Scarecrow on Horseback

by C. S. Adler

  Sally's head came up, and he said seriously, “You don't have to protect me from that fella, Mel. He can't get to me. I'm better with horses than he'll ever be, and he knows it. That's one reason he tries to bait me.”

  Later, when they were leaving the main building after dinner, Jeb passed them, coming in late. “Hojo looks okay,” he said to Sally. “You were kidding about who doctored him, weren't you?”

  “No, it was Mel. I think she's got a calling. I think we have a little horse whisperer on the ranch, not to mention a junior vet. Anyway, she sure did a good job with Hojo.”

  “It's stupid,” Jeb said without meeting Mel's eyes. “Letting a little girl near a horse like Hojo. I'm getting rid of him before he hurts someone.”

  “It wasn't Hojo's fault he ran into the nail,” Mel said.

  “Maybe not, but he's too much horse for a dude to handle. And way too much for a girl to play doctor with.”

  “Says you,” Mel sputtered, but Jeb just laughed at her and she didn't say what she was thinking, that she and Hojo were both big and clumsy and maybe they belonged together.

  * * * *

  If Hojo's wound healed well or needed further attention, Mel never knew. A horse trailer came and took him away a day later.

  Life on the ranch was as unfair as at the horse show in Cincinnati when Lisa had talked her into showing a horse Mel had never ridden and didn't know how to ride, Mel thought bitterly. For the first time she asked herself why Lisa hadn't chosen one of her horsey friends to show Wonder Boy at the competition.

  “He'll do anything you ask him to do. You got him wrapped around your little finger,” Lisa had said. And Mel had been proud, stupidly proud that Lisa realized that her horse behaved better for Mel than he did for his owner.

  “You're too much like him,” Mel could have told Lisa. “You're nervous and jumpy and your voice is shrill and you jerk him around and snap that whip.” They'd even looked alike, Lisa's proud mane of flaxen hair matching Wonder Boy's mane and tail. Had Lisa been jealous, Mel asked herself, that her horse obeyed me more readily than he obeyed Lisa and that he came to me more willingly? Talent? Mel might be helpless as a scarecrow in the saddle, but on the ground she had a way with horses, some horses anyway. Was that a talent? The idea made Mel smile.

  Until she remembered what Jeb had done to Hojo—that he'd sent the poor horse away, and not to some nice girl's backyard either, Mel bet. She hoped the girl who had gotten Lily was nice. Surely Lily would be that lucky at least.

  Someday Mel was going to ask Sally how he could stand having Jeb be his boss. And someday she was going to have the power to protect any horse she cared about. Then they wouldn't be whisked out of her life as if they were just meat on the hoof and as if the relationship between a girl and a horse meant nothing.

  Chapter Six

  The next afternoon Sue, the skinny eighteen-year-old wrangler from town, rode into the corral where Mel was exercising a horse named Colby that Jeb had said needed more training. “I got a treat for you, Mel,” Sue said. She had a big grin on her long, freckled face.

  “What?” Mel glanced at Sue, while continuing to direct Colby in a wide circle around the inside of the ring.

  “You know, Lily, that horse that got hurt at the beginning of the summer? I hear she was your favorite. Well, it was my cousin Denise who bought her, and she's riding Lily over here to meet you.”

  “Really?” Mel wasn't sure she wanted to meet the girl who'd been lucky enough to get her horse, but she did want to see Lily again to find out how she was doing. “That's nice.”

  “Yeah, Denise is your age. I bet you two will be in the same class this fall. Freshman, right?”

  “Right,” Mel said.

  Sue rode off and before Mel had time to sort out her feelings about meeting Denise, a small girl with flyaway black hair came loping up to the corral. Mel's heart skipped as she recognized the girl who'd fallen off Zorro, the one with the boastful father.

  “Denise?” Mel asked.

  “That's me.” She slipped off Lily and hitched her to the rail. “And you're Mel, aren't you?”

  Mel nodded, her eyes on Lily. The horse had never looked as good. She'd put on some weight. Her coat was glossy, and her eyes bright. Mel released Colby from the lead line and left him in the corral, closing the gate behind her.

