© 2009 by Jenny Oldfield
Cover and internal design © 2009 Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover photo © Kimball Stock
Internal illustrations © Paul Hunt
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Originally published in Great Britain in 1999 by Hodder Children’s Books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oldfield, Jenny.
Johnny Mohawk / Jenny Oldfield.
p. cm. — (Horses of Half-Moon Ranch ; bk. 4)
Summary: When a guest at the Half-Moon Ranch in Colorado becomes injured while riding a horse named Johnny Mohawk, thirteen-year-old Kirstie must prove the horse’s innocence to prevent a costly lawsuit. [1. Horses—Fiction. 2. Ranch life—Colorado—Fiction. 3. Colorado—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.O4537Jo 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2008039730
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
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About the Author
1
“Yee-hah!” Brad Jensen galloped Silver Flash into the corral. He reined the big sorrel mare to a sliding stop, kicked his feet from the stirrups, and vaulted to the ground.
Kirstie Scott and Lisa Goodman leaned on the fence and watched the young Texan rider.
“Pretty fancy,” Kirstie murmured. Brad had put the strong quarter horse through her paces on the stretch of level pasture by Five Mile Creek. He’d trotted her into the clear, shallow water, then loped her toward the ranch, raising a spray that shone like a million diamonds in the bright sunlight.
Lisa pulled down the peak of her baseball cap to shield her eyes. Brad was now hitching Silver Flash to a rail between Cadillac and Moose, his heeled boots and fringed leather chaps dripping from the charge along the river bank. “Yeah; fancy boots, fancy chaps.” She was evidently trying hard not to look impressed.
“Jeez, no; I was looking at Silver Flash’s footwork.” Kirstie wasn’t the least bit interested in the fifteen-year-old dude rider. Brad might be tall and lean, with short, fair hair and contrasting dark brown eyes, and he was a frequent visitor with his fourteen-year-old brother, Troy. But it was the horse who stole her attention. “For a big mare with a long stride, she sure can turn and stop on a silver dollar!”
“… As Hadley would say.” Lisa grinned and jerked her head toward the old wrangler who was the chief help at Half Moon Ranch. Today was Sunday, the start of a week’s vacation for a bunch of twenty or so paying guests. It was time for Hadley Crane’s introductory talk.
“Now, y’all need to respect your horse,” Hadley was telling the group. “Don’t go kicking him too hard or dragging at his mouth to get your own way.” He stood by the door of the tack room beside a board with a list of horses’ names chalked on it. After the talk, he would allocate a horse to each guest by asking a few brief questions and choosing a mount to suit the rider.
The nervous first-time visitors bunched together at the gate to the corral. They had flown in from cities in the East. Most worked in offices, schools, and hospitals and had never seen the snow on the peaks of the Rockies or the sparkling, blue-green mountain lakes except in holiday brochures and on TV. Many had never been on a horse.
Hadley’s gaze flicked coolly from one to the next. “Click, don’t kick,” he told them in a low, slow drawl. “When you want your horse to walk, click your tongue at him. When you want him to trot, click again.”
“Hey, Kirstie. Hey, Lisa!” Brad Jensen ignored the talk and came to lean on the fence next to the girls.
“Hey,” they murmured back without looking at him.
“What’s the instruction when you want the horse to canter?” a man at the back of the group asked Hadley. The speaker was short, middle-aged, and slightly built, dressed in jeans and a white polo shirt. His voice didn’t sound American.
“You English?” Hadley asked.
“Irish,” came the reply.
A boy of about Brad’s age stood next to the man, looking as if he wished he was somewhere else.
“What d’you reckon—father and son?” Lisa whispered. The man and boy looked alike, with the same wavy dark hair and light gray eyes.
“Yep.” Kirstie had already glanced at the list of guests. “Paddy and Stevie Kane from Macgillycuddy Reeks, County Kerry.”
“Macgill-y …what?” Brad twisted his tongue around the strange name.
