Snowfire (6 page)

“I'm bracing myself,” Darby said.

“We can do a Food Channel–style cooking demonstration…”

“Can't cook at all,” Darby remarked.

“…or compose an original song and perform it in front of the class.”

“That's all?” Darby asked. “We're in big trouble.”

“No, we're not.” Ann sounded as if she were chiding a child.

“You can get a new partner if it's not too late,” Darby offered, “because the only thing I'm worse at than cooking is singing.”

“Everybody can sing,” Ann insisted.

“That's what you think,” Darby said.

There was silence on the line for a moment before Ann asked, “Which rodeo events does Jonah want us to enter?”

“No!” Darby cried. “Don't distract me! We can't talk about the rodeo until we pick a project! If I'm ever going to get my mother to move to Hawaii I
need
an A.”

“I knew that would work,” Ann said, laughing. “Now, I'm up for singing or cooking. I don't care which. You pick.”

“I guess cooking is less horrible,” Darby said.

“Okay!”

“You don't have to sound so”—Darby fumbled for a
word—“
peppy
about it.”

“I am peppy! I've got all A's going into finals, and I'm excited about the rodeo! Life is sweet!”

“Well, I'm really tired, and I've still got to study some more for Ecology.”

“I'll quiz you,” Ann said, since she was in the same class.

Twenty minutes later, as she was saying good-bye to Ann, Darby felt pretty confident.

Finals were just big tests. She could do this.

She assembled all of the books, pens, pencils, and paper she'd need for her first day of finals and put them on the bench by the front door.

Before trying to sleep, she got out her diary and wrote about Medusa.

Darby dropped her pencil. It slipped off the bed and rolled across her bedroom floor.

She hadn't gone down to the pasture to see Hoku today! With studying, Medusa, and everything else,
she'd put it off until it was too late to go.

Her heart thudded against the inside of her chest like something trying to get out.

How could she have left Hoku down there, listening to the cries of a wild horse? What if Black Lava had kidnapped her yesterday and she wasn't even on the ranch anymore?

She would have guessed her thoughts couldn't have gotten any darker, but then they did.

Kanaka Luna's threatening neigh was carried on the breeze through her open bedroom window. Thread thin and faraway, it still sounded ferocious, and it gave Darby chills, especially since it was followed by a troubled whinny from one of the mares.

Why weren't the dogs barking? If a strange person or a predator had come onto the ranch they'd be raising a commotion. But they had been well trained to leave the horses alone.

Did that mean that the threat Kanaka Luna was warning against was another horse? A memory leaped into Darby's mind. It was of the night, not long after she'd first arrived, when she saw the fabled Shining Stallion out her window, under the candlenut tree.

She perched on her knees to look out the window. Starlight painted the candlenut tree's leaves silver, but that was all.

Swinging her legs to the floor, she stuck her diary into its drawer and pulled on a sweatshirt. She'd nearly made it to the front door when Jonah opened it.

From the outside.

“What's up?” she asked him.

“That stud's got rocks in his head, is all,” Jonah told her. “Carrying on about nothing. I walked all the way down to his pasture and back.”

Something had to be wrong, Darby thought. Her guilt about Hoku hadn't made that neigh sound distressed. And Jonah's night vision wasn't the best.

Darby didn't know what to say. She hadn't been able to shake off her uneasiness with Jonah since yesterday. She'd been careful, because she didn't want to make him mad, and sympathetic because of his failing eyesight. It wasn't a good combination.

Jonah was watching her shift from one bare foot to the other.

“Put on some slippers”—he spotted a pair of Megan's, under the bench, and nudged them toward Darby—“and go check things out.”

One thing Darby loved about life on the ranch was the way Jonah treated her like any other working member. He relied on her to make sensible decisions, and trusted her almost like another adult.

Darby was sliding her feet into the slippers—she would have called them flip-flops if she still lived in California—when Jonah planted a quick kiss on her hair.

She looked up in surprise and Jonah scowled at her.

“Come get me if you need me. I never get eight
hours of sleep, anyway,” he grumbled. “Why should tonight be any different?”

 

Darby paused on the front steps and listened to the night.

Other than an ocean breeze that rustled the leaves of the candlenut tree, everything was silent. In fact, it seemed unusually still, as if she'd stepped into a room where people had been talking about her, and they'd stopped when she entered.

She thought of the crazy owl that had scared her yesterday, and curled one arm over her head as she walked toward the tack room.

Just then a light inside the foreman's house blinked on. Kit or Cade must have heard Luna, too.

Inside the corral, Medusa was illuminated by the light from the front window. The mare stood at the corral fence. The bandages on her legs showed, and her ears pricked forward to catch the slightest sound.

