Dude Ranch (3 page)

“So there is a swimming pool?” Lisa asked eagerly.

“Not a pool. A hole. It’s a place where the beavers dammed up the river and there’s a nice deep swimming spot.”

“Are there still real beavers there?”

“Somebody’s got to be sure the dam’s in working order!” Kate said. “But don’t worry—they spend most of their time underwater. You probably won’t see them. Of course, you may feel one with your feet. You’ll know it by the soft fur and—”

“Don’t listen to her,” Carole said as Lisa shuddered. “She’s been spending too much time with Eli.”

Lisa nodded. “And if she teases us ‘dudes’ too much, we won’t give her her present, will we?”

“What present?” Kate asked, suddenly very interested.

“Tell us the truth about the beavers,” Carole said.

“I’ve never seen one. Or felt one,” she said. “And that’s the truth.”

“Okay, we’ll give you your present. In the bunkhouse.”

The pickup truck pulled off the two-lane highway it had been following since leaving the airport. The road was now a rutted dirt path. First they drove through a stand of trees that bordered a creek. “Swimming hole’s that way,” Kate announced, pointing to the right. The road wound around a hill. On either side, there were pastures, enclosed by wooden post fences.

“We’re on our property now,” Kate said. “Those cattle over there belong to Bar None. And here’s home.”

The truck drew to a stop in front of a sprawling ranch house with a wooden porch. It looked like it belonged on a postcard, too. There was a bam behind the house and there were a number of smaller cabins circling the main house. Stevie suspected they were the guesthouses, or bunkhouses.

“Look, there’s even a triangle by the door. Don’t tell me that’s how your mom calls everybody in for lunch!” Stevie said.

“Nope. I get to ring it! You can have turns, too. Maybe,” Kate joked.

Eli dropped the tailgate of the truck and helped the girls down. Kate’s parents appeared on the porch and welcomed the girls warmly.

“Colonel and Mrs. Devine, it’s
great
to be here!” Carole bubbled.

“Well, it’s great to have you here,” Kate’s mother said. “All of you. But we have one firm rule here on the ranch and that is no last names. Everybody calls us Phyllis and Frank. Now come on in and have some supper. I’ll have the wranglers put your bags in your bunkhouse. You all must be exhausted from your long trip.”

“Plum tuckered out,” Lisa said, nodding sagely. Her friends broke into laughter at her use of the un-Lisa-like expression.

“I think she’s been watching too many cowboy movies,” Stevie said, poking her.

Lisa grinned. “If we’re about to eat, can I ring the triangle?”

“You could,” Phyllis agreed. “But since everybody else has already
had
supper, you might confuse everyone. Why don’t you wait until morning? Breakfast is served at six-thirty on the dot. You can ring it then.”

Lisa stifled a yawn. “I think, under the circumstances, that I’ll wait until lunch to ring it, okay?”

“No problem,” Phyllis said.

The girls followed her inside to the dinner table, where a rich and filling stew awaited them. The girls were both hungry and tired. The Devines talked with Carole, catching up on her family news. Carole knew them originally because her father and Frank had been in the Marine Corps together for many years. They had a lot of friends in common. Now, Colonel Devine was retired, but he still wanted to know about his old friends.

After dinner, the girls helped clear the table and then stumbled across the yard to their bunkhouse. The four girls were being housed in a small building with two rooms. Kate pointed out the bedroom with two sets of bunk beds. “That’s why we call it a bunkhouse,” Kate told them. There was also a small sitting room and a bathroom. And they had their own little porch, complete with rocking chairs.

“This is neat!” Lisa announced as she peered around the place.

“Neat enough that I’ve earned my present?” Kate asked, reminding the girls of their promise to her.

“You earned your present a long time ago,” Carole assured her. “I think it’s time for a Saddle Club meeting—pajama-party style.”

The girls all donned their pajamas and gathered on the porch of their bunkhouse. They put their chairs in
a circle. The night air was cool and fresh. Beyond the roof of the porch, a sky full of stars glimmered in the velvet black night, and a three-quarter moon cast a pale light on the ranch. Crickets chirped in the grass. The girls heard the comforting sound of a horse’s whinny in a nearby corral.

