Johnny Mohawk

by Jenny Oldfield

  “We heard Sandy had cut him out of the remuda,” Troy charged on, regardless. “Something about the horse bein’ too mean to be ridden?”

  “Quite right.” Snappy now, and with a deep frown, then a quick glance in Stevie’s direction.

  “See here, Brad and me don’t think that’s right. Both me and my brother would love to ride that little black horse for the rest of the week.”

  Sandy shook her head. “Not possible, Troy. I promised Mr. Kane I’d get the vet to look at him, keep him out of action at least until the weekend.”

  Kirstie swallowed the urge to tell her mom that she’d ridden Johnny Mohawk that very afternoon and that he’d behaved like an angel. She saw that Stevie and Lisa had looked up from their deep conversation.

  “But hey!” Troy protested. He turned to Paddy Kane with a direct challenge. “I got me a better idea.”

  “Let us in on it, why don’t you?” Kane sneered.

  “Forget the vet. Let me give Johnny a test.”

  “No, Troy …” Sandy began.

  But Mr. Kane cut in, his face looking shadowy and strange in the flickering light of the log fire. “Hear him out. I’d be interested in what sort of test Troy could invent to prove that the horse is fit to ride!”

  The Texan boy shrugged. “Easy. I saddle him up and ride him hard on Eagle’s Peak Trail. I ask him to cross streams and climb high; all the tough stuff. See if he cracks under pressure.”

  “No, not possible,” Sandy said again. Over on the chuck wagon, the last song of the evening had finished and Charlie had put down his guitar.

  But Paddy Kane had narrowed his eyes as he listened. He cleared his throat and passed a hand across his mouth. “You’d never manage to handle the horse on that trail,” he said, nervous and uncertain about what to do now that the music had stopped and people were watching and judging. “It’s where Stevie had his accident.”

  “Sure I will!” Troy was casual, laid back, and obviously infuriating to the uptight Irishman. “Try me!”

  Kane rubbed his face, coughed, then nodded. Unable to turn down the challenge without losing face, he was forced to agree. “OK, fine. You’re on!”

  “Yee-hah!” The Texan boy slapped his leg. “I get to ride Johnny Mohawk!” he yelled to his brother.

  “B-but … ” Sandy Scott was doubtful. She was definitely finding the unpredictable visitor hard to handle. “You sure you don’t want to change your mind?” she checked with Paddy Kane.

  Attempting a grin that didn’t quite work, he shook hands on the deal with a jubilant Troy. “I was never one to turn down a challenge,” he said weakly. “I’d lay money on the stallion bucking the boy off before they get out of the valley!”

  “You’re certain you want to do this?” Sandy still couldn’t believe the sudden switch.

  “Quite sure. We Irish are great gamblers when it comes to the horses.”

  Fake, fake, fake! Kirstie breathed.

  “And if I ride the horse hard as I can and stay on him, I can have him for the rest of the week?” Troy checked with the ranch boss.

  Yes! Kirstie hoped her mom could read her mind. She edged in as close as she could get, eyes wide, holding her breath.

  “That would be part of the deal,” Paddy Kane acknowledged. His mouth twitched slightly, but there was no turning back. They arranged a time to set off—Hadley leading the ride, Troy on Johnny Mohawk, Paddy Kane going along on Silver Flash as a witness.

  “Neat! I know you can do it!” Kirstie flashed Troy a confident smile as the group broke up and people drifted away from the campfire, heading for their cabins and an early night. She turned to Hadley, who was kicking soil over the dying flames. “But why?” she demanded.

  “Huh?” The old wrangler killed the last embers with the toe of his boot.

  “All that stuff about Kane being ready to accept a challenge wasn’t right, was it? I mean, why did he really agree? He must know deep down that Stevie isn’t such a great rider and realize that he could lose this bet real easy!”

  “He knows it,” Hadley agreed. The fire was out; they were in pitch darkness out by Five Mile Creek. The swift water ran noisily between steep banks. “But pride’s a funny thing. Pride leads you places you don’t want to go. It sets you up for a great big fall!”

  7

  Deep down, Kirstie didn’t care. All this complicated stuff about Stevie’s mom dying and his dad’s weird desire to save face wasn’t nearly so important to her as proving that Johnny Mohawk was one of the best horses at Half Moon Ranch.

