Ranch Hands

by Bonnie Bryant

  Once in her pajamas, Carole flopped into one of the folding chairs and watched the flames flicker to life in the stove.

  “At first, I thought the low point of the day was when the hen bit me,” she said. “But then it actually came when I fell off the horse.” There was a moment of quiet, and then she repeated the words as if to be sure they were true: “I … fell … off … the … horse.” It didn’t sound any more real the second time, but it was just as true.

  During the trail ride, Eli had asked Carole to bring up the rear. That was a compliment. In general on trail rides, the best rider was in the front and the second best in the back. There had to be a strong rider at the rear to be sure everybody was safe and to be in charge if something happened. Considering her track record since she’d arrived, Carole was pleased that Eli had asked her to take that position. Apparently, he didn’t hold an angry hen against her.

  Being in the saddle and on a trail ride had seemed like exactly the right thing to heal all the humiliation of the previous events. Carole had often felt that being with horses made everything else better. She’d been content. She’d not only been riding, but she’d also been able to talk about it. One of the campers—not one of the L-ions—had asked her about the differences between English and Western riding, and it was an opportunity to explain something. She loved explaining things. Her friends sometimes teased her that she gave twenty-five-cent answers to nickel questions, but Carole was, nevertheless, happy as she shared her knowledge with the younger rider.

  Then the trail had begun leading upwards. Eli had passed the word back to remind all the riders to lean forward, compensating for the change in balance as the trail got steeper. Carole, however, was so involved in her explanation that she wasn’t paying attention. She didn’t lean forward far enough, and the next thing she knew, she’d slid right out of the saddle and onto the rocky trail. She’d felt like a total idiot. Her horse stopped patiently, as if he’d had plenty of experience waiting for dumb dudes, and she’d gotten right back into the saddle, but not before everybody had noticed, and most people had laughed—especially the L-ions.

  Eli had then suggested that Kate take up the rear, saying he wanted to be sure Carole hadn’t hurt herself. He was obviously just being nice about the fact that he couldn’t trust her at the rear anymore.

  “Carole, it could have happened to anyone,” Stevie said.

  “Sure, it could have. I fell off a horse once,” Kate added.

  “Right. When you were about eight years old,” Carole said numbly.

  “At least you didn’t put thirty horses in the wrong paddock,” Kate said, remembering her own worst moment.

  “Or be laughed at for not knowing an onion for a weed,” Stevie chimed in.

  All in all, it had not been a wonderful day.

  There was a knock at the door. The girls turned, wondering who on earth would want to be anywhere near them. It was Jeannie.

  “Can I come in? I don’t think I can stand another verse of ‘Home on the Range.’ It makes me think of that stove.…”

  She was making a joke about all the cooking she’d been doing. The very idea of making a joke after the dreadful day they’d had seemed totally weird.

  “Are you okay?” Stevie asked.

  “More or less,” Jeannie said. “I haven’t had a minute to talk to you girls and tell how glad we are you’re here.”

  “You are?”

  “We sure are,” she said. “See, we’ve had a problem with the staff. Four campers dropped out at the last minute and never paid us anything. We had two counselors signed up, but we had to let them go because we didn’t have enough income. We’re really relying on you three for a lot and asking you to do an awful lot of work for us. I just wanted to let you know that it’s going to be tough.”

  “I guess we know that and we don’t mind,” Kate said. “I’ve seen how hard my parents have had to work to keep the Bar None going. I also know how much you and Eli helped them. I want to be of some use to you guys with High Meadow.”

  “Me, too,” Stevie said. Carole nodded agreement.

  “Well, thanks,” Jeannie said. “I guess I’d better get back to my home on the range—the stove, I mean. I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to make for breakfast. See you,” she said, and she was gone.

  “We’re letting them down,” Stevie said. “That was a pep talk, wasn’t it?”

  “Sounded like it to me,” Kate agreed.

  “We can help. We really can,” Carole said. “We just have to figure out how and to stop doing stupid things, like falling off horses.”

