Snowfire (12 page)

Smiling at Cricket's calm authority, Darby thought:
role model
.

In only a moment, though, her attention shifted to Pele's trees. They were a clue, but she wasn't getting it.

They began riding. Cricket gave directions, and Megan talked with Lisa Miller as Darby tried to figure out what was bothering her.

It was the bird with the call like an old-fashioned radio dial whirling past a bunch of stations that made her remember Pigtail Fault, the strands of volcanic glass called Pele's hair, and the lava tube.

The first time she'd stepped inside, the coolness and scent had reminded her of Black Lava's hiding place behind the Crimson Vale waterfall.

Of course,
Darby thought. Pursued by Snowfire and blocked at every attempt to go back to Crimson Vale, he'd found a place where he could hide. And it smelled like home.

Darby turned in her saddle and beckoned urgently for Megan to bring Conch up alongside Baxter.

“This is all beginning to make sense,” she whispered to Megan. “I know why Jonah and Ann and I couldn't find Black Lava and his herd yesterday. I know where they were.”

“Where?” Megan asked, lowering her voice to match Darby's.

“The lava tube. It's the closest thing to home that he could find, and there's that
kipuka
with a nice meadow nearby. Don't you think?” Darby asked when Megan hesitated.

“It's worth checking out,” Megan said. “But I'm not sure we should share this with everyone else.” She considered the other riders.

“But we can't just go galloping off on our own without some kind of explanation,” Darby said. “I mean, that's what I want to do, too, but Cricket's so organized.”

Behind them, horses shied. Hoofbeats approached, and when Lisa Miller's bay gelding backed into a tree, she muttered, “What does he want now?”

“Here comes our excuse to get out of here,” Megan said. She grinned at Darby as Baxter began tossing his head and whinnying.

Pinwheel and her rider bolted into the group, and when Elliot pulled back on the reins, Pinwheel slid to a dead stop, but Elliot continued—sliding down her neck, over her head, and hitting the ground.

Some volunteers muffled their chuckles, but Darby wasn't one of them.

Baxter wanted to buck. He wasn't breathing like a scared horse. He was excited.

“Kit,” Megan called to the foreman, “we're going to go on ahead with Baxter, or we're going to have two wrecks going on.”

Kit had been riding forward with Cricket, ready to take a forceful stand with Elliot, but he looked back over his shoulder. Darby could tell he was thinking about Jonah's command that his granddaughter not ride alone into a herd of wild horses.

But she'd be with Megan, and Darby saw Kit take in the two of them. When Baxter loosed an earsplitting neigh, Cricket said, “If it were up to me, I'd let them. I trust those two.”

“Go ahead,” Kit told them. “But be smart.”

“Let's hit it,” Megan said, and Conch ran in place for a few steps, feeling her enthusiasm.

To Darby's surprise, Baxter didn't mind leaving the other horses. Together with Conch he headed out easily, and Darby thought she sensed a spirit of cooperation.

His muscles slid smooth and relaxed as he kept pace with the grulla.

“Baxter's happy.” Darby smiled at Megan, even though she knew she'd better keep a wait-and-see attitude.

“Want to go faster?” Megan asked. It didn't quite sound like a dare.

“How fast?”

“Gallop?” Megan suggested. “Can you handle that?”

“You're on,” Darby agreed, and Baxter gave a snort of anticipation.

“Here we go!” Megan shouted, and she'd barely lifted her reins when Conch rocketed into a run.

Baxter swung in behind the grulla. Satisfied to run in second place, he flashed his ears in all directions, taking in the new sounds around him.

This is what I love,
Darby thought. Her body shifted with Baxter's and her fear flew away.

 

Darby saw Pigtail Fault, a crack in the earth that was yellow-lipped with sulfur. As they galloped past, a waft of vapor from inside the earth followed them like a sigh.

The stone trees were ahead, but Megan led left, past the formation that reminded Darby of lion's paws.

Hoofprints marked the trail all around them, but Darby noticed that the brittle threads of Pele's hair, on the right side of the path, didn't seem to have been shattered.

Megan had led Boy Scout troops and other youth groups on hikes to the lava tube, so Darby decided she'd follow Megan's advice on whether they went inside or
not. Even though she remembered that the tube wasn't creepy and tight—in fact, she thought Megan had said it had a twelve-foot ceiling—she wasn't sure she wanted to be inside with a herd of wild horses. Ann had slipped on the smooth, wet lava rock floor before.

Megan didn't draw rein until they reached the mouth of the lava tube. Water dripped inside, and the horses' heads turned, as they listened.

Baxter's skin shivered from the sudden change in temperature as cool air blew toward them.

“I'm going to go in just a little way,” Megan said.

Darby held her breath, listening for the echo of hooves and the reverberating scream of a stallion. But neither came.

Megan backed Conch out of the entrance.

“No one home,” Megan remarked. “But you were right: They've been here. See for yourself.”

Baxter stepped gingerly to the mouth of the lava tube and took a few steps inside, but only as far as the wash of daylight lit his hooves.