“Hey,” Kirstie warned, “I want to listen to Hadley!” She didn’t, but she wanted Brad to shut up.
“Well, now, here in America, we don’t canter; we lope,” the ranch hand drawled. “And when we ask our horse to lope, we give him a kissing sound.”
“Kiss, kiss!” Brad’s brother, Troy, came up from behind, lunged at Lisa, then swung his leg over the top rail. He straddled the fence and jammed his white Stetson down over his forehead, ready to laugh and joke his way through Hadley’s talk.
“Yuck, Troy!” Lisa complained. She pretended to wipe her freckled cheek.
“‘Yuck, Troy!’ ” he echoed.
Brad grinned. “Kiss the horse, baby brother, not the girl!”
“Not this girl, leastways!” Tossing her auburn curls, Lisa made a show of walking off through the gate into the corral.
Kirstie followed. “Pity the poor horse,” she muttered. Troy and Brad were OK as far as horsemanship skills went, but as people, they got on her nerves.
“Troy’s on Yukon for the week, right?” Lisa stopped beside the pretty brown and white appaloosa mare tethered along the row from Silver Flash and gave her a sympathetic pat.
“Right.” Kirstie tuned in again to Hadley’s talk. She noticed that the Kane father had chosen to stand to one side since his question about loping. He’d folded his arms and taken on a superior frown, as if he’d heard it all before. The son, however, had stayed with the group.
“When you’re out on the trail, we want you to take care of yourselves,” Hadley went on, stepping down from the boardwalk outside the tack room and into the middle of the bunch. “We ride in a line…that’s single file to you folks from Ireland…and we don’t pass the horse in front, ’cause that’s gonna upset that other horse a little bit.”
The group parted to let the wrangler through. He paused beside a couple of teenage girls who were staying with their parents at Brown Bear Cabin on the road out toward Hummingbird Rock.
“So, how long have you folks been riding?” Hadley asked them.
The girls, Carole and Linda Holgate, let the wrangler know that this was their first time at a dude ranch. Scanning the list of names, he chose two quiet, steady quarter horses who’d been in the remuda at Half Moon Ranch since Sandy Scott had set up the business five years earlier. Then he moved on briskly to Stevie Kane.
“Howdy, Stevie.” H
adley went through the routine, one eye on the names on the board. “You ridden Western before?”
“You bet your life he ain’t!” Brad Jensen’s loud remark was followed by a hoarse laugh.
Kirstie saw Paddy Kane bristle and step up beside his son.
“No, sir!” Troy crowed. “He learned to ride English back home, you bet!”
“So?” Lisa turned on the Jensen boys. “Riding English is harder than riding Western, if you wanna know!”
Troy rode the six-foot-high fence as if he was on a small, high-stirruped English saddle. “Oh, yeah; cant-ah, cant-ah!”
Ignoring them all, Kirstie turned to look at Charlie Miller, Hadley’s young assistant, who was leading a dainty black horse into the corral, ready to be tacked up for the first trail ride of the week. Johnny Mohawk, the five-year-old stallion, was acting up as he came through the gate, pulling at his lead rope and tossing his long, dark mane.
Kirstie smiled to herself. Trust the half-Arab to make a grand entrance, as usual. She studied the high-stepping walk, the slim legs; the arched neck, flaring nostrils, and large, dark eyes of the lively horse. Johnny was beautiful from the tips of his ears down every inch of his muscular, shining body to the tips of his polished hooves. And didn’t he just know it!
Charlie gave him a second to calm down, then steered him clear of the other horses, leading him to a post by the barn door. He tied him securely and strode across the corral, past the bunch of visitors, into the tack room for Johnny’s bridle and saddle.
“Hey!” Brad stopped fooling to take a good look at the new arrival. He came up close to Kirstie to quiz her. “Where did he come from?”
“What do you mean?” Walking across the corral toward Johnny, hoping to leave Brad behind, she muttered a moody question in answer to his pushy demand.
