“You lied to us!” Matt shook his head in disgust, ready to drive Sandy straight into San Luis to visit their own attorney.
“My hands are tied. Sorry.”
“You could still call off the lawyers, keep your word.” Matt’s tone of voice showed that he knew it was a forlorn hope.
Kane spread his hands helplessly. “I’m offering you a clear way out of all this, and it’s in the last paragraph of the letter, if you care to read it.”
Sandy opened the sheet of paper and spoke the words out loud. “‘As the owner of his own trekking center in Ireland, my client’s whole concern is for the future safety of guest riders at Half Moon Ranch. Accordingly, we would inform you that he is prepared to drop all claims for damages against you and your employee, Charlie Miller, on one particular condition.’ ” Glancing up at Kirstie, Sandy took a breath, then read on. “‘Namely that the horse involved in the incident, Johnny Mohawk, is never used as a trail horse or in any other capacity whatsoever; that the said horse is taken to a sale barn and sold, and thus that no guest is put into the position of risk to life and limb that his son, Stevie Kane, endured on Monday, 2nd July. Yours, et cetera …’ ”
“Meaning we have no choice!” Matt insisted. The car engine was running, Sandy was in the house, calling to tell the attorney that she and Matt were on their way.
“Meaning we have to sell Johnny Mohawk because Stevie Kane is a liar and his dad is a lousy cheat!” Hot tears sprang to Kirstie’s eyes.
“Meaning this whole thing is out of control,” Sandy said quietly as she crossed the porch and got into the car. “A court case, insurance claims, bad publicity: I tell you, I don’t need it!”
“Look at him now!” Kirstie couldn’t be calm like her mom. She waved her arm toward the corral, at Stevie Kane acting tough with the Jensen brothers, all three of them cracking up over some stupid joke. Rodeo Rocky and Jitterbug stood quietly nearby, while Linda and Carole Holgate leaned on the fence to watch. “Why does he have to show off like that after all the trouble he’s caused?”
Sandy sighed at what was going on. “Sorry, honey, we have to go. If they start fooling around in there, find Hadley. He’ll have to deal with it.”
Kirstie glowered and fell silent. She hated the sight of the kid and his greasy, double-crossing father. Now, instead of watching Stevie laugh and swagger in front of the girls, she turned her back.
As Matt drove her mom up the drive, she planned to keep on ignoring the boys’ hoarse laughs and yells from the corral. But then one of the girls let out a shriek.
“Hey, Stevie, no!” Carole Holgate cried.
Kirstie swung around to look. “Oh my gosh!” She double-checked. Brad had already jumped onto Jitterbug, and now Stevie was struggling one-handed into Rocky’s saddle. She set off at a run toward the corral. In spite of everything, she had to try and stop the crazy fool.
“Stevie, don’t do that!” she yelled.
He was mounted and walking the horse toward the gate, following close in Brad and Jitterbug’s tracks. He was deliberately ignoring her.
Slamming up against the fence in her desperate hurry, Kirstie winded herself. “Stop!” she gasped. Her heart practically stopped beating from fear and panic. “Stevie, for goodness sake, come back before you kill yourself!”
8
“… Look, I can ride one-handed. It’s easy!” Stevie ignored Kirstie’s cries. He held Rodeo Rocky’s reins in his left hand. His broken arm was heavily bandaged and kept in a crooked position by a strong hospital sling.
“Stevie, don’t be a fool!” Carole Holgate echoed Kirstie’s warnings.
Seeing that it was useless, Kirstie ran into the tack room, then straight back out. “Has anybody seen Hadley or Charlie?” she demanded, recalling her mom’s advice before she’d set off for town for her emergency meeting with the attorney.
“Hadley already set off with the intermediates,” Linda told her. “The Jensens decided to take the morning off and maybe go fishing. And Charlie went to town. It’s his day off. That’s why Rodeo Rocky was hanging around for Stevie to climb on.”
“Look at this!” Stevie steered Rocky past Brad through the corral gate, weaving between two posts in a neat and tricky maneuver.
“That’s nothin’!” The older Jensen brother took up the challenge by dropping Jitterbug’s reins. He rode her out onto the footbridge using only his legs and heels.
“Why can’t they grow up?” Kirstie muttered. With both wranglers off the scene, it was up to her to put a stop to the stupid competition. And she had to contend with the strong thought that if Stevie fell off again, it would serve him right. Glowering, and aware now that Troy Jensen was leading a horse out of the barn to join in the so-called fun, she set off on foot for the bridge.
