Castaway Colt (2 page)

D
arby and Navigator searched the seashore, the nearby ohia trees, and the clumps of rocks and lichen-covered boulders, but they found nothing.

Disgusted with her inability to find a single hoof-print, Darby finally gave up and headed back to ‘Iolani Ranch.

With each of Navigator's long strides, Darby became more worried.

How long could a colt go without food? At his age, did he need mare's milk? Could he nibble grass? What had frightened him away?

Darby sucked in her stomach as if she could vanish from the sight of anything lurking unseen in the foliage around her.

“It's possible,” she teased Navigator, “that he gave up following us because you told him your tail wasn't a toy.”

Darby looked at the sun shining through the trees. It was just early afternoon, but if she planned to ride back to the ranch and get help finding the colt, she'd better hurry.

When she clucked to Navigator, he understood she was asking him to head for home, and settled into a long-reaching lope.

Darby spotted the shape of a horseman on the horizon. It was Kimo, one of her grandfather's cowboys. She remembered when she'd first met Kimo in the Hapuna Airport. She'd thought he was built as sturdy and square as a stone house. He was a burly young guy, but it turned out there was nothing rock-hard about Kimo except his muscles. His white smile and friendliness always made her feel at home.

Kimo didn't consider himself a real paniolo—as the best Hawaiian cowboys were called—but Darby didn't see why.

Now, for instance, she hadn't seen his hands move Conch's reins, but he'd invisibly signaled the grulla gelding into a dusty cow-horse stop that ended with Conch standing nose to tail beside Navigator.

“You tired out already?” Kimo asked.

His question might have hurt if it hadn't been for his grin, and the secret Darby knew.

Last week, Megan had overheard Kimo and Kit,
the ranch foreman, refer to Darby as “one smart, can-do
keiki
,” or the “can-do kid.”

“I'm not tired. I found this amazing white colt. He's following me—” Darby paused when Kimo peered past her. “I mean, he was. Really, just like ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,' but he took off.”

“Yeah?”

Did the deepening sun wrinkles around Kimo's eyes indicate disbelief or amusement?

“Yeah,” she said adamantly. “A young colt, like maybe three months old, I'm guessing, and he didn't look old enough to be out there alone.”

“Out where?”

“Night Digger Point Beach.”

“I'll go see what I can find,” Kimo said.

Assuming he'd mistakenly said
I
instead of
we
, Darby turned Navigator to follow.

“Nope,” Kimo said, shaking his head. “Cathy told me to send you home to try on gym clothes.”

Darby was grateful that Aunty Cathy, the ranch manager and sort of her stand-in mother at ‘Iolani Ranch, was handy with a needle and willing to alter her daughter Megan's outgrown gym clothes. Darby had already spent the money her mother had sent on new boots, so she was glad her gym uniform would be free.

But why should she quit riding and go back now? It couldn't take longer than five minutes to try on shorts and a T-shirt.

“That is, if I saw you,” Kimo said.

Darby caught Kimo's shrug as he squinted into a breeze scented with ferns and flowers.

“Too bad you didn't see me,” Darby said with an answering shrug.

Then she sent Navigator off at a jog, leading Kimo to the spot where she'd last seen the white colt.

Together, Darby and Kimo searched a stand of ohia trees that looked different from others she'd seen. Sparse as wizards' staffs thrust into the ground, they provided a promising hiding place, but the colt wasn't there.

They followed hoofprints to a stretch of black-sand beach covered with multicolored rocks. From pewter gray to salt white and coppery brown, they'd been pounded by the ocean until they were smooth and round as cobblestones. Neither Darby nor Kimo thought the colt would try to cross that loose surface if he had a chance to walk elsewhere.

At the edge of a damp forest, Darby saw shell-shaped fungus clinging to tree trunks. She mistook white globs on some rocks as far-flung sea foam until she rode close enough to see that it was some sort of lichen.

After hours of searching, Kimo finally told her to ride on back to the ranch.

“I'll keep looking until dark,” he promised.

Darby knew he would, but if tomorrow hadn't
been her first day at a new school, she wouldn't have ridden back alone.

