Ghost Rider (3 page)

John was at the barn ready to help the girls saddle up their horses while his father rounded up Kate’s horse from the field. When John offered to bring Lisa her saddle, she accepted. Western saddles were much heavier and more cumbersome than the English ones they used at Pine Hollow. Lisa was glad for the help—until John showed up carrying a pony saddle!

“Uh, John,” Kate began.

It was then that Lisa noticed the twinkle in his eyes. “I just thought these fancy English rider types might prefer a little saddle to a real one,” he said.

Stevie was the first one to laugh. She herself was quite a practical joker, and she always appreciated it when somebody thought up something funny to do.

“Thanks, but we can handle the real thing,” Lisa
said. “And I guess I’m going to have to get it myself.…”

John smiled wryly. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll get it for you.”

“John! What’s going on?” Walter demanded, returning to the paddock with Kate’s horse, an Appaloosa named Spot.

“We were just joking around, Walter,” Kate said. “John’s helping my friends saddle up.”

“It doesn’t look like he’s being much help,” Walter said. His sternness surprised Stevie, Lisa, and Carole. “It looks more like he’s causing trouble.”

“No trouble, Walter,” Kate said. “It’s just fan.”

Walter grunted a response while he hitched Spot’s lead rope to the corral fence. Then he fetched the Appaloosa’s saddle and had him saddled up in what seemed like an instant.

“Wow,” Carole said, admiring how quickly he’d done the job.

“Just trying to be helpful like I’m supposed to be,” Walter said, holding Spot’s reins so Kate could mount him.

John looked sheepishly at his father.

Kate climbed into the saddle and thanked Walter. It took only a few more minutes for Lisa, Stevie, and Carole to mount up, too. Then Walter and John
helped them all adjust the cinches on the saddles, and they were off.

It was wonderful. Stevie, Lisa, and Carole loved riding in any form, and they particularly loved the kind of riding they did at Pine Hollow. But riding at The Bar None was unique. They weren’t riding through fields and hilly woods. They were riding across Southwestern desert, passing tall cactus and scrubby bushes, around old rocky mountains, and along dusty trails. It was open, it was wild. Lisa found herself thinking that she had suddenly been dropped into an old Western movie. She could easily imagine cowboys and stagecoaches and one-street towns and half-expected John Wayne to pop up in front of her and drawl, “Howdy, pilgrim.”

She smiled at her own thoughts and recognized that it felt great to be back at The Bar None, riding with Kate and her friends.

Kate’s voice abruptly broke into Lisa’s daydream. She was talking about the herd of wild horses and the one she wanted to adopt. Lisa listened with interest.

“The Bureau of Land Management has to keep down the wild-horse population,” Kate was explaining. “If there are too many horses out there, two things will happen. First, the land won’t support a large number, and some of them will die. Second, they’ll eat
everything that’s growing, and the land will be even more barren. That’s why the government likes to make the horses available to people who can give them good homes.”

“It sounds like a great program,” Carole said.

“It is,” Kate confirmed. “Both the horses and the land benefit—to say nothing of us lucky ones who get the horses!”

“So when can we see your stallion?” Stevie asked.

“The herd has been collecting by the rise across the creek every afternoon recently,” Kate replied. “We should find them there about now.”

“Just show us the way,” Stevie said. Then an odd look crossed her face. “On second thought, I don’t think you have to. I have the feeling that Stewball knows exactly where to find them. He’s in gear.”

That was just like Stewball. Once he had an idea in his head, he was as stubborn as Stevie—and as likely to be right about it, too. All the riders decided to let Stewball take the lead. They trotted along a trail that followed a two-lane highway for a good distance, and then Stewball took a right and aimed for a mountain. He certainly seemed to know what he was doing, and when he rounded the base of the mountain and entered a small green valley where Two Mile Creek ran, they found that he was absolutely right. There, drinking lazily from the sparse stream, was a herd of about
fifty wild horses. The girls drew their horses to a halt and watched.