  “Hi, Lily girl. How you doing?” Mel said. Lily blew out her breath and dipped her head toward Mel, who gave her a good nose rub with her knuckles.

  “She remembers you,” Denise said.

  “Lily's a love.”

  “Oh, she is.” And you're the girl who was here when I fell off that black horse, aren't you?”

  “You were riding Zorro,” Mel confirmed. “Did your father buy Lily for you?”

  Denise wrinkled her nose. “Him? No way. He said he was coming so we could get to know each other, but he left after a couple of days and I haven't heard from him since.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  “That's okay. I don't mind.” Denise tilted her chin up. “It was my stepfather who bought Lily for me.”

  “Wow!” Mel said. “You're lucky.”

  “Not as lucky as you. You've got all these horses every day.”

  “Lots of horses, but not one that's my own.” Mel kissed Lily's nose.

  “Well, but you could borrow a horse, couldn't you? “You could come up the road to my house, and we could ride around the fields there together. I mean, wouldn't that be fun? Sue says we'll be going to the same school this fall.” Denise's smile was eager.

  “I'm not much of a rider,” Mel said to put Denise straight. “I've only had a couple of lessons, and I'm not very good on horseback.”

  “Really?” Denise sounded disbelieving. “But you're here with horses every day and you sure look as if you're good with them.”

  Mel shrugged. “It's just riding that—I think my legs are too long or something.”

  Denise laughed as if Mel had said something funny. “But you can stay in the saddle, can't you?”

  Mel shrugged. “I guess.” She was so drawn to the warmth of Denise's big brown eyes that she added on impulse, “Maybe I could get my mother to drive me over to your house. Where do you live?”

  Denise promptly drew a map in the dirt with her finger. “Only one turn off Centurion Way. Can you remember?”

  “Sure. ”. Standing on the ground next to Denise, she felt like a beanpole next to a sprout. Lily would hardly feel the girl's weight on her back, and Denise rode as gracefully as Lisa, who'd had hundreds of lessons. Lucky Lily.

  “Our mailbox has a coyote painted on it,” Denise was saying. “My stepfather, Ty, painted it. He's an artist,” she added proudly.

  “He must be a pretty nice stepfather if he bought Lily for you,” Mel said.

  “Yeah, he is. He doesn't get mad and talk big like—like some men.” Mel had no doubt which man Denise was thinking of. “Does your father work on the ranch here?” Denise asked.

  “No, my mother works in the office. I don't have a father.”

  Denise wrinkled her nose in disbelief. “Everybody has a father, don't they?”

  “Well, I mean, he left my mother when she was pregnant. So I never knew him. So I never missed him. I mean—”

  “Yeah,” Denise said. “I get it.” The sympathy in her voice made Mel like her even more.

  “How about coming over Saturday?” Denise said. “If you don't want to borrow a horse and ride over, and your mother can't bring you, maybe I could get my mother to do it, that's if she's not working that day. She works most weekends in the restaurant. Ty's home, but I don't like to bother him so much.”

  “I'll figure something out,” Mel said.

  “Great! Anytime you want to come is fine.” Her face was glowing with delight at the promised visit. “I'd better head back now. This is the longest ride I've ever taken Lily for. She'll need a good rub down before I put her back in the pasture.”

  “Lily likes to be fussed over,” Mel said.

/>   “Well, I like doing the fussing. Bye, Mel.” She unhitched Lily and sprang lightly onto her back. The horse set off the way she'd come without a backward glance at Mel.

  “Bye.” Mel watched them go off down the road with a bittersweet mixture of gladness and regret.

  Sighing, she put Colby back on the lunge line. Half an hour of walking and trotting on command and she told him, “You're doing good. You've got the idea now.” He pawed the ground, waiting, and she gave him the carrot strips she'd saved from last night's salad bar as a treat. “You do love your veggies, don't you, Colby,” she said, and she asked him, “How would you feel about being my special horse? Hmm?”

  She was thinking about how it would be to go riding with Denise and Lily, if she had a horse she could ride, a special horse, one that might be her own someday. “Colby,” she asked him, “would you like me as much if I were on your back as you do when I'm feeding you carrots?”

