Scarecrow on Horseback (2 page)

“Scared of riding?” Jeb asked Mel with a
knowing grin.

Mel stuck her chin up. “No. It's just not my
thing.”

Jeb grunted, the smirk lingering on his lips.
“Well, riding's what a dude ranch is for.”

“Someone has to take care of the horses,” she
argued.

“Uh huh. Well, you do whatever Sally says and
stay out of trouble, hear?”

She didn't like his bossy tone. She didn't
like him. Max had been cocky like Jeb, so sure he knew best. “I
hear,” Mel said.

Jeb strode off to the barn, his muscles
showing in his tight-fitting jeans and shirt.

“He likes himself too much,” Mel said.

Sally chuckled, “Don't take you long to
figure people out, huh? Now step out of the way here, honey.
Zorro's skittish, especially early mornings.”

Mel backed into the middle of the corral and
watched Sally ready a powerfully built black horse. Sally led the
black horse over to where Jeb stood talking to a chunky little man
wearing a fringed leather vest. Next to him was a slender girl with
a cookie-sweet face and a braid of black hair as thick as her arm.
Mel guessed the girl was close to her age. Zorro kept tossing his
head and swishing his tail. The girl watched him anxiously. Sally
came for Stilts, who snorted and stopped near the mounting block,
stamping his big hooves. Sally had a short hold on the lead line,
which was a good thing, because as the little man in the fringed
vest got onto the block and put his foot in the stirrup, Stilts
sidestepped away from him. The man missed his swing into the
saddle, cursed, and grabbed awkwardly at Stilt's long, white,
mane.

“Can't you hold that animal steady?” the man
snapped. Without a word, Sally coaxed Stilts into position again.
At his second try, the rider made it onto the horse's back.

“You did say you wanted a feisty one,” Jeb
said to the man. “But we can put you on another horse. No problem.”
He sounded cajoling now that he was talking to a paying customer,
Mel noticed.

“I can handle this stallion,” the man
boasted.

“Well, maybe your daughter might be better
off if we tried her out on—”

“No need,” the man barked. “She's been riding
all her life.”

Zorro flicked his mane. Mel shuddered,
sensing rebellion in him. But the girl flipped from the mounting
block onto his back with ease. Once she was in the saddle though,
Zorro danced restlessly around the corral resisting her attempts to
guide him.

“You better go with these two,” Jeb said
quietly to Sally. “I got a sick horse in the big barn to deal with.
Then I'll finish up here.”

“Sure,” Sally said. He mounted Rover, told
Mel he'd see her later, and led off toward a nearby mountain where
snow fingers clawed the peak.

The girl looked back over her shoulder at Mel
as Zorro pranced through the gate. Her eyes were so wide and scared
that Mel took a step toward her to help her. An instant later,
Zorro clattered off down the road after the other horses. It would
be all right, Mel told herself. Sally would rescue the girl if she
needed him.

A loud bell clanged, summoning any staff who
hadn't yet eaten to breakfast.

Mel hurried to the main building. The big
lobby had a long reception desk on one side and stuffed deer heads
peering down at her from high on the walls. What kind of person
would kill a beautiful animal and boast about it by displaying its
head, Mel wondered. Not a person she'd want to know.

In the dining room behind the lobby, her
mother, Dawn, was chatting happily with the ranch manager and a
woman at a table near windows that framed a view of snow capped
mountains. “So—” Mr. Davis, who had stayed up late to welcome Dawn
and Mel last night turned toward her. His pleasant smile pulled his
clipped red beard almost up to his eyes. “You get acquainted with
the horses yet?”

“Yes,” Mel said.

“Good. Next to the guests, they're the most
important critters on this ranch.”

“Sally said I can help him with the
horses.”

“Who's Sally?” Dawn wanted to know.

“He's my head wrangler's right hand man,” Mr.
Davis said. “Salvatore Loft's been with us for years and knows
everything there is to know about horses. Mel's in good hands with
him.”

The plump, sweet-faced woman beside him
reached over to pat Mel's hand. “We haven't met yet, Mel. I'm Mrs.
Davis. When you get tired of horses, you come on up to my house and
I'll teach you how to quilt. Quilting's how I pass my time when I'm
not helping out in the office.”

