Dude Ranch

by Bonnie Bryant

  For more than forty years, Yearling has been the leading name in classic and award-winning literature for young readers.

  Yearling books feature children’s favorite authors and characters, providing dynamic stories of adventure, humor, history, mystery, and fantasy.

  Trust Yearling paperbacks to entertain, inspire, and promote the love of reading in all children.

  Read all the Saddle Club books!

  Horse Crazy

  Horse Shy

  Horse Sense

  Horse Power

  Trail Mates

  Dude Ranch

  Horse Play

  Horse Show

  Hoof Beat

  Riding Camp

  Horse Wise

  Rodeo Rider

  Copyright © 1989 by Bonnie Bryant Hiller

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  “The Saddle Club” is a registered trademark of Bonnie Bryant Hiller.

  “USPC” and “Pony Club” are registered trademarks of the United States Pony Clubs, Inc., at The Kentucky Horse Park, 4071 Iron Works Pike, Lexington, KY 40511-8462.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

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

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82483-7

  Originally published by Bantam Skylark in 1989

  First Delacorte eBook Edition 2012

  v3.1

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Marjorie Brown and to her mother, my expert, Mel Roemisch.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  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

  About the Author

  STEVIE LAKE LIKED to look out on the world from between the ears of her horse. She sat tall in her saddle. Comanche shifted his weight comfortably from one side to the other. She patted him reassuringly with her gloved hand.

  It was too hot to wear gloves. The bright Virginia sunshine beat down on Stevie and all of the other riders and horses from the stable’s summer-camp program. Stevie was between her two best friends, Carole Hanson and Lisa Atwood. Like Stevie, they were dressed in formal riding habits, sitting stiffly in their saddles.

  In front of the line of riders stood Max Regnery, owner of Pine Hollow Stables. He had a sheaf of papers in one hand and was standing next to a board full of ribbons. Today was the last day of camp. It was time for awards, and Stevie suspected the only one she was going to get was “Biggest Troublemaker.” She sighed to herself. That was the price she had to pay for trying to have fun. The problem was that her idea of fun wasn’t always Max’s idea of fun.

  A deerfly landed on her wrist and tried to take a bite of her. She took a swat at it. Comanche felt the motion in his reins and thought it was a signal to move. He moved. Max glared at them. Stevie tightened up on the reins and Comanche stepped back.

  Max was giving out prizes to the young riders first. Since Stevie and her friends were twelve and thirteen, their awards would come later. In the meantime, she had to sit still, and that wasn’t her strongest suit.

  Stevie glanced over at Carole to her right. Carole’s beautiful curly black hair, which usually hung loose around her shoulders, was tightly braided and carefully folded up under her velvet riding hat. Her dark brown eyes stared straight ahead at Max. She looked both comfortable and attentive. Stevie thought that probably came from Carole’s father, a colonel in the Marine Corps. Colonel Hanson was always comfortable at attention too.

  Carole had been riding horses since she was a very little girl, and she wanted to spend the rest of her life working with horses. Stevie admired Carole’s incredible skill at riding. It was as if she’d been born doing it. Stevie thought it was difficult sometimes to tell where the girl ended and the horse began. She giggled, then glanced over at her other friend.

  To her left was Lisa Atwood. Lisa was one of the newest riders at the stable. She’d started classes just a few months earlier. She had learned an awful lot in a very short time—and Lisa, Carole, and Stevie had become the best of friends, too. Stevie shook her head, thinking about how different they all were. Lisa was a straight-A student who attacked every project with purpose and confidence. She usually succeeded at them, too.

  Today Lisa was wearing a brand-new riding jacket, carefully tailored for her. Her long hair was in a perfect French braid, and her boots had been polished, not by Lisa, but by the shoemaker at the mall. These things mattered a lot to Lisa’s mother, who was always very concerned about what was proper. One of the reasons Stevie liked Lisa so much was that they didn’t matter at all to Lisa. It didn’t matter to her that her boots were shiny, but if that was the price she had to pay to ride, she’d let her mother have her boots polished.

  Stevie, on the other hand, was very disorganized. She was forever starting vast projects and leaving them unfinished. She had polished her own boots for today’s ceremonies—or at least she’d polished the right one. The phone had rung before she’d gotten to her left boot. She hoped Max wouldn’t notice. Her own blond hair was in braids, too, but it didn’t stay in braids. The slightest breeze loosened strands of it. She knew she must look a mess. She didn’t really care.

  Although they were very different, the girls had a few things in common. For one, they were all wearing the same pin—a silver horse head, with the wind blowing the horse’s mane. That pin meant that they were all members of The Saddle Club, a club they’d made up themselves. The requirements for membership were that all members had to be horse crazy—there was no question that Carole, Lisa, and Stevie shared that—and they had to be willing to help the other members whenever they needed help. That was what their friendship was all about. At that moment, though, Stevie thought the only help any of them needed was to get out of their sweltering riding outfits and into something more appropriate to the day: a swimming pool.

  As soon as the ceremonies were over, they’d all untack their horses, say good-bye to their friends until classes started again later in the summer, and then Stevie, Lisa, and Carole would head straight for the Lakes’ swimming pool. The very thought of it made Stevie smile. Her smile caught Max’s eye. He glanced at her suspiciously, thinking she was up to something. She usually was. She tried very hard to look solemn.

  Looking solemn wasn’t easy for Stevie, especially when she had something nice to think about. Today she was thinking about tomorrow because tomorrow she and her two best friends were going on a trip together. Because of some incredible good luck, the girls were going to visit a friend of theirs, Kate Devine. Kate was a championship rider whose parents owned a dude ranch way out west. Not only was it going to be Stevie’s first visit to a dude ranch, it would be the first time she’d ever been west of the Mississippi River.

  She could imagine the towering Rocky Mountains, the lonesome pines, the Sierra Madre—whatever that was—the cowpokes lumbering along the Santa Fe Trail, the bandits lurking behind sagebrush or whooping and hollering around the circled wagons, gun-fights at high noon. Stevie made a funny face and then giggled to herself. It seemed that everything she knew about the West had come from movies. She had the feeling that the real West wasn’t exactly the same as the one Hollywood had created, and she suspected there weren
’t a lot of bad hombres hanging around the saloons these days, either.

  “Sit up,” Carole hissed at her. “He’s looking straight at you.”

  Stevie glanced at Carole and then looked at Max. He was looking straight at her. What had she missed, she wondered.

  “… and in the category of dressage, we have one student who has applied herself especially hard and has made great strides this summer. It gives me pleasure to award the dressage ribbon to Miss Stephanie Lake.”

  That was Stevie. Max was actually giving her an award! She could barely believe it. She thought she’d been sitting in the sun forever for no reason at all.

  Stevie slipped her feet out of the stirrups, swung her right leg over the horse’s back, and let herself slide down to the ground. Then she led Comanche to the center of the ring, where Max presented her with the bright, shiny blue ribbon. She felt her face flush with joy when Max shook her hand.

  “Good work, Stevie,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she told him. Then she and Comanche returned to their place in line. Carole and Lisa were clapping like crazy for her. She grinned at both of them.

  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.

  “PUT 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.