Hoofbeats of Danger

by Holly Hughes

  Annie almost blurted out “Pa, you’re being unfair!”—but she bit the words back. It was useless to quarrel with her father when he was worried about station matters.

  Pa lifted Magpie’s hoof again. “Well, her hoof don’t look injured,” he admitted. “We’d best take precautions, though.” He set down her hoof and took her halter. “Go to the remedy cabinet, Annie, and get some salve. Meet me in the forge.”

  As he led Magpie out of the barn, Annie slipped into the tack room, where a wooden cupboard hung in the corner. Inside were medicines for various horse ailments. Pushing aside a couple of bottles of belladonna and some muscle liniment, she found a small red tin of hoof salve. She took it and hurried back to the forge.

  As she came around the corner of the barn, she saw her mother standing in the forge doorway. “I heard you light into Billy,” she was saying to her husband. “What did he do?”

  Slipping around her ma, Annie saw her father lower his head. “He misused a horse,” he muttered as Annie gave him the salve. She realized with surprise that he seemed embarrassed about his outburst.

  “Well, the animal’s all right now,” her mother said mildly. “Billy’s just a boy, remember. He can be careless, but I don’t reckon he meant any harm.”

  Mr. Dawson turned away, bending over the glowing coals of the forge’s fire. He thrust a new horseshoe into the coals with a long-handled pair of tongs. Annie silently took Magpie’s head, circling one arm around the mare’s bowed neck. She lightly rubbed the special spot below the white streak in Magpie’s mane. Her eyes fastened on her pa’s strong hands, deftly handling the tools of his trade.

  Pa carried the red-hot shoe over to his anvil to hammer it into shape. He hit it three times fiercely—clang, clang, clang! Then he hung his arm at his side. “This is no time to let things go slack, Effie,” he said to Annie’s mother, his voice thick with emotion. “Just when we’ve finally got things going right. This place has been good for us, for all of us. I can’t let you down again. If I lose this job—”

  “You ain’t going to lose this job,” Ma said with quiet conviction.

  A darkness flickered over Pa’s face—the same darkness Annie had seen when things went sour in California. He shook his head grimly. “The Overland Express is having money troubles—one of the coach drivers told me about it last week. The Butterfield company’s trying to run us out of business. The Overland needs to win the government mail contract, but Butterfield and his cronies are fighting ’em in Congress. You know what happens when bosses start to get edgy. They crack down on the stationmasters—crack down hard.”

  Annie anxiously clutched Magpie’s halter as her father bent to hammer on the new shoe. What if her pa lost this job? Annie had been sad to leave the mining camp in California, but now she’d hate to go back. There was food on the table every day now. They lived in a sturdy cabin, not a flimsy mining-town shack. She loved the wide blue sky, the rolling river, the fierce red clay and gray stone thrusting in strange shapes out of the earth. And she loved the excitement of living at the Overland station, with wagon trains and stagecoaches and Pony Express riders passing through. She felt proud, like she herself was the gatekeeper to the West.

  Magpie raised her velvety muzzle, as if she sensed the worry settling in Annie’s chest like a lump of lead. Annie scratched the mare’s neck again, to soothe herself as much as Magpie. Then another thought stabbed Annie’s heart. If Pa got fired by the Overland, she’d have to leave Magpie, too!

  Mr. Dawson stood up. “Let’s see how that fits.” Annie silently led Magpie out of the smoky forge to circle around the sun-dappled station yard. The mare walked perfectly. Pa nodded, satisfied with his skilled work, and ducked back inside.

  Whistling softly, Annie led Magpie back into the shadowy barn, going to her stall at the back of the barn. She stripped off the blanket, then took a clean rag to rub the mare dry. Using strong circular strokes, she ruffled Magpie’s dense coat, feeling how much thicker it had grown in just a few days. “Putting on your winter coat already, aren’t you, girl?” she murmured. Magpie whickered and gave her head a little toss.

  Laying down the rag, Annie picked up a stiff-bristled brush. She pulled it expertly over the contours of the horse’s back, eyes closed, her hands following every curve and hollow by heart. As she brushed, Annie felt her spirits rise. She opened her eyes and lovingly traced the white-on-black patches she knew like a map—the butterfly shape on her haunches, the mantle across her withers, the perfectly round splotch on the left side of her neck, the small white spots splattered along her forelegs.

