Wild Horses (6 page)

“Where in the world?” was a good question. This out-of-the-way place with its unhappy history and its recent sudden disaster was starting to feel like it wasn’t in the real world after all. Maybe Kirstie had got it wrong, had imagined the storm and the landslide, the black stallion and the wild herd; maybe she’d dreamed them all.

“Weird!” Lisa echoed Kirstie’s uneasy doubts.

Glen Woodford got down slowly from Yukon, pausing to unstrap the saddlebag and bring his vet’s kit with him. He came and crouched at the edge of the ravine beside Kirstie and Lisa, hunching his broad shoulders inside his dark green jacket. “What do we reckon?” he asked, calm as ever.

Kirstie shook her head. “They were here!” she insisted. “And there was no way out!”

Lisa stood up and walked a few steps along the ridge to peer down the canyon from a different angle. “Zilch,” she reported in a flat voice. “Big round zero.”

“OK, you guys, let’s get this clear.” The vet looked Kirstie straight in the eyes. His square, even-featured face beneath the neat dark hair was serious but showed no sign of irritation. “This is the right place?”

This time Kirstie nodded. “For sure. You can ask Charlie.” No way could she have mistaken the canyon.

Glen considered things. “So maybe the herd climbed out after you left.”

“Maybe.” She was prepared to admit it was possible. “If they watched Lucky and me pick a new way up to the ridge, I guess they could have got the idea and followed.”

She pictured the dozen or so horses tackling the difficult route.

“But there were foals?” Glen asked. “The mares would have a tough time leading them up the cliff.”

“I know.” Kirstie sighed and appealed to Lisa for a bright idea.

Lisa looked sideways out of her green eyes, then turned away, muttering.

“Well, maybe. But what beats me is how this injured stallion made it out.” The vet stood up and gazed around, as if the answer to the mystery might be across the far side of the canyon, or further up the mountain. “You say the leg was real bad?”

“OK, listen. Number one, he was knocked unconscious by falling rocks. Number two, he lost a lot of blood.” Kirstie grew desperate to convince them. “That means he would be weak. And number three, the knee was so bad I thought it might even be broken!”

Glen took this in. “So the good news is, you were wrong.” He went on in response to her blank look. “The knee wasn’t that bad…not broken, so he found he could put his weight on it and follow the other horses up the track.”

“In other words, he made it out of there on his own?” Lisa got the idea. “Which means he’s doing OK.”

Taking a deep breath, Kirstie nodded slowly. “I guess.”

“What else?” The vet invited any other explanation. “…Which means he didn’t need my help after all,” he said after a long pause.

Kirstie felt her face grow hot and flushed at the idea that she’d dragged Glen Woodford all the way from San Luis under false pretenses. “I’m real sorry,” she stammered.

“Don’t be.” He smiled kindly, returning to Yukon to pack his vet’s kit back into the saddlebags. “This kind of happy ending I
like
!”

“So, what we do now is radio a message through to your mom with the good news, then get back to the ranch in time for one of your awesome cowboy cookouts!” Lisa quickly looked on the bright side. She glanced up at the lightening sky and unzipped her yellow waterproof slicker. “Saturday. Cookout day. What’s to eat?”

“Hmm?” Reluctant to leave the ridge, Kirstie still stared down into the empty canyon. “I got another idea,” she said slowly.

Lisa came close. “How come I get the feeling I’m not going to like this so-called idea?” she asked, gingerly crouching down beside Kirstie.

Through her continuing worries about the stallion and her puzzled surprise at finding Dead Man’s Canyon empty, Kirstie managed a grin. “Because it doesn’t involve supper at Half Moon Ranch?” she quipped.

“What’s with the ‘we’?” Lisa demanded as she stood by Cadillac’s side and waved Glen Woodford and Yukon off down the mountain. “You told your mom that ‘we’ wanted to camp the night by Dead Man’s Canyon!”

She made Kirstie laugh with her over-the-top expression of disgust. “
We
want to find the stallion, don’t we?”

“Yeah …”

“And
we
like sleeping out in summer?” She’d persuaded her mom that it would be great for her and Lisa to make camp up here.

“What will you use for a tent?” Sandy had asked over the two-way radio. “And what will you eat?”

Kirstie’s answer had been that Matt could ride up to the ridge before supper with the camping gear and food for both the girls and the horses.

Sandy Scott had thought about it, then asked her to hand over the radio to Glen Woodford for his opinion.

“They’d do fine,” the vet had told her with a wink at the girls. “No problem!”