“My wife wins prizes at the 4H shows for her
crazy quilts,” Mr. Davis said proudly.

“I'd love to learn to quilt,” Dawn said with
enthusiasm.

“I'd rather shovel horse poop,” Mel blurted,
then blushed.

“Oh, Mel!” Dawn said, but to Mel's relief,
the other adults laughed. They began discussing the ranch's
accounting practices with Dawn.

Mel thought about the horses she'd seen that
morning. Each one seemed to have his own personality. Maybe one
among them would choose her, the way Wonder Boy had chosen to
befriend her until that awful day when Lisa had made her ride him.
One horse, one companion, would keep her from being too lonely this
summer. Then when school began, she'd seek out a girl like herself
who wasn't pretty or smart or talented enough to draw people to her
and make a human friend.

“Mel, aren't you going to eat some of that
delicious food?” Dawn asked her. She pointed to the long table
laden with breakfast foods.

“I'm not that hungry.” But she got up and
took a cranberry muffin. While she was eating it, she listened to
her mother putting herself down as usual by describing mini
disasters Dawn had experienced with computers and fax machines.

“Mom's a really good bookkeeper,” Mel
interrupted to announce.

Mr. and Mrs. Davis turned amiable smiles on
her. “Of course, she is, dear,” Mrs. Davis said. “That's why we're
so delighted you've joined us way out here in the mountains.”

Mel touched her mom’s arm. “Can I be excused?
I want to get back to the corral.”

“Sure honey. See you later.”

Mel heard the rapid hoof beats on her way to
the corral. Startled, she turned to look at the road behind her.
There came Zorro galloping her way, stirrups flopping on either
side of an empty saddle. He ran right by her and stopped short at
the gate to the corral breathing hard.

“Did you throw off that girl?” Mel asked when
she caught up with Zorro. The horse was lathered in sweat, his
black hide flattened in patches. “You better not have hurt
her.”

Zorro's dark eyes fixed on her, his ears
going back and forth as he listened to her. She kept talking in a
low voice as she edged toward him. She stopped a safe distance away
and kept talking until she could tell by the quieting in his eyes
that he had calmed. Then she asked, “Want me to open the gate and
let you in?”

He backed off from her as she got within
reach of him but not far. She unlatched the gate and opened it
invitingly. Zorro walked into the corral, and Mel shut the gate
behind them both. The horses still left in the big open space had
finished feeding and were standing in random groups of two or
three. One horse nickered at Zorro, who stood still, his head
hanging and his sides heaving slightly.

“I could get that saddle off you. Want me to
do that?” Mel said. Cautiously she stepped to his side and laid the
palm of her hand on his neck. When he didn't jerk away from her
touch, she reached for the buckle to undo the cinch and heaved the
forty-pound saddle off his back. She lugged first the saddle and
then the saddle blanket into the barn and left them for the
wranglers to put away. Sally should be pleased by his new hand's
initiative.

Zorro was still standing in the same place
when Mel returned to the arena. She was stroking his side when she
heard more hoof beats on the road.

“Well, I'll be!” Sally said. Riding double
with him on Rover was the girl with the braid. And following them
into the corral was the man in the leather vest on Stilts. Sally
swung out of the saddle and lifted the girl off Rover. “You feeling
okay, sweetheart?” he asked her.

She nodded. “I'm sorry I fell off.”

“Not your fault,” Sally said. “Zorro was just
feeling ornery this morning. How about I saddle you a nice, gentle
horse and you and your Dad can start out again.”

“Her mother told me she was a rider,” the man
whined as if he were being accused of something. “I took her word
for it. How was I to know?”

“You never rode with her before?” Sally asked
him.

“We're divorced. I live back east. I came out
here just to meet my daughter.”

“Can I go home now? Please, Dad?” the girl
asked. Her face was very white.

“You sore from that fall you took?” Sally
asked.

She nodded. “I just need to go home now.”

Shamefaced, the man in the leather vest
jumped off Stilts and put his arm around the girl. ”Okay, we'll get
you to your mama, and she'll fix you up good as new.”

Mel thought the girl was brave not to
cry.

As soon as the father and daughter had gone,
Sally chuckled and said to Mel, “You're something else, girl. Won't
trust a horse to carry you on his back, but cool as a cucumber with
a high-strung animal like Zorro.”