  Suddenly her fingertips grazed against the “XP” branded high on Magpie’s hindquarters. She halted with a small sigh. That was the proud mark of a horse fine enough to be owned by the Pony Express—and a reminder that Magpie belonged to Annie in heart only.

  From the stall, Annie heard a wagon rumble into the yard. She slipped out to see who it was. The station’s stablehand, Jeremiah, stood with a pitchfork on the seat of a ramshackle wagon filled with sun-dried cut grass. “You finished harvesting the meadow?” Annie asked him.

  Tall, square-jawed Jeremiah simply nodded. He didn’t talk much, but his calm manner and horse sense had earned Annie’s deep trust over the past months at Red Buttes. He was somewhere between thirty and forty years old, with a bald spot just beginning to show in his light brown hair.

  Jeremiah lifted a forkful of fresh hay and laid it in her arms. “Let me guess—Magpie’s here?” he asked, his gaze taking in her glowing face.

  Annie grinned. “She sure is, Jeremiah!”

  She scooted back to toss the hay in Magpie’s manger. The mare snorted and gently butted her head against Annie’s shoulder before thrusting her muzzle into the sweet, fragrant grass. Annie buried her face in Magpie’s mane. “Only the best for you, girl,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER 3

  CRIES OF DISTRESS

  Rain began to pound on the stationhouse roof as the Dawsons, Billy, and Jeremiah gathered for supper. They sat on stools and benches around a crudely built wooden table that filled the center of the main room. Firelight flickered in the big fireplace, where the iron stew kettle hung on a hook. A kerosene lamp dangled on a chain over the table, but it wasn’t lit; Mrs. Dawson didn’t like to waste oil when they had no company. The rafters and the rough timber walls at the end of the long room were dusky with shadows.

  “Good thing we got the rest of the hay brought in this afternoon,” Mr. Dawson said to Jeremiah. “This rain would have spoiled the whole lot.” Jeremiah nodded silently in reply.

  “The eastbound stage is late—I hope the trail ain’t washed out,” Mrs. Dawson said, worried.

  “When they do get here, the driver may decide to stop overnight,” Mr. Dawson considered. “We could use the extra money. Annie and Davy, if there’s women or children on the coach, you sleep out in the tack room—give paying passengers your beds.”

  Annie perked up, hoping she could slip into Magpie’s stall to sleep. She’d secretly done it often. She loved snuggling on the straw, lulled by the mare’s warm breathing nearby.

  Just then, she heard slogging hoofbeats and creaking wheels outside. All the station folk scrambled to their feet and crowded toward the door.

  Peering around Jeremiah’s shoulder, Annie saw the stagecoach lumber into the station yard. Through the pelting rain, she could see that the coach jolted unevenly, tilting too low on one side.

  The driver pulled his team of six horses to a stop. Jumping down from his high seat, he shook a stream of rain off his oilcloth cloak. “Got a loose wheel rim, Dawson,” he shouted through the downpour. “Soon as I get these passengers out, I’ll need you in the forge.”

  “Glad to help, Mr. Slocum,” Annie’s father called back. Then he turned, eyes bright, to murmur to Mrs. Dawson, “Nate Slocum—one of the Overland’s most trusted drivers. A good man to impress.”

  The stagecoach guard had jumped down also. He held the coach door open and helped six passengers down t
he folding steps. Ducking their heads, they dashed into the station. Mrs. Dawson moved to take their wet coats. “Davy, light the lamp,” she ordered briskly.

  Jeremiah, Billy, and Mr. Dawson had gone outside to help the driver and guard unhitch the horses. Annie stepped toward the door, hoping to lend a hand in the barn. Mrs. Dawson looked up sharply. “Annie, I’ll need you in here. You serve supper to our guests, you hear?”

  With an exasperated flounce, Annie went to the wide brick hearth. She picked up a stack of wooden bowls and began to ladle out lamb-and-bean stew from the kettle hanging over the fire. On each bowl she set a slice of fried cornbread. Davy carried the bowls to the passengers now seated at the table.

  The passengers huddled over their meal, eating hungrily. Annie had noticed that some groups of passengers were friendly with each other, joking merrily as they ate. Others—like this one—were silent, maybe even downright sour. Cooped up together day and night for three weeks as they rumbled across the continent, maybe they’d gotten on each other’s nerves.

