Galloping Gold Page 4

  “Like what?” Aunty Cathy sounded like she was about to laugh.

  “Like you’ve got a secret.” Darby thought for a few seconds, and then said, “Mom told me she was coming for the Fourth of July, you know.”

  “I know that you know,” Aunty Cathy said, and this time she did laugh.

  “Then what?”

  “Are you saying I’m not allowed to smile?” Aunty Cathy’s hands flew up in mock exasperation. “I guess I’ll just go see how Megan’s spa treatment is coming along.”

  “What?” Darby yelped.

  “Shampoo, nails…” Aunty Cathy mused.

  Darby was speechless.

  “She’s bathing the dogs,” Aunty Cathy said.

  And then, before she left, she winked.

  Darby looked after the woman she’d come to think of as a second mother. Something was up. Aunty Cathy was always nice, and often funny, but never giddy.

  And the dogs hadn’t had a bath since Darby had arrived on the ranch.

  Oh well, she’d let Aunty Cathy have her mystery, Darby thought. All she cared about was finishing this job so that she could get out to the pasture and Hoku.

  Darby didn’t allow herself to check her watch until she’d dabbed cheesecloth soaked in cool water over every surface of each leaf on the first plant. Then she saw it had taken her ten minutes to do this one, relatively small, plant.

  From the ranch yard, she heard Megan squeal and a dog bark.

  Unfair, Darby thought. Megan was playing in the water while she played servant to a bunch of house-plants. At this rate, it would be too dark to ride Hoku.

  Then she had an idea.

  Instead of washing the leaves one at a time, she’d carry all the plants inside and set them in the bathtub. Then she could just run the shower over them. She’d finish in minutes instead of hours.

  Keeping a good grip on each plant’s container, Darby rushed between the lanai and the bathtub. It didn’t take long, but Darby was staggering under the weight of the largest of the remaining plants when she felt a tickle on her forearm. She changed her hold, thinking one of the long pointed leaves was brushing her, but the tickle didn’t stop.

  It wasn’t painful, just annoying, but Darby adjusted her grasp one more time before she looked down to investigate. A tiny brownish reptile looked up at her with its head cocked to one side.

  A gecko!

  Darby caught her breath in surprise. She wasn’t scared, but the gecko was. It scuttled up past her elbow, heading for her armpit.

  Trying to shake it off, Darby lost her grip on the plant. It fell and cartwheeled across the living room.

  For the second time that day, dirt sprayed around Darby. But this time was worse than nearly being trampled. Dirt had flown up, then landed on the pale living room carpet. She’d have to get out the vacuum cleaner and tend to this, too.

  Thank goodness the dirt wasn’t wet yet. It would have smeared all over the carpet. She’d have to be careful she didn’t vacuum up the gecko, too, she thought, but the gecko, the cause of this mess, was nowhere in sight.

  Grumbling, Darby crab-stepped around the dirt as she moved the last plant into the shower. She left the water running while she cleaned up the mud-spattered carpet, and she was just beginning to feel a bit relieved that her job was nearing the end when Aunty Cathy showed up again.

  “I used to do that, too,” she said from the doorway of the bathroom. “It’s a good idea, but it takes a while to clean out the bathtub.”

  “Clean it out?” Darby asked, but a glance showed her the shower’s jet had sluiced off loose leaves and stems. Some of the smaller containers had overflowed, carrying rivers of dirt all over the white tub.

  Now she was facing a third chore instead of just one. Darby gave Aunty Cathy a beseeching look, but she must have misinterpreted it, because Aunty Cathy just shrugged and said, “You do it however you want, honey. Just don’t leave things worse than when you started.”

  With dirt under her nails and water-withered fingertips, Darby finally finished and collapsed onto the bench by the front door.

  She pulled on her boots and told herself with wordless grumbling that since she was getting ready to teach Hoku about frustration management, she should try to shake off her own aggravation. It wouldn’t do any good to let the horse think her rider was irritated, too.

  “And I’m going to focus for the rest of the day,” Darby muttered to herself.

  Trouble had come when she’d let her mind wander from Sugarfoot to the gate she’d planned to open for Gemma. Trouble had come just now when she’d tried to rush the plant-care job.

