6. Midnight
Lady Ebony held her course until late afternoon. She was high in the red foothills when she halted. A little stream bubbled over red rocks, willow grew along the banks, and the grass was green. On each side of the water red rocks rose high against the sky. Along the base of the cliffs lay great slabs and piles of stone, broken loose from the walls by wind and rain, piled in confusion over the floor of the wild gorge. Lady Ebony moved among the tumbled rocks. A bobcat bounded from a thicket of rose brier where he had been hunting cottontails. Lady Ebony snorted and shook her head.
She kept moving slowly along the stream until she came to a grove of cottonwoods. Close beside the grove grew a dense thicket of tangled brush. Lady Ebony dropped her head and began pulling the tender gamma grass. She did not look up at the Crazy Kill Range again. After she had eaten her fill she drank at the stream and lay down.
Sunset flamed across the sky and died into cool shadows. The red bluffs changed from deep purple to slate gray. By almost unnoticeable degrees the moon brightened and flooded the valley and the cliffs changed color to match the white light. Now they were silvery with bands and squares of black shadows across them. And the stars hung, big and white, close to the ragged tops of the rims.
In this garden of red rocks close beside the little stream a colt was born. The morning sun beating down on the floor of the gorge shone on a wobbly little horse crowding close to Lady Ebony’s side.
The black colt jerked his curly tail and butted his head against his mother’s side as he got his first breakfast. His legs were long and heavy-boned. They were wobbly legs but they showed promise of great strength. His head was finely molded like his mother’s, and his sleek coat was all black, except for a white star in his forehead. That white star and the heavy-boned frame were his inheritance from his father, the chestnut stallion.
Lady Ebony was proud and excited over her handsome jet-black colt—so black that he could well be called Midnight. She kept turning her head, nosing his silky rump, and nickering softly. She was suddenly aware of many things she had scarcely noticed before. She heard a rustling in the thicket and sniffed the warm air nervously. A faint odor of cat came to her and she snorted angrily. A few minutes later a big bobcat stepped out of the thicket and stood looking at her. Lady Ebony shook her head and stamped her feet. The bobcat opened his mouth wide, exposing rows of white teeth and a red tongue. He closed his mouth and his yellow eyes stared at the mare and her colt. Then he humped his sleek back and trotted through the sunshine across the meadow to where his mate was waiting for him.
In one of the big cottonwoods a flicker hammered away at the trunk of the tree. Even this steady rat-a-tat bothered Lady Ebony. And when the flicker’s mate sailed down from the sky and alighted on an anthill she snorted again. The flicker up in the tree deserted his morning task and came down to join his wife in an ant hunt. They danced and cavorted on the anthill, picking up the busy little workers as they swarmed out to repel the invasion.
A yellowbelly whistler came down out of the rocks and set to feeding, sliding along the ground, sitting up to stare intently across the meadow, chuckling to himself as he munched the roots he dug up. He was joined by a pair of cottontail rabbits who stayed close to cover as they fed.
Midnight finished his breakfast and began walking around on his wobbly legs, investigating everything he came to with an inquisitive, pink nose. Lady Ebony followed him nickering nervously. The little fellow halted beside a clump of rattleweed. His ears pricked forward and he listened. From the deep shade under the green leaves came a warning rattle. The buzzing sound was repeated as Midnight’s nose drew closer. Lady Ebony sprang forward and stamped upon the patch of weeds as she shouldered her son away from the danger spot. The colt had met his first enemy, a big rattler.