Carole whooped.
“Heard the good news on the radio, eh, sweet thing?” her father called up the stairs.
“Can you believe it? What am I going to do first?”
“Pack, I’d say.”
Pack? What was her father talking about? “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Not we, you. And Lisa and Stevie,” Colonel Hanson said. “I mean as long as the schools are shut—and even Stevie’s fancy private school suffered bad damage with the downtown water disaster—you three are just going to have to get out of your parents’ hair. I just got off the phone with the Atwoods and the Lakes. The only thing we could all think of was to send you off to the sunny Southwest, with a trained Marine Corps pilot. Frank’ll bring you three back next Sunday when he comes to pick up Mr. Lowell. Now, he’s staying over an extra day to wait until the congestion eases up at the airport. Think you can be ready to go by tomorrow morning—at O-eight hundred?”
For a moment Carole was speechless. Then she grinned broadly. “Does a private first class polish brass?”
No problem!
THE FLIGHT WITH Frank Devine in the small plane went very smoothly. The last time the girls had flown to the ranch, they’d had to take three different airplanes. They thought this new way was a lot easier, and a lot more fun.
“Tray tables and seat backs into their full upright and locked positions?” Stevie joked. Of course, there wasn’t room for tray tables in the little plane, and the seat backs only reclined a few inches. It was Stevie’s way of saying that she thought the end of the trip was near. Stevie glanced out the window and spotted the small airport a few miles away. Another advantage to flying with Frank was that they could land at a local airport, which was just ten miles from the ranch, instead of the nearest commercial airport, which was over seventy miles away.
Frank laughed. “All you really need to do is make sure your seat belts are on—oh, and extinguish all smoking materials.”
The girls giggled.
“There’s the airport!” Carole said excitedly.
“And there’s Kate!” Lisa said, almost bouncing in her seat.
Stevie squinted out her window at the bright desert sunlight. She could just make out two small figures standing by the little terminal building who might be Kate and Eli. A pickup truck was parked on the other side of the building.
The plane slowly made its descent. Even though the airport was small, with no other visible air traffic, Frank kept in constant touch with the tower, receiving all his landing instructions and following them carefully. He concentrated totally on the task in front of him. Stevie watched his hands flick busily over the numerous switches and buttons on the panel in the cockpit. She couldn’t make any sense of what he was doing. She decided to concentrate on the approach instead.
The figures were becoming clearer. “It’s Eli! I know it is. And Mel is with him!” Stevie cried. Mel was Eli’s favorite herding dog. She was caramel-colored and had had a litter of puppies the last time the girls had been at the ranch. Now she sat motionlessly next to Eli, who watched the approaching plane. His big cowboy hat shaded his eyes.
Kate stood on his other side. In contrast to Eli’s calm, Kate was jumping all over the place and waving excitedly. Stevie wished she could be jumping, too. She had the feeling, though, that it might distract their pilot. And the last thing in the world she wanted to do was to distract their pilot!
Almost imperceptibly, the plane slowed down and settled onto the runway. When it was at taxiing speed, Frank made a U-turn. Within seconds, they had stopped in front of the little building that served as the airport terminal.
Kate ran up to the plane and helped from the outside as Frank opened the door.
The girls couldn’t get out of the plane fast enough. They were eager to see Kate and to hug her. Stevie was dimly aware of Eli and Frank unloading their luggage as the four of them had their reunion on the tarmac. It was so exciting to be back with Kate, headed for The Bar None.
“Can we have the same cabin we had before?” Carole asked.
“You can have your pick of cabins, except for the one with the broken toilet and the other with the leaky roof—or is that two now with leaky roofs?” Frank said. Stevie thought there was something odd in his tone.
“It’s not that bad, Daddy,” Kate said. “Just one leaky roof. Besides, we’ve got some guests coming for the rodeo on the weekend.”
The three other girls exchanged troubled looks. Something was definitely wrong at The Bar None, and they were beginning to get an idea of what it was. It was time for action. They hadn’t come a moment too soon. Stevie and her friends looked around for their bags.