Lisa and Stevie looked to Carole to do the talking. “Miss Kate Devine,” she began ceremoniously. “It is my great honor to invite you to join The Saddle Club—to have all the privileges of membership in our great organization.”

In the moonlight, the girls could see that Kate was smiling. “Oh, how wonderful!” she said. “I accept, of course!”

“We knew you would,” Stevie said. “So we even brought you a horse head pin.”

Lisa took a package out of her bathrobe pocket and handed it to Kate. Kate opened the tissue and looked at her pin. It was identical to the ones Lisa and Stevie and Carole wore.

“It’s beautiful,” Kate said. “It looks just like a horse I once rode in a show. Her name was Crescent because of a marking on her flank.”

“Did you take a ribbon with her?” Lisa asked.

“A blue,” Kate said, remembering. “I took a lot of blue ribbons when I was riding in shows, actually. They’re all in a cabinet in my room. But this means
more to me.” She looked at her pin. “It’s not going in any cabinet. I’m going to wear it!”

“Here’s to The Saddle Club,” Carole announced, putting her hand up in the air. Her friends joined her, clapping hands together.

“Now the next Saddle Club activity is going to be a good night’s sleep,” Lisa said sensibly. “Is breakfast
really
at six-thirty?” she asked Kate.

Kate nodded. “Really,” she said.

“R
ISE AND SHINE
!” Kate Devine’s voice broke through the hazy mist of Stevie’s dream. “Sun’s up—time for you to be up too! Breakfast will be served in five minutes. Lisa, it’s almost time to ring the bell!”

“You
must
be kidding!” Stevie groaned. “Are you actually standing there being
cheerful
at six-thirty in the morning?”

“Bingo! You win the prize,” Kate said. “And besides, I’m
always
cheerful at six-thirty.”

“So am I,” Carole said, sitting up in her upper bunk. “But that’s because I’m always sound asleep then, too.”

There was a loud thump as Lisa’s bare feet hit the floor of the bunkhouse. She was up, and from the surprised look on her face, very much awake.

“Somebody lead me to my toothbrush,” Stevie groaned.

In the end, it only took the girls a few minutes to don their shirts, jeans, and boots and emerge from their bunkhouse, ready for breakfast.

The sun was up, though still low on the eastern horizon. There was a cool freshness in the air. Morning dew sparkled on the grass, and birds chirped in the trees that gave shade to the ranch house.

“I’m glad we’re up so early,” Carole said.

“All this fresh air and sunshine has gone to your head, huh?” Stevie asked.

“I just can’t wait to start riding. What’s on for today?” Carole asked Kate.

“Breakfast, then to the corral for a couple of hours, then lunch, then into town to run some errands for my mom and to give you dudes a taste of the
real
West.”

“Sounds okay to me, but I wish you’d stop calling us dudes,” Stevie complained. “The way some people say it, it sounds like it’s an incurable disease.” She made a face. She didn’t like to be thought of that way, though she knew Kate didn’t really agree.

“Don’t take Eli too seriously,” Kate said, understanding what Stevie was thinking. “And, after all, this
is
a dude ranch.”

That was something for Stevie to think about, and she got a look at some of the other visiting dudes as
they went into breakfast. The Bar None had about twenty other guests. There were two families, one with four kids, one with five. The kids were much younger than The Saddle Club, which Stevie thought was too bad. Then, there were three couples. One seemed to be on their honeymoon. That was Stevie’s guess, anyway, after she saw the husband stumble on the steps because he was too busy gazing into his wife’s eyes. The other two couples were much older and appeared to be vacationing together.

Since the girls were going to spend all of their time together, and not on trail rides with the other guests, Stevie didn’t pay any more attention to the other people than that. But she
was
glad to know for the Devines’ sake that The Bar None had all of its bunkhouses and guest rooms full.

