Sparks flew in her mind, there were hammer blows against her heart, as she prepared herself for Donna Rose’s answer.
3
“Midnight Lady is a different story,” Donna admitted. “We guess she must have been the lead mare in the bunch where she was reared.”
“Meaning what?” Lisa asked.
With her heart thudding, turning her back on the corral and looking around the barn for a sight of the dapple gray horse, Kirstie hardly heard the reply.
“Meaning she’s harder to break than Moonpie and Skeeter.”
“Because she’s more strong-willed?” Lisa pressed.
Donna gave a hollow laugh. “You could say that. Leon would call her more ornery and stubborn.”
There was no sign of the horse herself. Kirstie walked the length of a row of empty stalls and came face to face with Leon Franks. Sharp knife in hand, he looked up from his task of breaking open a bale of hay. The expression of annoyance on his angular face, the cold gleam in his gray eyes, made her edge away.
“Kirstie, if you see Leon in there, would you please tell him I’d like to speak with him!” Donna’s voice reached them from outside the barn door.
“I hear you!” the ranch manager called back, brushing past Kirstie as he slid the knife into his belt. He strode the length of the barn without looking back.
“Hey, Leon, tell these good people how we’re handling the problem with Midnight Lady,” Donna went on. “Explain your method of breaking her. What do you call it, sacking out?”
Kirstie felt another jolt and a heightening of her unease. She lingered in the dark barn, unwilling to listen to Leon’s reply.
“That’s some bronc you bought,” he told Hadley with fake jokiness. “Nice looking mare, I give you that. But she turns out to be a real mankiller.”
“How come you need the sacks?” Hadley didn’t fall for Leon’s upbeat tone. His question was brief and suspicious.
Kirstie hung back, still looking for the horse. Through the frame of the wide doorway she could see Jesse and TJ riding a subdued Moonpie and Skeeter around the corral and the huddle of spectators discussing the sacking out process.
“We use tarps, not sacks,” Leon explained. “Good, heavy canvas. Once we get close enough to the horse to put on a head collar and tie her down, a couple of us move in and throw the heavy canvas over her back, around her legs, to give her the biggest scare we can. It don’t hurt her, just makes her jump. She wonders what hit her, but she’s tied fast and she’s not running nowhere. Sure, she pulls and kicks. But in the end she understands; there ain’t no use fighting it, she might as well give in.”
“That’s all we’ve done so far,” Donna told Hadley. “It takes a few days’ work to get her to that stage.”
“To break her spirit?” Lisa put in.
Inside the barn, Kirstie grimaced and went on searching. She turned into a dark stall beyond the hay store and stopped dead.
There was a bed of soiled straw, a bucket of water, a tethered horse struggling to rise from its knees.
Gradually her eyes grew used to the gloom. “Midnight Lady!”
The horse’s head swayed from side to side, her legs were too weak to push her up. She sank down.
Kirstie turned and ran. “Come quick!” she yelled to the others. “I found her. There’s something wrong with her!” The strong sunlight hit her in the face as she darted out of the barn.
“Kirstie, cool it!” Lisa grabbed her by the arm. “Who did you find? What are you talking about?”
“Midnight Lady! She’s real sick!” Gasping for breath, she pulled away. “Call the vet, quick!”
Leon shook his head. “No need for that.”
“What do you mean? She can’t even stand. If you don’t believe me, come and look!”
“I said it’s OK,” Leon insisted. “I just gave her a quick shot, that’s all.”
Kirstie shook her head as if to clear her confusion. She started back into the barn, then turned to face him. “What kind of a shot?”
He shrugged. “A sedative to make her quiet, let the shoer get near her.”
“How long will it last?” Kirstie couldn’t get the image of a desperate Midnight Lady sinking back into the straw out of her mind.
“Just a few minutes. Enough time for Chuck to fit a set of shoes without being kicked to blazes. She’ll come around soon enough.” The manager’s laid-back manner was intended to show the others that Kirstie was making a fuss over nothing as usual. With another shrug he turned his back and went to see if the shoer was ready for the sedated mare.
