Camp Club Girls Get a Clue!

by Renae Brumbaugh

  After the Camp Club Girls chatted a few more minutes, McKenzie agreed to seriously reconsider the queen contest. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  As she logged out of the chat room, she turned to Bailey. “I almost forgot the pictures I took with my cell phone. Let’s put them on the computer and see if we find a clue.”

  McKenzie loaded the pictures onto the computer, magnifying each picture one at a time. With their heads together, the girls studied them, hoping to see something that looked out of place. McKenzie’s eyes grew tired staring at the screen, and she was almost ready to give up when something caught her eye.

  “Look.” McKenzie touched her finger to the screen, pointing out a yellow object on the ground. “What is that?”

  Bailey peered closer. “I can’t tell. Is it a wrapper or something?”

  “I’m not sure,” McKenzie said. “It’s too late to check it out now, but maybe we can go back to the creek tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully it’s not paper and won’t blow away.”

  After scanning the remaining pictures, the girls saw nothing else that looked unusual. McKenzie wondered what detectives looked for. She hoped she didn’t miss a clue that was right in front of her eyes.

  McKenzie stretched her arms above her head and yawned. “Let’s be done for the night. Okay?”

  McKenzie logged off the computer and stepped out of the office. When she saw the rodeo outfit draped over a chair, she felt a sudden urge to try it on. Maybe Emma and the Camp Club Girls were right. A spark of excitement began to form deep inside her.

  Minutes later, the girls were in their room. Bailey flung herself onto her bunk, hiding her face in her pillow.

  “Tell me when you’re ready.” Bailey’s voice sounded muffled. “I don’t want to look until I see the whole package.”

  McKenzie changed out of her clothes and slipped into the new black jeans and shimmering green blouse. She added her new black cowboy hat and boots then finished off the outfit with a matching black belt with a large silver buckle.

  “Ta-da!” McKenzie posed with one hand on her hips.

  Bailey pulled her face from her pillow and gasped. Then her lip trembled as she stared at McKenzie.

  “What’s the matter?” McKenzie asked as she glanced down at her outfit. “Do I look stupid?”

  Bailey turned away and said nothing. Without looking at McKenzie, she finally answered, “It’s not fair.”

  McKenzie didn’t understand. “What’s not fair?”

  “You don’t even want to be queen and I do, but I can’t because I don’t live here.” Bailey’s voice cracked as she spoke.

  For a minute, McKenzie didn’t know what to say. Maybe she should drop out of the competition after all. The last thing she wanted to do was to hurt Bailey’s feelings.

  But as soon as the thought went through her mind, she knew she couldn’t do that. She had already promised her mom, and after talking with the Camp Club Girls, she had decided to go ahead with the competition as planned.

  Now that McKenzie knew Bailey’s true feelings, she needed to figure out a way to include her younger friend.

  McKenzie glanced in the mirror over the dresser at her shoulder-length auburn curls flowing beneath the cowboy hat and wondered how she should wear it for the contest—a low ponytail maybe, or she could just let it hang loose.

  She frowned as she rubbed her cheeks, wishing she could simply rub away the sprinkling of freckles across her nose. With a sigh she turned to Bailey. “I might get through this queen thing after all, that is if you’ll help me with my hair and makeup. Mom got me a kit and said I could wear a little but only for the contest. But you’re better at doing hair and makeup than I am. Would you help me with it?”

  Bailey sniffed and turned around. Her eyes were red. “I guess I could do that. Everything has to look just right, you know. You can borrow my nail polish, too. It matches your top perfectly.” Bailey tried to smile as she held out her neatly painted green fingernails.

  The girls said little as they changed into their pajamas and slipped into their bunks. McKenzie heard a coyote howl outside and Buckeye barked an answer, but she was so tired the howling didn’t bother her. Before she could finish her prayers, she had fallen asleep.

  McKenzie didn’t wake up until she smelled blueberry muffins baking the next morning. Within minutes, both girls were dressed and sitting at the kitchen table. McKenzie had just finished her third muffin when the first of the campers arrived for the day.

  McKenzie and Bailey hurried outside to meet them as a woman in a van dropped off three kids. All of them were rowdier than usual.

