Wild Horses

by Jenny Oldfield

  © 2008 by Jenny Oldfield

  Cover and internal design © 2008 Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover photo © Mark J. Barrett

  Internal illustrations © Paul Hunt

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

  www.sourcebooks.com

  Originally published in Great Britain in 1999 by Hodder Children’s Books.

  Cataloging-In-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  With thanks to Bob, Karen, and Katie Foster, and to the staff and guests at Lost Valley Ranch, Deckers, Colorado

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  About the Author

  1

  Kirstie Scott felt the bounce in Lucky’s stride. His head was up, ears flicking to left and right as she relaxed in the saddle and gave him plenty of rein.

  “Let’s head for Miners’ Ridge,” Charlie Miller called from the front. He reined his horse to the right and led the group of seven riders along a narrow trail between silver aspen trees.

  Great! Kirstie smiled to herself and nudged Lucky on with her legs. Miners’ Ridge, at the end of Meltwater Trail, was one of her favorite treks out from Half Moon Ranch. It would take them by the banks of rushing creeks and waterfalls, through spooky Dead Man’s Canyon.

  Good! Lucky echoed her mood by picking up his pace. He broke into an easy trot, splashing through a shallow stream to catch up with Charlie and tuck himself in behind Moose, the young wrangler’s sturdy gray quarter horse.

  Behind them, the other six riders took things more slowly. It was the last Saturday in May; their first day as paying guests at the Scotts’ ranch. To them, the steep slopes leading through dark pine forests and beyond that to snow-peaked mountains were new and risky.

  “You gotta trust your horses,” Charlie assured them. “They know the trail. All you gotta do is stay in line.”

  Kirstie grinned over her shoulder at the nervous followers. They were visitors from cities and towns, mostly without much riding experience. Trust your horse; that was the key. With a creak of saddle leather, she turned back and gazed straight ahead.

  Sure, it looked difficult. The trail rose sharply, zigzagging between boulders, overhung by branches. But it looked pretty too. The bright green aspen leaves shook and fluttered in the breeze, a carpet of blue columbines grew around the roots. Summer! Kirstie sighed. After the long, cold Colorado winter of snow and ice, the leaves and the flowers were just great.

  Summer was here and school was out. “Good boy, Lucky!” she murmured as her beautiful palomino picked his way between boulders. His rich golden coat looked dappled in the fluttering shadows, his long, creamy mane hung smoothly down his neck.

  No more school through June and July. And her mother had driven to Denver this very morning to pick up Kirstie’s big brother, Matt, from college. The family would be together again. Long days to ride the trails. Blue skies and mountains rolling on forever …

  “Kirstie?” Charlie broke into her dream.

  “Hmm?” She sighed, pushed a wisp of fair hair back from her face, then urged Lucky alongside Moose.

  “Can you lead? I need to check on that guy at the back of the line.”

  “The one who’s riding Silver Flash?” She glanced back at the last rider. The middle-aged man had decided to leave the trail and take a short cut to the front. He’d forced his sorrel-colored mare off the track and shoved her up against a rocky slope which was impossible for Silver Flash to climb. Now he was digging his heels in hard, grunting and leaning forward in the saddle to make the horse go. “Sure,” Kirstie told Charlie, as the wrangler went off to sort the man out.

  She and Lucky went on with the rest of the group, a woman with two teenage sons, and a young married couple. Up ahead, the trail hit a short, level, sunny patch before it climbed again, this time between the tall, scaly trunks of ponderosa pine.

  “This sure is tough going,” the woman behind her remarked as the gloomier trees closed in.

  She was riding Johnny Mohawk, a dainty, sure-footed black horse that Kirstie had helped her mother to buy last fall. Kirstie nodded but said nothing.

  “I sure do hope the weather holds,” the woman went on, an edge of nervousness in her voice.

