Dude Ranch

by Bonnie Bryant

  There, she thought to herself. Let him smirk at that. But when she turned around, Eli was totally engrossed in helping another of the ranch’s guests tack up his horse.

  “Come on, girls. Time to hit the trail!” Kate and the others had finished tacking up and were mounted and ready to go. She led the way to the corral’s gate. Eli unlatched the gate for them and then clicked it shut behind them. They were ready for their first Western trail ride.

  At first, they walked the horses slowly to warm them up and to get accustomed to the differences between Western and English style.

  “This really isn’t very different at all,” Lisa remarked. “I mean, they’re just horses and we’re just riders, right?”

  “That’s pretty much the way it goes,” Kate said, smiling. “I knew you’d get the hang of it right away. There are differences, of course. Like you only hold the reins with one hand. And your stirrups are hung lower so you have more control if you’ve got a steer on a rope attached to your saddle horn. The horses don’t canter, they lope, but it’s really the same thing—”

  “And we don’t post?” Lisa asked.

  “Actually, if you want to post, you can,” Kate said. “But since the stirrups are long, you won’t rise high. You shouldn’t need to anyway. Wait until you feel Chocolate’s trot. It’s smooth as a milk shake.”

  The thing that seemed the most different to Stevie wasn’t the saddle or the horse, but the place. “I’m not used to trails like this,” she said, pointing to the hills and mountains in front of them.

  “Now, that does take some getting used to,” Kate agreed. “Our nearest neighbor is about five miles. It’s not like that in Virginia, is it?”

  “Not at all,” Stevie agreed. “But I think I could get to like it.” She relaxed in her saddle and enjoyed the ride. Lisa was right. Western riding was just riding, and that was good enough for her.

  BY THE TIME the girls got to the town of Two Mile Creek that afternoon, the trail ride was a pleasant memory. Lunch was an even pleasanter one. They couldn’t believe how hungry they’d been and how they’d scoffed up the chili that Phyllis had cooked.

  “Hope you’re not too full for some ice cream,” Kate said. “We’ve got a wonderful little shop here in town. It specializes in sundaes. But of course, if you had too much at lunch—”

  “Let’s try it,” Carole said eagerly. “After all, if we can’t finish the sundaes, we can always get doggie bags.”

  “Out here, we call them dogie bags,” Kate said, pronouncing the o as in owe. “In case you didn’t know it, a dogie is a motherless calf.”

  “I have the funny feeling we won’t have any leftovers, anyway,” Carole said, and they all agreed that was true.

  Two Mile Creek looked a little like a town in a Western movie, Stevie thought, looking down the main street. Although the street was paved and there were no horses hitched to railings, the wooden sidewalks were covered like porches and she was very glad for the shade on the hot summer afternoon. There were a few stores specializing in Western souvenirs, but there were also the usual kinds that would be found in any downtown: three shoe stores, a jewelry store, a fast-food hamburger place, a video-rental store, a drug-store, a convenience store, and, best of all, an ice cream parlor. The girls ran the errands for Kate’s mother as quickly as possible and then headed for the ice cream parlor.

  It was decorated like an old-fashioned sweetshop. It was nothing like the girls’ favorite hangout back home, TD’s. Instead of booths, there was a long marble counter where the girls sat. Behind it was a vast selection of drink and sundae flavors. Unfortunately, there was also a very large mirror on the wall; Stevie was afraid that if she made a pig of herself, she’d have to watch herself eat every bite. She just ordered a dish of vanilla ice cream.

  The girls relaxed over their treats and eagerly chatted about their ride that morning.

  “See, I told you you’d like Western riding,” Kate said. “After all, I do. The thing to remember about it is that nothing’s there just for show. Western riding is all business. New riders sometimes think that saddle horn is just to hold onto. But that’s not true at all. Wait until we have our roundup later this week. You won’t be doing much roping, but you’ll see Eli do some and you’ll see what a pommel is really for.”

  “That’ll be neat,” Lisa said eagerly. “Will we sleep out, too?”

