Black Stallion's Shadow Read online

  “Who?”

  Jim swallowed and turned his head, looking slightly ashamed of what he was thinking. “Julio.”

  Wes frowned. “So what? He used to work for Emerson. Those guys are friends of his. You’re not saying that Julio had anything to do with …”

  “I’m just saying what I saw.”

  “If you want my opinion,” Ellie cut in, “you don’t have to look any farther than next door to find out who’s behind all this.”

  “Please, Ellie,” said Jim.

  Alec could see Ellie starting to get hot. “I can’t believe you guys. Rotasky is the one who stands to gain the most if we go down. It’s so obvious!”

  O’Brien held up his hands. “Don’t you people start squabbling. That won’t get us anywhere. You’re both right in telling me whatever you think is important.” The sheriff sighed and then looked at his watch. “The best thing you all can do is keep your eyes open. In the meantime, I’m going to impound this harness as evidence.”

  The phone rang, and Wes picked up the call. It was from the studio. The producers were sending an agent from their insurance company to the ranch to make a report. Despite the wagon accident, they had decided to go ahead with the PSA. Now more than ever, the relationship between Drover Days and the Humane Council needed to be straightened out. Alec listened to Wes and the man on the phone discuss the most immediate problem—finding an actor to fill in for Dousette.

  Wes hung up the phone. He said that the producers wanted a “name” actor for the spot. Yet finding someone available on such short notice wouldn’t be easy, even under normal circumstances.

  Jim snapped his fingers. “Hey, wait a minute. We don’t have to go scrounging around the casting office for some would-be cowboy star.” He put his hand on Alec’s shoulder. “We have one of the most famous horsemen in the country standing right here.”

  “Right,” Alec said with a laugh. He looked at the others, who just stared back at him. No one else was laughing. The smile slowly worked its way off Alec’s face.

  “How about it, Alec?” asked Wes. “You could easily play Dousette’s part in this thing. It’s simple.”

  “But I’m no actor.”

  “You don’t have to be. Just ride through the canyon with Kramer and Doug Maxwell, the actor who plays Jed, while Frank paces you in the camera car. It’d be a cakewalk for you. The rest, voice-overs and whatnot, we could take care of in the studio later.”

  Alec let the idea sink in for a moment. After the fire and what happened to Pal Joey, it seemed obvious that being on the set with Wes Taylor wasn’t the safest place in the world these days. Yet he liked Ellie and Wes, and his impulse was to help them out. If Kramer and Maxwell were still going through with the shoot, how could he refuse? On the other hand, Alec felt leery of getting involved with Wes Taylor and his crazy business.

  “I don’t know, Wes,” said Alec.

  “Imagine the look on Henry Dailey’s face when he sees you on TV with Paul Kramer.” The thought made Alec smile.

  The others watched Alec and waited for him to answer. Finally he shrugged and said, “Well, that doesn’t seem so bad. Sure. Why not?”

  Wes gave Alec a slap on the back. “Fan-tastic. You’re a lifesaver, kid.”

  Alec walked over to the tack room to get his saddle and bridle. As he came outside, Wes was waiting by the door. The old cowboy caught the puzzled look on Alec’s face. He seemed to be reading Alec’s mind. “Wondering what you’re getting yourself into? Don’t sweat it, Alec. This should be a cinch.”

  “Somehow I feel like I’m forgetting the reason I came here. It certainly wasn’t to start making commercials, even if they are for a good cause.”

  “The Black will get over that shadow-shying business, believe me. Just keep on working him into it nice and slow, like yesterday.”

  “I’m going to take him out to the driveway in a little while and see if we can make any more progress.”

  Wes’s voice softened. “I’m sorry you had to be here for this. Joey, I mean. Guess it’s been a rough couple of days for you and the Black.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Alec. He sighed and walked away.

  CHAPTER 14

  Guessing Games

  Alec carried his saddle, pads and bridle out to the Black’s corral. California sunlight brushed everything with a warm golden color. Two argumentative blue jays squawked at each other from the upper branches of a eucalyptus. Otherwise, Taylor Ranch was unusually quiet.

