Rodeo Rocky Read online

  “Yeah, sure.” Satisfied with the deal, the organizer shrugged. “Come back and tell me that in a couple of weeks, after you’ve tried to break him in.” He turned his back and strolled off, leaving them to back their horse out of the squeeze and deal with him as best they could.

  “Don’t listen to him!” Kirstie told Sandy.

  Hadley was nowhere to be seen, and they were still waiting for Lisa to show up with Lennie Goodman and a solution to the ride home with Rodeo Rocky. Meanwhile, two of the wranglers had stepped in to help them back the wild horse into the empty corral. After a few difficult minutes, they’d succeeded in getting close enough to open the back gate of the chute and let him find his own way out. Rocky had backed up, kicking and writhing, then lashed out with his heels when he found himself free of the trap. He’d run himself to a standstill around the corral and stood now, breathing heavily, covered in flecks of sweat, at the other side of the corral.

  “We’ve got our work cut out,” Sandy murmured, looking him over with a practiced eye.

  “But we’ll do it!” Still brimming over with joy that they’d saved the stallion from the rodeo, Kirstie wouldn’t let doubts cloud her day. She looked around eagerly for Lisa’s return.

  “It’ll mean tightening our belts for the rest of the summer,” her mother warned. “We paid more than we could afford. Maybe we’ll even have to sell one or two horses in the Half Moon remuda to make up some of the money.”

  Kirstie only half-heard. She’d spotted Lisa and her grandpa pushing through the crowd to join them.

  “Still, we made the decision,” Sandy said more firmly. “And I’m glad. Rocky’s a fine horse!”

  “A great horse!” A smile spread across Kirstie’s face as she spoke the words. A beautiful, free-spirited, wild stallion with the wide open plains of Wyoming in his blood and a dream of liberty in his head.

  “That’s sure good of you, Lennie.” Sandy Scott gladly accepted the trailer-park owner’s offer of a lift home for Half Moon Ranch’s new horse.

  “Lucky I drove down with the horse trailer,” the old man told her, keeping a wary eye on Rocky as he backed the pickup truck through the gate of the corral. “I brought it for a friend to do some business at the sale barn tomorrow, but I sure don’t mind helping you folks out.” He leaned out of the driver’s window and jerked his gray head toward the mustang. “I hear you paid out a lot of money for this guy?”

  As Sandy, Lisa, and Kirstie got to work unbolting the trailer ramp, Sandy explained how the surprise deal had come about. “We plan to work with the horse for a few weeks, get him used to the others in the remuda, put a saddle on his back, and gradually train him to be part of the trail-riding team.”

  “But first you got to get him home.” Lennie jumped from the cab and took a good look at Rocky, who had raised his head and tensed up at the sight and sound of the truck and trailer. Lisa’s small, wiry grandfather kept his distance while he decided how they were going to persuade the horse into the box. “Are you gonna leave that saddle on him?” he asked.

  “We’ve no choice,” Kirstie told him. “We can’t get close enough to take it off.”

  “No problem. Hadley or Charlie can bring it down to Wade tomorrow.” Sandy rolled back her sleeves and began to move quietly toward the horse. “Easy, boy,” she murmured, stopping to wait a while as Rocky pawed the ground, then reared up. His lead rope swung loose, the end knocking against his legs as he landed.

  As they waited for the horse to settle, Kirstie spotted Hadley standing quietly by the gate. He’d been showing the Half Moon guests around the rodeo grounds, but now she stole over and drew him to one side to give him the good news. “Look what we bought for the ranch!”

  “Yeah, I heard.” The old ranch hand scarcely opened his mouth to reply. He studied the stallion with narrowed eyes. “Reminds me of a saying my first ranch boss used to have way back,” he muttered. “Old Wes Douglas. His number-one rule was, ‘A horse is a dangerous machine. You hurt him first, or he’ll hurt you.’”

  “Oh, no way!” Kirstie shot back. The idea of inflicting more pain on Rodeo Rocky went against everything she felt and believed.

  “You got some other way of showing him who’s boss?”

  She flicked her hair back from her face. “Maybe.”

