The Shining Stallion, page 11
Small enough to ease through a narrow opening and hand things out, Darby thought. That’s why his stepfather had made a child part of his dirty work. To anyone who checked, the entrance to the sacred cave would look undisturbed. Manny wouldn’t go to jail and he clearly didn’t care about anyone else, including his stepson.
Cade must have known, even as a little kid, that he was doing something wrong, Darby thought, and she’d bet that was why he was so determined to set things right now.
“But you think you found the right cave, after all this time?” Darby asked.
“I think so, but I’d have to go inside to be positive,” Cade said.
“I almost squeezed through….”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Darby asked Megan.
Both Cade and Megan, in fact, considered Darby as if lining her up against a mental tape measure.
“Like what?” Cade said slowly.
“Like you were sizing me up for a ready-made coffin,” Darby snapped.
Megan shook her head as if she could dislodge the idea that had shown so clearly in her eyes. “No, we’re not going to let you go back down there. The footing’s too unstable. And, honestly? Little as you are, I still don’t think you’re the size of a ten-year-old boy.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Darby said, but her relief was mixed with uneasiness. “Don’t you think we should leave it in the valley? Maybe eventually we should turn it over to a museum like Cade thinks, or put it back in a cave, but one thing I know for sure is that I don’t want anyone else, uh, deciding for us.”
“Where would you leave it?” Cade asked, looking back over his shoulder.
“I saw a little hidey-hole,” Darby said, but she was thinking that if the stallion hid behind the waterfall, it would have to be a safe place.
“A hidey-hole?” Megan asked skeptically.
Darby nodded. “I’ll just ride back and—”
“I don’t think so,” Megan said, hitting each word with sledgehammer emphasis.
“You can trust me now,” Darby promised. “You guys sit right here and count to—”
“No way!” Megan said loudly, and Darby couldn’t really blame her.
They rode in silence. Any camaraderie she thought she’d seen between Megan and Cade had evaporated. In fact, they acted colder to each other now than before.
Darby kept looking at shadows around rocks, between trees, trying to memorize her surroundings. Nothing was going to keep her from returning the artifact to Crimson Vale. Even if she stashed it in the wrong cave, it would be safer there than at ‘Iolani Ranch.
She should probably tell Jonah about the necklace. Wouldn’t the Hawaiian horse charmer know someone qualified to apologize to the ancestors and explain about the necklace?
Every rustle and crack in the vegetation around them made her jump.
“This is what I get for having a good imagination,” Darby explained when Megan finally gave her a quizzical look. “I feel like we’re being watched.”
“It’s quiet,” Megan said in a creepy voice. “Too quiet.”
Darby was laughing when she heard a whine, just like a bullet’s ricochet in a cowboy movie, and then she heard galloping hooves.
All three of them looked at each other.
“It’s Manny,” Cade said calmly.
“If it is—” Megan began.
“It is,” Cade repeated.
Was he shooting at wild horses or trying to spook them into running? Darby wondered.
“If it is,” Megan repeated, “just let us do the talking.”
Cade didn’t bother to answer, but his yeah, right expression told Darby that five years hadn’t been enough time for Cade to forgive his stepfather.
“He doesn’t have any grudges against me or Darby,” Megan insisted, but Darby could tell she wasn’t getting through to him.
Cade wasn’t the child he’d been. Now he was a young man, and he wanted to confront his stepfather.
“Give it to me,” Darby said, holding out her hand for the broken necklace.
Cade frowned. Megan sounded bewildered as she asked, “What do you think Manny’s going to do, Darby? Frisk us for something he doesn’t even know we have?”
“All I know is if Manny’s doing the shooting, he’s after Black Lava for some reason. It can’t be easy, chasing down a wild horse on foot.”
“What makes you think he’s on foot? He’s as lazy as he is mean,” Cade said.
She didn’t blurt that she’d seen a man stalking Black Lava on a ridge across from the waterfall, because then she’d have to admit she’d heard the horse behind the waterfall.
