Ghost Rider

by Bonnie Bryant

“Probably, but I think he’ll be happy enough just to get them out of the backyard. My mom won’t mind, either.”

  “I hereby declare you in charge,” Stevie said. “And we’ll set that up over here.…”

  There was so much to do, and it was all so much fun, that the girls barely noticed as the hours passed. By midafternoon, it seemed that Stevie had everybody in town—and certainly everybody in the school—jumping at her commands. Phyllis Devine pitched in and beamed proudly to see how well her team—The Saddle Club—was running the fair she was in charge of.

  “Phyllis, you’re brilliant,” the principal of the school said, admiring how well everybody was working together. “I can’t get these kids to work like this to put on a dance for themselves, much less to put together a Halloween Fair for little ones. What’s your secret?” he asked.

  “My magic ingredient?” She shrugged. “Hard to explain, but it all has to do with horses.”

  Since there wasn’t a horse in sight (Carole was working on the pony rides outside the school), the principal couldn’t make any sense out of Phyllis’s remark. It didn’t get any clearer when Stevie, Lisa, Kate, and Christine all started laughing, either. The confused principal returned to his office, where he could fill out some more forms.

  By four o’clock it was time to call it a day. They could finish up everything the following morning before the fair actually began. Surveying the work they’d done, though, they could hardly believe they’d only begun that morning. In a mere six or seven hours they’d taken a perfectly normal school basement and rec room and turned it into a total disaster area. Crepe paper hung from every possible place, curtains had been set up to divide the horror house into its components, including a hiding place for the reverse vacuumers and a ramp that would lead to the sea of Styrofoam, and tables had been strewn everywhere. Only Stevie knew which activity would be on which table. For now it just looked like a mess.

  Stevie put her hands on her hips and admired the room filled with half-finished projects. “Isn’t it just beautiful?” she asked. Only good friends would agree. They did.

  “Okay, so what’s next?” Lisa asked. She stifled a yawn. She was tired from holding the ladder all afternoon.

  “Next is costumes,” Stevie said.

  “Wait a minute, we know what we’re going to be,” Carole reminded her. “We’re going to be mice.”

  “Sure, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any work to do. We have to figure out how to make ears and check that we’ve got the makeup we need for our whiskers. There’s a lot left to do. We can’t waste a minute.”

  “My mother promised me she’d help me with my costume tonight,” Christine said. “I’ll bet she can make six mouse ears in no time at all. Why don’t you come to my house?”

  “Can she do a farmer’s wife?” Kate asked, suddenly inspired. After all, if her best friends were going to be the three blind mice, the least she could do was join them.

  “In a New York minute,” Christine promised. “Actually, I think she’s got a gingham dress and an apron already. She might have to take the dress in a little, or else stuff it—oh, come on home with me and let’s see what she can do. In any case, you all will have a chance to see the adobe dollhouse.”

  “Great,” Stevie said. “I’m really dying to see it.”

  It took the girls a few minutes to tidy up a few (very few) things so they would know where to begin the next day. Stevie, Lisa, and Carole had each brought their basic mouse outfits—gray sweatpants and hooded sweatshirts—assuming that they’d end up at the store in town to look for something to make ears from. The fact that Mrs. Lonetree might be able to help them was awfully good news. She was a very creative person and probably would make better mouse ears than they could ever hope to!

  The best news, though, was that getting there was going to be half the fun. The girls had ridden their horses into town that morning and had let them loose in a corral the high school maintained for the students who rode to school. Now they would ride to Christine’s house and eventually back to The Bar None. That was always a pleasant prospect, but now all the more so since it was quite dark outside.

  Stevie gave a final tug to the cinch on Stewball’s saddle and climbed aboard. “It’s a good thing horses can see in the dark,” she said. “Because I don’t think I can see a thing.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Christine told her. “Once your eyes adjust to the darkness, you’ll be surprised how much you can see—especially since there are a lot of stars out tonight.”

  “And the moon?” Lisa asked, looking to the sky.

