Carole’s and Lisa’s faces fell, but San Antonio Sal gave Stevie a big wink.
“That’s okay, Stevie. I understand. I think you’ve got something to prove tomorrow, and with the help of your friends here, you’ll still have the opportunity to prove it.”
Sal turned to Carole and Lisa. “Okay, girls. My trailer’s parked beneath the west grandstand. After you finish your lunch, come on down there and we’ll get to work. By tomorrow afternoon you two will be real live rodeo clowns!”
“WHY, HELLO THERE, Stevie,” Pete Parsons called as Stevie walked into the cool dimness of the Rocking S stable. “I thought you were done riding for the day.”
She looked around. Pete sat on a bale of hay, twirling a small lasso in a crazy-looking circle.
Stevie smiled and shook her head. “No, Pete, I’m nowhere near done for the day. In fact, I think I probably should have skipped lunch and just stayed on Tumbleweed.”
Pete effortlessly spun the lasso out in a wide figure eight. “How so? Did you get so tired of driving that old Conestoga wagon that now you’re hankering to spend all day in the saddle?”
“No. It’s a lot more serious than that.”
“What do you mean?” Pete quit spinning the rope and looked at her.
Stevie told him the story of Gabriel and his superior attitude and how he thought he was a much better rider than she was and how they had a bet going to settle it once and for all.
“You know, I wondered if that boy wasn’t acting a little too big for his britches when he first came in here.” Pete frowned and stroked his thick black mustache. “But I watched you on Tumbleweed. You’re a good enough rider to beat him.”
“I know I can beat him in the quarter-mile race and the barrel racing,” said Stevie. “But I have my doubts about those other events.”
“Oh, you’re probably just a little rusty. It’ll all come back to you when the chutes open.”
Stevie shook her head. “No, Pete, you don’t understand. I only learned how to pole bend this morning, and I’ve never roped a calf in a rodeo or wrestled a goat in my life!”
Pete’s brown eyes widened. “You’ve never roped any calves? Nor wrestled one goat in your entire life?” He moved the piece of straw he was chewing from one corner of his mouth to the other and frowned at Stevie.
“I’ve never roped in a competition, and I haven’t done any roping at all in a while,” Stevie answered honestly.
“Well,” he said, gathering up his rope and unfolding himself from the bale of hay, “that’s a horse of a different color. I guess we’d better get busy. You need some emergency rodeo training, and you need it pronto!”
“WOW!” CAROLE BREATHED as she and Lisa stepped inside San Antonio Sal’s trailer. “This is the most fabulous place I’ve ever seen!”
The girls looked around the small, colorful room. Every inch was covered with clown equipment. The floor was lined with all sorts of purple and green wigs on stands, and boxes overflowed with polka-dot parasols, water-squirting flowers, and rubber chickens. A large, brightly lit mirror hung on one wall between two clothes racks, where baggy, oversized pants dangled next to sequined vests and crazy tie-dyed blouses.
Lisa blinked at the bright, glittery colors. “I’ve never seen so many spangles and sparkles and sequins in my life!”
“Well, it ain’t much, but it’s home.” San Antonio Sal chuckled. “Y’all sit down here and we’ll get to work.”
The girls sat down in front of the mirror. Sal pulled out one huge makeup kit full of greasepaint and charcoal pencils, then another one with fake noses and floppy false ears and fuzzy stick-on eyebrows.
“Let’s invent your personalities first,” she said, uncapping a tube of clear face cream. “Then you’ll know what kind of clown to be.”
“What do you mean?” Carole asked.
“Well, if you draw on a sad face, then your clown moves are going to be slower and your body language will be more droopy.” Sal squirted out some cream for Lisa. “If you put on a goofy face, then you’ll clown in a looser, less controlled way.”
“Oh, I think I’ll be goofy,” giggled Lisa, rubbing the cream onto her face. “I’d never get the chance to do that at home.”
“What if you just want to be happy?” Carole asked Sal.
“Happy’s probably the best face to put on,” Sal said. “That way you can be anything—mad, sad, goofy—according to what goes on in the ring.”
