“Good job!” Leon cried as he slammed the gate behind the horse.
Sweating and out of breath, TJ and Jesse congratulated each other with a slap of palms.
Kirstie frowned. She heard Lisa give a small, relieved sigh. Donna Rose, meanwhile, was left with no trace of the earlier smile on her carefully made-up face.
“We seem to have got ourselves a problem breaking that bronc,” she commented quietly as Hadley strode across the yard toward her.
“Slow and easy,” he advised. “You get her to a point where she wants to work for you, and after that you’ve got no problem.”
Nodding hard, Kirstie ran to check that Midnight Lady wasn’t harming herself against the rough poles of the stockade fence. She stood on the bottom bar of the gate and peered in to see the gray horse trotting nervously around the small compound, ears laid flat, nostrils flared. She was looking for a way out, switching direction, wheeling and arching her back in fear.
“C’mon, Kirstie!” Lisa called. “Time to go!”
Kirstie glanced over her shoulder to see Hadley climb into the cab of the trailer. She heard him start up the engine, obviously in a hurry to leave. “Gee, I’m sorry!” she whispered as Midnight Lady veered toward her, then slid to a halt and plunged off in another direction. “We never meant for that to happen.”
The horse reared and dipped, kicked out at the solid fence, ran on.
“Kirstie!” Lisa yelled a second time.
“It’ll be OK, you’ll see,” she promised the frightened mare. “Give yourself a day or two to settle in. We’ll try and get back to see you during the weekend!”
“We’re leaving without you!” Lisa warned, following Hadley into the cab.
One last glance. Midnight Lady stopped short, flung back her head and whinnied. Her white mane whipped across her neck as she swung around…trotting again, sliding to a halt in the dust, swerving …running in vain from the loud voices and tight, harsh ropes of her impatient new owners.
2
Early July was high season at Half Moon Ranch, and Kirstie’s worries about Midnight Lady were soon pushed to one side by the busy routine of leading dude riders out on the trails, helping to make sure that none of the visitors fell off or got lost on the pine-covered slopes of the Meltwater Range.
“You won’t believe what happened today!” she told Lisa over the phone. It was three days after the visit to Circle R and the two friends hadn’t had a chance to meet up since. “Today’s Sunday, right? Our first day on Five Mile Creek trail with a bunch of beginners. There’s this guy on Crazy Horse, and you know how sweet and easy that horse is. Well, the guy’s never been in a saddle in his life. First time, right? Charlie’s leading the group, and he tells them to walk nice and slow along the side of the creek. But this tough guy at the end of the line wants to act like a cowboy in front of two other guys from his office back in New Jersey.
“So he ignores Charlie and works Crazy Horse straight into a lope. Crazy Horse takes off like a rocket. The guy bounces all over the place and has to hang on to the saddle horn just to stay put. Crazy Horse thinks, ‘I’ll show this jug-head,’ gallops wide of the bunch, and right into the creek. The water sprays up and smacks the guy right in the face. He yells out, tips backward out of the saddle, and rolls into the creek!”
“Hey!” Lisa laughed and appreciated the scene. “What did Crazy Horse do then?”
“He stopped and stood as if butter wouldn’t melt, head to one side like he was asking, ‘Hey, what happened? Was it something I did?’ The guy stood up waist-deep, with water pouring off the brim of his hat, down his face, everywhere. It was squelching out of his boots every step he took as he climbed up the bank! His office pals were doubled over laughing. Charlie said nothing, but the guy had to go back to the ranch to get a change of clothes while the rest of us rode on.”
“And Crazy Horse got the morning off.” Lisa giggled. “Smart horse. Speaking of time off, Kirstie, why don’t you drive into town this afternoon and drop in at the diner? It’s been ages since you came over to my place.”
“Sounds good. I heard Matt say he was planning to drive in, so I could get a ride.” Kirstie’s older brother, Matt, was heading back to Denver to see his girlfriend later that day and could easily drop Kirstie off in San Luis, where Lisa’s mom, Bonnie, ran the End of Trail Diner. “Maybe we could even get him to drive us out as far as Renegade, to take a look at the three broncs we bought for the Circle R.”
“What’s that, a guilty conscience?” Lisa joked.
