“In the red pickup. Matt finally gets to go to Denver, so he can drop you off at your place on the way. Why do you ask?”
One foot on the porch step, glancing back at the golden pink horizon, Lisa made a nervous suggestion. “Maybe we could both go. We could ask Matt to drive us on as far as Donna’s place, just call in there unannounced.”
“Are you serious?”
“Why not?”
“Without being invited?”
Lisa opened her eyes wide. “Yeah! So they’re not expecting us, so they can’t give us any corny stuff about Midnight Lady being fine, thank you very much!”
“We could see for ourselves how she’s getting on?” Kirstie didn’t want to, yet she did. She thought she knew the depressing answer even before they went, couldn’t imagine that another visit would make any difference. And yet …
Lisa waited impatiently for an answer.
“OK,” she said at last. “You win. I’ll ask Matt.”
“I never liked this place,” Matt commented as he drove along the run-down main street of Renegade. The white paint on the wooden houses was peeling, old Chevys without wheels stood propped on piles of bricks in driveways. Outside the general store, a skinny black dog begged for food.
The town had a gas station, a couple of bars, and an abattoir, where cows from the local feedlot came for slaughter. Arnie Ash’s Abattoir was Renegade’s main reason to exist. In spring and fall, ranchers rounded up their cows, selected the ones who were to go for meat, and trucked them along to the feed-lot on the wide plain behind the long, straight row of houses. After a week or two of fattening up, the cows made their final short journey into town.
“I sure wouldn’t like to live here,” Lisa agreed.
No trees, no mountains. Kirstie stared out of the truck window at the weeds growing on the sidewalk, deliberately choosing to look away from the entrance to the slaughterhouse and the bold letters of the sign above the gates. A red traffic light had brought them to a stop. Wind blew sheets of an old newspaper across the street ahead.
“So tell me the plan one more time,” Matt said, tapping his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel. At six-foot-two, his long legs and arms seemed cramped inside the cab, and the look in his hazel eyes indicated that he wished he was way down the road to see Lachelle, instead of idling at a traffic light in this hick town.
“You take us to Circle R. We say hi to Donna Rose, then she probably invites us in for coffee. You say yes, we say we’d rather take a look around if that’s OK with her.” Lisa had the whole thing worked out.
“She’s supposed to say fine,” Kirstie explained. “So you keep her talking while we snoop in the barn to see if we can spot Midnight Lady.”
The lights changed to green. Matt put his foot down on the accelerator, eager to reach the ranch and get it over with. “You mean, I’m part of a plot to spy on a defenseless old lady!”
“Defenseless—not! ” Lisa snorted.
“Spy—yes!” Kirstie grinned. “It’ll only take a few minutes!”
Matt gave his sister a sideways smile and a dubious shake of the head. “Spying … sneaking around someone else’s property. Suppose you’re not happy with what you see. Then what? Are we into kidnapping horses here, or what?”
Kirstie looked blank. Trespassing, me? Kidnapping, me? How could you possibly think that?
Her fake innocence didn’t work. As Matt took a left onto Donna Rose’s long, straight drive, he demanded a proper answer. “OK, Lisa, give it to me straight. Tell me what I’m getting myself into here!”
“Come into the house and have a cup of coffee,” Donna suggested. If she was surprised to see their red Dodge pull up in the yard, she didn’t show it.
It was midmorning, midweek. The ranch house door stood open; the bunch of dried chilies hanging in the porch swung in the wind that blew continually off the open plain. It seemed there was nothing but oceans of grass between here and New Mexico.
“Sure, I’ll have coffee.” Matt winked at Kirstie as he accepted the invitation. Slamming the pickup door, he strode across the yard.
Donna noticed Kirstie and Lisa hang back. “Hey, I guess you girls didn’t come all the way out here to drink coffee,” she said brightly. Her silver earrings caught the light; the heels of her tan leather boots clicked on the wooden boards.
“Er … no. That is …” Lisa blushed and mumbled.
“We just kinda came along for the ride …” Kirstie did no better.
Donna’s smile broadened. “Midnight Lady’s in the stockade!”
