by C. S. Adler
“Come on, giddiap, Colby,” Mel ordered. “Come on; it's just a little wooden bridge. It won't hurt you.”
Three times, she kicked him, bouncing in the saddle with the effort of it. He backed up two steps and stood. “Want me to get you a stick to tap him with?” Sally asked.
“No way.” She slid off Colby and, with the lead line in her hand, walked to his head. “Listen,” she said to him, “You're being silly. There's nothing scary about that bridge. Come on. I'll show you.” She tugged at the lead line and began walking across the bridge herself. At first Colby wouldn't budge. He tossed his head, trying to get loose, but she held on.
“Come on,” she coaxed. “Be brave.”
She backed onto the bridge and clucked at him. The skin above his eyes puckered. His nostrils flared. She came up close to his head and rubbed her knuckles gently along his nose. He sighed. She caressed his neck and asked, “Please. I thought you trusted me, Colby. I wouldn't hurt you. You know that. The bridge is really okay.” She stepped backward onto it again and put some pressure on the line. He took a tentative step forward. Then he huffed and stopped and shook his head. He took another step. Now his two front feet were on the bridge.
“See, it's going to hold you up just fine.” She turned and walked ahead of him. And to her delight, he followed.
Once they'd both crossed the bridge, Sally applauded. “Way to go, Mel.”
“Maybe if I do it a few times, he'll get used to it. You think?”
“You're the one knows him best.”
She walked Colby back and forth across the bridge four times. Then she got on his back and rode him across. He went without protest. When they got to the flat path around the lake, Mel sat forward in her saddle and gave Colby the signal to trot. She didn't see any beaver, but she rode the tall speckled horse back to the ranch in triumph.
“Better try him out a few more times before we tell Jeb he's ready for guests.”
* * * *
Colby put in a week of perfect behavior, during which Mel rode him for a couple of hours every afternoon. On Friday, she announced at the staff dinner table that Colby was trained.
“That so?” Jeb said. “I'll try him out in the morning and we'll see.” Mel was due to spend most of Saturday with Denise, but she had time before breakfast to watch Jeb ride Colby.
As soon as the horses had run down to the big corral the next morning and been fed, Jeb tacked up Colby. When he tried to mount the horse though, Colby began acting up. He backed away as Jeb tried to swing into the saddle. Jeb made it, but he hauled up hard on the reins. Colby reared. Jeb brought him down and kicked him with his spurred boots. Colby took off at a full gallop, swerving as he ran to sideswipe the corral fence. He veered away from it in the nick of time, slinging Jeb sideways off the saddle and into the fence. As soon as Jeb dropped off his back, Colby stopped and stood still in the middle of the ring like the most docile of animals.
“That horse ought to be in a rodeo,” Sally said.
“I'm sorry.” Jeb who was picking himself up off the ground. “Are you all right?”
“I may be,” Jeb said angrily, “But that horse isn't. We put a dude on his back, we're likely to get sued.”
“He's fine with me.” I've been riding him without any trouble.”
“Yeah?” Jeb's lips were drawn white, and he threw the challenge at her like a rock. “If he's so fine with you, you could lead the family trail ride around Beaver Lake on him. How about that?”
“And you'll pay me a real salary?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He sounded surprised at her reaction, as if he'd expected her to back off. “So long as I don't hear any complaints from the guests.”
“Okay,” she said. “I'll do it then.”
Mel was happy. She was on her way to saving a pile of money. At the end of the season, she'd ask to buy Colby. Since Jeb didn't like the horse, he might advise Mr. Jeffries to let him go cheap. By the time school started, with any luck, Colby might be on his way to being hers. She wouldn't let anyone else ride him. She'd spend time with him after school every day when her chores were finished. She'd teach him to come when she whistled. She'd teach him. And he'd be the best horse on the ranch before long, her horse, her very own.