“I’d just feel better if it was in my pocket,” Darby said. She dropped her reins and crossed her arms. If they thought she was being bratty, so what?
Cade and Megan consulted each other silently and finally Megan shrugged.
Cade reached under his saddle’s skirt, removed the necklace from a pouch, then reined Joker close to Navigator and handed over the necklace. Darby thought his fingers parted from it with reluctance.
As soon as she took it, the braids curled into her palm like a cat that wanted to be petted.
That’s only imagination, Darby thought, but her hand jerked back and she dropped the artifact on the ground between the two horses’ hooves.
“Sorry. I’ll get it,” she said, and before either of the others could dismount, she did.
On the ground, she was more aware of Conch pawing and Joker’s flared nostrils. The Appaloosa tested the air with worried sniffs and Navigator didn’t want to approach him.
Did Joker remember the smell of Cade’s stepfather? Darby wondered.
“Should we stop or keep riding?” Darby asked.
The phrase sitting duck crossed her mind as she pulled gently on her reins, trying to lead Navigator close enough to pick up the necklace.
“I’m not moving until we know what’s up,” Megan said. “There’s high growth on both sides of the trail and the footing’s uneven. Whoever’s firing that gun might get excited and mistake us for whatever he’s shooting at.”
Conch lowered his head and pawed more vigorously, anxious to move on, but Megan didn’t let him go.
“Do you think Manny’s shooting at Black Lava?” Darby asked Cade. She knew it was a mistake as soon as the name cleared her lips. What had made her ask such a thing?
“Don’t ask me to think like him,” Cade said. “He doesn’t do it very often, and when he does, it means trouble. Look, do you want me to get that for you?”
“I’ll get it,” Darby insisted.
“Get what?”
She didn’t know where the voice came from, but a branch broke on the left side of the trail, just ahead.
Cold. Frozen in place, Darby had no words for how scared she was, but she swooped down to grab the necklace and shoved it into her pocket with clumsy fingers as Manny stepped into the path before them.
He was grinning like a hyena, Darby thought.
He wore a faded Hawaiian shirt open over khaki shorts. Heavy boots were laced up his shins. He was not much taller than she was, about five-foot-four inches tall, Darby guessed. And even though Manny was afoot and Cade was mounted, the man seemed bigger when his eyes locked on Cade’s.
He was the first Hawaiian Darby had encountered who didn’t radiate welcome.
After taking in Cade’s ease in his paniolo saddle, Manny said, “You kids see a horse come through here?”
His voice was higher-pitched than Darby had expected.
Even though Megan and Cade were right here, she didn’t like being alone on the ground with Manny.
Megan and Cade had both shaken their heads “no” to Manny’s question, but Darby backed away from him, leading Navigator to a rock where she could remount.
Go away, Darby thought. If the man had a single nerve in his body, he must feel their feelings shoving at him.
“How about you?” Manny asked.
“Me?” Darby squeaked. She glanced at Manny and saw his rifle barrel rested on his shoulder as he walked toward her. Was the necklace in her pocket sending out a beacon Manny could follow?
“Nope,” Darby managed. She held her reins in her sweating hand, grabbed a piece of Navigator’s mane, and put her boot on top of a rock.
She was about to pull herself up into the saddle when Manny said, “I see you don’t have no trouble keeping your mouth shut now.”
Darby looked in time to see Manny, sluggish as a python, shift his attention to Cade. Darby did the same. With surprise, she saw Cade’s eyes looked hazy and disinterested under the brim of his hat.
Darby felt oddly proud of him for keeping calm.
I see you don’t have no trouble keeping your mouth shut now. He was actually bragging about breaking a little boy’s jaw.
When the meaning of Manny’s words hit her, Darby missed her attempt to step into her stirrup and she couldn’t help watching as Manny took a strutting step toward Cade’s horse and asked, “Don’t have no message for your mom?”
There. Cade’s eyes showed a spark of hurt, and Manny laughed as if he’d scored a point.
Cade drew a deep breath, and all at once, as creeped-out as she felt, Darby knew that if there was a time to play dumb, this was it.
