Blue Moon

Marilyn Halvorson

ORCA Soundings

Copyright © 2004 Marilyn Halvorson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Halvorson, Marilyn, 1948-

Blue moon / Marilyn Halvorson.

(Orca soundings)
First published: Don Mills, Ont.: Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1994.
ISBN 1-55143-320-6

I. Title. II. Series.

PS8565.A462B68 2004   jC813'.54   C2004-900489-1

Summary:
Can Bobby Jo take a beat-up old horse
and turn her into champion barrel racer?

First published in the United States, 2004
Library of Congress Control Number
2004100596

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

Cover design: Lynn O'Rourke
Cover photography: Getty Images

In Canada:
Orca Book Publishers
1030 North Park Street
Victoria, BC Canada
V8T 1C6

In the United States:
Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 468
Custer, WA USA
98240-0468

Printed and bound in Canada
on New Leaf Eco, 100% post consumer waste paper

07 06 05 04 • 5 4 3 2 1

To Goldie,
I've owned a lot of good horses,
but only one great one. You were it.
—M.H.

“Sold!” the auctioneer yelled. “To the young redhead in the red jacket.”

For a second I just sat there stunned. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a curl of hair above the shoulder of my jacket. The hair was red. The jacket was red. There was no getting out of it. I had just bought a horse.

But why had I bought this horse? I watched gloomily as the bony blue roan
mare limped out of the sale ring. Her ears were laid back angrily. As the ring man swung the gate closed behind her, she lashed out and kicked it with both back hoofs. Oh, wow! Did I have a winner on my hands! How could I have been so stupid? What was my dad going to say? He lets me go to my first horse sale alone, on a school day even, and I mess up big-time. But sitting here wasn't going to help. Slowly I stood up and made my way down from the stands and toward the sales office.

I was partway through the barn area when a voice stopped me. It was a cool, lazy, laid-back voice. “Skippin' school, Bobbie Jo?”

I swung around and almost bumped into the guy who owned the voice. Cole McCall, the kid from the farm next to ours. Just who I needed to finish wrecking my day. I tossed my hair back. “That's an interesting question. Coming from the all-time champion at that sport,” I said coldly.

I turned and kept on walking. Cole just laughed and fell into step beside me. I pretended he wasn't there.

“Where are you goin'?” he asked.

“To pay for my horse, if it's any of your business.”

“You just bought a horse?” Cole's voice had taken on a new note of interest.

“That's what I said,” I answered, looking straight ahead and walking a little faster. “Now why don't you go find some of your hoodlum friends and leave me alone?”

A look I couldn't quite get flickered across his face. For a second I almost thought there was a real person behind Cole McCall's grin. But then he gave a careless shrug. “Yeah, why not? The guys are better company than you. See ya around, Blue Jeans.”

Cole had been calling me that ever since he first came into my grade ten class at West Valley High School last year. The nickname did fit my initials. It fit my clothes, too. But I still didn't want Cole McCall calling me that. I didn't want him calling me anything.
Maybe it was because I was afraid he kind of liked me. At least, my friend Julie said he did. But I wasn't about to get involved with a guy like Cole. He had a real attitude. He was always in trouble at school, mainly for skipping, and he didn't even try to come up with a good excuse for it. Besides, I wasn't about to go out with any guy who had longer hair than I did. I tossed my head and marched off to pay for the horse I shouldn't even have bought.

At the office I told the clerk my name and he flipped through some papers. “Okay, here it is. B.J. Brooks, lot number 79. All I need is a check for $690” His eyes widened as I dug in my pocket and came out with a fat roll of bills.

“Cash okay?” I asked. I'd emptied my piggy bank, dumped the jar of quarters I'd been saving since I was ten, and taken all the coins to the bank. Then I'd closed out my savings account and taken that in cash, too. It looked like a lot of money when I got it all in bills.

The clerk nodded. “Cash is fine. You're just the first person I've seen in a long time who actually has some.”

I started counting out the money and thought about how much work I'd done to earn each one of those twenty-dollar bills. The profit from three years of raising 4-H calves, all those summers of cutting the neighbors' lawns. And I'd gathered up every cent and brought it here to buy this horse.

No, that wasn't true. I didn't bring it here to buy this horse. I came to buy a colt. A yearling at the oldest. A good, young quarter horse that I could train myself and make into a champion barrel horse. Buying a colt would mean it would be three or four years before I could actually race him. I hated waiting that long, but I didn't have a choice. If you watched your chance you could get a good colt for the money I had. A trained barrel horse, ready to go, would cost a few thousand.

So how had I set out to buy a colt with a future and wound up with a sour, beat-up, old mare that obviously had a past? I'd asked
myself that question a lot of times in the last few minutes, but I still wasn't sure of the answer.

