I swallowed hard, blinked and avoided my mother’s eyes. “I don’t need Cole McCall holding my hand every move I make.” Then I rammed the truck into gear and took off with a jolt that probably spoiled Blue Moon’s day.
All the way down the lane I could still see my parents in the rearview mirror staring after me. I would have bet they were shaking their heads.
I turned onto the main road, wiping a hand across my eyes and wondering why the windshield was so blurry. I drove slowly past Cole’s turnoff, staring as far as I could see down the empty lane. Suddenly, I hit the brakes. “Sorry again, Blue Moon,” I muttered as the truck jolted to a stop. I backed up and turned into the lane. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I couldn’t stop myself. Not until I was halfway around the curve. Then I stopped real sudden. If I hadn’t, I would have run head-on into Cole’s truck coming from the opposite direction. He hit the brakes, too. Then he pulled his truck off to the side, came running over and jumped in beside me. “Cole…” I began, but I didn’t know what to say. It didn’t matter because he interrupted me anyway.
“Hey, Blue Jeans,” he said with that teasing grin. “You weren’t gonna go without me, were you?”
I spent the next twenty minutes trying to back the trailer around the curve. Cole spent the next twenty minutes laughing at me trying to back the trailer around the curve. Things were back to normal—for now anyway.
The afternoon that had stretched out ahead was suddenly gone. The afternoon rodeo events ended and everything shut down for an hour. Time to warm up the barrel horses. Blue Moon was calm, in control. She took the crowds and confusion in her stride. Somewhere, in a past life, Blue Moon had definitely been around.
The barrel racing started. The first rider was slow as molasses. Nineteen-five. We could beat that. The next two riders knocked down barrels. Five-second penalties. Out of luck. Then a girl came out on a beautiful golden palomino that ran like the wind. She ran clean—seventeen-six. My stomach knotted. Then came a real young kid on a big bay. She was just going into the first turn when a sudden gust of wind came up. The wind whirled a big piece of cardboard out of the stands and almost into her horse’s face. He leaped straight sideways, slammed her leg against the barrel, lost his footing and fell. They took the girl out in an ambulance. The horse limped out bleeding from a big cut on his leg.
It was a hot summer evening but I felt myself go cold inside. Did I really know what to expect from my horse? And why did I have to draw second-last place in the running order? Just one left before me. A young horse. Green as grass at this business. but the rider was experienced. She steered the horse around the barrels and turned for home. That’s when he ducked his head and went to bucking. The girl stayed with him and rode out the storm. The crowd loved it. Except for me, that is. All I felt was a little closer to throwing up.
Then I heard my name over the PA system. I went on autopilot. Somehow I got Blue Moon lined up behind the starting line. I felt the pent-up power underneath me. She was ready. I gulped a deep breath, looked up and caught a glimpse of Cole giving me the thumbs-up signal from the fence. Then we were gone. How could so few seconds stretch out so long? I felt each powerful stride as Blue Moon closed in on the first barrel, dug in and turned on a dime. I felt her powerful hindquarters push her away from that barrel and on toward the second one. Close around. Pounding down the long stretch to barrel three. Around it and racing for home.
Then I was circling her to a stop and waiting, breathless as always, for the time. It boomed out from the announcer’s stand. “We have a new leader, folks. B.J. Brooks and Blue Moon, seventeen-three.”
The grandstand went wild with cheering. I reached down and hugged Blue Moon’s neck. She gave her head a casual toss. “No big deal,” I think she said. But when we’d moved out of the arena, Cole came up and gave her a hug, too. If you really want to know, Blue Moon wasn’t the only one he hugged. And, yes, I did hug him back.
The last horse ran eighteen flat. Blue Moon and I loped out of the arena with our first trophy just as it started to rain.
