Ranch Hands (2 page)

One look and Stevie knew she had to go. She could almost see herself mounted on a pinto pony standing beneath the sign that stretched between the two posts at the gate of the ranch.

She was torn then. She wanted to run home and begin the process of talking her parents into letting her go. But then, she also wanted to stay at Pine Hollow and go for a ride with Lisa and Carole. Of course, she decided to stick around for the ride. Besides, her parents were both at work and wouldn’t be home until dinnertime.

“Just imagine!” Lisa said. “Eli wants
us
to help with his riders.”

“Not just
wants
,” Carole said. “He
needs
us.”

“I guess there are advantages to being pretty good
on a horse,” said Stevie. “And this is definitely one of them. Why, we’ll practically be camp counselors.”

“That’s no surprise,” said Carole. “We’re good enough riders, aren’t we?”

“It’s not just the riding,” Lisa added. “It’s all the other things we can do, too, like grooming and feeding. Eli and Jeannie really know they can rely on us.”

That gave all the girls a wonderful feeling. They loved riding and taking care of horses. They also liked the fact that somebody else recognized and valued their skills.

Stevie gave her boot a final tug and then stood up. “Let’s go,” she said. “And let’s play a game—pretending we’re already at High Meadow. I’ll be an obstreperous little kid, and you two can teach me everything you know.…”

Since Stevie was very good at being obstreperous (a word she heard frequently from the headmistress of her school), the game promised to be a fun one. Carole and Lisa stood up eagerly.

Just then, though, Mrs. Reg entered the locker area. Mrs. Reg was Max’s mother and the stable manager. She always seemed to know absolutely everything that was going on everywhere. Lisa often suspected she had a pair of antennae hidden beneath her soft gray hair.

“Topside has already taken two classes today,” Mrs. Reg said to Stevie. “You can take him out on the trail,
but only if you’ll be back within an hour and don’t ride him too hard.”

“It’s too hot to ride him hard,” Stevie agreed. “I’d never do that. And we’ll definitely be back within an hour. We’ve got something important to do.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Reg. “You know, though, that reminds me of something.…”

The three girls each sighed silently. Then, one by one, they sat down. Whenever Mrs. Reg said that, it meant she was about to tell them a story. Her stories always had to do with horses and often didn’t seem connected with whatever it was she’d been reminded of. More often, they were connected with something else that was going on, and it became a challenge to the young riders to figure out exactly
how
they were connected to what was going on. This one was no exception.

“There was a young boy who used to ride at Pine Hollow,” she began. She told about this boy—whom she never named—and how he’d loved horses and speed. It seemed that he wanted, more than anything, to grow up to be a jockey. He spent all his free time at the racetrack and hung around with the jockeys, wanting more than anything to be just like them.

When he became a teenager, though, it became clear that he would never get his wish, for he began to grow. A lot.

“He was over six feet by the time he stopped. And
big boned, too. He looked more like a wrestler than a jockey.”

The girls knew that successful jockeys were all very small people, usually just over five feet and about a hundred pounds. The lighter the jockey, the easier it was for the horse to run quickly.

“For a long time, he was very sad,” said Mrs. Reg. Then she stopped and looked off into the middle distance, sort of dreamily. It was just like her to stop when a story seemed to be getting interesting. Sometimes, if she were prodded in just the right way, she’d continue and give a hint as to what she was talking about.

“Then what happened?” Lisa asked.

Mrs. Reg looked puzzled, as if she couldn’t figure out why Lisa didn’t know the answer. “Are you girls going to go on your ride, or are you going to lollygag around here all afternoon? I’ve got work to do, you know.…” With that she left, leaving the girls to unravel the meaning of the story.

Stevie thought she knew the right question. “What made him stop being sad?” she asked. She looked at Carole and Lisa.

“I think I know,” Carole said. “I think she’s talking about Mr. McLeod, the trainer who owned Prancer.” Prancer was a mare who now belonged to Pine Hollow. She had been bred as a racehorse but had to retire from the track because of an injury. Then she’d
been moved to Pine Hollow, where she began her stable horse career. “See, when he couldn’t become a jockey, he became a trainer; and he’s still a trainer today.”

“Is that bad?” Lisa asked.

“I don’t think so,” Carole said. “He seemed like a very happy man when I met him. And if he’d become a jockey, he probably would have had to retire by now.”

“Of course he’s happy. He’s working with horses,” Lisa said, totally logical. She figured anybody who could spend all day every day around horses had to be a happy person.

“I think I’ve got it then,” said Stevie. That meant that she’d figured out what it was Mrs. Reg had been trying to tell them. Her stories always had a meaning. Deciphering that meaning wasn’t always so easy. “Mr. McLeod didn’t get exactly what he wanted, but he got something just as good, maybe even better.”

“Makes sense to me,” Lisa agreed.

“Getting on the trail makes even more sense,” Carole said.

That was an idea that didn’t have to be deciphered. The girls quickly tacked up their horses and headed for the woods. The first day of summer vacation had to be properly celebrated.

C
AROLE
’
S FATHER WAS
late coming home from his office on the nearby Marine Corps base. Carole was so nervous about asking him if she could go to Eli’s ranch for the summer that she couldn’t stop fidgeting. She decided a bribe couldn’t hurt her cause and began preparing dinner for the two of them.

The problem was, Carole could be a little flaky and scatterbrained—except when it came to horses, of course. That was why she put the frozen green beans in the frying pan and the hamburgers got dunked in the salted water. Fortunately, the baked potatoes didn’t suffer from being put in the refrigerator, and neither did they get cooked there.

By the time her father got home, the slightly soggy hamburgers were frying and the slightly crisped green
beans were boiling. The potatoes, now thoroughly chilled, were rescued from the refrigerator and hastily tucked into the microwave where she cooked them until they were very wrinkly.

