The Shining Stallion (7 page)

H
ad Francie had a heart attack? Could goats die so quickly?

Darby's fingers went limp. The feed bucket clanked on the ground.

Still, Francie didn't move. All four of her legs remained rigid.

I killed her,
Darby thought.

She glanced around for help. “Cade! Kimo? Come here! Please hurry!”

Cade came running. A truck door slammed, and Kimo hurried toward her, too.

“What?” Cade yelled.

She pointed and Cade hurried past her.

Darby covered her eyes. She didn't want to look,
didn't want to think what Jonah would say. The chain jingled. She imagined Cade lifting the little goat into his arms.

But when she forced herself to look, Cade didn't have his mouth pressed to Francie's shiny little lips giving her CPR.

Instead, he stood with his arms raised out to his sides, as if he'd been about to swoop down on her, but halted.

Francie was standing up! She shook her head, and the fur-covered bobbles on her neck trembled. One hind leg jerked in a testing kick. Her tail twitched and her tawny eyes looked bewildered until she sniffed the breeze. Then she lowered her head, homed in on her scattered breakfast, and began eating.

“She
was
dead,” Darby said slowly. “At least, she looked like it.”

“Sure she did,” Kimo teased.

“It's not funny!” Darby snapped.

“Francie's a fainting goat,” Cade explained.

Darby stared at him.

“Did you say ‘fainting'?” Darby asked.

Cade nodded.

“About once a week, something scares her, and over she goes,” Kimo explained.

“That's why she's out here, where it's pretty quiet,” Cade said.

Chained under the lanai of Sun House, Francie
would be sheltered from sun and rain. No trucks would rumble by too close, Darby thought, and no strange horses would be charging down paths to the pastures below.

“The dogs are usually pretty good about leaving her be.” Kimo frowned toward the dogs. They'd crept closer after Darby had scolded them, but Kimo's glare sent them slinking off again. “Jonah didn't tell you she was a fainter when he told you how to feed her?”

“It was Megan. I guess she forgot,” Darby said. “Does fainting hurt her?”

“Doesn't seem to,” Kimo said. “It's a breed trait.”

“There's a whole
breed
of fainting goats? An animal that passes out when it's under stress couldn't make it in the wild.”

“It's a man-made breed, yeah?” Cade glanced at Kimo.

“My dad says they were bred by shepherds. If wolves came down on a herd, the sheep ran. And the goat, uh, distracted the wolves.”

Darby recoiled, then shook her head and said, “Nice deal if you're the sheep.”

 

Later, after Francie had eaten her fill and Cade and Kimo had gone up to the office to talk with Cathy, Darby ran to Hoku.

“It's just us girls,” she called quietly, then fed the filly and asked, “Are you ready for another jump rope song?”

While the filly was still distracted by her hay, Darby began jumping and whispering,
“Down in the valley where the green grass grows, there stood Hoku, pretty as a rose….”

It was working. Just as the filly had loved her stories in the snow, she seemed to like the jump-rope rhymes.
And she's learning I won't hurt her with the rope,
Darby thought,
so I'll be leading her around in no time
.

“She sang, she sang, she sang so sweet, along came…”
Darby caught her breath, trying to think of horses Hoku would encounter here.
“Uh, Luna, and kissed her on the cheek. How many kisses did Hoku get? One, two, th—”
Darby missed a step.

When she stumbled, Hoku only glanced at her. That was a good sign, Darby thought.

Still carrying the rope, she slipped inside Hoku's corral before someone could caution her not to.

Hoku kept eating until Darby moved the lead rope. Before Darby could drop her arm back to her side, Hoku doubled away, her bright sorrel body curved like a drawn bow.

Darby had just noticed that Hoku's neck didn't look strained or swollen anymore, when a swing of the filly's hindquarters almost knocked her off her feet.

Winded by surprise, Darby gasped. “So, the rope's okay outside the corral, but not inside?”

She crossed the corral and dropped the rope outside, wishing she hadn't rushed things.

“We can wait, girl,” she said. By this time next week, she and Hoku were supposed to be living in the jungle, but Darby was in no big hurry for that.

Time was a weird thing, Darby thought as she leaned against the sun-warmed wood of the fence. She angled her face toward the sky.

If someone had asked her on Valentine's Day what she'd be doing in a month, she would have guessed that at this time of day, in March, she'd be in her second-period class or, on a Saturday, swimming with Heather. She couldn't have predicted she'd be warming up in the Hawaiian sunshine while her mother was shooting a movie in Tahiti.

