Western Star (14 page)

The five girls and Gary followed Phyllis into the house, with Kate assuring her at every step that the horses belonged in their paddock for the night and would be safe there. Everybody—even the Westerlys and the Double L people—would be glad about it, Kate promised her mother.

Lisa was the last one through the kitchen door. She turned to pull it shut behind her and took one final look out at the herd they’d rescued. The last thing she saw was the two dun mares and the chestnut gelding. In spite of the fact that they had to be tired from their long trip, one of the mares was playfully nuzzling the gelding. Lisa
could have sworn that the mare was tagging the gelding. “You’re it,” she whispered. She drew the door shut.

A big pot of chili was on the stove, kept warm for them since lunch. Phyllis filled six bowls and poured milk. The girls and Gary picked up their spoons and took their first bites since dinner the night before. Food had never tasted so good.

“Okay, that’s four mouthfuls each. Now talk,” Phyllis said.

They did. Kate did most of the talking, and she didn’t say anywhere near as much about the wild-goose chase that Gary had led them on as Stevie would have said. In fact, Kate didn’t say anything about it at all. She just said they’d finally figured out that the horses would most likely be near the old railroad spur and that they had actually found them there.

“We rescued them!” Gary announced proudly.

“Yes,
we
did,” Christine said.

Carole explained how they’d taken the herd to the top of the hill and over to the high meadow and safety. Stevie described the runaway six and her total failure as a roper.

Gary looked puzzled. “I didn’t realize you didn’t know how to rope a horse,” he said. “I could have done that for you.”

“I’m sure,” Stevie said.

Lisa had never thought of Stevie as a master of
understatement, but right then she thought Stevie deserved an award. Nobody contradicted her.

“But what about the people you think stole the horses?” Phyllis asked.

“They weren’t there,” Gary explained. “The girls thought they were coming back right away, but they weren’t. It wasn’t their car.”

“Gary? Are you all right?” The front door of the lodge slammed shut behind Mr. and Mrs. Finnegan. They ran over to Gary.

“What happened?”

The girls were touched by the Finnegans’ genuine concern for Gary—until Mrs. Finnegan’s next question.

“You didn’t hurt your hands, did you?”

“No, Mom, they’re fine,” Gary said. “Maybe a little tired from gripping the reins, but no problem. Really.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Finnegan,” Stevie said. “I saw to it that nothing happened to Gary.”

“Yeah, right, like she wouldn’t let us abandon him on a mountain slope the way we wanted,” Christine whispered to Lisa. Lisa stifled her giggles.

There was a loud thumping on the front porch of the lodge, and the door opened. Frank came in, followed by six other men. Phyllis and Kate greeted them by name. One was the sheriff and another was Mr. Westerly. The rest were other local ranchers.

“I suppose you haven’t had anything to eat all day,
either, and you’ll be glad to tell me what’s going on as soon as you have a bowl of chili?”

“How’d you know?” Frank asked.

“There’s a lot of it going on around here,” said Phyllis.

The men hung up their coats and joined the six young riders at the Bar None’s ample dining table.

“It’s horse thieves all right,” Frank said. “We found them in the cabin by the railroad spur. The sheriff’s been trying to get the truth out of those men all day.”

“You’ve got them?” Stevie asked, unable to contain herself.

“Well, we’ve got them,” the sheriff said. “But I’m not sure we can keep them. At the moment they’re guests of the town on the grounds of vagrancy. It’s the darnedest thing. We know they’ve stolen horses, but we can’t find the horses! All we could see was a mass of hoofprints, this way and that, in the corral and around the house, but it was getting dark so we couldn’t follow them. It didn’t make sense, anyway, since it was clear they intended to skedaddle out of here on the train tracks, and the hoofprints were leading away from there. Best we can figure is that they were looking for a place to hide them overnight.”

“Uh, Dad,” Kate said.

