jeans pockets and hunched her shoulders. “Excuse me for breathing!”

Kirstie sighed and followed. “Sorry.”

“Forget it.”

“No, really. I am sorry. Listen, Lisa, I get an awful feeling in my stomach whenever I think about Midnight Lady. When we got to know her better, just before we left Circle R on Sunday night, I sensed she’d really begun to trust us—”

“
You!
” Lisa interrupted her. “Not us. It was you she trusted.”

“Whatever.” Kirstie walked on, head down, deep in thought and struggling with her sense of helplessness. “It’s real mean not to take an interest. Like, maybe we should call Donna, ask how Midnight Lady’s doing …” It wasn’t enough, but it was something.

“Yeah.” Lisa slowed her pace. “Say, how am I gonna get into San Luis tomorrow morning?”

“In the red pickup. Matt finally gets to go to Denver, so he can drop you off at your place on the way. Why do you ask?”

One foot on the porch step, glancing back at the golden pink horizon, Lisa made a nervous suggestion. “Maybe we could both go. We could ask Matt to drive us on as far as Donna’s place, just call in there unannounced.”

“Are you serious?”

“Why not?”

“Without being invited?”

Lisa opened her eyes wide. “Yeah! So they’re not expecting us, so they can’t give us any corny stuff about Midnight Lady being fine, thank you very much!”

“We could see for ourselves how she’s getting on?” Kirstie didn’t want to, yet she did. She thought she knew the depressing answer even before they went, couldn’t imagine that another visit would make any difference. And yet …

Lisa waited impatiently for an answer.

“OK,” she said at last. “You win. I’ll ask Matt.”

“I never liked this place,” Matt commented as he drove along the run-down main street of Renegade. The white paint on the wooden houses was peeling, old Chevys without wheels stood propped on piles of bricks in driveways. Outside the general store, a skinny black dog begged for food.

The town had a gas station, a couple of bars, and an abattoir, where cows from the local feedlot came for slaughter. Arnie Ash’s Abattoir was Renegade’s main reason to exist. In spring and fall, ranchers rounded up their cows, selected the ones who were to go for meat, and trucked them along to the feed-lot on the wide plain behind the long, straight row of houses. After a week or two of fattening up, the cows made their final short journey into town.

“I sure wouldn’t like to live here,” Lisa agreed.

No trees, no mountains. Kirstie stared out of the truck window at the weeds growing on the sidewalk, deliberately choosing to look away from the entrance to the slaughterhouse and the bold letters of the sign above the gates. A red traffic light had brought them to a stop. Wind blew sheets of an old newspaper across the street ahead.

“So tell me the plan one more time,” Matt said, tapping his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel. At six-foot-two, his long legs and arms seemed cramped inside the cab, and the look in his hazel eyes indicated that he wished he was way down the road to see Lachelle, instead of idling at a traffic light in this hick town.

“You take us to Circle R. We say hi to Donna Rose, then she probably invites us in for coffee. You say yes, we say we’d rather take a look around if that’s OK with her.” Lisa had the whole thing worked out.

“She’s supposed to say fine,” Kirstie explained. “So you keep her talking while we snoop in the barn to see if we can spot Midnight Lady.”

The lights changed to green. Matt put his foot down on the accelerator, eager to reach the ranch and get it over with. “You mean, I’m part of a plot to spy on a defenseless old lady!”

“Defenseless—
not!
” Lisa snorted.

“Spy—yes!” Kirstie grinned. “It’ll only take a few minutes!”

Matt gave his sister a sideways smile and a dubious shake of the head. “Spying … sneaking around someone else’s property. Suppose you’re not happy with what you see. Then what? Are we into kidnapping horses here, or what?”

Kirstie looked blank.
Trespassing, me? Kidnapping, me? How could you possibly think that?

Her fake innocence didn’t work. As Matt took a left onto Donna Rose’s long, straight drive, he demanded a proper answer. “OK, Lisa, give it to me straight. Tell me what I’m getting myself into here!”

“Come into the house and have a cup of coffee,” Donna suggested. If she was surprised to see their red Dodge pull up in the yard, she didn’t show it.

It was midmorning, midweek. The ranch house door stood open; the bunch of dried chilies hanging in the porch swung in the wind that blew continually off the open plain. It seemed there was nothing but oceans of grass between here and New Mexico.

“Sure, I’ll have coffee.” Matt winked at Kirstie as he accepted the invitation. Slamming the pickup door, he strode across the yard.

Donna noticed Kirstie and Lisa hang back. “Hey, I guess you girls didn’t come all the way out here to drink coffee,” she said brightly. Her silver earrings caught the light; the heels of her tan leather boots clicked on the wooden boards.

“Er … no. That is …” Lisa blushed and mumbled.