Sweaty and frustrated, Darby rode up from the broodmare pastures to the ranch yard.

Megan was already home from soccer practice. She could tell because the brown Land Rover with the ‘Iolani Ranch owl painted on the door was parked in front of Sun House, and Peach, the Australian shepherd who rode shotgun each time anyone drove into town, wasn't waiting in his usual seat.
The next time the Land Rover goes to town, I'll be riding shotgun,
Darby thought.

Her stomach gave a nervous twist. Darby knew she was silly not to be looking forward to school.

She was a good student, so it shouldn't matter if eighth grade was part of the high school here.

“I'll do fine,” Darby muttered to Navigator.

Navigator's coffee-colored head bobbed along with his steps. He'd enjoyed the workout, Darby thought. She patted his neck in thanks for his good-natured energy in searching for the white colt. She wished they'd found him, but she had faith that Kimo would.

Darby unsaddled Navigator and started brushing the dried sweat from his coat. She looked down the road, past the fox cages. Judge was still standing at Hoku's corral fence.

The old bay horse belonged to Mrs. Allen, the owner of Blind Faith Mustang Sanctuary and the
Dream Catcher Wild Horse Camp in Nevada.

When the ranch horse had been born, who would have guessed he'd end up in Hawaii? But Darby had adopted Hoku and brought her to Wild Horse Island, and Mrs. Allen had sent Judge along so that Hoku had a stablemate for her voyage.

On their arrival at the ranch, Jonah had told Darby not to let Hoku choose Judge—or any other horse—over her.

Since then, Judge had been grazing with other horses in one of the lower pastures.

According to Kit and Kimo, though, while Darby and Hoku had been in the rain forest last week, Judge's longing neighs had been endless. Somehow he'd known Hoku was gone.

Since their return, Judge had plodded up the hill to visit the mustang filly several times each day.

Now, Darby checked Navigator's hooves, thanked him for not picking up rocks, and gave him a shoulder pat that told him to move off and look for dinner.

Then Darby hung up her saddle, left her saddle blanket to air, hooked her bridle on its hanger, and strode down the road toward Judge.

“Get away!” Darby called to the old horse, but she must not have sounded any scarier than she felt.

Judge gazed at her as if he must have misunderstood. Darby pretended to scoop up a rock to throw at him.

The sweet old horse just tilted his ears forward,
trying to understand, until she felt a guilty ache.

“Shoo,” Darby said, then fluttered her hands toward Judge.

Judge greeted her with a low rumble, and when she got close enough that Hoku switched her attention to Darby's odd gestures, Judge rolled his eyes and jogged away.

Hoku neighed after him, but the old bay kept moving.

“Hey, pretty girl,” Darby said.

She smooched at the sorrel filly, counting the seconds until Hoku turned back.

Hoku's ears swiveled toward Darby like delicate golden leaves turning to the sun.

Darby sighed, took a quick look around to be sure no one was watching, then tightened her ponytail.

Hoku rushed to the fence. Her coppery chest pressed against the rails until Darby held out her hand. Then Hoku eased her head over the top rail.

“Our secret.” Darby mouthed the words, but didn't say them loud enough for even Hoku to hear.

She'd only known for a week that the filly would come to her when she tightened her ponytail.

She loved the secrecy of it, and the idea that Hoku had chosen this silent signal.

Hoku dusted her lips over Darby's palm, then snorted, as if clearing an unwelcome scent from her nostrils.

“Don't tell me you can smell that colt,” Darby said. “Besides, you'd like him. You two could play together.”

As soon as she'd said the words, Darby reconsidered. Hoku already had a horse pal: Judge. If Darby supplied her with an equine playmate like the white colt, what would Hoku need with a human friend?

“Joking,” Darby whispered.

After feeding the filly, she headed toward Sun House, eager to tell Megan, Jonah, and Aunty Cathy about the white colt.

In the entrance hall, Darby tugged off Megan's scuffed burgundy boots and added them to the pile of shoes that Megan, Cathy, and Jonah had lined up, toes to the wall.

Something fragrant wafted from the kitchen, but Darby passed it to check out the noise in the living room.

A television news broadcast provided background for conversation, but Darby knew no one would mind if she announced
her
news.