  No more, Darby thought. She’d do exactly what she was told.

  “Granddaughter!”

  Darby hurried toward Jonah. His arms were full of horse gear.

  Yes! Darby thought. She could hardly wait to take the tack and find Hoku.

  “I thought you’d fallen asleep in there,” he said, handing her the armload of tack.

  “Saddle, halter, lead rope, and sheepskin pad,” Jonah listed each item as he gave it to her.

  “Saddle?” Darby asked. Her horse wasn’t saddle-broken yet.

  “A little endurance saddle,” he explained. “Light, yeah? Broken in. Your big saddle for Navigator has a wood frame. This one’s some kinda superflex plastic.”

  An endurance saddle? It looked a lot like an English saddle, Darby thought, and she couldn’t imagine where Jonah, devoted to all things paniolo, had found it. It didn’t seem like a piece of tack he’d just have sitting around.

  “You want me to put this on Hoku. And ride her?” Darby gasped.

  “Or you can wear it,” Jonah said.

  How could he joke about this? She’d never ridden her mustang with a real saddle.

  “Now, watch.” Jonah squatted and used the point of a stick to sketch out the hillside on which she was to ride Hoku.

  He’d changed the subject, Darby thought. Did he think riding her horse with a saddle for the first time was just a step along the way of gentling the filly?

  “You know where I’m talkin’ about?” Jonah asked, tapping the stick on the diagram he’d etched in the dirt.

  “Yeah,” Darby told him. “It’s not too steep.”

  “But definitely a sharp slope. You keep your wits about you. If the saddle slips toward her tail, next time we’ll put on a breast collar.”

  “Okay,” Darby said. Because of the hilly terrain, most horses on the ranch were fitted with sheepskin-lined breast collars that lay flat against their chests and buckled to the saddle on each side.

  Jonah drew a series of switchbacks ascending in continuous S’s.

  “Your filly will get bored with this. She’ll get it into her head that it’s faster to go in a straight line, to just leap on up the hillside instead of following the path. But you won’t let her.”

  “Okay,” Darby said again.

  “Today there’s no real reason for it—a bit easier on her legs, yeah?—but someday there will be a reason she has to trust you over her muddled mustang mind. Today’s practice for that day.”

  “Right,” Darby said, just as if she was taking Jonah’s directions—including the part about riding Hoku with a saddle for the first time—in stride.

  “Work her through the hills first, to drain off a little energy. Then ride her back up here,” Jonah said. With a swing of his arm, he indicated the ranch yard. “And make her stop and stand.”

  “Where, exactly?” Darby asked.

  “At the foreman’s house, the tack shed, next to the goat, the pig, the candlenut tree, next to all that hammering.”

  Although the construction racket grated on her nerves, the scent of freshly sawed boards made Darby smile. Three local guys were building a house on ‘Iolani Ranch property. She and her mother would live there when it was finished.

  “Got it,” Darby said before Jonah could accuse her of daydreaming. “I’m making her stop and stand because I say so.”

  Jonah pointed his finger at h
er as if she’d correctly guessed the answer to a riddle.

  There really was nothing to worry about. She’d ridden Hoku lots of times. A couple times she’d even done it with a leather strap, like a cinch, around the filly’s middle. Hoku already knew the feeling.

  Balancing the load in her arms against herself as she walked the path down to the pastures, Darby still felt surprised that Jonah expected her to do this alone, but she was happy she wouldn’t have an audience.

  Almost there. In a few more steps, fields full of horses would appear below her. The sight never grew old.

  There. The green unrolled in hills and dips, all sprinkled with horses.

  Hoku stood statue stiff, staring into Kanaka Luna’s pasture, until she spotted Darby. Then a streak of red-gold, bright as a chip of sunset, came hurtling Darby’s way.

  Darby tried to jog to meet her. In boots, with an armload of gear, it wasn’t easy. Darby’s heart went out to meet her horse before her own feet stopped at the pasture gate.

  Pulling together, Darby thought. It was the name of the Potters’ therapeutic riding program, but it fit her and Hoku, too.