“We’ll get them,” Frank said. “Tomorrow morning, first thing, we’re going back to that railroad spur, and we’ll follow the trail on horseback.”

“Dad—” Kate began again.

“We can put these folks up for the night, can’t we, Phyllis?” Frank asked, not waiting for an answer. “That way we can head out early.”

“Dad,” said Kate.

“We’ve just got to find the herd. Without the herd, we don’t have anything,” said Mr. Westerly.

“No matter how far we have to ride,” Frank agreed.

“True. But that herd could be days from here by the time we locate them,” said the sheriff.

“Dad!”
Kate said.

Mr. Devine turned to his daughter. “Honey, we men have some planning to do here. Can it wait?” he asked gently.

“I just thought you’d like to know that the herd is in our paddock,” she said. Then she grinned.

“Our what?”

“That’s what Kate’s been trying to tell you,” Phyllis said. “The girls brought the herd back here.”

“
Gary
and the girls, you mean,” said Mrs. Finnegan. She smiled at Gary, and he gave her a thumbs-up sign.

The sheriff gulped. “You mean to tell me that you kids went and stole a herd of horses?”

“From horse thieves,” Kate said. “And yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“I think I’d better take a look for myself,” said the sheriff.

After the chili pot had been scraped clean, The Saddle Club took the sheriff and his posse out to the corral to see the herd of tired but safe horses.

“I think you’d better start from the beginning,” said Frank as they returned to the main lodge.

“It all began when I picked up the phone, which I shouldn’t have …,” Lisa began.

The men didn’t interrupt until the rescuers finished describing how they’d given the hungry herd a welcome-home feed.

“Your guests seem mighty partial to the welfare of horses,” the sheriff said.

“We are,” Stevie responded, beaming with pride.

“And they may very well have saved these horses from an ugly fate. I’m sure those rustlers had the wherewithal to move the horses out before we got there. They must have been a touch surprised when they returned to the cabin and found the horses gone.”

“I bet they were,” Carole said gleefully.

“Well, you may have saved the horses, but there’s been some damage done to the evidence,” said the sheriff. “See, without the horses being there—that’s called possession—it’s going to be very hard to prove they were actually stolen in the first place by the men we have in custody.”

“I never thought of that,” said Stevie.

“But I don’t understand,” Christine said. “We took the horses from the same place you found the men.”

“I know it’s logical. We know they did it. We’re just shy of a way to prove that those two men were ever anywhere near any of those particular horses,” the sheriff said.

Kate spoke up. “We saw them on our land the other day. And actually, we stole the horses that we had seen them riding. They’re in our corral, too.”

“But no horses had been stolen the other day. The men
were
trespassing. But that’s not the same thing as horse thieving. We need some evidence that will put them with the stolen horses before they were stolen.”

Lisa gasped. She stood up and stuck her hand into her jeans pocket.

“Would this do?” she said, offering the sheriff three cigarette butts. “I found them in the feed tent by the Bar None herd. Aren’t there some kind of scientific tests to show who smoked them?”

The sheriff slapped his knee. “Are you kidding? Get me a plastic bag! Boys, I think we’ve found a way to jail those horse thieves!”

Lisa grinned. That made the day perfect—well, almost perfect.

“Gary, I’m so proud of you!” said Mr. Finnegan. “You know, your mother and I were upset about your missing
practice time this afternoon, but it looks as if you were up to something more important—for today anyway.”

“That’s right, Gary,” said Mrs. Finnegan. “I guess the girls owe you a note of thanks for coming up with such a great idea. Saving horses and catching thieves—
say
, that might make a nice ballad, don’t you think, Floyd?”

“Could be,” said Mr. Finnegan.

“Son, shall we go work on it?”

“Sure thing, Dad,” Gary said. He stood up to leave with his parents.

Frank and the sheriff and the other men went into the office to use the telephone, which was working again. The girls were alone. After a moment of quiet, Carole turned to Lisa.

