Crazy Horse (4 page)

Unsettled, Kirstie got out of bed and drifted toward the window. She leaned her elbows on the sill and gazed out across the yard.
I just figure that Mom would rather know
, she countered.
Maybe then she could call Matt and talk it through.

Uh-oh.
The voice warned against it. Strangely, it had begun to sound like Lisa, and Kirstie kept getting flashes of her friend’s intense green eyes, of her pale face surrounded by dark red curls.
Can you think of anything more guaranteed to make him quit? You know he always does the exact opposite of what folks want him to do!

Sighing at this, she stared up at the stars.
Help!

No response. They sparkled on in the blue velvet sky.

Kirstie turned to go back to bed. But out of the corner of her eye, she caught a movement down below. In the shadow of the great mountains, on the far side of the creek. She peered through the darkness. She couldn’t see exactly what was happening, but she could hear something… Horses! Hooves drumming up and down the meadow, a restless turning and bunching together, a touch of fear in the air.

Was it a mountain lion? A bear? It would be rare but not unheard of for either to creep down from Eagle’s Peak to stalk the valley herd. Yet the horses were behaving strangely; she could still hear their hooves, and now and then, a high whinny from one to another. Danger!

Horses were flight animals. In the wild, instinct told them to bunch together and run from predators like lions or coyotes. And that’s what the horses in the remuda seemed to be trying to do. Penned in by strong fences, they thundered around the meadow in growing panic.

Hmm.
Kirstie went back to the window and peered out. It was probably nothing. Horses spooked easily, especially at night. And whatever it was out there was most likely just poking around the garbage cans at the back of the cookhouse. Still, she’d better go check. Seeing that it was a frosty night, she slipped a fleece jacket over her pajamas, stepped into her sneakers, and went quietly downstairs.

The cold air hit her the second she stepped out onto the porch. Blowing down off Eagle’s Peak, it cut through the thick jacket and made her gasp. Clutching the collar around her chin, she ventured out into the yard.

Still the horses charged inside their confined space. The sound of their hooves was louder, their whinnies carried on the wind. It seemed they were bunched together at the near end of the meadow, taking refuge not from some menace close to the ranch house but from a danger at the far side, where the fence came up against a sudden cliff of bare granite—a natural barrier between Half Moon Ranch and a stretch of national forest beyond.

What could it be? Now that she was down here, Kirstie found she couldn’t so easily dismiss the disturbance. She glanced back at the house. Her mom’s bedroom window was dark. Sandy was sleeping through the noise. So was Charlie, whose bunkhouse light was off. She’d better investigate, then, if necessary, wake the others.

Trying to look more confident than she felt, she ran across the footbridge, her footsteps silent, her skin tingling with cold. She could make out Lucky’s pale mane and tail in the bunch of horses clustered by the gate, saw him pick up her presence, detach himself from the herd, and lope alongside the fence to greet her. The other horses jostled closer together, but as her eyes grew used to the dark, she could pick out Yukon’s distinctive brown and white coat and Johnny Mohawk’s jet-black shape rising like a shadow onto his hind legs, eyes gleaming, tail lashing from side to side.

“OK, Lucky, what is it?” Kirstie reached the white fence and mounted the bottom rung. She leaned out to pat the palomino’s neck, felt it was cold and clammy to the touch. “Wow, something sure spooked you!” she murmured.

There was a sudden crack, like wood splintering. It sent the whole herd into a frenzy of rearing and stamping. Lucky flinched, his head high, eyes staring across the meadow. Another crack from the far end of the field sent the bunched horses galloping, leaving Lucky quivering at Kirstie’s side.

The thing to do, if she wanted to get close enough to discover what the heck was going on, was to slip onto Lucky and ride bareback to join the herd. Before she had time to consider the danger, she’d climbed the fence. Lucky stood still just long enough for her to jump on, then he was away, galloping like crazy to catch up with the rest.

Kirstie leaned forward, arms around her horse’s neck, body flat against him as his powerful stride took her across the rough grass. She had to cling on and concentrate hard to keep her balance, rolling with his gait, judging the speed by the wind in her hair. Then, as soon as he joined the herd, he slowed and gave her time to look up. Surrounded by horses, she was hidden in their midst as she tried to make out what was happening in the deep shadow of the cliff.

It seemed that there were more horses over there—possibly as many as four or five. Nothing odd in that, maybe. But when one came out of the shadow and she spotted a rider on its back, she froze.
Who on earth? What on earth?

Without seeing Kirstie, the man reined his horse harshly, wheeled him around and vanished back into the shadow. There was another sharp sound of wood breaking, a muffled shout, before Lucky and the herd veered away.

They were crashing through the fence! There must be more than one rider. They were stealing Half Moon horses! This was the only explanation. Kirstie clung to Lucky and raced him back the length of the meadow, using her legs to steer him close to the gate and slow him so that she could jump off and raise the alarm. Shocked and trembling, she vaulted the fence and ran for the bunkhouse, rattling on Charlie’s door, then racing on to warn her mom.

“Mom, quick! Call the cops! There are horse rustlers out in Red Fox Meadow! C’mon, get up, please!” She took the stairs two at a time, flung open Sandy’s door, switched on the light. Her mom raised her head and groaned.

“Wake up!” Then she was out on the landing and down the stairs, heading back to the bunkhouse to find Charlie staggering out, sleepy and disheveled. “Come quick!” she pleaded. “Bring a shotgun. We’ve got rustlers…stealing the horses…quick, or we’ll be too late!”

