Pack Trip (12 page)

“A long time ago there was this hunter who lived nearby. He tracked a deer through the mountains. He tracked and he tracked and he tracked it for weeks. He became obsessed with catching this deer.”

“How obsessed was he?” Carole asked.

“Just wait and I’ll tell you,” Stevie assured her. “He reached the top of one mountain, which stood just about where we are now sitting, and for the first time he had a clear shot at the deer. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and squinted to focus, trying to get the deer into the cross hairs of his target scope—”

“I thought this took place a long time ago,” John teased. “They didn’t have cross hairs then.”

“Shhhh,” Carole said.

“But when he squinted, it made his contact lens pop out, and he couldn’t see a thing with the eye he used to aim. So he dropped his rifle, and he began rummaging around in the ground under his feet. Pretty soon, when he still couldn’t find the lens, he began digging, tossing dirt every which way. Before he knew it, he’d dug up the entire mountain and left us this beautiful valley.”

“Did he ever find his contact lens?” Lisa asked.

“Nah, it was probably lost at the bottom of the lake.”

“And the deer?” John asked.

“He stopped hunting it. He now lives exclusively on hash and beans!”

“Very good!” Eli said, clapping along with the others. He handed Stevie a s’more. “Who’s next?”

“Me,” Lisa said, raising her hand. “I’ve got one.”

“Okay, let’s hear it,” Jeannie said.

“Once upon a time—”

“Not a fairy tale, a
tall
tale!” Christine teased.

“Don’t worry; it’s tall,” Lisa said. Then she began again. “Once upon a time there were a brother and sister. They looked just like everybody else, and sometimes they even acted like everybody else, but they really weren’t.”

“I’ll second that!” Stevie said. Everybody laughed, and then Lisa took a deep breath to continue.

“Lisa, you don’t have to do this,” Carole said. “They’re gone, and it’s good riddance.”

“Maybe they even learned something from the experience and will change,” Christine said.

“I doubt it,” Lisa said. “They won’t change as long as there’s somebody there to pick up the pieces for them—like me, or their father.”

“I thought we were telling tall tales,” Eli said. Everybody knew he was trying to veer the riders away from the subject of Seth and Amy, but Lisa also felt there was something that she wanted to say.

Lisa dropped all pretense of a tall tale. “Anyway,” she said. “I was pretty busy for a while there, trying to make the world right for Seth, if not for Amy. I didn’t see that what was happening instead was that they were making it all wrong for me—and you guys, too. So do me a favor, will you?”

“Whatever you want,” Stevie said.

“Next time I get mixed up with a pair of jerks like that, will you remind me of this not-so-tall tale?”

“Definitely!” Carole said. That was an easy promise for everyone to make.

“See, that wasn’t a tall tale, that was a jerk tale,” Eli complained. “Who’s got another tall tale to tell?”

It seemed that almost everybody did, and much to everybody’s relief, none of the rest of the stories had any serious morals.

Later, when the full moon had risen high in the black velvet sky, it was time to sleep. It was too beautiful a night to sleep in tents, so they all brought their sleeping bags out into the open and laid them in a circle around the embers of the camp fire.

It had been such a wonderful day that Stevie didn’t want it to end. She wondered if she could stay awake all night and decided to do it by counting the stars overhead. Although she was sure there were thousands scattered across the vast sky, she was sound asleep before she got to seventeen.

T
WENTY
-
FOUR HOURS
later The Saddle Club was having its first meeting in five days. Carole, Lisa, Stevie, Kate, and Christine all sat in comfortable chairs on the porch of one of the bunkhouses at the Bar None Ranch. It had been a long day, though not nearly as long as the day and night of the fire. They had left their lakeside campsite early in the morning and ridden two hours to the horse ranch, where the vans awaited them. Jeannie and Eli had dropped the girls off at the airport so that Frank could fly them back to the Bar None. It would take Jeannie and Eli another day to return with the horse vans by highway.

Now there was only one more night of the trip before
Stevie, Lisa, and Carole had to return home. There seemed to be so much to talk about.

“I never thought a shower could feel that good,” Stevie said, snuggling in her freshly washed flannel pajamas.

“There is something to be said for civilization,” Lisa agreed.

“But I wouldn’t trade our experience on the pack trip for anything,” Carole added.

“Especially the part about holding hands with John?” Kate asked her.

“Especially that,” Carole agreed.

“Are you going to write to him?” Christine asked.

“I think so,” Carole said. “He lives a couple of thousand miles from me, so who knows if we’ll ever see each other again? But he’s smart about horses, and I like that. He wants me to keep him up-to-date on Starlight’s training.”

“Writing letters is nice,” Stevie said.

“You mean like the four postcards you mailed to your boyfriend Phil this afternoon?” Lisa asked.

“Sure,” Stevie said, shrugging and smiling, recalling all the information she’d had to jam onto four little postcards. “After all, I told him I’d send him postcards, I didn’t say when I’d send them. Besides, I like to write.”

“Everything but homework, right?” Carole said.

“Oh,” Stevie said. It was a stilted utterance, almost a gasping sound. “Oh, no!”

“What’s the matter?” Lisa asked.

“The word—
homework
. I just remembered.”

“You have homework?” Carole asked.

“It’s my book report,” Stevie said. “I brought the book with me, don’t you remember? It’s
Robinson Crusoe
. Have you seen it? What happened to it?” She jumped up from the porch and ran to her bunk. She began rummaging through her clean, neatly folded belongings. There wasn’t a sign of
Robinson Crusoe
. “My parents are going to kill me. I promised, absolutely positively promised, I’d have the thing written and practically typed and proofread by the time we got back.”

Shirts, pajamas, socks, and underwear were flying around the cabin. “Is it in your bag?” Stevie asked Carole, sounding desperate. Carole shook her head. “I’ve just got to have that book!”

“Hold it!” Lisa commanded, trying to pick up the various pieces of clothing that were scattered on the floor, the bunk beds, and even draped on the ceiling light fixture. “Let’s think this thing out logically.”

Stevie stopped her desperate search. Lisa’s specialty was logic. More than once Lisa’s logic had gotten Stevie out of hot water. Maybe, just maybe, it would work again.

“You must have left the book at the campsite on the mountain when you packed up your things to get away from the fire,” Kate suggested. That was the logical answer to the question, but it didn’t help Stevie get the report done.

“I know about
Robinson Crusoe
,” Carole said. “It’s about a man who gets shipwrecked on a desert island and survives, right?”

“Yes,” Stevie said. “I learned that from the back of the book. I don’t think I can write a whole book report with just that information, though of course I could try.”

“Forget about that,” Carole said. “It’ll never work. But since you’re supposed to write about wilderness survival, why don’t you just write the story of our wilderness ride instead? After all, we survived a forest fire! I bet your teacher will love it! What do you think, Lisa?”

Lisa furrowed her brows, obviously thinking hard. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” she said finally. “I think if you just tell your parents and your teacher about the forest fire, they will all think it’s the most original excuse you’ve
ever
come up with for not handing in an assignment. They’re going to love it!”

“That’s why I love The Saddle Club,” Stevie declared. “Just when you need help, it’s there for you!”

Bonnie Bryant is the author of nearly a hundred books about horses, including the Saddle Club series, the Saddle Club Super Editions, and the Pony Tales series.