Chapter Eleven
The rain stayed with us as darkness fell and we drove into the night. The main highway was busy with a lot of big trucks throwing water up over my windshield. I was relieved when we turned off onto the two-lane highway for the last halfhour of the drive. Then the storm really hit. The sky just opened up and the rain was a solid sheet in front of us. The noise on the truck’s roof was enough to rattle my brains. I hoped that Blue Moon wasn’t too scared back there.
I slowed down to a crawl, stared hard through the curtain of water and tried to keep track of the white line on the highway. We started into a long, gentle curve—and suddenly everything happened at once. A pair of headlights cut through the rain almost straight ahead of me. Cole yelled, “Look out!” and I swung the wheel to the right.
A bunch of miracles happened in the next split second. The other driver managed to swerve back into his own lane. I managed to stop my swerve before I rolled both the truck and the trailer. We skidded to a stop with just one front truck wheel in the shallow ditch.
The minute we stopped moving I was piling out the door. I slid my way along the rain-slick highway to the trailer and yanked open the small door at the side. Blue Moon was on her feet, standing kind of straddled out like a person on the deck of a rocking boat. I reached in and rubbed her neck. “It’s okay, Moon. It’s gonna be all right.” She gave a nervous little whinny and reached over to take a nip out of the sleeve of my jacket. I think she was making a statement about my driving. I gave her another pat and then gently closed the door.
“Thank God she’s okay,” I said over my shoulder to Cole. There was no answer. I turned around to face him, but he wasn’t there. I was sure he’d have been out of the truck in a flash and right behind me to check on the horse.
I went back to the open driver’s side door. Cole hadn’t moved. He was sitting with both hands gripping the edge of the dashboard, staring straight ahead. “Cole? Are you hurt? Did you hit your head or something?” I started to panic. “Cole! Talk to me!”
He sort of shook his head and relaxed his death grip on the dash. “Sorry, Bobbie Jo,” he said in a voice that was almost a whisper. “For a minute there I thought it was all happening again.”
I laid my hand on his shoulder. “What, Cole?” I asked softly. “What was happening again?”
He took a deep breath. “Is the horse okay?” he asked. I nodded. “Are we stuck?”
“I think if I put it in four-wheel drive we can get out. Just one wheel went in.”
“Okay, let’s go home. I’ll tell you on the way.”
He told me. It was a long story. “We used to live in Texas. My dad was head trainer for one of the biggest quarter horse ranches in the country. We were building up a herd of our own, too. We’d just put down a payment on a place of our own. Then,” his voice went kind of shaky, “one night we were comin’ home from the city in a thunderstorm and a drunk driver hit our truck. We all got hurt.” He turned and lifted up the side of his shoulder-length hair to show me the angry red scar on his neck. “A piece of pipe we were hauling came through the back window and got me. Mom had a broken arm. But Dad….” His voice broke. He swallowed. “You’ve seen Dad. He couldn’t work anymore. We didn’t have medical insurance. The doctor bills took everything. We saved Nightstar and two mares. That’s all. This is my uncle’s place we’re living on here. He’s owned the land for a long time, but he lives in Calgary. He said we’d at least have a roof over our heads.” He gave me a shaky smile.
“Dad goes to the hospital for therapy every day now. It’s been a year and a half since the accident, but this is the first he’s been willing to even try. At first he just wanted to die. But he’s startin’ to care a little now. Comin’ to see Blue Moon was the first time he’s gone out amongst people since we got here. I guess I’d talked about her so much his curiosity finally got the best of him.” Cole grinned. “He sure took to that horse. Talked about her more
than he’s talked about anything since the accident.”
Suddenly, the smile faded and I knew something else was wrong. “Tell me the rest, Cole,” I said, glancing at his face in the glow of the instrument panel.
He wouldn’t look at me. “That’s all there is to tell about my family,” he said in a low voice.
“But there’s something else you’ve got to tell me, isn’t there? You’ve been trying to get up the nerve to tell me all week, Cole. Get it over with.” I turned the corner into our lane and pulled to a stop in front of the barn. In a minute, my family would be out here wanting to know how everything went. I wanted an answer first.
