Midnight Lady

by Jenny Oldfield

  Tomorrow morning, when it would be too late to save Midnight Lady, when the Circle R trailer would already have driven down Renegade’s shabby main street, through the white gates, under the red sign to her short journey’s end.

  Three miles in complete darkness!” Lisa objected. “Kirstie, are you crazy?”

  “We’ll take flashlights.”

  “It would take hours to get there!”

  “Not by bicycle. You ride yours. I’ll borrow your mom’s.” Kirstie brushed aside the excuses. Doing something, anything, was better than doing nothing.

  “What if someone sees us?” Lisa had a long list of protests up her sleeve. She was snuggled deep under her blankets in a warm, comfortable bed, and here was her crazy best friend talking about getting dressed again, going out into the cold and dark, sneaking off on bikes along Route 27, through Renegade, all the way to Circle R.

  “Who?” Kirstie challenged. She was already unzipping her sleeping bag and climbing into her jeans and sweatshirt. “It’s past midnight. Everyone is asleep.”

  “I wish I was!” Groaning and sighing, Lisa flung back her covers. “Why can’t we be normal kids, Kirstie, listening to music, surfing the internet? When we have a sleepover, why can’t we do just that—like, sleep over!”

  In spite of everything, Kirstie grinned. Lisa looked funny with her dark red hair tousled and sticking up at the crown, her mouth pouted and sulky. “I could go alone,” she suggested, guessing the response.

  “Whoa, no way! You think I’d let a lunatic like you ride around the country by yourself!” Lisa pulled on her trousers, overbalanced, and hopped around the room.

  “Shh! Your mom will hear!” Opening the bedroom door, Kirstie peered along the landing, then quickly backed off. “There’s a reading light on in her room!” she whispered.

  “No sweat. Mom always leaves that on all night.” By this time, Lisa had succeeded in getting fully dressed. She rummaged in a drawer and brought out a flashlight, then tested it by shining it full in Kirstie’s face.

  “Thanks!” Dazzled, then blinking hard, Kirstie turned and set foot on the quiet landing. The boards creaked as, one step at a time, she made her way toward the stairs. Behind her, Lisa stubbed her toe and swallowed a sharp “ouch!”

  “What if Mom wakes up and finds our beds empty?” Lisa hissed her final objection in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. The neon light from the diner sign shone in through a narrow window, turning her face a sickly blue.

  Kirstie considered it. Bonnie would panic and start making phone calls. Then, back at Half Moon Ranch, her own mom would freak out. They would probably bring in the police. But by then it would be too late to stop her and Lisa from carrying out their secret plan. “We risk it!” she decided, opening the front door and stepping out under the moonlit sky.

  Sleek and silent, a weasel shot out from under a pile of logs and down a storm drain at the side of the road. A frog hung limply from his jaws; the long, black-tipped tail whisked as the weasel vanished down the narrow hole.

  At the last moment, Lisa caught sight of him in the beam from the light mounted on the front of her bike. She turned her handlebars to miss the swift creature, wobbled, and fell sideways into Kirstie.

  Both girls crashed to the ground, then picked themselves up unhurt. “How much farther?” Kirstie whispered, scanning the flat, open land that lay ahead.

  “About a mile.” Lisa whispered her reply. She glanced back at the lights lining the main street of Renegade. It had seemed like a ghost town as they rode through. A dog had howled, a gate had swung open in the wind. No one had stirred.

  “Why are we whispering?” Kirstie hissed as she got back on her bike. “There isn’t a soul out here!”

  “I know. Isn’t it creepy?” Lisa drew a deep breath. “It’s like being swallowed up by a giant black hole; like you ride by accident into a hostile universe and lose your way back into the daylight world of cars and shops. And all the people you ever knew wake up and wonder where you are.

  “You’re on this black planet with weasels and prairie dogs, and a million miles of grass, and you can see your folks, but they can’t see you. Like there’s this invisible wall between you and them. The sun and daylight is there, and everyone going about doing the normal stuff, crying because you vanished and they think you’re dead. If only you could let them know you’re OK. But you can’t because you’re locked inside this nightmare world …”

  “… And eventually you give up like all the other victims who have ever vanished into the hole,” Kirstie finished off. “You turn into a prairie dog, barking and whistling in the night, and are never seen again! Thanks for that cosy little bedtime story, Lisa!”