“He didn't want anyone riding him today,” she
replied.

“Yeah, I expect he's bugged about something.
I'd better check him over good. Could be he got kicked in the ribs
or something last night and is hurting.” He held out his hand.
“Shake, Mel. I think you and me are going to be pals.”

Mel smiled and shook Sally's work-roughened
hand. She was wondering if that girl lived close to the ranch, and
if she'd ever see her again.

Chapter
Two

That night in their little two-bedroom cabin,
which was back up in the pines and hidden from the road, Dawn asked
Mel how her first day had gone.

“Fine. I hung out in the big corral mostly,”
Mel answered.

Dawn raised an eyebrow and smiled. “I figured
if I couldn't afford to get you your own horse, taking you to live
on a dude ranch would be the next best thing.”

“It is.”

Dawn sighed. “Well, we both found out
something from last year in Cincinnati. You discovered horses. And
me, I learned money isn't everything.”

“You were happy there at first, Mom.”

“Until I found out what snobs all those
people were.”

‘Those people’ had been Max's friends and
business associates. They'd made her mom feel inadequate, Mel knew.
They'd been college graduates who had traveled and were good at
things Dawn had no knowledge of, like golf and bridge and
entertaining each other. Despite being the prettiest woman in Max's
social set, she hadn't fit in any better than Mel had with Lisa's
friends who talked of things with labels Mel didn't recognize and
ratings she didn't understand.

“The Davises seem nice,” Mel said.

“Oh, yes,” Dawn said. “They feel like family
already. I think we made a good move this time, Mel.” Her mother's
face was alive with hope.

“Sure,” Mel said. “I like it here.” She would
like it so long as she could be with the horses without being
expected to ride one. As for her mother, who knew? Mom always
started off hoping this new job in this new place was the right
one. Then somehow in a year or two or three, it became wrong and
she’d want to move on. Mel had lived in four states and six towns
in her life. That should have taught her to make friends easily,
but it hadn't. Instead, she'd become quieter and more self
conscious, not qualities that attracted people to her, she knew.
Lisa had been an exception. It had dazzled Mel to find a star like
Lisa glad to be her sister. That was why she'd trusted that Lisa
knew what she was doing when she made Mel ride Wonder Boy in the
Hunter Under Saddle competition.

“I want that blue ribbon, and Wonder Boy
needs those points,” Lisa had told her. “He'll show for you. He
won't perform for anybody else but me, but he likes you, Mel. Don't
worry that you've never ridden. Just sit on his back and leave it
up to him. You nudge him with your heels when the judges say walk
and pull back on the reins when you want him to stop. It's not
jumping or anything. It's flat. You walk and trot and canter and
turn around with a bunch of other horse. Nothing to it,
honest.”

They'd only had one afternoon to practice,
one afternoon for Mel to learn to ride when Lisa had had eight
years of lessons. Max had talked about leasing a horse for his new
stepdaughter, but he hadn't gotten around to it. Still Mel wasn't
nervous. Lisa had been the nervous one. She'd snapped commands at
Mel.

“Don't slump. Keep your back straight. Don't
let the reins hang loose. Now you're holding them too tight. You're
flopping around on the saddle, Mel. Can't you sit still?”

It seemed that Mel couldn't do anything right
on Wonder Boy's back.

Finally Max had come out and ordered them to
the dinner table, and Lisa had spent the rest of the evening
frantically searching for riding clothes that would fit Mel. The
trouble was Mel's legs were too long and her feet too big. The only
part of Lisa's formal English riding outfit that fit Mel was the
velvet covered hard hat. They ended up near midnight settling on an
old pair of Max's riding breeches from when he'd been thin, and a
long black jacket of Dawn's that was part of a business suit.
Lisa's high black riding boots were too small for Mel, but Lisa
said she would have to endure wearing them for the competition.

“They won't let you enter without the right
clothes,” Lisa said as she tightened a belt around Mel's waist to
keep Max's breeches from sliding down her narrow hips.

Max had suggested that Lisa withdraw Wonder
Boy from the competition, but Lisa was adamant. The horse was going
to win. She was counting on gaining those points. She'd looked at
Mel with a frightening determination. “Mel can do it,” she told
Max. “She has to.”