“I can trot, no problem!” Stevie cried, sitting awkwardly because of his injured arm. Rocky crossed the bridge at a gentle trot, probably aware that his rider wasn’t safe and easy in the saddle.
“Not a good idea, Stevie!” Kirstie called.
“Hey, who said?” Brad grinned down at her. He urged his dainty sorrel horse after Rodeo Rocky, yee-hahing as he raced to catch up. “How about a lope?” he yelled at Stevie, who swayed as he turned to see who was following.
Kirstie closed her eyes and groaned. She opened them again as Troy trotted by. “Oh, no!” If she’d thought things couldn’t get any worse, she’d been wrong. Hotheaded Troy was riding Johnny Mohawk to join the others. “Come back!” she pleaded. “Troy, you can’t use Johnny today. No one can!”
“Yeah, yeah! I won the bet, didn’t I?” He was going from trot to lope, giving Johnny his head. The black Arab’s tail streamed out behind him, his hooves ate up the ground.
“Hey, Troy!” Brad reined Jitterbug back to wait for his kid brother. Up ahead, Stevie took Rocky in a wide arc, up a gentle slope and back toward Troy and Brad.
“You wanna race?” Troy challenged.
Brad quickly agreed. “You and me. The first to reach Dead Man’s Canyon.”
“How about you, Stevie?” Troy asked as Kirstie sprinted to try and stop them. Johnny Mohawk was tossing his handsome head and snorting impatiently.
“Count me in,” Stevie answered, fake-casual. But a catch in his voice showed he was scared. “Dead Man’s Canyon; that’s the Meltwater Trail?”
“Yup. Along Five Mile Creek, cut up toward Miners’ Ridge, head through Fat Man’s Squeeze into the canyon.” Brad issued directions then added, “We’ll give you a couple of minutes’ start because of your arm.”
Stevie frowned. “I don’t need any favors. I want a fair race.”
“Listen, no one’s racing anywhere!” Kirstie gasped as she drew close. Her face was hot, her heart thumping. “For a start, Troy, we’re in real trouble if Mom finds out you saddled Johnny Mohawk. We’ve got to put him back in the meadow before she gets home. And second, Stevie, no way should you even be riding!”
“Yes, ma’am, no ma’am!” Troy joggled his head from side to side, laughing off her protest. Johnny Mohawk stamped hard and wheeled away from the group.
“Brad!” Kirstie appealed to the older boy.
“It’s not my problem,” he shrugged.
She turned desperately to Stevie, reaching out for Rocky’s rein. “This is serious!” she pleaded. “Whatever you do, don’t race!”
But he tugged hard at the horse’s head, jerking him out of Kirstie’s grasp and kicking up dirt as he swung him around. “Since when did you worry about me?”
Dust rose and choked her. “Stevie, I mean it!”
“Save your breath!” He kicked hard with his heels, made Rocky surge forward. “Let’s go!” he yelled to Troy and Brad, thrown back in the saddle and struggling for balance.
The Jensens didn’t need a second invitation. “Cool it!” Brad grinned at Kirstie in the moments before he followed Stevie and Rocky, as Troy and Johnny Mohawk set off in hot pursuit. “Ain’t nothing bad gonna happen, I promise!”
Kirstie had stood help
less, watching the three riders race out of sight between the aspen trees before she’d come to her senses. Then she’d pulled herself together and run for the ranch house to get help from the only person around.
“Lisa!” She flung open the door and ran into the kitchen. The two girls had hardly spoken for days. Ever since Stevie’s accident, Lisa had made it plain she was on his side. She’d even stopped riding the trails with Kirstie, preferring instead to spend time with her new friend.
She appeared now from behind Kirstie, hovering warily in the doorway. “Here I am. I was out on the porch.”
“I missed you. Listen, I’ve got a big, big problem!” she gabbled.
“Stevie on Rodeo Rocky,” Lisa interrupted. “I know.”
“You saw him out in the corral?”
“Yeah. He was trying to impress Linda and Carole, I guess.”
“OK, so riding Rocky around the corral is one thing. Racing the Jensens up to Dead Man’s Canyon—that’s different!” As she spilled out what had happened, Kirstie saw Lisa’s face change. Stiff and suspicious at first, it grew flickery and scared at the idea of a flat-out race up the mountain.
