“But Skye’s whole career could be on the line,” said Carole.
Stevie sat forward a little and murmured, “Just picture it: Skye rides in on Stewball, disguised as Sir Prize. The scene goes perfectly. The director stands up: ‘It’s a take!’ ”
Lisa let out a long breath. She looked from Stevie to Carole to Kate and then to Christine, who looked puzzled. Briefly she told Christine about John’s general dislike of the movie people, his run-ins with the director, and his suspicion that Skye was like all the rest of them.
“I can’t say I blame him,” Christine said. After a minute she added, “You know, up until a few years ago, most Westerns were very unfair to American Indians. Things have changed now, but it took a long time for Hollywood to come around and realize that there’s more to our tribes than scalping, raiding, and pillaging. We were always portrayed as the bad guys. John may have that in his mind, too.
“And don’t forget, he’s also an animal lover,” Christine continued. “Many of the so-called classic Westerns were abusive to horses. They used running wires to trip the horses as they were galloping so that their falls would look realistic. They jumped down from second-story porches onto the horses’ backs, and they rode very roughly. I don’t know if John has thought about all this stuff, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”
Christine’s points were important, and the girls considered them seriously. Whether or not the history of Westerns had upset John, they were glad that Christine had brought up the subject. It had made them think.
“Would it be wrong of us to ask John to dye Stewball?” Lisa asked. Beside her, Stevie giggled. Somehow Lisa’s putting the question into words made it sound comical. In a minute they were all chuckling. After the seriousness of what Christine had said, it was a relief to laugh.
“No, of course not,” Christine said kindly. “You can ask him, and he can always say no. It’s not as if he’d be selling out by helping you. You’re his friends, and Cowboy, Come Home sounds like a harmless movie.”
Lisa felt reassured by Christine’s words. Maybe John would be happy to be in the thick of things, to be a crucial member of the team. Besides, John knew his own mind. He wouldn’t agree to do something that went against his conscience. Or would he? If she were the one to ask him? But the whole point was that she had to be the one to ask him because she had the best chance of getting him to say yes. It was too late to wonder about it now.
Stevie had taken Lisa’s silence for a yes. She had gotten Lisa’s bathrobe down off its hook in preparation for a repeat of her evening stable conference with John the night before. “Remember, Lis’, there’s no time like the present,” Stevie said.
“I can’t promise anything,” Lisa warned them, sticking her arms through the sleeves.
LISA HAD AN odd sense of déjà vu as she headed out to the barn. Once again she had to talk to John. And once again the subject wasn’t one that she was eager to bring up. She had been so pleased that John was beginning to be his old self again. She didn’t want to wreck it by asking him for too much too soon. For all Lisa knew, she could set off another angry tirade about Hollywood. But she couldn’t let her friends down, especially not Skye. She had been involved from the beginning: She was the one who had suggested the Bar None in the first place. It wouldn’t be her fault if it didn’t work out—if Skye didn’t get to ride—but she still owed it to him to try to help.
After nosing around the barn for a few minutes, Lisa found John in Tex’s stall. He was putting the chestnut gelding away after grooming him. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” John said kiddingly when he saw her.
“I know,” said Lisa. “I’m beginning to feel as if we’re in cahoots and we’re planning some dangerous scheme.” Actually, Lisa thought, that’s not so far from the truth! “Wow, Tex looks great,” she added. “How was your ride this afternoon?”
“I didn’t get to go,” John said. “I came back to saddle up Tex, and instead I had to saddle up twelve other horses for the Hollywood spouses’ trail ride.”
“Oh, no! I’m sorry, John. That’s disappointing,” said Lisa.
“It’s okay,” John replied. “They’ll all be gone soon and then I can get back to working with this guy.” He gave Tex a pat on his glossy neck. “Actually, it was kind of funny. They were kind of funny, I should say—the spouses, I mean. We had seven wives, four husbands, and one mother, and not one of them had been near a horse before. It took an hour just to get them mounted. Thankfully, one of the other hands led the trail ride.”