Megan and Aunty Cathy hadn't noticed her yet when Darby began, “Hey, you'll never believe—”

Aunty Cathy bit through a thread from the final stitch of her sewing, held up a pair of red shorts, and asked, “What do you think?”

Struggling to focus on the favor Aunty Cathy had done for her, instead of the colt, Darby said, “Wow, thanks.”

Lehua High's school colors of red and gold were still eye-catching on the much-washed shorts and gold T-shirt sitting atop a stack of freshly folded clothes.

“I don't know that I'd go so far as a ‘wow,'” Aunty Cathy said, laughing, “but you're welcome. And they'll do for the rest of the semester.”

“Hey,” Megan greeted Darby. The older girl sat cross-legged in front of the television, but her gaze was focused on the textbook in her lap.

“Hey,” Darby answered. “You'll never guess what I—”

Megan glanced up, smiled, and asked, “Are you excited about tomorrow?”

“Sure.” Darby tried her best not to sound impatient.

“Not nervous?”

“No,” Darby fibbed.

“The best thing about school is that you get a fresh start every year,” Aunty Cathy pointed out.

Tomorrow
would
have been a fresh start, Darby thought, if Megan—star forward on her soccer team—hadn't missed an important game.

The team had lost.

You should have heard all my teammates. They wouldn't stop harassing me until I told them the whole stupid story,
Megan had said, rolling her eyes as she'd explained to Darby that instead of taking the blame in silence, she'd admitted she'd missed the game because she'd
had to make sure her city-slicker houseguest—Darby—hadn't broken her neck after jumping off a cliff to rescue a horse.

Darby hoped the students at Lehua High School had more to do with their brain cells than remember her name.

“Here comes the story we've been waiting for,” Megan said suddenly. “It's something about a missing horse.”

A missing horse? On the news? Darby's mind started making connections.

“Hey, I bet—”

But Aunty Cathy was already shouting, “Jonah! You'll want to see this!”

“I won't,” his booming voice insisted, but Darby heard her grandfather padding down the hall.

Darby was surprised to see him. Jonah usually worked until Kimo had left for the day and Cade and Kit had gone to the foreman's house for dinner.

Rubbing his wet hair with a towel, her grandfather pointed at Darby. “Why didn't you see off that old gelding that was bothering your filly?”

“I did,” Darby said, confused.

“Good,” Jonah answered, then left the towel hanging around his neck as he faced the television's scratchy picture. “Now hush.”

As they all stared at the screen in silence, Darby made out a surfer gliding along a white-tipped wave
and the sound of strumming ukuleles.

“What's that got to do with a lost horse?” Jonah grumbled.

“It'll be on after the commercial,” Aunty Cathy said. She was standing, but she didn't leave the room.

“They showed Babe in the little preview thing,” Megan assured Jonah.

“Dressed like an angel.” Jonah's sarcasm suggested that he didn't consider his sister angelic.

“Everything up at Sugar Sands Cove is white. It's their signature color,” Megan explained. “I think it's cool.”

“Cool,” Jonah repeated. “My big sister is very cool when it comes to money.”

Darby's brow tightened in a frown, but she kept quiet. She hadn't yet met her wealthy great-aunt.

“Makes me crazy up there,” Jonah muttered. “And now she's got the
pupule
idea that throwing away money will make her more.”

Aunty Cathy handed Darby the gym clothes, but kept her eyes focused on the television as she said, “Sometimes it's true that you've got to spend money to make money.”

“But those tourist rides,” Jonah grumbled.

Tourist rides at Sugar Sands Cove or ‘Iolani Ranch? Darby wondered. ‘Iolani was a working ranch, and Darby had figured out that every hour of every day was needed to keep it running. Just as she was about to ask for details, the news came back on.

“A Moku Lio Hihiu innkeeper makes an appeal for the return—”

“Innkeeper.” Jonah sneered, but this time both Megan and Aunty Cathy shushed him.

“—and tells how a valuable cremello foal was swept overboard during a struggle with the sea…”

The screen was filled with the vivacious, concerned face of a Hawaiian woman with short, shingled hair and slick mango-colored lipstick.