“What are you?” asked Lisa.
“I’m always happy,” answered Sal. “Texarkana Cindy’s usually goofy, while Texarkana Ruth’s usually mad. It works out pretty well for us in the ring.”
“Wow.” Lisa looked at all the tubes of greasepaint scattered in front of Sal’s mirror. “There are so many possibilities.”
Sal laughed. “That’s what makes clowning such a wonderful life. Every day you can be somebody different, and every day you get to make people laugh. Sometimes you even get to save a cowboy’s life.” She rummaged through a drawer under the table and pulled out a book. “Here’s an album of clown face designs. Look through there and maybe you can get some ideas.”
Carole giggled as she and Lisa turned the pages of the clown book. “I wonder if Stevie’s having this much fun,” she whispered.
“TWIRL, TWIRL, TWIRL, TWIRL, throw!” Stevie said to herself as she swung the lasso. She was practicing her cattle roping at a target Pete had rigged up for her—a plastic calf’s head stuck in a bale of hay. She swung the lasso one final time, then let it go. The loop soared through the air, only to fall harmlessly to the ground a foot away from the plastic head.
“Darn!” she said, dismounting for the twentieth time. “This isn’t working and I’m doing everything just like I’m supposed to!”
Disgustedly she re-coiled the lasso and walked back to Tumbleweed. There was a sympathetic look in the horse’s eyes, as if he wished he could do something to help her. She rubbed his neck. “Maybe we should take a break,” she said. “My right arm feels like it’s on fire from all this roping.”
She grabbed Tumbleweed’s reins and led him to a tall cottonwood tree that grew at one end of the corral. For the past three hours she had practiced what Pete had shown her—everything from tightening the noose of a rope to fit over a calf’s head to learning how to lean low in the saddle before she started to tackle a goat. As nearly as she could tell, the only progress she had made was to irritate her aching hands and make her rear end even sorer than it had been when she was driving the wagon.
“I don’t know, Tumbleweed,” she said softly as the sturdy little horse took long swallows of water from the trough. “I’ve done this before, but I’m really out of practice. This time I might have seriously overestimated my talents as a cowgirl.”
“Hi!” said a familiar voice behind her. She knew without looking that it was Gabriel.
“Hi,” she answered, quickly rearranging her expression from dismay into confidence. She grinned broadly. “How’s it going?”
“Great,” he said, leaning against the top rail of the fence. He’d changed into a shirt that made his eyes look even bluer than they normally did. He nodded at the plastic calf’s head protruding from the bale of hay and smiled. “Need a little practice, huh?”
Stevie shrugged. “I was just testing out Tumbleweed. I’m in great shape.”
“I see,” said Gabriel. He dangled one end of the rope he held in his hands and looked at the ground. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this bet we’ve got going.”
“Oh?” Stevie’s heart began to beat faster. Maybe Gabriel was about to chicken out.
“Yeah. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it all day.”
Stevie smiled to herself. He was trying to find a way to weasel out of it! Maybe there was a chance they could forget this whole thing and she could get back to having some fun with Lisa and Carole. “And?” she asked hopefully.
“And I’ve just decided what I’m going to make you do when I win!” he announced gleefully.
“When you win?” she repeated as she felt her face heat up with both anger and disappointment.
“Yeah. When I win.” He looked at her and smiled. “It’s really going to be great! Everybody’s going to love it!”
“Oh, really? What is it?” Stevie asked in spite of herself.
“Are you kidding?” He laughed and tilted his hat back on his head. “Do you honestly think I’d tell you before-hand? Forget it! That’s for me to know and you to find out!”
“Well, before you start enjoying your little dare too much, you’d better start worrying about what I’m going to make you do when I win,” retorted Stevie quickly. “It’ll go down in the annals of rodeo history! And I’m not telling you, either!”
“Fine!” said Gabriel.
“Fine!” Stevie cried back, watching with clenched fists as he slung his rope over his shoulder and sauntered off toward the stable. She snorted. Gabriel was undoubtedly the most impossible person she’d ever met, and now she was involved in a bet with him she couldn’t get out of!
