The Nerviest Girl in the World

by Melissa Wiley

  Mr. Corrigan shouted, “Now!” and Jack pulled the trigger on his pretend gun. It popped even louder than I was expecting and a big cloud of smoke puffed out of the barrel. “One, two!” called Mr. Corrigan, and Ike jerked back like he’d been hit, and then he dropped his gun, clutched his chest, moaning, and slumped over, emitting a fearful death gurgle.

  “What a ham,” muttered the camera operator.

  “It’ll play well,” Mr. Corrigan said, grinning beneath his mustache. “Kid’s giving our Jack a run for his money.”

  I’d been right about the gun pops spooking Dinah. She reared her head back and rolled her eyes, but I kept a tight hold on the reins and she stayed put.

  At least—until the real action began.

  Jack-the-hero had shot about half the bad-guy cowboys (including all three of my brothers), and his trusty deputy, Fred, had shot most of the others when all of a sudden another shot rang out, more distant but somehow more piercing than the others. Its crack startled Dinah something fierce. She reared up on her hind legs and almost dumped me to the ground. I clung tight, burying my fists in her mane, clutching the reins as hard as I could.

  “Easy, girl, easy,” I yelped, aiming for her ears but mostly talking straight into her neck. For a second all I could see was horsehair, but around me I heard a commotion of shouts and cries.

  “Where’d it come from?” someone yelled. “Durn near took the skin off my nose!”

  “Don’t shoot!” screeched another voice. And yet another voice was hollering a stream of words that would make my mama wash out my ears if she knew I’d heard them—even worse than durn.

  Suddenly Mr. Corrigan’s voice bellowed out through the megaphone: “HOLD YOUR FIRE, YOU BLOOMING IDIOT! WE’RE FILMING A MOVING PICTURE!”

  Well, that did it. The gunshots, the commotion, the megaphone blast echoing off the bluff—Dinah had had enough. She reared up again and this time my legs lost their hold. My lower half went flying free and when she came back down on her front hooves, both my legs wound up dangling on one side, free of the saddle and stirrups. My fists were still clenched in her mane and I was hanging there like a fish on a hook. The moment her hooves touched the ground, she tore off at a gallop with me hanging on for dear life.

  I think there was a lot more shouting but I couldn’t hear much of anything over the pounding in my ears. My heart was hammering like a woodpecker. Dinah raced at full gallop, flying over tumbleweeds and sage bushes, with me flailing off to one side of her.

  I was pretty scared, I’m not ashamed to admit. I knew how to fall off a horse—Papa had seen to that—but I didn’t much fancy the notion of being shot off one at this speed, like a pebble flying off a slingshot. I was pretty sure my bones weren’t as hard as pebbles.

  So I did the only thing I could do—I hung on tight and tried to get my right leg up onto Dinah’s back. It all happened a lot faster than I can tell it. I was too scared to speak, so I couldn’t whisper gentling words into Dinah’s pricked-back ears. I dug into either side of her neck with my elbows and hoped she’d get tired of running soon.

  My right foot smacked the top of a bush and I nearly flew the rest of the way off. But the motion seemed to check Dinah just a little. Her pace slowed a fraction and I managed to dig my toes into her flank. I shoved hard against my heel and felt myself shift upward just enough to get my foot around her side.

  As soon as my leg was over the side, I squeezed with all my might and wrenched myself up off Dinah’s neck. I clutched at the reins, almost dropping them as I unclenched my fingers from her mane. My palms were slick with sweat and at first the reins slid right through, which seemed to encourage Dinah into another burst of speed. But she was sweating too and I knew she was tiring. I yanked on the reins and finally found my voice.

  “EASY, girl!” I screeched, before remembering that a screech was the opposite of how you wanted to calm a horse. “Easy,” I repeated, softer this time, leaning close so she could feel my breath in her ear. Her eyes rolled back toward me. I felt her check just the tiniest bit.

  Gradually, gently, I increased pressure on the reins, murmuring sweet nothings to Dinah all the while. And ever so gradually she began to slow down from a gallop to a jog. I patted her neck and tugged a big harder.

