The Shining Stallion (11 page)

Darby looked in time to see Manny, sluggish as a python, shift his attention to Cade. Darby did the same. With surprise, she saw Cade's eyes looked hazy and disinterested under the brim of his hat.

Darby felt oddly proud of him for keeping calm.

I see you don't have no trouble keeping your mouth shut now
. He was actually bragging about breaking a little boy's jaw.

When the meaning of Manny's words hit her, Darby missed her attempt to step into her stirrup and she couldn't help watching as Manny took a strutting step toward Cade's horse and asked, “Don't have no message for your mom?”

There. Cade's eyes showed a spark of hurt, and Manny laughed as if he'd scored a point.

Cade drew a deep breath, and all at once, as creeped-out as she felt, Darby knew that if there was a time to play dumb, this was it.

“Hey, I'm Darby Carter,” she drawled, as if she were from South Carolina instead of Southern California.

Despite her revulsion, she led Navigator a few steps closer to Manny and presented her hand for shaking. She really would rather have touched a python, but she couldn't let Cade get pulled into an argument with his stepfather.

Darby doubted it would stop with words, and after that, it wouldn't be a fair fight.

“Jonah is my grandfather!” she announced so loudly, a colorful bird left a treetop. “How are you? I mean,
aloha
! Everyone around here is just so friendly.”

From the corner of her eye, Darby caught Megan staring at her in astonishment, but she ignored the older girl. Instead, Darby grinned until the corners of her mouth threatened to split. It took that long for Manny to reach out with a suspicious smile and shake her hand.

For one awful moment, Darby thought he might jerk her closer to him, but she kept a mindless grin on her lips and hoped it was true about angels protecting fools and children.

“Let me give you a leg up,” Manny said, nodding at Navigator.

“Huh?” Darby asked.

Manny stood with his shoulder next to Navigator's, facing the gelding's swishing tail.

“Put your boot here,” Manny said, making a cradle of his hands. “Just step there and throw your leg over the saddle.”

Darby had hated touching Manny's hand, and giving him control of her foot seemed even worse, but she saw Megan make a tiny nod, as if it was okay.

“Thanks,” Darby said, but what if he unlaced his fingers and dropped her? She couldn't help testing his hands before she vaulted up.

Even though Manny stood there, hands on hips, staring up at her as she organized her reins, Darby could still feel the grip of his hands around her boot.

“I didn't know Jonah had a granddaughter,” Manny said, then gritted his teeth.

After a full minute, Megan said, “We'd better be—”

But Manny had turned on Cade to say, “Guess the joke's on you, huh, cakey?”

At least that's what it sounded like to Darby, until she remembered Megan had told her that
keiki
meant “child.”

“Yeah,
hanai
or not, you won't be inheriting that ranch,” Manny said to Cade.

Cade shrugged, but Darby got the feeling Manny had lit the fuse to Cade's anger and it wouldn't be
long before he exploded if one of them didn't do something quick.

“Hey! You weren't shooting at that horse you're looking for, were you?” Darby asked.

“Trying to keep 'im out of my taro fields,” Manny said. “They eat everything in sight.”

“Don't they belong to someone?” Darby asked, trying to sound simpleminded. “Doesn't anybody care about them?”

“Out here, away from the tourists,” he said with a sly smile, “it's pretty much every man for himself. And every horse,” he said, chuckling. “In fact, it's not exactly safe for you kids. Someone looking through the trees might mistake your horses for wild ones and pop 'em right between the eyes.”

Thinking of the skull Cade had described, Darby felt sick.

“That would mean
someone
wasn't very careful,” Megan said, and Darby couldn't believe Megan was baiting him into a fight.

“It would,” Manny admitted. He pretended to look sad. “And what a shame if your family had another tragedy.” He flashed a gloating look at Cade. “Me and Dee, yeah, we felt so bad about Ben's death.”

Why, if he was talking about Megan's father, didn't he look at her? And if Manny was really expressing his condolences, why did he sound more
like he was making a threat?

Darby felt sweaty and unsteady. The necklace seemed to be trying to make its presence known. It pounded like a pulse in her pocket, and then like a drumbeat. It was a miracle that Manny wasn't staring at her, demanding she turn the artifact over to him.

“My grandfather will be looking for me,” Darby said, nudging Navigator with her heels. “So I'd better get home.”

