Rodeo Rocky (6 page)

The gate clicked behind her and she stood, relaxed as she could manage, waiting for Rocky to get used to her entrance into his private ring.

The horse gave her his full attention. His tail swished from side to side, he stamped the ground once.

Kirstie took a couple of steps toward him, then stopped. She looked up at Eagle’s Peak, across at the ranch house; anywhere but in Rocky’s direction. But she could judge where he was by sounds. He’d begun to trot. Around the rim of the pen he came, one ear straight ahead, one ear flicked toward her. He snorted and ducked his head, kept on trotting.

Still Kirstie pretended she wasn’t paying attention. She wandered a few steps to her right, then to her left, turned around on the spot, waiting for the moment when curiosity would get the better of the horse.

And sure enough, his circle grew tighter, as it had before breakfast that morning. It was Rocky’s way of asking a question:
What do you want?

Nothing
. She let him know her answer by turning her head away.
No pressure.

So, come on, what do you want?
He slowed down, came closer.

Kirstie could feel the heat from his body, his warm breath on her bare arms. He was reading her body language the way she wanted, sensing that, far from being a threat to him, she was here to make friends.

And now he stopped and lowered his head, poking his nose toward her as she stood in the center of the pen. He nudged her arm.
Come on, you must have some reason for being here.

Kirstie felt a thrill of excitement. Here was this crazy, untamable horse coming up to her and giving her a friendly shove; the savage horse that only yesterday had kicked and bucked and bitten. Keeping a wide smile on her face, murmuring soft words of encouragement, she reached out her hand to stroke him.

“Wow!” It was Saturday morning, and Lisa had dropped in at Half Moon Ranch with her mother, Bonnie. She was leaning on the fence, watching Kirstie work with Rodeo Rocky.

Less than two days in, and Kirstie felt she was well on the way to winning the horse’s trust. True, he would still sometimes shy away when she walked into the pen. His ears would flatten and he would quickly put the biggest possible distance between them. But mostly he would allow her into the pen, take his time, then wander toward her, head lowered, licking his lips in friendly greeting.

“How do you do that without a lead rope?” Lisa wanted to know as she watched Kirstie rub Rocky’s face and shoulders.

“I don’t know. It kind of happens, I guess.” She’d followed her gut feeling that the horse must not be forced. When he was good and ready, he would come up and talk.

She proved it now by running her fingers down his strong, supple neck and listening to him snort with pleasure. Still she took care not to stare directly at him, knowing that, like all horses, Rocky would take this as a threat. And she’d learned how to move when he was around; slow and smooth, sideways and in circles, never fast and direct.

“How long did it take?” Lisa was obviously impressed. She gestured for Matt to get up from the porch swing where he was reading a book and come and look.

“A lot of hours. And we’re not completely there yet. He
thinks
he can trust me, but he still has to be sure!” Kirstie showed her friend how she could sometimes drop her hands to her side, walk a few steps away and have Rocky follow her of his own accord.

“What do you think?” Lisa turned excitedly to Kirstie’s brother.

“So far, so good,” he conceded, ready to wander back to his book.

“Isn’t Kirstie cool?” Grabbing his shirt sleeve, Lisa insisted that he stay to watch. She shone a bright smile at dark-haired, good-looking Matt. “Would you believe she could do that so quick?”

Matt shrugged. “Yeah, yeah. But you wait till she tries to put a bit in his mouth and a saddle on his back.”

“Party pooper!” Lisa pulled a face and turned back to Kirstie, who was letting Rocky nuzzle softly at the palm of her hand. The horse was blowing and nibbling, nipping at the hem of her T-shirt, following everywhere she went. “Take no notice of Matt!” Lisa called. “It’s a guy thing!”

“What’s a guy thing?” Kirstie walked slowly toward her friend with Rocky in tow.

Lisa grinned and leaned over the fence to say hello to the stallion. “Matt knows he was wrong about this horse,” she explained. “And guys don’t like that. They like to be right!”