Wow! Kirstie chewed her lip and frowned. This wasn’t in the plan. They were meant to use cunning and stealth to find the horse.
“It doesn’t take Einstein to work out she’s the reason you came.” Warm and friendly, Donna extended the invitation. “Leon’s working with her right this minute. Go ahead and take a look.”
“No need to worry after all,” Matt muttered as he passed the girls.
“Don’t be too sure!” Kirstie shot back. What Donna meant by “working” was exactly what she and Lisa had lost sleep over. It would have been better and more according to plan if they’d been able to sneak up on Midnight Lady in a corner of the barn and quietly check her out to see how she was doing.
“Give it to me straight!” Matt had demanded.
“If we find she’s been beaten and hurt, we call in the animal welfare people,” Lisa had told him. “They charge Leon Franks with cruelty and find Midnight Lady a new home.”
“Easy as that?” He’d shaken his head as they’d drawn near the Circle R.
“Why not?” To Kirstie it had looked that simple. There was a law against it. Man mistreats horse. Man gets taken to court. Happy ending for the horse …
So it was a surprise to find Donna so open and welcoming. But there again, the lady was on a different planet as far as the treatment of horses was concerned. Probably when her husband was alive, she’d taken no interest in the workings of the ranch. Now that he was dead, she still left all decisions in her manager’s hands.
“I can hear stuff happening in the stockade!” Lisa set off at a run ahead of Kirstie.
There was a shrill whinny, the sound of a whip cracking. The rough fence of pointed pine stakes was too high for the girls to see over, so they had to run around the outside until they came to the gate.
The first thing Kirstie saw was the scarlet of Leon Franks’s shirt as he sat in the saddle on one of Circle R’s sorrel geldings. The second was the whip in his right hand. Then she saw TJ’s heavy figure swinging a tarp on the end of a rope, Jesse standing by with coils of rope. Midnight Lady was tied by a short rope to a post driven into the hard ground. Her front leg was hobbled to a noose around her neck. Kirstie’s stomach turned and she felt sick. More sacking out.
“Not again!” Lisa’s voice cracked. “It can’t still be happening!”
Through the dust raised by the gray mare’s struggles, Kirstie could see cruel marks just above her heels where the ropes had worn through the skin in the two days of torture she’d had to endure since they last saw her. “This horse is incredible!” she gasped. So much pain, and still she fought.
With his back to the gate, it was impossible for Franks to have seen the visitors. He yelled orders and moved in with the whip, cracking it close to Midnight Lady’s head to make her back off, straight into the thudding weight of the tarp which TJ had launched across her back. She squealed and reared, kicked and staggered onto her knees.
“Move fast, get a saddle on her while she’s down!” Franks yelled at Jesse.
The ranch hand obeyed. He wrenched the saddle from a nearby rail, ran with it, and flung its full weight across Midnight Lady’s shoulders.
“Fasten the cinch!” Backing off and keeping his distance now, the manager gave Jesse the most dangerous job.
The fair-haired ranch hand hesitated. Though the hobble limited the horse’s movements, she could still give a hefty kick with her back legs. He waited for her to colla
pse forward onto her knees again, then darted in to pull the girth tight. “Don’t ask me to get up on her back!” he grunted. “No way am I gonna risk my neck on this snorter!”
“You do what I tell you!” The manager watched coldly as the tightening strap around the horse’s belly made her panic. He smiled grimly as she struggled to her feet, bucking and kicking harder than ever, forcing Jesse to leap clear. “I never saw a horse fight so hard!”
“That’s it! We call an animal welfare number!” Lisa was white with anger. “Whatever you and Hadley might say about Circle R being able to do what they like with their own horse, we can’t let this go on any longer!”
Kirstie gripped the top bar of the gate until her knuckles turned white. It was as if the horrible scene had hypnotized her and fixed her to the spot.
“TJ, you heard what Jesse said. I guess it’s up to you.” Franks ordered the heavier of the two ranch hands to mount the horse.
The man spat on his hands and rubbed them together. He waited for a lull in the horse’s writhing and kicking, then he ran straight at her, and vaulted onto her back. His feet were slotted into the stirrups, his hands gripping her mane before she had time to realize what had happened.