Lisa turned and ran into the yard, turned again to wait for Kirstie. “We gotta do something!”
“Stevie’s never gonna make it one-handed!”
“Don’t tell me; I know it!” Lisa gazed along the valley toward Miners’ Ridge. “He always has to prove something!” she wailed. “And now look!”
“OK.” Kirstie saw she would have to take charge. “Here’s what we do. Lucky and Cadillac are in the barn waiting for the blacksmith to arrive. We saddle them up fast as we can, and we follow the boys!”
Lisa nodded and ran with her to fetch bridles and saddles. Within minutes, they’d made the two horses ready to ride. “They’ve got a mighty big start on us, though!”
“But we know where they’re headed.” Kirstie grew more determined. “We follow Meltwater Trail. Sooner or later, we’ll catch up with them. Then you have to talk to Stevie, Lisa; make him see sense!”
“Me?” Lisa swung into the saddle. “You want me to persuade him to come back to the ranch?”
“You got it!” Kirstie was up and ready, trotting Lucky out onto the trail. “It stands to reason; Stevie doesn’t hear a word anyone else says, but he’ll listen to you!”
They rode hard along the side of Five Mile Creek, following its bends, scouring the hills ahead for any sign of the three boys.
“Uh-oh!” Kirstie heard the telltale clink of a loose shoe as Lucky’s hooves thudded across gravel and rock. The palomino’s gait was uneven, the shoe bothering him as they galloped. “This is why Hadley put him on the list to see the blacksmith, I guess!”
“Wait!” Lisa had continued to keep a lookout as Kirstie slowed Lucky, down then dismounted to examine the state of his front shoe. “Here come Brad and Troy!”
“What about Stevie?” The shoe had worked completely loose, hanging on by a single nail. Unless Kirstie was very careful, the tender underside of Lucky’s foot could easily be damaged.
Standing in the stirrups, Lisa craned to see beyond the two galloping horses. “No, there’s no sign of Stevie.”
“What now?” Kirstie groaned. Another accident? One more broken limb? She regretted wishing that Rocky would throw Stevie and teach him a lesson.
“What happened?” Lisa yelled above the thud of approaching hooves. “Where’s Stevie?”
Troy pulled up in the usual spray of dirt. Even though he’d been in a race, Johnny Mohawk had hardly broken a sweat. “You tell us!” he shrugged.
“You mean you don’t know?” Kirstie spread both palms in a frustrated, helpless gesture. She left Lucky’s side and stormed over to Brad Jensen. “You get into a race with a one-armed kid who had stitches in a gash on his head less than forty-eight hours back, and you come and tell us you don’t know where he is?”
“Hey, hang loose,” Brad protested. He jumped down from Jitterbug to give her a breather. “It was like this: the Irish kid said he wanted a fair race, so that’s what we gave him. We reach the trees and spread out. I take one way up to Miners’ Ridge, Troy takes another way, and we leave it to Stevie to choose his own track, OK?”
“You fanned out across the slope?” Kirstie got it clear in her own mind. “Then what?”
“Me and Jitterbug, we get into a close thing with Troy and Johnny. I guess we forgot about Stevie for a while.”
“Johnny made it to the canyon ahead of Jitterbug!” Troy claimed. “He won easy!”
“Not that easy.” Brad gave him an argument. “Jitterbug could’ve come first if she hadn’t slipped in Fat Man’s Squeeze!”
“Hey, it’s Stevie we’re talking about here!” Lisa reminded them sharply. “Where did he and Rodeo Rocky get to by the time you were in Dead Man’s Canyon?”
“Ah, yeah …” Troy looked at Brad and shook his head.
“Well, I guess we don’t know.” Brad was equally nonplussed. “We wait a few minutes, expecting him to show.”
“But the kid doesn’t make it.” Troy picked up the thread of the story. “What can we do? We turn around and look for him on the way down.”
“How hard?” Lisa demanded. “How hard did you look for Stevie?”
“… He’s got a broken arm and stitches in his head,” Kirstie reminded them again.
Brad sighed. “We reckoned he’d turned back. Looks like we were wrong.”
“So you gave up on him!” Lisa yelled. “Honestly, Brad!”
Kirstie hushed her. “There’s no point. We have to think.” Looking at a still-fresh Johnny Mohawk, she quickly decided what to do. “Here, Troy, you take Lucky and walk him back to the ranch. His shoe’s loose, see? I’ll take Johnny. Lisa and me will ride up to the ridge and make sure Stevie and Rocky are OK.”