  “We just have to try harder,” Stevie agreed.

  They all knew that was true, but so far their trying hadn’t done much good. How much harder could they try? And how much good would it do?

  WHEN THE TRIANGLE rang the next morning, three sleepy Saddle Club girls rolled out of bed and into their clothes as quickly as they could. They wanted to do everything possible to be helpful and make Eli and Jeannie’s load easier.

  Ten minutes later they filed into the dining room, ready for a new day.

  Once breakfast had been served to all the campers, the girls each took a plate of flapjacks and sausages and sat down at the long table with the kids. It was tempting for them to eat by themselves at a smaller table, but they’d never get to know the campers well unless they spent time with them, and they’d never be useful as counselors unless they knew the kids. They did try very hard to avoid sitting with the L-ions, though that was difficult with three of them and only fifteen campers.

  Carole wondered where Eli and Jeannie were. Maybe she should be in the kitchen helping out. Then she noticed that the light on the extension phone was lit in the dining room. Eli was obviously talking to someone. Carole didn’t think she could help with that, so she ate her breakfast.

  A few minutes later, Eli entered the dining room. There was a happy look on his face—a happier look than Carole and her friends had seen since they’d arrived at High Meadow. Something was up and it just had to be good.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ve got some news,” he began. It turned out that he’d been talking with his neighbor on the telephone. The man had a herd of cattle that needed to be moved from one grazing area to another about fifty miles away. There were a lot of cattle and the man was shorthanded. He’d called to see if Eli had anybody around who could do some cowpunching for him.

  “So, do I?” Eli asked.

  The campers all looked at one another. “You mean us?” one of the kids asked.

  “I think so,” Eli said. “The fact is, I was going to borrow some of his cattle to have a sort of make-believe cattle drive, but this is much better. You all can have some experience with the real thing, and we can do my neighbor a favor at the same time.”

  And High Meadow can get paid for helping with the drive, Stevie thought to herself. Maybe that was the best news of all. Some people thought Stevie didn’t know much about money since she never seemed to have any. She always spent her allowance as fast as she got it. The fact was that because she was always out of it, she was very sensitive to what it was like for other people to be out of it. It wasn’t a nice feeling. And since Eli had lost those four campers at the last minute, he must be terribly worried about money—just the way Stevie would be if her parents suddenly cut her allowance. Maybe they wouldn’t make a lot for doing this, but it would be something, and something was better than nothing.

  “Ya-hooooo!” Stevie called out enthusiastically. One thing about Stevie was that her enthusiasm was always contagious. When she was excited about something, everybody around her always was, too. Now almost all the campers raised their hands when Eli asked who wanted to go along on the cattle drive.

  Carole watched this and was as excited as everybody else about the trip. She’d gone on a two-day cattle drive on her first visit to the Bar None, and it had been an unforgettable experience. She’d hoped they’d be doing more of it this summer.

  It turned out that
three campers—Linc of the L-ions and two others—didn’t want to go on the drive. One of the other two, a boy named Ellis, had a pretty bad cold and needed to stay around the ranch. The other one, Jack, just didn’t like the idea of sleeping under the stars for all those nights.

  Jeannie would stay at the ranch with the kids. There was a lot of work to be done no matter how many people were there, so somebody had to stay. The garden had to be weeded, the animals tended, and generally the place had to be kept up. These thoughts flashed through Carole’s mind. What also flashed through at the same time was that there was a lot of work for any one person to do. And the final thought that came to her was that she and her friends were at High Meadow to be as helpful as possible. Eli, Stevie, and Kate were more than capable of looking after a herd of cattle and twelve campers, especially when the campers would be too busy riding the herd to get into trouble. Carole wasn’t needed on the roundup. She was needed at the ranch.

  “I’ll stay here,” she said. Stevie and Kate looked at her in surprise. Stevie’s look was almost one of alarm.

  “Jeannie needs me,” she said simply.

  “I’ll stay, too,” Stevie said.