Cole slowly reached into the front pocket of his jean jacket and brought out a folded piece of paper. I opened it and turned on the overhead light.
It was a poster.
I sat there staring at the paper. Then I stared at Cole. “Where…?” I began. “How…?” There were so many questions I didn’t know where to start.
Cole answered some of them. “Like I said, Dad couldn’t get the mare off his mind. He kept saying she reminded him of something. Finally he got out a bunch of papers and dug through them. The poster was put out by a friend of his in Kamloops. He sent Dad a copy just in case he ever ran across a clue to where the mare had gone.”
“But the wagon wheel brand…”
“Yeah, the sloppy wagon wheel with the spokes that don’t line up. You know how easy it would be to change the rising sun to a wagon wheel? Look.” He took a pen, sketched a rising sun onto the back of the poster, added a few lines and came up with a wagon wheel.
For a minute, I just sat there in silence. I tried to think of all the reasons why it couldn’t be. But they all turned into reasons why it could. Champion cutting horse. I remembered that first morning when Dad had found Blue Moon out there rounding up cows all by herself.
“Dad says it’s up to you what you do about the horse. He’s not gonna do anything. He just figured you had a right to know, that’s all.”
Before I could answer there was a loud tap on the window. I opened the door. There stood Sara. “You guys steamin’ up the windows in there or what?” she asked with a sly grin.
“Get lost, rodent,” I said. I would have said more, but Mom and Dad were right behind her. They spotted the trophy and got all excited and proud the way parents are supposed to. I did my best to act excited and proud, too. But it was all I could do to keep it together long enough to look after Blue Moon and drive Cole home. Then I shut myself in my room and cried myself to sleep.
But I didn’t stay asleep. I kept waking up and asking myself what I was going to do. Blue Moon was mine, wasn’t she? After all, if I hadn’t bought her, she’d be dead by now. But what if I’d been the one she’d been stolen from? What if somebody had her and knew she belonged to me but wouldn’t even let me know she was still alive?
First thing in the morning, I phoned Frank Conway in Kamloops. I think I got the guy out of bed. I forgot that it was an hour earlier in B.C.
I told him the whole story. It took a while. Not only was I going to lose my horse, I’d be broke for a year paying off this phone call. At first, Conway wasn’t convinced. But the more I told him, the more I could sense he was listening.
He asked directions to our place. He had business in Alberta the next week, he said. He’d come by and have a look at her. “Okay, that’ll be fine,” I said. Then I hung up the phone and bawled some more.
The week dragged by. Half the time I practically lived in the corral, not wanting to miss a single minute of the time I had left with Blue Moon. Then I’d get tough and stay away from her for a whole day, practicing for when she wouldn’t be there. I finally told Mom and Dad what was happening. They were real proud that I’d done the right thing. My dad gave me lots of neat little speeches on building character and stuff. Personally, I’d rather have the horse than the character. Even Sara started being nice to me, so I guess I must have been in pretty bad shape.
Friday afternoon, Cole and I were stacking square bales in the hay shed. He suddenly straightened up and stood looking down the lane. “Bobbie Jo,” he said softly. I followed the direction of his gaze and saw a gray half-ton with B.C. plates pulling into the yard. Cole gave me a long look. “You okay?” he asked. I nodded. He put his arm around my shoulders and we went to meet Frank Conway. When we got closer I realized Conway wasn’t alone. Jim McCall was in the passenger seat. He stayed in the truck as Conway got out and introduced himself.
I managed a “hello” and then turned away fast to go and get the horse. I’d been all set to hate Mr. Conway. It was kind of a disappointment when I couldn’t. But as soon as I saw the way he handled the mare, I knew the guy was okay. He talked to her real quiet, ran a firm but gentle hand down her shoulder and walked all around her, looking her over. He studied the brand for a long time and then shook his head. He checked her legs and her hoofs. He was just trying to get her to open her mouth to check her teeth when the truck door closed behind us. We all turned around in time to see Cole’s dad walking toward us. He still had the crutches but his legs were straighter and he was putting weight on them. “Never mind the teeth, Frank,” he said with something close to a grin. “I checked them. The age works out right.”
