“More than,” Stevie replied. “Hey, that reminds me—why did the vampire go to the tropics?”
Colonel Hanson shook his head. He and Stevie loved to trade old jokes—the older and the cornier, the better. “I give up.”
Stevie grinned. “Because he liked his victims hot-blooded.”
Carole groaned. “This is cruel. We’re a captive audience, you know.”
“We could walk the rest of the way,” Lisa suggested jokingly.
“How about this one,” Colonel Hanson said. “What do you call a beagle in a sauna?”
“That’s easy,” Stevie replied. “A hot dog.”
Stevie and Colonel Hanson had time to trade a few more jokes before they reached the Hansons’ house. “Finally,” Carole said as her father pulled the car to a stop in the driveway. “I couldn’t take much more of those jokes.”
Stevie grinned. “Yeah, they’re pretty good, huh?” she said innocently.
Carole rolled her eyes and pretended to be annoyed, but she was kidding and she knew that Stevie knew it, too. In reality Carole was glad that her friends got along so well with her father. Carole and her father had always been close, and they had grown even closer since Carole’s mother’s death a few years earlier. She would always be grateful to him for being so loving and supportive through that difficult time in both of their lives.
But today Carole was just grateful that her father had managed to joke Stevie out of her bad mood. The trick she had played on Polly had cheered up Stevie for a few minutes, but then she’d gone right back to complaining—about the heat, about not being at riding camp, about not having a horse—basically about anything she could think of, or so it seemed to Carole.
“Sweetheart, could you run and get the phone?” Colonel Hanson said as he opened the front door, snapping Carole out of her thoughts. “I can hear it ringing.”
Carole obeyed, hurrying into the kitchen and grabbing the receiver off the hook. “Hello?” she said breathlessly.
“I thought you were never going to answer. I was about to hang up,” said a very familiar voice on the other end of the line.
Carole gasped. “Kate!” she exclaimed happily.
“Carole, did I hear you say that’s Kate on the phone?” Stevie demanded, rushing into the kitchen with Lisa and Colonel Hanson right behind her.
“Stevie, Lisa, and Dad say hello, Kate,” Carole said into the phone, waving at Stevie to be quiet. “It’s so good to hear from you!”
On the other end of the line, Kate Devine laughed. “I’m glad to hear that everybody’s there,” she said. “Just wait until you all hear why I’m calling. Then you’ll really be glad to have heard from me!”
“HONEY, WE’RE HOME!” Stevie shouted as she stepped through the door to the main house at The Bar None Ranch two days later. Carole and Lisa were right behind her.
“Stevie! Carole! Lisa!” two excited voices shrieked. A second later the three girls found themselves smothered with hugs from Kate Devine and Christine Lonetree.
“Howdy, pardners,” Carole said in her best Western accent.
“We thought you’d never get here,” Kate told her.
“I can’t believe we’re really here now,” Lisa said.
“Me, too,” said Carole.
“Me, three,” Stevie agreed wholeheartedly.
“Well, I for one am glad you really are,” Kate assured them.
“I for two am, too,” Christine said with a grin.
Stevie grinned back. “I’m just glad that businessman decided he had to make those two trips to Washington.”
Frank Devine had been a pilot in the Marine Corps. Even though he was retired now, he earned extra cash by flying the private plane of a wealthy businessman named Mr. Lowell who had frequent business in Washington, D.C. Since Willow Creek was only about half an hour’s drive from Washington, Frank was sometimes able to pick up Carole, Lisa, and Stevie and bring them out West for a visit. When Kate had called Carole it had been to tell her that Mr. Lowell was scheduled to make two trips East, one week apart. She wanted to know if The Saddle Club wanted to come for a visit. The Saddle Club did.
“Welcome, girls!” Phyllis Devine, Kate’s mother, bustled into the room with a large plate of homemade cookies. “Come right in and sit down. We’ll be eating dinner in about an hour, but I thought you needed a snack. You must be tired and hungry after your flight.”
