Black Stallion's Shadow (19 page)

“Is that what was bothering you?” Alec asked, fingering the tape. Something pricked his fingers and an electric shock jolted him. He dropped the blanket to the dirt and cried, “Ouch! What the …”

Wes picked up the blanket. He touched the lump, then jerked his hand away. Pulling out his knife, he carefully slit the tape. Something fell out: a small battery pack with two tiny wires bent down from one end.

It was a “buzzer,” a homemade device that corrupt jockeys sometimes used on their mounts. Alec had never actually seen a buzzer before. He'd only heard Henry and some of the older trainers talking about them. It delivered a jolt of electricity as strong as the shock from an exposed light socket and was intended to make a horse run faster. A jockey could palm a buzzer in his hand, use it at the start of the race, then toss it away along the back-stretch. Being caught with a buzzer at the track could get you barred from racing for life.

So this was why the Black went berserk, Alec thought. Wes poked at the thing and picked it up. There was a button on one side. He looked at Alec. “You know what this is, don't you?”

Alec frowned. “Yeah. That button must turn on the juice.”

Wes nodded slowly. “I read a story in the paper last
year about a jockey down at Del Mar being caught with one of these gizmos. Some boneheaded stuntmen used to use them in the old days, too.”

“Really?”

“That was a long time ago. The folks at the Humane Council would have a fit if they thought we'd put that thing there intentionally.”

Alec took a closer look at the buzzer. “If that button turns it on, I wonder why it didn't go off earlier when Kramer was riding with this saddle blanket. He weighs a lot more than I do.”

Wes took the buzzer from Alec and dropped it into his shirt pocket. He pulled at his mustache and thought a moment. “Maybe it has to do with your speed and the placement of the thing. Taped at the edge of the blanket, the buzzer might not go off at a walk. But throwing your weight forward, when you started loping, must have supplied enough pressure to switch the thing on.”

That made sense, Alec thought. He remembered that the Black started acting up only after Frank gave the signal for the riders to pick up speed.

“The real question is how it got under your saddle.”

Alec's face flushed with anger. “When I find the person who put that thing there I'm going to—”

“You're not the only one, Alec.”

CHAPTER 20

M
ike was taken down to the ranch in one of the Jeeps. The rest of the crew came over to see if Alec and the Black needed any help. Wes warned them back. “Give us some space, people.”

Marty stepped forward from the small crowd. “What happened to your horse back there, Ramsay?”

Alec glanced at Wes, who shook his head slightly. The movement was almost imperceptible, but Alec guessed what it meant. Wes didn't want Marty to know about the buzzer.

Alec shrugged. “He seems all right now.”

Marty looked at Alec suspiciously. Wes cut in. “Don't worry about it, Marty. He's wrapped for the day. I'm sending Alec and the Black home.”

“After that performance, you bet you are.”

Alec traded the Black's saddle and bridle for a halter
and lead shank. As he was about to start down to the ranch, Wes pulled him aside. “Marty's no dope. He knows there's more to what happened here than the Black's temperament. We're just lucky no one got hurt.”

“So where does that leave us now?”

Wes thoughtfully switched his chaw of tobacco from one cheek to the other. “Get yourself back to the ranch. And don't worry about the PSA. We'll finish the shoot even if I have to fill in for you myself.”

“What about the buzzer?”

“I'll find out where that gizmo came from. You can bet on it.”

Strutting to his Jeep, Wes looked back over his shoulder and half smiled at Alec. “I guess one good thing did come out of it all, though. The Black didn't have any problem with the shadows this time. That buzzer gave you both something else to think about.”

Wes left Alec and hurried off to meet up with Frank. Alec wiped the sweat and grime from his forehead with the back of his hand. He reached up to stroke the Black's neck and rub his ears. “Good boy,” Alec whispered. “We did it. We broke through.”

Yes, Alec thought, the shadow hadn't stopped them this time. But then he frowned as he thought about the gizmo taped under the Black's saddle blanket. Like it or not, it seemed that the buzzer had put the chain of events into motion. And he didn't like it, not at all, even if it had played a part in curing the shadow problem. That thing could have gotten him or the Black—or both of them—killed. The more he thought about it, the more
determined he became to find out how that buzzer found its way under his saddle.

Alec led the stallion to the other side of the box canyon. As he started down the trail, he tried to put his thoughts together. After what happened on the PSA, he could only be certain of one thing. Someone had wanted to panic the Black.

Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks. The saddles and blankets were switched at the last minute. Maybe the buzzer in the blanket hadn't been meant for the Black at all. Maybe it was intended for Lowball and Kramer!

All along both he and Ellie had assumed that the sabotage was directed at the ranch. Neither of them had even considered that the target could be one of the actors. The idea seemed so simple, he wondered why he hadn't thought of it before.

Alec resumed his trek down the trail, anxious to talk over these new possibilities with Ellie. Finally, it seemed the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place. Back at the ranch, Alec hosed down and washed the Black. Ellie came out of the office just as he finished. “You don't look so bad. Julio said the Black went loco on you.”

“I feel like I've been run through the tumble cycle in a dryer.”

“You should have seen Mike.”

“Was he still out of it when they got here?”

She nodded. “He came to for a minute and didn't know where he was. It sounded like he thought he was still riding after you and yelling for you to hang on. Then he started saying something like, ‘No, no, not again.' Jim
went with him to the hospital.”