Troy gave her no argument. Instead, he slid out of the saddle and handed over the reins. “I still think there’s no big problem,” he said.
“You hope!” Lisa narrowed her eyes and scowled down at him.
“You worry too much, you know that?” Troy threw his shoulders back and his chest out. “Stevie’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”
“Sure,” Brad agreed. He, too, kept up the bravado as Kirstie and Lisa got ready to ride on. “You only got one thing to watch out for up in Dead Man’s Canyon today, and it ain’t Stevie Kane.”
“What then?” Kirstie wanted to know.
“It’s hairy and black with sharp claws!” Troy crowed. “It’s mean and it’s angry …”
“The bear!” Lisa mumbled, glancing quickly at the mountain.
Kirstie took a deep breath, then nodded. If the Jensens were right and the mother bear really was prowling around the canyon, no way was this funny. “Let’s go!” she hissed, turning Johnny Mohawk and racing him toward Miners’ Ridge.
9
“I’m scared!” Lisa admitted.
She and Kirstie had galloped through the silvery aspen trees. They’d bushwhacked through pines and crossed tumbling mountain streams without seeing a sign of Stevie and Rodeo Rocky. Hearing their approach, mule deer had leaped clear of bushes and bounded up the slope and far away. Smaller creatures had crept with a rustle and a frightened squeak under the shelter of leaf and log.
“Me, too.” It was one of those times when silence was the last thing you wanted. It crowded in on you, made you imagine things you didn’t really hear, like the snort of a black bear calling her cubs.
“What was that?” Lisa gasped. They’d come to a point on the trail when they had to choose either to climb onto Miners’ Ridge or to take the narrow entrance between steep, gray cliffs into Dead Man’s Canyon.
“Nothing,” Kirstie insisted. She decided on the canyon. It was possible that Stevie had eventually followed Troy and Brad in there, only to find that they’d already finished the race and decided to head for home. “C’mon, Johnny; easy, boy!” The horse shied away from the entrance, suspicious of the shadowy rocks.
“Here, let me
take Cadillac through first,” Lisa suggested. The big, white gelding had a steady nerve, unlike the sometimes-jumpy Arab. She eased ahead of Kirstie into the canyon.
Kirstie clicked and urged Johnny on. Reluctantly, he followed, unsettled now by the crash and roar of the waterfall at the far end of the ravine. For a few moments, it was all she could do to hold him.
“This place gives me the creeps!” Lisa muttered as Kirstie brought Johnny back under control and she peered along its length. “I keep imagining things crouched in the shadows …”
At that second, Kirstie saw the bear. She was on her hind legs, and nearly six feet high, standing on a ledge beside the fall. Her mouth was open to show her giant, pointed teeth. “Back out!” Kirstie cried to Lisa, pulling hard on Johnny’s reins. “C’mon, Lisa, let’s get out of here!”
But it was too late. The bear had seen them. She snorted and swatted the air, lumbered down from the ledge toward them. Frozen with fright, Kirstie spotted two cubs knee-deep in the pool at the foot of the waterfall. Their shaggy coats were dripping wet, and they were play fighting like boxers sparring in a ring. Mother bear protecting her cubs: it was the worst, the very worst thing they could come up against!
“What do we do?” Lisa panicked as the huge bear advanced. She wrenched on Cadillac’s reins, making the poor horse rear up in confusion. Slipping sideways, Lisa lurched forward, flung her arms around the horse’s neck, and pulled him off balance as she slid to the ground.
Cadillac was down on his knees, struggling free of Lisa’s grasp. She was on all fours, unhurt but terrified, crawling away from the bear. The gap was narrowing, the bear gathering speed and hurtling down the canyon toward her.
Emergency! Kirstie snapped into action. She yelled loudly to attract the angry bear’s attention. Crazy, but this was what you had to do: shout and wave your arms, make the bear back off.
Lisa had frozen. She crouched on the ground while Cadillac broke free and raced toward the exit. The bear opened its jaws and roared.
Kirstie shouted louder still. She made Johnny advance across the bear’s path, feeling him flinch and resist. If only she could get him to rear up, to tower over the bear and scare her off, she would save Lisa from attack. “C’mon, Johnny!” she breathed, leaning right back and shortening the reins.
Johnny Mohawk Page 7
