Banjo Read online

  ALSO BY GRAHAM SALISBURY

  Blue Skin of the Sea

  Lord of the Deep

  Night of the Howling Dogs

  PRISONERS OF THE EMPIRE BOOKS

  Under the Blood-Red Sun

  House of the Red Fish

  Eyes of the Emperor

  The Hunt for the Bamboo Rat

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Graham Salisbury

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Oriol Vidal

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Salisbury, Graham, author.

  Title: Banjo / Graham Salisbury.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, [2019] | Summary: Danny, a rising rodeo star whose border collie, Banjo, has been wounded by neighbors, and Meg, who has a way with animals, come together to keep Banjo safe, aided by Danny’s brother. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018038802 (print) | LCCN 2018044435 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-307-97561-4 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-375-84264-1 (trade) | ISBN 978-0-375-94069-9 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-0-375-84265-8 (pbk.)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Human-animal relationships—Fiction. | Border collie—Fiction. | Dogs—Fiction. | Ranch life—Oregon—Fiction. | Rodeo—Fiction. | Horses—Training—Fiction. | Oregon—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.S15225 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.S15225 Ban 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780307975614

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Graham Salisbury

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Copper

  The best dog I have ever known

  And other dogs I have loved:

  Nicky

  Chloe

  Trixie

  Rocky

  Roo

  And the ones I have tolerated:

  Sergeant

  Boomer

  1

  SATURDAY

  Danny Mack was pretty sure he’d just lost his thumb.

  He’d caught the steer but lost control of his rope. He tried to wrap it around the saddle horn but wasn’t quick enough. When his horse, Pete, dug in and pulled back, the rope snapped into place and ripped his roping glove clean off his hand.

  “Ow!”

  Danny grimaced and gaped at it. No blood. And his thumb was still there. He shook out the sting.

  His best friend, Ricky, ran over from where he’d been manning the roping chute. “You all right?”

  “I think so.”

  Summer vacation had just begun, and Danny and his dad were in their home arena practicing team roping, getting ready to compete in the Jefferson County Fair and Rodeo in a couple of weeks. Ricky and Danny’s brother Tyrell were helping out. Tyrell was seventeen, four years older than Danny. As a team, Danny and his dad competed in community and open rodeos. Danny was the header, roping the horns. Dad, the heeler, roping the back feet. They were good at it, because they practiced.

  Dad, who’d caught the steer’s two back legs, loosened his rope and loped over on Mandingo. “You hurt?”

  “Stings,” Danny said, squeezing his hand. He had to focus on his dally—his wrap around the saddle horn.

  Dad leaned in for a closer look. “You’ll live. But be more focused. Roping’s dangerous, which is why we’re out here getting it right.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tyrell drew up on his horse, Half-Asleep. “What happened?”

  “Rope almost took my thumb off.”

  “Looks like it’s still there.”

  “Yep.”

  Danny turned in his saddle. His glove was lying in the dirt by the fence. He whistled. “Banjo! Get my glove.”

  Banjo, his border collie, snapped up, got it, and ran it over.

  Danny leaned down and took it. “Good boy.”

  He pulled the glove back on.

  Tyrell rode off to free the steer from the ropes and herd it back to Ricky at the chute.

  “Let’s give it one more run and call it a day,” Dad said.

  Danny nodded and coiled his rope. He loped Pete around the practice pen to calm himself down. This time, focus!

  Tyrell and Ricky got the steer back into the chute.

  Banjo trotted back to his place by the fence.

  Danny backed Pete into the box on the left side of the chute, where he’d wait until the steer was released. Dad backed Mandingo in on the right.

  When the steer was in place, Ric
ky glanced at Danny. “Ready when you are.”

  The idea was to stay in the box as short a time as possible. Get in, get ready, and hope the steer got up to the gate with his head aimed forward. That was the unknown, the steer.

  Dad nodded to Danny.

  Danny nodded to Ricky.

  Ricky slammed the gate open. “Haw!”

  The steer burst out running.

  A split second later, Danny spurred Pete ahead.

  The hardest part wasn’t the roping but the riding, and Danny’s balance astonished anyone who watched him. Dad once told him that he was about as good a rider as it was possible to be.

  Danny stayed to the left, with Pete’s nose even with the steer’s hip.

  Dad on Mandingo flew out of the heeler’s box, staying about ten feet off to the right, keeping the steer on a straight path so Danny could get a good shot at its head.

  Danny threw his loop—a clean catch over both horns. He made his dally around the saddle horn, doing it right this time. He slowed and pulled the steer to the left so the steer’s hind legs flayed out as it turned.

  Dad threw his loop and caught both back feet. He hadn’t missed all day. He made his dally and turned Mandingo to face Danny and Pete, the horses pulling the ropes taut, the caught steer between them.

  Dad nodded. “Do it like that two weeks from now and we’ll be all right.”

  “Yep,” Danny said. “Just like that.”

  “Not bad, little brother,” Tyrell called. “You too, old man.”

  Dad grunted.

  Ricky and Tyrell removed the head protector from the steer’s horns and released the steer into the pasture. Dad and Tyrell took their horses into the barn.

  Danny sat his horse, looking down on Ricky. “What you doing after this?”

  “Chores, I guess.”

  “Want to do something later?”

  “Like what?”

  Danny looked back at the barn and out toward the pasture. “Oh, I don’t know. Watch grass grow?”

  Ricky grinned and walked over to his bike to head home. Danny rode Pete alongside him, while Banjo sniffed through the weeds.

  “Thanks for helping out today,” Danny said.

  “No problem. You’d do it for me.”

  “Not with bulls, I wouldn’t.”

  Ricky laughed.

