It didn’t turn out to be much work at all, though. What happened was that Carole, on Arthur, led the way. As soon as Arthur began walking slowly back toward High Meadow, all the other horses simply followed. Carole had to be in front because she was on Arthur. The three campers brought up the rear. Clearly this was the accustomed position for Linc’s tired old gray horse. As long as the three of them were pretty much walking abreast, Carole wasn’t worried. If anything happened to one of them, there were two more to get her help.
Carole and the three bareback campers brought the herd into the pasture nearest the barn, and then Carole rode Arthur into his very own area. She dismounted, removed his bridle, and led the horse she’d mistaken for Arthur earlier back to the field with the rest of the herd.
Then all that remained was to help the campers dismount and remove their bridles. The job was quickly done.
Carole and the campers were going to return to the bunkhouse when they saw that the light was on in the kitchen of the main house. The four rustlers went to see what was going on. Inside they found a note from Jeannie and a plate of cookies. “Help yourself,” the note said. “And sleep in tomorrow morning. Thank you all so much!”
“You mean we get a reward for stealing twenty horses?” Linc asked.
Carole laughed. “This time, Linc. Just this once.”
Later Carole lay in bed, her mind filled with swirling thoughts. She felt very good about having gotten all the horses back to camp without the difficult neighbor’s ever knowing about it. It was quite a victory, and she knew she was entitled to be proud. But at the same time, she’d caused the problem in the first place, and she didn’t like that. It would have been a whole lot easier if she had done the right thing to begin with.
“THIS IS THE life, isn’t it?” Stevie asked.
“I love it, too,” Kate agreed.
The two of them were riding near one another at the back edge of a herd of obedient cattle. Eli was in the lead, twelve campers were strategically placed around the edge of the herd, and the two Saddle Club girls were on mop-up. Except that with Mel around there wasn’t anything to mop up. She was a wonder to watch, apparently sensing trouble before it began. Mel didn’t want a single steer or cow to get out of hand. She ran back and forth around the rear half of the herd and occasionally across the front of it—barking, growling, and wagging her tail busily, just to make her presence known.
“She’s like an exam proctor,” Kate observed. “The kind who won’t even let you tap your eraser just in case you’re using Morse code.”
“None of these dogies can get away with anything when she’s around. By the way, what is a dogie?” Stevie asked.
“A motherless calf,” Kate said. “They tend to be sort of directionless, so they need a lot of watching and guidance. That’s where the expression ‘Get along little dogies’ comes from.”
“I always thought it had something to do with puppies.”
“Nope, cattle,” Kate explained.
Suddenly, three steers shot out of the herd and headed to the left. Since Stevie was on the left, they were her responsibility. Kate stayed with the rest of the herd.
This sudden burst of activity seemed odd to Stevie, even though she knew that cattle sometimes behaved oddly. She also knew she could use some help. She whistled for Mel. Mel, however, was occupied with a pair that had gone off ahead of the rest of the herd and she couldn’t be disturbed. Stevie signaled to two campers to give her a hand. They circled around the three errant steers and tried to convince them to get back with the herd.
The campers got two steers headed for the herd while Stevie chased after the third. By then the third one had made up his mind that he definitely didn’t want to have anything to do with the pack. He’d just taken off.
Stevie took the rope off her saddle horn. She knew there was no way she could actually swing the thing around and capture the steer, but she thought that if she could get the fellow’s attention by waving the rope, she could talk him into going away from her. The problem was, Stevie needed to be in front of the steer. Since the steer was running at full tilt, this was a true challenge.
Stevie thought about Stewball, the horse she’d ridden at Bar None. When it came to herding cattle, Stewball was as good as Mel. The horse she was riding today, an Appaloosa whose name she’d forgotten, was no Stewball. He seemed to need as much attention as the steer, and that was no help to Stevie. One thing about the horse, though, was that he was fast.
