Wild Horse Spring (11 page)

I was looking for the forked piece of driftwood, but before we got there, I noticed some odd looking, dark mounds on the beach. They looked like they were moving.

“What’s that?” I called to Cody. We pedaled closer.
Something was definitely moving. As we moved toward it, I heard a low, terrible moan, like a child in pain, like something alive that was in pain. This sound was so wrenching, tears came to my eyes and my heart began to beat wildly. What could it be?

I rode closer, then let my bike drop in the sand. It wasn’t Firecracker. It was the mare I had seen on the first day, lying on her side, moaning, snorting, and struggling to stand. And her black foal, Dark Angel, was beside her, its head down, nuzzling its mother, and whinnying softly.

I took a few steps closer, and Dark Angel lunged a few yards away from me, then stood trembling on her knobby legs, and crying almost like a goat.

I watched the mare flail and saw that she wasn’t able to use one of her hind legs. A thin sliver of the white of her eye flashed as she jerked her head in the moonlight. “It’s her leg.”

“What can we do?” asked Cody. He was right behind me.

My mouth was completely dry. The mare’s moans made me feel sick to my stomach, and a cold sweat broke out on my arms and neck. I couldn’t stand to see animals in pain. Last summer when I’d found Waya, the wolf, and she’d been shot, I had almost fainted.

I wanted to go to the mare, touch her, stroke her, and
soothe her. But she was wild. Touching her wouldn’t soothe her. It would only scare her.

I took some deep breaths. Tried to calm the wall of panic in my brain.

If we called anyone, we’d get in trouble for being out here. But we had to. We had to get help for her. Could we call without giving our names?

“Let me see your cell phone,” I said to Cody. Silently he handed it to me, and with shaking fingers I punched in 911.

“Sheriff’s department,” said a man’s clipped voice.

“Yes,” I said, trying to control my breathing. “Out on the beach—where you drive on the beach—there’s a wild horse that’s lying on its side and can’t get up. Someone might have hit it. And there’s a foal too.”

“Where are you?”

“On the four-wheeler part of the beach.”

“What mile marker? There are green signs by the dunes. Can you find one near you?”

“Run up and find out what that mile-marker sign says!” I hissed at Cody.

He ran toward the nearest green sign and yelled it out to me. I gave the man the mile marker.

“Can I get your name, please?”

I took a breath. I couldn’t do that. Without answering I hung up. We should leave now if we didn’t want to get into trouble.

But how could I leave the mare and Dark Angel? She had tired of trying to get up and was lying on her side now, breathing heavily, her eyes wide and terrified. Her fur was streaked with sweat. Dark Angel, still afraid of us, had not come any closer but continued to whinny. She kept her mother between herself and us.

“Let’s wait with her for a little while and then go hide in the sea grass when they get here,” I said.

We sat down on the sand a short distance from the mare. Her side rose and fell with each painful breath. Just listening made me shaky and teary. Dark Angel lay down next to its mother and put its head on her flank.

A bright band glowed on the eastern horizon, and the sky lightened. A breeze blew off the ocean, some dried grass tumbled by, and I noticed a sand crab scuttle over tire tracks near the mare.

“Cody, look. Tire tracks.”

“Really?”

“That’s what it looks like. So someone hit her and then drove away!” Her streaked flank rose and fell, and the sound of her panting eclipsed the crash of the nearby waves.

“Wow,” Cody said.

“I know! She seems weak now.” What if she died? What would happen to Dark Angel? “I bet those kids we saw yesterday had something to do with this!” I said.

“You think?” he said.

The mare moaned suddenly and struggled again to get up. When the foal raised its head, its little anvil-shaped head, and nuzzled its mother, I scrubbed the tears off my cheeks. “Why would someone hit a mare with a baby foal?”

“I don’t know,” Cody said. “Maybe it was an accident.”

I stood up, barely able to take my eyes away from the mare and her foal. The sounds of the mare’s suffering were burned into my memory forever and kept making me cry. I hated crying in front of Cody. I never cried in front of anyone!

“Someone will be here soon. We should hide or leave so we won’t get in trouble,” Cody said. We righted our bikes and walked them behind the first dune and crouched in the sea grass. Both of us sat hunched and cross-legged, listening to the mare.