Lisa and John chatted for a while longer, and Lisa found herself avoiding the subject she’d come to discuss. But it was getting late, and the others would be dying to know the outcome of her mission. She had to say something. Finally, in a long, roundabout manner, after talking about everything else under the sun, she mentioned Stevie’s plan to disguise Stewball. Offhandedly she added, “I hear that many of the American Indian tribes used to have experts who knew about dyeing.”
“That’s true. My grandmother used to make dyes for blankets, pots—lots of things,” John said.
“John,” Lisa said in a rush, “do you think they ever dyed horses? Would you know how to dye a horse? Or at least dye his white parts?” With her request out in the open, Lisa could only wait for John’s reaction.
He thought for a minute. “In answer to your questions: I don’t know if they dyed horses, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they had; and yes, I know how I’d dye a horse. It’s easy. You just—”
“No! Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know. You don’t have to give any kind of tribal secrets away. That would be wrong,” Lisa insisted.
“But it’s no big se—”
“You might not mind telling now, but you’d regret it later. What I was hoping was that you could do the dyeing yourself,” Lisa said, her fingers crossed.
“Sure,” said John. “I could do that, but it’s not a—”
“You could? I mean, you will! I mean, would you?” Lisa cried, getting flustered.
“Why not? I’m on the technical team, aren’t I? Although I guess this would come under makeup, wouldn’t it?” John joked.
Without stopping to think, Lisa gave him a huge hug. “Thank you so much, John! You’ve saved the day!”
John hugged her back. When they separated, he reminded her, “Hey, I haven’t done anything yet. When do you want him dyed?”
Lisa thought fast. “Let’s see … the shoot is at three o’clock in the afternoon, so I guess tomorrow morning. Unless you need more time to collect the plants and berries and things.”
“No, I don’t need more time. Tomorrow morning’s fine. How about nine o’clock?” John said.
“Great! We’ll meet you here?”
“I’ll see you at nine o’clock,” John promised.
THE NEXT MORNING Stevie, Carole, and Lisa raced through breakfast at lightning speed. All three of them had the jitters. They had been so excited when Lisa told them the good news about John that none of them had been able to get to sleep until the middle of the night.
“If Christine hadn’t come and told us about John, what would we have done?” Carole asked, gulping her orange juice.
“And what if Kate hadn’t called Christine? We never would have come up with the plan,” Lisa said.
“What if the stuntman hadn’t come to watch Skye ride?” Stevie asked.
“And what if we’d never met Skye in Central Park? And what if I’d never decided to take riding lessons and never met you?” Lisa asked, cracking up.
The whole morning they’d been having silly conversations like this one, out of sheer nerves. None of them could quite believe that everything was going to go according to schedule—that John was really going to dye Stewball, that the director would be fooled, and that Stewball was going to perform as perfectly as he had in the lessons.
After breakfast, Lisa went to Skye’s trailer and told him the plan. “It’s brilliant!” Skye exclaimed. “You guys are amazing! So all I have to do
is show up to ride?” he asked.
“And convince the director to let you ride,” Stevie answered.
“No problem—he won’t deny me one final chance. Not even Blake Pratt would do that!”
AT NINE O’CLOCK sharp the girls reported to the stable. “I thought a couple of us could take a nice little trail ride,” John said meaningfully.
The girls had a quick conference and decided that only Stevie would go with John. Two riders would attract far less attention than four. And by staying behind, Lisa and Carole could make excuses for John’s absence if anyone asked where he was. John told Stevie to saddle up her horse. “I’m assuming you’ll be riding your usual mount?” John inquired pointedly.
Her hazel eyes flashing happily, Stevie played along. “Yes, I think I’ll take Stewball. You never know when his cutting abilities are going to come in handy.”
As soon as the horses were ready, Stevie and John mounted up. Lisa noticed that John’s saddlebags and backpack were bulging. Obviously, the materials for the dye were inside. She and Carole gave Stevie and John the thumbs-up signal and watched them jog away from the stables.