“You read my mind,” Stevie told her happily.
Within a matter of minutes the five girls were settled in the comfortable lounge with the cookies and glasses of cold milk.
“Okay,” Carole announced. “Let the Saddle Club meeting begin!”
“We’re ready,” Kate said. “What’s on the agenda?”
“Horses, of course,” Carole exclaimed. “What else?” Everybody laughed. Then Carole turned to Kate. “But seriously, how is Moon Glow’s training going so far?”
Moon Glow was the mare Kate had adopted as part of the Adopt-a-Horse-or-Burro program run by the Bureau of Land Management. The program allowed interested people to adopt horses from the wild herds that roamed the desert. It kept the wild-horse population from getting too large for the land to support.
Kate’s face lit up. “Just great,” she replied. “She has such a wonderful temperament. And she’s been really responsive to the training. Her foal—did I tell you I named him Felix?—is one of the smartest youngsters I’ve ever met. By the time he was six weeks old, he had figured out how to open the latch on the box stall where he was living. I found him wandering around, exploring the barn and making friends with everything in it.”
“Sounds like a foal after my own heart,” Stevie declared.
“That’s right,” Kate said with a grin. “He’s a real troublemaker, just like you!”
Stevie pretended to be hurt, but she couldn’t do it for long. There was just too much to talk about. She turned to Christine. “Speaking of babies, how’s Dude?” Dude was Christine’s puppy.
“He’s doing great,” Christine assured her. “But he’s hardly a baby anymore. You won’t even recognize him.”
At that moment a group of guests wandered into the lounge, talking and gesturing wildly among themselves. Several of them were wearing brand-new cowboy hats or bolo ties, and others carried shopping bags stamped with the names of stores the girls recognized from Two Mile Creek, the closest town to the ranch.
“I wonder what they’re so excited about,” Stevie said curiously. “Let’s eavesdrop.”
It didn’t take long for them to figure it out. “It sounds like they saw the show in town,” Christine said with a grin. “Don’t you hear that woman talking about the cowboy falling off the roof?”
“Aha! Brilliant, Watson!” Stevie exclaimed. The girls had been treated to the show Christine was referring to on their first visit to Two Mile Creek. It was a reenactment of a Wild West bank robbery and shoot-’em-up that was performed daily on the main street in town.
“It sounds like they had fun,” Carole commented as she watched the guests continue through the lounge toward the dining room without even noticing the girls.
“Who wouldn’t? It’s a great show,” Stevie said.
“I’m glad you feel that way,” Kate told her. She grinned. “Because it just so happens they need some extra actors this week. Guess who volunteered. Or to be exact, guess who volunteered you.”
Stevie, Carole, and Lisa gasped.
“You mean it?” Stevie exclaimed. “We’re going to be in the show?”
“That’s right,” Kate said. “We’re playing victims, so practice your screaming and swooning. We all get to be kidnapped by the gang of bank robbers.”
“You guys really know how to entertain a guest,” Lisa said. “It looks like I’m not the only one who thinks so, either,” she added as another cluster of tourists hurried through the lounge in the direction of the dining room.
Kate nodded. “You’re right. The ranch has been filled to capacity all summer. We had to kic
k a family of six from California out of your cabin. They’re sleeping in the barn from now on.”
For a second Lisa thought she was serious. Then she realized it was a joke, and she laughed. “Are we in our usual cabin?” she asked.
“You bet!” Kate told her.
“I’m glad the ranch is doing so well,” Carole said. “I’m sure your parents are happy about that.” At one point the Devines had feared they would have to close The Bar None because of competition from a nearby dude ranch.
“Oh, they’re thrilled,” Kate agreed. “They’re especially thrilled with the way Walter and John Brightstar are working out. Remember them?”
The three girls nodded. Walter Brightstar had just been hired as head wrangler the last time they had visited. John, his son, was a year or two older than the girls. Lisa could feel a blush creeping over her cheeks. She remembered John Brightstar especially well.
