Wild Horses (5 page)

In double-quick time she was changed and taking the stairs two at a time to join the others.

“These wild horses; where do you reckon they came from?” Sandy was asking Hadley Crane.

The wiry old man shrugged. “I did hear of a herd up by Eden Lake a week back.” His slow voice drawled over every word. He was standing, hat in hand, with his back to the wood-burning stove. His jacket steamed, his leather chaps were still tied firmly round his long legs.

“And these are the same ones?”

“Could be. From what I heard, no one got close enough to take a proper look.”

Kirstie listened hard. She knew that Eden Lake was way up above 10,000 feet. The winter snow would still be on the ground, lying in the rock crevices and covering the mountaintops. The meadows between the peaks would only just be beginning to show green. It made sense that if the wild herd had been spotted up there, they would since have moved down the mountains for better grazing.

As she figured it out she felt her brother Matt sidle up to her. “Watch out; one lecture coming up,” he warned.

“From Mom?”

Matt nodded. “She was real worried.”

“I was OK. It was the black stallion I was thinking about.”

“Yeah!” he grinned. “So tell me something new!”

Kirstie blushed as Matt teased her about her obsession. “What would
you
have done? Found him under a pile of rocks and just left him?”

“Nope. I’d have done about the same as you, I guess.”

This time she grinned back. She and Matt didn’t look alike; he was tall and dark, where she was middle-sized and fair. He had light hazel eyes like their dad, hers were soft gray like her mom’s. Everyone said Matt was good-looking, the image of his absent father. “Beautiful but dumb,” their mother would joke with a touch of regret.

But even though they looked different, Kirstie knew that her brother shared her love of horses.

“So how’s the stallion?” he asked her now. All he’d heard so far was a garbled story told in snatches by Charlie as Matt had helped him unsaddle the horses in the corral.

“Lost a lot of blood,” Kirstie reported. “The cut on his knee’s real bad and real dirty. I guess he needs a tetanus shot and antibiotics.”

“Charlie thinks maybe his leg’s broken,” Matt said quietly, as their mom went onto discuss with Hadley the chances of shifting the pile of rocks that blocked the entrance to Dead Man’s Canyon.

Kirstie shrugged and turned away. Only Glen Woodford would be able to tell them that. For now, all they could do was wait. And for Kirstie, waiting was hard.

“That’s a mighty big landslide back there.” Hadley scratched his head where the hair grew short and iron-gray. “I reckon it’ll take some serious earth-moving equipment to pull that pile of rocks away.”

Charlie nodded. “It’s the only way to get the stallion out of there,” he reminded them. “No way can he do what Lucky did and climb out by himself.”

Sandy Scott chewed her lip as she thought it through. Dressed in shirt and jeans like the men on the ranch, but slight and feminine under her workmanlike clothes, she wore her fair hair pulled loosely back. Her young-looking face was tanned from working in the clear summer sun, but it was creased right now by a worried frown. “The problem is, we still have a ranch to run,” she reminded them. “Finding equipment to move the rocks and rescue this horse sounds like it’s gonna take a whole lot of time.”

This was where Matt stepped in. “Let me take over from Hadley and lead one of the rides this afternoon,” he suggested. “That leaves one man free to go back to Dead Man’s Canyon.”

Hadley grunted, then nodded. “I reckon I could get over to Lennie Goodman’s place at Lone Elm and borrow his JCB. If I get the go ahead, I could drive the machine along Meltwater Trail and start work.”

“Let me come!” Kirstie joined in. Lone Elm was a trailer park a couple of miles along the creek. The owner, Lennie Goodman, used the big yellow tractor-type vehicle with a giant metal scoop across the front to shift earth and make new sites for the big trailers and recreational vehicles that visited the area.

Sandy glanced at her watch. “The guests are over in the dining room having lunch. We have half an hour before the afternoon rides. If we all lend a hand to saddle up the horses, I reckon Hadley and Kirstie could take the afternoon off.”

“Great!” Kirstie jumped in, taking her mom at her word. She headed for the door, jamming a baseball cap onto her head, urging Hadley to hurry.

But the old man never did anything in a rush. He said he would ring Lennie Goodman to check things out, sending Charlie after Kirstie across to the corral to help prepare the horses for the afternoon ride. Soon Matt and Sandy joined them there too.