And now they all three gathered their wits and ran. Sandy Scott had brought a flashlight, which she turned on, swinging the beam across the field. The herd stampeded, coats glistening with sweat in the moonlight, taking a crazy course around the meadow, churning up the ground. They reared and cried out, thudded down, whirled and spun in a frenzy of fear.

“Over there!” Charlie cried. The flashlight beam had picked out the activity at the far end of the meadow. The young wrangler ran toward the cliff, rifle in hand.

Three figures on horseback saw the light, heard Charlie’s voice. They circled the two horses they’d cut out from the herd and drove them toward the gap in the fence, forcing them out of the field before their pursuers on foot could stop them.

Three men! Kirstie strained to take in the details. Stetsons and thick jackets with collars turned up. Leather chaps flapping against their saddles, one with a fancy plaited bridle in white and red. The flashlight picked it out; it was unusual, something to fix in her mind. But the men’s faces were hidden under the brims of their hats, and their heads were down as they drove the chosen horses out of the field.

“They’re turning them toward the creek!” Sandy gasped, then lost the rustlers as they rode out of range of her flashlight. She stopped running and looked wildly around. “We’ll never move fast enough without horses.”

“Let’s try cutting them off!” Charlie realized that the thieves were heading the two stolen horses through the narrow gap between the granite cliff and Five Mile Creek, moving them upstream, away from the ranch. From the sound of their shouted commands and counter-commands, they knew that the first rider had reached the water and plunged in. The others stayed behind the Half Moon Ranch horses, yelling and urging them on into the stream.

Kirstie groaned. “Too late!” She’d lost too much time running to raise the alarm. She should have stopped and tried to tackle the rustlers by herself.

Charlie saw that she was right. He, Sandy, and Kirstie stood helpless in the meadow with horses weaving to the left and right. Raising his gun, he took aim at the backs of the escaping rustlers. “Do you want me to shoot?”

In the dark? At moving targets? With horses rearing and going crazy in between? Kirstie put her hands to her face.

There was a long pause as the stolen horses splashed into the stream and the now-invisible thieves drove them on.

“No,” Sandy sighed. “Too dangerous. Let’s face it, we already lost them.”

“I’m gonna check which horses they took!” Charlie did the first thing that came to mind while Sandy ran to the ranch to call the police.

Kirstie felt sick with a sense of failure. She stood by the broken fence, staring emptily into the darkness.

“You fill in the gap in the fence!” Charlie yelled. “Prop posts against the broken section. Get a move on, Kirstie, before the rest of the horses get it into their heads to escape!”

She broke out of her daze and clicked into action, dragging broken sections of fence into position, ignoring the panicky hooves still drumming up and down the field. The rustlers had chosen to crash through at the point farthest from the ranch, hoping, no doubt, to do their work and be gone before anyone heard them. It had been their bad luck that Kirstie had lain awake, come to the window, and discovered what they were up to.

Not that I was any use!
She blamed herself for not using her head.
I didn’t even get a decent description to give to the sheriff !
Angrily, she jammed planks back into position as best she could.

“That’s fine.” Sandy Scott came back out and told Kirstie that the makeshift repair should hold until morning. “I had to wake Larry Francini out of bed,” she reported. “He says he’ll be out this way to talk to us some time tomorrow.”

Stepping back from the fence, Kirstie grunted. “By that time, they’ll be miles away. Why can’t he come now?”

“With a posse of deputies?” Sandy sighed. “Get real, Kirstie. This is two plain old quarter horses we’re talking about here, remember. You don’t get a squad of cars with blue flashing lights driving twenty-five miles out from San Luis in the middle of the night for a couple of ranch horses.”

They turned as Charlie finished checking out the herd and came striding toward them.

“Well?” Sandy asked, her voice strained. “Which ones did they take?”

But before he could answer, Kirstie grabbed her mom’s arm and pointed. She’d seen something moving, high up the valley, across a pale patch of ground on the hillside. From the shape of the rocks on the horizon, she could pick out Miners’ Ridge, and directly below that, the pale patch, which must be the flat ledge of Hummingbird Rock. “I reckon that’s them!” she gasped.

Yes, there were figures on horseback, tiny from this distance, but silhouetted against the rock, the stars and moonlight strong enough to pick them out. And there were two horses not being ridden; the two stolen from the meadow. One was dark and difficult to identify, but the other was much lighter—a big, pale horse struggling and pulling against the rope tied tight around his neck. A pure gray horse.

“Cadillac!” Kirstie whispered.

“Right,” Charlie muttered.

The most valuable horse in the remuda. Matt’s beautiful pedigree.

“And who else?” Sandy asked.

Kirstie stared up the hillside at the dark horse fighting his captors at the end of a short, cruel rope. The horse strained and twisted, raised himself onto his hind legs, and sent an eerie, angry cry echoing down the valley. He was smaller and heavier than the gray Thoroughbred and still straining against the rope as the rustlers forced him along the length of Hummingbird Rock.

“Crazy Horse,” Charlie reported after a long silence. “That’s who they took. Matt’s two horses, Cadillac and Crazy Horse.”

“Why would anyone in their right mind steal Crazy Horse?” Lisa demanded.

She stood with Kirstie outside the main school entrance as kids streamed in for the start of morning classes. Yellow buses dropped them off in droves, and they trekked across a yard whitened by a light covering of overnight snow. Several jostled by with curious glances, wondering why the two girls stood on the step deep in conversation.