  Hoku made the happy grumbling noises Darby had taken for hunger when the filly was in her corral up in the ranch yard. But now Darby knew it as a greeting.

  Wait, Darby thought suddenly. Was there really a difference between Hoku’s exultant welcome and Sugarfoot’s charging?

  There was no time to mull over the question, because Hoku had reached the fence. The filly nickered, then lowered her head to look into Darby’s face.

  Darby dropped the tack and offered her fingers for her horse to sniff.

  “Hey, beautiful girl. I’m finally here.”

  Darby stroked Hoku’s neck, and then laid her hand against her horse’s cheek. Hoku blinked, but she didn’t shift restlessly. She was happy exactly where she was.

  They’d come close to losing each other when Shan Stonerow had tried to steal Hoku. First he’d tried fast-talking. Then, when he’d lost in a court hearing, he’d stolen Hoku from a horse trailer in Hapuna town. But Darby and her friends had caught him before he’d escaped, and since then, Darby and Hoku had been together.

  “This time for good,” Darby said. Hammering from the ranch yard underlined her words.

  Darby let Hoku sniff her neck over the pasture fence. After a minute or two, Darby touched the bolt on the gate. It didn’t make a sound, but Hoku backed off, tossing her flaxen forelock away from her eyes.

  “Ready to go, girl?” Darby asked. “Me too. I think.”

  Chapter Five

  Hoku didn’t care that Darby hadn’t brought wisps of hay as she often did.

  “I think you like having a human herd member,” Darby said as she slipped into the pasture and dumped the tack on the grass.

  She bolted the gate, then watched as Hoku inspected the gear.

  Months ago, Darby had realized Hoku depended on scent and sounds far more than she did on her sense of sight.

  “Zeroed in on that saddle first thing.” Darby watched as Hoku nudged the saddle, then worked her nose underneath and flipped it over.

  Darby didn’t expect any fireworks when she mounted Hoku, but the filly made a habit of surprising her. If Hoku’s mustang ancestry told her to protest the saddle with a one-horse rodeo, the broodmares and foals around them could be upset.

  “Should we do this someplace else?” Darby asked her horse, and for a moment she heard wind chimes, both bamboo and brass; the green clapping of leaves; and the trill of birdsong. Darby shivered as if her great-grandmother, Tutu, had called her name.

  Darby looked toward Pearl pasture and the forest beyond. She didn’t see Tutu standing there, beckoning her toward the rain forest, but she felt her calling.

  Darby took a breath and released it slowly. She didn’t feel like Tutu was in trouble, but…

  Hoku shook her head so hard, her ears smacked her head. The filly’s effort was successful in chasing off a fly, but Darby knew it wouldn’t be so simple to jiggle her own imagination back to reality.

  “Taking our first saddle ride in the rain forest is a crazy idea,” she told Hoku. The young horses of Pearl pasture were a rowdy bunch. And once she and Hoku reached the forest, there’d be vines to trip over and low branches to duck under. It would be fun to ride out and visit Tutu, but not now.

  When the filly began pawing the grass, Darby asked, “Bored? We can’t have that.”

  Moving quickly, Darby haltered her horse, snapping on the lead line, which would become a single rein when she was in the saddle. Then, because Hoku had loved Darby’s singing since the snowy day they’d met, she hummed an old disco song that was one of her mother’s favorites. She couldn’t remember its title, but she remembered singing along with her mother’s CD player when they drove anywhere together.

  As Darby whisked the sheepskin pad under the filly’s nose, she thought of Sugarfoot again. Really, what was the difference between the gelding’s charging and Hoku’s greeting?

  “You don’t run up to everyone that way, do you, girl?” Darby asked as she rubbed the pad over Hoku’s neck and shoulders.

  Had Sugarfoot flattened his ears as he’d charged Mrs. Mookini? Darby tried to remember.

  “A photographic memory would help,” she told the filly.

  Her mental snapshot of Sugarfoot showed the gelding with his ears tipped far forward, as if he was overly excited.

  She massaged Hoku’s back with the sheepskin pad, then settled it in place and waited. “No big deal?” she asked her horse, and Hoku blew through her lips.