Hair stuck to her sweaty neck. Darby swept her hand up from her nape and tightened her ponytail. Sighing, she closed her eyes and pushed away nagging thoughts of getting down to the lower pasture to fuss over Luna.

The big bay could probably take care of himself, but Jonah spoiled him. Darby took a few more minutes to bask in the sun.

She heard Hoku's hooves, then her breathing, nearby.

Don't open your eyes,
Darby cautioned herself, but Hoku startled a laugh from her by tapping her chin on top of Darby's head. Next she rubbed her nose on Darby's bare shoulder.

The filly's whiskers weren't prickly like Navigator's. Was that because they'd never been
trimmed? Or because she was only two-and-half years old?

“You're practically a baby,” Darby whispered to the filly, and Hoku let her chin grow heavy on Darby's shoulder, then exhaled as if she hadn't relaxed for days.

This is what I've always wanted,
Darby thought. She felt suspended in a golden sphere with her golden horse.

Hoku's snort made Darby's eyes open. She saw the taut line of Hoku's neck and knew the filly saw a man.

Darby followed Hoku's gaze.

Jonah rode his big gray gelding past the old fox cages. Thinking of Jonah's pride in her last night, when he'd mentioned she was a hard worker, or something like that, Darby smiled.

But tension charged Hoku's flattened ears and lowered head, so Darby stepped away, opened the gate, and locked it behind her.

Kona came toward them under perfect, collected control, but his eyes rolled and he jerked up each hoof, as if the dirt burned him. The gray gelding was nervous.

When Darby saw the cold set of Jonah's features, she knew why.

“Bad news, Granddaughter,” Jonah said, but he looked calm. In fact, he was actually carrying a cup of coffee with his right hand and his reins in his left.

“What's wrong?”

“It's Luna. We need to discuss your care of him.”

She'd looked at him yesterday when she'd ridden out on Navigator, but she hadn't seen anything wrong. Darby's mind raced. Luna had been loose in his huge grassy field, so he couldn't be hungry and his pasture couldn't need cleaning that badly.

“I wonder why you didn't tell me about the activation switch on the automatic waterer, so I could fix it?”

“Activation switch?” Darby repeated.

“The part horses nudge to make the water flow. The one in Luna's trough is broken.”

Kit had mentioned Luna standing by his trough yesterday. Is that why Kit had looked so worried when he'd gone riding past on Biscuit this morning?

“How would I have noticed?” Digging her fingernails into the board behind her, Darby tried to tough out this encounter, but bravado wasn't her strength and she knew it.

Jonah flung out the dregs of his coffee as if he couldn't discuss this while slaking his own thirst.

“He drank his trough dry.”

Darby closed her eyes for an instant, wishing she could escape.

“Is he okay?” she asked.

“Luna? Sure. He took care of himself by jumping the fence into the weanling pen and drank their water.”

Darby imagined the big bay shouldering his
motherless offspring aside. To them, he'd look like a monster.

“Are
they
safe?”

“He didn't hurt 'em, but they're dehydrated. Little guys were scared to go for water while he was guarding it.”

Darby didn't see how she could make so many mistakes, but she refused to let her dream life turn into a nightmare for the horses of ‘Iolani Ranch.

In two weeks, she'd put three horses—Hoku, Navigator, and Luna—in danger. Multiply that by two, Darby corrected herself. Kona and Joker had been ridden very hard, searching for Hoku. And so had Biscuit.

And now the weanlings…

“Maybe…,” Darby began, biting her bottom lip hard, hoping the sting would distract her from what she needed to say. But it turned out she couldn't bite that hard. “Maybe I don't belong here.”

“I was thinking that you loved the place.” Jonah raised his black eyebrows.

“I do!”

“You give up awful easy for someone in love.” Jonah cleared his throat.

“I don't want to hurt any more horses,” Darby protested. “I'm just not catching on fast enough.”

“Need any help packing your bags?” Jonah offered.

Then he smiled.

“Why aren't you mad at me? Or are you?” Darby had never felt so confused. “Why do you want me to stay when I've done nothing but mess up since I got here?” she asked him.

“Don't fish, Darby.” Jonah gave a disapproving scowl.

“Don't—?”

“You're fishing for compliments. And here's what I have to say about your ‘messing up': I know where you went into the water, and I know where you came out. You have what it takes.”

Darby almost quit breathing, she was so surprised. No one was supposed to know she had risked her life to save Hoku. She hadn't meant to do anything but swim her to the beach around the point. Since she was a strong swimmer, it hadn't seemed at all heroic. But she hadn't known about the powerful riptide.

