Third-Time Lucky (11 page)

Silence on Rainbow Mountain. Deep, dark night.

“OK, boy?” Kirstie whispered, her voice shaking. “Yeah, I know, this stuff gets weirder. And you want to know the weirdest thing of all about the Great Mystery?” She swung out of her hammock and went to stroke a trembling Lucky. “I really, really believe it’s gonna work!”

In the gray dawn light Zak Stone came to get Kirstie and Lucky.

“This is the good time,” he said, a faraway look in his dark eyes.

Kirstie struggled out of a deep sleep. She’d dreamed of herds of wild horses galloping over golden plains, their limbs fluid, coats gleaming. The dream horses made no noise, their hooves seeming not to touch the ground as they swept across the valley toward mountains lost in purple haze.

Now she opened her eyes to cold dew and white mist on the ground. Quickly she unzipped her sleeping bag and tipped herself out of the hammock. She saw Lucky standing patiently nearby, his coat wet, his broken stance suggesting the continued agony of hardly being able to breathe. And she could hear the gasping intake of air, the long, slow rattle out again, which told her that he was, as yet, no better.

“Where’s Matt?” she mumbled, zipping up the fleece jacket that she’d kept on all night. Her tangled hair tumbled over her face; she shivered as she gazed around the enclosed green meadow.

“Still sleeping.” Zak offered no explanation, but made it clear that Matt’s presence on the mountain wasn’t needed. Taking deep breaths, he began to concentrate on Lucky, walking in a slow circle around him, taking in every symptom of his sickness: the horse’s drooping head and swollen limbs, the strange, double heave of his ribs as he breathed out. Coming full circle to where Kirstie waited, he nodded then walked on.

This must mean it was time to talk to the spirits. For a second or two, Kirstie panicked. Would she need a head collar and lead rope? Should she be there at all? Or was it just down to Zak Stone and Lucky?

The answer to the first question was no. As if he understood something of what was happening, Lucky followed the tall, silent man out of the meadow. Each step was painful and difficult—down the grassy track, past the sluice box where water spouted and tumbled into the pool, up a stony slope toward the cliff top which overhung Zak’s cabin.

Still in doubt, Kirstie watched Lucky’s slow progress. Only when Zak reached the top of the cliff, turned and gestured for her to come, did she set off after them. She scrambled quickly up the slope, sending loose stones rattling downhill, disturbing a ground squirrel who’d been peering out of long grass. The squirrel in turn set off a couple of jays who screeched and clattered out of the branch of a pine tree then swooped and landed on the roof of Zak’s cabin below.

Reaching the flat, wide ledge, she rested one hand on Lucky’s shoulder, trying to make out some special feature that would set the place apart. To the right was the sheer drop of about fifty feet, to the left a series of smooth, strangely shaped boulders, marked with crevices where lichens and blue, bell-shaped flowers grew. “Is this Thunder Rock?” she asked.

For answer, Zak continued along the ledge. He disappeared into the mist behind the tallest of the boulders.

Kirstie ran after him, down a narrow channel between two high rocks. “How far is it? I don’t think Lucky can make it much further!”

Zak’s face, only just visible in the dark, damp shadows, was impassive. He stood waiting for the horse, who stumbled along after them. His hooves echoed down the hollow tunnel, his breath was halting, his progress agonizingly slow.

Then the rocks opened out onto a second, domed ledge from where Kirstie could see for miles. Hills rolled away from them in the silent dawn, rising to snowcapped peaks in the far distance. The ledge faced east, and as she, Zak, and Lucky emerged, she saw a sliver of red sun appear from behind a mountain, lighting up the gray sky. The Big Sky. Kirstie looked up as the glow from the sun spread, turning everything it touched from sleep to waking, from cold to life-giving warmth.

“This is Thunder Rock,” Zak said, pointing to a huge expanse of dark gray granite, still in the shadows. It rose like a whale’s back to their right, bare and stern, some thirty feet above the ledge. “The home of the spirits.”

Kirstie nodded and narrowed her eyes, standing close to Lucky and putting a protective arm around his neck.

As they turned away from the rock to face the rising sun, light spilled across the valley. It touched Kirstie’s face with a promise of warmth, slid across the ledge, and tipped the rounded peak of Thunder Rock. Gray granite glittered pink.

“Bring your horse to the foot of the rock and stay there with him,” Zak told her. “Understand that the great horse spirit dwells here in Thunder Rock and that I will ask him to protect Lucky and take away his sickness.”

Shaking, Kirstie obeyed. She led her beloved palomino into the cold shadow at the foot of Thunder Rock, fearing, hoping …

Quietly Zak began. “I call upon the Great Spirit, the all powerful god, Wakan Tanka. I ask him to send his spirit to this rock to protect and heal this horse.”

In the long silence, facing the east, Kirstie kept her hand on Lucky’s quivering neck. She saw the sun melt the shadows and raise the mist, shining bright across the valley.

Facing them, his face dark yet serene, Zak breathed slow and deep. He raised his hands skyward, gazing intently, eyes following a shape which seemed to swoop down from the sky and settle above Lucky’s head. When Kirstie turned to glance over her shoulder, expecting perhaps an eagle or a hawk, she saw nothing.

“Mighty spirit, I accept your presence in the great dawning of a new day,” Zak whispered. He lowered his hands and bowed his head.

Kirstie felt a pressure on her chest. She had to gasp for breath, closed her eyes to steady herself before she breathed out slowly. Opening them, she found Zak at Lucky’s side.

“In this moment, in this dwelling place of the spirits, come to me, Wakan Tanka. Work your Great Mystery through these hands.”