“They’re both wonderful with the horses, of course,” Kate said. “And John, especially, is wonderful with the guests, too. He’s been leading trail rides and giving lessons, and everyone seems to love him. Not only do most of the dudes seem thrilled to be instructed by an actual full-blooded Native American Indian”—Kate paused to wink at Christine, who was also a full-blooded Native American Indian. Christine rolled her eyes in response—“but he’s just so charming and knowledgeable that I think they’d love him anyway. I don’t know how we ever got along without him.”
“That’s great,” Stevie said, reaching for another cookie. “Maybe he’ll entertain us with some more Native American stories, like the one he told us last time about the white stallion, and the star-crossed lovers, and—”
“Speaking of entertainment,” Kate interrupted, “Christine had an idea for something to do while you’re here.”
Instantly the girls were all ears. They knew that Christine’s plans tended to be unusual and special. “What is it?” Carole asked expectantly.
“There’s an old tradition in my family that involves taking friends on long trail rides that end with a big cookout and a camp-out in the wilderness,” Christine said. “I thought we could do that this week.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Carole said dreamily. “We’ll sleep under the stars, the way people used to in the old days of the Wild West.”
“Are these camp-outs based on some sort of Indian custom?” Lisa asked.
Christine burst out laughing. “You dudes are always asking me things like that,” she accused teasingly. Lisa’s face turned red as she remembered the way she and her friends had gotten off on the wrong foot with Christine by assuming that, just because of her family heritage everything she did had something to do with ancient tribal customs.
When Christine saw that Lisa was truly embarrassed, she stopped laughing and apologized. “I’m just kidding,” she said. “Actually, this particular tradition started because when my parents were first married, they didn’t have much money. My dad was still in graduate school at the state university, and my mom was holding down two jobs to support them. They lived in a really small house, and it didn’t have a guest room. So the camp-outs were a way to have guests without making them sleep on the living-room sofa.”
“What a great idea,” Carole said. The others nodded in agreement.
“When they moved to the house we live in now, they decided to keep doing it,” Christine said. “Not because we don’t have the room, but because it’s so much fun.”
“I can’t wait,” Stevie said. She finished off the last cookie on the plate and gulped down the rest of her milk. “I also can’t wait for dinner. I’m starving!”
* * *
“I ALMOST FORGOT to tell you about the auction,” Kate told Stevie, Carole, and Lisa as they headed into the dining room a few minutes later. “It’s just about the biggest news around here right now. I was about to tell you before, but then we got distracted talking about other things, and I forgot.”
“An auction?” Carole asked. “What kind?”
They all took their places around one of the dining tables, which was covered with a cheerful red-and-white-checked tablecloth.
“The best kind—a horse auction,” Kate explained. “Ever since Walter and John started working here, we’ve had more well-trained horses than we know what to do with.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Lisa exclaimed. Then she bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t said it, even though she meant it. She was afraid her friends would guess that what she thought was wonderful wasn’t so much the auction itself—although that certainly sounded exciting—but rather the fact that John had something to do with it. Lisa wasn’t sure she wanted them to know how much she’d been thinking about John Brightstar ever since she had arrived at The Bar None. Of course they already knew about the special friendship that had developed between Lisa and John on their last visit. But Lisa didn’t know what to expect now that she would be seeing him again.
Luckily, her friends didn’t seem to have noticed a thing. They were busy pumping Kate for more information about the auction.
“It’s going to take place at the end of the week,” she was explaining. “My mom seems determined to make it into a big event. She’s going to sell a lot of baked goods and canned preserves, and she’ll have sandwiches and things for sale, too.”
“It sounds absolutely perfect,” Carole declared.
“Good,” Kate said, “because I promised Mom and Dad that you guys would help out. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Mind?” Stevie raised an eyebrow. “The only thing we’d mind is if you didn’t let us help!”
“STEWBALL! YOO-HOO, STEWBALL!”
“Oh, please, Stevie,” Christine scoffed. “What kind of a horse would respond to a call like that?”
