Castaway Colt Read online

  Megan’s jaw jutted forward as she waited for a response.

  The Viking yawned. When her eyes reopened, they didn’t settle on Darby, but on the male coach who’d just appeared before them.

  “Coach Roffmore.” Megan filled in the silence as Darby noticed a stocky man with a gray crew cut and legs corded with veins. “He’s the swim coach.”

  Megan patted Darby on the back, then moved down the front line to her own spot, a few yards away.

  “It’s nice to meet you.” Darby attempted to break the ice with her cousin, but the Viking said nothing and now that he was finished talking with Miss—no, Coach Day, Coach Roffmore fixed Darby with a stare.

  Does he want me to stop talking? Darby wondered. Is he blaming me for the extra paperwork that comes with being a new student? Or did her inclusion in this gym class mean Coach Roffmore knew she could swim?

  Swimming brought the white colt to mind. Kimo had called him a “sea horse,” and Darby was smiling at that when the coach barked at her.

  “Carter.”

  She nearly choked on her tongue before she managed, “Yes?”

  “Since you’ve entered school so late in the year, the best way for you to get to know everyone is to call roll. Here.”

  As Coach Roffmore extended his clipboard toward her, Darby glanced at the girls around her. For the first time, she noticed how many were Hawaiian or Asian. How badly would she massacre the pronunciation of their names? And why would the coach do this to her?

  Darby pictured herself falling to her knees with prayerful, upraised hands, begging the coach to reconsider, but Coach Roffmore didn’t look like a man who’d back down.

  Darby didn’t remember her fingers ever sweating before, but her thumbs made faint prints on the roll sheet.

  “Coretta?” Darby read in a shaky voice.

  “Here.”

  “Use last names, then first. Carter, Darby,” the coach demonstrated. When she nodded, he added, “Why don’t you start from the end of the alphabet and work your way up to the front line, here.”

  “Okay,” she said, then tried, “Yamaguchi, Gail?”

  “Here.”

  “Waipunalei, Monica?” Darby stumbled over the name, and wondered if you could die from humiliation. But the girl corrected her good-naturedly.

  Darby glanced up to thank her and noticed lots of sympathetic eyes. Darby let out a bit of the breath she’d been holding.

  Even though the only part of Hawaiian that Darby remembered was that the e sounds like an a, there were enough names like Warren, Smith, and Ota to keep her face from developing a permanent blush.

  Almost done, Darby thought.

  “Kato, Megan,” she called, and Megan winked at her.

  Cheryl Hong, a girl she’d met in the locker room, actually flashed her a shaka sign.

  By the time she reached her own name on the roll sheet, Darby saw that the only two remaining names were Borden and Ames. She could do this.

  But then she spotted the Viking’s impossible first name.

  Duxelles. It looked French, but Borden wasn’t French. Darby searched her memory. Borden was Dutch, wasn’t it? So that was like, German pronunciation?

  Great, that didn’t help at all. Neither did the fact that the letters swam before her eyes.

  Duxelles.

  She tried it in pieces, “Duck, ee—”

  The girls burst into laughter. All but one.

  Darby covered her mouth and shot a hopeless look at her cousin, but the reprimand came from behind her.

  “Grow up, Carter. That was a lame joke,” Coach Roffmore snapped.

  Darby whirled to face him. The man’s hands were on his hips and his eyes had narrowed.

  Miss Day’s expression said she knew it had been a mistake, but she looked past Darby to the lines of girls.

  Darby kept hearing, “What did she say?” and “The new girl, did she just…?” and the word Duckie, Duckie, Duckie jumped from the front row to the second, and waves of laughter built as the joke reached the last row.

  Coach Roffmore blew a shrill tweet on his whistle and shouted, “All eyes on me!”

  There was silence until Darby looked at the Borden girl and confessed, “I really don’t know how to say your name. I’m sorry.”

  “Dew. Shell.”

  The two syllables quaked with outrage.

  “Duxelles,” Darby whispered, and this time she got it right.

  Chapter 6

  Darby was counting the minutes until she could be around civilized creatures—horses, that is—again.