Chapter Seven
It was square dance night at the ranch. Sally had said it was fun and that he'd be there. “I hope Jeb won't be,” Mel said. She hadn't forgiven Jeb for dumping poor Hojo and preferred to avoid him. But that night when she heard the lively fiddle music start up in the barn on the other side of the road from the big corral, she was tempted even though Sally had said Jeb liked to dance.
Dawn was quilting in the living area of their cabin. Mel called it the pit because it was barely big enough to squeeze in a two-seater couch, an armchair, and an electric heater. Dawn was squinting under the feeble light of their single table lamp as she tried to make tiny, evenly spaced stitches in what would become a pillow cover.
“You can't sew here,” Mel told her mother. “You'll wreck your eyes. Why don't you go over to the Davises?”
“They went to town to visit a friend.”
Mel put down the veterinary medicine journal she'd borrowed from the ranch library. She'd been skimming it, looking for tips that she could use to help injured horses like Hojo.
“This place is even smaller than our apartment in Cincinnati,” Mel said. She meant the apartment they'd rented when her mother was a bookkeeper in Max's business before they got married.
“Well, but you've got your own bedroom here.”
“Umm,” Mel agreed, “but the bathroom's awful—that rusty metal shower—and the toilet's squeezed in so tight by the sink you've got to watch your knees when you sit down.”
“What's making you so grumpy tonight?” her mom asked.
“Nothing.” The bathroom was awful and the cabin was cramped. Plus there was no closet space. Her mother hung her good clothes on a clothesline she'd rigged up in her room. Mel stowed her pants, shirts, and underwear into the small battered dresser in her room. Fortunately, the rest of her belongings consisted of a craft kit to make friendship bracelets that she'd never opened because she'd lacked a friend to give a bracelet to and some photographs of kids she'd known and liked. She had several pictures of Lisa. Lisa with her waist length flaxen hair sitting pretty on Wonder Boy. But small and dingy as the cabin was, she didn't really mind it. Jeb was what she minded. He was a tyrant with the power of life and death over his subjects, and as long as she cared about the horses, she was one of his subjects.
“Sally says the fiddlers at the dance tonight are really good,” Mel said.
“Well, go ahead if you want to go,” her mom said.
“I don't want to go alone.”
“Mel, it's fifty feet down the road. You can walk over, look in, and if you don't want to stay, come home. The music's so loud we're practically in on it anyway.”
“We never do anything together anymore.”
“Honey, I'm tired. I've been working all day, and I'd just like to relax tonight. I'm going to quilt a while and go to bed early.”
“Please, Mom, Sally'll be there. You'd like him if you got to know him.”
“Come on, Mel. He's a nice man, but all he talks about is horses.”
“So? What's wrong with that? I wish you'd go to the square dance with me.”
“Oh, all right.” Dawn tucked her quilting into the makeshift sewing basket Mrs. Davis had given her. “I'll put on some jeans and we'll go.”
“You should wear that squaw skirt you never wear.”
“Why? I'm not planning to dance. You wear the skirt. It would fit you.”
“You know I hate skirts. I'm going in my jeans.”
“Okay, I'll wear the skirt. Anything to please my darling daughter,” Dawn said.
Dawn liked to dance. Mel hoped that if she danced with Sally, they might get friendly. Very friendly? Sally had gray in his wavy black hair and a lumpy face, but he had a great smile and probably wasn't that
much older than her mother. Of course, they didn't have anything in common, but Sally'd certainly make a great father, better than Max, who had never looked at Mel as more than an add-on responsibility. Ty was a stepfather too, but he treated Denise like he really cared about her, the way Sally acted toward Mel and he wasn't even her stepfather. Mel wondered if Sally had ever been married.
She considered changing her T-shirt. It had a hole near the neck. But her favorite black shirt with the wild stallion painted on the front was in the wash. She might as well keep on what she was wearing. Smelling of horses had to be okay on a guest ranch.
Outside in the dark under the evergreen trees, a rasping chorus of night birds and insects serenaded Mel and Dawn as they walked up the road. The moon seemed to be lying on its back on a cloud. Only Venus was visible so far.