  Colby didn't answer, but his ears twitched attentively as he listened to her. “So maybe it could be you and me, huh? Maybe,” Mel led him back to the big corral and set him loose.

  When the dinner bell clanged, Mel hurried to the dining room and took her usual place at the staff table between Sally and her mother.

  “Sally says Sue brought her cousin over to meet you today,” Dawn said.

  “Yeah, Denise invited me to her house Saturday. Could you drive me? It's not that far.”

  “Oh, I don't know honey. Not this Saturday. I've finally got a dentist appointment in town, and after that, I've got errands that'll take most of the afternoon.”

  “Well, okay,” Mel said. “I guess I could get there another way.” She thought of how it would be to walk into the new school this fall with a friend beside her, how it would be to have someone to sit with at lunch, not to be the silent outsider waiting like a beggar for an invitation, a smile. No matter that her mother had changed jobs and moved them frequently throughout Mel's life, she'd never gotten used to the naked feel of being new. The worse was walking in in the middle of a school year. At least this time she'd begin at the beginning. She could get to Denise's on horseback. It couldn't be that hard to learn to ride, could it? Anyway, fate seemed to be pushing her to do it.

  “How'd Colby do on the lunge line?” Sally, who was sitting next to Mel, asked.

  “Good. He's a nice horse.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  “I was thinking, maybe you could teach me to ride him?”

  Sally looked at her in surprise. A wide grin spread across his cheeks so that some of the crusty sourdough bread he favored showed in his mouth. “Be glad to,” he said. “Tonight?”

  “Tonight,” she replied.

  It was still full light out, but the moon was a blind eye overhead, and the chilly air was so still there wasn't a whisper in the trees while Mel waited in the small corral with Colby. She had tacked him up, but her hands were icy as she fussed with his mane, making little braids in it and hoping that he couldn't sense her anxiety.

  When Sally arrived, Mel was thinking about Lily and wondering if Hojo had been as lucky. “Where do you think Hojo is now?” she asked Sally.

  “Don't know, Mel. Sold to some farmer maybe.”

  “I hope they aren't making him work too hard.”

  “He's a strong horse, and like you and me, he probably don't mind working.”

  Wistfully, she asked Sally, “So how long would it take me to earn enough to buy my own horse? I mean, if I ride and Jeb pays me a wrangler's wages?”

  “Depends on how much horse you want to buy.”

  “Maybe I could get one cheap, one that nobody wants but me.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well,” I guess I should get started.”

  “I'll give you a boost up,” Sally offered.

  “That's okay. I can manage.” Mel gave Colby a loving pat, slid her booted foot into the stirrup, and slung her other leg up over his back. While Sally adjusted the stirrups for her, she patted Colby's neck and told him, “Now you better go easy and don't make me look bad, hear?”

  As if he'd understood her, the tall, pepper-spotted horse stood perfectly still as she set the reins in her hand as Sally had taught her. Her legs were quivering, but she sat erect while Sally checked the cinch. Colby seemed relaxed with her weight on his back. Mel barely touched her heels to his sides, and he started walking like the most obedient of animals.

  “How do I look?” Mel called to Sally.

  “Like a rider.”

  “Well, am I sitting correctly or not?”

  “A little stiff. You can relax. Loosen the reins just a tad so he don't think you want him to back up.”

  She made her cold fingers light on the reins. She and Colby went around the big arena at a leisurely pace with Sally watching them. He looked so anxious that Mel teased, “What's the matter, Sally? You scared?”

  “Guess I am a little,” Sally admitted. “Not sure I trust that horse.”

  Mel laughed. “Colby's okay. You always say horses have preferences just like people. Well, I think Colby prefers me.”

  “Looks that way so far,” Sally said.

  “So teach me something else about riding, Sally.”

  “Nothing to it. Just remember to keep your heels down in the stirrups. A cowboy rides on the balls of his feet. And if your mount needs to relieve himself like Colby's doing now, you rise up a ways from the saddle to get the pressure off his kidneys.”

  Mel tried it. She could feel the metal of the stirrups under the soles of the old boots she'd borrowed from the ranch's collection, but still, she felt secure enough standing up from the saddle. She smiled. She was learning. She could do it, not beautifully the way Lisa did it, but not as clumsily as she'd thought either.