“How nice!” Colonel Hanson said, looking at the meal that appeared in front of him. He smiled eagerly. “Is this what I have to look forward to now that school is out for the summer, home-cooked meals every night?”

“More like ‘home-ruined’ meals every night, you mean, and maybe I’ll alternate it with ‘home-burned’ some nights,” Carole said despondently. She took a bite out of the hamburger and grimaced.

Colonel Hanson tried the browned beans. Then he turned his attention to the potato. The news wasn’t any better.

“Let me show you an old cook’s trick,” Colonel Hanson said. He picked up his plate and Carole’s and took them over to the counter.

“This is the beginner chef’s most valuable tool,” he said. And with a flourish, he picked up the telephone and ordered a pizza for the two of them: pepperoni, green pepper, onions, and mushrooms. It would arrive in a half hour.

Carole was hungry, and the pizza sounded awfully good to her, but it wasn’t what she’d had in mind. She apologized to her father for messing up the dinner and even told him how she’d done it.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” he assured her. “I’ve boiled more hamburgers than I care to remember—although I think one boiled hamburger qualifies as more than I care to remember.” The corners of his mouth twitched a little as he tried to suppress a chuckle. It didn’t work. He couldn’t hold it in. He started laughing. Carole couldn’t help herself. She started laughing, too.

“I was just trying to do something nice,” she said. Then she scraped her failed dinner into the garbage. Her father did the same.

“I know, honey. It was nice, too. At least the
idea
was nice. What I’m wondering, though, is what was distracting you so badly that you boiled the hamburgers?”

“And fried the beans and chilled the potatoes,” she reminded him. He nodded. “Well,” she began. “I got a letter from Kate …”

“Eli’s ranch?” Colonel Hanson asked.

“You know about it?”

“Frank Devine called me this afternoon,” he said. “He told me that Eli’s hoping to get some real work out of you girls. I told him I wasn’t sure you’d want to spend the whole time working with horses, feeding, grooming, riding, instructing—not when there was a chance to go to cooking school.…”

“Dad!”

Colonel Hanson knew when to stop teasing, too.
“Actually, Carole, it’s perfect,” he said. “I got word yesterday from our commanding officer at the base that I’m going to have to go on an extended inspection tour. I knew I could take you along, but I also knew you would have been bored to tears. So, of course I told Frank it was okay by me if you went to Eli’s ranch—that is, if I could talk you into it.”

“Just try me,” she said, unable to hide her grin of utter joy. She was going to the ranch!

They spent the next hour eating every bit of the delicious and perfectly cooked pizza and talking about Carole’s summer on the ranch. They had a wonderful time, and in the end Carole concluded that the only bad thing about going to Eli’s ranch was that she really was going to miss her dad.

L
ISA PULLED HER
chair into the table and put her napkin on her lap. She’d spent the last hour in her room trying to figure out how to talk her parents into letting her go to Eli’s ranch. It wasn’t going to be an easy job, but she was sure she could manage it. The strongest point would be that Eli was expecting the girls to work. It really was more of a summer job than a summer camp. Eli needed their help, and it was going to be a real work experience. “Imagine how that will look on my college applications!” she’d say. She figured her parents would love that.

She had also decided that she should bring it up early in the meal—as soon as the last plate was served.

Lisa’s mother nodded to Mr. Atwood, who began to serve. He finished his wife’s plate and passed it to her.
One down, two to go
, Lisa told herself. He put the food on her plate and handed it to her. “Thank you,” she said out loud.
Two down, one to go
, she said to herself.

“Lisa, we’ve got some wonderful news for you,” her mother said.

“We sure do!” said her father, putting his own plate down in front of himself.
Three down …

“You tell,” said Mrs. Atwood.

“No,
you
do it,” said Mr. Atwood.

And so she did. Lisa’s mother told her that the three of them were going to Europe for a full month! They were going to leave in two weeks. They would go to England, France, and Italy. They would see everything! Her parents had been planning this trip to be a surprise for her for months.

“We started planning it right after Christmas,” her father said.

“We know you’re going to love it!”

Lisa listened. She was too stunned even to speak. All her life, she’d dreamed of the day she might take a trip to Europe, but not now. Not
this
summer when she could go to the ranch with Carole and Stevie. Not when she could spend the summer riding Western ponies and being a real hand on a real ranch, helping Eli
and teaching little kids. Not when something else so wonderful was going on.

“Isn’t it exciting?” Her mother’s face positively glowed with excitement. Lisa nodded numbly.

“We knew you’d be surprised,” said Mr. Atwood. “And we wanted it to be a surprise, too. You can’t imagine how hard it’s been.…”

Lisa’s father began a long explanation about how the phone call Lisa thought was a wrong number the other day had actually been the travel agent. Lisa barely heard the story. All she really heard was Europe and four weeks. She’d even be gone before her friends would leave for Eli’s. She’d be in places where they didn’t have horses, where they couldn’t ride every day. She’d even be in places where they didn’t speak English and didn’t know her and she didn’t know anybody. She wouldn’t have any friends around, just her parents.

Lisa looked at the two of them. They’d seen the blank look on her face and took it to be excitement. Lisa was glad of that. She loved her parents. She couldn’t disappoint them when they had gone to so much trouble for her.

“… the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. And don’t forget Nôtre Dame. I read that there’s a boat trip you can take on the Seine through the city. They call it The City of Lights, you know.…”

The City of Lights—a place she’d never been, filled with strange people, strange foods, strange words. What did it hold for her? Not much, Lisa thought. She wanted to go to the ranch. She wanted to ride and be with her friends.