“I'm glad you've found a friend here,” her mother said. “I was worried that there wouldn't be anyone for you on the ranch.”
“Umm. I like Denise a lot. We're going to open a stable together when we grow up.”
Her mother laughed. “Is that before or after you become a vet? That's what people on the ranch are saying, that you're sure to become a vet the way you can get those animals to hold still to be medicated or whatever.”
“I can't be a vet, Mom,” Mel said seriously, “I'd have to go to college, and I don't like school. I hate sitting still and having to learn stuff that bores me. I work harder getting a stupid “C” than other kids that get “A's”. I'm not even good at sports or music or art. The only thing that sticks out about me is my legs.”
“Oh, Mel,” her mother laughed. “Don't put yourself down like that. You should hear the way the staff talks about you. You have their respect.”
“Because I fit in better here than in Cincinnati. There they were all so ‘TV special’.”
“Hmm?” her mother questioned.
Mel shrugged. “And besides, Denise, I've got the horses and Sally here.” She caught her breath. “You like it here, don't you?”
“So far. I like the pace. It's relaxing. It's like I'm on vacation.” Dawn took a deep breath of the piney air.
“It smells good, doesn't it?” Mel said. Mountains made a great backyard, and she didn't mind chilly mornings in the spring and a short summer. She imagined it would be neat to be snowed in with the horses after the guests had all left. Could she be happy here forever? If Jeb didn't yank any more horses away from her she could be.
They'd arrived at the open door of the barn and were enticed inside by the music and the bright lights. Straw bales had been used as building blocks to make a stage for the musicians and the square dance caller. Most of the guests were already standing in a big circle holding hands with each other. Not many of the staff were present. Two of the kitchen workers who hung out together and ignored everyone else were there. Mel spotted Sally in the circle of dancers. He broke away from the people whose hands he was holding and came over to pull her and her mother into the circle with him.
“Glad you came,” Sally said.
“I don't know a thing about square dancing,” Dawn replied..
“No problem. It starts off easy. Just slide a few steps to the left and then to the right, take your partner, and promenade.” He gave her a lopsided grin.
When the music began, Sally coached them on how to dosi-do and swing your partner.
Mel had a stranger for a partner, a woman who was one of the guests.
“Isn't this fun?” the woman said. “I've always loved barn dancing.” She swung Mel around, showing her how to lean back and pivot on her right foot. It was fun. The caller told them to break into sets of eight, four couples facing each other across the set. Mel found herself with Sally as a partner. And there was Jeb in another set with her mother somehow.
“Why'd he have to come?” Mel muttered to Sally.
“Nowhere else to go while his girl's off seeking her fortune,” Sally said. “Now to allemand left you give your left hand to your corner and then turn and give your right to your partner. There, that's it.”
Concentrating on square dance steps made Mel lose sight of her mother and Jeb. Sally swung her hard enough to get her dizzy. She fumbled her way through a ladies' chain and began to sweat. Two dances later, she was breathless, and Sally led her over to the counter where pitchers of beer and lemonade had been set out along with some chips.
“Don't you want to dance with my mother?” Mel asked him.
“Looks like your mother has found herself a partner,” Sally said.
“Not the one I want her to have. Jeb's mean, the way he gets rid of any horse that isn't perfect.”
“Yeah, well, you got to remember, Mel, his job is to see to it the guests get good horses to ride. That's what they're paying for after all.”
She grunted. No doubt Sally was right, but that didn't make her like Jeb any better.
The barn was full of people milling about now that the musicians were taking a break. Finally, Mel spotted her mother and Jeb talking to each other near the open door.
Tall, muscular Jeb was bending attentively toward her mother whose face was animated as she listened to him. Oh, no, Mel thought. Her mother was making friends with the enemy. Mel turned her back on them so as not to see it happening. She wished she hadn't talked Dawn into wearing that squaw skirt.
“You're older than Jeb, aren't you, Sally?” Mel asked her friend who was frowning at her as if he was trying to read her mind.