  Pedaling slowly over the uneven track that would take them to the Circle R, the joke fell flat. The sky was too vast, the thing they were about to do too serious for them to stay lighthearted. And then the ranch itself came into sight; first the long, straight fences at the boundary of Donna Rose’s property, then the house at the end of the dirt road.

  “Are we absolutely sure that this is what we want to do?” Lisa stopped and put both feet on the ground. There was still time to turn around and go back.

  “Certain,” Kirstie told her. She got off her bike and propped it against the fence, ready for a quick getaway. This was going to be tough and scary, and there would probably be trouble at the end of it. Suddenly she felt guilty about having dragged her friend into it. “Honest, Lisa, you can stay here and keep watch. I can go ahead by myself!”

  “Do I look as bad as you?” Lisa stared her in the face, taking a deep breath and deliberately ignoring the offer.

  “White as a sheet,” Kirstie confirmed. “With big, starry eyes. Like you’re so frightened you can hardly swallow, and your heart’s practically jumping through your rib cage!”

  “That’s me!”

  “Me, too!”

  Tilting back their heads, they both looked up at the sky. A million pinpricks of stars shone; the moon was a nibbled silver disc disappearing behind a wisp of gray cloud.

  “Ready?” Kirstie asked, taking the flashlight out of her jeans pocket and striding toward the ranch.

  The horses stood at attention in the meadow behind the barn. Their eyes gleamed, their coats glinted in the moonlight.

  “One, two, three, four, five …” Kirstie counted out the hardworking sorrels used by Leon, TJ, and Jesse. She and Lisa were crouched beside the barn. The smell of creosote from the freshly painted wall filled their nostrils.

  The nearest horse turned his head, ears cocked. His face looked black in the shadows, but there was that gleam of white as he rolled his eyes.

  “There’s Moonpie!” Lisa pointed out the gray gelding in the far corner of the field. He was wearing a head collar, staring over the north fence at the hills beyond Renegade, the start of the foothills that eventually became the Rockies.

  “He looks weird in this light!” Kirstie whispered. Like a dream horse, a pale shadow.

  “And Skeeter!”

  Kirstie followed the direction of her friend’s pointing finger to see the black-and-white paint break into a trot away from the main bunch. He joined Moonpie by the fence, as far from the crouching girls as he could get.

  “Do you reckon they’ve seen us?” Lisa shifted position.

  “Yep.” No doubt about it. The horses had smelled and heard them from the beginning. They’d been alert, watchful, and ready to react at the first sign of danger.

  “Should we move?”

  “Nope.” Not until they were sure that Midnight Lady wasn’t in the meadow. Once they’d checked it thoroughly, they would have to edge nearer to the ranch house and start searching inside the barn. Meanwhile, Moonpie and Skeeter seemed to be unsettling the five other horses, who broke out of their group and scattered to the far corners. Their hooves pounded over the turf, sounding to Kirstie and Lisa’s oversensitive ears like a roll of thunder.

  Kirstie flinched and crouched back behind the wall. She checked
the upstairs window of the house; no lights went on, no one stirred.

  “Leon must have put Midnight Lady in a stall for the night,” Lisa whispered. “That way he can back the trailer right into the barn and get an early start in the morning.”

  A shudder ran through Kirstie. “Looks like it. You know something, we don’t know where Leon and the other two sleep!” It bothered her that she couldn’t identify exactly where they were.

  “They must be in a bunkhouse somewhere. Maybe behind the ranch house?” Lisa shrugged. “We can’t worry about that right now. Come on!” Still crouching, she turned and slid around the corner into the yard.

  Kirstie followed. From this position they could be seen from the house, so they had to scurry fast toward the barn door. She held her breath until they were inside, then stood upright in the pitch dark to recover.

  “Do you have the flashlight?” Lisa’s voice was thin and quavery.