“I guess I need to thank you,” she said.

“I guess I need to apologize,” said Lisa.

Nobody asked what either of them meant. They all just sighed with relief.

M
ORNING CAME VERY
early the next day. The girls were still tired from their long ride the day before, to say nothing of the long celebration that had followed in the evening. Each of them was sure she could have slept another six hours, but it was almost dawn and this was their last day at the Bar None. They weren’t going to miss out on their last dawn bareback ride.

“Everybody ready?” Stevie asked.

“Ready,” her friends said. They’d dressed in the darkness and had bundled up warmly.

Stevie opened the door. More accurately, Stevie tried to open the door. It was frozen shut. It took three of them to get it open, and when they finally succeeded
they knew they shouldn’t have bothered. There was a four-foot wall of snow on the other side.

“We’re snowed in!” said Kate.

“Let’s go back to bed,” said Stevie. “We can ride later.”

“Like
really
snowed in,” said Christine.

“I’m ready for another couple of hours of z’s,” said Carole. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us, because we’re flying out of here after lunch, and then it’s a couple of hours in the air.”

“And tonight is the Starlight Ride,” Lisa said. “Maybe it’s just as well that we’ll get more rest now.”

The five sleepy girls each took off a couple of layers of clothes and happily climbed back into bed. Lisa’s last thought as she drifted back to sleep in the predawn darkness was that she’d had a wonderful and exciting time at the Bar None—if she didn’t count sticking her nose into Carole’s business with Gary—but she was happy to be going home. Tomorrow was Christmas. Pot roast for dinner tonight.

Carole pulled the covers up to her ears. Her mind was filled with thoughts of the horses safe in the Bar None corral. Her thoughts drifted to her favorite horse, Starlight. She’d see him tonight. She’d hug him tonight. She’d ride him tonight. And tomorrow was Christmas …

Stevie pounded her pillow and then put her head on
it. A little more sleep was a good idea. She would need her strength. Tonight, back home, was the Starlight Ride. And she was going to be in the lead! She’d joked with Max about playing Follow the Leader and she mostly didn’t mean it, but she was going to have fun, and so was everybody else. And then tomorrow was Christmas. Her last thoughts were of mounds of presents collecting underneath the Lake family Christmas tree, and some of them were for her!

These were the stuff their dreams were made of. The girls slept.

“Hello! Anybody there?”

There was a knock at the door. Stevie sat up abruptly, knocking her head on the bunk above her.

“Ouch!” she cried.

“What?” Carole said through a sleepy haze.

“Good morning!”

Lisa opened her eyes. Bright sunshine streamed through the cabin windows. She looked at her watch and then blinked. It was eight-thirty and somebody was knocking at the door.

“Who’s at the door?” Carole asked.

“More important, how did someone get
to
the door?” Stevie asked, rubbing her head.

“You girls ever going to wake up?” asked the voice from outside.

It was John Brightstar. Lisa forgot she was already
dressed and instinctively pulled the covers up higher. “Good morning!” she said.

“Well, is that all the thanks I’m going to get for digging you out?”

“Come on in,” Kate said.

John opened the door. He had managed to get snow all over himself in the effort of digging a path.

“I think it’s the abominable snowman disguised as John Brightstar,” said Christine.

“No, it’s the other way around,” John said, shaking snow onto the floor. “Because I don’t think Mr. Abominable would bother to tell you that there is a distinct odor of French toast and bacon coming from the kitchen at the main lodge, and those who want breakfast should find a place at the table before the lady who runs the joint stops serving at nine o’clock.”

Five fully dressed girls bounded out of bed, thumping loudly as they landed on the floor of the cabin in their stocking feet. They yanked on their boots and coats and dashed out of the bunkhouse.

“Thanks for digging us out!” Lisa said.

“My pleasure,” John said, closing the door behind her. And then, before he returned to the stable, he said to her, “See you later.”