  By her reckoning, she only had to last forty more minutes.

  Creative Writing was going to be a fun class, but she’d come close to skipping it.

  If responsibility to her teachers hadn’t been so ingrained, she would have fled from P.E. to the office and begged for a schedule change.

  She couldn’t stand being in P.E. with Duxelles. Besides, she wasn’t an athlete, and even though she liked having Megan in one of her classes, she’d rather miss that than be around Duxelles any more.

  The big girl’s just you wait sneer had unnerved Darby in a way that none of the tough kids in Pacific Pinnacles ever had.

  Get a grip, Darby told herself. She had to be overreacting. They were related. If only for that reason, they’d have to get along.

  Ann was already seated in algebra when Darby entered the classroom. And Darby would have bet Coach Roffmore didn’t recognize her from P.E., except that he pointed out an empty desk in front of Ann for Darby to take.

  “Great,” Ann said, smiling. She sat sidesaddle at her desk, arranging her legs in a way that Darby guessed was easiest on her fractured patella. “How’s it been going?”

  “Okay,” Darby said, and her spirits had just started rising again when Duxelles walked into class.

  She was chugging milk again.

  “Coach, I’m starving,” said a muscular guy sitting up front. “Why can’t I eat in class?”

  “Borden’s an athlete. She needs strong bones,” the coach snapped.

  “Yeah, she also needs to pass this class. It’s her last try,” Ann muttered to Darby. “And Marc? The hungry guy? He’s a halfback. Not that he needs his calcium—”

  “Potter!” the coach roared.

  “Sorry, Coach. I didn’t mean to moan,” Ann said pitifully. “I can’t seem to get in a comfortable position.”

  A month before, when Darby had first arrived in Hawaii and Aunty Cathy had said that she was the school bus, Darby hadn’t realized that she meant there was no real bus between Lehua High and the ranch.

  Darby reached the school parking lot just as Kimo’s faded maroon Ram Charger, with an ‘Iolani Ranch owl painted on the door, pulled up next to the curb.

  Aunty Cathy was driving instead of the Hawaiian cowboy. When Megan piled into the front seat, leaving Darby to clear a place in the cluttered backseat, she didn’t mind.

  “I hate to make you wait at school until Megan’s done with soccer practice every day,” Aunty Cathy said, sounding worried. “It’s just lucky that practice was canceled today, but I can’t make two round trips….”

  “It’s okay,” Darby assured her, because going to school tomorrow didn’t matter.

  All she wanted to do was saddle Navigator and ride out to find Stormbird today.

  “Are you two going riding?” Aunty Cathy asked, making the right turn off the highway.

  “Of course,” Megan said. “You’ll be a rich woman by sundown, Mom.”

  “It’s a good thing, because Jonah could use a loan,” she said, then hurried on, “I’m joking. Just be sure to get your chores done after you have lunch and before you go.

  “And if I were you, I’d steer clear of Jonah. The bunkhouse water heater is still broken and Jonah’s truck won’t start. I guess he needs a new battery.”

  “Oh, that’s why you’re driving Kimo’s truck,” Megan said.

  Her mother nodded.

  The Ram Charger made its quiet way toward
home, and when Darby glanced toward the rearview mirror, she caught Aunty Cathy’s eyes watching her.

  Darby waved and smiled.

  Who cared about Coach Roffmore, the dreaded “Duckie,” or even Jonah’s broken-down truck? She was headed toward a world of horses.

  Feeling recharged from lunch and the prospect of seeing Hoku, then meeting Megan to start their search at two o’clock, Darby ignored Aunty Cathy’s warning to avoid Jonah and stopped next to her grandfather’s truck.

  All she saw of Jonah was his legs, sticking out from under the truck.

  Darby scuffed her boots as she approached so that she wouldn’t surprise him.

  “Pick up your feet. You’re going to wreck those boots,” Jonah growled.

  Welcome home. How was your first day at school?

  Apparently Jonah was too cramped and uncomfortable to offer such greetings, but Darby just shook her head.

