Ranch Hands

by Bonnie Bryant

  “But you and your parents—you will stay with us!”

  “You have room for all of us?” I asked. He told me that of course he did. Little did I know.

  Right then my parents showed up. They were as mad as could be and Dad was on the verge of saying all sorts of things about Italian innkeepers. I introduced them to Enrico and told them we had a place to stay.

  I won’t bore you with all the details now—I’ll have months and months to do that when I get home—but I will tell you that as I write this, I’m sitting at an antique Italian secretary (that’s a fancy word for a small desk) in Enrico’s family mansion. This isn’t just a house. Oh, it also turned out that the horse show wasn’t being given in any funky old public park. It was being given on Enrico’s family estate. I mean estate. It goes on for acres and acres and it’s been in his family for many generations. My parents and I are in our very own wing or something. I’m not sure exactly because the place is just too big for me to be completely oriented. I do know that when we want breakfast, we’re supposed to ring for a servant who will either bring it to us or show us the way to the dining room. I’m telling you, you’ve never seen anything like this.

  Now I think I’ll take a bath. The bathtub is about the size of a small swimming pool. Of course, the one in my parents’ bathroom is much larger.…

  Just kidding. Still it’s all pretty grand.

  It’s hard to believe this vacation is almost over.

  It’s been so interesting. When I think about it, before I left, I was scared to death about being in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar languages. I’ve realized that people are people, and if you try to be nice and try to speak to them in their own language, no matter how badly you mangle the phrases from the phrase book, they want to be helpful and welcoming. I’ve enjoyed the trip. I’m a little sorry it’s almost over, but I can’t wait to see you guys and hear everything about High Meadow. I get to read your diaries, right? Don’t leave anything out!

  Love,

  Lisa

  Stevie looked at Carole. “Have you included everything in your diary?” she asked.

  “Almost,” Carole said. “Well, not exactly. No, come to think of it, there are a few things I’ve overlooked. Intentionally.”

  “It won’t make any difference,” Stevie said. “She’ll find out anyway.”

  “How will she find out?” Kate asked.

  “We’ll tell her, of course,” said Carole. “We just don’t have any secrets.” But considering the way their experience as ranch hands was going, she sort of wished they did.

  THE SADDLE CLUB girls managed to get through the last week at High Meadow without any obvious disasters. That seemed to Stevie to be somewhat of a victory. There were no more stampedes or wandering herds of horses. None of the kids got badly hurt, though Linc skinned his knee when he got thrown from a horse trying to jump in a Western saddle. By the last day, the girls thought they pretty much had the routine down. Though it didn’t seem right that it had taken that long to do it.

  At dinner that night, when they were eating their last plates of trail stew (Eli’s specialty), Eli announced there would be a special camp fire at 9 P.M. They should all come in pajamas and bathrobes and bring their sleeping bags for warmth.

  Nights at High Meadow could get quite cool. That made for very good sleeping weather, as long as your sleeping bag was cozy. After dinner and cleanup, the girls donned their sweatpants and sweatshirts—preferred sleeping garb for cold nights—and their woolly slippers and headed for the camp fire.

  Flames danced upward, brightly reaching toward the starry sky from what appeared to be more like a bonfire than a camp fire. Jeannie handed out marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate squares.

  “S’mores!” Stevie shouted excitedly. A few of the kids had never had them. Stevie, Carole, and Kate explained exactly how to make the perfect one.

  “You have to get the marshmallow gooey enough to melt the chocolate bar when you make the cookie sandwich,” Kate said.

  “You mean I can’t just burn the thing?” Lois asked.

  “Only if you want to eat charcoal,” Kate told her.

  At Kate’s insistence Lois tried for golden brown. It wasn’t easy in the bonfire, but she succeeded more or less, and when she’d assembled her snack and bitten into it, she declared s’mores to be one of Mother Nature’s most nearly perfect foods. Nobody disputed that.

  Eli stood up to talk to the group then. It occurred to Stevie that he’d waited until everybody’s mouth was full so they couldn’t interrupt him. He cleared his throat.

  “It’s hard to believe that our time here is over and that tomorrow you all will be leaving to go back to your homes,” he began. He spoke about how much fun he and Jeannie had with all of them and how he hoped all the campers would want to come back next year.

  Except for us, Stevie thought ruefully.

  “A lot of things went wrong at first,” Eli said.

  Everything went wrong at first, Stevie thought. And at second and at third …

  “But eventually, we got it all going and I think everybody had a good time and learned something. I know I did and Jeannie did, too.”

  Yeah, like you wish you’d never invited The Saddle Club, thought Stevie.

  “I want to thank you all for being a part of High Meadow’s first year. I especially want to thank three of you for pitching in and getting things done even when you didn’t know what you were getting done.”

  He probably means the L-ions. They were more use than we were.