“That kind of a horse,” Stevie replied smugly as a horse detached itself from the small herd gathered at the other side of the corral and loped toward them. Stevie leaned over the wood-rail fence to scratch the horse, a skewbald pinto, behind the ears. “Hey there, good buddy,” she said fondly. “Remember me?”
The horse nickered as if in reply.
“See?” Stevie said, delighted. “He’s as happy to see me as I am to see him.” Stevie and Stewball had gotten along famously since the first time they’d laid eyes on each other. Everyone thought it was because their personalities were so similar—they were both fun loving, mischievous, and a little bit headstrong.
“Well, maybe, Stevie,” Kate said. “But I suspect he’s also happy to smell the sugar lumps you swiped from the kitchen.”
Stevie shrugged as she fed Stewball the treat. “Believe what you like,” she said airily. “I know it’s because he loves me.”
Meanwhile Carole and Lisa were scanning the herd for their favorite horses. “There’s Chocolate,” Lisa said, pointing out the dark bay mare she had ridden on past visits.
“And I see Berry over there,” Carole said. Berry was a strawberry roan.
“Hey there, Eastern dudes,” said a voice behind them. They turned to see John Brightstar walking toward them, a grin on his face.
“Hi, John,” Carole and Stevie greeted him.
Lisa said hello, too, and gave John a shy smile. She had been expecting to see him in the dining room, but he hadn’t shown up for dinner. Now here he suddenly was, which made her feel a little flustered.
“Hey, John, you should have heard Kate talking about you at dinner tonight,” Stevie teased him. “She’s about ready to have you knighted or something.”
John laughed. “She’s just buttering me up so I’ll help her train that ornery mustang she’s got,” he teased back.
“Oh, speaking of which—where are Moon Glow and Felix?” Carole asked Kate eagerly. “I’m dying to see them.”
“They’re in the barn,” Kate said.
“Why are you keeping them in the barn?” Carole asked. “Isn’t Felix old enough to stay out with the herd yet?”
“Oh, he’s old enough all right,” Kate said with a laugh. “I can’t remember if
I explained why I named him Felix.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you that,” Carole admitted. “It does seem like an unusual name for a horse.”
“But a good name for a cat, right?” Kate said. “And you know what they say about cats and curiosity—well, Felix is about the most curious foal I ever met. Last week he decided to get curious about how a cactus would taste.”
“Oh, no!” Carole exclaimed, imagining how painful the cactus prickers must have been to the foal’s soft mouth. “Is he okay?”
“Oh, sure. The cactus was tiny and definitely took the worst of it,” Kate assured her. “We’re just keeping Felix and his mama inside for a week or two until we’re sure he’s completely healed.” She chuckled. “He may be nosy, but he’s not stupid. I don’t think he’ll make that mistake again. Come on, I’ll introduce you to them.” She stuck out her tongue at John. “Excuse us, you ornery wrangler.” He just grinned in response.
The two girls headed for the barn. Stevie and Christine had gone back to leaning on the fence, talking to and about Stewball. That left Lisa alone—sort of—with John.
He smiled down at her. “Long time no see,” he said.
Lisa nodded. “How have you been?” she asked lamely. She found herself noticing again how tall he was, and how a shock of his black hair fell over his forehead and one eye. She could feel her face growing warm. “It’s nice to see you again,” she added. The comment wasn’t exactly the witty remark she would have liked it to be. But judging from the way John was smiling at her, he didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Same here,” he said.
Lisa searched her mind for something intelligent to say. “Kate was just telling us about the auction. It sounds like it will be a lot of fun.”
John nodded. “I hope it’ll be a success. In any case, it should bring in some nice publicity for the ranch.”
“From what I can tell, it hardly needs it,” Lisa said. “Kate told us The Bar None has been fully booked all season. And that it’s partly thanks to you,” she added shyly.
“A little more good publicity can’t hurt,” John replied. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and moved a step closer, still smiling at her. “And I’m glad to hear that the publicity about me is good these days.”
Horse Tale Page 2