So, not only did Leon Franks think it was OK to scare a horse half to death with his primitive breaking-in method, he also considered it fine to drug her into a feeble stupor! Kirstie looked daggers at him as he exchanged words with Chuck Perry then hurried back into the barn to see if Midnight Lady was ready to be fetched.
“Don’t shake your head like that,” Donna told Hadley. “I know you think Leon’s way of working is a little—what shall we say—direct—”
“… Old-fashioned,” Hadley interrupted. “Guys were working that way with horses, sacking them out, hobbling them, wearing them down with fear, when I was a kid. I thought it had died out over the last few years, so it beats me where young Leon learned to do it.”
“Way out in Wyoming.” Donna warned them to move aside as her manager led a lethargic Midnight Lady into the yard.
The horse was still heavily doped and unsteady on her legs, hardly aware of what was happening when the briskly businesslike shoer stood alongside and lifted each of her legs in turn. He matched metal shoes against her hooves, gave his forge an extra blast of heat from the canister of gas connected to it. Flames belched out, making Midnight Lady flinch and stagger.
“That’s where Leon worked before I hired him for Circle R earlier this year,” Donna explained. “He’s known horses all his life, lived on a ranch way out on the state’s eastern plains. The sacking out method’s been handed down from generation to generation, and Leon reckons it works much better than any of the modern, horse whisperer stuff.” She pointed to the corral where TJ and Jesse were dismounting from Skeeter and Moonpie. “And there’s the evidence in front of our very eyes!”
“B-but!” Lisa grimaced as Chuck hammered the red-hot shoes onto the gray mare’s feet. There was the smell of singed hoof, the grating sound of a metal rasp.
“Shh!” Kirstie warned. There were giant buts in her own mind, too, yet she had just realized the sense of not openly challenging the ranch owner. Donna Rose might look and sound like a fragile flower, easily swayed, but Kirstie detected a hard edge, too.
“Look at it this way,” she told them. “It’s a battle of wills. Man against horse. And the horse is twelve-hundred pounds of muscle with a brain the size of a can of corn. What are you gonna do? Match him pound for pound? No way. Like Leon says, you use your superior brainpower to fool him into thinking you’re the boss. Tactics is what it’s all about.”
“Hmm,” Hadley said again. He tilted his hat back.
“You want him to show you?” Donna was more than willing to prove her point once more.
“Right now?” Kirstie frowned.
“Sure. Leon’s planning another session before sundown. Why not watch while Chuck shoes Moonpie and Skeeter?”
Before they could object, Donna went ahead and made arrangements with Leon.
“I’m not sure I want to see this,” Lisa whispered to Kirstie as the ranch manager led a groggy, newly shod Midnight Lady into the corral.
“I know I don’t!” she hissed back. Secretly she prayed that the horse would disprove Leon Franks’s cruel theory by fighting back. Yet that would lead to pain. So no, she hoped Midnight Lady would submit. Oh, but that would be sad, to see a beautiful creature’s spirit broken! Confrontation. Battle. Winners and losers. Her mind whirled; she squeezed her eyes tight shut and wished for it all to go away.
But when she opened them, there was Leon Franks in the corral with rope
s and tarps. Midnight Lady was already tethered to a post as he tied a corner of one square of tarpaulin to the end of a rope. The sight sent the mare kicking and rearing, plunging this way and that. The veins in her neck swelled up, her eyes bulged.
Whack! Leon flung the tarp over her hindquarters. It landed with a heavy smack.
Midnight Lady pulled away as if her life depended on escaping from under the tarp. She butted and bit, kicked and bucked.
He dragged it clear, stooped to pick it up, threw it again.
Once more the horse went crazy.
Lisa turned away. Hadley frowned but said nothing. Kirstie looked on in horror.
“Now watch him use the rope to lasso her hind leg!” Donna told them. “He’ll tighten the noose, pull the leg clear of the ground and fix the other end of the rope in a second noose around her neck. See, now she’s well and truly hobbled!”
Kirstie felt she could hardly breathe, as if the noose was tightening around her own neck, as she saw Midnight Lady struggle bravely, pitifully on three legs to resist the tarp as it landed yet again on her back.