It took Lisa’s breath away. She knew about natural herds. She’d read about them. She’d even seen an educational special on them. But she’d never seen one. She’d seen hundreds, even thousands of horses in her life, but she’d never seen one that didn’t belong to someone, hadn’t been trained, coddled, shod, cared for. And here were fifty horses who didn’t belong to anybody. There were no halters, no shoes, no feed boxes, no vets, no riders. These animals were wild. They didn’t live in paddocks and stalls. They didn’t eat processed grains and sugar lumps. They lived here. They lived everywhere. Lisa was stunned by the sight, and she wasn’t alone in her thoughts.

“Oh.” Stevie sighed. “They’re beautiful.”

“Where’s the gray?” Carole whispered.

“Watch,” Kate said.

The wind shifted then and carried their scent. Some of the mares lifted their heads and sniffed. They whinnied gently. Then the horses began moving around. The mares drank again. And then a pure white head rose, sniffed, and looked. The horse’s ears twitched like antennae, reaching to pick up any sound. The girls were silent, but the horse found them anyway. The stallion called to his brood. At the instant of his call, all the horses in the herd were alert, awaiting his signal. Then,
rising as if by magic, the pure white horse jumped and neighed loudly. And then the whole herd began to move, galloping off and away from the riders by the mountainside. The only sound in the desert was the thunder of hoofbeats, and then all that remained was the cloud of dust they left behind.

“Oh,” Lisa said breathlessly.

“Just what I was going to say,” Stevie agreed.

“Y
OU
’
VE JUST GOT
to have him,” Lisa said to Kate as they rode back toward The Bar None. “He’s so beautiful.…”

“Did you notice the nick in his ear?” Kate asked. “It’s very distinctive. It’s like the imperfection that makes him absolutely perfect.”

At first Lisa didn’t think that was a very logical description, but as she thought about the horse, she came to think that Kate was right. Part of what made the stallion so beautiful was the wildness, and certainly the scar was a symbol of that, and would always be, even after Kate owned him and trained him.

Then, as if Carole had heard Lisa’s thoughts, she
asked Kate, “Will you train him yourself? Do you know how to do it?”

“I know some things, of course,” Kate said. “I mean, you can’t spend as much time around horses as I have, or even as you have, without knowing a lot about training.”

“Training a wild horse has got to be different from training a domestic one,” Stevie reasoned. “I mean, that stallion has never stood still for a human in his life. It’s hard to imagine that he ever will, either.”

A smile crossed Kate’s face, which told her friends that Stevie had put her finger on something very important to Kate: the stallion’s very wildness.

“He will,” Kate said. “I know it. Besides, Walter said he’d help me. He’s had lots of experience with wild ponies. He knows what he’s doing.”

The mention of Walter reminded the girls of the awkward confrontation between him and John at the stable earlier.

“Is he always that serious?” Stevie asked. “He came down pretty hard on John.”

Kate nodded. “I think Walter feels he has to prove himself. See, he’s got some kind of odd reputation.”

“You mean like he’s dangerous?” Lisa asked.

“No way,” said Kate. “But there’s definitely something mysterious about his past.”

“How do you know?” Stevie asked.

“We don’t. That’s what’s mysterious,” Kate explained. “Neither Walter nor John will talk about it at all, but it has something to do with John’s mother. She’s dead, I think. I overheard some parents talking about it at school, but as soon as they saw me, they stopped talking.”

“Too bad they saw you,” Stevie said. One of Stevie’s favorite activities was overhearing conversations not intended for her. She was disappointed that Kate had been discovered.

“It didn’t make any difference,” Kate said. “From what I heard, it was clear they didn’t know anything anyway. It’s all just gossip. My parents don’t listen to gossip, so they hired Walter, and nobody’s sorry they did. He’s a hard worker, and John works even harder. Sometimes I feel sorry for them because they work so hard and nothing ever seems to get better. Walter is always grim and determined. John? Well, he’s nice and helpful, but he’s hard to get to know.”

“He seems lonely,” Lisa said.