  Before the argument with the old wrangler could develop, Kirstie went to help her mother. Sandy had edged in toward the bay stallion and reached forward, slow and smooth, to grasp the end of the lead rope, which trailed along the ground. She stood up without tightening it. “Good boy!” she breathed.

  Rocky’s eyes rolled as he breathed in Sandy’s smell. He backed off into a corner, pulling the rope taut as he went. The second he realized she was holding it, he jerked his strong neck and whipped it from her hand.

  “OK, I could do with some help,” Sandy called, giving up the patient approach. Soon the corral would be needed again, so they would have to work faster to get Rocky out.

  Hadley and Lennie moved up alongside her and Kirstie, keeping the horse pinned against the fence. Though Kirstie didn’t like it, she had to stand by as Hadley beckoned a couple of rodeo workers to join them with lassos at the ready. Almost before she knew it, the ropes were thrown around Rocky’s head and the struggle began again.

  The stallion kicked and strained. He skittered and twisted, reared up, then trampled the dusty ground.

  “Bring the truck up close!” Hadley yelled at Lennie, who ran to reverse the trailer.

  “Stand clear!” Sandy warned the girls.

  The men took the strain on the ropes as Rocky bucked and reared, the low rumble of the truck’s engine sending him into another frenzy of defiance.

  “Move him forward!” Hadley grunted.

  “Yes, sir!” One of the rodeo men whipped the end of a rope down hard on the horse’s buttock. The sudden pain shot Rocky forward toward the lowered ramp. His hooves clattered against it as, once more, the man whipped him on.

  Kirstie swallowed hard, longing for the episode to be done with. Soon, soon they would be able to set Rocky loose in Red Fox Meadow, by the cool, clear water of Five Mile Creek.

  But meanwhile, he would have to endure the dark, stuffy trailer, the slam of the door as the ramp went up, the rocking and swaying of the journey home. Inside the metal box, the horse stamped and screamed.

  “OK, let’s go!” Sandy said quickly. “Kirstie and Lisa, you ride with Lennie. Hadley and I will follow with the ranch guests.”

  As they sprang into action and Lisa ran around the front of the trailer to jump in her grandfather’s cab, Kirstie paused long enough to catch a look pass between her mom and Hadley. She overheard a snatch of quiet conversation, before Lisa yelled for her to join them in the cab.

  “… Don’t look at me like that!” Sandy protested. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “What did I say?” Hadley shrugged as he slotted the last bolts of the raised ramp into place.

  “You don’t have to say anything. It’s the way you look.”

  The skeptical old ranch hand shrugged again.

  “So, go ahead, say it!” Sandy challenged. “Say what’s on your mind.”

  Hadley stood up straight, listening to the horse throwing himself around inside the trailer. “OK,” he nodded, with a glance at Kirstie as she climbed into the cab. He spoke under his breath, so that she had to strain to hear. “You want to know something? I think you just made a big—I mean, a big—mistake!”

  The round pen by the barn was empty except for Jitterbug and Lucky when Lennie Goodman pulled in through the arched entrance of Half Moon Ranch. The other horses were out in the meadow, enjoying a well-earned afternoon’s rest.

  Kirstie’s older brother, Matt, looked up from the work he was doing with the palomino and the sorrel. He quickly unhitched the lunge rein from Jitterbug’s halter, looped it over the white fence, and strode across the yard to greet the truck as it parked by the gate of the pen.

  “What the—?” Hearing the disturbance f
rom inside the trailer, Matt stopped short.

  “We’ll tell you later!” Kirstie thrust open the door and jumped down. It had been fifteen miles of hell for Rocky on the twisting, rough road out of town along Route 5, almost an hour of torment for Kirstie and Lisa as they tried to block their ears from the horse’s frightened squeals. Now they had to unload him from Lennie’s trailer and get him into the safety of the fenced pen.

  Too busy to answer Matt’s puzzled questions, she left her brother to Lennie Goodman and urged Lisa to help her lower the ramp.

  “No, wait!” Lisa looked around the empty yard and across at the barn. She yelled at a figure standing in the wide doorway. “Charlie! We could do with some help!”

  The young, dark-haired ranch hand threw down a rake and came running. When he reached the trailer and peered inside, he gave a low whistle. “Wow!”