  “Whoa, there,” I said, and finally she stopped, breathing hard and flicking her ears angrily. “Whoa.” My arms felt like noodles. I slumped down to rest my head on her neck. I could hear her heart pounding in rapid counterpoint to mine.

  “Durn,” I whispered into her mane, because nobody could hear me except my horse, and she wasn’t likely to wash my mouth out with soap for swearing.

  It was a good thing Dinah was so worn out, because such an almighty ruckus was made by my brothers and the rest of the actors thundering up on their own horses that my poor old girl almost took off running again. I held her tight, and I think she must have recognized the scent or sound of my brothers’ mounts, her stablemates. She made one little goatlike skitter and then stopped again, hanging her head, breathing hard.

  “Pearl!” roared Ike, tearing up beside us. He always could outride the rest. His fake mustache was dangling by one corner, half in his mouth.

  “Jiminy, Pearl. You all right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. It came out as a kind of squeak. My stomach was wheeling with jittery butterflies and my head didn’t feel too steady either. But I didn’t want to look like a baby, so I gulped a breath and sat up straight and said as breezily as I could, “Sure, I’m the bee’s knees.”

  Ike’s mouth dropped open and his mustache fell the rest of the way inside. He sputtered and spat it into his hand, flicking his tongue like a barn cat working up a hairball.

  “Well, I’ll be du—” he said, cutting off short. That did it. I burst out laughing just as the rest of the company came barreling to a halt beside us.

  Frank was an echo of Ike: “You all right, Pearl? Pearl, are you all right?” Bill didn’t say a word; he just looked me up and down, checking to make sure I had all my limbs, I guess, and then slumped on his horse with his face in his hands.

  I was surprised to see Mr. Corrigan was amongst the riders. He came up last, on the actor Jack’s horse. I blinked at him in surprise.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he murmured. “Here’s the little lady, sitting there just as cool as a cucumber. I gotta say, kiddie, you must be the nerviest girl in the world.”

  “Oh, no, I’m terrified of caterpillars,” I burst out before I knew I was going to say anything at all.

  There was a startled silence and then suddenly all of them were roaring with laughter. Ike shot me a rueful look. Dinah whipped her head around with a furious glare, as if to say, Can’t you see I’ve had enough?

  “Easy, girl,” I told her, hoping my voice didn’t sound as shaky as it felt. The nerviest girl in the world wouldn’t be shaky. I aimed for nonchalance. “What happened, anyway? Something spooked her awfully bad.”

  “We almost had us a real gunfight, is what,” said Ike. He still had mustache hairs stuck to his lips. “You know Mr. Galloway? Rancher over yonder?” He pointed off toward the east.

  “Yeah?”

  “The fool thought we were real horse thieves,” said Amos, the oldest cowboy in the Flying Q acting company. “Thought we were stealing Sanchez’s stock.”

  “I can’t blame him for misunderstanding what he saw, but coming in gun a-blazing—that’s the foolish part,” said Mr. Corrigan. “Even if you had been horse thieves, he might’ve shot one of the family, for all he knew.”

  “You mean some of those pops were real bullets?” I yelped. I looked from Ike to Bill to Frank, my mouth wide enough to swallow my own mustache if I’d had one. “You coulda been shot!”

  “And you could’ve broken your neck,” said Frank in kind of a pale voice. “Jiminy, Pearl. That’s the scaredest I’ve ever been in my life.”
r />   “That makes two of us,” said Mr. Corrigan.

  “That makes a posse of us,” said Ike. And then the most surprising thing of the whole day happened. My big bold brother began to cry. He tried to cover it up by acting like he was wiping sweat from his brow, but I know what I saw. As we rode slowly back toward Carter’s Bluff, I swear I saw him wipe tears from his eyes with his fake mustache.

  When we got back, the rest of the crew came rushing up to meet us.

  “The little girl’s all right?” asked the cameraman. He had his cap between his hands, mushed practically into a ball.

  “Sure!” I said, spurring Dinah forward a little. She nickered at me grumpily. She was done with speed for the day.