Physical bravery? To her, it was a terrible accident that she'd barely survived. If anything, Jonah should admire Hoku for saving his granddaughter's life.

“And I
am
mad.” He pointed his finger at her. “Ask Cathy. I was roaring when I came to the house looking for you. If you'd hurt that stallion or his babies…” Jonah grappled for control, but his rational approach collapsed and he was shouting again. “When I ask you to do something, it must be done, and not two or three days later, either!

“It's fine that you work Hoku and go riding on
Navigator, but there's never enough time to do what must be done to keep this place running. Never has been and probably never will be. Why do you think—?” Jonah broke off with a dismissive gesture.

Had her grandfather been about to mention her mother? Or maybe her aunt Babe, who'd opened a fancy resort instead of working on ‘Iolani Ranch?

Jonah lay the flat of his hand on Kona's neck, calming the nervous horse.

“We take these animals from places where they care for themselves. We make them helpless, in a way, but they do their best to work with us. They shouldn't suffer for their loyalty.”

“They shouldn't,” Darby echoed. Her throat ached when she thought of Hoku.

Darby's thoughts tangled together. If not for humans, Hoku would be running free on the open range. If that bus hadn't slid on an icy road, Hoku wouldn't have been captured. If there hadn't been a barbed-wire fence in this strange new world…

“I'm sorry,” Darby said, knowing it wasn't enough.

“You're smart,” Jonah told her. “So how's this? I'll show you what to do instead of expecting you to figure it out. Just pay attention. I won't keep repeating myself.”

“That would be great,” Darby said.

The owl she hadn't seen for days coasted overhead. Darby looked up quickly enough to see its
childlike face and lemon-drop eyes before it vanished into the branches of the ohia tree next to Hoku's corral.

Then, hooves danced behind Darby. Looking over her shoulder, Darby saw her horse.

Cautious, with delicate ears flicking forward and back, Hoku hovered near the fence. She was still afraid of Jonah, of all men.

She was ready to run, but willing to stay if she had to.

“You've got my back, right, girl?” Darby whispered.

Hoku didn't utter a sound. But she flung her head high, showing off the star on her chest like it was the badge of a superhero.

T
ogether, Darby and her grandfather admired Hoku.

The mustang filly was recovering from her sea journey. Rolling on the warm Hawaiian grass had helped her shed the dull hair from her coat. Her hollow face and sunken sides were filling out from hay, and though the gleam in her eyes was wild, Hoku looked less haunted.

“If her Quarter Horse half beats down that wild blood, your filly might turn into a passable horse,” Jonah said.

Darby loved her filly's wild side. She didn't want it beaten down, but she'd heard the dare in her grandfather's voice. She kept quiet, without hiding her smile.

“You going to have her ready to lead in a few days?” he asked.

“I think so,” Darby said, but she didn't mention the jump rope.

Jonah grunted, then changed the subject without warning. “Hear the goat surprised you.”

“Yeah,” Darby said.

“Megan feels bad she didn't warn you.”

“Is that what she said?” Darby asked, wondering how Megan could have forgotten something like that.

“She didn't have to. I was up at the house when you screamed—”

“I didn't scream,” Darby insisted. “I never scream.”

“—and she knew exactly what had happened. Even told me to go easy on you about Luna because she felt so bad about forgetting.”

Darby was thinking this over when Jonah made another turn in the conversation.

“Once I got a roping horse, Nell, from a friend on Maui. Cheap, too, because she was fussing with a high-dollar Appy mare of his. Biting her, kicking, and you know in the old times, lots of Appaloosas had little rattails. Nell made a special point of plucking mouthfuls of hair from the Appy's tail. After a while, it was nothing but sore, pink skin.

“So I took Nell. She worked for me, but the mare had no spark and she was off her feed. Soon I got a call from my friend asking did I want to return Nell or take the Appy, because much as the two carried on,
they were such good friends, the Appy had been deafening them all, calling after Nell ever since she'd left.”

Darby sighed.

It wasn't the first time Jonah had used an animal story to point out something about people.

“I get it,” she told him. “You think Megan and I should be friends, even though we've gotten off to a rough start.”

“Granddaughter, I don't know what you're talking about,” Jonah said. “I was only telling you about a couple horses.”

Darby let him have it his way, but she couldn't help wondering if he was thinking of her or Megan as the one with the rattail.

 

True to his word, Jonah explained how and why she'd be leading Luna alongside Navigator.

“It's exercise for Luna and good training for you,” Jonah said as Darby rode Navigator beside him, on their way to the stallion's pasture.

