Blue Moon (6 page)

“Stole him off a dead gunfighter,” Cole drawled.

I glared at him. “Cole…”

“Raised him from a colt,” he said, and this time I could see he meant it.

I stared at him unbelievingly. “All this time you've been watching me work with Blue Moon you never once said anything about having a horse of your own. Why didn't you tell me?”

Cole shrugged, reached down and rubbed the stallion's neck. “Itchy, huh, Nightstar?” Then he looked up. “Did you ever ask?” he said, his eyes on mine.

Before I had time to answer, Nightstar reached his nose over toward Blue Moon and gave a soft little whinny. It sounded like it meant something like, “How about we ditch these two and go eat clover together in the moonlight?”

Blue Moon gave an insulted squeal, flattened her ears and bared her teeth. I grinned and gave her a pat on the neck. She was definitely my kind of horse.

Cole and I started riding together nearly every evening. The longer rides were just what Blue Moon needed. When I tried her on the barrels again, she was back to behaving like a pro. Now what she needed was a chance to prove herself. I guess Cole was thinking the same thing. One Monday morning he handed me a piece of paper. It was a poster for the Elkridge Rodeo. He
pointed to an event near the bottom of the page. Novice Barrel Racing. “No pros in there,” he said. “Ol' Moonface would have a pretty good chance.”

I jabbed him in the ribs with my elbow. “Stop calling her that!” Then I couldn't resist adding, “You really think she could win?”

“Sure,” he said with a wicked grin, “if she doesn't decide to skip the third barrel and run for home instead.”

I gave him another jab. “Not much danger,” I said confidently. Especially since home was a two-hour drive from Elkridge. I started to work on Dad. I had two weeks to talk him into the three things I needed. His truck. His trailer. And his permission to go. By the end of the week I had all three.

That was about the same time that Cole started acting funny. I mean even stranger than usual. I'd be yapping away at him about Blue Moon, and he'd get this worried look on his face and say something like, “Uh, Bobbie Jo, there's something I'd better…”
Bobbie Jo yet, not Blue Jeans. But when I'd stop talking and wait to hear what he had to say, he'd never get around to spitting it out. It was really getting on my nerves.

The day before the rodeo, I was bouncing off the ground with excitement. Cole was grumpy as an old bear with a hangover.

I took Blue Moon for just one quick run around the barrels that evening. She did them in seventeen-one. “Cole!” I screeched when he told me. “That's fantastic! She's gonna win!”

“Yeah,” he said, staring at the ground. “Maybe.”

I couldn't take it. “Well thanks a lot for the support. All week you've been trying to bring me down and I've had enough of it. Just go home.”

I thought at least he'd fight back. He didn't. He just nodded. “Okay. Good luck tomorrow.”

It felt like I slept about ten minutes that night. In the morning I woke up tired and scared. I didn't want to go to the rodeo alone.
Everything I'd done with Blue Moon, I'd done by myself. I kept telling myself that. It was the truth. But every step of the way, Cole had been there. Not doing all that much. Just being there. And suddenly I realized I still needed him to be there.

I spent the morning going through the motions of getting ready to go to the rodeo. It was Saturday, so Cole didn't come to work. He didn't come to hang around either, like he did most Saturdays.

It was almost one o'clock. I should get going. I wanted to watch some of the other events and give Blue Moon lots of time to get used to the place. I put the mare in the trailer. Cole and I had been practicing loading her for weeks. Now she walked right in. I didn't have any excuse to hang around any longer.

Mom and Dad came out to wish me luck. They had wanted to come and watch me race, but one of our best cows was due to calve that day so they didn't dare leave. As I climbed into the truck, Mom asked
the question I'd been dreading. “Isn't Cole going with you, Bobbie Jo? After all the time he's spent helping you with the horse, I thought you'd want him to be there for your first rodeo.”