  Billy sidled into the house, shaking rain off his jacket. He winked at Annie. She rolled her eyes. She knew that Billy should be in the barn; Express riders were expected to work around the station between relays. Still, she ladled out a bowl of stew for him.

  Davy popped up beside the woodbox. “Want to play the memory game, Davy?” Billy asked in an undertone. Davy nodded eagerly and plopped onto the bench beside Billy.

  “Look around the room, then,” Billy instructed Davy. “Fix in your mind everything you can see. If you want to be an Indian scout like I do, you’ve got to be sharp-eyed.”

  Annie perched on the end of the bench, twirling the tip of one braid as she studied the room. She and Billy had played this game often, and Annie was good at it. She counted five coach passengers. There was a brown-haired woman in black, and her son—about eight years old, Annie guessed, with a chubby, spoiled face. Across the table from them sat two men with gray beards—one stout, with a red face, the other thin, pale, and wrinkled. “Red Fred and Dick the Stick,” Billy whispered in Annie’s ear. She smiled but nudged him to be quiet.

  The fifth passenger, a thin man with glasses, held up his bowl. “May I have some more?” he asked in a reedy voice.

  “Mr. Peeper,” Billy whispered. Annie couldn’t help but grin as she jumped up to serve the food.

  The station door opened and the sixth passenger walked in, his head and shoulders soaked with rain. Annie guessed he’d gone to the outhouse. He was a young blond man with a yellow handlebar mustache. Raindrops dripped from its two absurdly curled ends. “Goldilocks,” Billy whispered. Annie clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

  Annie looked over at Davy. He’d slid down to the hearth and was staring into the fire, daydreaming. “So much for the memory game,” she murmured to Billy. “Some Indian scout he’d make.”

  “Aw, he’s just a pup,” Billy said. “No telling how he’ll turn out when he grows up.”

  Annie sighed. “I don’t reckon Davy will ever measure up for Pa. I mean, look how hard Pa is on me—he’s so disappointed I’m a girl. It don’t matter that I can hunt and ride and shoot—he wants a boy who can do all that. But that sure ain’t Davy.”

  Billy set down his bowl with a clatter. “Well, I can do all those things, and your pa ain’t a’tall fond of me. I reckon he’s just hard to please.”

  Jeremiah and the guard came in from the barn, soon followed by Mr. Dawson and the coach driver, Mr. Slocum. Annie scurried to fetch their food. Jeremiah took a bowl of stew from her with a husky. “Thanks” and tugged the end of one of her pale braids. Annie flashed him a little smile.

  Then she handed a bowl to the coach guard, a heavyset man in an olive green coat. He took it with a cheerful, hungry look. She didn’t recall seeing him before. She remembered Mr. Slocum, though—a tall, silver-haired, rugged man with cold, hawklike blue eyes. “Best jehu on the Overland Trail,” she’d heard her pa say, using the common nickname for coach drivers. “And don’t he know it.”

  Nate Slocum stood eating by the front door, peering out into the rain. Then he turned to the room, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Folks, we’ll stay here overnight,” he announced. “With this storm, it don’t make sense to travel in the dark. And Mr. Dawson thinks it’ll take him an hour or so to mend that wheel rim.”

  He glared at Pa, as if he thought the repair could be done faster. Annie threw a nervous glance at her father, remembering her parents’ conversation earlier. Was Pa’s job at stake?

  Suddenly from the barn came frantic whinnying, and then a high, wild neigh. Annie froze, dropping the stew ladle. For a moment there was utter silence. Then a splintering crash split the night.

  Jeremiah, Mr. Dawson, and Nate Slocum jumped to their feet. They ran out the station door, leaving it open behind them. Billy and the stagecoach guard hurried out after them, and the others crowded anxiously in the doorway. Seized with dread, Annie squirmed forward through the crowd. Unearthly as that animal cry had been, there was something familiar in it.…

  Hoping against hope, Annie peered out into the wet darkness. Her heart lurched as she saw a black-and-white blur in the barn doorway. The world seemed to stop for an instant. It was Magpie, bucking grotesquely, hooves flailing, eyes rolling.

  Annie clung to the rough doorpost, feeling sick and hollow. What was wrong with Magpie? It almost looked as if …

  Had Magpie gone mad?