“But it’s hurting her!” Lisa protested.
“Only a little.” Donna assured them that the horse would soon learn to give in.
“There’s a rope burn around her back leg!”
Donna ignored the protest. “Watch. See how the fight’s being driven out of her.”
It was true; Midnight Lady’s kicks were more feeble. The hobble strained the muscles in her leg and neck, made her groan with pain.
Give in! Kirstie pleaded silently. Submission was the only way of making this torture stop. At a certain point the terrorized mare would have to recognize the fact.
Five minutes went by, then ten. Leon persisted in throwing the tarp and tightening the hobble with cold determination.
“Give in!” Lisa whispered out loud.
The horse’s head was low, her sides heaved with exhaustion. Now, when the tarp landed on her back, she couldn’t summon the energy to buck it off.
“OK, enough!” Donna decided at last. “End of session.”
Leon showed no reaction. He simply gathered up the ropes and tarps, loosened the hobble, and walked away. Midnight Lady was left tethered to the post, trembling miserably in the evening sun.
“Unbelievable!” Lisa cried.
After the sacking out demonstration, as soon as Chuck had finished his work, Donna had taken him and Hadley into the ranch house for coffee. Leon, TJ, and Jesse were nowhere to be seen.
“I mean, really…I cannot believe it!” Furious, shocked, unable to find the words to match how she felt about the treatment of the horse, Lisa paced up and down the corral.
Kirstie could hardly bear to look at Midnight Lady.
“That they do this to her and then leave her standing here. It’s disgusting!” Lisa kicked a post, turned and strode back. “Why didn’t Hadley do something?”
“It’s not his horse,” Kirstie said quietly. Nothing in the world could be sadder than seeing an animal lose her will to fight. It was as if the flame of life went out.
“Even so!” Lisa’s eyes blazed.
“Donna’s the boss around here. She believes in it.”
“Yeah, and since when were you so reasonable? I thought you’d feel the same way I do!”
“I do, believe me.” Slowly, cautiously, Kirstie was moving closer to the exhausted horse. Defeat was written over every inch of Midnight Lady’s trembling, sweating body: in her hanging head, her lank white mane, her dull eye. “You know almost the worst thing?” she whispered to Lisa, as she paused and quietly watched. “It’s that this feels like my fault!”
“No way.” Suddenly Lisa stopped being angry. She stared at Kirstie. “You couldn’t know this would happen. No one could.”
“It still feels bad. Like, this wouldn’t be happening if we hadn’t picked her out to come to Circle R. It means we let her down in some way.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!”
Kirstie glanced at her friend with the ghost of a smile. “Like you say, since when was I reasonable, especially when it comes to horses?” Turning back to Midnight Lady, she noticed that her head was coming up a little, and her ears were beginning to pay attention to the sound of their voices. “Saying sorry might not make any difference,” she told the horse softly. “But I am awful sorry.”
“Now I know you’re crazy! Crazy girl talks to horse.”
“I’d rather be crazy.” Rather talk to horses than people who saw life as a battle of wills. Rather reach out a hand like she was doing now and let the animal get used to her scent, the sound of her voice.
“Take it easy,” Lisa whispered when she saw how close Kirstie had got. “Watch out she doesn’t bite!”
“You won’t bite me, will you?” Kirstie moved in and slid her hand gently down Midnight Lady’s neck. The gray coat was clammy, the muscles still quivering. But Kirstie’s touch seemed to soothe her and she turned her head.
“Honest to goodness, Kirstie, you gotta go easy.” Concerned for her safety, Lisa advised her to back off. “That horse could turn mean any second!”
“No, you won’t. Show Lisa you’re no mankiller, whatever they say about you.” Slowly, slowly, she eased her hand up and down the horse’s neck, across her shoulder, along the curve of her back.
Midnight Lady shifted her weight. Her quivering muscles began to relax.
Look softly, smile, show her what it means to be her friend. Kirstie moved in even closer, rubbing her coat with both hands, stroking her cheek, scratching her nose.
“Hey.” Lisa’s frown melted, her voice was breathy with disbelief. “Can you believe it? You two are bonding!”