  On a surge of pleasure, Mel leaned forward and clucked at Colby. He broke into a smooth trot. Twice around the inside of the fence he trotted until she put him back into a walk. It had felt good, Mel thought. Trotting had actually felt good. She was so elated that she couldn't stop smiling.

  Half an hour later Sally asked, “Had enough for one night, Mel?”

  She brought Colby to a halt next o Sally. “Colby was great, wasn't he?”

  “I'll say. You both did great.” His grin radiated pride in her.

  But her legs felt weak when she slid off the horse and stood on the ground again. Without being asked, Sally relieved Colby of his tack. He nodded at Mel and led Colby on his way back across the stream and across the road to the path up the mountain where he could rest with the other horses for the night.

  * * * *

  That Saturday the rain came down as if it meant to drill holes in the earth. Mel called Denise who said to please come anyway even if they couldn't ride. “Sue can bring you over,” and of course, Mel's mother agreed to take Mel home on her way back from her afternoon in town.

  The gusting wind made driving hard, and Sue watched the road carefully as she drove Mel over to Denise's house. “My aunt was raised in Colorado,” Sue said, “but she went east to college and got married and had a baby, and the family thought she'd never come back. Then she got divorced and came home with this black artist she'd married out of the blue. Everyone thought she was nuts, but Ty turned out to be a great guy, and he's wonderful with Denise, who's a sweetheart. Don't be put off by Ty's wild paintings now. They may look weird, but people pay a lot of money for them.”

  Mel didn't see any paintings that day. They pulled up in the driveway past the mailbox painted with a psychedelic coyote, and Denise immediately hustled Mel upstairs to her bedroom.

  “Ty's behind on work he promised for a show next week and my mother's at the restaurant, so we can just hang out in my room and talk, okay?”

  “Fine. What's Lily doing?”

  “I already took care of her. She's in the barn. Do you want to go see her now? Or we could wait until the rain lets up some?”

  “Sure, we can wait,” Mel said, although she'd been looking forward to communing with Lily.

>   They played Cribbage, which Denise said Ty had taught her, but she seemed embarrassed that she kept winning even though Mel assured her she didn't mind.

  While the rain slashed at Denise's window pane, Mel looked around. Pictures of horses filled the room and Denise's bookshelves were crowded with horse stories and models of horses. When she saw Mel looking, Denise said, “Boring, huh? I've got a one track mind. My mother says if I'm not careful I'll grow up to be a jockey. But actually, I might like that.”

  “Well, you're little enough.”

  “Not brave enough though. I'd get scared in a race with all the other horses pounding past me.”

  “Then you'd have to stay in the lead, wouldn't you?” Mel asked.

  Denise laughed. “I'd rather run a stable. Want to go into business with me?”

  “Yes!” Mel agreed with such enthusiasm that they both laughed and proceeded to brainstorm a name for their business. When they finally settled on Easy Riders, Denise said it was time for a snack, so they went down to the kitchen to raid the refrigerator. Denise put together what she called “a nutritious dessert.” It was fresh strawberries with whip cream from a can on top of slices of sponge cake. “Fruit and eggs and milk—nutritious, right?”

  “And lots of sugar. Delicious,” Mel said.

  Denise wouldn't let Mel go that afternoon until she agreed to come every Saturday until school began. “I'll ride over on Colby next week,” Mel promised with confidence because at last things seemed to be going right for her.

  * * * *

  Before the new guests arrived that next week, Mel told Sally she wanted to try riding Colby on the easiest of the trail rides the ranch offered.

  “Okay,” Sally said. “I'll follow behind you on Rover.”

  The trail was only a few miles long. It went down the road a half a mile, across the bridge over the stream, and then up the hill and around the lake the beavers had made. If riders were lucky, they could glimpse the broad-beamed animals adding sticks to the dome of their underwater home, maybe even dragging a gnawed sapling to the water's edge.

  Colby was fine on the road. He stayed calm even when a pickup truck rattled past them going the other way. But as soon as they got to the bridge, he stopped. Mel kicked him harder. Colby had stopped and there he stayed.