Finally, Stevie was able to get in front of the steer. She turned her horse around so he faced the oncoming animal. Her horse planted his feet in the ground. The steer stopped and did the same. It was like a game of chicken. If Stevie had been on Stewball, he would have known exactly how to dodge and block and keep the steer in check. This horse, however, needed Stevie to tell him what to do.
She used her legs, getting him to move to the left and right, along with the steer. Then she raised her hand, swung the rope around, and hollered. She didn’t know why, she just thought it was a good idea. Her horse didn’t know why she’d done it, either. It startled him so much that he bucked and then reared. Stevie wasn’t prepared for that. She bounced in the air and landed flat on her bottom, right next to her horse. The good news was that her horse didn’t run. The better news was that all the activity had convinced the steer he didn’t want to proceed any farther afield. Calmly he turned and walked right back to the rest of the herd.
Stevie pulled herself up, rubbed the area that hurt the most, and then got back into the saddle. She found herself sitting on the area that hurt the most, but otherwise she was fine. She hoped nobody had seen her fall. She wasn’t so lucky on that score.
“Nice flight!” said Lois.
“You forgot your cape, though,” said Larry.
“Thanks, kids,” said Stevie. “At least I got the steer back into the herd.”
“Seemed to me that the steer did most of the work, dude,” Larry said. Stevie did her best to shrug off the insult.
“Going’s going to get tougher now,” Eli said, circling back to the rear of the herd. “We’re going to veer to the left and up that little hill.”
“Doesn’t look too bad,” said Stevie.
“Wait’ll you see the other side,” said Eli. Then he noticed the dirt on her jeans. He didn’t say anything. Stevie thought she saw the smallest bit of a smile, but decided she was probably wrong. Eli wouldn’t make fun of her. He knew she wasn’t really a dude, didn’t he? She didn’t have a chance to say anything else, though, because Eli had to finish circling the herd and preparing all the cowboys for the turn and the hill.
The herd proceeded obediently up the incline, and then Stevie watched a curious thing. As each row of steer got to the top, they stopped, then proceeded down, almost jerking as they went. Stevie wondered what kind of landscape would cause that to happen so consistently.
Her question was answered when she and her horse reached the crest of the hill. She stopped and gaped. The hill was nearly straight down! There was a path and it was negotiable, but it was clearly treacherous. There would be no careful herding as the riders went down this hill. It would be everything they could do to manage the hill and stay on their horses.
“You okay, dude?” Larry asked her. The sneer was more than slight. “Don’t forget to lean backwards,” he said. “If you don’t, you may fall off your horse. Again.”
Stevie could think of a lot of retorts, but she found herself so worried that Larry might be right and she might fall off again that she just closed her mouth and kept all her retorts to herself. Fortunately, she made it to the bottom without mishap. So did all the campers. Not so the steer. There were eight or ten of them stuck on the hillside, frozen with fear and unable to move up or down. There was nothing to be done but to go get them. Eli got all the campers to circle the herd and told Stevie and Kate they’d have to help him with the frightened strays.
Stevie never minded work. She didn’t even mind taking risks, like going b
ack up the hill and working with the stray cattle. What she did mind was humiliation, which she was sure she’d get a big dose of on this mission. It looked like more than a little bit of trouble. The worst part was that every single camper would have a perfect view of whatever stupid thing she did.
“Stevie, this way!” Eli said, bringing her out of her reverie. The only thing worse than making a fool of herself would be being too afraid to try. She had to go. She went.
She and Kate caught up with Eli and picked their way back up the hill very carefully, watching their balance, and keeping an eye on the strays.
Each one of the strays presented a different challenge. One had a hoof lodged under a rock. All they had to do there was to pull the hoof out without getting crushed by the beefy creature or kicked by any of his other three working feet. Another two were just huddling together behind a tree, looking downward fearfully. Mel convinced them to move forward, parallel to the hillside, until there was no tree to protect them. Then they had no choice but to go downward. They did it and reached the bottom safely.