Even though we’d only waited ten minutes, I got anxious.

“When is someone going to get here?” Cody said. “Maybe we should just leave.”

A faint band of early morning sun filtered through the waving sea grass.

Cody hadn’t said anything about me crying. He’d pretended not to notice. I was grateful he hadn’t made fun of me, and I was starting to see why Stephanie
liked him. One thing I had noticed about Stephanie was that she always saw the good in people. I had been in the habit, for a long time, of seeing only the bad.

And Cody’s smile made a kind of tingle travel up my spine.

Only a minute or so later, two sets of headlights headed up the beach. They slowed as they approached the mare, and once again she tried to stand, moaning with the effort. A white SUV stopped, and two men jumped out. One had a beard, and the other had a gray ponytail and wore a baseball cap. An officer climbed out of the sheriff’s car.

“It’s Isabel and her foal!” said the man with the beard. “Someone has hit her.”

The man with the baseball cap took a few steps toward the mare. “I would have to examine her. Let’s use the darts so we can get close.”

I realized the man with the baseball cap was a veterinarian. From the back of the pickup truck, he pulled out something that looked like a slim rifle and inserted a brightly colored dart. I was familiar with these from helping the vet with the wolves last summer. He took aim at the mare’s haunch and fired.

Even though I knew the vet wasn’t shooting her, that he was just sedating her, I still felt my throat tighten.

The dart took literally thirty seconds to work, and
she laid her head on the sand. The vet was able to approach her. The foal stumbled a short distance away and stood there bleating. The vet knelt and examined the mare’s leg and flank, murmuring soft and soothing nonsense words.

As the sky began to lighten even more, he stood and talked with the other man, and they crossed their arms over their chests, nodding soberly. They glanced at the foal, then back at the mother.

What would happen to them? Thoughts whirled and buzzed in my head. I knew Cody and I should leave, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the scene before me. I had heard many times at the barn that usually if horses broke their legs, they were put down. Would that happen to the mare?
Oh, please, please, don’t let her die
.

Meanwhile, the officer had started to pace out the tire tracks on the beach. His hair was so short he almost looked bald, and he definitely looked like he worked out. He began to snap pictures of the tread marks, from different angles, then took out a measuring tape and measured the width of the tracks.

“Based on the size of these, I’d say we’re looking for an ATV,” he said to the other men. “And there’s most likely some damage to the vehicle.”

“Big surprise,” said the man with the beard. “Kids.”

“Look,” said the officer. “There are some bicycle marks around here too.”

I caught my breath and glanced at Cody.

“We can offer a reward, like last time,” the officer said.

“Thanks,” said the man with the beard.

“And I’ll see what the trace on the 911 call turns up.” He shook hands with the other men. “Good luck. I hate to see things like this. Sorry.”

As the sheriff’s car pulled away and headed back down the beach, a glow spread along the horizon. It was almost daylight.

“We need to leave,” Cody said.

I nodded, roughly wiping my hair and the tears from my face, and we picked up our bikes. Before returning to the beach, we walked our bikes through the dunes for almost the length of a football field so the men wouldn’t see us.

I hated leaving the mare lying there, but we had at least gotten help. As I pedaled down the beach, I whispered over and over, “Please let them save her.” I remembered Stephanie asking me if I believed in God. I had said no. But who else would I be talking to if not to God?

Cody and I rode down the beach together, in a gray morning world, as a damp breeze from the ocean blew
away scraps of the calls of the seagulls flying overhead. I was hoping we could get home before anyone missed us. Our bike tires made a grainy sound against the damp sand, like an old record at the end of the song. Gradually, faint streaks of pale purple shot through the sky and frosted the water. My eyes burned from lack of sleep. We found the wooden walkway to the house and walked the bikes along it as quietly as possible. My heart was pounding hard, and I was hoping Mom and Norm were still asleep and not looking out through the sliding door and seeing us. Cody didn’t try to talk, and I was glad. We put the bikes back where we had found them.

“How can we find out what happens?” Cody asked quietly.

“We have to call later.”

We had witnessed something horrible together. I hadn’t cried in front of anyone in a long time. Even though I hated boys, I felt like I wanted Cody to hug me or maybe hold my hand.

