Free Midnight Lady by Jenny Oldfield Page B

white head, water still dripping from her blunt pink nose. The brand on her rump showed a capital R inside a circle.
    “She’s Donna’s cow, but she must have wandered off ranch property,” Sandy had decided. “C’mon, girl; yip, yip!”
    They’d spent the best part of an hour driving her out of the culvert and back onto Circle R land.
    Arriving home to Hadley’s news, Kirstie was the first out of the trailer. She followed him into the barn. “Any idea which two horses?”
    The wrangler tossed alfalfa hay into wooden feed troughs, then watched as three foals scrambled across the pen behind the barn. Their sticklike legs and heavy heads made their progress ungainly. But soon they were tucking into a good feed. “Two more ranch horses,” he reported. “A sorrel named Foxy and an appaloosa named Pilgrim.”
    “Where did they find them?” For a few seconds, the cute foals had taken Kirstie’s mind off the problem. The biggest, a black-and-white paint, was head-butting the palomino and the bay to get at the best of the hay. But then the other two ganged up to cut the paint out. In the end, they all seemed to agree there was enough for everyone and settled down to munch contentedly from the manger.
    “To the south of the ranch,” Hadley told her. “Leon reckoned they’d head across the plain rather than cut back toward the mountains. Seems he was right.”
    Kirstie gave a small nod, then turned away. She had a flashback to the night before, seeing in her mind the moonlit scene, when the horses had split off in all directions: some toward the flat lands to the south, it was true, but some toward Eagle’s Peak in the north. Skeeter, for a start. Probably Moonpie and Midnight Lady had followed close on his heels. But she said nothing to Hadley about that.
    “Kirstie!” Her mom called her from the house porch.
    She broke into a run, along the dark corridor of wooden stalls, past the round feed bins, through the heavy pine door into the corral.
    “Lisa’s on the phone!” Sandy waited, arms folded. “You two are grounded, remember! Don’t go making plans!”
    Nodding, Kirstie scooted by to take the call in the kitchen. She arrived breathless and curious.
    “Hey.” Lisa didn’t sound her usual bubbly self.
    “Hey!” She perched on the edge of the table, staring out at the mountains.
    “I’m up at Lone Elm. I just heard from Grandpa; they found three of Donna’s horses so far.”
    “I know.” News traveled fast. “Donna’s thinking of selling Circle R.”
    “What! I never knew that.”
    Not that fast, then.
There was a long, awkward silence for her friend to start feeling guilty in. “Did you call me just to tell me about the three horses?”
    “No, really …” Lisa seemed to be making a decision to say what was on her mind. “Kirstie, I just drove up to the trailer park with Grandpa. He’s pretty mad at me.”
    “The whole world is mad at us,” Kirstie confirmed. “So?”
    “So, he wasn’t saying much. I spent the whole time looking out of the window, making like I didn’t care.”
    “You and me both.” Lisa was having the same kind of hard time as she was, Kirstie realized. “So, is there a point to this story?”
    “Well, I couldn’t swear to it,” Lisa sighed. “Maybe I’m a bit crazy right now. But we were driving up to Lone Elm and Grandpa stops to talk to the Forest Guard. I’m seeing loose horses everywhere, like, not really seeing them, just imagining them.”
    “It’s because we didn’t get any sleep last night.”
    “Well, whatever. They mostly turn out to be shadows or mule deer. Finally, I’m looking up at a rock, seeing what I think are three horses on the skyline. Grandpa is saying good-bye to the Forest Guard. I’m saying, ‘Hold on a second!’ but he’s deliberately ignoring me. So I’m trying to work out if this time it’s more mule deer, or if it really is three horses. One’s definitely a black-and-white paint …”
    “Skeeter!” Kirstie