  “Right here.” Kirstie flicked the switch. A yellow beam picked out the row of wooden stalls, then the stack of hay bales at the far end of the barn. Her hand shook and the beam wobbled up to the rafters, across the roof.

  “Hold it steady!” Lisa was venturing forward, listening for movements. If there was a horse in here, she would soon grow uneasy at the noises made by intruders. They would hear her stamp and snort.

  “Last time we came, Midnight Lady was in the stall past the haystack!” Kirstie decided to venture farther in. “There’s a door down there that must lead straight out into the meadow. Leon could have brought her in that way.”

  As she walked with the flashlight past the empty stalls, she grew more convinced she was right. The muggy barn felt like it contained a living creature, almost like there was breath in here, and warmth from a body. She swept the light up the stack of hay and down again, turned the corner, and shone it carefully into the final stall.

  The beam fell first on the straw-covered floor. It lit hooves and slender legs, cast just enough light to pick out the shoulders and curved back, the arched neck, and long, straight face of Midnight Lady.

  The horse stared out of the darkness without moving.

  “Easy!” Kirstie whispered, keeping the beam out of her eyes, hoping that Midnight Lady would recognise her voice. “It’s me, remember!”

  The mare dipped her head and snorted, kept her gaze steadily on Kirstie as Lisa appeared at her friend’s side.

  “You didn’t think we’d forgotten about you, did you?” Kirstie handed the light to Lisa then took a step nearer, noticing the tether tying the horse to a metal ring on the wall. She reached out to undo the knot. Her words seemed to have a calming effect, so she murmured as she moved in, saying, “Easy, we’ll soon have you out of here. Hold steady while Lisa finds out how to unbolt this door … Hear that? That’s the door swinging. Now you can feel that fresh air blowing off the plain … Yeah, nice and easy!”

  Lisa’s fingers had worked at the stiff bolts and slid them back. The hinges had creaked as the door opened. Midnight Lady smelt the cool grass and a thousand nighttime scents. She followed Kirstie’s gentle lead toward the open air.

  Outside, the seven horses bunched tensely in a far corner of the meadow. They watched and waited as Kirstie brought the gray mare out of her dark prison into the moonlight.

  “OK, now comes the hard part!” Lisa looked along the fence from end to end. The meadow dipped to a stream at one end, but there was another strong fence on the far bank. Now she was certain there was only one gate, and it led into the yard by the house. That meant they had to lead Midnight Lady right under the nose of her sleeping owner.

  “We’ll do it!” Kirstie set her course toward the gate. “You know why?” she told the horse. “We’ve got this plan to help you escape. It’s an emergency. No time to do anything sensible. The important thing is to get you out of here before morning!”

  Once more, her voice kept Midnight Lady calm. The other horses had begun to stir and split off, swerving across the field, their manes and tails flying, their hooves kicking up turf. But not the gray mare; she came along sweetly, listening to Kirstie’s words.

  “We get you off the ranch, and tomorrow we think again,” she promised. “Maybe the animal welfare people will get involved. Maybe I can persuade my mom to buy you after all …” They were waiting for Lisa to open the gate, their backs to the nervous herd, almost free.

  Lisa slid another bolt.

  A light went on in a window in the house.

  Kirstie saw it. For a sickening moment, as her heart jumped and she held tight to Midnight Lady’s lead rope, she prayed that the light would go back out.

  But no. It stayed on. A figure came to the window to look out.

  “Quick, Kirstie, get her out of here!” Lisa urged.

  But the new urgency had spooked Midnight Lady. She pulled at the rope, veering away, back into the meadow. “Not that way!” Kirstie tried to stop her, felt the strength of the frightened horse, tugged in vain.

  The rope stretched taut as Lisa urged Kirstie to be quick. Kirstie felt it burn her palms as it slipped. It was agony to hold on, and Midnight Lady was full of fear, ready to flee in exactly the wrong direction. One more wrench of her head and Kirstie had to let her go.

  Now she could run. She was a flight animal. It was all she knew.

  She reared and turned, joined the other horses in the meadow, screamed out a warning. Moonpie and Skeeter galloped to her, gathered her, and raced her off across the field. The ranch horses jostled and bunched after them. They thundered down the slope to the stream, splashed into it, turned and made a crazy dash toward a second fence and then a third.