  “Yup. Under the stars, just like in the movies.”

  “What days will that be?” Stevie asked.

  “Oh, I think the roundup will be Wednesday and Thursday. Why? You got a date?”

  Saturday was Stevie’s birthday. She really didn’t think she’d want to be on a trail on her birthday. But she wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted. “No, I was just wondering,” she said.

  Carole glanced at Stevie. She could tell something was on her friend’s mind, and she thought she knew what it was. “Isn’t your birthday coming up soon?” she asked.

  “Yeah, it’s on Saturday,” Stevie answered nonchalantly.

  Carole knew from the way she’d responded that that was what was on Stevie’s mind. Carole had something up her sleeve for Saturday, but she didn’t want Stevie to know about it. She just said, “Oh,” noncommittally.

  Stevie returned her attention to her vanilla ice cream until her whole bowl was empty. So was everybody else’s.

  Kate glanced at her watch and then at the door. As she did, there was a very loud bang.

  Lisa jumped in her seat. “What was that?” she asked.

  “Let’s go see!” Carole said, standing up from the counter. The girls paid for their ice cream and dashed to the door. There had been three more loud bangs just while they were paying.

  Stevie could barely believe what she saw when she stepped out onto Two Mile Creek’s main street. A crowd of people was gathered around just watching as a disaster was unfolding in front of them!

  They were right across the street from the bank. Three cowpokes were backing out of the bank, holding large sacks of money.

  “Don’t nobody try to follow us!” one of them hollered, brandishing his gun at the crowd. “Ain’t gonna spend my life behind bars!”

  Three horses were hitched in front of the bank. As the men backed away from the doorway, they unhitched their horses and began to mount. Another shot rang out across the street. This one was louder and turned out to be the report of a rifle. It came from the roof across the street. One of the horses jumped. The rider spun around, dropping to the ground and rolling in the dirt. He aimed his six-shooter at the source of the rifle shot and got off two rounds.

  There was a loud shriek of pain. “You’ll never get away with this!” the man cried from the roof. Then, as the girls watched, he dropped and rolled off the roof, clutching his side in pain.

  The crowd went “Ooooh!”

  “Let’s get out of here, boys!” one of the robbers said to the others. The three leapt onto their horses and turned to leave town at a gallop. But before they could go, the sheriff and a posse arrived on the far end of the street, completely blocking the way.

  The lawmen began shooting at the robbers in an impressive show of strength. It was clear they were shooting to warn, not to kill. The robbers heeded the warning. Before any of the bullets found their mark, the robbers tossed their guns into the street and raised their hands.

  The crowd went “Aaaaah!”

  “Okay, McClanahan,” the sheriff said fiercely. “The game is over. You and your boys have stolen your last payroll. And you’ll swing for the murder of Marshall Ellsworth, and for my deputy there.” He pointed to where the man had fallen off the roof.

  The sheriff neared the robbers and was about to put handcuffs on them when McClanahan reached into his boot and brought out a pistol. “I said you wasn’t gonna take me alive and I meant it!”

  Then another shot rang out, this time from the roof of the bank. McClanahan dropped down off his horse.

  The crowd went “Yaaaaay!” Stevie was just about to get really angry
at all these people standing around just watching all this bloodshed when she realized suddenly what was going on. It wasn’t real at all! It was a show for the tourists—the dudes—and she’d been taken in completely. She wouldn’t let Eli know about that!

  The remaining bank robbers began to flee, but the sheriff and his deputies shot them both before they reached the edge of town.

  The bank president met the sheriff in the middle of the street, took the heavily laden bags containing the “payroll” from him, and thanked him.

  “Sheriff Bradford, seems to me the town’s payroll’s been a lot safer since you took over!”

  “I’m just doing my job, Mr. Vandermeer,” the sheriff said humbly. “And the job is law and order!”

  The two men shook hands. The audience burst into applause, including all the members of The Saddle Club.

  “That was terrific!” Lisa said. “It was so realistic, I almost believed it at first.”