“I want to hurry so that if anyone sees us, it will only be for a moment or two,” John called back over his shoulder. “That way there’ll be less chance of anyone noticing that one of our horses is a pinto—a pinto who’s going to come back as a chestnut.”
“Hear that, boy?” Stevie asked Stewball. “You’re about to get the beauty treatment of your lifetime.”
Instead of taking the usual trail toward Parson’s Rock, John made a sharp right at the trailhead and headed in the opposite direction. Jogging and loping when the footing was good, they reached a small creek in about half an hour. Stevie was beside herself with excitement. “I feel like a real horse rustler!” she said. “It’s too good to be true.”
John was all concentration. “Well, most rustlers probably have a lookout person, so you can be it. I have to ask you to wait over there,” he said, pointing to a large boulder. “I doubt anyone’s going to come this way at this hour, but yell if you see anyone approaching.”
Stevie agreed. Normally she would have tried to finagle a way to go with John, but Lisa had specifically mentioned the night before that they shouldn’t try to find out the ingredients of John’s concoction. She felt it was important that he be able to keep it a secret.
“I’m going to take both horses down the creek where it’s shallower,” John explained. “Tex, here, as my pack-horse—he’s got the supplies—and Stewball, for obvious reasons. I need water for the dye. We should be back in an hour.”
“We’d better synchronize our watches,” Stevie said, imitating his superserious tone.
John raised his eyebrows skeptically.
“In movies, the criminals always synchronize their watches!” Stevie insisted.
“All right, all right!” John said. Under his breath he added, “This is for Hollywood, after all.”
Their watches set, John led the horses away, and Stevie scrambled up the bank to her position behind the boulder.
The wait was pure agony. The minutes ticked by. Stevie sat, then stood. She counted birds flying overhead. She recited the parts of the horse. She made a Christmas wish list, even though Christmas was six months away. She sat down again. Then she looked at her watch. Exactly fourteen minutes had elapsed. “Aa—” She was about to scream, but then she realized she couldn’t, or John might think someone was coming. She stood up again, and, pacing in front of the boulder, she started to sing “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”
When an hour and six minutes had gone by, she heard a familiar whinny. She sprang out from behind the rock—and saw an utterly unfamiliar horse. It was Stewball, but he was a chestnut! The transformation was unbelievable. “John, you’re a miracle worker!” Stevie screamed. Now was definitely not a time for understatement.
John smiled a bit sheepishly. “It was nothing.”
“Nothing? Are you kidding? It’s amazing!” Stevie said. “It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”
“No, really, it was nothing.”
Fine, Stevie thought, let him be Mr. Modest about it. The point is: The plan’s going to work! “Can I touch the dye?” she asked.
“Sure, it won’t come off,” said John. “But we’d better be getting back. Lisa and Carole will be wondering where we are, and I’ve got real chores to do.”
Gingerly patting Stewball on the neck, Stevie swung back into the saddle. On the ride back to the barn, she kept leaning forward and back to stare at Stewball’s previously white patches. Up close, she could see a vague difference in the shade of the chestnut that had been white and the real chestnut patches, but it was nothing the camera would pick up twenty, ten, or even five feet away. In spite of her promise to Lisa, Stevie was aching to ask John what had gone into the dye. Somehow she managed to keep her word. She did make a mental note to try to research American Indian dyeing techniques in her school library come fall. There was no telling how many ways such a powerful dye could come in handy for pranks and practical jokes.
LISA AND CAROLE had almost the same reaction as Stevie. They stared at Stewball in shock. “John, this is—it’s—it’s beautiful,” Lisa breathed.
“I’m glad you said ‘it’s’ and not ‘he’s,’ ” Stevie said loyally, “because I, for one, think Stewball was beautiful before, in his natural state.”
“What’s funny is that he doesn’t look anything like Sir Prize,” said Carole, “even dyed the same color. Any horseman or horsewoman could tell the difference in a second; the horses have completely different conformation. Stewball’s back is shorter, his neck isn’t as broad, he—”
“Yes, Carole?” Stevie interrupted. She knew that when Carole got going about horsey stuff, she could go on forever.