  “It’s not up yet,” Christine said. “But when it comes out, it should be nice, because it’s almost full. I love riding by moonlight.”

  “Me, too,” Carole said. She climbed into the saddle. “Actually, that’s an understatement,” she continued. “The fact is that I love riding anywhere, anytime. That includes by moonlight.”

  “Me, too,” Kate said. Then she asked, “Everybody ready?”

  They were, and they were off. Christine led the way since she knew the route to her own house the best. At first the girls followed the road out of town. They knew that they could take the road all the way to the Lonetrees’ house, but the fact was that it was going to be a lot more fun to leave the roadway and cut across the open land. Their journey was aided then by the fact that the moon rose at the moment they left the road. It stood on the horizon, nearly full, big, orange, and bright. It almost seemed to lay a path for them to follow.

  “This way,” Christine said. It was easy to see where they were going. It was a fun ride.

  Even though each girl was quite aware of the fact that they were in the twentieth century, not far from things like power plants and gas stations and a school with no fewer than two computer labs, it somehow seemed to each of them as if they had left all that behind. Every step into the open countryside felt like a step back in time, away from electronics and nuclear power, away from microwaves and dishwashers. The years dropped off as a snake sheds its skin. Lisa found herself thinking about life in the Old West, wondering what it would have been like just to survive. Stevie’s mind turned to images of cowboys and stagecoaches, just as she’d seen in so many movies. Carole found herself thinking about the animals that had once wandered so freely and so safely on the land. Christine thought of her own family’s people, part of the original American West. Kate thought about the horses, brought here from Europe, allowed to roam free—the magnificent animals who ruled the prairies and the desert lands.

  How-oooooooo!

  Even though the girls from Virginia had never heard that sound before, they knew instantly what it was. It was unmistakable. It was a coyote.

  “Watch it!” Christine warned.

  The girls all drew their horses to a halt. They listened again. The coyote howled again.

  How-oooooooo!

  He was a good distance from them, so they knew they weren’t in any immediate danger, but the fact that there was one coyote around could mean that there were more. Coyotes didn’t usually attack humans. Still, they were dangerous animals, and it made sense for the girls to hurry on their way.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Christine said.

  “No, wait!” Kate said, staying still. “Look!”

  The girls looked where she pointed. The object of the coyote’s call became apparent then, as a cloud of dust rose from the dry earth to the south of where they waited.

  “It’s the herd,” Carole said. “The horses! They must have been startled by the coyote. Look at them.”

  While the motionless horses had been nearly invisible to the girls’ eyes, the moving herd was very apparent. The mares and their young were milling frantically and simply making their presence more apparent to all the creatures around, especially the coyotes.

  “We’ve got to help them!” Carole said.

  “By doing what?” Christine asked. “What’s going on here is what’s been going on for thousands of years. There’s nothing for us to
do.”

  “But the coyotes—they could attack the horses!” Carole couldn’t bear the idea that one of the herd might serve as dinner for the coyotes.

  “The horses can take care of themselves,” Kate said. Her eyes didn’t move from the scene in front of her.

  Her friends watched as well. Then the entire scene was dimmed when a cloud swept across the sky, obscuring the big, round orange moon. Suddenly there was only darkness.

  How-oooooooo!

  All motion among the horses stopped as abruptly as it had started. After a moment of stillness, there was movement in the center of the pack, where a silvery stallion ran in circles and whinnied loudly. There was something else about him, something odd. Lisa squinted.

  “Did you see that?” She couldn’t believe what her eyes were telling her, but there appeared to be a white-clad figure on the stallion’s back.

  “What was it?”

  The horse shifted directions again and began a gallop to safety. Unquestioning, the brood followed his lead. Within seconds the whole herd began to disappear behind an outcrop of rocks.

  “It was a rider,” Kate said breathlessly, sitting forward in her saddle for a clearer view of the now almost invisible herd.

  “Don’t be silly—” Carole said, dismissing the claim.