  “Let’s get him out!” Kirstie pulled at the heavy bolts, anxious to free Rocky from his ordeal. “Open the gate, Charlie.”

  Charlie Miller swung into action without asking any questions. He set the open gate to form a barrier that would stop the stallion from running off across the yard, then he ran around to the far side of the trailer to join Lennie and Matt, who were by now ready for the horse to come out. Once they were in place, Kirstie slid the last bolt free and lowered the ramp.

  Rocky reacted to the sudden light and rush of fresh air into the box by ducking his head and charging. Out he came, clattering over the metal onto firm ground, past the three men and two girls, who stepped back to avoid his flying hooves. He sensed the sky above, the snow-capped mountains in the distance, the river water running through the valley. Freedom.

  He was out of the trailer into the round pen, going wild, his rodeo saddle wrenched to one side, stirrups swinging wide, dirt flying from under his feet.

  “Wow!” Charlie breathed. “Some horse!”

  “Watch out!” Matt yelled at Kirstie and Lisa, as Rocky raced around the edge of the pen, too close for comfort.

  Driven crazy by forty-eight nightmare hours, the wild stallion careered toward Kirstie’s own horse, Lucky, and the skittish sorrel that Matt had been working with when they arrived.

  Jitterbug saw Rocky charge at her. Head high, dancing nervously in his path, she seemed not to know which way to turn.

  “Get out of the way!” Once more Matt yelled a warning and waved his arms above his head.

  Lucky took heed and trotted quickly to the far side of the pen. But the dainty mare froze as Rocky charged. The stallion bared his teeth, snatched at her neck, and missed. He wheeled around, kicking savagely, striking out at the horse that stood in his way. The kicks landed with a thud. Jitterbug squealed and sank to her knees.

  Seconds later, when Rocky had charged on and the dust had cleared, Kirstie saw the mare splayed out. Blood trickled from her nose. A dark red stain seeped slowly into the pale yellow ground.

  4

  The sun was low and red-gold over Eagle’s Peak when the vet, Glen Woodford, arrived from San Luis. Aspens and oaks rustled in the breeze on the banks of the creek, where a dozen ranch guests enjoyed the usual Thursday evening cookout of barbecued chicken.

  The visitors had arrived back at Half Moon with Hadley and Sandy only minutes after Rodeo Rocky had brought Jitterbug down with his savage kick. Shocked at first, they’d quickly gotten over the incident, and were now relaxing outdoors, listening to Dale Lavin play guitar as the sun went down.

  “It’s a good thing you called me out,” Glen told Sandy Scott as he examined the sorrel mare’s cut face.

  Kirstie stood in the background, behind her mother and brother, beside a subdued Lisa.

  “She bled real bad!” Lisa whispered with a small shudder.

  “Sure.” The vet cleaned the gash on the horse’s nose with a white gauze pad. “There’s an artery runs right down this side, see. There’s always a lot of bleeding when a blood vessel is damaged.”

  Kirstie recalled how Hadley and Charlie had held Rocky at bay while she and Lisa had helped Jitterbug to her feet and out of the round pen into the nearby barn. She glanced down at her hands to see that they were streaked with dried blood from the sorrel’s injury.

  By the time Matt had run to the ranch house to call the vet, Sandy had driven through the ranch gates to be greeted by the chaotic scene. Just thirty minutes later, Kirstie’s mom had settled the guests and Glen had arrived.

  “Who put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding?” the vet asked, taking suture equipment out of his bag and injecting a local anesthetic before he stitched the gash.

  “Kirstie did.” Lisa gave her friend a worried smile. “She didn’t freak out, she just went ahead and did first aid until her mom got here.”

  “That’s good.” Glen Woodford worked quickly and skillfully, kneeling in the straw beside the injured horse. His closely cropped, dark hair was flecked with gray, his tanned face marked with fine lines under the eyes. “It means she stands a better chance of a quick recovery. We don’t need to give her a transfusion; just a few sutures, a shot of antibiotics, a top-up of sedatives, and she’ll be just fine.”

  “Poor Jitterbug.” Sandy crouched down beside the vet. “I bet you never knew what hit you.”

