Ranch Hands

One of the horses reared. The one next to it bucked, kicking another horse who bit the one who had reared. Every horse whose ears hadn’t flattened before now flattened its ears, and they all started whinnying and crying wildly.

Two more horses reared, and that was all the rest of the herd would take. They fled.

Stevie and Kate stood helplessly by the open gate while more than a dozen horses raced past them right into the middle of the herd of cattle.

The cattle, which had been just as restless as the horses, found this an ideal opportunity to run. Within a matter of seconds it was clear to Stevie and Kate that they had a full-blown stampede on their hands.

“Eli!!!” Stevie shrieked.

“I’
VE GOT A
secret,” Carole Hanson said to Lisa Atwood.

“Oh, no, I don’t like secrets at all,” Lisa complained.

“But I always thought you
loved
secrets!” Carole said. The two of them were walking to their favorite place, Pine Hollow Stables, to meet their friend Stevie Lake and celebrate the fact that school was out for the summer. Carole couldn’t think of any good reason to be upset about anything, especially secrets.

“Usually I like secrets, but not right now. It’s my parents,” Lisa continued. “They’ve been tiptoeing around the house and whispering to each other for days. Something’s up. It’s a secret, and I have the funniest feeling that I’m not going to like it.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Carole said. “And don’t blame me for your parents’ secret. I promise you’re going to like mine.”

“Then it must have to do with horses,” said Lisa.

“Maybe,” Carole said. “But I can’t tell it to you until we meet up with Stevie.”

Carole was being a lot more mysterious than usual. Normally Stevie was the one who was good at mysteries and secrets—especially the part about
telling
secrets. She wasn’t nearly as good at keeping them.

The three best friends, Stevie, Carole, and Lisa, were very different from one another, but they all felt the same way about horses. They loved horses so much that they had formed their own club and called it The Saddle Club. The first requirement for membership was that the members had to be horse crazy. That was easy for Carole, Stevie, and Lisa, who were totally horse crazy. The second requirement was that each member had to be willing to help out another member whenever she needed it. Sometimes the help had to do with horses. Sometimes it had to do with other things—like schoolwork, parents, or boyfriends. Judging by the look on Lisa’s face, Carole had the funny feeling she and Stevie might soon be pitching in to help Lisa cope with her parents’ secret. Since there was nothing to be done about that for the moment, Carole’s thoughts turned to a more pleasant subject.

“I think I want to try to ride every day this summer,” she said.

“That’s my favorite part about summer,” Lisa said, nodding in agreement. “As long as Max will let us, we
can
ride every day.”

Max was the owner of Pine Hollow. Since he knew what good riders Stevie and Lisa were, he let them ride as long as their horses weren’t being used in a riding class. That didn’t apply to Carole, though. She owned her own horse and could ride Starlight any time she wanted. In fact, she really had to ride him—or see that he got exercise one way or another—almost every day. That was fine with Carole. She was never happier than when she was with Starlight.

“If I can ride every day,” Lisa went on, “imagine how much better a rider I’ll be when fall comes again. I particularly want to work on my jumping.”

“Riding isn’t the only important part about horses,” Carole reminded her. “There’s a lot of work to be done on horse care, too.”

“I know, and stable management and all sorts of other things that have to be done before you get on the horse’s back. Those things are hard, but fun. Know what I mean?”

“I do,” Carole agreed.

The two of them chatted about all the things they wanted to do at Pine Hollow in the next two months as they walked there together. It was a hot day, promising
more of the same as the summer wore on. They lived in the town of Willow Creek, Virginia, about twenty miles outside Washington, D.C., and the area was noted for its muggy summer weather. The girls never minded, though, as long as they could be with their horses.

Stevie was standing out in front of the stable, waiting for them.

“Come on, girls,” she said. “There isn’t a minute to waste. We have exactly two months and eight days until school starts. That means sixty-eight straight days of riding—or is it sixty-nine? Thirty days hath September …”

“Oh, stop wasting time counting,” Lisa said. She knew Stevie would never remember the jingle correctly, and it might take a while to figure out the answer to the question. She thought there was something much more important to do with their time. “Let’s just ride!” She marched toward the locker area in the stable.

“Okay,” Stevie said agreeably, following Lisa inside. She couldn’t remember whether it was April or July that had thirty days anyway.

“Not quite so fast,” Carole said. “I’ve still got this secret.”

That stopped Stevie in her tracks. “Yes?” she asked expectantly.

“Well, let’s get to the locker area and then I’ll show
you. It’s very hard to read a letter from a friend if I’m walking around at the same time.”

That gave it away for Stevie. “Kate?” she asked.

Carole grinned and nodded.

“Then let’s hurry up and sit down!”

Kate Devine was a friend of all three girls. They had originally met her because her father had been an officer in the Marine Corps with Carole’s father. When Kate’s father had retired, he’d bought a dude ranch out West, and the girls had visited Kate there and learned a whole lot about a new kind of riding.

Kate, herself, was an excellent rider. In fact, she’d been a junior national champion, but she’d stopped riding competitively when she found that beating others had become the most important factor in riding. It took meeting up with The Saddle Club to get her back on a horse, and she’d never been sorry. Now she got to ride all the time and never competed a bit—except with the dudes who came to stay at her family ranch.

Lisa and Stevie stowed their street shoes and pulled on their boots while Carole opened the letter. She sat down on the bench and began to read out loud. With every word, Lisa and Stevie slowed down the dressing process. They had to sit still to take in all the good news. First of all, Kate told them that Eli and Jeannie had gotten married. Eli used to be the head wrangler at the Devines’ dude ranch, and Jeannie had worked
there as well. The girls had even helped get the two of them together, because Eli had been a little blind about how much Jeannie liked him. Then, when Eli had gone away to school, Jeannie had followed him there. It seemed very right that they’d finally gotten married.

“A complete riding club and matchmaking service—that’s us!” Stevie announced proudly. Lisa agreed, but she shushed Stevie up anyway. She wanted to hear the rest of the letter.

“Yes!” Stevie said, almost breathlessly.

“Yes, yes!” Carole added.

“Make that three!” said Lisa.

Then Carole passed around the brochure that Eli and Jeannie had sent Kate. It showed photographs of breathtakingly beautiful scenery on the edge of the Rocky Mountains. The ranch was nestled in a valley, and a sign showed its name as High Meadow.