“No, I kinda had it in mind it’d be nice to see how they’re doing …” Kirstie tailed off. “Yeah, guilty conscience,” she admitted. “I got this sneaking feeling we let Midnight Lady down the day we dropped her off at Donna’s place. I want her to know we care what happens to her.”
“Me, too,” Lisa agreed. She told Kirstie to fix things up with Matt for a lift out to the ranch, while she made arrangements at her end for her mom to pick them up and drive them back. “See you at two thirty!” she ended, bright and breezy. “And, Kirstie, try not to get too stressed out. Midnight Lady’s gonna be just fine, you’ll see!”
“Why not bring Lisa back to Half Moon with you?” Sandy Scott called from the ranch house porch. “Tell her she can stay over for a few days if she’d like.”
“Thanks, Mom!” Kirstie gave her a smile and a wave as she sank into the passenger seat of Matt’s beaten-up, pale blue Chevy. The invitation meant that she and Lisa would be able to ride out together, away from the trails worn smooth by the guests. They would take her own palomino horse, Lucky, use Matt’s horse, Cadillac, for Lisa, and head for remote spots like Eden Lake or Bear Hunt Overlook, maybe bushwhacking cross-country through shadowy glades, above the snow line to Eagle’s Peak.
She was picturing the scene—the rushing streams, the narrow passes—as Matt drove slowly out of the yard and along the winding dirt road toward Route 5. The car rattled along, washboarding over dry ridges caused by water running across the road during a spring flood. She sat back in her seat as they rounded a bend to the left, tight against a sheer face of brownish red rock.
“What the …!” Matt slammed on the brake.
A cream pickup truck was hurtling toward them, way over their side of the road. A cloud of dust billowed out behind.
“He’s not gonna stop!” Kirstie cried. She braced her arms against the dashboard, felt their own car shimmy sideways in a screech of brakes.
The pickup driver saw them, but it was too late. His own brakes went on so hard he lost control, sliding and skidding across their path until the two vehicles came to a crunching, grinding halt. The pickup had hit them head on, to the sound of shattering glass and scraping metal.
“You OK?” Matt turned to Kirstie before he opened his door.
She nodded. “Fine. No problem.” Which was more than could be said about Matt’s car. Steam was rising from its hood, the windshield shattered into a thousand tiny fragments.
“If that’s Chuck Perry, I’ll kill him!” Matt seemed to have recognised the pickup. “The guy drives like a maniac. I’m always telling him to take it easy along this road!” Getting out of his smashed car, he strode to confront the other driver.
Chuck Perry was the shoer from Minesville who came to Half Moon Ranch once a month to shoe the horses. It was true he was a reckless driver, as the beat-up condition of his often-changed pickups proved. And yes, Kirstie saw that Matt’s guess was correct as the driver emerged from his vehicle and she recognized the short, squat, mustached figure of the farrier.
“Where’s the fire?” Matt demanded, standing hands on hips.
“No fire. Just a dozen horses to shoe and three different places to be in at any one time,” Chuck snapped back, turning in dismay to look at his busted radiator and smashed fender. “I gotta finish here and get over to Circle R before sundown. Now look what happened!”
“It kinda puts out a few plans of my own,” Matt pointed out, his temper cooling once he got over the shock. If
he’d been expecting Chuck to apologize, he would have been sorely disappointed. Instead, the tough, muscular shoer was winding himself up into a frustrated rage.
“How am I gonna do my work?” he demanded, pointing to the portable forge and box of tools in the back of his pickup. “And if I don’t shoe those horses, I don’t get paid. I got bills up to here.” A hand gesture above his head showed Kirstie and Matt that he was snowed under by debt.
“OK, OK.” Matt began to think on the shoer’s behalf, seemingly willing to forget whose fault the accident had been. Kirstie thought this was very big of him, considering how grumpy she felt about not getting to Lisa’s on time. And it wasn’t even her car that had been totaled. “What do you say we walk back to the ranch and get Hadley to tow you in?” he went on to suggest. “That way, you get your equipment in place and you can put shoes on our horses.”
Grumbling and sighing through his mustache, Chuck Perry agreed. Within half an hour, with Hadley’s help, the bend in the road was cleared and the farrier hard at work outside the barn.
