Midnight Lady (12 page)

“That daughter of yours is a sweet kid,” Donna told Sandy. She’d cried a little, told Kirstie that it was a kind offer, but not one that she could fulfil. The horse was missing, and anyway she was too hard to handle. No way could anyone bring her back without using force. She’d sighed, squeezed Kirstie’s hand, and gone back into the house.

“Sweet?” Sandy echoed, raising her eyebrows but sounding grateful as well as surprised. “Since when?”

Kirstie gave an embarrassed grin as she cleared away the coffee cups. Her mom was right, “sweet” was definitely what she was
not!

But the two women were getting along great. Donna more or less admitted that the original problem over Midnight Lady was partly her fault; she hadn’t supervised Leon’s breaking in methods closely enough, had left the running of the ranch too much in his hands. And, to Kirstie’s surprise, she didn’t seem to care that Leon was overhearing this. The ranch manager scowled but didn’t dare to protest, since for the first time Donna demonstrated who was boss.

It was Sandy’s idea that Donna should stay over at Half Moon Ranch. “You’re tired,” she reminded her. “Let Leon and TJ drive your car back to Circle R, help Jesse look after things at that end. They have to come back in the morning to collect the truck. By that time, you’ll have had a good night’s sleep and things may look a little brighter.”

There were more scowls from Leon as a grateful Donna accepted the offer. “Arnie Ash wants an answer early tomorrow,” he reminded her.

“I’ll call from here.” Donna’s mind was made up about the overnight stay. She waited for Leon to follow orders.

The arrangement gave Kirstie the space she needed to put things right once and for all. She wouldn’t try to explain or persuade; instead she would
act!

First she had to wait for Leon and TJ to drive off and for Donna and her mom to finish chatting and go to bed. She had to fight off her own exhaustion, splashing cold water over her face and leaning out of the window to gulp in fresh air after she’d said her good nights and gone up to her room, where the bed in the corner had looked soft and tempting.

Hunting through her closet, she chose a thick fleece and a baseball cap to protect her from the chilly night. But she shouldn’t leave her room too soon. She must wait until her mom and Donna were asleep. The minutes seemed long as she checked the clock: half after ten, ten forty-five, eleven.

Then at last, when the house was silent, she crept downstairs. She went outside onto the porch, pulled on her boots, then tiptoed out in the yard, glancing back at the bedroom windows.

This time she would risk taking a saddle and bridle out of the tack room, keeping a close eye on the bunkhouse where Hadley and Charlie were already asleep. She hoped! Heaving the saddle from its hook, she breathed heavily and wondered why she’d put on so many clothes. She was too hot. It must be because her nerves were playing up, and because the saddle was heavy as she carried it out to Red Fox Meadow.

By the time she got to the fence, her knees had begun to buckle. She dropped the saddle in the grass and softly called Lucky’s name.

So far the plan was going like clockwork. Lucky came eagerly to her call, his mane and tail almost white in the moonlight, his dark eyes gleaming. Soon he was saddled and ready to ride. “Meltwater Trail!” Kirstie murmured as she slipped her foot into the stirrup and swung onto his back. “We’re going to Miners’ Ridge and Dead Man’s Canyon. C’mon, Lucky, let’s go!”

Kirstie felt certain that she and Lucky would find Midnight Lady at the end of their moonlit ride. She knew horses and how they were likely to behave. The gray mare would follow her herd instinct and still be hanging out in the area where she’d last seen her companions, Skeeter and Moonpie. That meant starting the search at Dead Man’s Canyon and making their way up to Angel Rock. There, under the trees, or in the deep black shadows of the rocks, Midnight Lady would be waiting.

But what would she do, how would she react when she saw Kirstie and Lucky? Would she recognize Kirstie as the girl whom she had trusted, who had set her free from Leon Franks’s ropes and tarps? Or would her experiences at Circle R have soured her nature and turned her against all humans? As she rode Lucky into the narrow entrance to Dead Man’s Canyon, Kirstie understood there was no way she could possibly predict the answer to this most important question of all.

After a few wary steps into the deep, dark ravine, she reined Lucky to a halt and listened. She heard but couldn’t see the waterfall at the far end of the canyon, the call of owls, and the distant, barking cry of a coyote. Kirstie glanced up at the sky, waiting for thin, ghostly clouds to clear, and for the moon to shine fully into the canyon. Lucky shifted and scraped his feet on the rocky ground. He turned his head, waiting for the next command.

“OK, she’s not here!” Kirstie decided. “Let’s try higher up!”

They were retracing their steps, passing through Fat Man’s Squeeze, when Lucky hesitated and looked up to his right onto Miners’ Ridge.

The moon was out in a clear sky, the silvery light picking out every blade of grass, every tiny blue columbine that grew in the crevices between the rocks. Kirstie tilted her head and peered up the slope.

The runaway horse gazed down, her legs and body in shadow, but her neck and head white in the moonlight. Her eyes were deep, dark pools.

The midsummer sun rose before six on Friday morning, tipping the mountains with golden pink light while the rest of the valley lay cold and gray.

It was decision day for Donna Rose.

“You’re up early,” Donna said to Kirstie, when she came down to make coffee. The lines on her face seemed deep and careworn, there were shadows under her eyes.

“You, too.” Kirstie hugged her secret, tried not to race ahead.

“Yes, I didn’t sleep well.” Donna forgot about coffee and drifted toward the kitchen door. “It’s a beautiful day!”

“I guess you were trying to decide about the ranch,” Kirstie said gently.

Donna glanced around. “I’d say I changed my mind a hundred times at least. Fifty reasons to stay. Fifty reasons to go.”