Once she had ridden past Manny, she turned and flapped a hand in good-bye. “Aloha!” she shouted again.

Darby tried to sit loosely in the saddle. After all, Manny wasn't about to shoot them in the back. That kind of thing might happen in movies, but not in real life.

The three of them rode on and Darby felt as if a laser beam was aimed between her shoulder blades. Manny was looking after them, for sure. And something told her they shouldn't be riding three abreast.

She drew rein and fell in behind Cade. If any of them were in danger, it would be him. She hadn't looked at Manny's gun. Did it have some kind of superscope projecting a target on her back?

All at once, as if her morbid fantasy had come true, Darby heard a gunshot.

“Sorry,” Manny shouted as all three of them twisted in their saddles to look back at him pointing
his rifle skyward. “Just saw a little something I wanted to take home for dinner.”

She didn't see anything fall from the sky, but all the way home, Darby imagined the dying flutter of feathers.

“M
anny said there was no law to make him stop shooting the wild horses,” Darby told Jonah when she found him inspecting Luna's corral.

“You've done a good job here,” her grandfather said.

Looking for horse manure wasn't what she'd had in mind when Jonah told her he'd talk with her about the encounter with Manny.

“Thank you,” Darby said. “He told me it was every man—and horse—for himself.”

“He's right,” Jonah said. “Even though the wild horses are part of the old Hawaii—a story you should get your
tutu
, not me, to tell you—they've been getting into homesteads and causing problems the last
twenty years or so. Too many people.”

“That's not the horses' fault,” Darby said.

“He didn't bother you kids?” Jonah asked, his brown eyes narrowing as his voice got quiet. “Threaten you in any way?”

Other than taunting Cade, what had he done? Cold menace had flowed from him, and Darby wanted to make sure the necklace didn't fall into his hands, but she'd be lying if she said he'd done anything threatening.

“He didn't do anything to us,” Darby admitted, “but how can we stop him—”

“If he comes on our place, we'll stop him,” Jonah said adamantly.

“But the black horse, the one that might be the Shining Stallion—”

“That black horse has had his second chance,” Jonah said. “He's on strike three.”

Darby knew what he meant. As a sire, Luna was more important than all the other horses of the ranch put together.

“We're one of the few working ranches in the islands these days,” Jonah said. “I could sell these two thousand acres for a million dollars each to build houses on, and that's a lot of money.”

“It is,” Darby agreed, but her eyes skimmed the green velvet of the hills, thinking it would be sacrilege to cover them with houses.

“But I can't put a price tag on heritage that goes
back a thousand years,” Jonah said with a shrug. “What number should I write? How many zeroes would I add to make up for selling soil powdered with my ancestors' bones?
Our
ancestors,” he corrected himself. “And all our
mana
—our spirit and good fortune—comes from our ancestors. I'll tell you what, I'll grab the bulldozers' blades with my bare hands before I let anyone turn this ranch into a mall and parking lot. I'll come back to haunt any of my heirs that do the same, too. I'm not pranking you, Granddaughter.”

“I'd never give up ‘Iolani Ranch for houses,” Darby said, insulted.

“And you understand that Luna is the cornerstone of our Quarter Horse breeding program, so I can't let that blue-eyed black have a chance at him,” Jonah said, circling back to his point.

“I understand,” Darby said.

“Humph,” Jonah said. “We'll see.”

 

Darby hid the ancient necklace inside her dictionary-diary. Every time she thought of it, she sucked her stomach in so hard, it hurt. She woke each morning for a week, from dreams of dark, echoing caves, and she thought she must be grinding her teeth in her sleep, because her jaw ached.

All week, she watched for the black horse—on ridgelines, in folds between the hills, out at the border of Pearl Pasture. If she glimpsed him first, she'd scare
him away before Jonah or Luna spotted him.

But the wild stallion didn't appear under the candlenut tree at night, or come to the wide pastures when she and Navigator ponied Luna. And the big bay stallion had other things on his mind.

Luna was so lovesick over Hoku, one day he inhaled Darby's shirt right into his nostrils. That afternoon, Hoku snapped at the same shirt with such ferocity, Darby began changing clothes between working with the two horses.

Was Hoku the “tomboy mare” that Jonah had called her? Or had Hoku decided not to share Darby? Each day the sorrel filly reflected Darby's affection back to her, and for now, that was most important.