  “Pure silvery white, just like the horse,” Lisa said.

  “And just like White Eagle—” Christine added.

  “Oh, come on you guys,” Stevie said. “It’s just John, playing another joke on us.”

  “Do you think—?” Kate began.

  “Of course I do,” Stevie said. “You don’t really believe in ghosts, do you?”

  Kate closed her eyes and shook her head as if trying to shake the image from her mind. Then she opened her eyes again. “I don’t suppose so,” she said. “You’re probably right, it was John.”

  “Well, more power to him,” Carole said. “At least he figured out how to save the horses from being attacked by the coyotes.”

  “I don’t think that was what he had in mind when he planned the joke,” Kate said. “I think he was just trying to scare me away again.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere trying to know what’s going on in John Brightstar’s mind,” Christine said. “Let’s just get to my house.”

  The girls proceeded together. The thoughts of pioneer days were gone now for Lisa. The only thing on her mind was John. Maybe Kate was right—he was trying to scare her off—but Lisa had to admit that that was a pretty incredible thing to do. Not only was he the kind of boy who would take care of an ailing horse and come up with a deliciously romantic tale to justify keeping a horse in the wild, he’d even risk riding the creature!

  Or was it possible, just possible, that John’s story was true and the stallion had come to help them because they were helping the children on the Indian reservation?

  Lisa really didn’t know what to think. All she knew was that she had a lot to think about. And his name was John.

  MRS. LONETREE WAS positively a whiz with her sewing machine. Within what seemed like a matter of minutes, she’d created three adorable sets of mouse ears—field mice, not Mickey—and had them tacked onto the girls’ sweatshirt hoods.

  “They’re perfect,” Lisa declared, and everybody agreed.

  Then she deftly unfolded three wire coat hangers and quickly covered them with white felt. The blind mice now had canes to walk with. The final touch would be sunglasses, and Mrs. Lonetree said the girls were just going to have to do that themselves. Lisa, Stevie, and Carole thought that was more than fair. Then, while Mrs. Lonetree was adjusting the old gingham dress to create a farmer’s-wife outfit for Kate, Christine took the “mice” into the bathroom, where they could all practice applying whiskers with an eyebrow pencil.

  “Should they curl?” Stevie asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Lisa said. By then, though, it was too late for Stevie. Her whiskers curled all the way up to her eyebrows!

  “This is just a test,” Stevie reminded her friends, working hard to remove the pencil marks. “I mean, we’re supposed to make our mistakes now, aren’t we?”

  Lisa and Carole giggled and tried their own whiskers. In the end it turned out that the best ones were just a few brief straight lines radiating from above their mouths. Soon they each had proper whiskers and assured Stevie that her unsuccessful curly whiskers were hardly visible anymore.

  “Nothing a shower and a scrub-brush and some bathroom cleanser can’t get off,” Stevie agreed cheerfully.

  “Very nice,” Christine said, admiring the results of the girls’ efforts. “Would you like your cheese now or later?”

  “That realistic?” Lisa asked.

  “Absolutely, and if you think you look good, wait until you see how Kate is looking.”

  When they returned to Mrs. Lonetree’s workroom, they were astonished. It was their friend Kate, all right, but she didn’t look at all as she had a mere fifteen minutes ago. She was wearing a very well-padded gingham dress with a long skirt and a full apron. She had a white cap on her head and a very long carving knife in one hand. Mrs. Lonetree said her outfit would be complete with the addition of some black leather shoes.

  “I think this particular farmer’s wife is going to have to make do with black leather riding boots. Will it work?”

  “It will be the perfect touch,” Mrs. Lonetree agreed. Then she turned to Christine. “So what’s it to be for you?” she asked.

  “Mine’s going to take a little longer,” Christine said. “Can we work on it later?”

  “Sure,” her mother agreed. “That will give me some time now to show the girls the dollhouse.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Stevie said. “I was afraid you wanted to keep it a surprise. Where is it?”