  “I was being considerate,” she told her grandfather. “I didn’t want to sneak up on you.”

  She heard the clang of metal on metal, but nothing else for a full minute, so she asked, “How’s your battery?”

  “It’s not the battery.”

  “Oh,” Darby said.

  She didn’t know many car parts, so she stayed quiet, wondering if she should ask about the shocks. She’d always remembered the term because it struck her as a weird name for a piece of machinery.

  Jonah began muttering, but Darby only picked out bits of sentences between the clanking of tools.

  “…land worth a million dollars an acre”—clang—“what I get for not”—clank—“selling it off…”

  “Maybe I’ll find the colt and win that money,” Darby said.

  “Do that.”

  “After all, I’m probably the only one to have seen Stormbird,” she said, speaking down to Jonah’s knees.

  Jonah sighed, banged on the car’s undercarriage, then said, “If you don’t have anything else to do, check Hoku’s fence. Judge has been leaning on it and no one’s had time to reset the post, so you go see to it, yeah?”

  “I will!”

  Darby sprinted past the old fox cages toward her sorrel’s corral.

  Judge wasn’t there, and the fence wasn’t obviously sagging anyplace.

  “Hoku!” she called to her horse, but the filly just stood in the middle of the corral, swishing her tail. “Are you bored, baby?”

  Darby walked from post to post, pushing each one to see if it wobbled.

  “I don’t really know how you feel, because I wasn’t born wild,” she told her horse, “but I’ve been running around here, free, for an entire month. And even though I like school, the classrooms sure seem crowded compared to this.”

  Darby gestured toward the rolling green hills. When she turned back, Hoku gazed into her eyes with an understanding that startled Darby.

  “You like the ranch and me just fine, but it’s not the same as running free,” she whispered. “But don’t give up. As soon as I can ride you, we’ll run and run and run until…” Darby glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was listening. “I’ll give you your head, isn’t that what they call it?” Hoku shook, making a lion’s mane of her long, flaxen hair. “Well, whatever it is, I’ll be no trouble, snugged up there in your mane. I promise.”

  Darby worked her way around the corral twice, testing the fence posts. She refused to miss any weakness in them. She couldn’t let Hoku escape, not when they were making brilliant progress together.

  Darby shoved the posts with both arms, then turned around and leaned back with all of her weight. Not one of them budged.

  Had Jonah just been trying to get rid of her?

  Darby didn’t know, but later she thought that it was probably a good thing she’d used up so much energy testing posts, calling in Jill and Peach, and helping Megan bridle Tango after she’d already tacked up Navigator, or she might have exploded when after they’d ridden for a few minutes Megan said, “Duxelles has a way of…well, she’s kind of overwhelming, even if you’ve known her for a while.”

  Darby thought of the way Megan had set her jaw and glared at Duxelles as she’d said, Borden, meet Carter.

  Navigator must have felt her tension, because he bolted a few steps toward the rain forest and Darby spent a few minutes gathering her reins and reassuring the brown gelding before she asked, “Does she bother you?”

  “Not since my growth spurt,” Megan said, “but she used to trip me in fifth grade.”

  “My cousin,” Darby repeated as they passed the barely visible path to the old plantation. “She doesn’t look…you know…”

  Darby didn’t say Duxelles didn’t look Hawaiian, because she’d learned almost immediately that Hawaiians came in all shapes and colors. Instead, she gestured toward her hair.

  “Blame White Water Willy, I guess,” Megan had said. “Yawn and Duxelles look like him.”

  Darby nodded, then asked, “What’s up with a boy named Yawn?”

  “It’s Dutch,” Megan said, shrugging. “J-A-N, you know?”

  “Oh,” Darby said.

  Suddenly both dogs froze. The smaller black dog, Jill, could have been Peach’s shadow.

  Both horses stopped, too. Darby noticed Tango looking toward the rain forest instead of the trail to Night Digger Point Beach.

  “Up here,” Megan said. She clucked at Tango and touched her heels to the rose roan, urging her up a rise of ground.

  Offshore, they saw two white plumes of water and heard a sound Darby didn’t recognize.