  “My older brother’s girlfriend saw the ghost rider last night,” one young boy exclaimed to his friend.

  “Your brother’s just making it up,” another boy argued.

  A girl who looked about Bailey’s age said, “No sir. My grandpa says the ghost rider is back. Several people saw him riding around last night. Kind of like a ghost—at dusk.” The girl made a high-pitched, eerie ghost sound.

  McKenzie and Bailey exchanged glances.

  Did several people really see the ghost rider? McKenzie wondered. She thought it was just a story someone had cooked up years ago.

  The girls had little time to listen to the story. After the campers had all arrived, McKenzie gathered her group and Bailey went off with her group. She was learning fast under Emma’s teaching. Since arriving at Sunshine Stables, she had her horse making tighter turns around the barrels, and she had also improved on her time.

  After Kids’ Camp, McKenzie worked diligently with Sahara. They ran through the course several times as she worked on perfecting her turns. After turning around the third and last barrel, she squeezed her calves together, urging her horse faster and faster. Emma said she was improving every day, but McKenzie wasn’t sure. She hoped she placed higher in the standings than she had the previous year.

  McKenzie practiced until a pickup pulled into the driveway next to the arena. She rode over to the fence, watching Maggie Preston climb out and stride toward Emma.

  “Looks like you’re keeping busy training your girls,” Maggie said as she flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Honestly, Emma, I don’t know how you can concentrate with all the commotion going on around here. I would be a basket case if my prize horse was stolen.”

  “I figure I have to keep busy. I just can’t sit and worry, or I’d go nuts,” Emma explained. “I have faith that God will return Diamond Girl to me. If I didn’t have faith, I could never get through this.”

  Maggie shook her head and scoffed. “You need a little more than faith, Emma. It sounds to me like you need a little luck on your side. Has the sheriff found anything yet?”

  “He’s working on it, but so far there’s not much to go on,” Emma said dismally, ignoring Maggie’s comment.

  “It’s such a shame. Unless the sheriff finds your horse soon, you’ll have to drop out of the competition, and I would sure hate to see that happen. Let’s see, you’ve brought home the first-place trophy for three years now, right?” Maggie said as she stared intently at Emma.

  “Just barely,” Emma said with a smile. “You were only a fraction of a second behind me, remember?”

  “How could I forget?” Maggie mumbled as she pulled her ringing cell phone from its case.

  Seconds later Maggie excused herself and headed back to her pickup. She was needed back at the stables, she said.

  Emma turned to the girls and said they had worked enough for one day, so they watered the horses and turned them into the corral.

  By the time they finished, a few clouds had rolled in, bringing a cool breeze with them. McKenzie suggested that she and Bailey walk to the spot in the back pasture where they had found the horseshoe earlier.

  “Hopefully that yellow thing we saw in the picture is still there,” McKenzie said after stopping at the house for a couple of popsicles.

  “We definitely need a clue to solve this mystery, that’s for sure.” Bailey licked a grape
popsicle. Her lips and tongue turned purple. “We don’t have much to go on yet.”

  “Just the horseshoe,” McKenzie said, “and the yellow thingy on the ground.”

  “Don’t forget the funny guy we saw yesterday on that gorgeous horse. That could be a clue. Maybe.”

  “I guess there are a few more possible clues than I thought. It would help if we could figure out if any of them are connected.” McKenzie dropped a piece of strawberry popsicle on her white T-shirt. When she tried to wipe it off, the red stain grew bigger.

  The fence by the creek was over a mile away, and by the time the girls reached it, sweat was dripping down McKenzie’s neck. She cupped the cool water and splashed her face and arms. While Bailey dipped her arms in the creek, McKenzie walked to the fence. Hopefully the yellow object they had seen in the photo hadn’t blown away.

  McKenzie stared at the ground as she walked but soon stopped and turned to her friend. “Bailey, the yellow thing is still here.”

  Scurrying the last few steps, McKenzie knelt and grabbed the piece of yellow plastic. She turned it over in her hand as Bailey came up behind her.

  “What is it?” Bailey asked.

