Tennyson suggested that maybe she should’ve borrowed a tent from her neighbor. We all agreed, but none of us would’ve known how to put it up. They had misrepresented their camping acumen. They were more comfortable with malls.
A dog barked in the distance and it made me think of coyotes. I knew there were coyotes watching us. Did Tennyson not think of coyotes? And coyotes were probably the most innocuous animals in these woods at night.
The dog’s barks got louder and they were joined by the unmistakable sound of a horse.
“Exactly whose land are we on? Would it be someone who would confront trespassers?” My voice revealed my irritation and Tennyson looked a little hurt.
“The Whitmires’ ranch.”
“As in Henry Whitmire?”
“Who else? They own like a million acres out here. This is nowhere near their house, so they’ll never know.” She glanced at Sara and muttered under her breath, “And, voila…happiness ensues.”
ELEVEN
As if he’d been summoned, Henry appeared on the back of the horse, bearing down on us from the pasture. The horse was a bay, if my memory of American Girl fiction was correct. Strange how your brain remembers meaningless details when you’re stressed.
Henry slowed his horse and stopped right at our feet. From this angle, he looked a hundred feet tall. Tennyson gave him a look of utter self-satisfaction.
Henry’s black and white dog seemed interested in me. He came straight to me and licked my face. Henry’s gaze took in our impromptu campsite—Tennyson’s car, our sleeping bags, the open sacks of food, the dying fire, and the missing tent. I could tell he was trying hard not to smile, but the effort of it was playing at the corners of his perfect eyes.
“Huh,” he said. “You girls having a little campout tonight?” His voice sounded gentle enough to hide the biting sarcasm behind it, but there was no mistaking that he found this scene incredibly entertaining.
“Yeah, what’s it to you, Henry?” Tennyson said.
He chuckled a bit. “What’s it to me? Well, first of all, my dad got a call a minute ago that there was a fire out here, and one of our ranch hands was locking some gates and noticed a little red Nissan.”
He paused like he was waiting for Tennyson to defend herself, and then he shook his head slightly and continued.
“I kind of thought I might find you here and that the fire might belong to you, but I didn’t dream you’d be crazy enough to sleep out here on the ground with no tent and a bunch of food open all around you.”
His voice got louder as he tried to make the stupidity of this sink into Tennyson’s hormone-addled brain.
“You’re asking to be eaten,” he said. “If a bear doesn’t get you, a wolf might or a panther, or a skunk will make himself known in the middle of the night. And you know there’s a burn ban, right? You understand that means no fires, at all, anywhere, especially not right under our trees and next to our pasture where our expensive livestock is just trying to enjoy the evening?”
“Henry, you’re just feeling your oats,” Tennyson said. “The gate wasn’t locked and this looked like a nice, safe place to introduce Meg to camping in the mountains.”
She smiled her sweetest smile at him. “By the way, which wrangler turned us in?”
He nodded slowly and pushed his tongue into his cheek. “Is that what this is about? Tennyson, girl, if you’re looking for trouble, I can accommodate you.”
“Was it Dylan?”
Henry ignored her, but the tiniest grin touched his lips. “So when you got out of your car to unlatch the gate with the big W on it, you didn’t have some idea about where you might be?”
“We were all talking. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
He rolled his eyes and glanced at me when she said that.
“Well, Meg, what do you think about camping so far? Is it everything you’d hoped it would be, Pittsburgh?”
His voice dripped with mischief and it gave me butterflies when he said my name and gave me a nickname.
“Um, not so much. I’m freezing and I really thought camping involved more in the way of tents, and maybe little lanterns strung through tree branches. And possibly an air mattress and a nice cowboy cooking over the fire.”
Henry didn’t even try to hide the smile. His whole face lit up and he threw back his head and laughed. I stared at him wondering if he could really find me that funny or if he was actually laughing at me. I hadn’t seen anyone this cracked up in so long. It made me homesick. Before Wyatt died, we used to fake laugh this hard in our yard to make the neighbor kids think we were cool.