Darby never would have guessed how delighted she'd be to see fresh horse droppings, but they were a sign not only that Black Lava and his herd were nearby, but that this was their hiding place.

“Back,” Darby told Baxter. She held her reins tight and squeezed with her legs, and the blue roan backed up eagerly. The sunshine warmed her back as if she'd been inside longer. She sighed, then turned to Megan and blurted, “That stone pulpit.”

Megan knew instantly what she was talking about, but she looked dubious.

“But that's where we saw Snowfire before. Do you really think Black Lava would go there?”

“It's the closest food and water,” Darby said, then shrugged.

“If that's what your horse radar is telling you,” Megan answered, “let's go.”

 

The other volunteers must have ridden in a different direction, because there was no sign of them by the time Megan and Darby reached the bulge of pahoehoe they'd nicknamed the Pulpit.

A wide crack had fractured the face of the volcano directly across from them since the last time they were here, but the scene below them was just the same.

Exactly the same,
Darby thought, because there was Black Lava. Once again the stallion was in a dangerous mood. Dusty and disheveled, he glared at them only briefly and trotted in a tight circle around his diminished herd.

Baxter and Conch didn't look at each other, but the two young geldings dropped their heads and crowded so close together that Megan's and Darby's boots knocked.

The black stallion was a fearsome sight, and that made it all the scarier when Snowfire appeared. He walked into the meadow with his large herd.

Black Lava didn't give Snowfire a moment for
strategy. This time there were no arched-neck battle rituals.

Black Lava screamed to the white stallion and rose into a challenging rear. He had only a few family members left, and he'd fight to the death to keep them.

T
he white stallion thundered toward Black Lava. His head swung from side to side in a herding gesture.

“He's acting like he can just herd Black Lava. Isn't that…I don't know, an insult to another stallion?” Darby asked Megan.

“I think so, but…wow, he's not fighting! He's going after
another
mare!”

Snowfire charged right past Black Lava and slid to a dusty stop beside the bay mare, mother to the black foal.

Curious, she touched noses with the white stallion.

“Do you believe him?” Darby asked. “And her!”

Even when Black Lava changed direction and
whirled around to glare at Snowfire, the white stallion continued his flirtation.

Then Snowfire made a mistake. Considering the black foal, pressing against the bay's side, he flattened his ears and snapped at the colt.

The bay mare threw her head up and backed away, but the white stallion was determined to take her, and he didn't want her foal to come along.

“Why isn't Black Lava doing something?” Darby asked, because the black stallion had left the mare and foal to fend for themselves while he circled Snowfire's band.

“Look at him; he's deciding which one to steal!” Megan said.

It didn't take him long, but Darby couldn't stop looking between the two stallions.

In no more than a minute, Black Lava had gathered up two of Snowfire's gray mares, the sun-colored dun, and the two red fillies that Jonah had pointed out as Snowfire's daughters.

Nipping and squealing, Black Lava ran them back to his own herd. When one of the grays tried to return to Snowfire's band, Black Lava raced alongside her, refusing to let her leave.

Darby hoped the theft would distract Snowfire from bullying the bay mare, but it didn't.

“She's not going without a fight.” Megan pointed as the bay mare thrust her body in front of Snowfire, protecting her baby while she kicked the stallion's forelegs.

Neither girl said anything. They knew that Snowfire wanted only the mare, not the foal of his enemy. They knew that if he couldn't frighten the colt away, he would kill him.

Black Lava was ready to go. He circled his stolen mares and herded them before him, gathering the rest of his band along the way.

“Wait!” Darby yelled.

None of the horses noticed. The bay mare was still fighting Snowfire, and Black Lava was leaving her behind.

“I don't believe this!” Megan said, and her hand grabbed Darby's. They held on to each other so tightly their fingernails bit into one another's skin.

Finally Snowfire frightened the colt away from his mother's side.

“Run!” Darby screamed.

But the mare was exhausted, and the foal wasn't fast enough. A swing of the stallion's head sent the foal tumbling to the ground.

Snowfire loomed over him.

Darby didn't stop to think.

Whooping and yelling, she set Baxter on the downhill trail and rode at the stallion.

“You're crazy,” Megan shouted, but she urged Conch to follow the blue roan.

The sight and sounds of invaders made Snowfire halt his attack. He wheeled back to the mare and gave her rump a punishing bite.

Without a backward look for her foal, the bay mare galloped toward Snowfire's herd.

In the sudden quiet, the girls scrambled down from their mounts. Holding tight to their reins, since this was no time to test the geldings' willingness to stay ground-tied, they approached the black colt.

He flailed at the ground with his front legs, fighting back terror and exhaustion in an attempt to follow his mother.

“You can't,” Darby said quietly.

The foal looked at her, dazed, and Darby handed Megan her reins. With every step she took, the baby looked bigger. He was probably three months old. She didn't want to scare him or hurt him, but she had to stop him.

When the colt bolted into an unsteady run after his mother, Darby didn't hear herself yelling or feel the tears streaming down her cheeks, but she tackled him to the ground and stayed on top of him until Kit came and helped them both to their feet.