I swallowed hard, blinked and avoided my mother's eyes. “I don't need Cole McCall holding my hand every move I make.” Then I rammed the truck into gear and took off with a jolt that probably spoiled Blue Moon's day.

All the way down the lane I could still see my parents in the rearview mirror staring after me. I would have bet they were shaking their heads.

I turned onto the main road, wiping a hand across my eyes and wondering why the windshield was so blurry. I drove slowly past Cole's turnoff, staring as far as I could see down the empty lane. Suddenly, I hit the brakes. “Sorry again, Blue Moon,” I muttered as the truck jolted to a stop. I backed up and turned into the lane. I wasn't sure what I was doing, but I couldn't stop myself.
Not until I was halfway around the curve. Then I stopped real sudden. If I hadn't, I would have run head-on into Cole's truck coming from the opposite direction. He hit the brakes, too. Then he pulled his truck off to the side, came running over and jumped in beside me. “Cole…” I began, but I didn't know what to say. It didn't matter because he interrupted me anyway.

“Hey, Blue Jeans,” he said with that teasing grin. “You weren't gonna go without me, were you?”

I spent the next twenty minutes trying to back the trailer around the curve. Cole spent the next twenty minutes laughing at me trying to back the trailer around the curve. Things were back to normal—for now anyway.

The afternoon that had stretched out ahead was suddenly gone. The afternoon rodeo events ended and everything shut down for an hour. Time to warm up the barrel horses. Blue Moon was calm, in control. She took
the crowds and confusion in her stride. Somewhere, in a past life, Blue Moon had definitely been around.

The barrel racing started. The first rider was slow as molasses. Nineteen-five. We could beat that. The next two riders knocked down barrels. Five-second penalties. Out of luck. Then a girl came out on a beautiful golden palomino that ran like the wind. She ran clean—seventeen-six. My stomach knotted. Then came a real young kid on a big bay. She was just going into the first turn when a sudden gust of wind came up. The wind whirled a big piece of cardboard out of the stands and almost into her horse's face. He leaped straight sideways, slammed her leg against the barrel, lost his footing and fell. They took the girl out in an ambulance. The horse limped out bleeding from a big cut on his leg.

It was a hot summer evening but I felt myself go cold inside. Did I really know what to expect from my horse? And why did I have to draw second-last place in the
running order? Just one left before me. A young horse. Green as grass at this business. but the rider was experienced. She steered the horse around the barrels and turned for home. That's when he ducked his head and went to bucking. The girl stayed with him and rode out the storm. The crowd loved it. Except for me, that is. All I felt was a little closer to throwing up.

Then I heard my name over the PA system. I went on autopilot. Somehow I got Blue Moon lined up behind the starting line. I felt the pent-up power underneath me. She was ready. I gulped a deep breath, looked up and caught a glimpse of Cole giving me the thumbs-up signal from the fence. Then we were gone. How could so few seconds stretch out so long? I felt each powerful stride as Blue Moon closed in on the first barrel, dug in and turned on a dime. I felt her powerful hindquarters push her away from that barrel and on toward the second one. Close around. Pounding down the long stretch to barrel three. Around it and racing for home.

Then I was circling her to a stop and waiting, breathless as always, for the time. It boomed out from the announcer's stand. “We have a new leader, folks. B.J. Brooks and Blue Moon, seventeen-three.”

The grandstand went wild with cheering. I reached down and hugged Blue Moon's neck. She gave her head a casual toss. “No big deal,” I think she said. But when we'd moved out of the arena, Cole came up and gave her a hug, too. If you really want to know, Blue Moon wasn't the only one he hugged. And, yes, I did hug him back.

The last horse ran eighteen flat. Blue Moon and I loped out of the arena with our first trophy just as it started to rain.

The rain stayed with us as darkness fell and we drove into the night. The main highway was busy with a lot of big trucks throwing water up over my windshield. I was relieved when we turned off onto the two-lane highway for the last halfhour of the drive. Then the storm really hit. The sky just opened up and the rain was a solid sheet in front of us. The noise on the truck's roof was enough
to rattle my brains. I hoped that Blue Moon wasn't too scared back there.