“We’ve got to get to the ranch,” Carole announced, picking up her carry-on bag.
“Right, we’ve got to talk,” Lisa said.
Frank looked at them curiously. “Why, you’ve done nothing but talk for the last six hours in the plane!” he teased.
“That was just talk,” Stevie said. “This is business.”
“Saddle Club business,” Lisa said. Then she turned to Kate. “Are you ready for your first official meeting since joining?”
“You bet I am!” Kate replied. She picked up one of Lisa’s suitcases and loaded it on the truck. The group began the ten-mile trip to The Bar None.
THE BAR NONE looked just the same as the day The Saddle Club had left it a few months before, except for one thing. In the summer, it had been full of paying guests. Now, just two guests occupied one of the cabins. The place looked empty, almost deserted.
“The trouble is that we have all the expenses and none of the income,” Kate said, answering her friends’ question before it was asked.
“But isn’t this just the off-season?” Stevie suggested. “I mean, it’ll fill up again at vacation time, won’t it?”
“Maybe,” Kate said. She paused. “Did you notice all the signs along the roadside for The Dapper Dude Ranch?”
“Who could miss them?” Stevie remarked. “They seemed to be up every fifteen feet.”
“They were up every fifteen feet,” Kate said disgustedly. “It’s a new place that’s opened up right outside of town. They’re advertising all over the place—not just on the roadway, but in magazines and with slick brochures. It seems like they have all the money in the world to bring in business. They’ve certainly managed to take a whole lot of business away from us. We’ve even had people cancel reservations here and say they’d decided to stay at The Dapper Dude instead. Can you imagine?”
“I can’t imagine wanting to stay at a place called The Dapper Dude. It’s the stupidest name I ever heard of,” Stevie said.
“To you, maybe,” Kate replied. “But the fact is, whatever they’re doing, it’s working, and The Bar None is in trouble. It’s lucky for us that The Dapper Dude is all booked up for this weekend because of the rodeo. We’re getting their overflow. For now, anyway, we’re still in business. After next week, well, we just don’t know.”
It was a sobering thought, casting a pall on their reunion. With Kate’s words echoing in each of their minds, the girls completed their unpacking. Three words kept running through Stevie’s head as she worked—Saddle Club project.
But, really, what could they do?
IT WAS ABOUT four o’clock by the time they finished unpacking. Since there seemed to be little to say or to do about The Bar None’s predicament, Kate suggested that they head for the barn, where they could enjoy themselves instead of sitting around and worrying over something they couldn’t do anything about. The other girls agreed, a little relieved to set aside the problem for a while.
“Hey, look! Eli’s practicing for the rodeo,” Kate said, leading them over to the corral. “It’s really neat, once you figure out what he’s doing.”
Stevie watched carefully. Eli mounted his horse, got him into a spurt of a gallop, made him stop so fast that the animal had to dig his hooves into the ground, leaped off him while he still seemed to be in motion, and ran forward, whi
ch somehow made the horse back up.
“What is he doing?” Lisa asked, posing the question for all of them.
They drew up to the edge of the corral, joining a girl about Eli’s age who was leaning against the round wood fence.
“Girls, this is Jeannie Sanders, our new wrangler,” Kate said. They all nodded and shook hands, but it was clear that Jeannie’s attention was on Eli.
“How’s he doing?” Kate asked.
“Oh, wonderfully,” Jeannie answered, almost breathlessly. Then she blushed.
Stevie didn’t usually think of herself as a person with a lot of insight about what was going on in other people’s minds, but she certainly knew a Grade A crush when she saw one. There was no doubt that Jeannie had one of those on Eli. The girl could barely keep her eyes off of him.
“More important, what’s he doing?” Stevie asked.