But he didn’t. With a quick wave, he jogged across the sand toward his house. He passed the ATV parked in the driveway and disappeared around the back of the house.

I shimmied up the square corner column from the lower porch to the upper one, threw my leg over the
back porch railing, and landed on the porch floor. Trying to be as quiet as possible, I tiptoed past the sliding door to Stephanie’s room, peeked in, and saw her dark hair tumbled on the pillow. Still asleep.

She’d never have to know.

An inch at a time, I opened the sliding door to my room and slipped in. In only a few seconds I had changed to Dad’s old Heineken T-shirt that I always wore to sleep in and slid under the covers, pulling them to my chin. Fine, grainy sand coated my feet and legs next to the sheets. For a time I lay there catching my breath and staring out through the sliding door at the dawn sky.

It looked like we’d gotten away with it.

But every time I closed my eyes, I saw the mare, the one they’d called Isabel, lying on the beach, panting. I saw Dark Angel, the scared little black foal. I thought I’d never sleep again.

A
gain, strong morning sun shone through the sliding door, heating my room and waking me up. I had slept later than usual, and my arm had an awful, sore, stinging feeling. It hurt even more when I sat up and tried to pull my T-shirt on. Brownish blood had seeped through the bandage, making it stick to my arm. I tried pulling the bandage off, but it hurt so bad my eyes watered. So I just left it.

I went out on the back porch to look at the ocean,
and below I saw a red fox trot by on dainty feet, its bushy tail hanging low. Before I could call Diana to come see, it skulked through the grasses on the dune, until it wove through a few stalks and disappeared like fog.

I usually slept later than Diana, so I was surprised when I peeked into her room and saw her still sleeping. One sandy foot stuck out from under the covers along the side of the bed. Then the thought popped into my head like a newspaper headline:
Diana snuck out last night
.

I could hear Daddy and Lynn downstairs talking, and I stood and listened for a minute at the top of the stairs before going down.

“He’s a very handsome boy, and he seems bright,” Lynn said. “It’s no wonder Stephanie is fascinated by him. He’s different from most of the boys she knows.”

“Stephanie is too young to have anything to do with boys,” Daddy said with sudden force.

“Oh, I agree. But you can’t stop her from being interested,” Lynn said. “Once it happens, it just happens.”

“I can keep her away from them.”

“No, you can’t, Norm! There are boys in her school, on the teams she cheers for … Boys are everywhere! Are you going to keep her prisoner in a castle turret like Rapunzel?”

“Yes!” said Daddy, laughing. “I think Rapunzel’s dad had the right idea!”

“Right!” Lynn said, with a soft chuckle. “And I’m sure Rapunzel and her dad had a wonderful relationship.”

“Who cares about our relationship as long as she’s safe?” Daddy said.

“Oh, Norm, you don’t mean that.”

“No, you’re right, I don’t,” he said.

“Besides, honey, as hard as you might try, you can’t protect her from a broken heart,” Lynn said. “She’s already been through your divorce and our marriage, and that will make a girl wise beyond her years.”

I waited a few heartbeats and then walked downstairs rubbing my eyes like I’d just gotten up. “Morning,” I said.

“Morning, sweet pea!” Daddy said a bit too enthusiastically. He stood and gave me a hug. “Did you sleep well?”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“How’s your arm?” Lynn asked.

“It stings, and the bandage is stuck.”

“I can take care of that.” Lynn sat me at the counter while she got the first-aid kit. With a quick practiced swipe, she yanked off the bandage.

“OW!” My eyes watered.

“It’s easier if you do it quickly,” she said, holding
my arm gently in her confident hands. She cleaned off the dried blood with warm, soapy water. “It looks better today.”

The wound felt tender and raw, and tiny pinpricks of fresh, bright red blood appeared. I felt more secure as Lynn placed a new, smaller bandage over it. “By tomorrow, we should be able to leave it open to the air.” She patted my arm. “I can’t believe Diana is sleeping so late. That’s unusual for her.”

“I know,” I said vaguely. “Weird.”

“Somebody needs to wake her up. We’ve got a lot to do today,” Daddy said. “I’ve been checking out the websites for both the aquarium and the Wright Brothers Memorial.”