Darby headed toward the corral. No moonlight lit her way and the brightness falling from the foreman's house window didn't reach this far. Rushing through the darkness, she stepped right out of Megan's too-big slippers, then crashed the bare arch of her foot on a rock in her path. She staggered but managed not to yelp.

Both slippers on, or both off?
Darby decided flimsy protection was better than none. Then, as soon as she'd jammed her feet into the slippers, she remembered
a night-vision trick Cade had taught her. Standing still, she closed her eyes and covered them with both hands.

Out in the rain forest, waiting for the appearance of a rabid boar, he'd told her,
The longer it is since I've looked into the light, the better I can see in the dark.

When she took her hands away, she saw something move. Beyond the fox cages and past the corral, at the end of the road, a shadow wavered.

She hardly dared to breathe.

It had to be Black Lava. He'd discovered Medusa was at the ranch and had come back for her. He didn't know she couldn't jump the fence or run beside him. He didn't know that tempting her to follow was cruel.

With silent steps, Black Lava approached the corral.

There was no mistaking the touching of noses over the fence and the low nickers. They had missed each other. They were delighted in this reunion.

Medusa pushed against the fence, and the stallion pushed back. Medusa shoved her chest against the fence again, and Black Lava did, too. It was a strong fence, reinforced for Hoku, but could two horses working together break it down?

Kit burst from the foreman's house and the dogs began barking.

Black Lava shied, and Darby heard the dirt and gravel slip under his churning hooves. He disappeared, though Medusa ran around the corral, trying to build
up speed. The white bandages on her front legs went up and down as she charged at the fence.

Darby drew in a sharp breath, sure Medusa would jump.

Could her injured legs carry her? Darby didn't think so.

At the last second Medusa veered away from the fence, not daring to go over.

Black Lava whinnied. From where? Darby couldn't see the stallion calling for Medusa to try again.

Kit grabbed the pitchfork leaning against one wall of the tack shed and stormed forward.

“You get!” he shouted, waving the pitchfork.

The dogs barked even louder, and Darby heard them hit the side of their kennel as they followed the stallion's movement. Closer now, Darby saw that Black Lava had retreated to the other side of the corral, but he wasn't going anywhere.

Medusa battered her chest against the corral gate, sensing where it should give.

Black Lava circled the corral at a run. Even when he faced Kit and the pitchfork, the stallion didn't falter. In an onslaught of hooves and horsehide, he forced the foreman to let him pass.

Kit could have jabbed the horse, but he didn't, and Darby guessed Kit had sized up the situation just as she had. Black Lava understood Medusa must be left behind. Without hesitating, the black mustang raced alone into the darkness.

Medusa called after him, frantic for her mate to return. Her neigh rose and fell, again and again.

After such chaos, the stallion wouldn't come back, Darby thought. Didn't Medusa know that?

Kit replaced the pitchfork, then faced Medusa. The mare crossed the corral, stopped to listen, then made her way to the other side and listened again.

Kit held out a hand, but he was invisible to her. Medusa's hopeless prowling went on after Kit turned back to the bunkhouse, after Cade returned from the broodmare pasture to say all the horses, including Hoku, were safe. Long after Darby had gone inside Sun House, the sounds of searching carried on the breeze through her window.

T
he next morning, Darby stared blankly into her school locker and yawned. After she'd gone back inside and talked about Medusa with Jonah, she'd tried to sleep.

But she couldn't.

Medusa had trotted back and forth in the corral all night, neighing for Black Lava to come back. Even after Darby got up and shut the window, she could still hear the wild mare's distressed cries. When fitful sleep finally came, she dreamed that Hoku was in trouble.

In the dream, Darby wandered the ranch, searching for Hoku in empty pastures, in vine-choked Crimson Vale, and on barren, windswept beaches. She could hear Hoku in the dream, but she never found her.

She awoke frustrated and exhausted. Only when she'd leaned out on the lanai, staring over the pastures for a glimpse of Hoku, and saw her, did Darby start getting ready for school.

Megan had groaned at Darby's slowness, saying she'd strangle her if Darby made them late for their first final, but they'd not only made it on time, they were fifteen minutes early.

“Were you up all night?” asked Ann. Her wild red curls bounced as she blocked an avalanche of books plummeting from Darby's locker.

“
Almost
all night. When I finally fell asleep I had the worst dreams.”

As they walked to Ecology, Darby told Ann about the wild horses' reunion.

“It's kind of romantic,” Ann said, tilting her head toward Darby. “How did Black Lava even know she was there?”

Darby shook her head. “Smell? Sixth sense? I don't know.”

“That's why I love horses so much,” Ann said. “Just when you start thinking it's all about picking up poop and digging dirt out of their feet, they do something magical and spooky. Like this.”

Darby would have agreed, except that they'd reached the doorway to Ecology and a boy named Tyson was blocking their way.

