Johnny Mohawk

by Jenny Oldfield

  “OK, tell me again!” Kirstie needed a clear picture of what had happened. She was out on the trail with Lisa, leading her mom and Mr. Kane, who crawled behind them in the pickup truck. They were working against the clock, letting Crazy Horse find the spot where Stevie had had his accident before daylight faded and dusk closed in.

  Wearily, Lisa shook her head. “Kirstie, I already went through this a hundred times!”

  “But I want to hear it without Mr. Kane jumping in and blaming everybody.” She spoke low and urgently. “Take it from where you two split off. You say you got more and more lost on the mountain?”

  “Yeah. I was OK on Crazy Horse here; no problem. Sure, I was cold, but I did what we always do …”

  “You cowboyed-up!” Kirstie gave Lisa a sympathetic smile. Cowboying-up was the phrase they used when things on the trail got tough. There was no point moaning and crying; you just had to get on with what had to be done.

  “Yeah!” Lisa grinned back. As she reached a landmark tree casting its long, deep shadow across the track, she reined Crazy Horse to the right and set off cross country. The four-wheel-drive truck bumped and rattled over the rough ground. “OK, we were lost and cold. Stevie and I—well, I guess we had a difference of opinion.”

  “You had a fight?”

  “Not exactly. He wanted to go one way along a ridge. I reckoned we should head down to a stream.”

  “How did you know? I thought you were both lost.”

  “We were. I just felt Crazy Horse knew what he was doing, and Crazy Horse was the one who wanted to cross the stream.”

  “What about Johnny Mohawk?” Kirstie wanted to know.

  “He wanted to come with Crazy Horse and me. But Stevie was stubborn. He held Johnny back and made him head for the ridge. I watched them until they were out of sight, not knowing if I should follow. Stevie was pushing Johnny hard, and by this time, the horse was tired. I reckoned he would have a problem if they just kept going around in circles. In the end, even though Crazy Horse didn’t like it, I went after them.”

  “But before you could catch up with them, Stevie had his accident?” Kirstie wanted to fix the order of events in her mind. Looking around and spotting a rocky ridge ahead, she reckoned that they’d almost reached the place where Stevie Kane had fallen.

  Lisa nodded. “I was riding around the pointed rock up there, taking it easy because the track gets kinda steep and scary. I heard Johnny acting up, like he was refusing to move, and Stevie was saying, ‘Go ahead, go on, git!’ ”

  “Did he kick him? Did he use the rope?”

  Lisa sighed. “You asked me that before. How do I know? I couldn’t see them because of the rock. But I heard Johnny snort and stamp. He sent little rocks sliding and rolling down the hill toward Crazy Horse and me. He began to whinny and squeal. He must have been bucking like crazy, because there was this avalanche of stones, and Stevie was yelling louder and louder, then Crazy Horse and me came around the corner just in time to see him flying backward out of the saddle. He hit the ground hard, Kirstie. I heard his head smack against a rock!”

  “Lucky he didn’t knock himself out.” She glanced around to point her mom and Mr. Kane in the direction they should go next. “Almost there!” she promised.

  “He could’ve killed himself. Anyway, he fell with his arm twisted under him. I got to him quick as I could. I raced Crazy Horse along the ridge. There was blood all down Stevie’s face, but he was trying to sit up, so I knew he wasn’t too bad.”

  “What about Johnny? What did he do?”

  “He didn’t hang around. Once he’d bucked Stevie off, I didn’t see him because of the dust. Leastways, I was too busy trying to help Stevie to care about the horse.”

  “This bucking,” Kirstie said, realizing that Johnny Mohawk had done the sensible thing and headed straight for home. She was still eager for precise details. “Did you actually see Johnny Mohawk buck Stevie off? Or did you just see Stevie fall?”

  “I told you; I heard it but I didn’t see it.” Lisa hesitated at the tall finger of rock she’d described to Kirstie. Around this corner, they would find the injured boy. She drew a deep breath to prepare herself. “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing.” Kirstie clamped her mouth shut and leaned forward to pat Lucky. “Go ahead. I’ll follow.”

  “No, wait. Are you saying that Johnny Mohawk didn’t buck Stevie off after all?” Lisa hissed.

  Behind them, Paddy Kane slammed the truck door and came running.