  CHAPTER 4

  AN EXTRA CHANCE

  Fiercely Annie shoved past the coach passengers in the doorway. Mrs. Dawson reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Let the men handle this,” she muttered.

  The scene in the yard was blurred by rain, but Annie could see Jeremiah trying to get a rope around Magpie’s neck. As the men hemmed her in, Magpie wrenched away, pitching her body sideways. Annie spotted Billy by the horse’s head, trying desperately to grab her halter.

  Behind them, the coach guard dashed out of the barn, whip in hand. When Annie saw the whip, she lunged forward, a cry rising in her throat. Mrs. Dawson yanked her back, more firmly this time.

  She heard someone in the crowd behind her say, “Give it a good lashing—that’d make the beast mind its manners.” Annie spun around. The passenger that Billy had called Goldilocks was grinning to the bespectacled man beside him. He looked startled at the glare Annie gave him, and nervously twirled his mustache.

  When she turned back, she saw a rope looped crazily around Magpie’s neck, with Jeremiah tugging on its end. Annie bit her lip, watching the rope tauten and strain. The men began to close in on the horse again. Magpie made strange bleating whinnies. Annie shut her eyes tight.

  “Should we wrestle her into the barn?” she heard Jeremiah’s voice shout, almost lost in the drumming rain.

  “No—the way she’s kicking, she might crash through a wall,” her father yelled back. “She could get hurt, and for sure she’d get the other horses all stirred up. Better put her out in the corral.”

  As she opened her eyes again, Annie saw the five men shoving and leaning against the frantic horse, forcing her into the corral next to the barn. Magpie, resisting, dug in with her hooves, splattering their faces with mud. But with all hands working, she was pushed inside the fence at last. Jeremiah dashed out after the other men, slamming the gate shut. The men headed back toward the house.

  Relieved that the struggle was over, the onlookers moved with a murmur of conversation back to the table and hearth. Only Annie was left, clinging fearfully to the doorpost. Alone, she watched Magpie snort and make a few confused runs at the split-rail fence, as if aiming to jump it. Then she stopped, stiff-legged, wheezing, head hanging low. Annie saw a dreadful spasm twist the mare’s body. The white patch on her withers shuddered and twitched.

  A few yards away, Annie could hear the Overland employees, huddling under the wide, overhanging eaves of the station house. She strained to catch their conversation through the dull rainfall. “She was fine when I
changed her shoe this noontime,” Mr. Dawson was protesting. “Gentle as always. My little girl held her head while I was shoeing her.”

  “These wild ponies—I’ve seen ’em go loco like this,” she heard Jeremiah say in a glum voice. “They go back to being wild, being feared of humans. There ain’t no cause, and there ain’t no cure. It’s a darn shame to see it happen to a fine horse like Magpie.”

  “Best to shoot it now and put it out of its misery,” put in the guard. There was a rumble of agreement from the other men. “Want me to fetch my gun, Dawson?”

  A cry burst from Annie, and the men halted, turning in surprise. Eyes swimming with hot tears, she rushed forward, breaking into the circle of men. “You can’t shoot her, Pa!” she said urgently. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but you’ve got to give her a chance. Magpie’s so sweet-tempered, she wouldn’t turn against humans like that.”

  Her father looked at her, startled. Water dripped from his shaggy dark hair and beard. “Better stay out of this, Annie,” he warned.

  Annie dug her fingernails into her palms. “But Pa, I know that horse,” she pleaded. “I’ve slept in her stall—she’s eaten her oats right out of my hand. A horse like that doesn’t go wild again.”

  Billy raised his voice. “You’re a good horseman, Mr. Dawson—you know what she’s saying is true.”

  Pa flashed him a sharp glance.

  “She must be sick or hurt.” Annie pressed her point. “Why don’t we send for Redbird Wilson? She knows a lot about healing animals. Remember the time we took her that goat with the broken leg?”

  Her father hesitated, considering. They could hear a dull thud as Magpie flung herself against the side of the barn. “Well, I don’t know,” he said, his gaze flickering toward Nate Slocum. “I guess it’s worth a try. After all, she’s one of the fastest ponies the Express has got.”

  The stagecoach guard folded his thick arms. “Who’s this Redbird Wilson you’re talking about?” he asked curiously, cocking one eyebrow.