  “Today’s the day!” she told Lisa as she leaped out of bed and into her riding clothes of jeans, boots, and T-shirt. She determinedly ignored the fact that her friend had come inside after the sing-along and gone to bed without a single word.

  The hump inside the blue sleeping bag in the corner made no sound.

  Not asleep, but still not talking! Kirstie had already heard Lisa turn restlessly from side to side in the predawn light. Hurt as she was by her friend’s sudden switch of allegiance, she decided the best thing to do was pretend she didn’t care.

  She left Lisa to stew and ran down the stairs two at a time. The hall clock said five thirty, way too early for anyone else to be up, and two and a half hours until Troy, Paddy Kane, and Hadley were due to set out. Two and a half restless hours, during which she was too excited and nervous to eat breakfast, too impatient to stay in the house.

  So Kirstie pulled her baseball cap from its hook by the door and slipped outside into the cool, misty morning. She startled a chipmunk scouting for tidbits under the porch swing. The tiny creature saw her, swiped his striped tail from side to side, chattered, and scuttled off across the boards.

  Now was the time to see wildlife, as the sun rose over Hummingbird Rock to slowly warm the wet, dark shadows beneath rocks and trees and to drive danger from the landscape. Searching the hillside beyond the creek, she counted three mule deer with their long, tapering antlers and large, mulelike ears. Closer to home, she saw a gray fox creep from the cover of a log pile outside the Kanes’ cabin and slink off into the trees.

  Something had disturbed the fox, she realized. Despite the early hour, she wasn’t surprised to see the cabin door open and Stevie Kane peer out. What did surprise her was the way he acted next: creeping out across the porch as sly and silent as the old fox, looking this way and that as he crossed the lawn and headed for the corral.

  Quickly, Kirstie stepped out of sight behind a rain barrel close to the house. She felt like a fool for hiding; it was like she was a little kid. But something told her not to let Stevie know she was there. Crouching behind the barrel, she watched him enter and cross the corral, then vanish inside the tack room.

  She waited a few seconds while she decided what to do. What was he up to in there at this time of the morning? Why had he been so keen not to be seen? A gut feeling told her that the reasons were connected with Johnny Mohawk. Yeah! she told herself. You get in there and find out exactly what he’s doing.

  So she did some creeping of her own. Across the yard, treading softly, heading for fresh cover on the porch around the back of the tack room, she reached a window and peered inside. At first, she saw no sign of Stevie, only the glint of bridles hanging on the wooden walls and the soft shine of saddles slung across their stout racks down the middle of the room. Then hollow footsteps; Stevie Kane turned a corner and came along the row of saddles toward her, carefully reading the labels tacked to the wall. Lucky, Cadillac, Crazy Horse, Yukon … Johnny Mohawk. He stopped suddenly, took a quick look over his shoulder, then delved deep into his jacket pocket.

  Time to leave the window and circle around to the door, Kirstie decided. Soft as a cat, hardly daring to breathe, she edged along the porch. She shouldn’t have worried; when she reached the open doorway and finally dared to poke her head around the doorpost, Stevie was too busy with Johnny’s saddle to notice her.

  She watched him with a puzzled frown. Whatever he’d taken from his pocket was small and needed
to be handled carefully. He placed it gingerly on top of the saddle, then lifted the flap, felt with his good, left hand in the gap between the stirrup leather and the pad of thick fabric called the comforter—a kind of small rug used to stop the saddle rubbing the horse’s back. As soon as he found a suitable space, he took the object from the top of the saddle and slipped it inside.

  “No way!” Kirstie’s heart was in her mouth as she stepped suddenly into the room.

  Stevie let the saddle flap fall into position, then spun around. “What?” He put on an innocent face. “Kirstie! You gave me a fright coming in like that!”

  She ignored him. “Don’t give me that. Just show me what you put under Johnny’s saddle!”

  “I don’t know what you mean!”

  Wounded innocence now; all fake, just like his father. Kirstie pushed past him and felt along the stirrup leather until her fingers came up against something sharp. “Ouch!” She drew her hand back and sucked the spot of blood that had appeared. Then carefully, slowly, she tried again. This time, she was able to pull out the object and hold it up. “Razor wire!”