  Kirstie glanced up. There were glimpses in the distance of clouds gathering over Eagle’s Peak; at 13,000 feet the highest mountain around. “Yep,” she agreed.

  “What happens if it rains? Do we turn back and head for the ranch house?”

  “Nope.” Kirstie didn’t like to talk much while she rode. She preferred silence; to hear the stiff, dry rustle of the pine needles as the wind drove through the trees, to breathe in the sharp woody smells and look out for chipmunks or ground squirrels scurrying on ahead of the horses’ plodding feet.

  So she was glad when Charlie came back up front. “I tell you one thing for sure,” he muttered in Kirstie’s ear as he rode by on Moose. “Some horses are much smarter than your average dude.”

  She grinned back at him. “Silver Flash is a pretty smart horse,” she agreed, pleased to see that horse and dude rider were back in line. She and Charlie often shared a joke. He was nineteen years old, a year younger than her brother Matt, and had come to work at Half Moon just after Christmas. Tall and dark, with cropped, black hair, he wore a thick, big-checked blue and white shirt, worn-out jeans, and battered cowboy boots.

  “How long before we reach Miners’ Ridge?” the nervous woman on Johnny Mohawk asked now, one eye still on the distant rain clouds.

  Charlie rode Moose steadily on, waiting to answer until after he’d helped his horse pick his way across a splashing stream. Then he turned in his saddle and yelled over the sound of the water. “The whole ride should take us three hours or thereabouts.” Pointing to the track of the stream, he showed them where he planned to lead them. “See there, up by the fall? The trail heads off to the left, up to Hummingbird Rock. And past that, you see where the two cliffs meet in a narrow pass?”

  The group of visitors scrunched up their faces, peered up the hill at the rocky horizon, then nodded.

  “That’s Dead Man’s Canyon. We get through there, up onto the ridge until we come across the opening to an old gold mine. And that’s when we start heading for home.” Charlie grinned, then reined Moose to the left, on up the slope.

  It was Kirstie’s turn to take Lucky through the racing stream. She leaned back in the saddle as he strode down the bank, heard the clunk of his hooves as they hit the rocky bed. The white, foaming water splashed up around her boots and jeans. “Trust your horse.” She heard Charlie’s advice inside her head and let Lucky find his own way across. The palomino’s hooves slid and clunked, found solid ground, trod safely on. Ten seconds later, they were through the stream and climbing up the far bank.

  Ten minutes later, after
much urging and encouraging from Charlie, the six visitors had also made it.

  “A little wet around the ankles,” Johnny Mohawk’s rider, Loretta, complained. “But worth it!”

  She smiled at Kirstie and Kirstie smiled back.

  “You know something?” Loretta confided as the group rode on through the ponderosa pines toward Dead Man’s Canyon.

  “Nope,” Kirstie replied, swinging her hair behind her shoulders with a quick toss of her head.

  “I never thought I’d say this when we first came on the trail. I mean, I was pretty darned scared back there…” She settled into her saddle, tucked in behind Lucky, heading for the tall, gray cliff faces that formed the narrow canyon.

  “Say what?” Kirstie glanced back at the slight, pale-faced woman with short, dark hair. Her face was excited and kind of lit up at having crossed the tricky stream. There was a light in Kirstie’s own large, gray eyes. She’d just guessed what Loretta was about to confess.

  “This week here at Half Moon Ranch; I think it’s gonna be a whole lot of fun!”

  Fun and tons of hard work (for the family who ran it), Kirstie thought. She settled back into listening to the wind in the trees as she ended her talk with Loretta and rode on.

  Kirstie had left the city and moved here with her mother and brother just four years ago, when she was nine years old. “Here” was at the end of a five mile dirt road off Route 3 out of San Luis, a small town of one main street, a grocery store, and a gas station, which was another ten miles down the paved road. “Here” was 8,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains, in the Meltwater Range, and it was uphill all the way to Wyoming. Fifteen miles to school each day; three and a half hours by car to Denver, where she’d once lived.