“This black horse; he wasn’t here last year.” Brad circled Johnny Mohawk, taking in the horse’s aristocratic good looks. “Jeez, he’s a nice-looking brute. Where’d you get him?”
“From a film unit that was working out here last fall.” Proud of Johnny, she found herself explaining to Brad, reaching out to stroke the horse’s soft cheek and velvety muzzle. “He was a stunt horse in a movie, along with a dozen or so others. The horse trainer sold five of them after they finished shooting. Mom saw him in the San Luis sale barn, fell in love with him, and brought him back here.”
Johnny Mohawk tossed his head and stamped his foot, as if he knew they were discussing him.
“Yeah, we know you’re a beautiful boy!” With a grin, Kirstie took a bit and bridle from Charlie and began to fit the tack. “The problem is, you know it, too!”
“… How about the black Arab?” a harsh voice cut in, and a figure strode across the corral.
Stooping to peer under Johnny’s neck, Kirstie spotted trouble ahead in the shape of Paddy Kane.
The Irishman had spotted Johnny Mohawk and wanted him for his son. “This is a good mount for Stevie,” he insisted. “A horse with a bit of spirit is what he wants, not some plodding old time-server.”
“I’d say Crazy Horse was the right horse,” Hadley was insisting without seeming to contradict too strongly. “Crazy Horse is smart, and he knows the trails.”
“It’s OK, Dad, I don’t mind.” Lingering behind the two men, Stevie offered a way out. “The chestnut looks fine to me.”
“But this black one has a definite touch of class.” Paddy Kane walked around Johnny Mohawk as Charlie finished saddling him. “You don’t want an ugly ride like the chestnut. You want something that looks right!”
Kirstie frowned and turned her back to buckle Johnny’s cheek strap. Plodding? Ugly? The mouthy little guy knew nothing! Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mom come across the yard and stand quietly by the fence.
“Well, now, are you sure your boy could handle Johnny?” A hint of scorn had edged into Hadley’s voice.
“My boy can handle any horse you’ve got on this ranch!” The boast drew attention from all corners of the corral, while Stevie himself dropped his head in embarrassment. “Didn’t you know? We run our own trekking center back in Kerry, so the boy was practically born in the saddle. He was riding by the age of eighteen months, following in my footsteps, hacking out in the Macgillycuddy Mountains, helping me break in new horses. You’re not telling me that this black horse is too much of a handful for the likes of us!”
Hadley listened, then sniffed. “You folks have Arab horses in Kerry?”
“Connemaras, cobs, hunters, Arabs; any type of horse you care to name!”
“Dad, it’s OK!” Stevie tried again to break the deadlock between the two men. He seemed to hate having the eyes of the whole corral on him and his big-headed father.
“Shut up, son. I want this week in the Rockies to be a challenge for you. I’m paying a lot of money for it, and I insist on the very best horse they’ve got!”
“How about letting Stevie give Johnny Mohawk a try, Hadley?” Sandy Scott had climbed the fence and dropped into the corral. The breeze caught her fair hair and rippled through her bright, blue and white checked shirt. Her tanned face and gray eyes gave no sign of irritation. “He can ride Johnny out along Five Mile Creek this morning. I’ll be leading that ride, so I can keep an eye on him.”
“Sure.” Although visibly angry, Hadley still did as his boss told him. Turning and striding back across the corral, he made sure that Carole and Linda Holgate were happy with their mounts.
“Hmm.” Paddy Kane grunted and nodded without a word of thanks.
Sandy nodded kindly at the red-faced Stevie. “You need to know that Johnny Mohawk is a little different from the rest of the quarter horses here,” she explained. “It’s partly his pedigree and partly his recent history. If I tell you that Johnny’s been in the movies, that should help you understand!”
“Wow, a movie star!” Now that the argument between the two stubborn men was settled to Paddy Kane’s satisfaction, Brad Jensen began to joke and fool around once more. He jumped up onto Silver Flash and wheeled her close to where Stevie Kane stood. “Johnny Mohawk belongs to the Hollywood brat pack!”
