Snowfire by Terri Farley Page B

dogs barking? If a strange person or a predator had come onto the ranch they’d be raising a commotion. But they had been well trained to leave the horses alone.
    Did that mean that the threat Kanaka Luna was warning against was another horse? A memory leaped into Darby’s mind. It was of the night, not long after she’d first arrived, when she saw the fabled Shining Stallion out her window, under the candlenut tree.
    She perched on her knees to look out the window. Starlight painted the candlenut tree’s leaves silver, but that was all.
    Swinging her legs to the floor, she stuck her diary into its drawer and pulled on a sweatshirt. She’d nearly made it to the front door when Jonah opened it.
    From the outside.
    â€œWhat’s up?” she asked him.
    â€œThat stud’s got rocks in his head, is all,” Jonah told her. “Carrying on about nothing. I walked all the way down to his pasture and back.”
    Something had to be wrong, Darby thought. Her guilt about Hoku hadn’t made that neigh sound distressed. And Jonah’s night vision wasn’t the best.
    Darby didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t been able to shake off her uneasiness with Jonah since yesterday. She’d been careful, because she didn’t want to make him mad, and sympathetic because of his failing eyesight. It wasn’t a good combination.
    Jonah was watching her shift from one bare foot to the other.
    â€œPut on some slippers”—he spotted a pair of Megan’s, under the bench, and nudged them toward Darby—“and go check things out.”
    One thing Darby loved about life on the ranch was the way Jonah treated her like any other working member. He relied on her to make sensible decisions, and trusted her almost like another adult.
    Darby was sliding her feet into the slippers—she would have called them flip-flops if she still lived in California—when Jonah planted a quick kiss on her hair.
    She looked up in surprise and Jonah scowled at her.
    â€œCome get me if you need me. I never get eighthours of sleep, anyway,” he grumbled. “Why should tonight be any different?”
    Â 
    Darby paused on the front steps and listened to the night.
    Other than an ocean breeze that rustled the leaves of the candlenut tree, everything was silent. In fact, it seemed unusually still, as if she’d stepped into a room where people had been talking about her, and they’d stopped when she entered.
    She thought of the crazy owl that had scared her yesterday, and curled one arm over her head as she walked toward the tack room.
    Just then a light inside the foreman’s house blinked on. Kit or Cade must have heard Luna, too.
    Inside the corral, Medusa was illuminated by the light from the front window. The mare stood at the corral fence. The bandages on her legs showed, and her ears pricked forward to catch the slightest sound.
    Darby headed toward the corral. No moonlight lit her way and the brightness falling from the foreman’s house window didn’t reach this far. Rushing through the darkness, she stepped right out of Megan’s too-big slippers, then crashed the bare arch of her foot on a rock in her path. She staggered but managed not to yelp.
    Both slippers on, or both off? Darby decided flimsy protection was better than none. Then, as soon as she’d jammed her feet into the slippers, she remembereda night-vision trick Cade had taught her. Standing still, she closed her eyes and covered them with both hands.
    Out in the rain forest, waiting for the appearance of a rabid boar, he’d told her, The longer it is since I’ve looked into the light, the better I can see in the dark.
    When she took her hands away, she saw something move. Beyond the fox cages and past the corral, at the end of the road, a shadow wavered.
    She hardly dared to breathe.
    It had to be Black Lava. He’d discovered Medusa was at the ranch and had come back for her. He