Kirstie, too, had rearranged her plans. “Hadley says he’ll drive Chuck to Circle R late this afternoon,” she told Lisa on the phone. “It just so happens that he’s down to put new shoes on Moonpie, Skeeter, and Midnight Lady after he’s finished here. That works well for us, as a matter of fact.”
“Sure.” Lisa didn’t care how they got to Circle R. She was her usual, laid-back self.
“Not so good for Matt though.” Kirstie could see her brother sitting dejectedly astride the fence overlooking the empty corral. It was already well past three and he’d had to call up Lachelle in Denver to tell her he wasn’t going to make it after all. “He’s a star-crossed lover,” she told Lisa.
“Like poor old Romeo!” Lisa laughed unsympathetically. They’d both read the play and seen the film. “‘Parting is such sweet sorrow!’”
“Yeah. Except Matt and Lachelle; they never even got together!” And Matt was no Romeo, and Lachelle no Juliet for that matter. Too into the workings of boring car engines and the latest shade of lipstick for that, though Kirstie would never dare say so.
“So we get to see Midnight Lady again, after all!” Lisa said happily. She’d dumped a bag containing nightclothes and riding gear into the back of Hadley’s pickup and climbed in beside Kirstie.
It was five o’clock on a long, lazy Sunday afternoon. Lisa’s mom, Bonnie, had taken a quick break from serving coffee and food and come out onto the sidewalk to see her daughter off, snatching a few words with Hadley as he leaned out of the driver’s window.
“You be sure and say hi to Donna for me,” she made him promise. “She was in here the other day, singing your praises over three horses you bought for her. Couldn’t say enough. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Mrs. Rose was a tiny little bit sweet on you, Hadley Crane!”
In the back of the truck, squashed in beside Chuck Perry’s forge and toolbox, Lisa and Kirstie broke up.
“She wouldn’t hear a word against you!” Bonnie Goodman insisted, playing the situation for all it was worth. She was enjoying the wrangler’s blushes. “Leon Franks stood alongside her, mumbling something about one of the horses being vicious, but Donna knocked him straight back …”
“When was this exactly?” Kirstie cut in, suddenly serious when she caught the word “vicious.”
“Let me see…this was Friday.” Bonnie ran a hand through her dark curls as Hadley signaled to pull out onto Main Street. But first he let a car park up in front of him, outside True West, the San Luis gift shop selling handtooled leather cigar boxes, custom-made Stetsons, and antique wagon wheel chandeliers. “Why, what’s the problem?” Lisa’s mom caught the change of mood.
“Nothing.” Lisa smoothed things over. “See you in a couple of days!”
They were off up the street, past the gas station and convenience store. Chuck Perry sat stiffly beside Hadley, his face refusing to crack a smile. The old ranch hand himself was still recovering from Bonnie’s far-fetched theory about him and Donna Rose.
“When did Donna lose her husband?” Lisa asked Kirstie, enjoying the wind in her hair as the truck gathered speed.
“She didn’t lose him,” Kirstie protested. “You make him sound like an old sock in a laundromat. He died. She’s been a widow for three-and-a-half years. And no, Hadley never had a wife. Believe me, he just ain’t the marrying kind!”
The smile that Donna Rose used on Chuck Perry when the shoer finally showed up to work on her three new horses was a pale shadow in comparison with the dazzler she turned on Hadley as he got out of the red Dodge and sat himself down on the porch swing at Circle R.
“I’d like you to check out my five other working horses while you’re here,” she told the farrier. “TJ and Jesse just brought them in from the meadow for you to take a look at. They’re in the barn right now.”
Chuck grunted and nodded.
“What got into him? He’s like a bear with a sore head.” Donna’s earrings shook and caught the light as she laughed at Chuck’s retreating form.
“Major surgery needed to his main method of transportation,” Kirstie reported. “Serious damage to his collateral.”
“His truck’s been in a crash,” Lisa translated. “He totaled it completely.”
“How are Skeeter and Moonpie?” Swiftly Kirstie changed the subject to what really interested her as she spotted Leon Franks on horseback. The ranch manager pretended that he hadn’t seen the visitors as he drove a black-and-white cow and calf into the tall stockade.