  The Black waited for Alec at the corral gate. Alec spoke to his horse, looking up into the stallion’s huge, dark eyes. Tiny reflections of his own face stared back at him. He stood there a moment, wondering how the Black really saw him. Did the Black remember Alec as the boy whose life he saved in a shipwreck so many years ago? Could either of them ever forget their struggle for survival on that deserted island? So much had changed since then, yet the bond between them remained. Alec and the Black belonged to each other.

  Afternoon shadows were just beginning to fall when Alec reined the Black out of the corral. They rode down the driveway and alongside the blacktop road fronting the pasture. Inside the fence, some of the other horses nickered as the stallion went by.

  Keeping to the shoulder, Alec and the Black followed the road past the entrance to Sagebrush. Luckily, there was no traffic to contend with. Alec breathed deep and easy. His thoughts wound back to the wagon accident and the question of the cut harness lines. With all the other things going wrong at the ranch recently, the accident couldn’t be seen as just a single event. It must be part of a pattern.

  Perhaps the person responsible was a core member of the film crew, someone who was there for almost every scene. One by one, Alec began to consider everyone he could think of, from director to production assistant. Halfway through his list, Alec stopped. Why would any of the crew want to harm Drover Days? It would put them out of a job. Unless they were being paid off on the side or there was some other unknown reason, that didn’t make sense.

  This fact was doubly true for those who lived at the ranch. Jim seemed a devoted member of the family. Mike had already proven his loyalty by trying to save the wagon team from crashing. No one at the ranch or on the crew had any known reason to hurt Drover Days, though they might have the most opportunities.

  Then suddenly Alec thought of Julio. Why was he talking to those men from Emerson’s Ranch? The question quickly answered itself: because he used to work for them. They were his friends. With a sigh, he shifted his weight in his saddle and tried not to think about it anymore.

  Alec turned the Black around when he reached a gas station on the outskirts of Sky View Terrace. By the time they arrived back at the ranch gate, the afternoon shadows were fanning out around trees and buildings like dark liquid. Shadows. Before this week Alec would have hardly noticed them. Now they seemed to be everywhere.

  Alec rode through the gate at the driveway entrance. Up ahead, a dark shadow hung down from the eucalyptus trees and spread out across the midpoint of the driveway. At the shadow’s edge, the stallion pulled up. He began pawing the dirt, then half reared. He threw back his head and tossed his inky mane. A breeze rustled the leaves of the eucalyptus trees towering overhead. Long, dark seed pods helicoptered down from the upper branches and scattered onto the ground.

  The Black flicked his ears and listened. Slight tremors rippled the stallion’s coat. Beads of sweat glistened on his flanks.

  Alec thought about what he had to do. He leaned forward, pressing his head next to the Black’s neck. Clucking softly, he cued the Black to back up into the shadow. The response was tentative, almost awkward, but at last the Black stood quietly in the shadow, just as he had the day before.

  So far, so good, Alec thought. The next step was to get the Black to cross the shadow headfirst. Moving out into sunlight again, Alec reined the Black around. The stallion brought his head within a foot of the shadow’s edge and then stopped.

  Alec didn’t try to force the Black to move fa
rther. He began whistling, soft and low. After a minute, he tried coaxing the Black forward with gentle rocking and the urging of leg pressure. The Black wouldn’t budge. Alec started up a one-sided conversation with his horse, talking about his upcoming TV debut. “It might be fun, you know. I sort of wish we could do it together, but I can’t risk having you around the set anymore, not the way things have been going lately. It’s enough of a risk to take myself.” He talked about Wes and Ellie and the woes of Taylor Ranch. And Alec rambled on about his own personal problems. The words themselves were unimportant. All that mattered was the flow of sound, familiar and reassuring.

  The Black swished his tail at flies. He fluttered his nostrils and twitched his ears. Alec waited patiently. From time to time, he tried another gentle nudge to lure the big horse forward into the shadow. When he did, the Black resisted stubbornly, bracing himself and keeping his hooves planted firmly on the ground.