I slowed down to a crawl, stared hard through the curtain of water and tried to keep track of the white line on the highway. We started into a long, gentle curve—and suddenly everything happened at once. A pair of headlights cut through the rain almost straight ahead of me. Cole yelled, “Look out!” and I swung the wheel to the right.

A bunch of miracles happened in the next split second. The other driver managed to swerve back into his own lane. I managed to stop my swerve before I rolled both the truck and the trailer. We skidded to a stop with just one front truck wheel in the shallow ditch.

The minute we stopped moving I was piling out the door. I slid my way along the rain-slick highway to the trailer and yanked open the small door at the side. Blue Moon was on her feet, standing kind of straddled out like a person on the deck of a rocking boat. I reached in and rubbed her neck. “It's okay, Moon. It's gonna be all right.” She
gave a nervous little whinny and reached over to take a nip out of the sleeve of my jacket. I think she was making a statement about my driving. I gave her another pat and then gently closed the door.

“Thank God she's okay,” I said over my shoulder to Cole. There was no answer. I turned around to face him, but he wasn't there. I was sure he'd have been out of the truck in a flash and right behind me to check on the horse.

I went back to the open driver's side door. Cole hadn't moved. He was sitting with both hands gripping the edge of the dashboard, staring straight ahead. “Cole? Are you hurt? Did you hit your head or something?” I started to panic. “Cole! Talk to me!”

He sort of shook his head and relaxed his death grip on the dash. “Sorry, Bobbie Jo,” he said in a voice that was almost a whisper. “For a minute there I thought it was all happening again.”

I laid my hand on his shoulder. “What, Cole?” I asked softly. “What was happening again?”

He took a deep breath. “Is the horse okay?” he asked. I nodded. “Are we stuck?”

“I think if I put it in four-wheel drive we can get out. Just one wheel went in.”

“Okay, let's go home. I'll tell you on the way.”

He told me. It was a long story. “We used to live in Texas. My dad was head trainer for one of the biggest quarter horse ranches in the country. We were building up a herd of our own, too. We'd just put down a payment on a place of our own. Then,” his voice went kind of shaky, “one night we were comin' home from the city in a thunderstorm and a drunk driver hit our truck. We all got hurt.” He turned and lifted up the side of his shoulder-length hair to show me the angry red scar on his neck. “A piece of pipe we were hauling came through the back window and got me. Mom had a broken arm. But Dad….” His voice broke. He swallowed. “You've seen Dad. He couldn't work anymore. We didn't have medical insurance. The doctor bills took everything. We saved Nightstar and two mares. That's all. This is my uncle's
place we're living on here. He's owned the land for a long time, but he lives in Calgary. He said we'd at least have a roof over our heads.” He gave me a shaky smile.

“Dad goes to the hospital for therapy every day now. It's been a year and a half since the accident, but this is the first he's been willing to even try. At first he just wanted to die. But he's startin' to care a little now. Comin' to see Blue Moon was the first time he's gone out amongst people since we got here. I guess I'd talked about her so much his curiosity finally got the best of him.” Cole grinned. “He sure took to that horse. Talked about her more than he's talked about anything since the accident.”

Suddenly, the smile faded and I knew something else was wrong. “Tell me the rest, Cole,” I said, glancing at his face in the glow of the instrument panel.

He wouldn't look at me. “That's all there is to tell about my family,” he said in a low voice.

“But there's something else you've got to tell me, isn't there? You've been trying
to get up the nerve to tell me all week, Cole. Get it over with.” I turned the corner into our lane and pulled to a stop in front of the barn. In a minute, my family would be out here wanting to know how everything went. I wanted an answer first.

Cole slowly reached into the front pocket of his jean jacket and brought out a folded piece of paper. I opened it and turned on the overhead light.

It was a poster.