Alec felt a little guilty about Mike getting hurt trying to help him. “What he did took guts. It was a little crazy, though. I mean, I know he was trying to help, but he almost drove the Black and me into the trees.”

“Any idea why the Black took off like that?”

Alec told her about the buzzer that Wes had found hidden in the saddle blanket.

“Unbelievable. You say Frank made you switch saddles before the shot?”

“Yeah.”

“That probably means the buzzer was meant for Lowball and Kramer!”

“I thought of that too.”

“Kramer! Maybe he's the one they've been after all along!”

Alec nodded in tentative agreement.

Ellie smacked her forehead. “If I hadn't been so pig-headed in trying to pin our troubles on Sagebrush, I would have seen this a long time ago. How could I be so stupid?”

“Any idea who tacked up Lowball this morning?”

“Probably Mike. But that doesn't mean anything, if the buzzer was well hidden. It could have been anyone.”

“How about Julio?”

“Maybe.”

Alec scratched his head. “How many people could have guessed which saddle blanket Kramer was going to use for the PSA?”

“Anybody. Kramer's superstitious, always uses the
same gear. It kind of surprises me that he agreed to switch with you.”

“You know,” said Alec, “that has to be it! Kramer must be the target. Now all we have to do is start looking at people who have a grudge against him.”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “That list could fill a book. And whoever the bad guy is wouldn't even have to be here. They could be paying off someone on the crew to help with the sabotage.”

Ellie walked along as Alec led the Black back to the corral. She opened the gate and Alec turned the stallion loose inside. After feeding the Black a few coffee cans full of oats, they walked back to the house. Ellie said she had to get back to work. Before she disappeared into the office she told Alec to go into the kitchen and make himself a sandwich. Alec did as she suggested. Later he walked outside to sit on the porch. At Sagebrush, bulldozers churned up the dirt by the houses under construction.

Jeeps started returning from the location site. Wes came by and told Alec that they had finished the PSA with Patrick filling in for Alec. For the rest of the day the crew would be moving to the studio in town for more work on
Drover Days.
Wes walked back to his Jeep, saying he had to go to the production office for a conference.

After Wes left, Alec wandered back out to the Black's corral. He groomed his horse and stayed there awhile, just watching the Black and thinking.

For the first time since it happened, he recalled the pangs of fear he felt as the Black bore down on the line of shadow at a full gallop. What had he been scared of? And
why? Were the tightening muscles he felt in the Black as they approached a line of shadow just a response to Alec's signals to hesitate, signals he didn't even realize he was sending? They must have been. All along he'd thought Wes was way off base when Wes had suggested Alec might be the one with the shadow phobia. Now he was convinced. When his life and the life of the Black had been on the line, he had forced himself not to flinch, not to worry. And the Black had responded—thank God.

When Alec stopped by to see her that evening, Ellie was at her desk in the office. She looked up from the papers she was working on.

“How's it going?” he asked.

She rubbed her eyes. “Ugh. Fine print is making me go blind.”

Alec reached over and switched on the desk lamp. “Any word about Mike?”

She shook her head. The phone rang, and Ellie picked up the receiver. From what he overheard, Alec gathered someone from the hospital was on the other end. “They need an insurance card number for Mike,” Ellie told Alec. “It should be in his wallet in his trailer. Want to help me look for it?”

“Sure. They say how he was doing?”

“Okay. He's resting now.”

They walked out to Mike's trailer and went inside. Ellie started looking around for Mike's wallet. “You know, I was thinking some more about what happened this afternoon. Anyone could have a grudge against Kramer.
But only someone in the core crew could get close enough to do anything about it. Or one of the actors.”

“Like who?”

“I don't know. Maybe one of them is jealous of Kramer or something.”

“Maybe so.”

Alec's gaze drifted around the room at the pictures and posters on the wall. Mike's trailer was a little Western museum all its own. Ellie picked up a pair of jeans that hung on a closet doorknob. In the back pocket she found the wallet, and inside she found the card they needed. “Here it is.”

She hung up the pants again. Alec turned to leave, but Ellie didn't follow. She was staring at a dog-eared newspaper clipping tacked on the closet door.

“Hey, look at this. You know who that guy is standing next to Mike?” She pointed to the clipping Alec had noticed earlier, the one of Mike winning a trophy belt buckle at a rodeo.

“I saw that too,” Alec said. “Some actor, isn't he?”

“I never noticed it before, but now that I see it close up, that looks like Kramer's old sidekick, Hank McBride.”

“You mean the actor who was drowned on location, the one Jim was talking about the other night?”

She nodded and leaned closer to examine the faded clipping. “Yeah. That's McBride, all right. What's he doing with Mike?”

Reaching over to touch the paper, Alec felt the thickness at the bottom. The lower section was doubled up. Unfolding it, he read aloud the news article hidden under
the photo. “Brother Gives Trophy to Brother: Harleyville—Western movie star Hank McBride, left, took time out from his busy schedule to present the awards at the Harleyville Rodeo yesterday. Top prize for bulldogging went to a familiar face on the Northwest rodeo circuit, young Mike Reynolds, who just so happens to be Hank McBride's stepbrother. Success must run in the family. Other winners were …”