  Alec dismounted to give the Black’s back a rest. He stood by the Black’s head, puzzling over the nature of this thing that troubled his horse. What did the stallion feel, Alec wondered. He kicked at the carpet of seed pods in frustration. “Come on, Black. They’re not holes, just shadows. You won’t trip.” The stallion arched his neck. It made him look larger than life, proud and defiant. His eyes caught the sunlight and flashed brilliantly.

  This wasn’t getting them anywhere, Alec thought. He walked the Black down the drive toward the gate, then turned around and came back to the shadows again.

  Alec assumed the Black would avoid the shadows as before. But this time the Black passed freely through one shadow after another. Alec pinched himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Not since Ruskin’s accident had the stallion crossed a line of shadow on anything vaguely resembling a racetrack.

  “That’s it, fella. Good boy!” Hooking his foot into a stirrup, Alec swung himself into the saddle and tried to retrace the stallion’s steps. But with Alec up, the stallion began to balk again. Alec tried to figure out what was going on. Could it be that the Black balked at shadows only when Alec was riding him?

  For the first time, it dawned on Alec that he might be the one with the shadow phobia, not the Black. Perhaps Ruskin’s spill at Santa Anna had frightened him more than he knew. Maybe he had been unconsciously telegraphing his own fear to the Black ever since. It was hard for him to accept the idea that he could have a problem this big and not know it. He reined the Black around and started back to find Wes.

  Outside the office Wes stood talking with a man in a suit who Alec guessed was the insurance agent sent by the production company. After the man got into his car and left, Alec told Wes what had just happened. Wes listened and then nodded slowly. “I was thinking that you might have more to do with all this than you realized.”

  Alec frowned. “I don’t feel like I’m riding different than usual. I just can’t believe that it’s me who’s scared of shadows.”

  “That’s easy enough to find out. Let’s put someone else up on the Black, run them up the driveway and see if the Black balks at the shadow. If he doesn’t, then we’ll know the problem is coming from you.”

  Alec shook his head. “No one can ride the Black but me, Wes, remember?”

  Wes snapped his fingers. “I forgot about that. Well then, if we can’t test the Black with another rider, we’ll have to test you with another horse.”

  After taking the Black back to his corral, Alec saddled Lowball and brought him out to the driveway. On Wes’s signal he put Lowball in motion. The big Thoroughbred responded eagerly to Alec’s urging, sweeping through one shadow after another at a gallop.

  “So much for that theory,” Alec said as he dismounted beside Wes. The old cowboy thought a moment.

  “Maybe. But you might be more nervous on the Black than you would be on any other horse—so that last experiment’s pretty meaningless.”

  Alec groaned. It was Wes’s theory that was meaningless. He felt like Wes was grasping at straws. Alec took off Lowball’s tack and turned him loose in the pasture.

  Every day that passed seemed to make the situation more confusing.

  Late that night, Alec and Ellie met out by the Black’s corral. Alec told her about the training session. “Yesterday I felt sure that the Black was recovering. Now I’m starting to question myself as well as the Black.” Ellie heard the frustration in Alec’s voice.

  “At least the Black isn’t as hung up as you thought he was.”

  “Yes, but we still can’t race.”

  Ellie didn’t let him feel sorry for himself very long. “You think you have problems? I’ve just been doing the books. A couple more weeks like this and Rotasky will be calling this Sagebrush West.” She gestured around her and then looked up at the stars. “Just be glad you’re not in a hospital bed, like Dousette.”

  “How’s he making out, anyway?”

  “They’re keeping him under observation in case of internal injuries. If he checks out okay, they should release him in a few days.”

  After a moment’s silence, Ellie told Alec that she’d been looking around the tack room earlier. “Thought maybe I could uncover a clue to who got in there and cut those reins. I didn’t find anything, though.”

  “You know, accidents do just happen sometimes.”

  “Maybe so. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who’ll benefit if things keep fouling up and we start missing our loan payments. This land is valuable, and Rotasky wants it.”

  They sat there a while longer, and then Ellie said, “It’s getting late. Think I’ll turn in.”

  “Me too.”

