Read Online Wild Horses by Jenny Oldfield - Free Book Online

She’d reached the end of the canyon and come up against a sheet of water falling from a high ledge.
    “Is this it?” Lisa craned her neck and stared up at the waterfall, created by several streams running together and meeting on the ledge some fifteen yards above the spot where they stood. It tumbled over fast and furious, splashing into a shallow pool at their feet.
    Nodding, Kirstie walked up to the edge of the pool. She felt the spray on her face, noticed a lower ledge behind the fall which was almost dry because of a rocky overhang. “Why isn’t this pool deeper?” she queried, still listening, looking, investigating.
    Lisa too studied the spot. It was clear that many gallons of water per second were pouring down the fall, but that the pool where it landed was neither big nor deep. “Maybe the water drains out someplace?”
    Kirstie edged around the pool. “But where? This is supposed to be the spot where Dead Man’s Canyon ends. It’s solid rock. There’s no place for the water to run out.”
    “Through here.” Lisa pointed to where the surface of the pool swirled with eddies and small currents. She saw that the water was channelled away at the base of the low ledge. “There’s a kind of stream at the back of the waterfall, beside this ledge.”
    Quickly Kirstie ran to join her. “Water can’t run through solid rock!” she gasped. It could vanish underground, but what Lisa was saying was that it ran away in a stream above the ground. Which meant there was a gap in the rock!
    “There’s a gully!” Lisa was still one step ahead. She was down on her hands and knees, crawling onto the ledge behind the fall.
    Almost deafened by the crashing water, Kirstie followed. The ledge sloped downhill and ran the width of the waterfall.
    “Hey!” Suddenly Lisa stopped.
    “What? What is it?” All Kirstie could see was a sheet of water to her left, a wall of rock to her right, and Lisa in front.
    “The stream runs along a kind of gully.” Lisa turned to whisper, as if she could hardly believe what she saw. “Like a chasm. Really narrow. But I think it opens out again.”

    “Let’s go!” Kirstie felt her stomach tighten into a knot. A hidden entrance to a place she never suspected before!
    So they crept on, behind the thundering water, until the ledge flattened out, turned to the right, and led them on between a narrow, tall crevice where the stream ran away from the waterfall.
    “Hey,” Lisa whispered. “Do we really want to do this?” She was squeezing down the gully, up to her ankles in water, feeling closed in by tall rocks.
    “We do,” Kirstie insisted. The gully and the stream behind the fall held the answers to all her questions. She felt they would soon solve the mystery of the missing black stallion. “We really do!”
    There was a green clearing at the end of the hidden gap with the stream flowing gently across. Grass grew, aspen trees clung to the rocky slopes, dripping moisture. A well-kept, living secret behind Dead Man’s Canyon.
    “Did you know about this place?” Lisa stood in the small meadow shaking her head. She turned on the spot, looking all around.
    Kirstie saw a pale brown hawk swoop from one of the trees, across the cloudy sky. “No way!” she breathed.
    A breeze swept through the grass. The aspen leaves quivered, the hawk landed.
    “Does
anyone
know about it?” Lisa’s voice didn’t lift above a whisper.
    “Charlie doesn’t. I don’t know if Hadley does. Maybe my grandpa did.” Kirstie stepped into the middle of the clearing. She noticed the bright blue columbines growing in the long grass. “He’d know all the grazing land for the cattle. I used to come on roundups in the spring and fall, but I never came here before.”
    “… Kirstie!” Lisa broke in. She grabbed her arm and pointed.
    There was a thicket of young aspens at the far side of the clearing. The trees were clustered thickly, good camouflage for any living creature.
    Kirstie saw a dark movement.