Stevie nodded. “That must be why he tried that practical joke. He just wanted to be friendly.”

“That’s what I thought,” Lisa said.

Carole wrinkled her nose. “Well, it wasn’t very funny. The saddle you put on a horse is very important. It needs to fit the horse, and it needs to fit the rider. I don’t think it’s something to joke about. I
mean, if the saddle doesn’t fit a horse, the horse can get sores, and they take a long time to heal—”

“Carole!” Stevie said, a little exasperated. “It was a joke.”

Carole loved horses so much that it was harder for her to understand joking about them than it was for her friends. It was just like her to go off on a long speech about horse care and lore. Her friends took it as their responsibility to bring her back to reality.

“Definitely a joke,” Kate assured her.

“And a slightly funny one,” Lisa agreed. “It made me laugh.”

“Well, Walter didn’t laugh,” Carole said.

“But he’s
always
serious,” Kate said.

“I wonder what secret he and John are keeping,” mused Stevie. Her friends looked at her. There was nothing Stevie loved more than a mystery she could solve. There was nothing she hated more than not having her curiosity satisfied.

“Stevie!” Lisa said. “Some things just aren’t any of our business. I mean, you have to respect other people’s privacy.”

“I suppose,” Stevie conceded. “I’ll mind my own business. I promise.”

“Well,” Kate said, “our business right now is to finish this ride and get back to the ranch. Christine’s coming over later tonight, and Mom said something
about wanting some help in the kitchen for dinner. Any volunteers?”

Three hands went up. Helping Phyllis cook was always a pleasure because the results were always so mouth watering, and, as they thought about it, it had been a long day for the travelers. Some good food would be very welcome. They headed home.

“I
T
’
S A HEART
!” Stevie declared.

“No, an oval—I mean an egg! A penny, uh, a saddle!” Carole suggested.

“A heart with some lumps around the edge—five lumps around the edge?” Stevie persisted.

Lisa shook her head violently. She scribbled some more and then looked to Kate for help.

“A treasure map?”

The girls were playing Pictionary. They were one team. The other team had been made up from other guests at The Bar None. The other guests were definitely winning, and Lisa didn’t think her friends would ever recognize the turtle she was trying to draw. She drew a pattern on the turtle’s back that looked pretty realistic to her.

“A bathtub!” Stevie was triumphant. But wrong. Lisa shook her head.

Now desperate, she tried drawing a hare to suggest a tortoise. That was no more successful.

“Time!” the other team announced.

“A turtle,” Lisa said. Her friends looked at her scribbly sketch with a new point of view. “Three years of art lessons and I can’t draw a recognizable turtle.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Stevie told her. “Remember, I had trouble drawing a bell. This game is not about great art.”

“Yes it is,” a member of the opposing team chimed in—and then smiled gleefully. Considering all the very odd scribbles that had passed for pictures since the game started right after supper, everybody knew that was funny, and they all laughed.

The person who was drawing for the other team reached for a card, frowned as she looked at it, and then asked Lisa to time the round. Lisa automatically looked at her wrist. There was nothing there. It didn’t make any difference in the game since they were actually using an egg timer, but it did make a difference to her wrist. She’d obviously taken her watch off sometime, and she had to try to remember where and when.

She flipped the egg timer and set her mind to work while the other team struggled with a drawing of a vegetable peeler.

Pencil. Sword. Lollipop. I mean sucker—you know, the kind with a looped handle. Pot. Pan. Knife
.

Lisa remembered that she’d had it on when she and
her friends had been riding. She didn’t remember whether she’d had it on when she was working in the kitchen and at dinner.

Lasso. Lasso roping an egg. Lasso laying an egg
.

She recalled unsaddling Chocolate and noticing how much lather the horse had worked up. She’d given her a bath, and that must have been when she removed her watch. The memory came back then. She had taken her watch off and hooked it on a nail protruding from a wall in the barn. She didn’t remember taking it off the nail, so it was almost certainly still there. It would probably still be there in the morning, but Lisa didn’t want to take the chance.