  As she jumped down from the fence Ellie caught the heel of her boot on the lower rail. She slipped and fell to the ground. Alec reached out and lifted her to her feet. Still holding hands, they started back toward the house. Alec gently squeezed her fingers. She returned the gesture before letting go.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” Alec said, “but doesn’t it get lonely for you around here? Don’t you have a boyfriend or anything?”

  “At the moment I wouldn’t know what to do with one.”

  “I was wondering if maybe you and Mike …”

  Ellie smiled. “No. We’re just friends. Mike’s into his career and trying to learn what he can from Pops. Besides, I have the ranch to think about. That’s plenty.”

  Alec nodded. “Just like I have the Black.”

  “And the Black has you. Right now there’s no room for anything else, for either of us.”

  Side by side, they strolled quietly down the rest of the path. Alec said good night and set out for his trailer. As he lay in bed thinking things over, he began to feel a little angry with himself. Every day he seemed to become more involved with the ranch and further from uncovering a cure to the shadow shying. What had possessed him to sign on to do that stupid PSA? He let out a deep sigh. Whatever it was, there would be no turning back now.

  CHAPTER 15

  More Surprises

  By the time Alec finished feeding the Black the next morning, the place was swarming with cast and crew. The day’s schedule called for taping a fake fight between Rex and a big stag deer. It sounded risky. Even by himself, Rex could be a handful and a half. Alec wondered how Wes was going to manage the stunt.

  Inside the filming corral, the Drover Days crew set up the sound, camera and lighting equipment. After yesterday’s accident, no one was taking any chances. They checked and rechecked the equipment down to the last detail, then checked it again. As always, they joked around while they worked. Yet there was something desperate in the air, something forced about their laughter, as if they just wanted to get the scene over with before anything else went wrong.

  In the empty corral adjoining the filming corral the wranglers were heightening the fence with extensions. It could then serve as a holding pen for the stag. Mike was back at work today, limping a bit but not complaining. Alec helped Mike nail together a wooden chute connecting the two corrals for the stag.

  Alec looked up from his
work when he heard voices arguing. Predictably, one of them belonged to Wes. The other was Marty Fisher’s.

  Marty waved his hands in the air. “Sure, I’m mad. What do you expect? You’re the one who’s supposed to be in charge of the animals here.”

  “That’s right. I am the one who put Joey down. There was no other choice. And if it happened all over again tomorrow, I’d do the same thing. I won’t let an animal suffer if there’s no hope for him.”

  Marty drew a deep breath to calm his anger. “Look, Wes, this isn’t the first problem we’ve had with you on this shoot. You’ve been stretching the rules since day one. Some of the people back at the office are saying we’re not tough enough on trainers like you.”

  “Not tough enough?” Wes balled his hands into fists. “Come on! The horses on Drover Days get better treatment than the actors—more breaks, shorter hours, no overtime.”

  “What happened to Joey makes us all look bad.”

  “In all the years I’ve been working in this business, I’ve never lost an animal like that.”

  “This is the last warning, Wes. We’re going strictly by the book from now on. Any more screwups and the Humane Council will have to withhold approval of the show. You know what that would mean. The networks won’t touch it.”

  They stood in silence a moment while Wes managed to get hold of his temper. He must have realized that arguing with Marty wasn’t getting him anywhere. “I’m sorry, Marty. I know I fly off the handle with people sometimes. But never with my animals. You know that.”

  Marty nodded. “You push them pretty hard sometimes, Wes.”

  “Sure, but I always get the job done without anyone getting hurt.”

  “Until yesterday.”

  “Yeah,” echoed Wes, “until yesterday.”

  A white ragtop Cadillac pulling a small horse trailer came rumbling up the drive and parked by the shooting corral. A burly man with a shaved head and a blond goatee stepped out of the driver’s seat. Three young assistants followed him.

  Ignoring everyone around him, the bald man in the shiny black boots strode to the other side of the corral. Relaxed, almost catlike, he exuded confidence, as if he owned the place and was walking a few inches higher off the earth than everybody else. The man began testing the sturdiness of the extensions in the holding pen.