The wild stallion didn't lurk around at daybreak or dusk when she fed Hoku or Francie the fainting goat, or at midnight when she kept watch for him with Cade and Megan on Friday night.

By Saturday, a whole week later, Darby convinced herself he'd taken his herd into hiding, but she couldn't decide if that made it a better or worse time to return the ancient artifact to Crimson Vale.

Of course, she could just keep it here, but it didn't belong to her.

Darby imagined herself swimming in a satin-smooth sea—that would be her perfect life at ‘Iolani Ranch—while something dark and octopuslike swirled below her bare legs. That dark threat had
something to do with the necklace. She had to take it back to where it had come from.

Giving in to the jump-rope songs Darby chanted, Hoku had accepted the lead rope. Darby could not only lead the filly around; she could actually jump rope while Hoku held her end.

“Not that we'll try that in front of everyone,” Darby promised Hoku as she led the golden filly from her corral and out the gate held wide by Megan, for the very first time since her escape.

Kimo, Cade, and Jonah all knew the filly was leaving the confinement of her pen, but they'd agreed with Darby that the best audience for Hoku's premiere would be all girls—Darby and Megan.

The dogs were locked in their kennel. Jonah stood still in the doorway of the tack room. Kimo sat behind the wheel of his truck, ready to give chase if Hoku broke away from Darby. Cade, astride Joker, rode up and down, pretending to check the fence line—but his riata was at the ready. Kit sat astride Kona at the end of the gravel road. If Hoku headed for the street, he'd herd her back to safety.

Darby acted as if it were the most normal of days, and Hoku had nothing to prove to anyone.

“But you'll show them all you're a big girl,” Darby teased Hoku.

The filly's flaxen mane and tail floated on an early-morning breeze. Her forelock swept across her brow, showing brown eyes that watched a different world
from the one she'd seen through her corral fence.

Hoku raised her tiny muzzle to the height of her neck. She filled her lungs with so much grassy air that when she finally breathed again her exhalation trembled like a baby that had cried itself to sleep.

But the filly danced lively and alert beside Darby, listening to a jump-rope song. Hoku didn't flatten her ears or miss a step when she heard the corral gate close softly behind them, or when Megan's footsteps followed.

Only when they reached the end of the path, climbed the green swell of hill, and descended into the fold between that hill and the next, did the filly grow flighty.

“Shh, girl,” Darby said when Hoku gave a single tug at the lead rope.

The filly lowered her golden head, confused for a moment, then became intent on some scent that clung to the grass.

“Yes, Luna's been down here,” Darby admitted to the filly, and her eyes slid sideways to catch Megan's.

She'd told her friend that Hoku's aversion to males included the stallion as well as men, and Megan hadn't been very sympathetic.

“I trained Pip to like running with the big dogs,” Megan told Darby as she walked on Hoku's right side now. “And that's a lot less natural, since she could be their prey. I'm sure you can do it, after—hey, careful,” she warned Hoku as the filly lifted her forefeet from
the ground, head swiveling form side to side. “If, I mean, her highness gets over being a drama queen.”

“She's not pretending,” Darby said, defending the filly. “Hoku was beaten, for sure, and who knows what else. She can't tell me, so I just have to try to figure it out. I think—” Darby's words caught in her throat. Her arms were covered with chills as the filly stopped and stared.

Following Hoku's gaze, Darby saw him. Megan's gasp said she did, too.

The wild stallion stood night-black against the emerald hills. The only part of him that moved was his drifting tail.

“Just turn her around,” Megan said softly. “He's not going to follow her back into the corral, and she doesn't act like she wants to go with him.”

That was for sure.

With fully flattened ears and eyes narrowed to slits, Hoku glared at the stallion, then at Darby.

“I didn't know what I was getting you into, baby,” she told the filly.

Slowly, she tried to turn Hoku back toward her corral, but the filly held her ground.

“I don't blame you, girl. I know he should be the one to leave, but I don't think he's going anywhere while you're out here,” Darby told Hoku.

“Stop explaining and get her back inside,” Megan snapped. “Here comes Luna.”

“What?” Darby reeled with horror, but Luna's
neigh of rage proved Megan right.

And all at once she knew how it had happened. Jonah had told her how easily Luna had hopped over his fence into the weanlings' pen when he was without water.

Now, another stallion was in Luna's territory, within yards of Hoku. The big bay stallion was answering a drive as strong as thirst.