  “This way,” Mrs. Lonetree said, standing up from her sewing machine. She took the girls into her pottery studio. They had seen her work before. It was very special and very beautiful. Some shelves had pots that she was making for tourists. She followed the authentic traditional shapes and designs. The ones she was prouder of, however, were more modern interpretations of the traditional Native American pots. Carole and Lisa looked to see the new items she was working on. Lisa had taken pottery lessons for a while and had an idea of how difficult the work was. She really admired Mrs. Lonetree’s skill. She was about to say so when the first gasp of delight came from Stevie, whose eyes had gone straight to the dollhouse.

  “Oh, wow!” Stevie said, hurrying to where the dollhouse stood.

  Carole and Lisa joined her and agreed with her completely.

  There, in the middle of the studio, was the dollhouse. It was a perfect model of an adobe pueblo—a Southwest Native American home. A pueblo was essentially a box with steps on one side leading to the flat roof. There was only one entrance to the pueblo and that was from the top, via ladder. Since this was a dollhouse, Mrs. Lonetree had designed it so the whole thing opened in the center with a hinge to reveal the inside.

  There were simple furnishings with traditional designs and patterns. A shelf near the cooking area held a complete array of miniature pots and bowls—just like the ones Mrs. Lonetree made for the tourists. There was a wall hanging, a woven rug, in traditional patterns. A rough-hewn table held miniature weapons used by the Native Americans of the old days—knives, a bow, and even some very tiny arrows that actually had feathers on the shafts!

  There were small wooden cooking utensils as well as gardening tools.

  “It’s perfect!” Stevie said.

  “How can you bear to give it away?” asked Lisa.

  Mrs. Lonetree smiled. “I had fun making it,” she said. “Now somebody should have fun playing with it. I suppose I could have made some dolls, but …”

  “Don’t even think of it,” Stevie said. “You’ve already done about a hundred times more than anybody could possibly ask. And if you want to know what I think, I think donating this incredibly beautiful work of art to benefit the after-school p
rogram at the reservation school is just about perfect.”

  “I kind of thought the same thing,” Mrs. Lonetree said. “Those kids need every bit of help they can get. So, with your clever planning and my pots and sewing machine, we’ll do well by them, won’t we?”

  “The best we can,” Stevie said.

  Lisa had a little chill right then. From the moment she’d heard about the Halloween Fair, she’d always known that it was for a good cause. Hearing how strongly Mrs. Lonetree felt made it seem even more important. It was one thing to know that you were involved in a good cause. It was another to understand, truly, that real people were going to get real benefit from it. Knowing how much work, love, and pride Mrs. Lonetree was giving to their efforts on behalf of the after-school program made Lisa see her entire trip out West in a much clearer light. She felt even better about herself and her friends.

  The girls would have liked to have stayed at the Lonetrees’, maybe even have a chance to play with the dollhouse a bit, but Kate reminded them that her mother was counting on their help serving dinner, and they had to get back to The Bar None.

  The girls packed up their costumes, put them in their saddlebags, and got ready for the trip back home. They all thanked Mrs. Lonetree profusely for her help—in every possible way—and they remounted their horses for the final leg of their journey.

  The Bar None was a short distance, perhaps two miles, across country from the Lonetrees’ house. It was a trip the girls, especially Kate, had made many times, in dark and daylight. They felt safe and sure about their journey.

  It had been a long and busy day, following an even longer and busier day. They rode together without talking, just enjoying the journey and thinking how welcome a good meal and a warm bunk were going to be very soon.

  Lisa loved the countryside. At first look it had seemed barren to her, but now she knew better. The rocks and mountains were home for many creatures who managed to make meals of the brush and cactus that covered the land. Part of the trail back to The Bar None led through what felt like a gully between two craggy hills. One of those hills rose nearly straight up from the desert floor. A movement at the top of it caught Lisa’s eye. She looked up. There, standing on a flat area at the edge of the hill, was the stallion, now clearly riderless. His herd was not in sight. He was completely silhouetted by the moonlight that streamed from behind him.