The girls could barely believe the breakfast Phyllis Devine served them. Each of them had a steak, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and fried potatoes.

“What’s for dinner?” Carole asked, gazing in amazement at the plate that was put in front of her. “Cocoa Puffs?”

Kate grinned at her. “Dinner will be big too. And you won’t believe the appetite you’re going to have. Riding horses all day really makes you hungry. You may have trouble this morning because you weren’t riding yesterday, but tomorrow you’ll be eating like a—a—”
She paused, and Stevie rolled her eyes while Lisa giggled.

Then the wonderful smell of the unusual breakfasts in front of them reached the girls’ noses. Much to their own surprise, they dug in. There wasn’t much talk in the next few minutes while they ate their Western-style breakfasts. And after they’d cleared their table, it was time to get to the corral.

“Every morning, the wranglers bring the horses in from the pastures where they spend the night,” Kate explained as she led the girls to the ranch’s outbuildings. “Back east, you usually have to keep them inside for protection or because the stables don’t have enough land to let them loose. Our horses here would hardly know what to do in a box stall. They love the freedom of the range. Just watch tonight when we let them loose again,” she said.

Following Kate’s lead, the girls perched themselves atop the wood-rail fence that surrounded the ranch’s corral. From the corral, a single horse could be taken to the saddling area whenever needed. At the moment, there were no horses in the corral at all.

Eli was riding a horse in the pasture where all the horses were grazing. He had a dog with him. While The Saddle Club watched, Eli and his dog rounded up about twenty-five horses, about a third of the total herd, to be used by the guests that day. The dog knew
what he was doing, and so did Eli. They worked like a perfect unit, cutting out just the horses Eli wanted, leaving the others, and getting the group headed for the corral.

“Isn’t he something?” Kate asked.

Stevie nodded. She had to admit that it was quite a show and she was beginning to understand something about Western riding. It was different from English, but that didn’t mean it was easier. When it came to doing that kind of work on a horse, Stevie
was
a dude, and so were her friends, no matter how good they were at riding.

“Come on, let’s open the gate for Eli,” Kate said, hopping into the corral and running across to the entrance. She unlatched the heavy gate. Then Stevie, Lisa, and Carole helped her swing it open just in time for the arrival of the first of the horses from the pasture. As soon as the last one was in—the horse carrying Eli—the girls shut and latched the gate tight.

“Much obliged,” Eli said politely. He dismounted, secured his horse to a fence post, and began the work of assigning horses to riders.

He carefully eyed each of the girls and then, one by one, cut out horses for them. He gave Carole a strawberry roan. That was a chestnut horse with white hairs among the auburn ones. Her horse was named Berry.

Lisa’s horse was a bay mare. She was a rich brown color with a black mane and tail and her name was Chocolate.

Kate’s horse apparently was the one she always rode. He was an Appaloosa named Spot. She cut him out herself on foot and began saddling him so she’d be able to help her friends.

That left Stevie. Eli scanned the remaining horses. Stevie had a sneaking suspicion he was trying to find an especially difficult horse for her. When he finally chose, she didn’t know whether the horse would be difficult, but she certainly knew he was funny-looking. Eli had selected a skewbald horse for Stevie. He had large blotches of white and brown on him, so irregular that Stevie almost laughed. One of the first things a rider learned about horses was that looks didn’t matter at all, but in the case of this horse, Stevie wondered.

“We call him Stewball,” Eli drawled. “He
likes
dudes.”

The way he said it made Stevie wonder exactly
how
the horse liked dudes. For breakfast?

There was no way, no way in the world, that she was going to let Eli know she was nervous. She took a deep breath, looked Eli straight in the eye, and asked, “Where’s his tack?”

Eli handed the bridle to Stevie. She knew it was a test. He wanted to see if she could put it on the horse.
The bridle was a little different from the ones at Pine Hollow, but it only took her a few seconds to figure it out. She slipped it over Stewball’s head and slid the bit into his mouth, adjusted a few of the straps, and smiled triumphantly at Eli. He nodded noncommittally and returned to the barn.