Together, the girls grabbed Hoku's lead rope. One on each side, they held close to her halter as the filly jerked her head up, snorting.

“Just walk away, girl,” Megan muttered to the filly. “That's what my mom always says to do with pushy guys.”

But they couldn't turn Hoku before the sound of screaming eagles filled the air.

The stallions joined in primitive warnings. Brushing aside mock battle for war, the bay and black reared, forelegs threshing the air before they dropped to all fours and rushed together like knights' chargers.

Chests slammed, necks curved with bared teeth, and both animals drew blood before wheeling to batter each other with slashing, kicking hooves. One bay leg gave way, and then two black ones, but the stallions were evenly matched. The bay was bigger, but the black was swift. Both were up in an instant and neither thought of surrender as they stood panting.

For a minute, Hoku seemed to have lost interest. The girls managed to turn her and drag her toward her corral. It made sense, Darby thought wildly. She'd heard that mares stood idly by, swishing their tails, waiting for the outcome when battles like these happened on the range.

But then Luna and Black Lava were at each other again.

Dust roiled in red clouds. Teeth raked off rows of shining coat.

Any minute, Jonah would be coming with a gun.

Squalls mixed with the pounding of hooves repositioning the horses' heavy bodies for another attack, and Hoku swung around to watch. Her reversal made Darby stumble, but she clung to the orange-and-white lead rope, amazed at the filly's strength.

Hooves struck horseflesh. Hoku snorted. Once, twice, three times, she reprimanded the males. Darby remembered—in wild herds, all the members waited with swishing tails while stallions battled.

Except for the lead mare.

Hoku whinnied. Tossing her head from side to side, she released a sharp neigh that cut through the stallions' fury. The battle faltered. Then it stopped.

When Hoku reared, lifting both girls off their feet, the black mustang shifted his attention to the humans.

The wild horse gazed at Megan and Darby. When Hoku lowered herself back to all fours, the girls
crashed down with her. Darby's knees struck dirt and she saw Megan squat, trying to keep her weight low so that Hoku couldn't lift her again.

Neck trembling, the filly gave a final, openmouthed scream at the stallions. Luna lowered his head and clacked his jaws in apology, but the black stared at her in disbelief.

And then the mustang's attention jerked to another horse running into the field. Cade rode Joker, bearing down on Black Lava with a swinging rope.

Put it away,
Darby moaned silently. She knew better than to yell, but oh, how she wanted to. Hoku feared ropes as much as any wild horse. At best, all her work with the filly would be wasted when the filly spooked at Cade's riata.

At worst, Hoku might break free and run away with the wild horse.

The dark stallion feinted right and when the riata flew for his head, the mustang swung left, wheeled on his hind hooves, and launched himself in a black arc to the top of the first knoll.

Luna leaped after him, but the smaller, lighter-bodied mustang had already outdistanced Luna, and Cade had already flung a second loop. This one settled over the mighty bay's head just as Darby heard more hooves thundering behind her.

A blur of speed, Kona streaked past as soon as the bay was caught. Kit had lost his hat and he lay on
Kona's neck as if he were back in the rodeo. Darby had never seen a horse run like Kona did for Kit. The gelding was stretched out like a greyhound, eyes set on the black mustang.

Feeling himself caught, Luna bucked, but he wasn't fighting the rope. He was showing off for Hoku—Darby was almost sure of it.

“Let me at him,” Megan pretended to translate Luna's squeals and snorts. “If they hadn't held me back, you'd be dead!” she shouted after the black.

Finally, Luna loped alongside Joker.

Ponying had paid off today, Darby thought, watching the two horses move together.

And her tomboy filly had saved the two stallions from themselves. Although blood dripped from a bite on Luna's neck, he'd escaped serious injury. And the way the black mustang was leading Kit and Kona on a zigzagging chase over ‘Iolani's two thousand acres proved he wasn't hurt, either.

After a call from Sun House, Megan jogged there to tell her mother what had happened.

Jonah walked up to check his stallion over, and Luna lowered his head for inspection.

Darby was glad to be alone with her horse.

Now that the excitement was over, the filly trembled. She rubbed her forelock against Darby's chest. Then she sneezed the stallion-raised dust from her nostrils and pulled at the tangerine-and-white-striped rope, leading Darby back to the corral.

“Good girl,” Darby crooned to her. “You're right. It's hay time, and you've earned it.”