  “Me, too,” Carole said.

  Stevie remained silent.

  “Everybody does the first time they see it,” Kate said.

  “How did the guy roll off the porch?” Carole asked.

  “There’s a stack of mattresses,” Kate said. “Come on, I’ll show you.” Lisa and Carole followed her behind the scenes of the cowboy drama.

  But Stevie was distracted by the arrival of a dog. It was a big and beautiful German shepherd. The dog sniffed at Stevie’s hand and then waited patiently. Stevie got the signal. She patted him on the head, and scratched behind his soft ears. His tail wagged joyfully. He sat while she patted him some more. He was wearing tags and she wanted to see if they said what his name was, but before she could read them, there was a loud whistle. The dog’s ears perked up. He stood up, turned abruptly, and ran off in the direction of the whistle. Stevie completely lost him in the crowd and couldn’t even see who his owner was. She shrugged to herself. It was probably somebody who would think she was just a dude, anyway.

  She ran after her friends to see the mattresses where the “deputy” had landed. When she got there, she found that Carole and Lisa were having their pictures taken with the man who’d played the deputy. He was standing between them grinning proudly. Stevie joined in on the photograph session.

  Why not? she thought, smiling to herself. After all, she was a dude.

  STEWBALL GALLOPED ALONG the Pine Hollow cross-country trail. The German shepherd kept pace with the galloping horse. Stevie held a lariat in her right hand and her reins in her left. She swung the lariat up over her head where it formed a perfect circle. At just the right minute, she tossed it over the bank robber’s head and yanked it tight, pinning his arms to his body. His six-shooter clattered to the ground. She waited for applause. There was none. All she heard was a whistle. The dog ran off.

  Stevie sat up in bed. There was a gray darkness in the room. Her bedside clock said it was 4:45.

  As she sat there, staring at the blue numbers, her very odd dream came back to her. Of course, it was just her mind piecing together the experiences she’d had in the last few days. They had been an unusual few days, to say the least. But why had she awakened?

  Stevie heard the whistle again. It hadn’t been part of her dream. It had been for real. There was something familiar about the sound, but she couldn’t recall what it was or why.

  Silently, Stevie crept out of bed and went to look out the porch window of the bunkhouse. It took her a few seconds to focus in the dim light of the very early morning. Her eyes identified the main house and the barn as well as silhouettes of a few trees against the horizon, where the first dim light of dawn was appearing. Then there was motion.

  Stevie realized that there was another silhouette—this one of a horse and a bareback rider. She squinted her eyes. The horse stood motionless. The rider leaned forward ever so slightly, as if peering into the distance. Then there was the whistle again. It was the rider’s whistle that had awakened her in the first place. Then, from behind the horse, a dog joined the horse and rider. The dog’s tail wagged eagerly. The whistle was familiar; the dog looked familiar. Could it be the dog who had befriended Stevie in Two Mile Creek after the “bank robbery”?

  Then, silently, the horse turned and moved off slowly. The dog trotted easily behind. Soon the threesome was completely out of Stevie’s view.

  She scratched her head and returned to her bunk. What kind of person would go riding at this hour of the day? What kind of person rode bareback?

  “Oh,” she whispered to herself. Native Americans rode bareback. Had she just seen one? She sat on the bunk and then lay down and closed her eyes. Stewball broke into a canter. Stevie smiled as her horse tried to catch up to the mysterious visitor and his dog in the predawn morning.…

  “YOU KNOW,” STEVIE said two hours later when she and her friends were sitting at the breakfast table, “I always have blueberry pancakes on my birthday. It’s going to be funny eating steak and eggs this year.”

  “Your birthday?” Lisa said. “Is that coming up soon?”

  “Yeah, it’s on Saturday,” Stevie told her, though she thought it was odd that Lisa didn’t remember, since they’d just talked about it yesterday. “It’s Alex’s birthday, too,” she said, turning to Kate. “He’s my twin brother. Did you meet him when you were in Willow Creek?”