  While the filly considered a bite of grass, Darby picked up the saddle and carried it around the horse, slid it along Hoku’s sides, and finally placed it atop the sheepskin saddle pad.

  Once more, Darby waited.

  But Hoku only turned an ear toward her when Darby bent down to catch the end of the cinch. She buckled the leather strap so loosely, it barely grazed Hoku’s belly.

  “How ’bout a little walk over to that rise?” Darby asked.

  She led her horse for five minutes, then stopped to tighten the cinch one notch. She led her some more and took the cinch up to the next hole, repeating the process until the cinch was as tight as it should be.

  “It’s showtime,” Darby told the filly, but she looked around the surrounding hills hoping she didn’t have an audience.

  She saw no riders. The only movements were the swishing tails of horses.

  As she clipped the halter rope into a single rein, she noticed that most of the broodmares were dozing. Two foals were prone, napping with closed eyes in the sunlight.

  “Let’s not wake them up,” Darby said to her horse.

  She led Hoku to a rise in the pasture, just tall enough to make it easier to mount.

  Without a plan, she set one boot in the left stirrup and swung lightly into the air. If she could have hovered like a windblown feather before coming down on Hoku’s back, she would have, but she could only do her best not to disturb her horse.

  When the filly’s tail flicked, singing through the air, Darby made her arm muscles relax.

  When Hoku’s hindquarters shifted and she kicked a back leg forward toward the unfamiliar cinch, Darby slipped her feet out of the stirrups and let her legs hang as limp as overcooked noodles.

  Then Hoku’s head swung around. The whites of her eyes showed as she strained to see everything on her back. Widening her nostrils, she sucked in the strange smell, but then she shook her head and Darby guessed Hoku had realized the saddle was the same object she’d sniffed and overturned on the ground.

  Darby blew out a lazy breath and let her eyelids lower.

  Hoku did the same.

  Smiling, Darby stirred her legs against the filly’s sides and Hoku stepped out, headed for the gate.

  Yes! Darby thought.

  She didn’t shout in celebration, but she kept humming that mysterious song.

  “I don’t care what it’s called, do you, Hoku?” she asked.

&nb
sp; The endurance saddle was comfy, and they got through the pasture gate as if nothing had changed.

  They were about to pass Kanaka Luna’s pasture when Darby heard a faint equine snort. To Hoku, it must have sounded like a taunt.

  The filly’s ears flattened and she sidled toward the fence.

  “It’s okay,” Darby crooned. “It was the mare, not Luna.”

  As the stallion watched them go, Hoku shook off her irritation, but she wanted to trot.

  “Sorry,” Darby said, and she kept Hoku at a walk in case the saddle felt different with her bouncing on it.

  Instead, she headed for the hillside S’s and Hoku’s first frustration test.

  Hoku took the first few turns at a walk. Then, just as Jonah had predicted, she pulled to go straight up the hillside.

  “Nope,” Darby said. She kept the orange-and-white-striped rope tight, refusing to give the filly her head. Although Hoku danced in place, trying to show Darby a more direct way up the slope, she didn’t break into a fretful sweat as she did when Darby made her obey in the round pen.

  So Darby rewarded Hoku, allowing her to extend her stride and walk faster.

  “As long as you do what I say,” Darby told the filly as they swooped around turns that doubled back over and over again.

  The crest of the hill was in sight and Hoku had developed an ambling rhythm when the lyrics to the mystery song popped into her head.

  “Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive,” she sang, and the words were interspersed with giggles. What a perfect song for her brain to bring up while she’d been preparing to try Hoku under saddle for the first time.

  As her laughter grew, she let Hoku trot, and by the time they reached the top, Hoku was almost running, whipping through each tight turn with the ease of a cow pony, and Darby was singing along.

  “Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive!”

  Darby was happy. Her horse hadn’t bucked a single time.

  The song grew louder with each hoofbeat, and Darby meant to hold the last note until her breath ran out.

  “Stayin’ a-liiiiiiii…”

  But Hoku shied at the sight of two mounted figures, making Darby’s teeth clack together just before they reached the hilltop and ran directly into Cade and Pauli.