  “Don’t look at me! I didn’t know it was there!” White in the face, shaking all over, Stevie jumped to deny it.

  Kirstie gasped and turned on him. She walked right up to him, shoved the dangerous, two-inch stretch of wire under his nose. “You know the damage this could do? It could cut deep!” Shock, then scorn, filled her voice as she realized what Stevie was up to. “… You were trying to set Johnny up!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He stood his ground. A blank, hard look came into his eyes.

  “This!” She held the razor wire closer still.

  “I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Liar!” Kirstie’s hand began to shake. If Stevie denied it, it would be difficult to make people believe her, she knew. There were no witnesses. It would sound too cruel, too crazy to suggest.

  “I … never … saw … it!” Stevie’s eyes were dead, the pupils big and dark.

  “All to prove you’re right!” Kirstie cried. “A trick to get Troy bucked off and Johnny Mohawk proved guilty! Then what? Johnny gets banned. Mom can’t use him on the ranch without your dad taking us to court and suing us for every cent we’ve got! Worse than that—if we can’t use Johnny, what do we do with him? We can’t afford to keep him if he can’t work. So what happens to him then?”

  “You sell him,” Stevie said, cold as ice, the words of a much younger kid creeping in. “And good riddance to bad rubbish!”

  But the plan had backfired, and there was no razor wire to rub through the blanket and dig into Johnny’s skin as Troy rode him out along Eagle’s Peak Trail.

  Instead, Troy and Johnny Mohawk made a dream team, and Kirstie was there to see it happen.

  “Sure; come along,” Hadley had told her when she asked if she could join the group. A rush of feelings—anger mixed with fear, confusion and concern for Lisa—had forced Kirstie to stay silent about the incident with Stevie Kane in the tack room, but she’d made doubly sure to check all Johnny’s tack before Troy got up in the saddle, examining the cinch strap and stirrups, as well as the comforter. Relying on Troy’s skill to bring Johnny the reprieve she longed for, she’d watched him mount with quiet confidence. Then she’d thrown Stevie a withering look as his dad had set off on Cadillac. The look had said, I’ll get you! And now she muttered aloud, “Everyone’s been feeling sorry for you until now. But I’ll prove you’ve been lying all along!”

  Stevie had turned his back, head down, shoulders hunched with worry.

  Kirstie and Lucky were keeping pace with Troy and Johnny Mohawk up the trail, through the lodgepole pines to where the trees thinned out and patches of snow began. The horses’ hooves crunched through the pure white drifts, the sky grew dense blue, a breeze rippled through a stretch of alpine forget-me-nots.

  “It’s looking good!” Troy called as he went ahead. “Johnny’s on his best behavior! He’s out of this world!”

  Kirstie nodded. The stallion’s jet-black coat gleamed in the sunlight, he went surefooted along the narrow ridge by the pointed rock. “This is where Stevie had the accident!” she reminded Troy.

  Paddy Kane also recognized the spot. He held Cadillac back, refusing at first to take him along the ridge.

  “There’s something he’s not telling us!” Kirstie murmured. She’d learned to second guess the Kanes’ reasons for doing or not doing things. “Go steady, Troy!” she called. “Just in case!”

  “Sure thing!” The Texan kid slowed Johnny’s pace as he rounded the bend and the track narrowed right down to single file. The rider was relaxed, the horse listening to commands.

  “Walk on, Lucky!” Kirstie urged. The palomino had hesitated, his eyes and ears alert. “What’s he telling us?” she asked Hadley, who had ridden up close behind.

  The wrangler shrugged. “Look, listen. Trust your horse.”

  By this time, Troy and Johnny were out of sight, so Kirstie pressed Lucky forward, taking the bend at a trot. She saw Johnny pause by the rock where Stevie had waited all afternoon for help, admiring the way Troy handled him gently but firmly to get him past a spot he obviously didn’t like. The horse tossed his head for a moment, then lowered it and carried on, picking up the pace again as he reached the far end of the ridge.

  “Nothing to it!” Troy turned and yelled for them all to follow.

