Rodeo Rocky (2 page)

He was a beautiful bay stallion with a jet-black mane and tail, bigger than the rest and first out of the silver truck. And he was crazy. He bucked and kicked, twisted, spun around on the spot, head down, thumping the ground. The sun shone on his rich, brown coat; his strong shoulders and rump rippled with muscle as he screamed out his protest at being torn away from his endless plains, his sea of grass, his wilderness, to be dumped here, inside this circle of wooden barriers and curious, staring faces.

“Say!” A spectator whistled and sighed at the sight of the magnificent horse. “That’s where I’d put my money if I was a betting man!”

“A real rodeo champion,” his neighbor agreed.

The horse reared and threw back his head just feet from where Kirstie and Lisa stood.

Kirstie couldn’t take her eyes off the bay horse. She heard the men’s amused talk and wondered how they could treat him so lightly. She gasped as a wrangler darted toward the horse, seized the fifteen-foot lead rope, and began to drag him across the corral. The horse fought back, pulling his head away and almost wrenching the rope out of the man’s hands. But he was hemmed in by other mustangs, all led by wranglers who crowded them toward the wooden chutes that led into the main arena. He was forced to go with the flow.

Then he was in a chute, a barrier came down behind him, and he was trapped once more.

“Look at him kick!” The man next to Kirstie had followed the progress of the big bay horse.

“Rodeo Rocky!” his friend added, chuckling at the wild horse’s antics inside the squeeze. He gave him a name that seemed to suit his bucking, kicking tricks. “Yeah, I’ll put five dollars on that horse. Five on Rodeo Rocky; make no mistake!”

The starting pistol had fired and the wild horse race had begun.

Kirstie’s attention was glued on Rodeo Rocky as he bucked and kicked his way into the arena. She ignored the teams of men standing with saddles inside the ring, the fresh cheers, the announcements over the loudspeaker. She had eyes only for the bay.

Between her and Rocky was a fence. Men with numbers on their backs were running to catch hold of trailing lead ropes as other horses charged and twisted, skidded and spun. Dust was rising, there was a terrible heat and a feeling of fear.

“Rocky was a lead horse,” she whispered to Lisa through gritted teeth. “You can tell he was in charge of the herd by the way he handles himself.”

The stallion stood his ground amidst the chaos. His ears were flat, his eyes were hard. Kirstie saw him curl back his lip and snake his neck to bite the cowboy who approached him. The man leaped back just in time.

“Grab the rope, Jake!” he yelled to one of his partners.

A thickset wrangler in black T-shirt and jeans managed to take hold of the end of Rocky’s lead rope and twist it around his waist. He dug in his heels and leaned back with all his weight as the horse reared and pulled.

“Jake Mooney’s the anchor man in black,” Sandy Scott told the girls. “He’s the best there is.”

Kirstie hadn’t heard her mother approach as the race began, but she didn’t turn around. Instead, she nodded and kept her gaze fixed on Rodeo Rocky.

“He’s got Gary Robbins on his team as mugger.” Kirstie’s mom put one foot up on the bottom rail of the fence and leaned forward.

The mugger was the man whose job was to take hold of the taut rope and ease his way along toward the struggling horse. Kirstie knew what would happen next; Robbins would soon grasp the horse around the neck in a headlock, then reach out and pinch the top lip hard. The horse would squeal with pain and, while the hurt was bad, the third team member would dart in with the saddle. Before the horse knew it, the cinch would be buckled under his belly, and the rider would be on his back.

“Gee, d’you see that?” a spectator cried.

Kirstie gasped and gripped hold of the fence.

Rocky had twisted his head free of the mugger’s lock and strained against the anchor man. By now, other teams had saddled and mounted their horses. Robbins swore and moved in to try again.

This time he grappled and succeeded in squeezing the bay horse’s lip. Almost buckling at the knees from the pain, the stallion didn’t resist as the saddle was slapped over his back. Kirstie closed her eyes for a second, then forced them open. Now the rider, Fenney Brooks, was up in the saddle, the mugger had released his grip, and the anchor man flung the lead rope into Fenney’s outstretched hands.

“He’s off!” the bystander yelled. “Man, see that bay horse go!”

Man and rider were almost last out of the arena onto the track, but they were catching up fast. Fenney was digging in his spurs, the horse’s stride was long. They ate up the ground between them and the leading horses.

“This is awful!” Kirstie groaned at the sight of the rider’s spurs. She left her spot by the fence and ran along the front of the crowded stand to the spot where the horses would thunder across the finish line. She heard Lisa coming after her. “Did you see that?” she cried.

Hundreds of yards away, across the far side of the dirt track, the wild horses bunched together around the bend. The riders steered with the lead rope, wrenching their horses’ heads to the left and right, spurring them on. One rider on the outside of the bunch lost his balance and crashed to the ground, curling up to protect his head from the thudding hooves. The crowd oohed and aahed. Then a brown horse went down, kicking up dirt as he went, falling onto his knees and rolling sideways.

“I know; I can’t look either!” Lisa hissed. Like Kirstie, she’d hidden her face behind her hands. “Was it Rocky?”

Kirstie shook her head and squeezed forward for a view of the finish. She jumped up and down, dodged heads, slipped to the front of the crowd. “Here they come!” she breathed, almost choking at the sight of the horses thundering toward them. “Rocky’s leading… He’s gonna win…Yes, yes, he is!”

Horses and riders flashed by in a blur of faded color behind a cloud of thick dust. Kirstie glimpsed bay and black, silver spurs cutting into the flanks, the creak of saddle leather, the raised arm, the whip …

There was a deafening cheer, more shouting and spurring as the slower horses finished the race. Riders slid from the saddle, muggers and anchormen ran to join them. Mooney and Robbins slapped Fenney Brooks on the back as he stood by his sweating, bleeding horse.