  McKenzie looked up at Bailey, whose bangs were plastered to her head with sweat. “It’s a clip used to fix a barbed-wire fence.”

  McKenzie stood and examined the fence beside her. Farmers and ranchers used these kinds of clips all the time. She looked up and down the fence row and saw clips on every post, securing the wire to the post. All of the other clips had faded from the sun, but the one she held in her hand was shiny and new. She looked at the post directly in front of her. All of the clips on that post looked brand-new, too.

  “I think I know how Diamond Girl got out. Someone has recently fixed this fence. I can tell because this post has all new clips,” McKenzie explained to Bailey. “The horse thief or thieves took down this stretch of fence that crosses the shallow part of the creek. After they took Diamond Girl through the opening, they fixed the fence.”

  Bailey’s eyes lit up. “That’s why there are no tracks. The thief led Diamond Girl up the creek.”

  McKenzie nodded. “Right. The thief struggled with Diamond Girl on the rocks in the creek. That made her lose her horseshoe back there.”

  “I think our detective work is paying off,” Bailey said excitedly. “It’s a good thing you took those pictures. Otherwise we never would have seen that clip on the ground.”

  McKenzie’s heart beat faster as a sudden thought came to her. Someone had fixed Emma’s fence, but who? Was it one of her workers? If so, did that mean someone at Sunshine Stables had stolen Diamond Girl?

  McKenzie swallowed as she thought about it. All of Emma’s employees were also her friends and surely none of them would steal Diamond Girl—would they?

  Danger Nearby!

  “Do you really think someone at Sunshine Stables stole Diamond Girl?” Bailey asked after McKenzie explained her idea.

  “I don’t want to believe that,” McKenzie said firmly. “Everyone there loves Emma and Diamond Girl too much. At least I hope they do.”

  The thought that the thief might be someone McKenzie knew made her sick to her stomach. She had known most of Emma’s workers for several years, except for Derek. Surely none of them would steal Emma’s prize horse. But she knew she couldn’t overlook this possible clue if they wanted to find Diamond Girl.

  “Didn’t Derek say he wanted to open his own stable someday? He said he needed a lot of money. You don’t think he’d—” Bailey stopped abruptly.

  “No. Derek would never steal Diamond Girl,” McKenzie said as convincingly as she could. But she had also only known Derek for a couple of months. McKenzie shook her head as she brushed the thought from her mind.

  “What are we going to do?” Bailey asked.

  “I don’t know. I know it’s wrong to accuse someone of a crime when we can’t prove it, but this sure looks suspicious. I think we need to tell Emma about it.” McKenzie headed up the bank toward home.

  “Too bad Elizabeth’s not here,” Bailey said. “She would know what to do.”

  Besides being the oldest, Elizabeth knew her Bible much better than McKenzie did. When McKenzie read her Bible, she often didn’t understand what God was saying. Elizabeth, however, always seemed to know what the scripture meant.

  McKenzie sighed. “Maybe we should e-mail Elizabeth when we get back. We can tell Emma what we’ve found later.”

  McKenzie gazed across the pasture to Sunshine Stables in the distance. She wished they had ridden horses. Not only were her legs tired, but the breeze from earlier had died. A timber ran along one edge of the pasture, stretching all the way to the stables. Though walking through the trees was a longer route home, at least it was shade. So she made a quick decision.

  McKenzie looked at Bailey’s red, sweaty face and said, “Let’s go to the woods and cool off a little. Then we’ll walk home through the trees.”

  Bailey eagerly agreed and in a few minutes the girls stepped into the cool shade of the timber, slumping onto a fallen log.

  McKenzie laid back on the rough bark and closed her eyes. She breathed the fresh smell of grass and wildflowers and listened to the rustle of the leaves overhead. She heard the crackling sounds of rabbits and squirrels scurrying over dried twigs and grass.

  The air in the timber was so still she started to doze. Then she was startled by a loud voice and the heavy clomping footsteps crunching through the brush.

  McKenzie sat up and peered through the overgrown brush. Across the fence, she saw a horse and rider going through the timber. As the pair drew nearer, the horse whinnied softly.