  “No … I don’t know!”

  “You are! You’re saying that Stevie’s lying!” Lisa’s voice rose.

  “Stand clear and let me through!” Paddy Kane demanded, pushing Kirstie and Lucky dangerously close to the edge of the ridge. “Let me see my son!”

  Kirstie allowed him to barge by, then leaned forward in the saddle to bring Lucky away from the steep drop.

  “I’m not saying he’s definitely lying!” she whispered back to Lisa, as, one after the other, she, Lisa, and finally her mom rounded the corner.

  They saw Stevie Kane sitting against a rock, his right arm tied in a makeshift sling, his face white in the shadows and streaked with blood. He’d heard their voices, the truck’s engine, and the sound of hooves approaching; he knew help was on its way. Kirstie would have expected him to be relieved, to have struggled to his feet to show them not to worry, that he was OK. Instead he sat quite still, staring up at his father’s face.

  “If you’re not saying Stevie’s telling a lie about Johnny, what are you saying?” Lisa muttered as she and Kirstie dismounted on a ledge of rock and waited for Paddy Kane to speak to his son.

  Kirstie’s frown deepened. What was that look in the kid’s gray eyes? Was it fear of being lost and injured, of lying there helpless while coyotes, bobcats, and even bears prowled nearby? Or was it fear of his father? “I’m saying something weird is going on here,” she told Lisa. “Something real weird that none of us understands!”

  5

  “Johnny just went crazy!” Stevie Kane repeated the phrase over and over as Sandy gave him first aid.

  The sun had sunk behind the mountain, leaving them to rescue the boy in the cold, creeping half-light. It made Stevie’s face extra pale; the blood trickling from the cut on his head seemed almost black as Kirstie’s mom took pads of cotton wool from her first-aid kit. He winced as the cold disinfectant on the pad touched the wound.

  “He went crazy for no reason; just reared up and dipped back down. He bucked me right off!”

  “Easy, son!” Paddy Kane glanced down at the steep slope that fell away from the ridge where the accident had happened. He pointed to the churned-up ground. “A couple more steps to the right, and they’d have gone over the edge,” he muttered.

  “It wasn’t my fault!” Stevie managed to grit his teeth and not cry out as Sandy worked on the cut. He cradled his hurt right arm, wincing with pain as he tried to shift his position. “The whole thing came out of nowhere. The horse has a mean streak, that’s all!”

  “Sure, Son.” The father walked down the track a little way and back again, as if looking for pieces of evidence that he could store in his memory and relate to his lawyers. He stooped to pick up the riding crop that Stevie had carried, then poked at the nearby bushes with the toe of his boot.

  Standing to one side with Lisa, Kirstie shook her head. It could be the pain that made Stevie sound so scared, but that still didn’t mean he had to go overboard in blaming Johnny Mohawk. She thought he was protesting too much, trying to convince himself, as well as his dad. “Are you sure there was nothing on the track that spooked Johnny?” she asked quietly as Sandy finished covering the now-clean cut with gauze and tape, and then snapped shut the lid of her first-aid box. She offered Stevie a hand to stand up.

  “No way!” He shot back the answer, then groaned at the pain in his arm. “That horse isn’t normal. There was no reason for what he did!”

  Paddy Kane stepped forward to help his son to his feet. “Don’t worr
y, we know this wasn’t your fault.”

  Do we? Kirstie thought. She wanted to stop this whole thing, like you could pause a video, run it back, and replay it from the beginning. And she wanted a clear camera angle; something other than Stevie’s word for it.

  “Have you got ahold of him?” Sandy asked Mr. Kane, checking that Stevie was steady enough to keep his balance. She waited for Kane to get in position and offer support, then headed down the track toward the pickup. “I’ve got a two-way radio in the car. I’ll call the ranch and get Matt to call the emergency room at San Luis Hospital so they know we’re on our way. We’ll drive straight down there with Stevie while the girls ride back home!”

  “You hear that, Stevie?” With one arm around his son’s waist, the man took the boy slowly down the track. “We’ll get this arm X-rayed and fixed as soon as we can. No more riding for you this holiday!”

  Stevie glanced at Lisa as he limped by. Kirstie noticed that look in his eye again: a pleading, secretive, unspoken message that didn’t fit the situation. “Thanks for fetching help,” he muttered.