Kirstie nodded. Her words, her body language had managed to convince Midnight Lady that she meant no harm.
The beautiful, forgiving mare pushed her head against Kirstie’s shoulder and nudged her.
“Yeah!” She leaned her face against the soft, warm neck. “I want you to know: you and me, we’re definitely on the same side!”
4
On the right day, in the right frame of mind, Half Moon Ranch was heaven on earth.
The soaring, swooping horizon of Eagle’s Peak and other distant mountains of America’s Great Divide could whisk away all troubled thoughts. Green meadows were dotted with blue columbines, forested slopes gave shade to calypso orchids, the banks of clear streams glowed with golden marsh marigolds.
Lisa’s two summer days at the ranch took the girls out at dawn, when the sky was eggshell blue, before the sun touched Hummingbird Rock. With fingers still slow with sleep and heads dozy from the warmth of their beds, they fumbled with buckles to get saddles on Lucky and Cadillac. The horses nudged at them for a handful of special oat feed from the tub inside the barn door, which Kirstie would bring in two big handfuls. Crested jays perched on the corral fence would watch greedily for spilled crumbs, then, with a flash of vivid blue wings, dart to the ground to pick up seeds.
Then, with the horses’ cinches tightened and bridles on, the girls would head out along Five Mile Creek, past the jeep road. They would choose the climb up Bear Hunt Trail, through the tall ponderosa pines to Red Eagle Lodge, where they could turn and look down on Half Moon Ranch in miniature. It was fun to spot the red roofs of the log cabins, the handkerchief-sized square of green lawn, the long barn and tack room, and the bunkhouse where Hadley and Charlie slept.
Or they might take a different route, the favorite Meltwater Trail, which took them through the narrow pass called Fat Man’s Squeeze, where granite rocks formed a tall ravine then opened out onto Dead Man’s Canyon and, towering above that, the sheer gray cliff of Miners’ Ridge.
Whatever they decided, Lucky and Cadillac bore them steadily. No track was too steep to climb, no creek flowed too fast for them to cross. Kirstie’s palomino led the way, while sturdy, stately Cadillac followed. Stopping to rest in the midday sun, coming home in the cool of the evening, Lucky’s almost golden coat shone like silk. Beside him, passi
ng quietly through the shadow of an overhanging rock or under the thick branches of dark pine trees, Cadillac’s cream color made him seem ghostly and strange.
“It’s hard to believe Cadillac was ever like Midnight Lady,” Lisa murmured. It was Tuesday evening; her visit was almost over. Tomorrow she must go back to town.
“Huh?” Kirstie closed the gate of Red Fox Meadow and leaned on the fence to watch Lucky and Cadillac lower their heads to graze quietly. Working out the connection, a flicker of a frown appeared on her face. She didn’t want her head filled up with pictures of Donna Rose’s horse. Right now she would rather concentrate on nice, easy things.
“Or Lucky either,” Lisa persisted. “I mean, can you imagine them before they were broken?”
“I hate that word!” It was no good; she was seeing flashes of Midnight Lady bucking and kicking, of ropes and tarps, and of Leon Franks’s cold gray stare. “Broken means beaten. I hate it!”
“Hey, it wasn’t me; I didn’t invent it!” Lisa set off suddenly toward the ranch house. She stuffed her hands into her jeans pockets and hunched her shoulders. “Excuse me for breathing!”
Kirstie sighed and followed. “Sorry.”
“Forget it.”
“No, really. I am sorry. Listen, Lisa, I get an awful feeling in my stomach whenever I think about Midnight Lady. When we got to know her better, just before we left Circle R on Sunday night, I sensed she’d really begun to trust us—”
“You! ” Lisa interrupted her. “Not us. It was you she trusted.”
“Whatever.” Kirstie walked on, head down, deep in thought and struggling with her sense of helplessness. “It’s real mean not to take an interest. Like, maybe we should call Donna, ask how Midnight Lady’s doing …” It wasn’t enough, but it was something.
“Yeah.” Lisa slowed her pace. “Say, how am I gonna get into San Luis tomorrow morning?”
Midnight Lady Page 3