Another was a cow with a calf. There was nothing wrong with them except that the calf had decided this was the exact moment when he had to have lunch. While Eli, Kate, and Stevie watched, he finished nursing, and then he and his mother moved onward without any further prodding. Two of the strays needed to be talked down. Eli’s system for that was to put a rope around the animal’s neck and to get his horse to tug convincingly. Mel barked and snapped at the animal’s feet while Stevie and Kate stood behind it and yelled encouragingly. Eventually, the strays decided that moving forward and downward was less unpleasant than being yanked, barked at, and yelled at.
The thought that kept going through Stevie’s head as she and Kate worked with Eli was that there was no way in the world that she could have figured out how to do any of this without Eli there. Sure, she was staying on her horse, much to Larry’s dismay, but it wasn’t the same as really helping independently. Every time Eli figured out another way to solve the problems of the strays, Stevie felt dumber and more like a greenhorn dude.
Then, when the last stray was with the herd and they’d put that hill behind them and settled into a campsite for the night, Eli asked Stevie to build a camp fire. It was her final failure of the day. She could put all the ingredients exactly the way she thought they ought to be, but she couldn’t get it to burn no matter what she did. Unfortunately, it was Lois who came to her rescue, adjusting the paper and the twigs until they were just so and then, with one match, got a roaring fire going.
Stevie and Kate didn’t even stick around for the marshmallow roast. They headed for their bedrolls, hoping for a decent night’s sleep on the hard cold ground. The other campers didn’t even seem to notice or care that they weren’t there. It was about what Stevie and Kate had come to expect.
STEVIE DIDN’T KNOW where she was when she first opened her eyes. She squinted in the gray light of dawn, barely making out the fact that there were kids in sleeping bags all around her. What clued her into her actual locale was the gentle and constant lowing sounds of the cattle nearby. She was on a cattle drive, and ever since the first hill, nothing had gone right.
She pulled herself out of her tent and looked at the surroundings. In spite of all the awful things that had happened yesterday, the place was nothing short of spectacular. They were in a valley, completely surrounded by the Rocky Mountains whose jagged, snowcapped tips reached into a pale blue-and-pink dawn. Stevie wondered how she could have missed the beauty of the place and then remembered that she’d had a few other things going on the previous day. She reminded herself to notice the beauty all day long today.
She stretched lazily, changed her clothes, washed up, and went in search of a way to be useful.
She found Eli laying a fire to cook breakfast. He asked her to finish doing it while he started closing up camp so they could get going quickly. Stevie laid the twigs, papers, and sticks out just the way she’d watched it being done before and put a match to the kindling. The kindling burned nicely, but the wood didn’t catch fire at all. She tried again. No luck.
By the time she was ready to do it a third time, Kate had joined her and Eli had come to see what the problem was. He suggested that Stevie’s talents would be better used getting the horses ready to be saddled up than smoldering kindling. Stevie wasn’t sure if he was teasing or serious. It didn’t improve her mood to start the day off with another failure.
“Be careful, though,” he warned her. “Those animals are all kind of edgy this morning. I think there must be a coyote around. Just keep them all calm, okay?”
“Okay,” Stevie and Kate agreed. The two of them walked together over to the temporary corral where their horses had been put for the night. The cattle milled around nearby, slightly restless as Eli had said they were.
When the girls got to the corral, they saw that the horses were a little restless, too. A couple of them had their ears laid way back on their heads, their eyes open so wide that they showed white.
“What’s going on here?” Stevie asked.
“Eli must be right about the coyote,” Kate said. “And nervousness is contagious. When one horse in a group gets edgy, all the others get it as well. Our best bet is just to show them we’re not nervous.”
“Great idea. The question is, how? Oh, I know!” Stevie was never happier than when she was being clever, and she’d come up with a clever idea to show she wasn’t nervous. She began singing as she opened the gate to enter the corral. Apparently, however, she’d chosen a song the horses didn’t much like. When she hit a high note and held it, one of the horses reared. The one next to it bucked, kicking another horse who bit the one who had reared. Every horse whose ears hadn’t flattened before now flattened its ears, and they all started whinnying and crying wildly.