“They’re doing great,” Donna assured her. “Leon’s been working with them. He put saddles on their backs for the first time earlier today. Both of them took it without so much as a single buck. I tell you, when it comes to breaking broncs, Leon’s your man!”
Kirstie listened and nodded. “That’s good,” she said cautiously, then turned to Hadley. The word “breaking” somehow bothered her. “Ain’t that good news?”
“Sure, if they’re gentle broke,” he replied. “If those horses are working out of willingness and not fear, I’d say that Leon did a great job saddling them up so quick.”
“How would you tell the difference?” It was Lisa’s turn to ask a question.
“Yes, you’re the expert!” Donna said brightly. “C’mon, Hadley, give us the benefit of your years of experience!”
He looked up from under the brim of his hat. “A gentle broke horse acts like he’s your friend. He responds to kindness. If you break him with force, there’s fear in all his movements. He spends his life thinking you’re gonna hurt him with ropes and whips, and he’s most likely right; you’re the kind of rider who’ll give him more pain the second he steps out of line. So you see it in his eyes mainly; his slave look, his burn of resentment.”
“Or hers,” Kirstie said quietly. But the mood had changed so much that she didn’t dare to go ahead and ask after Midnight Lady.
And anyway, Donna Rose had cheerfully missed the point. “When I saw your truck coming up the track, I asked Jesse and TJ to saddle Moonpie and Skeeter to give you a small demonstration of where we’re at,” she told them proudly. “They should be about ready by this time. Would you like to come through the barn to the corral around the back?”
Nodding and trying to squash their uneasiness, Lisa and Kirstie followed the ladylike owner.
“C’mon, you, too!” Donna waited at the barn door for an even more reluctant Hadley.
He came slowly across the yard, stopping to say a few words to Chuck Perry in the area by the barn where the sparks flew from the anvil and the shoer hammered metal into the correct shape and size for one of Donna’s roping horses who was tethered nearby. By the time Hadley joined Lisa, Kirstie and Donna in the corral, Jesse and TJ were ready to mount their broncs.
Skeeter came in first, ahead of Moonpie. TJ walked him confidently out of another door to the barn and into the empty corral. Skeeter’s head was up, his eyes staring. Kirstie noticed a raised mark across the white flash that ran
the length of his bony face and a patch of bright yellow antiseptic paint on one of his white front socks. But he stood quietly enough while TJ checked his cinch strap and prepared to mount.
Likewise Moonpie, when he was led into the corral by Jesse. The flea-bitten gray seemed to be tense; his tail was tight against his rump, his back slightly arched under the unaccustomed weight of the saddle. But he didn’t protest as his rider grabbed a fistful of white mane and roughly hauled himself skyward.
“Hmm,” was all Hadley said as both junior ranch hands landed heavily on the horses’ backs.
Not much, but enough for Kirstie. Hadley’s “Hmm” said it all. For a moment she closed her eyes and drew a sharp breath.
“See how docile they both are!” said a pleased Donna Rose.
Jesse and TJ gave Moonpie and Skeeter a firm dig with their spurs, jolting the young horses into forward motion. The geldings felt the cold bite of metal across their tongues as the reins suddenly tightened. Back went their heads, eyes rolling. But they obeyed the command to walk on.
“Too docile!” Lisa murmured under her breath.
Tears came to Kirstie’s eyes as she witnessed the scene and tried to imagine what it must have taken to break these two horses’ spirits. Ropes and tarps, whips and spurs. Hobbled legs, blows to head and belly. She’d read about the cruel methods men sometimes used to subdue an unbroken horse.
“Leon’s done a fine job, don’t you think?” the unwary ranch owner gushed, taking the evidence at face value. After all, there were riders on the geldings’ backs, and the animals showed no sign of protesting. “We’ll have these two at work in time for the fall roundup, no problem!”
With an effort, Kirstie summoned her voice to speak the question that had been on the tip of her tongue since they arrived at Circle R. She glanced back at the barn and out into the empty meadow beyond the corral. With the sound of hammer against anvil ringing in her ears, and with the sight of two cruelly broken horses parading before her, she found the courage to ask, “What about Midnight Lady?”
Midnight Lady Page 2