  That had been when her dad had still been part of their family, and her grandma and grandpa had run Half Moon Ranch, grazing a few hundred longhorn cattle in the green valley by Five Mile Creek.

  Then, in one terrible year, when she was eight, it had all fallen apart. Her dad had left home suddenly; almost, it seemed to Kirstie, without a word of warning. One day he was there, driving into his office in the city. The next day, the Good Friday before Easter, he’d packed his bags and gone, leaving a hole where he’d once been, an empty place at the table, a space in the garage, no one in the big double bed beside her mom.

  Matt, Kirstie, and Sandy Scott. No Glen Scott. Their dad had a new girlfriend, a new life. His picture was in the silver frame on the bookshelf. That was all.

  That weekend they had driven out to Half Moon Ranch to be with Grandma and Grandpa. Kirstie’s mom had gone around the log-built ranch house in dazed silence, while Kirstie and Matt rode out with Grandpa to bring in some early calves. It set the pattern for that first, lonely summer; driving out of town at weekends, away from the emptiness of their Denver home, to a place where nothing ever changed.

  Only it did. Kirstie had just turned nine when, sudden as her dad’s leaving, Grandpa fell ill and died of a heart attack. And this time she didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye. The old man had been out working the cattle. It was their farmhand, Hadley Crane, who came riding back to Grandma with the news.

  They called out the doctor from San Luis, but by the time he got there it was way too late.

  People at the funeral said it was how old Chuck Glassner would have wanted to die: suddenly, out working the cattle by the side of Five Mile Creek. That puzzled Kirstie: she knew her grandpa would never have wanted to leave his ranch, his wife, his daughter, and grandchildren—he loved them all too much.

  But now, four years later, she was beginning to understand. She ran through those years as the shadows of Dead Man’s Canyon began to close down on the small group of horses and riders. She remembered the day when they’d shut up the neat, modern house in Denver and moved out to Half Moon Ranch for good.

  Sandy Scott had decided to take the gamble of leaving the city with her two kids and setting up home and business on the eastern slopes of the Colorado Rockies. With Grandma’s blessing, they were going to turn the cattle ranch into a small vacation center for paying guests. There were five cabins to build in the aspen trees that sheltered the original ranch house; small log houses with open fires, sitting rooms, and bedrooms where visitors would be comfortable.

  That took a year of hard work from Hadley and another cowhand, who had stayed on after Grandpa’s death. Then there were horses to buy at the horse sale barn in San Luis—Hadley again, though by this time Sandy herself had developed a good eye for the points of a horse. She planned ahead, bought wisely, waited for Hadley and a couple of local men to build a sound corral, strong tack-room, and feeding-stalls.

  Then, two summers ago, Half Moon had finally opened its doors to paying guests.

  Kirstie took a deep breath at the memory of her mom’s face as she’d welcomed their first visitors. It had been nervous, with small frown marks between her fair eyebrows, and she’d been too brisk in showing them to their cabins …

  Just then Lucky tensed beneath the saddle, picking up his rider’s momentary edginess. His ears flicked round, quizzing Kirstie. What’s the problem? Was it something I did?

  “Not you,” she murmured. She clicked her tongue gently against the roof of her mouth to urge him on. “It was me. I was just…thinking.” She sighed again.

  The winter before last had been her grandma’s time to fall ill. In Kirstie’s mind, the old lady seemed to fade with the light. As days grew shorter, nights longer and colder, and the aspen leaves had turned from bright gold to brown, her gran had grown more frail. This time there was no surprise; Kirstie knew she would die.

  “I’ve seen you build this place from nothing,” Grandma had told Sandy in her last days. “I’ve seen you work and build a whole new life out here. I’m so proud.”

  She had slid away from them, died peacefully, and Kirstie’s sadness, though strong, was less sharply painful than at the other two terrible times.

