The Shining Stallion (10 page)

D
arby stumbled back in the direction of the waterfall. She'd never been so eager to put on socks and boots, which just proved the wild stallion must exude some kind of mind control. Otherwise she couldn't have ignored the pain.

Cade rushed to meet Darby, not to sympathize with the way she limped on both feet at the same time, but to marvel over the stallion.

“Manny told me I made him up.” Cade's frown was mixed with an expression of wonder. “And then, after I got older, I thought he was dead.”

“What do you mean?” Darby asked.

“You know, the stallion that fought Old Luna,”
Cade said. “The one Jonah killed.”

If she was going to tell Cade the truth, Darby thought, this was the time to do it. But it was Jonah's secret.

“Isn't he incredible! Where did he come from?” Cade asked. He looked over both shoulders as if the horse had left some sign.

Darby had the weirdest feeling her world had gone as still as a movie freeze-frame. A lot depended on what she said next, and even though the stallion hadn't sworn her to silence, she wasn't about to tell Cade or anyone else about the ringing of hooves on stone, just before the stallion burst through the waterfall.

“Just sort of out of nowhere,” Darby said, and that was no lie. “I was over talking to Navigator and when I turned around, the stallion was charging me.”

It was no use trying to describe the horse's wild beauty, his halo of rainbow droplets, or the fierceness that left her convinced he was the horse who'd been locked in a bloody battle with Luna's sire. Besides, Cade was as enchanted with the stallion as she was.

“You saw the Shining Stallion without me?” Megan coughed against the powdery earth that coated her face as she pulled herself back up and over the ledge. She didn't say anything about Cade beating her to the top, but she looked at him in surprise.

And though Darby caught Megan's amazed
expression, Cade didn't. He was still staring after the wild horse.

“I used to call him Black Lava,” Cade said.

Dark and deadly, burning with power. Darby sighed at the rightness of the name, and as she did, she looked down and saw a distinctive hoofprint in the dirt. Smudged and half-hidden by Cade's boot, it had one wavy edge.

“What are we going to do about—” Megan began, but Cade's voice stopped her.

“I thought he was dead because of the skull,” he said.

“What skull?” Darby asked, not sure she really wanted to know.

“Manny found this horse skull washed up in a cove. And about the same time, this wild horse herd I'd been following around the valley”—Cade paused to gesture at the terrain around them—“just dropped out of sight.”

Then he tried to erase his wistful tone by changing it to rough sarcasm. “Punctured the bone right between the eye sockets,” Cade said, using his index finger to make a drilling motion in the middle of his forehead. He gave an uneasy laugh, too, but anybody could tell he didn't think it was funny.

“The skull couldn't be from the horse Jonah shot,” Darby said reasonably, but she was thinking that when Jonah had told her about Manny shooting
at horses in his taro patch, she'd thought he'd meant shooting to frighten them off, not kill them.

Without meaning to, she studied the hoofprint Cade was standing on.

Knock it off, she told herself and darted her eyes over to the rainbow, then tilted her head to one side in fake concentration.

“You look just like an owl when you do that,” Megan said.

“Do what? Think?” Darby demanded, but then she waved Megan's explanation away and told Cade, “The time's not right. Didn't you come to the ranch pretty soon after the stallions fought?”

“Yeah,” Cade said. “What's that got to do with—”

“She has a point.” Megan seconded Darby's idea. “The closest cove to ‘Iolani is miles away and, not to be gross, a horse's body would still have had plenty of skin and—oh.” Megan stopped herself and grimaced. “I suppose something could have been eating it.”

“Like what?” Darby asked. “I thought there weren't any big predators on this island.”

“Wild dogs?” Megan suggested, but then her tone and expression hardened. “And boars.”

“All I know,” Cade cut in, “is that the skull is nailed over Manny's door. If you have the bad sense to go over there, you can see it.”

“No thanks,” Darby said.

It was unlike her to feel so scared. Stories of
menehune
and tsunami horses and ghost stallions grazing among graves didn't frighten her, but the man who'd broken Cade's jaw and surely shot the horse whose head hung over his doorway was no myth.

She never wanted to meet up with him.

Megan and Cade must have felt much the same way, because they tightened their horses' gear, mounted, and rode back the way they'd come without another word.

 

They were ten minutes into their ride back to ‘Iolani Ranch when Megan asked, “So what shall we do about the necklace? We didn't really decide.”

“You didn't leave it there?” Darby yelped, pulling Navigator to a stop. “I'm not taking it home with me.”

“You don't have to. I've got it,” Cade said.

“But why didn't you leave it there?” Darby asked.

“We couldn't,” Megan said, giving Cade a glare.

“It's my fault,” Cade agreed. “I kind of forgot the part where the caves are sealed with boulders and I was ten years old the last time I slipped inside one.”

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.”