  The cameraman—his name was Mr. Gordon, but everyone called him Gordy—put a hand to his chest and breathed a huge sigh. “Thank all the saints and angels,” he said. “I’m that glad to know it. I’d never have forgiven myself if—”

  “What do you mean?” said Mr. Corrigan. “It was gunshots that spooked the horse. Nothing you did.”

  “I don’t mean that,” said Gordy, and his whole face turned the color of a ripe plum. He shot a sheepish look at the moving picture camera.

  “You don’t mean to say…,” began Mr. Corrigan, eyeing him shrewdly.

  “Pure instinct, I swear it,” said Gordy.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Bill, looking perplexed.

  “When the horse took off—” Gordy began, but he broke off, studying his feet.

  “You filmed it,” said Mr. Corrigan.

  Gordy squared his shoulders and met Mr. Corrigan’s eye. “That I did. And I understand if you want to sack me.”

  “Sack you? Why, man, I could kiss you!” Mr. Corrigan clapped him on the back, his eyes gleaming above a canyon-wide smile. “I mean”—and he turned back to me—“seeing as Pearl here came to no harm.”

  He dismounted his horse and turned to offer me a hand down from mine, but I was already sliding to the ground. I put a hand on the saddle knob in case my legs went to jelly. They felt a bit noodly but I kept to my feet.

  “You filmed me?” I asked, feeling suddenly very shy.

  “I did, lass,” said Gordy. “I didn’t think. I had my eye to the eyepiece and you were perfectly in frame. It was the most natural thing in the world to keep turning that crank.”

  “Do you think,” said Mr. Corrigan, shifting his feet like a nervous horse, “you got it?”

  Gordy grinned. “Oh, I got it, all right,” he said. “At least, I kept rolling as far as I could see her. We’ll have to see what it looks like. Might be nothing but a blur. That horse was running like the banshees were after her. And this little lass flapping like a rag doll in a gale.” He shuddered and ran a hand over his eyes.

  “How many minutes left on this reel?” asked Mr. Corrigan.

  Gordy shrugged. “About six, I’d hazard.”

  Mr. Corrigan stroked his mustache. “We’ll finish this story, then. But first I think we could all use a bit of dinner. Boys, water your horses and have some grub.”

  I felt a stab of guilt. The staggering discovery that the camera operator had recorded my perilous flight had completely driven my poor horse out of my head. Poor Dinah, standing there with her head low and sides still heaving.

  “I’ll see to her,” said Ike kindly.

  “No, I will,” said Frank. Bill was already reaching for the reins.

  “No, I’ll take care of her,” I said. “She’s my responsibility. Come on, girl.”

  I guided her to the water trough in the Sanchez pasture. Dinah rolled an eye to glare at me. I was probably going to have to walk the whole way home. But I didn’t mind. I figured maybe that would give my heart time to quit galloping. I wasn’t sure, anymore, whether it was racing because of the runaway or because Gordy had made a film of it.

  I couldn’t stay to watch them film the rest of the story. By the time I got Dinah back home, which took halfway to forever, as I’d predicted, I was late for my afternoon chores. Papa scolded me on my way to the stable, Mama scolded me on my way to the kitchen, and Grandma scolded me on my way to the pie shelf in the pantry. (But then she cut me a big piece of dried-apple pie.)

  Even the ostriches scolded me, when I finally made my way to their pen. Ostriches scold worse than all your parents and grandparents put together. The difference is, they’ll scold you just for being alive—it doesn’t particularly have much to do with your behavior. Unless you’re late with their feed, and then watch out.

  Today (since I really was late with their feed) I was prepared for their flappy, jabbery onslaught. I’d armed myself with a basketful of oranges. Not to throw at them, although sometimes the thought was tempting—just to shut them up.

  Ostriches love oranges and they’re so greedy they’ll just gulp them down whole. It’s the funniest thing you ever saw—a big round lump sliding slowly down the skinny stovepipe of an ostrich’s throat. Papa calls it a party trick; whenever we have visitors, he tucks a couple of oranges in his pocket on the way to the ostrich pen, because it’s so funny to watch folks gawk at the spectacle. You’d think the stupid birds would choke, but they’re way too stubborn for that. They’d never give you the satisfaction.