“Come on, Tumbleweed,” she said, leading the horse back to the plastic calf head after Gabriel was out of sight. “Now not only do we have to win, we have to think up some totally disgusting thing for him to do!” She looked at the horse and gave a grim smile. “But we’ll do it, even if we have to practice all night!”
IN THE RODEO arena, three clowns were rolling out a dented barrel. One clown was tall, with bright red hair and a sequined vest. The other two were shorter. One wore a baggy black suit and a derby along with a red nose and candy-striped socks, while the other sported a frizzy green wig with pointed Martian ears and an old-timey long-sleeved purple bathing suit.
“I must say, y’all look just as good as the Texarkana Twins,” Sal laughed as Lisa and Carole helped her maneuver the barrel out into the arena.
“Well, I feel pretty happy.” Carole laughed and pulled up one of her striped socks.
“And I certainly feel goofy.” Lisa adjusted the green wig on her head.
“Great. Just keep those feelings in mind while I show you our routines. That way everything will go perfectly.”
Sal stood the barrel up on one end. It was lightweight but deep enough for a person to squeeze inside. “Let me give you a brief course in rodeo clowning. If you’ve ever noticed before, rodeo clowns usually work in teams of three. We have a bullfighter, a point clown, and a barrel man. The bullfighter is a clown who jumps around and tries to distract the bull after the rider’s off his back. You have to be nimble and quick to be a bullfighter.”
“And brave, too,” added Carole.
“Absolutely,” Sal agreed. She thumped the barrel. “The barrel man stays inside here and watches the bullfighter work. If the bullfighter is having trouble with a bull, he leads him over to the barrel man, who stands up inside the barrel and draws the bull over to him. Then the barrel man scrunches down inside in case the bull decides the barrel would make good target practice for his horns.” Sal laughed and pointed to a large dent on one side of her barrel. “That was put there by a bull named Percy who just didn’t like the color of my wig one day.”
“What does the point clown do?” asked Lisa.
“The point clown coordinates everybody else. If she sees the bullfighter needs help, she goes there; if the barrel man’s getting tossed around too much, she helps out there. If everything’s going okay, the point clown entertains the audience.”
“That sounds like the toughest job of all,” said Carole.
“Oh, they’re all tough in their own ways, but they’re also a lot of fun.” Sal noticed Lisa’s wary expression. “Anyway, we’ll be working the junior events, so we won’t have any broncs or bulls to worry about. Just calves and goats.” She laughed. “They’re not real strong, but they can be slippery little devils.”
She banged on the barrel. “Okay. Who wants to be the barrel man? Or should I say barrel girl?”
Lisa shrugged. “I’ll give it a try.”
“Great,” Sal said. “Hop right in there and Carole and I will roll you around the arena. We can work on our routines as we go along.”
Lisa squirmed down into the barrel.
“Are you ready?” said Sal.
“Ready!” called Lisa.
“Okay, then, clowns. Let’s go!”
AS THE PURPLE evening shadows grew long over the corral, Stevie’s lasso finally fell exactly over the calf’s head.
“All right!” she cried as she wearily climbed off Tumbleweed. “After about a hundred throws, I finally got him!” She sighed as she loosened the rope from the plastic head. It was getting too dark to practice anymore, and she knew she was still far from good.
“Okay,” she said to herself. “I may not win the calf roping, but if I’m lucky, at least I won’t totally disgrace myself.” She re-coiled the rope, then started to walk Tumbleweed back to the barn. The setting sun turned the filmy clouds a brilliant shade of orange.
“I wonder if Phil is having as pretty a sunset as we are?” Stevie asked aloud as Tumbleweed clopped along behind her. “I wonder if he’s toasting marshmallows around a campfire or strumming a guitar or skipping rocks across a river?” She felt a sharp pang in her stomach as she imagined Phil with a new girl by his side. She would enjoy doing all the things Phil liked to do, and they would be sitting side by side every day, telling each other jokes, holding hands when the river was calm and paddling furiously through the rapids together, all the while gazing into each other’s eyes.