Henry stilled and took a breath. He glanced at his dog that had laid his head in my lap and gone to sleep, then he pulled on his reins and disappeared just outside the trees. He spoke quietly on his cell explaining to someone what we needed.
In a minute, he walked back through the trees and he seemed happy. He’d tied his horse up on a branch. He started picking up limbs and breaking them across his knee, then created a campfire three times bigger than the one we’d just been so proud of—the one that had started with an explosion and died quickly.
“I thought you said there was a burn ban,” Tennyson teased.
“It doesn’t apply to me,” he grumbled.
He lit the fire and got it going with no lighter fluid. The warmth was immediate.
“Okay, Miss Tennyson,” he said. “The fee for camping on our land is this—you and Taylor and Sara get off your butts, take my flashlight, and gather more firewood so we can keep this going.”
“No way,” Tennyson said. “It’s dangerous out there.”
“Not if you go that way.” Henry pointed toward the trees where he’d tied his horse. “You’ll be fine. And don’t come back until you each have an armload.”
“How come Meg gets out of this?” Sara said.
“’Cause she’s new,” he said. “She’ll help me put rocks around the fire to keep it contained.”
The girls complained as they walked into the woods. Henry sighed and sat down next to me.
“What about rocks?” I said.
“Nah, nobody puts rocks around a campfire,” he said. “You’ve put some kind of a spell on my dog, Meg.”
“I’ve always wanted a dog. What’s his name?”
“Butch—he’s part Border Collie and part Australian shepherd. Look at his eyes.”
I touched Butch’s head, and he grunted and opened his eyes—one was a shocking blue and one was dark brown. I smiled. Henry grinned and patted Butch.
“He’s a real ladies’ man. His mother is my sister’s dog, Claire. He’ll keep the snakes off you if you keep him near.”
I pushed Butch from my legs and jumped to my feet, scanning the ground around us. Henry reached up and took my hand. “I’m teasing you.” He pulled me back down next to him. “Butch won’t keep the snakes off you, but I will.”
“What kind of snakes are we talking about, Henry?”
“Mostly rattlers, so maybe you’ll hear them coming.”
“Great. That’s helpful. Tell me about your horse.”
“Truly…that’s her name. She’s a five-year-old quarter horse—a cutting horse. I use her when I’m working cattle. She’s a good girl—young and feisty—but she’s getting there. I’m usually not a big fan of mares because they’re temperamental, but Truly’s all heart.”
“I’ve never really been this close to a horse.”
I felt him staring at me. “Well, you’ve got a lot to learn up here. I’ll have to make sure you learn Cow so no one takes advantage of you. Know what that means?”
“Is it a joke? It feels like a joke.”
“Cow’s not a joke. It’s the language spoken by all these ranchers that have been here generation after generation punching cows.”
“Okay,” I said. “Can I have my first lesson now?”
A slow, easy grin spread across his face and eyes. Tennyson walked up and dumped an armload of wood at Henry’s feet. Without taking his
eyes off me, he said, “That’ll only last thirty minutes, Tenn. Get more.”
She left quietly, shooting me a glance over her shoulder that was full of meaning. I’d owe her for this.
“All right, Meg. First thing you need to know is that a man’s horse is only very slightly less important to him than his girl. And up here, there’s nothing worse than being afoot—nothing strikes more fear into our hearts.”
“But that’s Old West stuff. It’s not really relevant anymore, right?”
He shook his head and narrowed his eyes at me.
“The West hasn’t changed like the rest of the country.”
“Okay. Give me a Cow word.”
He thought for a minute, looking around at the parts of his ranch we could see. “Here’s one. See that back pasture where the cows are standing still?”
I leaned over him and squinted until I caught the outline of cattle. “I see it.”