  I watched the orange lumps roll down the neck pipes and pondered my big adventure that day. Had Gordy really made a moving picture of me and my runaway horse?

  I couldn’t really imagine what it would look like. Never mind the pictures—I’d never even seen a play, unless you counted the Nativity play at Christmas. Not a real play at one of the San Diego playhouses. My parents went, now and then, and they’d even been to the big opera house with (so I’d heard) real red velvet curtains and plush seats. Mama said the opera was sublime, and Papa said it was about what you’d get if you put some fancy ladies’ gowns on our ostriches and watched them strut around, gabbling.

  “Except our birds could probably stay on key better,” he’d added.

  “Oh hush, you,” Mama had fussed. But she had laughed the way she always laughs when Papa pokes fun at something.

  I wandered back to the kitchen, where Mama and Grandma were both flying around getting supper together.

  “Can I go see the boys’ movie when it plays?” I asked. I made an abrupt decision not to mention my own spell in front of the camera.

  “Moo-vie?” asked Grandma, raising an eyebrow.

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s a nickname for moving pictures. Everyone says it.” I had a sudden rush of fear that movie was a naughty word like durn and I just didn’t know it. But Grandma rolled her eyes and went back to slicing tomatoes.

  “I’ll never understand the fad for shortening perfectly good words,” she said amiably. “Are you really so pressed for time that you can’t choke out two more syllables?”

  “Can’t say I’ve ever noticed Pearl running out of time for any amount of words,” teased Mama. I started to argue but remembered I was asking for something and had better be extra sweet.

  “Can I, though? Go to the moving picture show?” I pronounced the phrase as slowly and elegantly as I could. Grandma snorted and flicked a last tomato slice onto its platter.

  Mama sighed. “We’ll have to see, Pearl. I don’t know if those are fit places to take a child.”

  “Aw, Ike says it’s just a bunch of chairs in a storefront, Mama. They hang up a sheet or screen and project the picture onto it.” I didn’t have the faintest idea what any of that meant, but I figured it sounded harmless enough.

  “Hmm,” said Mama, crinkling her brow. I knew right away that meant I wasn’t going to get a yes out of her for now, and I didn’t want to hang around for a no.

  “I’d better get the table set,” I said, reaching for a stack of plates. Mama eyed me knowingly, but I scooted out of the kitchen before she could say anything. Best leave it alone for a while,
I decided. A watched egg never hatches, as Grandma says. (Which is silly, because I’ve watched eggs hatch loads of times.) I went slowly around the table, depositing a plate before each chair, trying to imagine what a moving picture would look like. Would a picture of my brothers really get up onto a screen somehow? Would they really be moving around up there, riding their horses across the stage?

  Would I?

  When my mother heard about the pretend shoot-out that turned into a real shoot-out, she about had a fit. I couldn’t tell who she was angrier at—the rancher with his hasty bullets or Mr. Corrigan for hiring my brothers in the first place. She even seemed a little mad at my brothers, although it wasn’t their fault the rancher got confused and fired before he took a proper look around him.

  “But, Ma—” Ike began, but she wasn’t in the mood for discussion.

  “Someone could have been killed,” she said, her lips thin and tight. “It’s the foolishest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “No argument there,” said Ike cheerfully. Bill shot him a warning glance. Mama just glared at him and stalked off to pound some bread dough until it cried for mercy.

  “Wish we hadn’t finished that reel this afternoon,” muttered Frank. “Then she’d have to let us go back.”

  “She can’t stop me, anyway,” said Bill. “I’m a grown man.”

  “You are not,” scoffed Frank. “You’re not of age for two more years.”

  “Nineteen is grown,” Bill argued. “Papa was nineteen when he married.”

  “Good lord,” said Ike. “Married. You?”

  “Aw, hold your horses,” said Bill. “I got no marrying plans anytime soon.”

  At any other time, I would have been absolutely riveted by this conversation—it had never occurred to me my brothers would one day marry and leave home, let alone that Bill was old enough to do it right this minute—but today all I could think of was what would happen when Mama found out about Dinah’s run.