  “Of course I mean Kate, Carole, and Stevie—”

  “Yeah!” said one of the kids, who then began clapping. Ellis patted Carole on the back. Larry shook Kate’s hand. Two campers waved proudly at Stevie.

  “It would have been a very different summer without you three—”

  “Right, like there wouldn’t have been a stampede, you mean?” Stevie asked, this time expressing her thoughts out loud.

  Eli laughed. “Maybe so,” he said. “But in my experience if that hadn’t happened, something else would have. Besides, nobody got hurt, though one of our tents is a little the worse for wear, and the campers keep telling me about this neat story they made up while you and Kate and I were helping Mel calm the herd. So? It happened and we solved the problem. We even got the herd where it was supposed to go, just a day late.”

  The girls could barely believe their ears. They’d really thought Eli and Jeannie had been disappointed in them, and now here they were telling everybody in public what a wonderful job they’d done. Was he just being nice?

  “There’s another thing, too,” Eli said. “Jeannie and I were talking about it last night. See, we knew when we decided to have this camp that a lot of things were going to go wrong. We figured we’d cause most of them ourselves and feel bad about it and then we wouldn’t know how to get out of the messes we caused. That’s what made us decide to invite you girls to come along. We knew that if you were here, you’d be the ones to cause the trouble and you would also find much better ways than we ever could of solving the problems. Boy, were we right!”

  The campers all laughed. So did Eli and Jeannie. So did the girls. It was Eli’s way of saying they’d made trouble, all right, but everything had come out fine in the end, and that was what mattered.

  Eli pulled out a guitar then and handed it to Jeannie. She began strumming it softly, and the songs began. It was a little corny to be sitting around a camp fire on a star-studded night, surrounded by mountains and meadows, singing cowboy songs. In fact it was so corny that it was perfect. Everybody joined in. The strains of the guitar and their voices seemed to reach up to the mountains and the sky, filling the night with music.

  Then there was another sound in the distance, at first a mere hum and then more distinct. It was the sound of an airplane.

  Kate smiled, knowing that it was her father. Frank Devine had found an airstrip nearby and had flown in to take her and her friends out early the following morning.
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  Camp was over. It was time to go home.

  “LEEEEEESSAAA!” Stevie shrieked the minute she spotted her friend walking up the drive at Pine Hollow. “Come on, Carole, she’s home!”

  The three girls met in front of the stable and exchanged big hugs. They hadn’t seen one another for more than four weeks. It had seemed like a lifetime.

  “Time for a Saddle Club meeting,” Lisa said. “But first of all, I’ve got to get back onto a horse. I haven’t ridden in a month!”

  “Unless you count that little hack you took in Windsor,” Stevie teased.

  “Oh, right, that. And then there was the ride I took with Enrico while we were staying at his ‘cottage.’ But still, it wasn’t as much riding as I would have done if I’d been here or with you. Let’s ride to the creek and talk there.”

  That sounded just about perfect to Stevie and Carole. It only took the girls a few minutes to tack up their horses and get permission to go on a trail ride. Mrs. Reg didn’t bother to ask where they were going. She knew they just wanted a chance to talk and catch up. She said it was fine.

  When the horses were ready, the girls mounted them and then each touched the good-luck horseshoe to guarantee a safe return. They were off.

  At first, as they rode, it almost seemed as if there were so much to say that they couldn’t say anything. Each of them was so happy, once again, to be on her own favorite horse, riding at her own favorite place, that words couldn’t begin to capture the feeling. Carole led them in a trot and then a canter across the field to the woods.

  It was a muggy hot Virginia day. The sun beat down on them, bringing beads of sweat under their riding helmets. The pungent scent of warm horses cut through the air and filled their noses. As far as they were concerned, it was just about perfect.

  When they reached the woods, Carole slowed Starlight to a walk, to let him cool down in the shady cover. The girls began talking then.

  “That was incredible about running into Enrico!” Stevie said.

  “It sure was. He was so nice to us, too. And his parents were just wonderful. They promised to come visit us sometime. My parents didn’t seem too thrilled about that, though—not that they didn’t like Enrico’s parents. It’s just that our nice little four-bedroom house hardly seems like a fair exchange for their manor house! Wow, I mean, I’ve got to tell you about that place.”

  “You sure do,” Carole agreed.

  “But first, you guys have to tell me about High Meadow. Was it wonderful?”

  Carole and Stevie looked at one another. That was a good question. Was it wonderful? It had been hard. It had been confusing. It had been trying. The campers had given them a tough time. The routines were difficult to get used to. Wonderful?

  “Yes,” Stevie said, finally. “It was wonderful. It just didn’t seem that way all the time.”

  Lisa looked at her friends. That wasn’t the answer she’d expected.

  “Do you remember that story Mrs. Reg told us before we left on our trips about the boy who wanted to be a jockey and ended up being a trainer?”

  Both Carole and Lisa recalled it.

