Dude Ranch (2 page)

Then it was time for the last two awards of the day. One, for the best overall rider, was a cinch to go to Carole. Nobody could come close to her natural ability at riding, and nobody worked harder to improve her skills. Carole was a shoo-in.

“But before we get to the best overall rider, we have one more important category,” Max announced. “The rider who wins this category may one day win the best overall because it shows a rider who has a running start—the rider who is most improved. Usually this goes to experienced riders who just hit their stride in learning, but this year, it’s going to a new rider—one who came in here without any experience at all and has, in my opinion, learned years worth of riding in a few short months. Congratulations, Miss Lisa Atwood!”

Carole and Stevie couldn’t help themselves. They started cheering out loud and clapping for Lisa because she was their friend, and because she deserved it. Shyly, Lisa accepted her ribbon. As she was walking her horse back to the line, Stevie noticed Lisa scanning the audience, looking to see if her mother had come. She was there all right. Stevie even thought she detected a smile on the woman’s face.

Although Mrs. Atwood could get very enthusiastic about new riding jackets and shiny boots, she really didn’t understand
riding
. She thought it was just something nice girls should know something about. It was clear she wasn’t sure what to think about girls who knew a
lot
about it. Stevie felt sorry for Lisa.

She didn’t have long to feel sorry, though, because Lisa’s award was followed quickly by Carole’s. Carole
won the best overall rider ribbon and the whole class stood up in their stirrups to give her a standing ovation.

In spite of the awful heat, Stevie thought it was a just-about-perfect day. After all, any day in which all three members of The Saddle Club got blue ribbons was bound to be just about perfect.

Max left the ring, and the riders all dismounted and led their horses back into the stable area.

“Last one in is a rotten egg!” Stevie announced to her friends.

They knew just what she meant. It only took the girls a few minutes to untack the horses and gather up their own belongings from the stable locker area. Stevie’s house was a short walk. They ran. They were wearing their suits under their riding clothes, and within seconds, three sets of riding clothes were scattered by the edge of the pool in Stevie’s yard.

Nobody was a rotten egg. They all hit the water at the same moment.

“
P
UT YOUR TRAY
tables and seat backs in their full upright and locked positions
,” a smooth voice said over the intercom.

“Those are the nicest words I’ve ever heard,” Carole announced. It was the next day, and the three girls were sitting together in a small airplane. They had been traveling for hours. They’d changed planes twice, and they’d nearly gotten lost in the Denver airport. Carole was really glad that her father had asked the flight attendant to keep an eye out for them. They’d almost gotten on a plane bound for Hawaii!

“Does that mean we’re really there?” Lisa piped up.

“I guess so,” Carole said. “Every plane we’ve been on has been smaller than the last. If we have to change again, it’s going to be a hang glider and I’d rather walk!”

The girls looked around. Their plane was a twenty-seater. Carole was right.

Stevie, sitting by the window, returned her attention to the land below.

“There are cows down there! And horses! Lots of them!”

“Not necessarily just
cows
,” Carole reminded her with a grin. “Dairy herds are just
cows
. But this here’s roundup country now! Those could be beef cattle.”

Stevie giggled, then instantly sobered. “You mean I’m looking at a lot of hamburgers?” she asked.

There was a snort from the seat behind them. The girls turned around to see a boy about eighteen years old. His eyes were sparkling with laughter.

“What’s so funny about hamburgers?” Stevie demanded.

“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way myself,” he drawled.

“Why not?” Stevie asked. “That’s what’s going to happen to them, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” he said. “But when you put it that way, everybody’ll know right away you’re just a bunch of eastern dudes! Out here, we call that stock.” With that statement, the young cowboy returned all his attention to his magazine. The girls turned around in their seats and concentrated on the landing.

Within a few minutes, the plane had landed at a small airport nestled in a valley surrounded by rolling
green hills. They grabbed their hand luggage and headed for the steps that took them to the hot tarmac runway.

“
Look!
” Lisa said breathlessly as she stepped onto the ground. Stevie and Carole looked where she was pointing. Beyond the gentle hills that encircled them were the majestic peaks of the Rocky Mountains, still covered with snow in the middle of the summer.

“I think somebody painted those on, don’t you?” Stevie asked. The girls agreed that it seemed impossible that something so beautiful could be right there.

“Looks like a postcard,” Carole said.

There was another snort, now familiar to the girls. “That’s where they put the camera to take the pictures,
dudes
,” the cowboy teased them.

“Hmph,” Stevie remarked. She grasped her flight bag and walked purposefully toward the gate. She didn’t want to be called a dude any more. After all, it wasn’t as if The Saddle Club didn’t know anything about riding. Why, they’d won prizes, just yesterday!

“Carole! Stevie! Lisa!”

The girls looked up. There, waving frantically from behind the chain link fence, was their friend, Kate. They ran as fast as their burdens would let them to join her.

It seemed like such a long time since she’d been at Pine Hollow, but their memories of the wonderful fun
they’d had with Kate there were vivid. Kate was horse crazy just like they were. She was one of them and the hugs of greeting they all gave one another proved it.

“You look terrific!” Carole said, admiring Kate’s new style of clothes. Kate was wearing faded jeans, a red plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, soft leather cowboy boots, and a felt hat.

“A little different from the horse-show duds, I guess, but you’ll get used to them,” Kate told her friends. “Now come on, let’s get your bags and head on out to the ranch. We’ve got a long trip in front of us.”

“We just took a long trip,” Lisa reminded her.

“That was the
easy
part,” Kate said. “This is the
fun
part.”

The girls exchanged looks. What was
that
supposed to mean?

“Have you seen Eli?” she asked.

They shook their heads and shrugged. “Who’s Eli?” Carole asked in return.