  McKenzie recognized the rider as the young man she and Bailey had seen the day before. At least McKenzie thought it was the same man. Today he wore a black cowboy hat pulled down low over his forehead, and though the day was hot, he wore a dark brown, long-sleeved shirt. His collar was pulled up to his chin, so it was hard to see his face. He was definitely riding the same horse, but he seemed to have more control of her.

  Bailey whispered into McKenzie’s ear, “Why is he riding out here?”

  McKenzie turned to her friend. “I don’t know. This is a weird place to learn to ride. I wonder if Maggie knows he’s out here. I’d think she’d want her new riders to stay on open land, not in timber.”

  McKenzie wanted to call out to the man, but then she remembered how he had treated them. She was afraid he’d get angry again, so she decided to keep quiet. Slipping to the ground as quietly as she could, she motioned for Bailey to do the same. From behind bushes, the girls peered at the man on the spotted horse.

  Again McKenzie thought there was something familiar about that horse. Why couldn’t she figure out where she had seen it before?

  The crunching twigs and dried leaves beneath the horse’s hooves echoed through the timber. Slowly the man guided the horse around stumps and fallen logs, staring at the ground, first one side and then the other.

  He acted as if he’d dropped something and was looking for it. He continued searching the ground but finally gave up. With a flick of the reins, he disappeared through the trees.

  McKenzie stood and brushed the dirt from the knees of her jeans. “I wonder who that guy is.” She picked a bramble off her shirt. “I think it’s the same guy we saw before, but I’m not sure.”

  Bailey nodded. “But it’s definitely the same horse.”

  “That horse is one of a kind, that’s for sure,” McKenzie said as she glanced at her watch. Chore time had probably already started, but if they hurried they would get there in time to help with most of the jobs. The girls started back toward Sunshine Stables, hurrying through the trees, dodging bushes and lowhanging branches.

  As they hurried single file through the woods, Bailey lagged behind. “Hey, McKenzie, wait up,” she called through jagged breaths. “I found something.” McKenzie turned and went to Bailey’s side. The younger girl took a deep breath and handed McKenzie a piece of paper.

&nbs
p; McKenzie looked at the words scrawled across it, “Willow Ridge Horse Therapy Ranch. 555-9814.”

  “I wonder if this was what that guy lost,” McKenzie said as she studied the handwriting.

  McKenzie had never heard of Willow Ridge Horse Therapy

  Ranch. In fact, she didn’t know of a horse therapy farm around here. She stuffed the paper in her jeans and continued through the timber. Soon they arrived at Sunshine Stables. The stable hands had just begun chores, so the girls weren’t late after all.

  They rinsed their horses in the wash area, and McKenzie let the cold water splash her arms and face. Usually washing the horses wasn’t her favorite part of grooming, but today she enjoyed the job. The cool spray of water felt good on her sweaty skin. She didn’t care that she was nearly soaked when they finished.

  When the chores were finally done, the girls changed into dry shorts and T-shirts and settled in the porch swing.

  McKenzie pushed her toes against the wooden floor, setting the swing in motion. The heavy chain hanging from the ceiling creaked with each sway. Cicadas sang their shrill song in the nearby trees.

  McKenzie leaned her head back remembering the stories the young campers had told that morning. Several of them knew people who had seen the ghost rider recently.

  “I wonder if the ghost rider really has returned.” McKenzie tucked one leg beneath her.

  “Lots of people seem to think so.” Bailey slapped a mosquito on her leg.

  “I think it’s funny that no one has seen this ghost rider for years. Now, all of a sudden he shows up again, right after Diamond Girl disappears. Don’t you think it’s weird?”

  McKenzie looked skeptically at Bailey.

  Bailey nodded. “Yeah, I guess it is. It’s all a part of the mystery.”

  McKenzie thought about Bailey’s words. Maybe the ghost rider was a part of Diamond Girl’s disappearance. It seemed more than coincidence that the mysterious rider had shown up this week. Did he know something about the horse? McKenzie was still wondering about that when Emma called them in for supper.

  While they ate, McKenzie told Emma what the campers had told them that morning. “Do you think the ghost rider could be back?”