I should have realized from the start that the blue roan mare was a meat horse. If I hadn't known by the way she looked, I should have known by who was bidding on her. There were a couple of crafty old guys who always hung around the sales, picking up the horses that had hit the end of the trail. They bought for the meat packers and they were always on the lookout for a chance to buy cheap. Much as I hated the thought of any horse ending up that way, I knew it was a fact of life. I guess it was better than the horses being left to starve. Better than getting so old and crippled they got down and couldn't get up.

So why couldn't I have just left things alone and let nature take its course? Why did I have to go and buy this mare? It might have been her color that did it. When I was a little kid I had a picture book called
Lady, the Little Blue Mare
. It was about a blue
roan horse and I read it until the cover fell off. Ever since, I'd wanted a horse that color more than anything else in the world. But blue roans are about as common as honest politicians. I guess I went a little crazy when I came across a blue roan I could actually own. Or maybe the real reason I bought her was because she was a rebel. I liked the way she held her head up. The way she fought back when she was pushed around.

While one half of my mind was thinking about that, the other half was counting out the money. “Six hundred, six hundred and twenty, six hundred and forty, six hundred and sixty, six hundred and eighty,” I counted out loud. Suddenly I stopped. That was my last twenty I'd just tossed on the pile. I dug in my pocket for the other twenty I knew was there. Nothing but a well-worn Kleenex. I checked the other pocket. Empty as my kid sister's head. I checked the pockets of my jean jacket. Lint and two gum wrappers.

The clerk cleared his throat. “Another ten dollars, miss.”

“I know, I know,” I muttered, shooting him a dirty look. “Don't get your shirt in a knot. It's here somewhere.” I made another panic-stricken tour of my pockets. That twenty dollars was not here anywhere. I could hear the people in the lineup behind me shuffling their feet.

“Miss,” the clerk said firmly, “either you've got the money or you haven't. If you're short on cash, why don't you write a check for the last ten?”

“Because I don't have any money left in the bank,” I muttered. “But I did have the cash. I know I did.”

“Well,” the clerk said wearily, “you don't now. Step aside and let these other people go ahead. I'll give you half an hour to come up with the cash or we'll have to resell the horse.”

Resell the horse? Let him resell the horse and I'd be off the hook. I'd have my $690.00 and I wouldn't be stuck with that sorry excuse for an animal. I should have jumped right up and kissed that old clerk on
his tobacco-stained mustache. But, oh no, not me. Right then and there I bristled up like a cornered cat and glared at him. “You will not resell that horse. I bought her fair and square and I'll get you your lousy ten bucks. You can count on it!”

Okay, now, I told myself. This is not a problem. Just find somebody you know and ask them to lend you ten bucks. Half the farmers from West Valley are always at the auction market. One of our neighbors must be here.

Well, maybe not quite always. I made three tours through the whole auction market. Along the way I had the offer of a date—from an eighty-year-old guy with no
teeth. I was yelled at twice for standing in front of somebody and blocking his view of the sale ring. And when I reached up to push my hair back at the wrong moment I almost bought another horse. But I didn't see a soul I knew.

I was getting desperate enough to call home and explain the mess I was in to my parents. I checked my watch and scrapped that idea. Right now, Mom would be at work driving the school bus and Dad would be out in the field planting green feed. But I had to think of something. The closer I got to losing that blue roan horse, the more I started to like her.

Then I caught a glimpse of Walt Devon. He was one of the meat buyers, running a string of sorry-looking old horses up the ramp into his trailer. When the last one was in, his helper closed the door behind it. “Ready to roll, boss?” he asked.

Devon picked a tidbit of leftover lunch out of a crack between his teeth. “Naw, don't get in a hurry, Bill. Think I might pick up another one cheap here in a minute.”

That did it! Walt Devon was not going to haul my horse off to the packing plant. I took another desperate look around. Over by the corrals, three or four guys were throwing square bales onto a truck. I didn't recognize any of them at first. Then something about one of them caught my eye—long, curly blond hair, ragged denim jacket. Yeah, it was him all right. I never thought I'd be desperate enough to ask Cole McCall for the time of day, but I was stuck. I took a deep breath. “Cole?”

Either he didn't hear me or he pretended not to. He kept on tossing bales. Just talking to him was bad enough. Did I have to yell his name for all the world to hear?

“Cole!”

He set down a bale and slowly turned around. The two strangers he was working with turned to stare at me.

“Cole, I, uh, need to talk to you.”

Cole gave me a cold look. “Don't bother me, Blue Jeans,” he said between breaths. “We're busy.” The other guys laughed. I could feel my face getting warm.

“Cole,” I said through my teeth, “would you just come here, please?”

He gave his friends kind of a shrug. To me he gave a low bow and a taunting grin as he walked over. “What can I do for you, Blue Jeans?”

I held my temper. “Uh, Cole, do you have ten dollars?”

He gave me an unbelieving stare and then he laughed. “Do I look like I have ten dollars?”