“He’s practicing his stopping and dismounting and getting his horse to work with him for calf roping. See, the cowboy not only has to rope the calf, but he’s also got to get three of its legs tied together. To do that, he has to immobilize the calf. And the horse helps him by keeping the lasso rope taut. See how the horse backs up after Eli’s dismounted? That’s what he’s supposed to do because, believe me, the calf is struggling to get away from both the cowboy and the horse. This is a very tricky event. It’s the one that calls for the most coordination between the cowboy and his horse. For something like steer wrestling, muscle is what counts the most. For saddle-bronc riding, well, that’s mostly experience and balance. Calf roping, now that calls for skill.”
She sighed as she said the last words. Stevie took it to mean that, in Jeannie’s opinion, Eli had all the skill anybody could ever ask for, at everything.
While they watched, Eli brought out a calf and let him run loose in the corral while Eli practiced his roping. The girls already knew Eli was really good at that. It was fun to watch and they all enjoyed it, nobody more than Jeannie.
“Eli’s in three events on Saturday: steer wrestling, calf roping, and bronc riding. And there’s an awful lot hinging on his riding,” Kate told her friends. “He’s counting on his performance to get him a rodeo scholarship at the state university. We’re counting on it to be good publicity for The Bar None. It could really make a difference to all of us.”
“He sure looks good to me,” Stevie said, admiring Eli’s skill. Jeannie looked a little jealous. Stevie thought it was probably just an automatic reaction. “I mean, he looks like he could win,” she corrected herself quickly.
“Let’s go see if your mother needs any help with dinner,” Stevie suggested. When they were beyond Jeannie’s hearing, she raised the question that was really on her mind. “I know Jeannie’s in love with Eli. I’ve never seen such a love-struck doe in my life, but does he know she’s alive?”
“Nope,” Kate said. “She trails after him like a puppy and he never seems to notice her at all. I mean, he likes her okay. They work together just fine, but what I think we’re seeing here is pure unrequited love.”
“Sad,” Carole remarked. “She’s so, so …” she struggled for the right word.
“Adoring,” Lisa supplied. “And all that adoration shouldn’t go to waste!”
“Now there’s a project worthy of The Saddle Club,” Stevie said, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “First, we have to get them together, alone. Moonlight, stars—you know the routine. And then …”
“I wouldn’t get so carried away,” Carole advised. “Why not let nature take its course?”
Stevie grinned impishly. “On some things, Carole, nature can be very careless. This is going to require something more than that!”
STEVIE OPENED HER eyes. At first, she couldn’t see anything. The bunkroom was completely dark. She glanced at the luminous clock on her bedside table. The clock said it was five-thirty. It was seven-thirty back in Willow Creek. Her internal clock was telling her to get up. The bedside clock told her to go back to sleep. The internal clock won the battle.
Stevie crept out of bed, pulled on a sweatshirt over her pajamas, and tiptoed out onto the bunkhouse porch, where she could sit on one of the aged deck chairs and look at the sky.
There was something very different about the nighttime sky at The Bar None. At home, the sky was just a dark area with a few dim stars scattered here and there. Here, in the open country, without a sizable town for more than fifty miles, the sky was a rich black velvet sprinkled with thousands of bright stars, reaching from one end of the horizon to the other.
Although it was warm in the Southwest, it was late fall and the sun wouldn’t be up for more than an hour. Until then, there was blackness, studded with brilliant pinpoints of light.
Stevie sighed. It was beautiful. It made her think of other country nights and other starry skies she’d seen. That, naturally, made her think of Phil Marston, her boyfriend. They didn’t see each other very often because they lived about twenty minutes apart by car, but they talked on the phone a lot, and they’d be together again in the summer at camp, where they’d met in the first place. Stevie suddenly remembered that this trip had come up so fast she hadn’t had time to tell Phil about it. She promised herself she’d get a postcard to send to him as soon as she and her friends could get to town.
Stevie leaned back in the deck chair and closed her eyes. She wasn’t as wide-awake as she’d thought. She drifted toward sleep.
“Good morning.” A voice awoke her.
Stevie sat up, startled. The sky was gray now, cloaking the world in its dim light. In front of her, a young girl was sitting bareback on a horse. Next to the horse, a half-grown puppy was gnawing playfully on a stick.