Two more horses reared, and that was all the rest of the herd would take. They fled.
Stevie and Kate stood helplessly by the open gate while more than a dozen horses raced past them right into the middle of the herd of cattle.
The cattle, which had been just as restless as the horses, found this an ideal opportunity to run. Within a matter of seconds it was clear to Stevie and Kate that they had a full-blown stampede on their hands.
“Eli!!!” Stevie shrieked, knowing then that making more noise couldn’t possibly frighten the animals any more than they already were. She didn’t really have to yell that loud, though. Eli had heard the frightened animals and was already on his way to help.
By the time he got there, the entire herd was in motion—a thousand animals running wildly through the valley. There wasn’t a second to waste.
“Stevie! Get the campers to safety. Kate, come with me.”
Stevie ran back to where the tents were pitched. For the moment, the herd was running away from the campsite, but she knew that could change on a second’s notice. She didn’t have to wake the campers up. The noise of the terrified herd had done that job for her. What she had to do was to keep them calm and get them to safety.
“As quickly as you can, put on your boots—don’t worry about clean clothes now—roll up your beds, and come with me.”
Lois came wandering out of her tent. “Help me comb my hair,” she demanded.
“Later,” Stevie said, firmly but kindly. “For now, just get ready to move.”
Lois started to protest. This was no time to get into a tangle with a L-ion, but Stevie understood that sometimes, in a panic, people seem to feel the need to do very normal things, like combing their hair. “And be sure to bring your comb,” Stevie said. “We’ll do your hair as soon as we get resettled.”
That seemed to be all the assurance Lois needed. She emerged from her tent a few seconds later, holding her bedroll and her comb. She had her boots on. Stevie paused only a split second to congratulate herself on motivating Lois properly.
“This way,” she said, pointing to the hillside nearby. One thing the herd had learned yesterday was that they didn’t like hil
ls—up or down. Stevie thought that probably meant that even in a panic they wouldn’t run up one. Also, that particular hillside had a couple of really good rocks on it that the kids could climb to safety where even the angriest steer would never follow.
“We’re going to have a rock-climbing contest,” Stevie said. “First one up to the top of that boulder gets a prize.”
Stevie knew she wasn’t fooling anyone with her ploy to get the campers to safety, but they all seemed reassured by the game.
“Last one up’s a rotten egg,” Larry said, leading the way. The kids scurried after him. No one wanted to let him win.
It took a lot of scrambling to get to the rock and a good deal more to get all the kids onto it. Stevie got them to work together, forming a sort of human chain so that the bigger kids could help the smaller ones up. Eventually twelve kids were safe and sound on a large boulder overlooking a valley where a herd of cattle, mingled with horses, was running wildly. They were so proud of the way they’d gotten up that they even forgot to notice who the last one—the rotten egg—was. It was Stevie, of course. She had to be last to be sure that the kids were all safe before she joined them.
“Come on, Lois, let me comb your hair now,” Stevie said. Lois seemed surprised that Stevie was as good as her word, but she also seemed comforted to have the job done. Stevie made a French braid for Lois, and two other girls thought she’d done such a neat job of it that they wanted her to do it to their hair as well. Even the boys were impressed with Stevie’s skill and watched in rapt attention at her ministrations.
All the while, Stevie was acutely aware of the chaos in the valley below. As soon as the kids were totally calm, she could give Eli and Kate a hand.
She thought it was a good idea to give the campers something to occupy themselves. She explained that she was going to help Eli and Kate.
“Will you be safe?” Larry interrupted her. Stevie was touched by the obvious concern in his voice. Less than twelve hours earlier, he would have been de- lighted if somebody had told him Stevie had drowned in a creek.
Ranch Hands Page 7