There was a silence. Conway cleared his throat. He pushed aside her forelock. “Well, then, it’s her. The brand, the age, but mostly this funny little mark on her face.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a picture of a blue roan colt. Beneath its short, fuzzy forelock was a perfect crescent moon. He laid a hand on her neck. “Her name’s Bonnie Blue, and you’ll never know how much it means to me to find her.”
Uh-uh, I thought to myself, her name’s Blue Moon, and you’ll never know how much it means to me to lose her.
“So, how much did you say you paid for her, Bobbie Jo?” Conway asked.
I told him. Yeah, I thought. If I get real lucky you might give me back my $690.00—and you get the greatest horse in the world.
Just then, Jim McCall spoke up. “Come over here a minute, Frank. Let’s see if you’re half the horse trader you used to be.”
Conway laughed and walked over to where Cole’s dad was leaning on the fence. They talked, low-voiced, for a while. Quite a while. I saw Conway shake his head a couple of times. He looked in Blue Moon’s direction a few times. Finally, he nodded and came back to where Blue Moon was standing.
“Jim tells me you beat a meat buyer out of this mare at an auction sale. That true, Bobbie Jo?” I nodded, wondering where this conversation was going. “In some countries they believe if you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them forever,” he said. Now I really wondered where this conversation was going. “And,” he went on, “you couldn’t very well be responsible for a horse that was way off in B.C., could you?”
I just kind of gawked at him. He turned to Cole. “When I stopped by your place, your dad showed me your black stallion. Some kind of a horse, isn’t he?”
“Yes, sir,” Cole agreed, his voice cautious. I could see he was wondering what was going on here, too.
“Your dad figures that if Bonnie Blue here was bred to your black, she might just come up with a pretty special kind of colt.” Conway turned back to look at me. “So, here’s the deal, Bobbie Jo. You let this mare raise me a foal from Cole’s stallion and I’ll consider it full payment for the mare. Sound fair to you?”
For once in my life I was stuck for words. I just stood there nodding my head so hard I thought I could hear my brains rattle. Frank Conway held out his hand. “Deal,” he said.
“Deal,” I said. We shook on it.
Cole grinned. “Blue Jeans and Blue Moon. Great name for a country music act.”
I swatted him. But not too hard.
NEW Orca Soundings novel
Overdrive by Eric Walters
“Go! Get out of here!”
I saw flashing red lights behind me in the distance. For a split second I took my foot off the accelerator. Then I pressed down ha
rder and took a quick left turn.
Jake has finally got his driver’s license, and tonight he has his brother’s car as well. He and his friend Mickey take the car out and cruise the strip. When they challenge another driver to a road race, a disastrous chain reaction causes an accident. Jake and Mickey leave the scene, trying to convince themselves they were not involved. The driver of the other car was Luke, a one-time friend of Jakes. Jake finds he cannot pretend it didn’t happen and struggles with the right thing to do. Should he pretend he was not involved and hope Luke doesn’t remember? Or should he go to the police?
Other titles in the ORCA SOUNDINGS series
Bull Rider by Marilyn Halvorson
Death Wind by William Bell
Fastback Beach
by Shirlee Smith Matheson
The Hemingway Tradition
by Kristin Butcher
Hit Squad by James Heneghan
Kicked Out by Beth Goobie
No Problem by Dayle Campbell Gaetz
One More Step by Sheree Fitch
Overdrive by Eric Walters
Refuge Cove by Lesley Choyce
Sticks and Stones by Beth Goobie
Thunderbowl by Lesley Choyce
Tough Trails by Irene Morck
The Trouble With Liberty
by Kristin Butcher
Truth by Tanya Lloyd Kyi
Who Owns Kelly Paddik? by Beth Goobie
Zee’s Way by Kristin Butcher
Blue Moon Page 5