“Hey, I’m Darby Carter,” she drawled, as if she were from South Carolina instead of Southern California.
Despite her revulsion, she led Navigator a few steps closer to Manny and presented her hand for shaking. She really would rather have touched a python, but she couldn’t let Cade get pulled into an argument with his stepfather.
Darby doubted it would stop with words, and after that, it wouldn’t be a fair fight.
“Jonah is my grandfather!” she announced so loudly, a colorful bird left a treetop. “How are you? I mean, aloha! Everyone around here is just so friendly.”
From the corner of her eye, Darby caught Megan staring at her in astonishment, but she ignored the older girl. Instead, Darby grinned until the corners of her mouth threatened to split. It took that long for Manny to reach out with a suspicious smile and shake her hand.
For one awful moment, Darby thought he might jerk her closer to him, but she kept a mindless grin on her lips and hoped it was true about angels protecting fools and children.
“Let me give you a leg up,” Manny said, nodding at Navigator.
“Huh?” Darby asked.
Manny stood with his shoulder next to Navigator’s, facing the gelding’s swishing tail.
“Put your boot here,” Manny said, making a cradle of his hands. “Just step there and throw your leg over the saddle.”
Darby had hated touching Manny’s hand, and giving him control of her foot seemed even worse, but she saw Megan make a tiny nod, as if it was okay.
“Thanks,” Darby said, but what if he unlaced his fingers and dropped her? She couldn’t help testing his hands before she vaulted up.
Even though Manny stood there, hands on hips, staring up at her as she organized her reins, Darby could still feel the grip of his hands around her boot.
“I didn’t know Jonah had a granddaughter,” Manny said, then gritted his teeth.
After a full minute, Megan said, “We’d better be—”
But Manny had turned on Cade to say, “Guess the joke’s on you, huh, cakey?”
At least that’s what it sounded like to Darby, until she remembered Megan had told her that keiki meant “child.”
“Yeah, hanai or not, you won’t be inheriting that ranch,” Manny said to Cade.
Cade shrugged, but Darby got the feeling Manny had lit the fuse to Cade’s anger and it wouldn’t be long before he exploded if one of them didn’t do something quick.
“Hey! You weren’t shooting at that horse you’re looking for, were you?” Darby asked.
“Trying to keep ’im out of my taro fields,” Manny said. “They eat everything in sight.”
“Don’t they belong to someone?” Darby asked, trying to sound simpleminded. “Doesn’t anybody care about them?”
“Out here, away from the tourists,” he said with a sly smile, “it’s pretty much every man for himself. And every horse,” he said, chuckling. “In fact, it’s not exactly safe for you kids. Someone looking through the trees might mistake your horses for wild ones and pop ’em right between the eyes.”
Thinking of the skull Cade had described, Darby felt sick.
“That would mean someone wasn’t very careful,” Megan said, and Darby couldn’t believe Megan was baiting him into a fight.
“It would,” Manny admitted. He pretended to look sad. “And what a shame if your family had another tragedy.” He flashed a gloating look at Cade. “Me and Dee, yeah, we felt so bad about Ben’s death.”
Why, if he was talking about Megan’s father, didn’t he look at her? And if Manny was really expressing his condolences, why did he sound more like he was making a threat?
Darby felt sweaty and unsteady. The necklace seemed to be trying to make its presence known. It pounded like a pulse in her pocket, and then like a drumbeat. It was a miracle that Manny wasn’t staring at her, demanding she turn the artifact over to him.
“My grandfather will be looking for me,” Darby said, nudging Navigator with her heels. “So I’d better get home.”
Once she had ridden past Manny, she turned and flapped a hand in good-bye. “Aloha!” she shouted again.
Darby tried to sit loosely in the saddle. After all, Manny wasn’t about to shoot them in the back. That kind of thing might happen in movies, but not in real life.
The three of them rode on and Darby felt as if a laser beam was aimed between her shoulder blades. Manny was looking after them, for sure. And something told her they shouldn’t be riding three abreast.