“He’s one of our wranglers—a cowboy to you. He was on your flight, but I was so busy looking for you I didn’t see him. You could hardly miss him, though. He’s eighteen, kind of cute, and speaks with this incredible western drawl—”

“And he makes fun of ‘dudes’?” Stevie asked.

“That’s the one,” Kate said, grinning at Stevie. “I knew you all would get along. One of the ranch’s
guests drove me and the pickup out here. Eli’s driving it back to The Bar None. It’s about seventy miles. We can sit in the back of the truck. You can see more that way, but the road’s a little bumpy in places, especially the way Eli drives! Hey, there he is now.”

Kate introduced the girls to Eli Grimes. He nodded politely at them just as if he’d never met any of them before or made fun of them. Stevie decided that was the best way to handle it, too. She ignored him as well. Without a word, he lugged their suitcases to the pickup truck parked next to the terminal, slung them into the back, took the keys from Kate, got in the truck’s cab, and started the motor.

The girls piled into the back of the truck and arranged themselves on the mattresses the Devines kept there for the comfort and safety of their guests.

“Why is it called The Bar None Ranch?” Lisa asked Kate once they’d pulled onto the road.

“Because when my parents first saw it, they knew it was the prettiest ranch they’d ever seen, bar none. Our symbol is an O with a line over it, like this.” She traced an Ō in the dust on the truck bed.

“Neat,” Lisa said.

Carole wanted to change the subject to her favorite one: horses and riding. Only instead of Carole being the one with the answers, she was now the one with the questions. Carole was lying on her stomach on the
truck bed. She bent her knees and crossed her feet at the ankles.

“Okay, now, let’s get down to business. Just how different
is
Western riding?” She propped herself up on her elbows.

Kate leaned back against the cab of the truck, looking completely at home in the Western setting. One arm circled her bent legs, the other rested along the side of the truck. She looked out across the hilly countryside, covered with lush grassland. Across a field to their right, a mare and her foal stood comfortably under a shade tree, munching at the grass.

“Look familiar?” she asked Carole, pointing to the pair of horses.

Carole smiled. “Sure, it reminds me of Delilah and Samson.” Delilah was a mare at Pine Hollow and Samson was her foal.

“And how about that one?” Kate asked. She pointed to a gray horse with black dappling.

“That one looks like Pepper,” Lisa said. Pepper was the horse she rode most of the time at the stable.

“Right, and that one over there is sure to remind you of Patch,” Kate said. “And the horse you ride, Stevie—that’s Comanche, right? There’s a chestnut in a pasture ahead that looks a lot like him. You won’t find any Thoroughbreds or the other fancy horse-show breeds like Holsteiners out here. You will find Quarter
Horses, Arabians, and Appaloosas. Those, especially the Quarter Horses, are good
working
horses. But underneath, they’re all horses.”

“You mean there aren’t
any
differences between English and Western?” Carole asked, wrinkling her brow.

“Well, not exactly,” Kate told her. “There are lots of differences. You only hold the reins with one hand, for instance, and when you want to turn, you just lay the rein on the opposite side of the neck. That stuff’s easy, though. You’ll get used to it right away.”

“And if we don’t, Eli’s going to be there to laugh at us! That’s going to make us learn fast!” Stevie said.

“Maybe it will,” Kate said. “And maybe there are a few things
Eli
could learn, too.”

“Like how to post!” Lisa suggested.

Kate smiled to herself and then began laughing. The girls knew that the very idea of Eli Grimes rising and sitting in the saddle with the beat of the horse’s trot was just plain funny. “I don’t think you could ever teach a wrangler to post,” she said. “But I think you can already sit a trot. So, see? Western’s going to be easier for you than English would be for him.”

“Oh!” Stevie said after a moment, surprise in her voice. The girls looked where she was looking. Evening was coming and the sky was beginning to darken. The sun, sitting on the crest of the mountains to the west, had streaked the clouds with brilliant shades of
pink, red, and purple. “I think this must be where they put the camera for
those
postcards, too,” she said, recalling Eli’s remark at the airport. “I’m really glad I brought my camera. Does it always look like this?” she asked. She carefully framed her friends against the backdrop of the sunset and snapped a photo.

“Not always,” Kate said. “Usually it’s prettier. And wait until you see the sun
rise
! It’s as pretty as can be and we can see it from the porch of our very own bunkhouse.”

“Sunrise? You must be kidding,” Lisa said. “No way I’m going to be up early enough to see that!”

“That’s what
you
think!” Kate said. “Listen, we’ll be at the ranch now in about ten minutes. Mom’ll feed us some supper and then we can start planning the things we want to do while you’re here.”

“Ride,” Lisa said.

“Check,” Kate said. “We’ll be doing plenty of that. We’ve also got a barbecue planned and a couple of picnics, and we’re going to have a roundup this week. That should be neat! Anything else you especially want to do?”

Lisa and Carole were full of suggestions. Carole wanted to learn about breaking in horses. Lisa was interested in swimming and mountain riding.

As they chatted, Stevie felt a small pang. There
was
one sour note to this trip, but she didn’t want to make
a big deal of it. It was that her thirteenth birthday was coming up in just a week. Birthdays were always very special to her, particularly since she shared them with her twin brother, Alex. He could be a bore and a nuisance 364 days a year, but on their birthday, he was her
brother
. Their parents always made a fuss about it. The twins usually had a poolside party with a cookout. Stevie would miss that this year, a lot. Still, she was determined not to upset anybody else with her own problem. She’d just have to miss it this year. And she was lucky to be on such a neat trip. There would be lots of other years, lots of opportunities to have birthday parties. It wouldn’t matter at all. Much. She abandoned her lonely thoughts and listened to her friends talking once again.