“I know who’s the real brat around here!” Lisa sidled up to Kirstie and watched the other guests mount their horses.
Sandy took the time to hold the black horse still while Stevie swung into the saddle. “He likes to be looked at and admired, that’s all,” she told him. “You’ll see his head go up when he joins the others and he begins to show off a little.”
Sitting deep in the big Western saddle and gathering the reins in his left hand, Stevie nodded. “I can handle him. Don’t worry.”
No sooner had he said that than Johnny Mohawk seemed to set out to prove him wrong. The gleaming black horse felt the boy’s weight in the saddle and must have picked up the fact that this was the first time that Stevie Kane had ridden Western style. Sitting back on his haunches before the rider’s feet were in the stirrups, he launched himself across the corral in a quick, edgy trot. Stevie jerked backward and grabbed the saddle horn. He hung on to it with his right hand as he hooked his feet through the stirrup irons, then reined Johnny back. After three or four steps, he was upright and in control, laying the reins to the left to avoid Carole Holgate and her sister, using his legs to steer the horse neatly toward the gate.
Kirstie had stepped back to stand beside Lisa and watch horse and rider go. She saw Johnny Mohawk arch his neck and carry his tail high, saying Look at me! as he trotted across the corral.
“The kid’s good!” Lisa sounded surprised. Stevie and Johnny came to a neat halt at the head of the line waiting for Sandy Scott to take them off along the creek trail. “Like, he’s new to Western, but he sure knows how to bring Johnny into line!”
Once at the gate which faced the track along the green valley between the steep mountains of the Meltwater Range, the stallion tossed his head and skittered sideways, keeping his rider on his mettle. When the Jensen brothers came up on Silver Flash and Yukon, loudly jostling for position, he duck
ed his head and kicked back hard. Once more, Stevie Kane had to make a grab for the saddle horn and hang on.
“But not that good!” Kirstie said quietly.
Kirstie and Lisa saw Sandy ride to the front on Jitterbug. Quickly, they ran for Lucky and Crazy Horse so they could to join the end of the line behind Paddy Kane on big, creamy white Cadillac.
Ahead lay the blue and gold of larkspur and dandelion meadows and the rainbow spray of white water rapids cutting through granite. There would be beaver dams and elk coming down to drink—and, if they were lucky, the scamper of striped chipmunks along felled pine-tree trunks.
“Yee-hah!” Brad gave his cowboy yell as they all set out eagerly on Five Mile Creek Trail.
2
Kirstie sat easy in her saddle. Ahead of her, the line of horses and riders was soon strung out along the riverbank, shaded from the hot sun by stands of aspen trees. Their delicate, silver-green leaves shimmered in the breeze.
“Easy, Lucky!” Holding back her palomino horse, she smiled wryly as she saw Crazy Horse take it into his head to settle Lisa in behind Paddy Kane and Cadillac. The two horses went everywhere together, which was bad luck for her friend.
“At my riding school in Kerry, we have a horse-walking machine to provide the animals with exercise,” the talkative Irishman was telling Lisa proudly. “And we have an indoor arena with an all-weather surface.”
“Gee.”
“Of course, we insist on helmets for all our riders.”
“Yeah?”
“The law demands it in Ireland. And all my staff have advanced first-aid diplomas, though we naturally put safety first, so their expertise is rarely put to the test.”
“Sure.” Lisa sighed and glanced back at Kirstie with a look that said, Boy, is this guy boring!
Kirstie grinned at the narrow escape for her and Lucky. Instead of listening to Paddy Kane, she could do what she loved best when she was out on the trail, which was to drift off into a world of her own. First she let her gaze rest on distant Eagle’s Peak, snow-capped even in midsummer. Then, closer to the track, she caught sight of small herds of mule deer amongst the ponderosa pines. If she stayed well back, there would be no talking, no having to be nice to guests; that was her mom’s department. Up ahead, she noticed Sandy Scott slowing down to show the riders the safest place to take their horses across the fast-flowing creek.
Johnny Mohawk Page 1