  “No way,” said Carole. “Eli needs you.”

  It was true, and Carole knew that that was the right way to do it. If it meant that she wouldn’t get to do anywhere near as much riding as she wanted for a couple of days, what difference would it make? She was doing what was right, and that felt good.

  “Fine,” Eli said, confirming who was leaving and who was staying. “I want you all to go pack your bedrolls, a change of clothes, and your most necessary personal items. We will leave right after morning chores.”

  “Can’t we skip the morning chores?” Lois asked.

  Eli gave her a withering look. Stevie found herself a little relieved to know that Eli found at least this one of the L-ions as unpleasant to deal with as she did.

  Carole finished her last pancake and began gathering the plates to start work in the kitchen. There were a lot of sandwiches to make for the first meal the cowpokes would eat on the trail. After that the rancher would supply meals from a chuck wagon. In the olden days, a chuck wagon was a horse-drawn covered wagon that rode with the herd. In more modern times, it was a pickup truck complete with a stove and a refrigerator. The chuck wagon would meet them at the first night’s campsite.

  Carole and Jeannie worked together in the kitchen, quickly and efficiently. First, they cleaned up after breakfast. Carole had the job of seeing to it that the campers cleaned up the dining room well. She found that when she told them they couldn’t go on the cattle drive until after the job was done, well, they worked twice as hard!

  Once the campers got busy packing their bedrolls, Carole and Jeannie began making lunch: sandwiches, fruit, dessert, and drinks. They set up an assembly line and got the job done very quickly.

  As they worked, Carole was too busy to think about the trip her friends would be taking, but when they passed out the lunch bags and looked at the gear all packed and rolled and tied to the back of each saddle, it occurred to Carole that the trip Kate and Stevie were going on was a very far cry from the two-day cattle drive they’d done on the Bar None. They’d hardly left the Devines’ property for that one. Now a group of kids, two young counselors, and one real cowboy were taking a very large herd a long distance. They’d be gone for the better part of a week.

  As she thought about this, Carole was surprised that she wasn’t more envious. But Kate and Stevie were doing something they needed to do, helping Eli, being counselors. And she was being helpful in another way, staying with Jeannie, looking after the three campers who’d be there, too. She was being responsible. That, alone, was enough to make her feel happy about her decision.

  “Okay, what’s my first job?” Carole asked, turning to Jeannie.

  Jeannie scrunched her eyebrows in thought, and then she spoke. “Well, since you’re giving up a horseback trip, I think you have the right to have your first job be a horse job. Saddle up a pony for yourself and round up all the horses, except Arthur of course, and put them in the field on the far side of the barn. Get the campers to help you with that. They should be on ponies, too. Then you can set your own ponies out in the field as well.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Carole said, saluting sharply just the way her father had taught her. Rounding up horses wasn’t exactly the same as rounding up a herd of cattle, but it was certainly something she could do. She also liked the idea of showing the campers how to do it. She truly felt she was being helpful to Eli and Jeannie, once again confirming that she’d made the right decision.

  “HENRY THE SECOND built the round tower, you know,” Mrs. Atwood said.

  “Imagine that!” Lisa uttered. She was trying to sound excited, but she wasn’t feeling it. Her father didn’t seem particularly excited either and wasn’t even making a pretense of it. He just kept looking around at the shops in the town of Windsor.

  “Isn’t there one of those pubs around here some place?” he asked.

  “Later, dear, later. It’s only ten-thirty now and we have so much to see before lunch.”

  “Everything except the castle,” Lisa said. They’d taken the train from London to Windsor, about an hour’s ride, expecting to be able to have the tour of the castle, but it turned out that the queen was in residence now, so they couldn’t visit it. Mr. Atwood had remarked to Mrs. Atwood that perhaps she should have checked where the queen was staying before they got onto a train. Mrs. Atwood had said it didn’t matter at all that they couldn’t get into the castle proper. The town of Windsor itself was positively filled with memorable sights.