“Yeah, almost old enough to be his father.”
“Well, how come you aren't the head wrangler then?”
“I didn't want the job.”
“They offered it to you?”
He sipped the lemonade in his paper cup and thought before he answered. “I had a go at it. But I got other irons in the fire.”
“What other irons?”
“It's a long story, Mel.”
Meaning he doesn’t want to tell me, she thought. “I don't see how you stand taking orders from that guy,” she said.
“I told you, Mel. I don't let him bother me. I don't let much bother me. I just enjoy the horses and watching the sun rise and set. I like hearing rain pinging on the roof of the barn, and I like being holed up somewhere warm in winter. I got simple tastes.”
“And you never wanted to get married and have children?”
Sally's face closed down. “Mel, the music's starting up again. You want to find yourself another partner?”
“No.”
“Well, then, come on. Let's get into a set.”
When the dance was over and, as Mel walked back to the cabin with her mother, Mel asked her how come she had spent the whole evening with Jeb.
“He's a really nice guy,” her mother said. “Thanks for talking me into going, honey. I enjoyed myself tonight.”
Worse yet, that weekend, Mom went to a restaurant in town with Jeb, and she made light of whatever Mel said against him.
Chapter Eight
Once Mel began leading the family rides, Jeb began acting more like an indulgent big brother to her then, as if she was an unpaid servant. Mel didn't know whether his change in attitude was because she was doing her job well or because he'd become friends with her mother. He could be trying to please Dawn by being nicer to her daughter. When a week passed and she hadn't received a pay check, she asked him, “How much does a wrangler make?”
“Enough to starve on,” Sally said over his shoulder as he lugged the last of the tack into the small barn.
“Nobody starves on this ranch,” Jeb said.
“True enough,” Sally said. “It's the good cooking keeps us all here.” He disappeared through the open barn door carrying a saddle.
“You said you'd pay me if I led the family rides, didn't you, Jeb?” Mel demanded.
“Yeah, well. Yeah, I did, didn't I?” Jeb rubbed the back of his neck as if he were regretting that. “Okay, you're on the payroll.”
She believed it when the first check came the next Friday, small but real. Mel squea
led with delight and handed it over to her mother to deposit in a bank account for her. She was so thrilled with the card-sized bank book that she carried it out to the tack room where Sally was mending a bridle and made him look at it. “Can you believe it?” she said. “I'm really on my way to buying my own horse.”
“I'll say,” he said. “Looks like you've gotten to be a regular riding fool this summer.”
“No, I haven't,” she said, quick to correct him.
“Folks who like horses mostly like riding them,” Sally said, shaking his head as if he didn't understand her.
“I like them just as much when my feet are on the ground.”
Sally grinned. “I once had a horse turn around and bite me in the butt right after I'd fed him, and my feet were planted firm as rocks on the ground.”
She laughed.
“It hurt,” Sally said indignantly. “You think a nip from those big square teeth don't hurt?”
“Did you bite him back?” Mel asked.
“No, but I whacked him good. So what's the real story, Mel?”
“Why should I tell you? You don't tell me anything.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How come you never got married?”
“Who says I didn't?”
“Then what happened to your wife?”
Sally swiveled around on the nail keg he was perched on to face her. “It's a long story.”
Mel promptly sat down on the dirty wooden floor, cross legged, to show her readiness to listen.
“See, I worked on a ranch near where I was raised in Texas,” he said. “I was just a kid, and I didn't know much, but I knew I liked the ranch owner's daughter a whole lot. And she liked me. But she was her daddy's little girl, and he thought I was no-count and always would be. Truth is I wasn't any great shakes at school and cowboys don't never get rich. Anyway, when Clara, the old man's daughter, told him we were fixing to get married, he said to wait. She figured waiting wasn't going to hurt us and that he'd come around to liking me in time. So we waited. We waited and years passed and nothing changed.” Sally stopped to remove his beat-up cowboy hat and rub his head. “You sure you want to hear this?”