“Those cows are asleep. That pasture’s called bed ground because that’s where they go at night.”
“Always the same place?”
“Depends on the season. But whatever field they pick is bed ground.”
All three girls returned with crazy looking branches and sticks, which they dropped on the pile Tennyson had started.
Butch heard something and his ears perked up. He whined until another horse appeared and stopped in the woods next to Truly. The cowboy could only be Dylan judging by how quickly Tennyson flipped her hair and stuck her chest out.
He raised his hand at us and then started untying bundles from behind his saddle. He seemed awfully glad for a little excitement out on the range. He tossed a large canvas sack to Henry and kept one for himself. Out of the sacks came tents that the guys set up quickly, without speaking.
Then Henry unrolled a huge bag and started filling it with the food that we had sitting around us. I jumped up and helped him, feeling weird that they were doing all this work for us. The other girls sat and watched. He sealed this bag tightly, wound a long rope around the mouth, threw the bag over a high tree branch, and then tied the end of the rope around the tree trunk.
He glanced at me and smiled. “Like my critter deterrent? If you need any food out of the bag, just untie the rope and lower the bag down.”
He picked up our pillows, shook them out, and put all four of them in the larger tent. Dylan untied two sleeping bags from his horse and took them to the other tent. Tennyson had a look on her face that was borderline smug as she watched him work.
They were going to let us stay—let us have our girl camping fantasy—but they had to hang around so we wouldn’t die doing it.
Henry sat back down next to Butch and me, and Dylan made a place for himself next to Tennyson.
“I see you shared Tennyson’s secret with Dylan,” I whispered to Henry.
“Hey, you have no idea what it does to a guy to know a girl might like him. Everyone deserves a good night once in a while.”
“I’m getting the feeling that this was Tennyson’s plan all along. She must have known that he would find us.”
“I’ve known her long enough to know that this was purely intentional.” He peered sideways at me, judging my reaction. “I like her just fine, but you should watch yourself around her. Tennyson is given to obsession and her obsessions tend to run toward trouble. It’s kind of a Wyoming thing to push the whole ‘Wild West’ routine to its limits.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said. “Sorry if we screwed up your Saturday night.”
He reached out to rub Butch’s head in my lap. “There’s nowhere else I need to be, but I had to give Tennyson a hard time. You think I overdid it?”
“I don’t think it had any effect on her whatsoever.”
He rubbed the fabric of my sleeping bag and took a closer look. “Hey, nice pink, fleecy thing. Were you planning on watching a princess movie and having a pillow fight in your under…things?”
“You laugh, but all the girls in Pittsburgh were jealous of my sleeping bag.” I yanked it away from him so he’d forget how soft and girly it was. “And the whole half-naked pillow fight thing…that’s some fantasy guys have about what we do at slumber parties. The truth is less provocative.”
His eyes registered amusement. “Well, that’s a disappointment. I won’t tell you how much time I wasted on that fantasy in junior high. Still, that sleeping bag isn’t gonna do you much good tonight when the temperature goes down.”
He jumped up and was at his horse in a couple of long strides. He brought back a thick, blue blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders, then added more wood to the fire.
Dylan started telling stories about wrangling horses and life in Texas. He made Tennyson laugh so hard about football games at Texas A&M that she couldn’t breathe. He jumped up and taught everyone Aggie yells, which were actually led by boys in white pants and white shirts, and involved a lot of squatting and major arm movements.
They all talked for what seemed like hours. I listened quietly, enjoying the fact that no one really paid attention to me. Henry suddenly lay back with his head on his arms.
“Did you have a sky like this in Pittsburgh, Meg?” he said quietly.
His voice startled me because I thought he was listening to Dylan.
“We had stars but they never looked like this. The sky here…it kind of settles down on you like a big blanket. It makes me feel lonely for some reason.”
He looked up and nodded. “So, what’s your story? I’ve never heard you talk about yourself to anyone. Is that my imagination?” He turned over and rose up on an elbow.