Sunday afternoon. Sandy Scott had seen off the old guests at Denver airport and was driving back to Half Moon Ranch with a bunch of new visitors for the start of a fresh week of trail rides, cookouts, sing-alongs, and quiet evening walks by the side of Five Mile Creek.

Kirstie had stayed behind to work with Rocky because Yukon was expected to foal tonight and that would mean taking the stallion out of the round pen and letting the new mother look after her foal in safety. Yet Kirstie mustn’t let Rocky feel that they were under pressure. The horse had to be willing to leave the pen and join the others in the meadow.

“Get Hadley or Charlie if Yukon shows any signs of going into labor,” Sandy had instructed before she left for the airport, knowing that Kirstie would be the one closest to the barn where the pregnant mare was stabled.

But so far, all was quiet. Matt was in San Luis visiting his girlfriend, Lachelle Jordan. Hadley was holed up in his bunkhouse, enjoying the few slack moments that his job allowed, and Charlie was the only one around to watch Kirstie’s afternoon session with the rodeo horse.

“I’m gonna try him with a halter and lead rope,” she decided after half an hour of the friendly stuff that Rocky by now so obviously enjoyed. The horse was happy to let her stroke and pat him from head to toe and had no thought of fleeing or playing up in his handsome head. “We have to get a rope on him to lead him out to the remuda when he has to leave the pen.”

Charlie nodded and went into the tack room. Moments later, he emerged with the rope and harness and quietly handed them over the fence to Kirstie.

“This is your first big test,” she told the horse softly, letting the rope and collar hang unnoticed, as she hoped, from her right hand.

But Rocky had spotted the equipment. He tensed up and backed off, then craned his head to sniff at the rope.

“Trust me, it doesn’t mean we’re gonna tie you and beat you up like Wade Williams’s men,” she promised, swinging the collar toward him to let him get a proper sight of it now. “It’s what we do around here to get a horse from A to B. No pain involved, no problem.”

Charlie grinned. “I sure hope he can understand what you’re saying!”

Kirstie smiled back. “Every word! Can’t you, Rocky?” She offered him the halter to smell and explore. Then after a while she made her move, doing her best to look more confident than she felt. “Now this slips on over your nose, like so.”

The horse blinked as the harness slid over his face.
Easy, easy; please don’t fight it!
And that was it. The buckle was fastened, nice and easy. For the first time since he arrived at the ranch, Rocky was wearing a head collar.

That night, when the new moon was high, Sandy Scott called Kirstie from her bed to come and watch Yukon’s foal being born.

“Any moment now,” she promised as they crossed the yard and entered the barn. They passed by a row of empty stalls until they came to a well-lit, straw-lined one at the end. The stall was fourteen feet square, giving plenty of room for the brown and white broodmare, while her helpers, Charlie and Hadley, stood outside at the ready.

“How do we know it’s about to happen?” Kirstie whispered from outside the stall. The birth of a foal was a rare event on the ranch, since Sandy usually bought three-year-olds from the sale barn, ready to be trained and ridden.

“Yukon’s been restless all day,” her mom explained. “She’s been lying down, getting up, biting her flanks and so on. Then, about an hour ago, her contractions started.”

Rubbing her eyes, which were still prickly from sleep, Kirstie stared.

“This is it,” Hadley murmured. His expert eye had caught sight of the foal presenting itself in the birth canal. He showed Kirstie a pair of small front feet, explained that the foal would be in a diving position. The feet should soon be followed by the nose, neck, and shoulders.

“Don’t we help or something?” she whispered.

“No, she’s doing fine,” her mother told her. “We only step in if there’s a problem.”

Already the foal was slithering onto the hay, safely delivered by the mare. Then it rolled and wriggled inside the birth sac, breaking through and beginning to breathe of its own accord. As it did this, Kirstie found that she let go of her own held breath. She gave a deep sigh of relief.

“Now, the foal will try to get to her feet.” Hadley described the next stage. “The cord should break, and we treat the end with iodine solution. See, she’s having a shot at standing up right now!”

Kirstie nodded. The tiny, fragile creature with its enormous head was wobbling up on skinny legs. Kirstie gasped as the baby fell and lay still.