So it had been fixed. Kirstie and Lisa were sleeping out.

A message had been sent to Hadley that the earth-moving equipment wouldn’t after all be needed right away. The wrangler had turned around and begun to head back to Lone Elm trailer park. And Matt had, as expected, been easygoing about bringing supplies when Sandy had reached him by two-way radio.

“Great, Mom. Thanks!” Kirstie had clicked off the radio just as the vet had been ready to leave. Now she too waved and wished him a safe journey back to the ranch.

“So… ?” Lisa watched Glen disappear down the slope, then took off her slicker, rolled it, and stuffed it into a saddlebag hitched to the back of Cadillac’s saddle.

“So, we wait till Matt gets here with the feed for Cadillac and Lucky. Then we pitch the tent and cook beans and burgers …”

“Yuck!” Lisa pulled a face.

“You said you wanted a cookout!” Kirstie reminded her.

“Yeah. I was thinking more like chicken, marinated and grilled over an open fire. Baked potatoes, coleslaw…the full works. Not beans!” Lisa’s face was comically disappointed.

“So … cowboy-up!” she told her with a big grin. It was the Scott family’s motto, half-jokey, half-serious. “It’s tough, but you know we can do it!”

Lisa rolled her eyes again and pretended to sink against the rough bark of the tall pine tree. “There you go with that ‘we’ thing again!” she sighed.

The small, dome-shaped tent was up. Beans were cooking on the tiny stove.

“You don’t find it kinda…spooky up here?” Matt mentioned as he gave Lucky and Cadillac their feed.

“Nope!” Kirstie said with lightning speed.

“Yep!” Lisa shot back.

“To me it feels like this place never gets the sun,” Matt went on. “It’s kind of shadowy, reminds me of, well, spooks, I guess.”

“Thanks, Matt!” Kirstie muttered. Lisa was already jittery enough, without him putting his size ten boots in it.

“Oh, don’t …” Lisa stared around at the lengthening shadows. A breeze in the trees rattled branches. Some small creature, a chipmunk or a ground squirrel, scuttled off through the bushes.

Matt smiled to himself. He waited until Lucky had finished feeding, then let him wander off to a safe distance to chew on a small patch of new grass. “All those dead miners,” he reminded them in a ghostly voice. “Lost in the rush to grab gold from the mountain. Killed by greed!”

“Yeah, that was way back,” Kirstie insisted. “You’re talking centuries here.” Nevertheless, she did glance up from the stove toward the grassed-over mounds of waste from the old mines.

Lisa followed her gaze. “What’s that?” She pointed with a shaking hand about fifty yards up the hill to what looked like a cave between the mounds.

“That’s an old mine entrance.” Matt saw she was hooked on his story. “I guess it goes pretty deep; a black hole into the heart of the mountain! A scar on nature left by man’s lust for gold!”

Kirstie jumped up from stirring the pan. “Don’t listen to him,” she told Lisa, striding over to Matt. “He’s winding us up.”

“Me?” His eyes were still smiling. “Would I?”

“Yes, you would!” Kirstie turned him around and marched him back toward Moose. “Go home, Matt!”

Swinging into the saddle, laughing out loud, he prepared to do as he was told. “So why the camp?” he asked before he left. “Why here? Why now?”

“Because!” Kirstie refused to answer. She stood, arms crossed, looking up at him, waiting for him to go.

“Because she wants to find the black stallion.” Lisa spelled it out. “Because she can’t believe he got out of there alone, without help. She thinks he’s still around here someplace, needing her. And you know Kirstie; once she gets a notion, she just won’t let go!”

“Promise me one thing,” Matt had insisted before he finally agreed to leave them alone on Miners’ Ridge. “You won’t climb down the canyon looking for the horse before daylight.”

“It’s a deal.” Kirstie knew he was right. Trying to find a way down was too risky in the gathering dusk. The plan was that she and Lisa climb into their sleeping bags the moment it grew dark, get as much sleep as they could, then get up at first light the next morning to continue the search.

“So who can sleep?” Lisa said now that Matt had finally gone. They’d finished cleaning up, made sure that Cadillac and Lucky were safely tethered, and crawled into the tent for the night.

Kirstie was still crouched by the entrance, looking and listening. Except for the rustle of wind through branches and the occasional screech of an owl, the mountain was silent. Ignoring Lisa’s question, she went on with her own train of thought. “If you figure it out, even if the stallion did get out of the canyon somehow, there’s no way he can have gone far. He’d be too weak from losing so much blood …”

“What was that?” Hearing a new noise, Lisa dived deep into her sleeping bag and pulled it up round her chin.

