Galloping Gold (4 page)

“G
ood thing you're back,” Jonah told Darby as the Potters drove away. “Your Aunty Cathy needs help in the house.”

Wary of housekeeping chores, which she hated, Darby still didn't complain. Instead she asked, “Where's Cade?”

“You think he's gonna do your chores?”

“No, but I bet he's doing something more fun,” Darby said.

“That Cathy's pretty tough,” Jonah said, but his expression was so weird, Darby couldn't tell if he was joking, or meant what he'd said. “Cade took a ride out,” Jonah added, and made a vague gesture toward the hills.

Darby guessed unexpected guest riders had shown up. Since they'd shown off the cremellos at the
keiki
rodeo, lots of tourists had come to ‘Iolani Ranch to ride. Thinking of their increased income reminded Darby of the visiting mare.

“Did that La Bamba mare come all the way over from California?” Darby asked.

Jonah nodded.

“Owned by people with more money than good sense,” he said, hiding his pleasure. “She's sure got your filly stirred up.”

“Hoku wants to be the lead mare or something,” Darby explained.

“Or something,” Jonah agreed, but he only gave Banshee La Bamba a few seconds' thought before he went on. “Finish up in the house. I'm gonna tell you how to teach your horse a lesson on frustration management.”

“What's that?” Darby asked, but Jonah didn't answer.

“Wear your boots and old jeans.”

“Maybe I should do that now,” Darby suggested.

“It won't be pretty,” Jonah said. “Let the tourists get off the place first.” Then Jonah shooed her toward Sun House.

Darby hoped Jonah had meant that Aunty Cathy needed help with work she'd brought from the office up to the house. Aunty Cathy often reviewed price lists of standard vaccines for the horses so that she
could make the smartest purchases.

Or maybe it was something to do with organizing a group ride. Lately they'd been contacted by Girl Scouts, YMCA Indian Guides, and even parents wanting to schedule birthday rides for children and their friends.

Darby didn't mind making lists of games and refreshments, except that she was eager to go ride Hoku.

Frustration management. Hoku doesn't need that nearly as much as Sugarfoot
, Darby thought as she reached Sun House. Maybe the gelding just wanted to run for the fun of it.

By the time she'd taken off her shoes and left them by the front door, Darby had persuaded herself that her indoor chores would have something to do with horses.

“Aunty Cathy?” she called, but there was no answer.

Yes
! she thought. If Aunty Cathy had already finished the job, Darby sure wouldn't go looking for another one.

Darby sauntered down the hall to her bedroom and dropped her sleepover bag on the bed. She didn't know whether to curl up on her bed to read right now or take her book with her when she went down to the broodmare pasture to see Hoku.

Then she heard Aunty Cathy's voice.

“I'm out on the lanai,” she called.

With a sigh, Darby headed for the living room and walked through it to the wooden deck that overlooked the ranch.

Where is Megan?
Darby wondered.
Why isn't she inside doing chores, too?

The job wasn't repulsive, just boring. Aunty Cathy said that the
vog
—volcanic fog—drifting from the active one of the Two Sisters wasn't good for the plants that grew in bright containers on the lanai. Darby's job was to sponge off each and every leaf to help the plants “breathe.”

“What's in this?” Darby asked, nodding at the basin of liquid Aunty Cathy had prepared.

“Just water. I used to dilute milk and use it as leaf polish, but I read that it clogs the plants' pores with protein.”

Darby realized her mind was wandering back to Sugarfoot and what she could do to keep him on his home ranch when Aunty Cathy's voice rose and she asked, “Did you girls stay up late talking?”

“Kind of, but it was this morning that really drained my energy,” Darby admitted. She gave Aunty Cathy a quick account of what had happened with Sugarfoot and Gemma Mookini.

“That doesn't sound very good,” Aunty Cathy said, “and I don't know the family, but Kimo does. You might ask him if she's likely to carry through with the threat.”

“I will, but they need to work with Sugarfoot
anyway.” Darby lowered her voice. “He knocked a visitor out of his wheelchair once.”

Aunty Cathy sucked in a breath and blinked as if she was trying to erase a mental picture of a wheelchair's silver spokes whirring around in a blur.

“I'll put my mind to a solution,” Aunty Cathy promised, “but it's already spinning with luau plans.”

Instead of drooping with exhaustion, Aunty Cathy looked kind of smug.

“Why are you smiling like that?” Darby asked her.

“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 her 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.