“We just kinda came along for the ride …” Kirstie did no better.

Donna’s smile broadened. “Midnight Lady’s in the stockade!”

Wow!
Kirstie chewed her lip and frowned. This wasn’t in the plan. They were meant to use cunning and stealth to find the horse.

“It doesn’t take Einstein to work out she’s the reason you came.” Warm and friendly, Donna extended the invitation. “Leon’s working with her right this minute. Go ahead and take a look.”

“No need to worry after all,” Matt muttered as he passed the girls.

“Don’t be too sure!” Kirstie shot back. What Donna meant by “working” was exactly what she and Lisa had lost sleep over. It would have been better and more according to plan if they’d been able to sneak up on Midnight Lady in a corner of the barn and quietly check her out to see how she was doing.

“Give it to me straight!” Matt had demanded.

“If we find she’s been beaten and hurt, we call in the animal welfare people,” Lisa had told him. “They charge Leon Franks with cruelty and find Midnight Lady a new home.”

“Easy as that?” He’d shaken his head as they’d drawn near the Circle R.

“Why not?” To Kirstie it had looked that simple. There was a law against it. Man mistreats horse. Man gets taken to court. Happy ending for the horse …

So it was a surprise to find Donna so open and welcoming. But there again, the lady was on a different planet as far as the treatment of horses was concerned. Probably when her husband was alive, she’d taken no interest in the workings of the ranch. Now that he was dead, she still left all decisions in her manager’s hands.

“I can hear stuff happening in the stockade!” Lisa set off at a run ahead of Kirstie.

There was a shrill whinny, the sound of a whip cracking. The rough fence of pointed pine stakes was too high for the girls to see over, so they had to run around the outside until they came to the gate.

The first thing Kirstie saw was the scarlet of Leon Franks’s shirt as he sat in the saddle on one of Circle R’s sorrel geldings. The second was the whip in his right hand. Then she saw TJ’s heavy figure swinging a tarp on the end of a rope, Jesse standing by with coils of rope. Midnight Lady was tied by a short rope to a post driven into the hard ground. Her front leg was hobbled to a noose around her neck. Kirstie’s stomach turned and she felt sick. More sacking out.

“Not again!” Lisa’s voice cracked. “It can’t still be happening!”

Through the dust raised by the gray mare’s struggles, Kirstie could see cruel marks just above her heels where the ropes had worn through the skin in the two days of torture she’d had to endure since they last saw her. “This horse is incredible!” she gasped. So much pain, and still she fought.

With his back to the gate, it was impossible for Franks to have seen the visitors. He yelled orders and moved in with the whip, cracking it close to Midnight Lady’s head to make her back off, straight into the thudding weight of the tarp which TJ had launched across her back. She squealed and reared, kicked and staggered onto her knees.

“Move fast, get a saddle on her while she’s down!” Franks yelled at Jesse.

The ranch hand obeyed. He wrenched the saddle from a nearby rail, ran with it, and flung its full weight across Midnight Lady’s shoulders.

“Fasten the cinch!” Backing off and keeping his distance now, the manager gave Jesse the most dangerous job.

The fair-haired ranch hand hesitated. Though the hobble limited the horse’s movements, she could still give a hefty kick with her back legs. He waited for her to collapse forward onto her knees again, then darted in to pull the girth tight. “Don’t ask me to get up on her back!” he grunted. “No way am I gonna risk my neck on this snorter!”

“You do what I tell you!” The manager watched coldly as the tightening strap around the horse’s belly made her panic. He smiled grimly as she struggled to her feet, bucking and kicking harder than ever, forcing Jesse to leap clear. “I never saw a horse fight so hard!”

“That’s it! We call an animal welfare number!” Lisa was white with anger. “Whatever you and Hadley might say about Circle R being able to do what they like with their own horse, we can’t let this go on any longer!”

Kirstie gripped the top bar of the gate until her knuckles turned white. It was as if the horrible scene had hypnotized her and fixed her to the spot.

“TJ, you heard what Jesse said. I guess it’s up to you.” Franks ordered the heavier of the two ranch hands to mount the horse.

The man spat on his hands and rubbed them together. He waited for a lull in the horse’s writhing and kicking, then he ran straight at her, and vaulted onto her back. His feet were slotted into the stirrups, his hands gripping her mane before she had time to realize what had happened.

Then, painfully hobbled and tethered as she was, she reacted with fury. She snaked and tossed her head, lurched forward, rocked back onto her haunches, flinging TJ in all directions. Then she launched herself straight up into the air, back arched, until the tether rope jerked hard on her head and pulled her down. TJ yelled with surprise, but held on. Then, instantly, with a straight-legged, forward jump that wrenched and almost toppled the post to which she was tied, Midnight Lady finally unseated her rider.