“I don’t like to waste words.”
“You could waste a few on me. I wouldn’t hold it against you.”
The intensity in his eyes made me a little uncomfortable, but I forced an answer. “There’s not much to tell, I guess, and I’ve sort of always been private. I was born in Pittsburgh. I moved to Wyoming. The end.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
He laughed and scratched the side of his head. “You’ve got to give me more than that. Everybody likes to be known. It’s why people roll their car window down when their favorite song comes on. They’re saying, ‘Hey, hear this? This is me.’”
“I didn’t realize I was describing myself every time I roll my window down.”
“Come on, Pittsburgh, what’d you like to do with your friends? Were they sad when you moved? Did you leave some guy back there? When’s your birthday? What’s your favorite book?”
I laughed. “What’s your favorite book?”
The inquisitive tilt of his head made me feel like he was reading me from the inside out. “Don’t do that. You can talk about yourself. It won’t kill you. Tell me.”
“To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“See, did that hurt?” He smiled as he watched me.
“A little.”
He waited quietly for me to talk. Finally he gave up and sighed. “So, I was born here,” he said. “My dad was born here. His dad was born here and that’s who I’m named after. We’ve got a ranch that’s been in the family a few generations, and I spend the majority of my time working.”
“What kind of work?”
“Anything my dad needs done. We raise corn and alfalfa and a little barley. We’ve got several thousand head of cattle and a whole bunch of horses. I spend a ton of time fixing fences, repairing barns, and working on equipment that falls apart right when we’re trying to harvest.”
“When do you do homework?”
“In the middle of the night.” His smile was sheepish. “It probably sounds horrible to you, but I love it. If I’m worth my salt, I’ll be able to help my dad keep this ranch going.”
Henry rolled to his back and stared at the stars. “Now, it’s your turn, Meg.”
Hugging my knees for comfort I sifted through facts that would be safe to tell. “Well, it’s just me and my mom and dad. My dad is heading up marketing at the Hotel Wyoming and my mom’s a painter. She’s a figurative
artist.”
“Did she paint you a lot?”
“She practiced on me a lot when I was little.” Actually, she’d practiced on Wyatt and me constantly. “She’s good. She has a few paintings hanging at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.”
“How’d they meet…your folks?”
“At the University of Pennsylvania—their mailboxes next to each other in the quad where they lived.”
“So, did he accidentally get some of her mail or something?”
I twisted my fingers into my sweatshirt, feeling strangely touched that Henry was curious about my family. I couldn’t remember ever repeating this story to anyone. It came out in exactly the same way it was put into me—through my dad’s awestruck telling of how he fell in love.
“He would sit on a bench, waiting to get his mail until she was there. He says he wanted her the moment he saw her take a letter out of her box the first day of class. She looked at the return address, threw her bag down, and sat on the floor right under her mailbox so she could read it right then. Her hands were shaking, so he looked closer.”
Henry smiled next to me, his teeth barely visible in the dim light of the moon. “Go on.”
“He could tell a guy had written it by the scrawl and my mom cried, without shame, mascara running down her cheeks and everything. That was all it took for Dad. But they didn’t marry until much later. He had to chase her through Europe first and convince her that Pittsburgh would be a nicer place to live than Paris.”
“Do you look like her?” The look on Henry’s face was so earnest I couldn’t breathe.
“Yeah, I do, I think.”
“Then I know why he chased her through Europe.”
I glanced at him, ready to see sarcasm or humor on his face, but there was just kindness…and interest. I blushed and hoped he couldn’t tell by firelight.
“I’ve never seen anyone turn as many colors as you do,” he said. “It’s nice. Your mom—who was the letter from? The one that crushed her?”
“Apparently her boyfriend back home in New York had decided he couldn’t keep his hands off other girls.”
Glass Girl (A Young Adult Novel) Page 7