He reached out and placed his broad palms on Lucky’s trembling back, kept them there until he felt the horse’s muscles relax. Then he moved his hands slowly over the feeble, ailing body, passing them over his ribcage, bringing them up to his head. Through it all, the horse stood perfectly still, ears pricked as if listening to something beyond the silence, as if watching a sign in the deepening blue of the sky.

Breathe!
Kirstie reminded herself. She drew air into her lungs.
Breathe!
she told Lucky.
Deep and easy
.

Zak cupped his hands over Lucky’s nostrils and leaned his head against the horse’s head. He held the position in intense, silent concentration.

There was a breeze from the valley. It lifted Lucky’s white mane and ran a shiver down the length of his golden back.

“Breathe!” Kirstie whispered.

Slowly Lucky raised his head and drew a deep, steady breath of cool air.

Zak stepped back, his work complete.

“So, no drums, no dancing?” Matt asked abruptly.

Perched in the fork of an aspen tree, legs swinging, her back against the silver-white trunk, Kirstie shook her head. “No. And I didn’t see a single feather or bead necklace, no fringed deerskin pants, nothing!” As far as traditional dress and music went, the healing ceremony at Thunder Rock could be said to have fallen far short of expectations.

“So tell me!” Matt demanded to know what had gone on. He’d woken in an empty cabin, with the sun streaming in through the window. By the time he’d dressed and made it to the meadow, Kirstie and Lucky were already back from the rock, and Zak was nowhere to be seen.

“It was amazing!” Kirstie sighed. She kept her eyes glued on Lucky, who was quietly grazing at the far side of the culvert.

“That doesn’t tell me anything! What happened exactly?” It was obvious from the frown creasing his forehead that Matt wished he’d been there to witness the healing ceremony. Leaving him behind had made him irritable.

“I can’t describe it.” How did you say that an invisible spirit had moved in the breeze and breathed new life into a sick horse?

“Try. Did he use herbs?”

“Nope.”

“Magic spells?”

“Nope.”

Matt strode around the tree, exasperated and skeptical. “What then?”

Kirstie jumped down to the ground and made her way toward Lucky. “Just faith, I guess.”

“Huh? And did it work?” He followed across the grass, striding ahead to confront her.

But she refused to answer. Sidestepping him, she stood, arms crossed, studying Lucky. He was still weak, no way his normal self. His coat didn’t shine the way it should; he moved awkwardly on those swollen joints. But he was eating contentedly, head down, cropping at the grass and chewing hard. “Listen!” she told Matt.

They heard water trickling through the meadow, leaves rustling.

“What am I supposed to hear?” he demanded.

“Is Lucky struggling for breath?” Kirstie asked, her eyes sparkling, still listening hard as if she couldn’t believe the evidence of her own ears.

Matt stared at the smooth motion of Lucky’s ribcage, in and out without the shuddering double-heave of aborted breath. He shook his head.

“So it worked!”

Thanks to Zak Stone, whatever he did and however he did it, Lucky could breathe easy.

“A horse can sometimes battle against a virus and pull through,” Matt the college-trained skeptic pointed out. “Equine influenza is serious but isn’t fatal in 100 percent of cases, especially if the horse is young and healthy.”

It was Friday evening: twelve hours since Thunder Rock. Zak had stayed away all day, leaving the cabin to Matt and Kirstie, apparently confident that Lucky’s healing had taken effect. The sun had traveled across a blue sky unbroken by clouds, blazing down from its midday height and only now cooling as the shadows lengthened and it sank in the west. Lucky had fed and drunk without a break, making up for the starving, fever-ridden days just past.

At dusk Kirstie had fetched a grooming kit from the trailer, and started work on cleaning Lucky up. She’d brushed the dust out of his coat, raising clouds of the stuff after a week of neglect. She’d been picking dirt out of his hooves when Matt had come along and started into his “There’s gotta be a logical explanation” routine.

“The trachea and lungs can recover once the body’s natural healing mechanisms kick in to defeat the infection,” he explained, cool and reasonable. “Fever constricts the blood vessels, leading to lack of oxygen in the lungs, but, as long as the horse rests, the damage is reversed as soon as his temperature’s back to normal.”

“Sure, Matt.” Kirstie hooked a stone out of a back hoof, her hair swinging forward across her face. “And that happens in a second, like this?” She snapped her fingers and shot him a frowning glance.

He hesitated then came back. “It could happen!”

“And why does it have to be scientific?” she demanded, hooking out more packed dirt. “Why can’t it be a spiritual thing?”

Struggling for an answer, frowning and about to resort to more college stuff, he suddenly changed his mind. “Because I wasn’t there,” he confessed quietly and honestly. “What I didn’t see is real hard for me to believe.”

“And I was, and I do,” she replied. “We were, weren’t we, Lucky? We believe.”

Zak came back at nightfall on his big black-and-white pinto. He rode bareback, with a head collar and rope, no bit or bridle. There was no mention of Thunder Rock.

Supper was bacon, eggs, and hash browns, cooked on his wood stove. The two men drank homemade beer, talked about baseball and cars, discussed the best route for Kirstie, Matt, and Lucky to take through Wyoming, missing the busy tourist roads of Yellowstone Park.

At ten, when Kirstie slipped away with a handful of oats for Lucky, she found that Zak had followed her to the meadow.

“How is he?” he asked, looming up in the darkness, his footsteps making no noise.

“Good!” She felt Lucky’s soft mouth take the food from her hand. Then his rough tongue licked between her fingers. “He’s eating plenty and the swellings are down.”

“Hmm.” Zak’s nod was brief but satisfied. “Your brother, Matt …” he began.