 

Against everyone's better judgment, they'd decided to take the colt back to ‘Iolani Ranch.

“He's hurt and scared, and he'll never survive alone.” Kit had sounded disgusted as he finished loading the saddle horses and squeezed Darby and the exhausted colt into the truck cab.

Megan caught a ride home with the volunteer Elliot and his mare Pinwheel, because Cricket and the other
volunteers were seeing that Black Lava and his expanded herd made their way safely to Crimson Vale.

Tired and terrified as he was, the black colt was not drained of energy. He whipped his neck back and forth and shoved his chest against the cage of Darby's arms, but she held on.

He stared up at the truck cab enclosing him and squealed for the blue sky to come back, and Darby just winced as the shrill sounds pierced her ears.

And he kicked.

“You're going to hurt yourself,” she warned as his black legs, thinner than her forearms, struck out and hit the door, the gear shift, and Kit.

“Mighta been better off in back,” Kit said, nodding toward the horse trailer.

They'd already been over this, so Darby didn't argue. They'd weighed the comfort other horses would have given the colt against the accidental trampling he'd get if he gave into his weariness and fell under their hooves.

“You're okay,” Darby whispered to the colt. “We have other wild ones, where we're taking you. They'll speak your language, baby. It'll be the next best thing to home.”

Even as she said it, Darby realized the foal had been on the move since birth, following his mother and Black Lava wherever they led. The little black horse had never known a real home, but maybe she could change that.

 

“Not bad,” Jonah said. “Doesn't mean we're adopting him, but not bad.”

Arms crossed, he stood outside the round pen, watching Darby and Megan put Plan B into action.

Plan A had called for them to slip the black foal into Medusa's corral, but the steeldust mare had reacted to the noise of arriving trucks and horses with rage. She'd claimed the small territory of Hoku's corral as her realm and guarded the gate as if it were a drawbridge.

Even though she'd known the black foal in her wild life, it would be too dangerous to test her memory.

They had brought Hula Girl and her independent colt Luna Dancer up from the broodmare pasture to join the black colt. Even though they weren't wild, their presence seemed to soothe him.

The girls weren't having quite as much luck bottle-feeding him.

Aunty Cathy made sure Darby had washed her hands before she handed her a bottle full of milk replacer they kept for emergencies. Then Cathy joined Jonah, watching at the fence.

After their ride home, the foal wasn't as scared by Darby as by Megan, so Darby was the one to shake a few drops of the formula onto her hand, then smear it on the foal's nose and into his mouth.

Immediately his pink tongue appeared to lick at his nose. Once he'd lapped off all of the yellow-white formula, Darby applied more.

“Do you like that, Inky?” she asked.

“Inky?” Jonah asked.

“That's what we've started calling him,” Megan explained. “Inky Dinky.”

“Oh, honey, how's that going to sound when he's a magnificent stallion like his sire?” Aunty Cathy asked.

“Magnificent?” Jonah asked. “That troll of a horse?”

Megan ignored him and answered her mother. “I've already thought of that,” she said. “He's going to be Black Lava's Inkspot.”

“Yeah,” Darby said with approval. She was stepping from side to side, trying to insert her milky index finger into the corner of Inky's mouth, but the foal kept backing into Megan as he tried to escape. “You have no idea what I'm trying to do,” she said, “do you?”

“Dancer does.” Megan laughed as the tame colt shoved his way in to lick Darby's fingers. When they were clean, Dancer licked Inky's milk-dotted nose.

Darby guessed that the black colt was used to the company of other foals, because he stopped ducking away and stood patiently as Dancer finished.

From Hoku's corral, Medusa neighed. Her tone had changed. Darby thought there was a questioning quality about it. Did the lead mare recognize the scent of a member of her old herd?

Twenty minutes later, Dancer was still the only one interested in the bottle.

“Inky's too old for the bottle. Let me get a bucket for him to try,” Aunty Cathy said.

“But they're cute, and they like being bottle buddies.” Megan pretended to pout.

“Not too deep,” Jonah shouted after Aunty Cathy. “Wild ones don't like to put their heads in a deep bucket. They can't see what's sneakin' up on 'em.”

Instead of a bucket, Aunty Cathy brought back a metal cake pan and told Darby to hold it at a slight angle.

It worked. Inky must have drunk from a creek or stream before, because he instantly understood. Though he managed to splatter about half of his formula on Darby, he drank three pans full of it.

When Kit walked back up from Medusa's corral to watch, he nodded at the colt and said, “Sorry, boss.”

“What were you supposed to do?” Jonah said, and then, more pointedly, he added, “Besides, I'm gonna take his expenses out in trade from these two soft-hearted girls.”

Darby smiled, even when Jonah shook his finger at her.

“Do you think Medusa recognizes his smell?” Megan asked as the girls left the corral.

“Hard to say,” Kit answered. “She's settled down just a little, and she's interested; that's for sure.”

The words were barely out of Kit's mouth when a commotion began down by the fox cages. Horsehide hit wood again and again. Medusa threw herself at the gate, reminding them she didn't like captivity, no matter what.