“Christine!” Stevie said, jumping up out of the chair and running to her friend. “How are you!”
Christine slid down off Arrow’s back and greeted Stevie with a hug. “I’m fine, but what are you doing sleeping out on the porch at this hour? I mean, there are a thousand things to do. You going to sleep the day away?”
Stevie laughed. Christine Lonetree took an early-morning bareback ride every day. She always rode by The Bar None, and nobody had ever known it until Stevie had seen her on The Saddle Club’s earlier visit to the ranch. When the girls became friends, Christine had taken them with her on her early-morning ride. It had been a very special ride, ending up at Christine’s family’s house across the valley from the ranch. Christine’s mother had given them a wonderful pancake breakfast.
“Me, sleeping?” Stevie said innocently. “Why, I’ve already had my first ride of the day. I was just waiting to see if a lazybones like you would ever show up this morning.”
“I can tell you’ve been up for hours, by the way you’re rubbing your eyes and yawning,” Christine teased. “And I love the riding duds. I ride in pajamas all the time.”
Stevie laughed. “No fooling you, huh? Well, let’s just get everybody else—” She turned to go into the cabin, but was stopped by something tugging insistently at the ankle of her pajamas. “What in …”
“Dude wants to say hello,” Christine said, pointing to the culprit, her curly-haired brown-and-white puppy.
Stevie remembered Dude well. In fact, she had been the one to give him to Christine. The last time she’d seen the puppy, he’d been little more than a sleepy, fuzzy ball. He’d grown a lot since then. He was full of energy, and appeared to have a great liking for pajama bottoms.
“He’s so cute!” Stevie cooed, kneeling down and patting the energetic ball of fur. Dude turned his attention from Stevie’s pajamas to her hand. He began licking it furiously. Then he jumped up on her and started licking at her ears.
“Down, Dude!” Christine said sharply. It didn’t do any good at all. Stevie didn’t mind, though. She was enjoying patting and hugging the puppy. After a few minutes, Dude discovered an oak leaf skittering across the porch. He growled protectively and then pounced at it.
“Time to wake everybody else up,” Christine said. Stevie opened the cabin door for her and the two of
them went in.
“Can you do reveille?” Stevie asked. Christine nodded. The two of them stood as if in formation and whistled the traditional “wake-up” song of camps and armies. It didn’t work on their friends, so they resorted to a more direct method.
“Get out of bed, you lazybones! Look who’s here!”
When Kate, Carole, and Lisa saw their visitor, they woke up immediately. Lisa and Carole hopped out of their bunks and ran to greet Christine. For a few minutes, there was a confusion of hugging, tooth brushing, and getting dressed. Within an amazingly short time, the five girls reassembled on the porch to visit until breakfast.
It turned out that Kate had called Christine to tell her the girls were arriving. Normally, Kate and Christine would have had school that week, but Christine explained that Saturday’s rodeo was really a local festival and almost everybody in the area was participating in one way or another.
“They used to try to keep school open during Rodeo Week, but they found that nobody came. No teachers, no students. The principals in the district got together and threw in the towel.”
“That’s almost as much fun as burst pipes,” Lisa said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kate remarked. “A planned vacation is never really as much fun as an unplanned one. I love the fact that you guys came on the spur of the moment, with nothing planned except the rodeo.”
“Actually, there is something planned,” Carole said. The other four girls looked at her in surprise. “It’s something we talked about a while ago. We just never got to do it until now.”
With that, Carole stood up and went into the cabin. Kate turned to Stevie for an explanation.
Stevie shrugged. “Beats me,” she said.
“I think I know what she has in mind,” Lisa said slowly. “And she’s right. It’s something we planned a very long time ago—the day we left here on our last trip.”
Stevie thought back. And then she remembered.
“Here it is,” Carole said, returning to the porch from the bunkroom, where she’d been rummaging around in her suitcase. She was holding something in her hand.
Rodeo Rider Page 2