“We ‘pony' horses—like they do taking racehorses to the post, you know?—for lots of reasons,” Jonah said. “Maybe we've got an injured horse that's not moving around enough to get better; we pony him. We could have more horses to work than we have time to work them. Ponying, you double the number of horses you work out at once.

“With a young horse like Hoku who's not saddle broken, pony her and she'll just naturally copy the
behavior of a good solid horse like Navigator.”

If I can get her used to the rope,
Darby thought.

“But Navigator's the key,” Jonah told Darby. “Don't you use any horses but him to pony. The lead horse must listen to you, not his instincts. Kona, for instance, is fine to use with grown horses, but he wants to nip some sense into the young ones.”

Jonah went on to say Darby would give Luna two thirty-minute sessions a day in the arena. Once she could handle him well there, she was supposed to take him into open country to keep his back and legs built up.

At first, Luna treated her as he had before, when she'd helped Jonah position him for the farrier, as if he saw no reason for Darby to intrude on his time with her grandfather.

The full-maned bay stallion loped out to meet Jonah, even though they'd probably just seen each other when Jonah had taken him out of the weanlings' pasture and put him back in his own. It was a warm greeting, but one of equals. Instead of petting the stallion, or letting him nuzzle his palm, Jonah gave the stallion a firm slap on the neck.

Like a handshake between partners, Darby thought—as if Luna and Jonah shared the ruling of this ranch.

“Go halter him,” Jonah told her. “Tell him ‘drop' and he'll put his head down for you. Use one-word commands. He doesn't like a lot of chitchat.”

Darby nodded.

“Stride out there. Show him you're in charge. He respects authority.”

So she did. Luna turned his eyes her way. There was no accusation in them—he didn't know she was the one responsible for his thirst. His gaze was distant, but not unfriendly. He stared past her, toward Jonah, until the breeze shifted.

As if he thought she was hiding a carrot cake behind her back, Luna came toward Darby at a fluid lope. She didn't get a chance to tell the horse “drop.” He stopped beside her and lowered his head, but not for the halter.

I'm not ticklish,
Darby told herself as she wriggled away from Luna's sniffing of her head and neck. He was so persistent, it was hard not to laugh.

He rubbed his face into the curve where her neck turned into her shoulder, and Darby stumbled.

“Push him away,” Jonah told her. “Hard.”

She did, and Luna stepped back. As he returned to being his mannerly self, the stallion opened and closed his eyes, looking baffled.

“Never seen him do that. He was acting like a darned cat,” Jonah said. “Could be he likes your perfume.”

Darby opened her mouth to say she wasn't wearing perfume, then stopped.

Luna's fascination with the top of her head and side of her neck could be explained in one word: Hoku.

The wild filly's scent was the perfume Luna liked.

She haltered the stallion's bowed head as he stood daydreaming, but she whispered a stern message: “She's my horse and she's too young for you, so you can just forget it.”

 

Darby thought she was doing pretty well when Luna walked beside her as if she were parading him in a show ring, but when they came to the fence, she could tell that Jonah's approving nod was for his horse.

“Switch me horses,” Jonah said, once she'd led Luna from his pasture.

She wasn't sure what he meant until he swung into Navigator's saddle and indicated she should mount Kona.

With Jonah in the saddle, Navigator was a horse transformed. Jonah didn't readjust her stirrups, just rode with his legs free, and Navigator moved as if his greatest joy in life was reading Jonah's mind.

Jonah gestured for her to give him the stallion's lead rope, and began firing off instructions on how to pony when he noticed Darby was still afoot.

“Mount up,” he said.

“I'm not sure I can handle Kona,” she said, looking at the muscular gray gelding as he grazed nearby where Jonah had ground-tied him.

“That old weed-eater? Just climb on,” Jonah told her. “You'll be fine.”

Darby picked up Kona's reins and got one boot in the stirrup, but then she hopped around on her other foot, making backward circles as Kona kept walking toward her. When he finally tired of the game, Darby swung aboard, then realized it had been so easy because Jonah's stirrups were much longer than hers and her legs were flapping loose, too. Holding on tight, she clucked Kona into a trot.

Luna moved alongside Navigator with such grace, the two seemed to have choreographed this routine and danced it together many times.

Darby sighed at the perfect coordination of rider and horses until they passed near Sun House and the candlenut tree.

Luna swung around as if someone had called his name. With nostrils flared, he bared his teeth and lunged to the end of the lead rope. He would have dragged Navigator toward the tree if Jonah hadn't hissed a reprimand.