“And how about I give you the fifty-first reason to stay?” Now; before Sandy, Hadley and Charlie were awake, before Donna had the chance to call Arnie Ash and accept his offer!

“You’re sweet …” A sad smile crept over Donna’s features; she was shaking her head.

Now!
though Kirstie’s nerves were stretched tight, though she still couldn’t be sure how this would work out! Everything depended on Midnight Lady.

“Come outside and take a look!” she whispered.

Donna had reluctantly agreed to play along, as if humoring Kirstie was a way of shelving her big decision one more time. “You kids have so much energy!” she’d sighed, following her into the corral, where the resident pair of blue jays pecked in the dust.

The birds had flapped and squawked at their approach.

Then Kirstie had left Donna in the corral and slipped through the heavy pine door into the barn. Now she breathed in the nighttime, moist, musty smells of hay and sleeping animals, passing the stalls occupied by the three young foals and turning into the one where Midnight Lady had spent most of the night.

The gray mare was already awake and suspicious of the footsteps approaching her stall. True, she’d met Kirstie and Lucky on the mountain the night before and decided they were friend, not foe. She’d responded to Kirstie’s kind words and come along calmly enough. Sweet alfalfa had tempted her into the barn, and the prospect of a clean, soft bed. But would it be the same in the cold light of day?

“Hey!” Kirstie said softly. She stopped in the doorway, avoiding eye contact, waiting for Midnight Lady to decide.

The horse looked intently at her.
Have you come to get me? Are you gonna take me some place with ropes and tarpaulins? Do you want to break me and destroy me like others of your kind?

“Yeah, I know you’re not sure,” Kirstie whispered. Still she stayed where she was. “And I don’t blame you.”

Still gazing at her, Midnight Lady lowered her head. She licked her lips and ground her teeth.
Maybe, maybe
…one small step…
maybe!
She walked slowly to join Kirstie.

Yes!
Kirstie felt a thrill of triumph. This was the third, magical time that the horse had accepted her. Once at Circle R, then last night on the mountain, and now! But she did nothing to disturb her, backing smoothly out of the stall, watching her follow. When Midnight Lady joined her again, she reached out and stroked her softly between the eyes. “Will you come and show Donna what a great horse you really are?” she whispered.

Midnight Lady dipped her head and followed again, past the stalls with the foals, along the dark passageway toward the square of daylight and the open door. No lead rope, nothing. Just the trust between girl and horse.

“Oh my!” Donna Rose saw them step through the doorway into the corral and a shaft of early morning sunlight. Kirstie’s fair hair fell in wisps across her tanned face, her white T-shirt hung loose over her worn jeans. The gray horse towered over her but followed her every move.

And now! Did she dare? Kirstie walked toward the saddle she’d positioned carefully on the fence. Would Midnight Lady take it? She had the memory of Leon, Jesse, and TJ’s one, cruel attempt to saddle her, like grit, like sharp glass in her mind. If Kirstie attempted it now, would she buck and kick and go crazy as before?

Carefully, still without rope or lead, she lifted the saddle and slid it onto Midnight Lady’s back. The horse’s ears flicked warily; she blew through her nostrils. Bunched muscles in her jaw and neck showed that adrenalin was shooting through her, but, as Kirstie stooped to fix the cinch, she stood quite still.

“Goodness, who would’ve believed it!” Donna breathed from her position by the fence.

“I would, for one. If you’d have asked me, I’d have told you this girl could do it!” a voice said quietly.

Kirstie glanced up to see Hadley leaning on the fence, one foot on the bottom rung, his hands clasped comfortably along the top. The wrangler must have heard the jays kicking up a fuss and come out of his bunkhouse to find out why. She allowed herself a small, embarrassed grin.

“She has a kind of way with horses,” he told Donna.

“It’s magic!” Donna was shaking her head in disbelief as next Kirstie took a bridle from the fence post and gently slipped it over Midnight Lady’s ears. The horse accepted the cold snaffle with a small lift of her head.

“No. It’s what we call gentle breaking,” Hadley murmured, watching keenly, ready to criticize if Kirstie made a wrong move. “The mare’s doing fine, see; she’s an OK horse.”

“Easy!” Kirstie murmured, forgetting her audience, looping the reins over Midnight Lady’s head. “We’re gonna have fun, OK?” It was time to adjust the cinch and try putting a foot into the stirrup.

The horse felt the strap tighten and Kirstie’s weight in the stirrup. She sidestepped nervously.

“Easy!” Kirstie waited, then swung her other leg over. That movement, the slow motion swing of her leg, the settling of her weight in the saddle, seemed to go on and on. The sun glinted on the silver snaffle rings, a sudden breeze lifted the silky hair of Midnight Lady’s white mane.

The moment after, when the horse could so easily have bunched her muscles, gathered her strength, and exploded across the corral in a series of bucks and kicks, she turned her head to glance at Kirstie. This was all new and strange, but the look showed she didn’t mind in the least.
OK, let’s have fun
, it said.

“No regrets?” Sandy asked Donna.

The kitchen was full of the smell of bacon, eggs, pancakes, coffee. There were people coming and going in an endless stream.

Leon Franks had driven over from Circle R, and Donna had made her vital phone call to Arnie Ash.

“No regrets!” she replied, smiling at Kirstie, who tucked into a blueberry pancake drowned in maple syrup.

“Sure?” Sandy double-checked as she put plates of cooked breakfast in front of Hadley and Charlie. She’d been busy bringing Matt up to date with events after he’d arrived back from Denver, telling him about his sister’s success with Midnight Lady.