Kirstie went from horse to horse along the tethered row. She checked their stirrups and tightened their cinches after Charlie and Matt had lifted the heavy saddles across their broad backs. When she came to Silver Flash, however, she saw that the big sorrel horse stood in her head collar, without saddle or bridle.

“Ronnie Vernon won’t be riding this afternoon,” Charlie told her. “He says he wants to go fishing instead.”

“Hmm.” She wrinkled her nose, then sniffed. Personally, after the way he’d disobeyed orders and raced Silver Flash up out of the canyon this morning, she wouldn’t care if the man never rode again.

“He feels pretty bad,” Charlie reported.

“Tell me about it.” She raised her fair eyebrows until they disappeared under the peak of her cap. A glance toward the dining room showed her the man himself walking quickly in the other direction, away from the corral. “You could say he was the reason the stallion got hurt.”

“You mean he started the landslide?” Matt frowned.

Sandy stopped work to listen.

Kirstie untethered Silver Flash, ready to lead her out to the remuda, the strip of grassland by Five Mile Creek. “He’s the one who set the first rocks sliding by making his horse lope up the track.”

“Yeah, but there was a lot of rain coming down that ridge.” Charlie stepped in to remind them that Vernon shouldn’t take all the blame. “The water loosened the whole thing up. It could’ve happened to anyone.”

Sandy nodded, giving Kirstie a meaningful look. “Let’s leave it, OK?”

Kirstie blushed, realizing that she might be being hotheaded. She was worked up by vivid memories of the injured horse. “Sorry,” she said quietly.

“No, it’s OK, I understand.” Her mom walked alongside as Kirstie led Silver Flash down to the meadow. “They tell me you fixed the stallion up pretty good.”

“Let’s hope.” She recalled her last view of him, angered by the bandage around his leg, trapped in the canyon as more rain clouds rolled down the mountain.

“You did a good job, Kirstie.” Sandy watched her daughter put Silver Flash to graze, then stretched an arm around her shoulder.

“I wish Glen Woodford would get here!” Try as she might, she couldn’t get the main problem out of her mind: the first-aid treatment she’d given the badly injured horse wouldn’t hold out for long. What the stallion really needed was a vet. And quick.

But she was distracted by the sight of a new figure riding on a bike down the dirt track from the main gates of Half Moon Ranch. She recognized the short red hair and long limbs of her best friend, Lisa Goodman. Lisa was Lennie Goodman’s granddaughter, the same age as Kirstie and in the same grade at San Luis Middle School.

“Hey!” Lisa spotted Kirstie and Sandy and veered across the grass toward them. “I was at Lone Elm when Hadley called!” she explained, flinging her bike down. “He told us what happened.”

“Can your grandpa lend Hadley the earth-mover?” Kirstie asked.

“Sure. He’s driving it over from the trailer park right now. I came on ahead.” Breathless from her ride, Lisa walked back to the corral with Kirstie and her mother. “Sounds like you got a real problem on your hands,” she gasped. “Can I come see?”

Quickly Kirstie nodded. She knew Lisa wouldn’t be in the way. “Hadley can take over and drive the JCB when your grandpa brings it. We’ll saddle Cadillac for you …”

“Best ask Matt first,” Sandy reminded them. “He’s back home now, remember!”

“Ask me what?” Matt came out of the tack-room to catch the end of the sentence. He’d taken off his college clothes and wore his Stetson and riding boots instead, ready for the afternoon’s work. “Does someone want to borrow my horse by any chance?”

They arranged with him for Lisa to ride Matt’s white gelding, and while they were doing this, a black Jeep rode down the track to the ranch house.

“Glen Woodford!” Kirstie cried, breaking away from the group. She climbed the corral fence and ran to meet him. “What kept you?”

Ignoring her question, the vet jumped down from the Jeep, slammed the door, and strode toward her. “Hey, Kirstie, I hear you can put me in the picture. How’s this injured horse of yours doing?”

As she explained, Charlie went out to the remuda to fetch yet another horse, this time for the vet. The wrangler said they should ride across country to the canyon to save time. “Dirt roads round here are flooded,” he told them. “According to Lennie, Five Mile Creek broke its banks.”