  Kirstie and Lucky kept on going. As the track narrowed and fell away steeply, she spotted the churned up ground where Johnny had thrown his rider. Then a few steps beyond this, Lucky suddenly stopped.

  What was it? Kirstie looked up and down the slope. Three trees had fallen a few yards higher up and formed a crisscross pattern with their trunks. Brushwood blown by the strong winds had collected against them in a thick tangle of branches and briars. But there seemed to be a tunnel through the brushwood, deep under the fallen trunks, to a place offering shelter and safety to an animal, perhaps. Kirstie saw that it must be a large animal whose claws had scratched and torn at the entrance to the tunnel, scraping away earth and piling it to either side.

  “Bears!” Hadley murmured.

  Kirstie froze in her saddle. “That’s their den?”

  The old man nodded. “It looks like a bed site for the mother bear and her two cubs. She banks up the soil for extra heat.”

  She scanned the hillside anxiously, expecting to see a bulky creature with a large, square head, huge shoulders, and long claws lumber out of the forest toward them. From what she knew about black bears, it could come at them at a speed of 30 miles per hour, and nothing, but nothing, would stop a mother bear if you came between her and her cubs.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Hadley suggested, calling Paddy Kane to join them from behind. “The bears are most probably out foraging up the mountain at this time of day and they won’t be back before nightfall, but it’s not a good idea to hang around.”

  Kirstie was only too glad to oblige. She pressed a reluctant Lucky on, holding him on a tight rein until they came off the ridge. “Did you see the bear’s den?” She gasped out the news to Troy.

  “Where? Wow, that’s really wild!” He followed the line of her pointing finger. “Do you reckon that’s maybe what bothered Johnny the first time Stevie brought him along here?”

  Watching Hadley backtrack to try and persuade Paddy Kane to bring Cadillac along the ridge, Kirstie nodded. “Bears!” she whispered.

  “Kirstie, Troy!” Hadley called from the tower of rock. “Paddy doesn’t want to risk the ridge with Cadillac!”

  “I bet he doesn’t!” she breathed. “I bet he’s known about the den since Monday!” Stevie’s father had been the one who’d walked the track looking for clues. It was her guess that he’d spotted the brushwood den then, guessed that it housed some pretty big animal, but said nothing.

  “We’ll go back down the way we came!” Hadley called. “You two go right ahead. We’ll see you back at the ranch!”

  “… He’
s chicken and he’s a liar!” Kirstie told Troy all she knew about Paddy Kane as they rode down the mountain together. “He guessed the bear’s den had spooked Johnny, and Stevie hadn’t been able to handle it. But he kept it secret and blamed the horse.”

  “But we showed him!” Troy let Johnny Mohawk lengthen his stride as they came out of the aspen trees into the sun. There was half a mile of good loping ground between them and the ranch. “We made a deal, and we showed him what Johnny can really do. He’s a great horse, and now I get to ride him between now and Saturday!”

  Once before during this week, Kirstie had put Lucky into a race against Johnny and won. But today was different. She saw the black Arab horse surge along the riverbank, watched him swerve to avoid a rock and gallop on. He was full of himself, enjoying his speed, lost in his own strength and perfection.

  No contest! Not with Johnny Mohawk in this mood. Not with a natural horseman like Troy in the saddle. She sighed happily and let Lucky lope for home a lazy second.

  “Too late, I’m afraid!” Paddy Kane pretended to be sorry. It was Thursday morning, and the postman had just delivered the mail to the ranch.

  Sandy Scott held an attorney’s letter in her trembling hand. “But we had a deal!” she insisted. “If Troy could handle Johnny Mohawk without any problem, you promised not to make any more trouble!”

  Kirstie felt her throat hurt as she swallowed. It was anger rising up from her stomach, making her want to yell that this wasn’t fair.

  “But the letter was already on its way, you see.” The Irishman made out that the important fact had slipped his mind. “I’d set the whole thing in motion the day before yesterday. So the fluke circumstance of Troy getting back in one piece doesn’t make any difference. Once the lawyers get their teeth into something, you know what they’re like!”

  “It says here you plan to sue us for personal injury!” Sandy read the letter through as Matt and Kirstie stood nearby. They’d all come up to the Kanes’ cabin as soon as they’d taken in what had happened.