“… And if he’s weak, maybe another stallion in the herd will take over from him as leader and guide the others someplace else. That means the black stallion gets left behind. And you know there are mountain lions on Eagle’s Peak …”

“Lions?” Lisa squeaked. Her head disappeared into the sleeping bag so that only her curly red hair showed in the glow from the lamp which hung from the roof.

“And black bears. The bears are no problem to the stallion. But a cougar’s different.” Kirstie knew that, though rare and seldom seen, a mountain lion would attack a horse weakened by injury. “They hunt at night,” she told Lisa in a worried voice.

“Don’t tell me!” Lisa pleaded.

“So you see, we need to get up at dawn and be out on the trail looking for clues.” She thought ahead, oblivious to the trembling heap inside the sleeping bag next to her. “Say we do pick up a track and find him. Say he’s weak and all alone. We can stay with him, radio Mom at the ranch, and she can send Glen back to give him the shots he needs.”

“Sure,” Lisa said faintly.

Zipping up the tent, Kirstie turned and sighed. She switched off the lamp and threw the tent into complete darkness. “See, since he didn’t get those antibiotics he could be in pretty bad shape by now.” Wearily she crawled fully dressed into her own sleeping bag. “In fact, Lisa, I know Glen was trying to make things sound good for our sakes, but if you really think about it, it’s pretty clear to me that the horse could actually die!”

“Help!…Help me!”

Rocks crashed down from the roof of a dark tunnel. Dust rose. Men choked and cried out. One picked himself up from the ground and staggered away, arm raised to shield his stooped head from the falling debris.

“I can’t get out! I’m trapped! Somebody, help me!”

Voices wailed in the thick blackness. Wild eyes, anguished faces under a landslide of heavy rocks.

Kirstie beat her fists in the air. Her legs thrashed inside a confined space. “Help!” she cried, sitting bolt upright.

“Wake up!” Lisa was shaking her. “You’re having a nightmare. Kirstie, wake up!”

She opened her eyes, made out the dome of the tent in the gray light before dawn. Her legs were trapped inside the twisted sleeping bag, but there were no rocks, no miners suffocating in a dusty tomb. She took a deep breath and, for a few seconds, hung her head forward and buried her face between her hands.

“Are you OK?” Lisa waited until she looked up again.

Kirstie nodded. “Sorry I woke you.”

“You didn’t. I was already awake, looking out for mountain lions … bears … ghosts …” She gave her friend a wry grin. “Didn’t spot any, though. But wait till I see your brother!”

Shaking off the nightmare and reaching out to unzip the tent for fresh air, Kirstie spied Lucky and Cadillac standing quietly under the nearby trees. Both horses looked pale and unreal in the morning mist as they stretched their tethers to turn their heads at the sound of the zip.

She crawled out on all fours, feeling the cold dew on the grass. Lifting her hands to her hot face, she cooled herself down.

“You’re sure you’re OK?” Lisa followed her out, already dressed in shirt and trousers.

“Yep. Glad to be awake,” Kirstie confessed. Sleeping out was usually more fun than this, with a saddlebag full of potato chips and Hershey bars for breakfast, and sun breaking through the trees. Today there was no sun; just more clouds and the wet mist clinging to the ridge. From somewhere deep in the canyon, she recognized the sound of a bobcat’s yowl.

Cadillac skittered sideways at the noise. He knocked into Lucky, who tossed his head and pulled at his tether.

With her stomach still churning from the nightmare, Kirstie stood up. Down below, lost in the mist, the bobcat went on making his high-pitched racket. “I wonder what got into him?”

“And the horses.” Lisa glanced nervously toward Dead Man’s Canyon, then over at Lucky and Cadillac. “You know something? I’m not the only one who doesn’t like this place.”

“I agree. What do you say we saddle up and get out of here fast?” Kirstie suggested, eager in any case to begin the search for the black stallion.

She was heading toward Lucky when a gray shape came hurtling out of the canyon and along the ridge. About a yard long from head to the tip of its stubby tail, with a mottled coat, there was no mistaking the sturdy bobcat. He flew toward Kirstie, saw her, and veered off for the trees where the horses were tied up.

It all happened in seconds; the bobcat flashing by, Cadillac smelling and hearing him before he saw him, the wrench at the halter rope, the brittle branch snapping.