  Ricky was a junior bull rider, and Danny was not a fan of bulls. One wild kick and they could kill you. Danny knew of a rodeo bull from Texas that weighed 1,900 pounds. That one could kick you from Oregon to South Carolina. As a junior rider, Ricky rode bulls that were between 500 and 1,000 pounds.

  Danny said, “You have more guts than brains.”

  Ricky laughed. “You’re just jealous.”

  He whistled for Banjo, squatting as he trotted over. “You take care of that wimp on the horse, you hear? He needs help.”

  Banjo nosed Ricky’s hand.

  Ricky looked up. “Guess he sees my point.”

  “Get outta here,” Danny said, smiling. “Wanna do some fishing? If not later today, then next week?”

  “Sure. Call me.” Ricky gave him a thumbs-up and rode off.

  Danny whistled and slapped his thigh. “Banjo! Come!”

  Banjo raced over and leaped. Danny caught him by the skin on the back of his neck and lifted him into the saddle. Banjo licked his face.

  “I think you’ve earned yourself a treat, don’t you?”

  Together, they rode back to the barn.

  2

  THURSDAY

  Five days later, Danny bolted up in the middle of the night. He thought he’d heard a shot.

  His room was still. The light in the yard cast a rectangular shadow across his wall.

  Ca-rack!

  Another shot. From a rifle.

  Then two more.

  The floorboards in the room above him creaked. Tyrell was up. Danny squinted at his clock.

  2:49.

  He got up and crossed to the window. The yard, the drive, and the trucks were gray under the light near the barn.

  Past the barn, the corral was empty. The working pen and pasture beyond lay silent and ghostly, edged by a dark line of trees.

  Light from the hall flooded his room. His brother stood in the doorway dragging a T-shirt over his head. “You hear that?”

  Tyrell was six foot one, with a scraggly brown beard, bright blue eyes, and a thin scar in his left eyebrow.

  “Rifle?” Danny said.

  Tyrell nodded. “You coming?”

  “Yep.”

  Danny pulled on sweats and stumbled into his boots as he followed Tyrell out. “Is Dad up?”

  “Apparently not.”

  Danny looked up the stairs. Dad’s door was open, but the room was dark. Probably slept right through it. He’d come in around midnight. Dad was an independent trucker and was often gone two, three days at a time.

  Tyrell reached into the closet by the front door and grabbed the Winchester 94, their grandfather’s hunting rifle.

  They jogged around the barn, then out into the pasture and up a ridge, where they looked down onto their neighbor’s land and the wide valley that spread east. Pinpricks of light winked in the black far distance.

  “Can’t see a thing,” Danny whispered.

  Tyrell aimed the rifle forward, finger outside the trigger guard, ready. “Those shots came from this direction.”

  Danny squinted down the grassy slope, trying to see. The ridge where they stood was on their property. A fence below separated their place from the Brodies’ sheep ranch.

  “See anything?”

  Tyrell didn’t answer.

  Danny looked back. “Where’s Banjo?”

  “Barn, I guess.”

  Danny was instantly alert. The only reason Banjo wouldn’t be with him right now was that something was wrong.

  “He’d have heard us and come out,” Danny said. “He’d be here.”

  “True.”

  “Something’s weird.”

  Tyrell let up on the rifle. “Whatever it is, I sure can’t see it.”

  Danny glanced again into the black silence, then backed away and jogged after Tyrell, heading to the house.

  He checked Banjo’s bed in the hay shed. Empty. “Banjo. You here, boy?”

  “Check the barn,” Tyrell said. “I’ll look around back.”

  Danny ran into the barn.

  Nothing.

  “He ain’t out back,” Tyrell said from the door. “Find anything?”

  Danny shook his head.

  Tyrell tucked the rifle into the crook of his arm, muzzle down. The night was so silent it made Danny shiver. “Think we should wake Dad up?”

  “Let him sleep. What could he do that we ain’t done already?”

  “What about Banjo?”

  “He’ll show up sooner or later…’less he’s the one got shot.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Wasn’t meant to be.”

  Tyrell put a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “We’ll find him. Maybe the shots spooked him.”

  They headed into the house.

  Inside, Danny got his sleeping bag and took it out to the hay shed, where Banjo always slept. He’ll come back. He has to come back.

  He stood alone in the eerie silence, feeling strange and empty without his dog. It felt like when his mom left. Danny was four then. After she left, he saw her every other week for a couple of years, but she eventually married a rancher and moved to California. Danny liked him. But even though his mom called them every week, and flew him and Tyrell down to California twice a year, she was an empty place inside him.

  “Banjo!” Danny called.

  All he got back was the faint yip of a coyote out on the distant plain. It was the most lo
nesome sound he’d ever heard.

  3

  Just hours after the late-night shooting at the Mack place, the sun rose into the blue of a cloudless summer day.

  Twenty miles up the road near the old western town of Sisters, Meg Harris and her best friend, Josie, carried a saddle and blanket out into the middle of a covered, open-sided arena. Meg pitched the saddle upright on the ground. Josie set the saddle blanket on top of it, then helped Meg adjust her clip-on wireless microphone.

  “Nervous?” Josie asked, her voice low.

  “A little.”

  “You’ll be all right.”

  Meg nodded. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You think I’d miss a show like this?”

  “I hope I don’t get a horse I can’t handle.”

  Josie gave Meg a quick hug and headed over to the stands to sit with Meg’s family and their other friends from 4-H. Meg was glad they were all there. She didn’t want to mess up in front of them. But that was what a 4-H public demonstration was all about—learning by doing. Delivering on your ideas. Still, a horse could be unpredictable, even dangerous, especially if it’d been abused or neglected.

  Please, please, please…no risky horses.

  The view on one side of the arena was of high-country forest below a line of sharp-edged mountains called the Three Sisters. Meg let her gaze rest there as she tried to calm her breathing.