Darby stiffened. For some reason Tyson loved to tease her. No, she corrected herself, it had gone
beyond teasing. One day he'd make fun of her because she'd embraced her new culture with excitement. The next day he'd act like she had no right to island customs, since she wasn't one hundred percent Hawaiian.

Whatever the reason, he was a real pain. Ann shoved past him, careful not to touch him with her armload of books, but he made a huge uproar by pretending to fall over a trash can.

Darby asked, “Why are you so awful all the time?”

“Because he has the brains of a mongoose,” Ann suggested.

“That's being generous,” Darby snapped.

Tyson gave a self-satisfied laugh and headed for his desk in the back of the room.

When Darby and Ann sat down, Ann began brushing at the front of her blouse.

“Sugar,” she mumbled. “All over the…”

At her friend's sudden silence, Darby looked up from her book.

“I know what we're going to cook,” Ann said. She picked a single crystal of sugar from her shirt and held it so close to Darby's face that her eyes crossed.

“What?” Darby asked, sitting back before Ann made her dizzy.

“Malasadas!” Ann crowed. “That's what this is from,” she said, brushing the front of her shirt again. “Mom stopped at a malasada truck on the way in, but
hers are even better.”

“We could demonstrate how to
make
malasadas?” Darby asked, but she was already picturing the sugar-coated, deep-fried pastry.

“Aunty Cathy makes them so well you can hardly believe it. Come over after school and we'll get her recipe….”

Before they could celebrate their anticipated A's in English, their Ecology teacher entered wearing a flapping white lab coat. As he passed out the tests, they forgot everything else.

Ann finished the final exam early and started writing their Food Network–style script.

“I can finish this next period,” Ann promised Darby as they filed out of Ecology. “Since I'm an office aide, I won't be taking a test. But how are we going to make them in class without a stove?”

“Aunty Cathy makes them in an electric frying pan,” Darby said. “At least, I think so. I'm always too busy eating to really pay attention to how she does it.”

“We'll work it out. I'll call my mom and tell her I'm going home with you to study,” Ann said. “Okay? And while we work on the malasadas, we can talk about the rodeo!”

“Definitely,” Darby agreed, and then she ran down the hall toward the gym, hoping her P.E. test really was the “piece of cake” Megan had promised.

 

It turned out that Ann had to go home and help put Sugarfoot in his corral before she could come over to ‘Iolani Ranch.

The caramel-and-white pinto was a problem horse, Ann admitted, but since she and her mother had been working with him he was improving, and Ann's mother promised she'd bring Ann over to practice making malasadas as soon as she could.

Darby wasn't entirely sad about the change in plans.

On the drive to ‘Iolani Ranch, Aunty Cathy had agreed to help with the malasada project. She'd make sure they had all the ingredients, set up the electric frying pan, and simplify the recipe—even though, she'd said pointedly, it was a pretty last-minute arrangement.

As soon as she got home, Darby changed into her old jeans and her red sweatshirt with the cutoff sleeves. She was going down to visit Hoku no matter what.

She was nearly out the front door when the kitchen phone rang.

She made a growling noise, since she knew she was alone.

Jonah was down by Hoku's corral with Kit checking on Medusa. Aunty Cathy and Megan had just gone upstairs, so Darby gave in and grabbed the phone.

“Darby, I'm glad I caught you,” Cricket said. “Would you and Megan be willing to join a group of
volunteers who are riding rain-forest and grasslands paths, trying to keep Black Lava and his herd from returning to Crimson Vale? They've been seen in the area and seem to be trying to get back.”

Impatient to reach Hoku, Darby didn't tell Cricket how much she'd seen of Black Lava the last few days. She simply asked, “Why not just let them return?”

“The water hasn't been certified potable yet,” Cricket replied.

Potable
equaled
drinkable
, Darby was pretty sure, but Cricket took the gap in conversation as confusion.

“That's why we drove them up Sky Mountain in the first place, remember? Of course you do,” Cricket answered herself.

Maybe if Darby hadn't seen Black Lava's wild desperation with her own eyes, she would have agreed to help. But she had.

Still, she respected Cricket too much to argue with her, so she made an excuse.

“I'll have to ask Jonah,” Darby said. “I'll tell Megan about it, too.”

“Okay,” Cricket said, but she knew she was being put off. “Kit told me what happened last night with Black Lava.”

“Oh.”

“Seems to me we'd be doing a good deed for the horses and your grandfather.”

“I'll talk to him,” Darby promised. Then, feeling a
little weird, she said good-bye to Cricket, hung up the phone, and sat on the bench to put on her boots.

Because she didn't want to make Hoku jealous, Darby walked toward the broodmare pasture instead of riding. She hadn't gone far when Jonah came out from the tack room.