“Oh, right. What I was going to say is that luckily the director won’t notice the swap in a million years.”
“Let’s hope you’re right,” Lisa said. For some reason, she felt more cautious about the success of the plan than Stevie or Carole.
“I wouldn’t worry about the director,” John said. “Heck, Skye could probably show up riding a chestnut cow and get away with it. Now, listen: Today is taken care of. And so’s tomorrow. The dye should last till Friday. After that, though, we’re going to have to rinse it out and redye.”
“Stewball’s scenes may be finished in a couple of days. According to Skye, Blake wants to fly everyone out this weekend,” Stevie said.
“If that’s what happens, great. But otherwise, remember that it won’t last forever, okay?” John said.
Before John left, Lisa took him aside and thanked him again. She began, “I don’t know what to say—”
“Then don’t say anything,” John whispered. He reached down and gave her hand a warm squeeze. “I was happy to do it.”
CAROLE GRINNED AS she led Sir Prize out of the huge stall in his private barn. “Come on, you big oaf, it’s time for you to disappear.”
The animal trainer was waiting outside. “Now, you’re sure Mr. Ransom wants you to put the tack on Sir-Sir?” she asked nervously.
“Yes, I’m sure. Didn’t he come tell you?” Carole asked, feigning innocence.
The woman nodded, keeping pace with them. “He—he did, but I always like to double-check.”
Carole walked faster to discourage the woman from following. “Mr. Ransom will personally return his mount after the shoot,” she said.
“All right, I—I guess,” the woman said, finally dropping back. “Take good care of him! He’s a very valuable animal!” she called.
In the main barn Carole found an empty, out-of-the-way stall. It was a straight stall, not a box stall, which meant the horse had to be tied standing forward. The ranch hands used the straight stalls when they needed to keep a horse on hand temporarily—before the farrier’s or veterinarian’s visit, for instance. A straight stall was completely safe and acceptable as long as a horse didn’t have to live in it arou
nd the clock.
“I’m sure these quarters are shockingly small for you, Sir,” Carole said as she tied Prize’s lead line to the ring on the wall with a quick-release knot, “but I’m afraid it’s the best we can do for our supporting cast this afternoon. You see, your understudy is about to take center stage.”
THE FRONT ROW of chairs on the viewing platform was deathly quiet. Carole, Stevie, Lisa, Kate, Christine, and John were waiting for the scene to begin. A hundred yards away, Skye was mounted on Stewball. All they could do now was cross their fingers and hope.
The director’s nasal voice carried over the whispered conversations of the crew and the other viewers. “Too bad this probably won’t be the final shoot,” he said to a cameraman. “Those dark clouds add just the right touch of menace for this scene.” After another minute or two, the director gave a signal to one of his assistants.
“Quiet on the set! Quiet, please!” the assistant yelled. “Five, four, three, two, one—roll film!”
They saw the cattle first. Moving at a lively pace, the cows and calves came toward the corral. Then Skye and Stewball appeared, herding them like old pros, with the sheepdog running alongside. And it was just as Stevie had said: The whole scene went like clockwork.
Stewball may have been a chestnut, but underneath he was the same quick, clever cow horse he’d always been. He jogged, he loped, he stopped, he turned on a dime. He anticipated the herd’s every move, and Skye gave him free rein to do it.
Skye himself sat boldly on top, his cowboy hat fixed at a rakish tilt. Together, and with the dog’s help, they brought the cattle into the corral. When they were all penned, Skye clanged the gate shut and herded them down to one end.
Lisa stole a glance at the director. He was staring, utterly transfixed, at the scene.
Skye backed up and chose a calf to cut. He galloped toward the herd, sending most of them stampeding to the other end of the corral. But one calf was caught, facing off against the horse and rider. Skye let Stewball show his stuff as he prevented the calf from joining the herd. Then, with a loud whoop, Skye let the calf go. He took off his cowboy hat and tossed it high in the air.
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