  “No, I don’t think I did,” Kate said. “Pass the salt, will you?” she asked Carole. Carole handed her the saltshaker. “Eli tells me he needs some help forking hay this morning. Anybody want to pitch in?”

  “I can’t,” Carole said. “I promised your mother I’d show her my father’s barbecue-sauce recipe right after breakfast and before we go riding.”

  “Me, neither,” Lisa said. “I’ve got to get a postcard off to my mother before she starts calling every day.”

  “I can’t, either,” Kate said. “I promised lariat lessons to the Baker kids before we go on our ride. I guess Eli’s stuck with the job himself.” She looked meaningfully at Stevie.

  If there was one thing Pine Hollow’s riders learned, it was that taking care of horses was a lot of work, and they learned to help with it. Stevie couldn’t believe the lame excuses her friends were coming up with to duck a fairly simple job. “I’ll do it,” she said. “I don’t mind pitching hay. It’s better than mucking out stalls.”

  “That’s another advantage to keeping the horses in the pasture,” Kate remarked, and they all laughed knowingly.

  Stevie ate the last bite of her breakfast and cleared her dishes. If she was going to pitch hay, she might as well get to it. The sooner that was done, the sooner she and her friends could ride some more.

  “See you guys,” she said, and headed for the barn.

  Three pairs of eyes watched her leave the mess hall.

  “Mom’s waiting for us in the kitchen,” Kate said, pushing back from the table and grabbing her own dishes. The girls hustled, clearing quickly, and took their plates to the sink.

  “Okay, now how are we going to do this?” Carole asked once the three of them and Phyllis Devine were seated at the large kitchen table. “And, most important, how are we going to keep her from knowing about it?”

  “The way we’ll keep her from knowing about it is easy,” Phyllis said. “We just won’t tell her. The bigger question is, how are we going to get that birthday cake from this kitchen to the barbecue site on Saturday without having the layers fall apart?”

  “And how are we going to get her presents there without her seeing them?” Carole added.

  “I’ve got some ideas about that,” Lisa said. “If we can get her out of here before breakfast for an early-morning ride, I think we can stall her until lunchtime. As long as we keep her away from the road where the pickup will be bringing all the barbecue stuff, I think it’ll work. Only trouble is that it’s going to mean you’ll have to do all the work because we’ll be on the trail with Stevie.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Kate said. “You two go with her. I’ll stay and help Mom. That way you can s
ort of get lost and she’ll believe it.”

  Carole curled her lip in distaste. “What if we really get lost?” she asked.

  “No way that could happen,” Kate assured her. “The barbecue’s going to be at Parson’s Rock. It sticks up out of the prairie like the Empire State Building. You can find it from anywhere within miles of here.”

  “Sure?”

  “Only a total greenhorn dude could get lost out there,” Kate said. “And neither of you is that. Are you?”

  Carole and Lisa exchanged glances, then giggled. There was just no telling.

  “I THINK PEANUTS here needs some fresh hay,” Stevie said. She was glancing into one of the barn’s few box stalls where the horses needing special care were housed from time to time. “I’ll get him some water, too.”

  “Good idea,” Eli said.

  There was a lot of hay and straw kept in the upper loft of the barn and it had to be pitched down as needed for food and bedding. Stevie and Eli had worked side by side until the lower bin was filled. Stevie was good at pitching hay. She knew just how to use a pitchfork. It wasn’t that it was the hardest task in the world, but there were some tricks to it, and Stevie had learned them over the years at Pine Hollow. She couldn’t help notice that Eli had watched her carefully, then grinned when he saw how good she was at the chore.

  Stevie put the fresh hay in Peanuts’s bin and filled his bucket with cool water. While the horse took long gulps of water, she patted him comfortingly. He’d injured the tendon in his left foreleg and would be laid up for quite a while.

  “It’s got to be tough on him to be boxed in here after all that time outdoors, doesn’t it?” she said to Eli.

  He nodded. “Range horses just don’t like being indoors, particularly when they’re laid up like Peanuts.”