  As Glen finished his work and clicked his bag shut, he looked around at the watching group. “So where’s the brute who did this?”

  “Still in the round pen,” Matt reported, his face lined with a deep frown. “I cleared Lucky out of there real quick, but the bay made it plain he wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “So let’s take a look at him.” The vet led the way out of the barn and into the lengthening shadows of the corral. The round pen stood beyond the area where the horses were saddled and made ready for the daily trail rides, behind the long, low wooden tack room.

  “I don’t reckon the bay was hurt,” Matt said in a cold, unsympathetic voice. “Just too crazy to know what he was doing.”

  Kirstie followed silently, unable to argue for Rocky. But she understood why he’d done it. “I’d like to see how they’d all act if they’d been treated the way he was!” she muttered to Lisa.

  “I guess.” The uneasy answer came as the two girls arrived at the pen.

  The bay stallion stood in the deep shadow cast by the tack room wall. His coat looked almost black, the whites of his eyes glinted eerily as he stamped his feet and tossed his head.

  Glen Woodford leaned against the fence and took a long, hard look. “That’s a fine, big horse,” was his first comment.

  “But?” Matt prompted, guessing from the vet’s tone that there was more to follow.

  “But he’s a horse with problems, that’s for sure. See how he pushes his nose in the air, walks backward, acts up every which way he can?”

  They all observed Rocky’s restless antics.

  “What are you saying?” Matt’s voice broke the silence.

  “I’m saying, first you gotta keep this horse away from the others,” Glen told them firmly. “The mean streak that made him kick out at Jitterbug could run deep. And second, you can try working with him the way you would with other mustangs; roping him and getting him used to bit and bridle. But don’t go getting your hopes up too high.”

  “Meaning?” Kirstie’s brother gave her a meaningful look, making sure she got the message straight.

  Glen Woodford sighed and took a long time to answer. He’d turned from the pen and begun to walk toward his jeep, parked by the ranch house, before he delivered his final verdict on the stallion. “You can try, like I said. You put in all the work; spend hours, days, weeks with the lunge rein here in the round pen, but my guess is you still won’t break this horse!”

  “The point is, we don’t want to break him!” Kirstie insisted. Deep down she felt that the vet had been wrong about Rodeo Rocky.

  The Scott family sat around the kitchen table with Hadley and Charlie. Lennie and Lisa had left them arguing over the day’s events and driven onto Lone Elm. Now the door onto the porch stood open to let
in the cool evening air. Kirstie watched the tiny hummingbirds hover around the bird feeder in the dim dusk light, seeing them dart their long beaks into the honeyed water in the dish.

  “So tell me how you plan to work with the horse if you don’t want to break him.” Matt pushed aside his empty plate and leaned his elbows on the table. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t have six hours to listen right now.”

  Kirstie screwed her face into a frown. There was no point arguing with her brother in this mood. She looked to her mother for support, but Sandy Scott sat silent and worried.

  “You paid two thousand dollars for a horse no one can ride!” Matt repeated a sentence he’d muttered several times during supper.

  Across the table, Hadley caught his eye and shrugged.

  “Give him a couple of days,” Charlie Miller broke in quietly. They were the first words he’d spoken, either during or after the meal, and he came across shy and awkward as usual. Until January of that year, Charlie had been a college student with Matt in Denver. But he’d grown sick of the city and the rat race and decided to take time out by working as a wrangler on the Scotts’ dude ranch. He’d learned the job quickly under Hadley’s guidance, showing skill at handling the hardworking quarter horses and mustangs, and leading the trail rides with quiet confidence.

  “It’ll take more than a couple of days,” Matt objected, reminding them of Glen Woodford’s verdict on the problem horse.

  Sandy sighed and scraped back her chair as she stood up. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. On the one hand, Glen knows what he’s talking about better than most. And you, too, Hadley. I respect your judgment.”

  Kirstie’s heart sank as she listened to her mom. If the experts were against Rocky, what future did he have here at Half Moon Ranch?

  “On the other hand, I did make a decision back there. OK, so it was a spur of the moment thing, but I reckon I know a good horse. And you have to agree, this is a great-looking animal!”

  Kirstie sat up and nodded. She found she was holding her breath as the family conference moved on.