Then, painfully hobbled and tethered as she was, she reacted with fury. She snaked and tossed her head, lurched forward, rocked back onto her haunches, flinging TJ in all directions. Then she launched herself straight up into the air, back arched, until the tether rope jerked hard on her head and pulled her down. TJ yelled with surprise, but held on. Then, instantly, with a straight-legged, forward jump that wrenched and almost toppled the post to which she was tied, Midnight Lady finally unseated her rider.
TJ thudded to the ground. He rolled sideways in the dust as the horse’s hooves trampled his hat to a pulp.
Watching every move, Leon’s mouth stretched into a thin smile. “Nope. Never seen a horse like it.”
Midnight Lady’s sides heaved, she staggered on her hobbled leg, her wild face warned she would bite and kick to death anyone who dared to come near.
“Stupid animal!” TJ got shakily to his feet and turned in disgust to his boss. “You tell Donna this horse ain’t fit for nothing, you hear!”
“… You tell Donna what?” a voice behind Kirstie and Lisa asked.
They swung around into the glare of the sun to make out the well-groomed figure of the ranch owner herself, slowly followed by Matt.
“Mrs. Rose, you can’t let this go on!” Lisa ran to her.
Kirstie turned back to brave Midnight Lady, wishing with every particle of her brain, every ounce of her body, that she could do something—anything—to help!
Donna had ignored Lisa and reached the gate. She was staring at the scene, at the wild-eyed, stamping mare, at the two shaken ranch hands, at Leon Franks sitting coolly on his horse. “Tell Donna what?” she repeated.
“Bad news,” Leon drawled, staring over the stockade fence at the far, flat horizon. “I done my best with this horse, tried every darned thing I know, but it ain’t no good.”
Brave, brave horse! Kirstie thought. She loved the fierce look in her eye, her spirit’s refusal to be broken.
“What are you saying?” Opening the gate, Donna joined her men.
“TJ’s right; the mare ain’t no good for ranch work,” Leon told her. He didn’t care one way or the other. It was just a fact.
At first, Donna refused to believe it. “But Hadley chose her. He knows horses inside out!”
“Makes no difference. She’s vicious. She got lethal tendencies.” Dismounting, the manager took off his black Stetson and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.
“So you give in?” his boss demanded scornfully, one eye on Midnight Lady.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Saying nothing, listening to every word, Lisa nodded hopefully at Kirstie and Matt. At this rate, there wouldn’t be any need to call animal welfare; Circle R looked ready to let Midnight Lady go.
“So what do you suggest we do with her?” Donna demanded. “Sell her?”
Leon sniffed and looked at the ground.
“But who’d want a bronc that can’t be broken?” The new notion hit Donna hard.
Lisa frowned at Kirstie. “How about Half Moon Ranch buying her?” she whispered.
“Don’t even think about it!” Matt warned. He was the hardheaded one in the family, the businessman.
“No one!” Donna answered her own question. “That means we’re stuck with a horse we can’t use!”
“It happens.” Leon shrugged. He looked like he was waiting until Donna had calmed down before he made a suggestion. “Course, no way can we go on feeding a horse who doesn’t earn her keep.”
Exasperated, looking quickly from one to another in the group until her eyes finally rested on Kirstie, Donna sighed. “It looks like Hadley made an expensive mistake.”
Don’t blame Hadley, Kirstie thought. And don’t blame Midnight Lady. Leon Franks is the one who’s at fault here.
“There is one way of getting some of your money back.” He cut across Kirstie’s dark thoughts to deliver his solution.
Donna pursed her mouth. “Which is?”
“Let me ring Arnie Ash’s place.”
The name jolted like an electric shock through Kirstie’s system. Tall red letters on a white sign above a wide gate. A feedlot behind a shabby main street.
“The abattoir?” Donna thought for a moment, casting a glance at the impossible gray mare with the unbreakable spirit. Midnight Lady stood head up, ears back.
“Yeah. They take horses and turn ’em into dogmeat,” Leon said in a low, coarse voice. “It’s not gonna be worth a whole lot, but you gotta admit, it’s better than nothing.”