  Megan did, though.

  “Jet Skis,” she said. “They’re probably people from Sugar Sands Cove, but they usually don’t get around this far.”

  “I bet they’re looking for Stormbird,” Darby said.

  “But you have to be rich to stay at Sugar Sands Cove,” Megan said.

  Darby shrugged. Who would turn down the fun of a treasure hunt or the reward at the end of it, even if they already had plenty of money?

  “Well, forget them! We’ll pick up the pace and find him first,” Megan insisted. “And here’s how.”

  Darby was surprised by Megan’s thorough knowledge of the ocean. Megan explained that a strong coastal current ran from Night Digger Point Beach to Message Bottle Landing.

  “That’s why they call it that,” Megan pointed out. “If you throw a bottle into the waves off Night Digger, it will end up at Message Bottle Landing.”

  “And if a person jumps in?” Darby asked, thinking how hard she and Hoku had fought against the waves after they’d swum out from Crescent Cove.

  “Same thing for a person or a horse. Especially a little lightweight colt!”

  “Wow,” Darby said. She glanced toward the roaring Jet Skis. It was pretty unlikely that those people knew half as much as Megan did.

  “I’ll take Jill with me,” Megan said, “and you keep Peach, yeah? I’ll ride up the shore toward Message Bottle and you go to Night Digger.”

  Darby’s hands began shaking. She couldn’t help it, even though she knew she was being silly.

  The reason Jonah had ordered them to take the dogs was that Aunt Babe had encouraged Manny to search for the valuable cremello colt.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Megan said, but then she began counting their safety precautions on her fingers. “We’ll each have a dog, I’m riding twice as far as you’ll have to—”

  Darby opened her mouth to protest because she didn’t want either of them to come face-to-face with Manny.

  “—and Manny is afraid of Jonah.”

  Darby knew greed outweighed fear for lots of people, but Megan was already turning her horse, promising she’d hurry back.

  “What if you find Stormbird?” Darby said. “You can’t hurry back with him.”

  “Unless…” Megan drew the word out, and Darby was pretty sure the older girl was stalling. “If I find Stormbird, I’ll, uh…”

  Megan glanced at each side of her saddle.

  “You don’t have a rope,” Darb
y pointed out. “Neither of us has a belt. Or shoelaces, so you can’t lead him back home.”

  “He’s probably not old enough to know how to lead, anyway,” Megan said, frowning as she smoothed her hand over her mare’s black mane.

  Tango was what Jonah called “green-broke.” She could be ridden and she understood most of Megan’s signals, but Darby doubted the rose roan would tolerate something like Megan wrestling a colt up over her back, let alone agreeing to carry it all the way back to the ranch.

  We didn’t think this out very well. Darby didn’t say it out loud, because all the excitement was her fault. She was the one who’d seen Stormbird. She’d claimed she knew approximately where he was. And she’d just sort of pictured the colt following Navigator home like he’d started to last night.

  “I’m dumber than I thought.” Darby looked down at her saddle horn.

  When Megan chuckled, Darby looked up. Her remark hadn’t been that funny.

  “Maybe you are, but I’m not,” Megan teased, and Tango must have sensed her rider’s excitement, because the rose roan’s legs pranced in place and she tossed her black mane.

  “You’re going to love this!” Megan assured Darby.

  As she waited, Darby smiled, even though she had no idea what was coming next.

  Chapter 7

  “Pretend you’re riding away from me,” Megan told Darby.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it. Turn Navigator down that path like you’re riding to Tutu’s.”

  Darby’s thoughts darted around impatiently as she turned Navigator away from Megan and Tango.

  Then Megan whistled.

  Darby looked back, but the summons wasn’t for her.

  With lifted ears, Jill and Peach stared at Megan.

  She swung her arm toward the departing Navigator.

  “Walk up,” she ordered, and the dogs followed the brown gelding until she added, “Away to me.”

  The dogs trotted alongside Navigator, then crossed in front of him.

  The big gelding jerked his head up in annoyance. Before Darby moved the reins, Navigator turned away from the dogs.