She drew rein and fell in behind Cade. If any of them were in danger, it would be him. She hadn’t looked at Manny’s gun. Did it have some kind of superscope projecting a target on her back?
All at once, as if her morbid fantasy had come true, Darby heard a gunshot.
“Sorry,” Manny shouted as all three of them twisted in their saddles to look back at him pointing his rifle skyward. “Just saw a little something I wanted to take home for dinner.”
She didn’t see anything fall from the sky, but all the way home, Darby imagined the dying flutter of feathers.
Chapter 15
“Manny said there was no law to make him stop shooting the wild horses,” Darby told Jonah when she found him inspecting Luna’s corral.
“You’ve done a good job here,” her grandfather said.
Looking for horse manure wasn’t what she’d had in mind when Jonah told her he’d talk with her about the encounter with Manny.
“Thank you,” Darby said. “He told me it was every man—and horse—for himself.”
“He’s right,” Jonah said. “Even though the wild horses are part of the old Hawaii—a story you should get your tutu, not me, to tell you—they’ve been getting into homesteads and causing problems the last twenty years or so. Too many people.”
“That’s not the horses’ fault,” Darby said.
“He didn’t bother you kids?” Jonah asked, his brown eyes narrowing as his voice got quiet. “Threaten you in any way?”
Other than taunting Cade, what had he done? Cold menace had flowed from him, and Darby wanted to make sure the necklace didn’t fall into his hands, but she’d be lying if she said he’d done anything threatening.
“He didn’t do anything to us,” Darby admitted, “but how can we stop him—”
“If he comes on our place, we’ll stop him,” Jonah said adamantly.
“But the black horse, the one that might be the Shining Stallion—”
“That black horse has had his second chance,” Jonah said. “He’s on strike three.”
Darby knew what he meant. As a sire, Luna was more important than all the other horses of the ranch put together.
“We’re one of the few working ranches in the islands these days,” Jonah said. “I could sell these two thousand acres for a million dollars each to build houses on, and that’s a lot of money.”
“It is,” Darby agreed, but her eyes skimmed the green velvet of the hills, thinking it would be sacrilege to cover them with houses.
“But I can’t put a price tag on heritage that goes back a thousand years,” Jonah said with a shrug. “What number should I write? How many zeroes would I add to make up for selling soil powdered with my ancestors’ bones? Our ancestors,” he corrected himself. “And all our mana—our spirit and good fortune—comes from our ancestors. I’ll tell you what, I’ll grab the bulldozers’ blades with my bare hands before I let anyone turn this ranch into a mall and parking lot. I’ll come back to haunt any of my heirs that do the same, too. I’m not pranking you, Granddaughter.”
“I’d never give up ‘Iolani Ranch for houses,” Darby said, insulted.
“And you understand that Luna is the cornerstone of our Quarter Horse breeding program, so I can’t let that blue-eyed black have a chance at him,” Jonah said, circling back to his point.
“I understand,” Darby said.
“Humph,” Jonah said. “We’ll see.”
Darby hid the ancient necklace inside her dictionary-diary. Every time she thought of it, she sucked her stomach in so hard, it hurt. She woke each morning for a week, from dreams of dark, echoing caves, and she thought she must be grinding her teeth in her sleep, because her jaw ached.
All week, she watched for the black horse—on ridgelines, in folds between the hills, out at the border of Pearl Pasture. If she glimpsed him first, she’d scare him away before Jonah or Luna spotted him.
But the wild stallion didn’t appear under the candlenut tree at night, or come to the wide pastures when she and Navigator ponied Luna. And the big bay stallion had other things on his mind.
Luna was so lovesick over Hoku, one day he inhaled Darby’s shirt right into his nostrils. That afternoon, Hoku snapped at the same shirt with such ferocity, Darby began changing clothes between working with the two horses.
Was Hoku the “tomboy mare” that Jonah had called her? Or had Hoku decided not to share Darby? Each day the sorrel filly reflected Darby’s affection back to her, and for now, that was most important.