  “That’s OK,” Lisa breathed. “Sorry it took so long. It must have felt like forever!”

  Stevie took a deep breath and attempted a feeble joke. “Only when the sun went down and the coyotes started howling!”

  “Coyotes?” Paddy Kane picked him up sharply, ready to list this among the other traumas his son had suffered.

  “Joke, Dad!” Stevie sighed and got ready to limp down to the truck where Sandy Scott was waiting. “See you later,” he told Lisa.

  Together, Stevie and Paddy Kane made their way past the pointed finger of rock, disappearing in its shadow, then emerging onto the level ground where the truck was parked.

  Lisa watched them climb in and slam the doors. The pickup truck eased onto the trail, its red tail-lights winking. Then it drove off steadily. “What’s gonna happen now?” she said quietly as she and Kirstie went to fetch Lucky and Crazy Horse.

  Taking a last look around at the tall pines silhouetted pitch-black against the inky sky, hearing the wind gust down the rocky slopes, Kirstie sighed. “You want the bad news, the really bad news, or the really, really bad news?”

  Lisa’s grin held none of its usual sparkle. “The bad news.”

  “OK.” Kirstie mounted Lucky and turned him down the empty track. “What’s gonna happen is: Stevie’s out of it for the rest of this week, so Paddy Kane will ask for his money back for the whole vacation.”

  Up on Crazy Horse’s back, Lisa clicked the willing horse into action. “And the really bad news … ?”

  “… Is that no way will Mr. Kane be happy with just a refund. He’ll be looking for money to pay the hospital bills, more money to compensate for Stevie’s injury, mega-money to show the whole world it’s our fault!” And it would be thousands of dollars—the kind of sum her mom didn’t have. Plodding down the track in the dim light, Lucky skittered sideways as a ground squirrel scuttled out of a bush. “But I guess maybe Matt and Mom have fixed it so we’re insured for that kind of thing. So the really, really bad news is what bothers me most.”

  Lisa held Crazy Horse back until Lucky had righted himself and continued on his way. “Which is … ?”

  “… Which is what’s gonna happen to Johnny Mohawk after this.”

  “Because Stevie’s blaming him?”

  “Yeah; because he’s calling him crazy and mean, which I know he’s not!” Kirstie’s voice rose. “Because Stevie and his dad claim he’s a great rider, which we know he’s not!” She glanced over her shoulder at Lisa, waiting for a response. But none came. “And because at the end of all this, they’re gonna say Johnny’s no good for a dude ranch. They’re gonna want to get rid of him!”

  That Monday evening, Lisa stayed over at Half Moon Ranch. She rolled out a mattress in the corner of Kirstie’s room and crept into a sleeping bag while Kirstie lay in bed looking out of the window at the dusting of silver stars in a clear night sky. Together, the girls waited for the phone to ring.

  “That was Mom from the hospital!” Matt shouted up the stairs. “She says they X-rayed Stevie Kane’s arm, found a clean break of the ulna, put it into a plaster cast up to the elbow, no problem!”

  Lisa scrambled out of her sleeping bag onto the landing. “What about the cut on his head?”

  “Three stitches,” Matt reported. “They’re gonna keep him in overnight to check for concussion. Mom and Mr. Kane are on their way back right now.”

  “He’s gonna be OK?” Lisa wanted to know.

  “Fine. No need to get uptight. Try and get some sleep.” Matt told her it was late.

  “How late?” Kirstie mumbled as she heard Lisa crawl back into her bag.

  “Half past midnight.” After a long pause, as they lay with eyes wide open staring out of the window, Lisa whispered Kirstie’s name, then, “Hey, I know you’re thinking about Johnny Mohawk …”

  The black Arab: the graceful snaking of his neck as he turned his inquisitive head, the fineness of his long, silky mane, the brightness of those intelligent, dark eyes … “Yes,” Kirstie sighed.

  “And you’re not thinking about Stevie …” Lisa went on.

  True; Kirstie had closed her mind to the slight, dark-haired, troubled kid. She didn’t care about his injuries, could only hear his voice criticizing the horse, shifting the blame …“No,” she confessed quietly.

  “Kirstie, I’m gonna tell you something to do with Stevie that he talked to me about earlier.”