“Too soon,” Sandy reported. “Give her a few minutes’ rest and she’ll try again.”

Fascinated, Kirstie watched every movement of the newborn creature; the alert flick of her ears, the struggle to rise. Meanwhile, Yukon accepted her foal by licking her clean and nudging her onto her feet.

“When will she start feeding?” Charlie’s eager question broke the soft, warm silence of the barn. It made Kirstie realize that this birth was the first the young wrangler had seen.

“In a couple of hours.” Hadley’s easy, calm reply showed that he’d witnessed it many times. “And come the morning, both broodmare and foal should go out into the round pen for exercise.” He turned questioningly to Sandy Scott.

Sandy nodded. “I know. I warned you all that we’d have to move Rocky.”

For the first time since she’d crept out of her warm bed to watch the birth, a feeling of unease came over Kirstie. Sure, she’d known about the deadline, but she’d been pushing it to the back of her mind. She turned away nervously and pictured Rocky out there in his safe pen under the silver moon.

“That’s OK,” Charlie encouraged. “You can move him into the meadow, no problem.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. He’s wearing a head collar. He’ll let you fix the rope and lead him out.”

Taking a deep breath, she nodded.

“Let Hadley do it,” Sandy suggested, picking up Kirstie’s nervousness.

“No, that’s OK.” Bad idea! There was only one person that Rocky had learned to trust. Kirstie knew it had to be her and no one else.

“Before breakfast,” her mom insisted. Satisfied that all had gone well for Yukon and her foal, she led the way through the dark barn out into the yard. They walked in the moon- and starlight, by the round pen.

For a moment, Kirstie paused to glance over the fence. There was Rocky, awake and alert to the sound of their footsteps, keeping his distance, listening, looking. The copper gleam of his coat under the moon was weird, the black of his mane like a moving shadow, and the glint of his eye wary as his gaze followed their journey from barn to house.

“Tomorrow, I’ll take you to Red Fox Meadow,” Kirstie murmured to him through the darkness. “It’ll be fine, you wait and see!”

6

Rocky had to want to do it. Kirstie recognized the first rule about working with horses. If he wasn’t willing to go into the meadow, nothing short of the extreme violence used by the wranglers at the San Luis Rodeo could make him.

“This is going to be OK,” she told him gently, choosing the first light of Monday morning when the sun peeped over the hills behind the guest cabins to go out into the round pen. With everyone except Hadley and Charlie still fast asleep, she knew there would be no distractions.

But she still had to convince the horse that she herself was calm and easy about the move. She had to enter the pen with halter and lead rope as if there was nothing unusual, nothing threatening about to happen. There must be a smile on her face, the same casual, indirect approach as ever. As she drew near and looked up at his intelligent, sensitive face, she stroked his neck and murmured encouraging words. “OK, you’re doing great. I’m gonna slip this head collar on and we’re gonna walk right out of here into Red Fox Meadow.”

Slowly, with the shadow of suspicion gradually melting from his eyes, Rocky let her ease the collar over his nose and strap it behind his ears. He dipped his head and nuzzled her arm.

“Let’s walk.” Giving the gentlest of tugs on the lead rope, she set off for the gate.

The big bay stallion followed quietly, his coat gleaming, his dark mane blowing in the breeze. He scarcely looked at the gate as they stepped outside the pen into the yard, his ears forward, then twitching this way and that.

“
Goo-ood
boy!” Kirstie headed for the wooden bridge across Five Mile Creek. Beyond that lay the meadow, where Hadley and Charlie were already cutting out from the herd the horses that would be needed for the day’s rides. “This is gonna feel kind of strange,” she told Rocky, as their footsteps echoed on the thick pine planks that formed the bridge. “You’re gonna meet Cadillac and Crazy Horse out here. Cadillac’s the big, creamy-white mustang and he knows he’s beautiful, but don’t let that bother you. Then there’s Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse has to be the ugliest horse around, but he thinks he’s a good-looking guy, just like Cadillac. You can’t come between those two; they go every place together …”