5
“They’re taking Midnight Lady down to the abattoir early tomorrow morning!” Kirstie spoke on the phone in a loud voice to Hadley. She stood in the booth inside the noisy End of Trail Diner, while Lisa leaned in through the doorway. Across the room, Matt was talking to Bonnie Goodman about what had happened.
“I hear you,” Hadley replied. He offered no comment or opinion.
“Say something!” Kirstie begged.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Tell us what we can do to stop them!” It had been unbearable, listening to Donna Rose discuss the details with Leon Franks. The ranch manager was to call Arnie Ash and ask for a time when they could deliver the horse to the slaughterhouse; he was to drive the trailer himself to make sure that nothing went wrong.
“Get the best price you can,” Donna had told him. That was her hard edge showing, a reaction to her disappointment that the money spent on Midnight Lady had been wasted.
“And next time let me choose my own horse,” Leon had reminded her, with what both Kirstie and Lisa had thought was a nasty sneer.
On the drive back from Circle R to San Luis, Matt had told them they were both imagining things. “Leon’s doing his job the best he knows how,” he’d insisted. “Don’t go reading too much into things.”
“You never saw him sacking out,” Kirstie had retorted. “The guy’s got a mean streak. If I was Donna Rose, I’d watch out for him!”
“You want me to stop Donna from sending her horse to Arnie Ash?” Hadley said now.
“Ask him if your mom would like to buy Midnight Lady!” Lisa hissed, poking her head over Kirstie’s shoulder. A couple of truck drivers came into the diner and began to order burgers and fries from Bonnie. Meanwhile, Matt was looking at his watch and obviously thinking of his date with Lachelle. He gulped down the last of his coffee and put the cup down on the counter.
“I heard that, too,” Hadley cut in before Kirstie had time to repeat the question. “I can give you Sandy’s answer without even asking her.”
“Hadley, explain the situation to Mom. Say we’d only need to pay half of what Midnight Lady is worth.” Kirstie knew that the price given by Arnie Ash would be rock bottom, and that Donna Rose might well be tempted by a higher offer. “And you know you
rself what a good horse she is!”
Silence from the other end. In the diner there was the whirr of the till, the hiss and spit of cooking oil as Bonnie Goodman tipped a scoop of raw fries into the pan.
“I know what a good horse she was! ” Hadley replied at last. “Past tense.”
“What do you mean?” Kirstie put one hand over the receiver then turned her head toward Lisa. “He’s gonna refuse to help!” she groaned.
“Midnight Lady was a great horse before Leon Franks and his pair of thugs got their hands on her.” Hadley spelled it out. “But I don’t hold out much hope for her after what they put her through this last week. I’ve seen what happens to a strong-spirited horse when she’s been brutally treated. She gets this wild streak running through her: half-fear, half-anger. No way will she settle down and become a steady dude ranch horse. Her temperament’s spoiled for good.”
“Not Midnight Lady!” Kirstie protested for all she was worth. “She’s special. She could learn to trust again.”
“Hmm.”
“Don’t be like that. I know what I’m saying …” Desperately she broke off and turned to Lisa.
Lisa grabbed the phone. “Hadley, are you still there? What Kirstie’s trying to tell you is she’s already made friends with Midnight Lady. You know how great she is with horses. She only had a few minutes with her on Sunday afternoon, but she cut across all the cruel stuff, really got through to her. Beneath all that bucking and rearing, there’s still a beautiful, gentle horse …”
Kirstie took back the phone. “At least ask Mom the question for me.”
“Sure.” The short answer conveyed his deep doubt that it would do any good. Then Hadley changed tack. “What does Matt say?”
Kirstie faltered. “You know Matt; always counting the dollars.”
“Don’t even think about it!” was exactly what he’d said. The words were etched in her brain.
“And you also want me to pass on the message that you plan to stay over at Lisa’s place?” Hadley recalled. “Did I get that right?”
“Yeah,” she sighed, her heart sinking. “Things work out best if I sleep here. Bonnie can drive me home tomorrow morning …”
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