Johnny Mohawk (Half Moon Ranch #4) - Softcover

Jenny Oldfield

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340716193 ISBN 13: 9780340716199

Publisher: Hodder Children's Books, 1999

Synopsis

Kirstie Scott lives at Half-Moon Ranch, where her mother runs a pony trekking centre. She has her own palomino pony and together they love riding the local trails. Storms, floods and earth tremors are all facts of life in this wild terrain, and at times the landscape itself proves the enemy to both horse and rider.

About this title

About the Author:

Born and brought up in Harrogate, Yorkshire, Jenny Oldfield went on to study English at Birmingham University, where she did research on the Bronte Novels and on Children's Literature. She then worked as a teacher, before deciding to concentrate on writing. She writes novels for both children and adults and, when she can escape from her desk, likes to spend time outdoors. She loves the countryside and enjoys walking, gardening, playing tennis, riding and travelling with her two daughters, Kate and Eve.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

"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 fifteenyear- 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 fl own 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 fi rst 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 fi ve years earlier. Then he moved on briskly to Stevie Kane.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0340716193
• ISBN 13: 9780340716199
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 154