  “Perhaps we’ll see the queen driving through the town in a limousine,” Mrs. Atwood said cheerfully.

  Mr. Atwood looked at her. “Think that means she might spot us as a nice group of American tourists and invite us in for a cup of tea?” he asked sarcastically.

  Mrs. Atwood stopped talking for a few minutes.

  Lisa sighed. This was frustrating. There were parts of the trip she was enjoying, but at times like these, she couldn’t keep her mind on the quaint cobble-stoned streets of the town. All she could think of was the wide-open spaces of Wyoming and how much she wished she were there with her friends, riding in the Rockies, rounding up cattle, eating stew by a camp fire, singing cowboy songs, enjoying the fresh mountain air, and smelling the wildflowers and the warm, wonderful scent of horses.

  “And if we go along this street for a way, we’ll find the park,” Mrs. Atwood said. “Park” seemed about as close as she was going to get to wide-open spaces. She followed her mother dutifully.

  One thing she’d discovered about the British people was that they had nice parks. London had many really pretty ones, all of which were planted with colorful flower beds. It seemed that in the United States, flower beds in parks had to be protected with concertina wire. Here in England everybody just enjoyed the flowers without picking them. It was terribly civilized, and Lisa did like that. The park in Windsor was no exception. It had gently sloping hills with well-tended grass. Here and there were little flower beds, neatly planted for maximum enjoyment by people strolling by.

  Mrs. Atwood was all for walking along every single inch of footpath in the park. Mr. Atwood was, by then, totally preoccupied with his empty stomach and decided to sit down and think about it. Lisa and her mother sat down with him.

  While her parents discussed the choices they had for eating lunch, Lisa daydreamed about Wyoming. She remembered the great trips she’d had with her friends to the Bar None. She thought about the horses on the ranch. She could almost hear the clip-clop of their hooves on the open prairie land.

  Then she realized that she definitely could hear the clip-clop of some horse’s hooves, even if it wasn’t a Bar None horse. The clips and clops were approaching at a very fast pace, and then they stopped. Lisa leapt up from the bench. If there was a horse around, she just had to see it.

  She’d heard the horse stop just over the h
illtop nearby, and in a few seconds she could see the horse, a sleek, bay Thoroughbred. What she couldn’t see, however, was the rider. The horse was saddled up and riderless. One of the stirrups was twisted around its leathers, and it looked as though the horse had thrown his rider and run off.

  Lisa knew just what to do. She had to find the rider and make sure he or she was okay. A rider could get badly hurt being thrown from a horse, and this park was big enough that it might be a while before anyone found the injured rider.

  Lisa approached the horse, who appeared to be run out. He stood patiently while Lisa lifted his reins, and then he walked forward obediently while she led him. Lisa wanted to ride him. It was going to be the fastest way to get back to the rider he’d thrown, but she also wanted to make sure that he was over whatever had spooked him in the first place. He seemed very tame and willing. She brought him over to an empty park bench to use as a mounting block. In a matter of seconds, she was in the saddle and pleased to find that she didn’t even have to adjust the stirrups. They were already the right length. She wasn’t wearing appropriate clothing to ride this perfectly groomed and tacked horse, but riding was better and faster than walking. She gave the horse a gentle nudge and rode up to the crest of the hill to tell her parents where she was going.

  Her mother started to protest, strongly. Lisa shrugged. She knew what she was doing, and it was a lot more important than deciding which historic pub to go to for lunch.

  She followed the horse’s trail as well as she could. Riding this elegant Thoroughbred was so wonderful that she almost didn’t care if she ever found the rider. It was clear to her that this was a very valuable horse who probably had bloodlines that could be traced back as far as the round tower at Windsor Castle. Her mother could admire old stones. She preferred to admire horses. Not only was this an elegant horse, but his gaits were smooth and even. She alternated walking and trotting and found it utterly joyful to feel the wind on her face as the horse traced the bridle path back. For the first time since leaving the United States, Lisa was totally happy.