“And here I am, alone in the middle of a dusty corral, throwing a rope around a plastic calf head,” Stevie moaned. “I’m dirty and I’m sore and now I’ll probably lose the rodeo tomorrow and then I’ll have to do some stupid, humiliating thing that Gabriel dreamed up!
“Oh, Tumbleweed,” she sighed, reaching up to rub the horse behind one of his soft ears. “How do I get into such messes?”
“THIS IS THE first soft thing we’ve sat on in over a week!” Lisa exclaimed, nestling into the old movie theater seat. “It almost seems like we’re back in civilization again.”
“I know,” Carole said. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“It sure does.” Lisa laughed. “Particularly after spending most of the afternoon rolling around in a barrel. I feel like I’ve been launched into outer space!”
The girls were attending, along with all the other pioneers, a prerodeo talent show put on by the people of Clinchport. An old theater on the town square had been made into an auditorium, and the seats were filling up fast. When the houselights blinked three times, everyone realized the show was about to start.
“But you’ve got to admit clowning was fun,” Carole said. “I mean, putting on all that crazy makeup and then learning how to do those tricks with the horses. This was one of the neatest days I’ve ever had!”
Lisa and Carole giggled, then turned to Stevie. “How did your day go, Stevie?” Lisa asked. “We saw you practicing hard for the goat wrestling when we went to get Sal’s bull barrel.”
“Huh?” Stevie turned her gaze away from the hay bales that decorated each corner of the old stage and looked at her friends.
“I said, how did your day go?” Lisa repeated.
“Oh, great.” Stevie rubbed her right shoulder as if it were sore. “After I practiced what San Antonio Sal told me about pole bending, Pete from the stable helped me with the other events. I worked on my dismounts in goat wrestling for most of the afternoon. Then I finished up by perfecting my lasso release for calf roping.”
“Gosh, Stevie,” said Carole. “That sounds like something my dad would dream up for his new Marine recruits. You should have joined us and had some fun learning how to clown.”
“Yeah.” Lisa looked at Stevie with concern. “It doesn’t sound like you had nearly as much fun as we did.”
“Oh, I’ll have my fun tomorrow,” Stevie promised with a wicked grin, “when I win the rodeo and that creep Gabriel has to do the dare of my choice.” She frowned. “What do you t
hink of making him put on my old pioneer dress and do ‘women’s work’ for a day?”
Carole laughed. “For Gabriel, I think that would be a fate worse than death!”
“Hi, girls,” someone called. They looked toward the stage. Bouncing on the seat in front of them was Eileen, her blond ponytail flying in the air with every bounce.
“You’d better stop, Eileen,” Lisa warned. “You’re going to break that seat.”
“You can’t make me!” retorted Eileen. “Nobody can make me do anything!”
“Probably not,” Carole agreed with a sigh. She turned back to Stevie and Lisa. “Anyway, Stevie, guess what we learned to do with the horses today—”
“I know a secret!” Eileen blurted out in a singsongy voice.
Stevie and Lisa ignored her as Carole told about the fun they’d had learning Sal’s fall-asleep-on-your-horse routine.
“I said, I know a secret!” Eileen jumped harder on the seat and singsonged even more loudly.
“Okay, Eileen.” Stevie frowned at her. “So you know a secret. Good for you.”
“No, I know a really big secret!” Eileen insisted. “One that you probably would just love to know yourself!”
Just as Stevie was about to tell Eileen to sit down and be quiet, the houselights dimmed. “Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice announced over a loudspeaker. “The people of Clinchport proudly present the Clinchport High School Drill Team!”
The red velvet curtains opened. Three rows of high-school girls marched onto the stage. Some carried white rifles on their shoulders, while others waved American flags. They marched around the stage in a close-order drill to a recording of “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Everyone began to clap in time to the music, and for once Eileen had to be quiet.
Three hours later the talent show was over and the girls slowly walked back to their wagon.
“That was fun, wasn’t it?” said Lisa. “Those cowboys who yodeled were terrific.”
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