Luna satisfied himself with—well, to Darby it looked as if the stallion was marking his territory like a male dog—and then he followed Navigator down the ranch road, strutting as he passed the tack shed.

Darby's mind whirled, certain the intruder had been a stallion. Her thoughts didn't go much farther because once they passed the fox cages, Luna scented Hoku.

Already full of himself, Luna tucked his chin to his chest and arched his muscular neck. He pranced
toward Hoku's corral as if he were the king of the island.

Jonah motioned Darby to ride up closer. When she was beside him, he didn't comment on Luna's behavior. Instead, he told her, “Using the saddle horn, you can take a dally if you need a little extra control or leverage.”

Leverage on the horse, she assumed, but what was that other thing?

“Dally?” she asked.

“Like this.” Jonah flipped the lead rope in a tight loop around the saddle horn and reeled Luna a few steps closer to Navigator.

They were even with Hoku's corral now. Darby's heart pounded hard. How would her filly react to Navigator, Kona, and Luna? Would Hoku's herd instinct kick in and send her hurtling against the fence rails as she tried to join them?

Prancing and champing his jaws, Luna attracted Hoku's attention, but Jonah's smile vanished when the filly pinned her ears and rushed the fence with a squeal.

Luna froze in bewilderment.

“Are you watching?” Jonah asked Darby.

“Yeah,” Darby said, surprised. “I thought she'd want to come along with us.”

“Not that,” Jonah said. “This.” He nodded to his saddle horn.

Darby watched Jonah take a second dally in slow motion.

Luna tossed his black mane and snorted before letting himself be towed along.

“Could be she's one of those tomboy mares,” Jonah muttered, and Darby couldn't tell if he was talking to her or Luna. Before she could ask for an explanation, her grandfather said, “You need gloves, but more important than that, is this.”

Jonah grasped the rope with an exaggerated thumbs-up motion. “Don't ever let your thumb get in the rope's path. Even an experienced rider can be surprised, and when a one-ton horse hits the end of that rope wrapped around your soft little thumb, it'll pop right off.”

Darby was listening, but she snatched a quick look back at Hoku. The filly prowled her fence like an angry cat, glaring after the stallion.

When Jonah turned to see why Darby was so quiet, he must have thought she looked skeptical. He gave a short bark of a laugh.

“You don't believe me? Sometime ask Kimo how many fingers his dad has, that old scoundrel. He's the one tricked me into taking Francie.”

They rode a few steps together before Jonah added, “I tell you, that will sure change your vacation in Hawaii, takin' off a thumb.”

“Yes,” Darby agreed, “I bet it would.”

 

By eleven o'clock, Jonah had been teaching Darby to pony for almost an hour.

Sitting on the grass while Kona cropped nearby, Darby decided it was a skill she wasn't likely to master soon. There was so much to keep track of at once.

Two horses, one lead rope, a handful of reins, and her inexperienced riding all had to come together in a kind of synchronized smoothness that made patting your head while rubbing your stomach look easy. And Darby had never been able to do that for more than ten seconds at a time.

Luna had only broken his perfect pace three times—by the candlenut tree, by Hoku's corral, and once in the dip between the hills that Jonah called the fold.

The stallion would probably behave when she took over, Darby thought, if he wasn't provoked.

“Okay, now, before you try it, go up to the house and get yourself some gloves,” Jonah told Darby. “They're hanging on a rack in the laundry room.”

Darby didn't bother arguing. She started walking, thinking she'd grab a protein bar or something while she was in the house.

“Hey,” Jonah asked, “why walk when you can take a horse?”

This time when Darby approached, Kona's gray ears waggled in welcome. Darby still hadn't taken up
the stirrups, so she didn't need the sidehill to remount. She smiled when Kona let her settle into the saddle as if they were old friends.

“We'll get you some gloves of your own later,” Jonah said, watching her. “Boots, too.”

“That's okay,” Darby said, gathering her reins.

“What do you mean, ‘that's okay'?” Jonah asked.

“I mean, you don't have to do that. Aren't they expensive?”

“Do you want to do this right?” Jonah gestured at the ranch around them.

“Yes, but—”

“And is it possible I know how to outfit you, so that you can grip your reins and ropes and keep your feet from slipping through the stirrups so you won't get dragged to death?”

“I just don't want to cost you a bunch of money.” She squeezed her legs against Kona and aimed him toward Sun House.

The gray moved into a long walk, just as she'd hoped, but Darby was still close enough to hear Jonah grumble, “Save me money somewhere else—like on doctor bills.”