  “Get out of the way!” Lisa gasped at Kirstie as the horses swung toward the gate. She shoved her to one side, against the gatepost, leaving the opening clear.

  Kirstie was down on the ground, staring up at the charging horses. They galloped rhythmically over the soft earth toward her.

  Their hooves shook the earth, they reached the gate, and then they were through. Midnight Lady led them, pounding past Kirstie, who was struggling to her feet. Then came Moonpie and Skeeter, mad with the idea of freedom. They charged through the gate ahead of the ranch horses, who all followed the three broncs into the yard, raising dust, scattering in every direction.

  More lights in a lean-to section of the ranch house. Kirstie saw them as she stood up. Her palms were burning, her cheek hurt where she’d fallen against the gatepost.

  But the horses were still galloping, three across the flat land to the south, black shadows disappearing into the night.

  Two circled the ranch house, then broke off in the direction of the town. In the dim confusion she spotted the black-and-white shape of Skeeter. He raised his head and found the jagged black horizon of the distant mountains.

  Then she lost him in another whirl of activity.

  Moonpie? Midnight Lady? Two pale horses disappearing into the night. Which was which? Where were they headed? She saw that both gray horses were tracking after Skeeter in his race for the mountains.

  But everything was confused; her palms felt like they were on fire, voices yelled out of the darkness.

  “Run, Kirstie!” Lisa cried, dragging her across the meadow, away from the house.

  Kirstie followed, hardly aware of what she did.

  And she didn’t care. Midnight Lady was free; that was all that mattered.

  6

  “Lisa?” Bonnie Goodman called up the stairs to her daughter, thinking she was still fast asleep in her bedroom.

  It was half past seven on Thursday morning, opening time for the End of Trail Diner.

  Lisa was sitting fully dressed except for her jacket on the edge of her bed. Kirstie stood by the window with her sleeping bag draped around her shoulders. Her fair hair hung limply across her face, her gray eyes were dull. Neither had changed back into pajamas after the night’s events. Both felt drained, almost numb with fear and guilt over what had happened.

  “Lisa, come down! TJ and Jesse are here.
They’ve brought some bad news from Circle R!”

  Lisa groaned. “OK, we’re on our way!” With an effort she stood up and went to pull back the drapes. “What now?” she asked.

  Kirstie closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “What do we do? Do we admit what we did?”

  “If we do, we’re in big trouble!” Until now, they’d hardly said a word to each other, as if speaking about it only made it worse. They’d run across the meadow under the cover of darkness, circled back to the dirt road, grabbed their bikes, and pedaled away unseen.

  By that time, there had been no chance of recapturing the eight escaped horses. As they’d ridden off, Kirstie and Lisa had heard the sound of surprised, angry voices coming from the yard at Circle R—the ranch hands discovering the open gate and empty field. They hadn’t stuck around then to own up, so why now?

  “We’re in big trouble anyway!” Lisa tried to be more realistic. “If we go down there and listen to TJ giving us the bad news about their horses, we’ll have to look like we’re surprised and shocked. I don’t know about you, but drama definitely isn’t one of my best subjects!”

  “So? We put our hands up and say it was us? What then? They’ll call the cops.” Kirstie pictured her whole world collapsing. The look in her mom’s eyes when the local sheriff paid them a call. She didn’t think she could face that.

  Lisa took a sharp breath. “My mom will just die!”

  “Yeah! Mine, too.” On the other hand, they could decide to keep quiet and let everyone think it was an accident that the horses had gotten out. So much easier. So much less painful.

  “… Lisa, Kirstie, are you coming down?” Bonnie called again.

  “Why don’t we just set out to find the horses?” Kirstie said hurriedly. “If we recapture them all except Midnight Lady, what harm is there in that?”

  “Easy peasy!” Lisa’s eyebrows shot up.

  “It’s not that difficult,” Kirstie insisted. She could hear Bonnie’s footsteps coming upstairs. “The ranch horses probably won’t go far. They’ll most likely hang around in the Renegade area, find some good grass. Come nightfall, they’ll be making their way home.”