  These things had made her quieter than she was before, less likely to rely on people being there for her when she needed them. And now, when she looked at her mom and the growing success of the ranch, she could believe that a person could make anything happen, if only they wanted it enough. It made her feel good…that, and the horses of Half Moon Ranch.

  Lucky, Moose, Johnny Mohawk, and Silver Flash. Crazy Horse and Cadillac, her brother Matt’s favorite. More than a dozen horses of all colors: sorrel, flea-bitten gray, palomino, and Appaloosas; all good American quarter horses, but each with their own personality and special spirit.

  Like Silver Flash now; the sorrel horse with the bright white flash down the length of her bony, intelligent face. She knew all too well that she had a complete beginner on her back. The man was heavy, with a dark mustache. His name was Ronnie Vernon and he worked at a bank in Dallas, Texas. Whenever he tried to dig his heels into Silver Flash’s sides to make her break from the line and trot forward, the smart horse refused to obey.

  From up front, Charlie caught sight of Ronnie Vernon’s tactics. He sighed and asked Kirstie to head the line once more. “Don’t try to overtake as we get near the canyon!” he yelled at the man, turning Moose and heading down the slope to make sure that his instructions got through.

  Meanwhile, Kirstie knew there was another stream to cross before the horses could enter the narrow channel between the rocks into Dead Man’s Canyon. Horseshoe Creek was coming up; she could hear the water gushing and tumbling down the rocks around the next bend in the trail.

  “Sounds kind of full,” Loretta said, still following close on Lucky’s heels.

  “That would be the snow melting from the mountaintops,” Kirstie explained. “It all runs down into Five Mile Creek and on into Big Bear River. This time of year there’s always a lot of water.”

  She and Lucky rounded the bend first, to find the creek leaping and swirling its way between wet black rocks. It tumbled over tree trunks that had fallen across its path, and sent white spray drifting toward them.

  “Wow!”
One of Loretta’s sons pulled Cadillac to a sudden halt. The big, creamy-white horse tossed his head and skittered sideways. Back down the line, everyone stopped.

  “It’s OK. Follow me.” Kirstie had made this crossing dozens of times before, and she knew the safest place. It was only the wild sound of the water surging between the rocks that made it seem more difficult than it really was.

  Lucky knew this too. He went boldly forward to the water’s edge, dropped his head, and with his ears pricked forward, stepped into the fast-running stream.

  Kirstie’s horse was strong and certain. She knew he would pick his way through. And she loved the feel of the ice-cold spray on her hands and face as Lucky steadied himself, then went on, picking up his feet to step over a fallen log, letting the torrent push against his sturdy legs without giving way.

  “Good boy!” Kirstie leaned forward to pat his neck as Lucky stepped up the far bank. Now they must wait for Loretta to pluck up the courage to try. “Come on, it’s fine!” she called back. “Give Johnny Mohawk his head and let him do it for you!”

  She watched the dainty black horse put a first foot in the water, and noticed that, right at the back of the line, Charlie had finally got Ronnie Vernon in order.

  The wrangler gave her a wave and yelled at her to go ahead into the canyon. “We’ll meet up with you there!”

  So Kirstie watched Loretta through, then urged Lucky on, glad to let Charlie take charge once more. And she picked up an eagerness in her horse too. He seemed to be in a hurry, putting more pace into his walk. She clicked and he broke into a trot. “What is it?” she murmured. “What have you heard?”

  Lucky’s ears were forward, his head up, as they entered Dead Man’s Canyon. A wind whipped through his pale mane and his golden shoulders grew dark with sweat as they left the group behind.

  “You heard something,” Kirstie acknowledged, tensing a little. Or was it just the wind and the darkening sky that had made Lucky quicken his pace? Those distant clouds over Eagle’s Peak were speeding toward them, drawing down onto Miners’ Ridge, bringing rain. “Easy, boy!” she whispered, holding him back from a lope.