Rodeo Rocky (5 page)

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.

“Maybe we should give him a chance,” Sandy said slowly, gazing out at the hovering, darting birds.

“Or maybe we should cut our losses and send him to the sale barn right now.” Matt didn’t mean to be harsh, but he made it clear that he and Hadley were the only ones talking sense. “If not, we put the other horses at risk, just like Jitterbug today.”

“And the guests,” Hadley put in. “You put a dude on that bay stallion, he bucks him off, the guy breaks a leg. Then you kiss good-bye to your good name.”

“Good point,” Matt agreed. “Honestly, Mom, it’d be crazy to even try!”

“Hmm.” Sandy went to lean against the doorpost and gaze out across the corral at Red Fox Meadow beyond.

Kirstie followed her. “A couple of days for him to settle down, Mom,” she said quietly. “Please.”

A new moon had appeared over Bear Hunt Overlook; a pale silver circle in a fading blue sky. Across the yard, in the round pen by the tack room, the shadowy figure of Rodeo Rocky could be seen standing absolutely still, ears pricked, listening to the sounds of the mountains.

Sandy glanced down at Kirstie’s earnest face. She lifted a hand to smooth her windblown hair. “OK,” she said softly. “A couple of days. Let’s see how it goes.”

“I don’t know a whole lot of technical stuff about horses,” Charlie admitted when he met up with Kirstie in the round pen early next morning. “Compared with Hadley, I’m a rookie.”

“I don’t care. I’m just glad you want to help.” Feeling sure that she and Charlie were on the same wavelength, Kirstie zipped her red fleece jacket up to the chin and tucked her hair inside the collar. At the far side of the pen, Rodeo Rocky kept his wary distance.

“I reckon you have to stay back and just watch a horse before you try to get to know him,” the young wrangler went on. “Give him a chance to decide you’re OK, and no way are you gonna hurt him.”

“Me, too.” She grinned at Charlie. “See Rocky watching us now. Most people would move right in before he’s ready and start putting a rope around his neck and lunging him. I don’t like that. Not until he’s happy about it.”

Charlie grunted and nodded in Rocky’s direction. “Look at him lift his tail and high step around the pen!”

The stallion had decided to take a look at his two visitors. Instead of keeping the farthest distance from them, he began to trot in a circle that went around behind their backs about five yards from where they stood. As he trotted, he kept one ear pointed forward, but his inside ear was flicked toward Kirstie and Charlie.

“At least he’s OK about us being in the pen with him.” Kirstie let Rocky trot around and around, head up, ear constantly flicking in their direction. “That’s one step up from last night.” She recalled the screams of anger and fright as they’d unloaded Rocky from the trailer, the way he’d lashed out at poor, unsuspecting Jitterbug.

The first rays of the sun caught the horse’s dark bay flanks, giving his coat a coppery sheen.

“What do you reckon, fifteen hands high?” Charlie asked quietly, happy for Rocky to tighten his circle and trot closer in to where they stood.

“Maybe more.” Kirstie didn’t feel a grain of fear as the stallion moved in. She thought it was wonderful the way his coat shone with the metallic gleam. It made him special, let him stand out from other, normal bays. And the black mane and tail gave a contrast. Once they were combed through and the coat was brushed and groomed, Rocky would be the finest-looking horse in the remuda. “It’s amazing!” she sighed. “Twenty-four hours ago, this horse was going through the worst time of his life. Locked up, tied up, shoved, and prodded. You’d think it’d make him hate the sight of us.”

But no. As they stood quiet in the long, cool dawn shadows, Rocky was dipping his head and tightening his circle.
What’s this?
he was asking them.
What do you want?

He came closer, slowing to a walk, still moving in a cautious circle but ready to talk.

Then, across the neighboring corral, the tack room door opened and Hadley stepped out with a heavy saddle. The door flapped and banged against the wall as the old wrangler called out to them. “Charlie, time to fetch the horses in from the meadow!”