“You ever going to change the shavings in that Pigolo's pen?” Jonah asked.

Darby nodded. She couldn't utter a word of complaint, since she'd been the one to lecture the family about pigs being as clean as people allowed them to be.

“And Francie?” Jonah said, gesturing toward the black-and-white goat dozing by Sun House. “That goat doesn't like her new hay. Better ask Cathy what Cricket said to do about it.”

Darby agreed to do everything, especially since Jonah hadn't mentioned his plans for barbecuing one of the animals on Fourth of July, and then she told him about her conversation with Cricket.

He shrugged. “I think Kit scared him good.”

“I hope so,” Darby said. “Do you think he went back to Sky Mountain?”

“He'd be a fool to do that if Snowfire's taken his pick of his mares.”

Darby was just about to head down the hill to her horse when Jonah put his rough hand on her shoulder. “Cathy's going back into town. Said she had to
pick up a big jug of cooking oil—”

That would be for the malasadas,
Darby thought guiltily. “—and stop in at the feed store. Cricket talked to her about some special hay cubes for your goat, but she forgot them when she was picking you girls up. I guess the test schedule threw her off.”

Darby didn't ask how Francie had turned into
her
goat. She just said, “I was going down to work with Hoku.”

“I'll help you with that later,” Kit shouted across the ranch yard.

Great,
Darby thought.

Jonah crossed his arms. “Cathy needs your help.”

Darby knew better than to object. Cathy was helping her, so she had to help Cathy. “Okay,” Darby said, heading toward the ranch truck.

“There she is,” Aunty Cathy said to Megan, who was apparently coming, too. “Just in time to go
back
into town.”

As they drove, Darby recounted Cricket's request that they join other volunteers in blocking Black Lava and his herd's return to Crimson Vale.

“I hope Jonah's right that he's taken his herd back up to Sky Mountain,” she said. “I hate to say no to Cricket, but it just doesn't feel right to keep blocking Black Lava like that.”

“It's for the good of the horses,” Aunty Cathy reminded her.

“But they don't like Sky Mountain,” Darby said. “I think Snowfire…Well, I'm not sure what's happening up there, but I know Black Lava had three foals before, and now he only has one.”

When Aunty Cathy looked up in the rearview mirror to meet Darby's eyes, she was frowning.

 

Aunty Cathy parked outside the feed store, and they hurried inside.

The store smelled like some kind of exotic breakfast food. They wended their way through aisles stacked to the ceiling with burlap bags, but when they reached Cricket's office, in the back, they learned she'd left early.

According to a clerk, Cricket had to make arrangements for an animal rescue, but she had left a sample bag of goat chow for Francie.

Darby didn't say a word about Cricket's absence, but she was a little relieved. She didn't want to defend her reluctance to frighten Black Lava off the trails to Crimson Vale.

Aunty Cathy ran across the street to the grocery store for malasada supplies, while Darby and Megan loaded the dog food and Francie's new goat chow on a handcart and wheeled it out to the truck.

Darby and Megan pitched the heavy sacks into the back of the vehicle.

“Thank you, ladies,” Aunty Cathy said as they all climbed back inside.

Traffic was heavier than usual when they reached the road. “The tourist season is starting,” Aunty Cathy noted. “And there'll be even more people in time for the rodeo.”

“That doesn't sound good,” Darby replied.

“I've been thinking about Black Lava's foals,” Aunty Cathy said. This time when she met Darby's eyes in the mirror, she looked sympathetic. “In fact, I bumped into Cricket at the market, picking up a sandwich for her dinner, and told her about the herd.”

They were nearly out of the small downtown area, and Aunty Cathy picked up speed as she turned onto the main road leading toward the ranch.

“And what did she say?” Megan asked.

“Does she think the trip to Sky Mountain was just too much for them?” Darby suggested.

“Nothing like that,” Aunty Cathy said carefully. “Apparently wild stallions…Well, sometimes when they steal each other's mares, they kill their foals.”

“No way!” Megan said. “Why?”

But Darby had already figured it out, or maybe Samantha, back in Nevada, had once hinted at the awful behavior. “Survival of the fittest?” Darby asked.

Aunty Cathy nodded. “The strongest stallion wants
his
babies to live, so when he steals a mare, he does away with her foal. Sometimes he even injures mares who are expecting foals, so that the old stallion's young won't be born.”

“That's awful,” Megan said.

“Here we go.” Aunty Cathy accelerated, maybe as a distraction, or because she was relieved that the pace of the cars around them had picked up.

One of the feed sacks in the back slid off the pile and crashed down to the side.

Startled, Aunty Cathy swiveled a half turn in her seat to see what had happened. “What was—”

“Mom! Look out!” Megan shouted.