Glen nodded and went to fetch his bag from the car, while Kirstie ran for a saddlebag for him and strapped it onto the back of his horse’s saddle. Meanwhile, Lisa was up on Cadillac, ready and waiting.

“You got a two-way radio with you?” Sandy asked, as Kirstie mounted Lucky.

She nodded.

“Keep us in touch. I’ll be out leading the beginners’ ride.” Sandy glanced round to see the first guests leaving the dining room and heading for the corral.

Glen Woodford promised to keep an eye on both girls. “We should reach the canyon before Hadley gets there with the JCB,” he guessed. “According to Kirstie, I should be able to climb down from the ridge. If it goes well, I can treat the horse’s injuries, give him a couple of shots of procaine, and be out of there before the work on moving the rocks begins. Then it’ll be up to Hadley to make a way out for the whole herd.”

“Let’s go!” Impatient to set off, her hopes raised by the vet’s confident words, Kirstie tapped her heels against Lucky’s sides.

The willing palomino strode out across the corral, followed by Lisa on Cadillac and Glen on a brown and white six-year-old paint called Yukon.

“Forget the trails!” Kirstie called over her shoulder, heading Lucky straight up the slope behind the ranch. “We’ll bushwhack across country; it’ll be quicker!” She calculated roughly forty-five minutes to the canyon, caught a glimpse of the giant yellow earth-mover trundling slowly along Meltwater Trail as they rose high through the aspen trees. Overhead, the clouds still threatened, but for the moment the rain held off.

Three-quarters of an hour of pushing the horses uphill, picking their way clear of the lime-green aspens into the darker, spikier ponderosa pines. Silent except for the occasional snorting of the hardworking horses, the three riders concentrated on finding the quickest route to Miners’ Ridge.

“What’s this procaine shot you mentioned earlier?” Lisa asked Glen as they climbed the final slopes. Though she lived at a diner in town with her mother, Bonnie Goodman, and didn’t ride as often as Kirstie, she’d kept up well.

“Procaine is a type of penicillin,” the vet explained. “And the stallion will need one big dose of tetanus, since these are wild horses we’re dealing with and there’s no chance of them being immunized already.”

“And will you stitch the wound?” Lisa quizzed.

Glen shrugged. “Don’t know yet. Sutures don’t generally hold if the laceration is across a joint. I may be able to give him something to keep down the swelling; let’s hold on and see what we find when we get there.”

Kirstie listened without breaking her own silence. The other two were talking as if the stallion’s leg wasn’t broken, she realized. She hoped they were right.

She let Lucky pick his way up the steep hill, ducking to avoid branches, keeping her weight slightly forward in the saddle. Soon they would reach the ridge. Noticing Lucky’s ears prick forward to listen, she motioned for Glen and Lisa to keep quiet.

“Are we almost there?” Lisa called after a minute or two of now silent progress.

Kirstie nodded. They were coming to mounds of waste stone, long since grassed over; stony relics left by the gold miners way back last century. They would dig deep into the mountain with dynamite and picks, haul the rock out to the mine entrance, and dump it before burrowing back deep into the earth. During one bad winter a big explosion had killed many miners, and the accident had given the nearby deep gully its name. Beyond the rough mounds the long, narrow ridge that overlooked the canyon began.

“That’s weird.” Kirstie tilted her head to one side. Like Lucky, she’d been listening hard. “I can’t hear anything.”

Glen Woodford rode up alongside. “So? What should we hear?”

“Hooves,” she explained. Earlier that morning, the wild horses had made a lot of noise as they pounded up and down the canyon. Now all was silent. “Really weird!”

“Maybe they’re resting.” Lisa looked for an explanation. “Or listening to us sneaking up on them.”

They rode on until they reached the top of the ridge and were able to look down.

Still no noise. No restless shifting of hooves, no nervous whinnies echoing from the cliffs. Nothing.

“Empty!” Kirstie gasped.

No mares and foals huddled together, jostling down the far end of the gully.

“How come?” Lisa stared at the blocked entrance where the fallen rocks towered, seemingly too high for a horse to climb.

Kirstie slipped from the saddle and crouched by the sheer drop. “I don’t know!” she breathed. Her hands gripped at the edge of the cliff as she peered down.

The canyon was deserted. There wasn’t a living thing down there. But how could a whole herd of wild horses have escaped? And the biggest question of all; where in the world was the injured black stallion?