As if reacting to an electrical current, the sudden noise made Rocky veer away from his patient observers. He swung out to the edge of the pen, loping at high speed in wide, reckless circles.

Charlie sighed and shrugged. “Sorry.”

“That’s OK.” Kirstie knew he was paid to take orders from Hadley. At least they’d had a few quiet minutes of making friends with Rocky. She smiled at Charlie as he fixed his pale straw Stetson firmly onto his forehead and went to do his first job of the day.

And things are better than yesterday
, she decided. She left the round pen as smoothly and silently as she could. Meanwhile, Rocky loped on, pushed by his instinct to flee at the first sign of danger.

Once through the gate, Kirstie turned to watch him run. Yesterday, Rocky had fought anything that went near him. Today, he’d let her and Charlie stand in the pen. Yesterday, he’d been full of hate. Today, he was curious, questioning, thoughtful.

It was a small step forward. But it was a step all the same.

“How’s it going?” Sandy asked as she crossed paths with Kirstie on her way out to the corral.

“Good!” Her head was up, shoulders back, as she went into the ranch house for a quick breakfast of blueberry muffins and coffee.

5

“How’s the rodeo horse?” Brett Lavin asked Kirstie over lunch, his mouth full of hamburger and fries.

“Good!”

“How’s it going with the bucking bronc?”

“Has he kicked any more horses in the face yet?”

The questions had come thick and fast as ranch guests came out of their cabins, crisscrossed the yard, and rode out on the trails.

Kirstie had spent the morning on the ranch instead of taking Lucky out with one of the trail groups. Her plan was to hang around in the yard and the corral, where Rocky would be able to see her come and go. He would learn to recognize her from a distance, watch her at work, see her riding quietly by on her palomino as she took him to drink at the creek. With the guests out trekking toward Miners’ Ridge or Elk Rock, the place was peaceful, with nothing to disturb the lone stallion in his round pen.

“So how’s it going?” Sandy Scott wanted to know after lunch. She’d just come out of the barn where she’d checked on Jitterbug’s cut nose, and was rushing to head up the afternoon ride through Fat Man’s Squeeze to Deer Lake. But she stopped for a moment outside the tack room to get a real answer about the problem horse out of her noncommittal daughter. “Come on, Kirstie, give me the lowdown!”

“Better than yesterday.” Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Rocky standing by the fence, looking out at the bunch of horses saddled and waiting in the corral. The clink of bridles and squeak of leather as riders mounted had caught his attention, and he stood alert and puzzled.

“Have you tried him on a lunge rope?” Sandy asked.

“Not yet. He needs more time.”

Her mom mounted Johnny Mohawk, a pretty, high-spirited, half-Arabian horse whose black coat shone in the full force of the afternoon sun. She swung her leg easily over the saddle and sat looking down quizzically at Kirstie. “How much time?”

“Couple of days.”

“Sunday? Then, no doubt, a couple more days after that. And before you know it, the horse has been living in the pen a whole week. You realize we need the space for Yukon’s foal as soon as she gives birth.” Sandy reminded her that their six-year-old brown and white mare was in the late stage of pregnancy, and that both mother and baby would take priority in the pen.

“That’s OK. Rocky will be ready to move into Red Fox Meadow by then,” Kirstie assured her, not letting her mom see that this was a pressure she could do without. Behind her cheerful front, Kirstie couldn’t yet see a realistic prospect of letting the wild mustang loose.

And as Sandy rode the guests off to the lake under the bluest of blue skies, Kirstie chose a firmer approach for the afternoon. She would go into the round pen, she decided, but not with a halter and a lunge rope. They would remind Rocky too much of yesterday’s rodeo. There would just be herself and the horse.

“Good luck!” Charlie passed by on Moose, a big, gray quarter horse, as Kirstie swung open the gate into the round pen. He gave a long look over his shoulder, then loped onto catch up with Sandy’s group.