Slowly Kirstie released her pent-up breath. She fought back the sob that rose high in her throat as she stared at the trickles of blood from the cuts in Rodeo Rocky’s heaving flanks. Then she glanced up at the fluttering banner above his head as Brooks took the lead rope and dragged him back into the arena to receive first prize.

The bay stallion pulled away. His head was high, his jaw rigid, his back arched. He stood below the white banner that flapped in the cold wind blowing off the Meltwater Mountains.

“Keeping the Dream Alive!” Kirstie re-read the bold, red letters.

She gazed again at the wild horse that had been torn from his world, trapped, tied, and ridden to exhaustion. And, as she glimpsed the nightmare in his eyes, she swore to him that she would help.

2

“One rider broke his jaw.” Hadley’s report on the wild horse race was in full swing when Kirstie, her mom, and Lisa rejoined the group from Half Moon Ranch. Dale Lavin was smiling broadly and showing the other guests his winnings, while his son crowed in a loud voice over the way the cowboys had used their spurs to urge the mustangs on.

“You see that Fenney Brooks?” he cried, running to meet Kirstie and Lisa. “I wanna ride like him, without a bridle. You see him? You see how he beat those other guys?”

Kirstie frowned and nodded. “You wanna break your jaw, too?” she muttered under her breath.

“Kirstie!” Sandy Scott stood between her and the guests. “Why don’t you and Lisa just find a good place to watch the bulldogging and the bronc riding? Meet us back here at half past four.”

Kirstie hung her head and scuffed the dirt with the toe of her boot. “Do we have to? Can’t we leave before the end of the show?”

“Not unless you want to walk the fifteen miles home,” Sandy said firmly, grabbing her by the shoulders and turning her away.

“I don’t want to see it,” Kirstie complained. “I can’t stomach much more, Mom.”

Seeing she was serious, her mother kept one arm around her shoulder and walked her a little way off from the group. “What’s got under your skin, honey?”

The poor bay stallion
, she wanted to say.
The cuts from the spurs; the look in his eyes.
But she was too choked to speak.

“Rodeo Rocky,” Lisa said quietly, coming up alongside Sandy and Kirstie and sticking out her chin in a determined fashion. “We say that’s no way to treat a beautiful horse!”

“I might agree,” Sandy replied. “But what can we do? You saw how the crowd loved it. And the rodeos have been treating horses pretty rough for years and years. Are we gonna be the only ones to speak out?”

Kirstie took a deep breath and looked her mom in the eye. “Yeah. Someone has to.”

“Then we’d be
real
popular with the ranchers and the rodeo organizers!” Sandy shook her head.

“So?” In Kirstie’s mind, unpopularity was a price worth paying.

“So, we’d lose business,” her mother pointed out. “Which we can’t afford to do. We rely on people hearing good things about Half Moon Ranch to make them want to come and stay.”

“Your mom’s right,” Lisa said after a pause.

Kirstie glared at her as if to say, whose side are you on?

“Sorry.” Lisa shrugged helplessly and wandered off to watch the bulldogging event just getting under way in the main arena. There was a buzz in the crowd again, as the first riders galloped into the ring to either side of an angry steer.

Kirstie was left face to face with Sandy. “Don’t spoil the day,” her mother warned. “I know it’s hard, honey, but try and put a good face on…for my sake, OK?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kirstie saw the bulldogger leap from his horse and wrap his arms around the thick neck of the bucking steer. Within seconds, the man had grabbed the bull’s horns, twisted his head and flipped him sideways into the dust. “OK,” she agreed. “But I don’t have to watch this. I’ll be over by the corral if you want me.”

“Fine.” Her mom watched her go with a sigh, then went back to her guests.

At least if I wait by the corral I can watch the horses being saddled for the bronc event
, Kirstie thought. Being with horses, anywhere, anytime, was her main thing.

But today, even the pleasure of watching her favorite animal was spoiled by knowing that the wranglers were forcing saddles on their backs and dragging them into chutes. She felt a dull anger come over her as she made her way toward the corral and the scores for the bulldogging event went up on the board. Ignoring the cheers and the yells, she found a quiet corner where she could sit on the fence and wait out the rest of the afternoon.

Half an hour passed in a haze of dusty heat. The cheers of the crowd sounded distant to Kirstie, whose gaze was fixed on the broncs in the corral. The unbroken horses milled restlessly in the confined space. One would break from the group and make a quick, nervy run toward the fence, spin, and lope back. Another would raise his head and rear as a wrangler approached to cut him out of the herd. The cowboy would swing his lasso, the horse would feel the rope snake around his neck and burn into his skin as the man dug his heels in the dirt and pulled.

One horse, a flea-bitten gray, gave her wrangler a hard time before she was finally forced into the squeeze. Too strong for one man, she jerked the cowboy off his feet and dragged him through the dust. Kirstie heard the man yell, saw two others race to help. They lassoed the gray mare’s hind leg, then hobbled her by winding the rope around her neck, pulling the back leg forward off the ground. Then they dragged her, limping off-balance, into a chute.

“Gary, that fleabitten’s your bronc!” a nasal voice yelled across the corral. The middle-aged speaker was a man Kirstie recognized with a shiver of dislike. It was Wade Williams, the owner and organizer of the San Luis Rodeo. He was tall and broad, with a sallow face and a heavy, dark mustache. “You got that?” he shouted at Gary Robbins, one of the riders in the bronc event.