  Kirstie turned in bed and stared across the dark room at Lisa. “Would he want me to know?”

  “Maybe not,” Lisa admitted. “I got the feeling I was the first person he’d talked to since it happened. But it does make a difference.”

  “In how I see him?” Kirstie still wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Right now, it was plain and simple. In the contest for sympathy between Stevie Kane and Johnny Mohawk, the beautiful horse came out the clear winner.

  “Yeah. It’s about his mom,” Lisa pressed on. “She died.”

  Kirstie sat up and drew her knees toward her chest. “When?”

  “Spring this year. She’d been sick for a long time. Stevie says he can hardly remember a time when she wasn’t sick.”

  “He promised her he would be a great jockey, a steeplechaser!” Kirstie said quickly, as Paddy Kane’s early remark came slamming back to the front of her head. She hugged her knees and rocked forward.

  “Kind of. How did you know that?” Lisa was surprised.

  “His dad told me.”

  “Well, the way Stevie tells it, Mr. Kane was the one who gave the promise. It was one of the last things he told Stevie’s mom before she died, because he knew how much Stevie’s riding meant to her. That was what she’d always wanted him to do, and I guess he thought it would make her happy.”

  “Was Stevie there when his dad gave the promise?” Kirstie’s feelings swung this way and that. How crazy for a father to do that if it wasn’t what the son wanted. Yet who knew what anyone would do in that situation? You’d probably say anything, do anything for the dying person. Yes, she could understand why Paddy Kane had done it.

  “Yeah. He told me his mom kinda turned to him and smiled. Stevie didn’t see her again after that.”

  “Is riding horses really what he wants to do with the rest of his life?” If Kirstie asked herself the big question, the answer would be a giant yes. Horses, horses, horses! But she realized she was lucky. Hardly anyone she knew was this sure.

  “I guess. I didn’t ask.” The darkness and the stars made Lisa’s voice sound echoey and distant. “But Stevie did tell me that his dad fell apart when his mom died. He didn’t care about anything, he let his business go all to pieces, hardly left his room for weeks and weeks. He only came here to Half Moon Ranch because it was a vacation that Stevie’s mom had planned last Christmas when she still thought she could get better.”

  Kirstie sighed. “That’s so sad.” And yet … she still couldn’t forgive the Kanes over Joh
nny Mohawk. And she marveled that the quiet, almost secretive Stevie Kane had opened up to tell Lisa all this.

  “Before …well, before, you know …Stevie says his dad used to be a nice guy. He didn’t get angry all the time, he didn’t put any pressure on him the way he does now.”

  “Yeah, I get the picture.” Another sigh escaped as Kirstie recognized that she had to feel sorry for both the Kanes. Why was life always so complicated?

  “… I thought you should know.” Lisa wound down, let the pauses lengthen. “So you can understand why Stevie has to prove he’s good when he’s up in the saddle …Better than good, because of the promise …”

  “Yeah,” Kirstie interrupted. “Johnny Mohawk has gotta be wrong. Stevie’s gotta be right. Because Stevie’s got to be better than good. Stevie’s got to be a great, great rider!”

  No one had told Troy Jensen that there was a problem with riding Johnny Mohawk. The hotheaded Texan kid had gone straight out to the remuda early next morning, when the dew was still heavy on the grass in Red Fox Meadow. He’d brought Johnny into the corral and saddled him, and now Kirstie came out of the ranch house to find him practicing tricks in the neighboring round pen before Charlie or Hadley noticed what he was doing.

  Troy knew how to make Johnny turn on the spot. He could circle him to the right and to the left, get him to pivot on front legs and back. Feeling the expert command of bit and heels, the Arab willingly picked up his elegant feet and did dainty pirouettes.

  “Turn him, cowboy!” Troy’s big brother, Brad, called from the gate, unaware of Charlie running across the yard. “Hey, look at Johnny Mohawk spin!”

  The worried young wrangler pushed Brad to one side and ran into the round pen. “Take Johnny back to the meadow before the boss comes back and sees you!” he called.

  Troy reined the black horse to a standstill, letting the dust settle around them. “How come?”

  “Sorry, Troy. Sandy gave orders not to saddle him up today.” Holding Johnny’s head, Charlie waited for the kid to dismount.