  “I think I know what it was about now. She was trying to warn us that our expectations were going to turn out to be all out of whack, but that it would work out in the end in a way that would be even better than our expectations.”

  Carole felt mildly annoyed, not because she thought Stevie was wrong, but because she realized she was right. “How is it Mrs. Reg always knows what’s going to happen to us?”

  Stevie smiled and shook her head. “Beats me.”

  “What’s going on here?” Lisa asked. “What did happen at High Meadow? Am I going to have to read every word of your diaries to get a few simple answers to a few simple questions?”

  “My diary would be short reading,” Stevie said. “You know me, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” Lisa said. “I bet you made one long entry the night before you left for High Meadow, a medium length entry the first night you got there, before anything happened, and then two scribbled one-sentence entries much later on. Right?”

  “Wrong,” Stevie said. “I didn’t do the medium length one. Just the one long and the two scribbled.”

  Lisa wasn’t surprised. That was just like Stevie. She hoped she could count on Carole, though.

  “Not much better,” Carole told her. “I did a couple of entries that you’re welcome to read, but on the worst days, I didn’t write anything. Stevie and I are just going to have to tell you everything that happened.”

  “Everything?” Stevie asked, still uncomfortable about confessing every dumb thing she, Carole, and Kate had done in the three weeks at High Meadow.

  “Everything,” Carole said. “And I know just the place to do it.”

  She drew Starlight to a halt and dismounted. They had arrived at the creek, and they had a routine there that they followed whenever the weather allowed it. Today’s weather was perfect for it.

  The girls secured their horses to branches of the trees that stood by the creek so the horses could get fresh water. Then they removed their own riding boots and socks and climbed onto a flat rock that overhung the stream. They each hiked up their pants and let their feet dangle in the water.

  “Nothing ever felt so good!” Carole declared.

  “Oh, I’m not sure about that,” said Stevie. “The swim after the stampede was pretty terrific.”

  “Stampede?” Lisa said.

  That seemed like as good a place as any to begin.

  By the time Carole and Stevie finished telling all, Lisa was laughing. It was the one reaction they hadn’t expected from their friend.

  “You certainly kept everybody busy, didn’t you? And you finally tamed the L-ions. Did you really get Linc to jump?”

  “Yes, I did,” Carole said, a little proudly. “He didn’t want to admit that he liked doing it. He kept saying he wanted to try it to prove how sissy English jumping was, but then he seemed to want to try it a lot. I’m sure he liked it.”

  “And, you, Stevie, finding a way to keep twelve kids quiet and calm in the middle of a stampede! No wonder Eli thought you guys were so great!”

  “We didn’t think he did,” Carole said.

  “As I remember Eli, he has a way of keeping his thoughts to himself, doesn’t he?”

  “Sure,” said Stevie. “What I forgot, though, was that if he’s angry about something, he’ll let you know. I should have realized that when he wasn’t angry, he must have been pleased. It would have saved me a lot of worrying.”

  That didn’t sound like it made sense, but Carole agreed with it because she knew it was right.

  Lisa swirled her feet in the cool water and watched the ripples reflect the trees and sky above. “You know, I was thinking,” she began. “At first, it was hard being away from home, but I got used to it. When we left, I was terribly afraid of all the things I didn’t know, but I found that what I did know was enough. That made me feel good.”

  “And when we left home, we were just full of ourselves, very sure that all the stuff we knew would be more than enough. It didn’t turn out that way. We had to learn a lot more and prove ourselves to the campers, Eli, and Jeannie. Mostly to ourselves, though, I guess,” Carole said.

  “Being away from home is hard sometimes,” Stevie observed. “Even when you’re glad to be where you are.”

  “Right,” Carole mused.

  “But being away from home wasn’t as hard as being away from my friends,” said Lisa. “I missed Willow Creek and Pine Hollow, but most of all I missed The Saddle Club.”

  “Well, we’re all back together again now!” Stevie announced, as if she’d just realized the significance of their trail ride. “And like Dorothy says in The Wizard of Oz, ‘There’s no place like home!’ ”

  “Especially if ‘home’ is a stable!” said Lisa. Then she reached over and took a handful of water and splashed it on her two friends. Stevie and Carole weren’t sure what felt so wonderful about that—the cool water
dripping down their hot faces or the fact that their best friend Lisa had splashed it on them. They decided not to waste any more time thinking about that. Instead, they decided to retaliate. In seconds, creek water was splashing all over the place.

  The Saddle Club was back together.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BONNIE BRYANT is the author of more than fifty books for young readers, including novelizations of movie hits such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles® and Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, written under her married name, B.B. Hiller.

  Ms. Bryant began writing The Saddle Club in 1986. Although she had done some riding before that, she intensified her studies then and found herself learning right along with her characters Stevie, Carole, and Lisa. She claims that they are all much better riders than she is.

  Ms. Bryant was born and raised in New York City. She lives in Greenwich Village with her two sons.