Blue Moon (4 page)

I stood glaring at her. No horse had ever put me through anything like that before.
She deserved…What did she deserve? A good beating? Or maybe she'd had a few too many good beatings. Maybe that was why she wasn't about to trust anybody. But one thing was for sure, abusing a hard-to-catch horse wasn't going to make her any easier to catch next time.

“Atta girl,” I whispered, swallowing my fury. “See, nothin' bad happens to you when you get caught.” I turned to run a soothing hand along her neck. As I did, something caught my eye. A beat-up old black truck parked halfway down the lane. Cole McCall's truck. And the great Cole McCall himself was sitting on the hood watching me. He looked like he was taking in the wild-horse race at the Calgary Stampede. And he was laughing.

For a minute I was too stunned to do anything but stare at him as he strolled over to the fence. By the time he got to me, I wasn't stunned any longer. I was furious. “What do you think you're doing here?” I blurted out.

He checked his watch. “Working. In about ten minutes, if the job starts at eight like you said it did.”

“Job?” I echoed. “You said you didn't want the job.”

He shook his head. “Wrong again, Blue Jeans. I said I didn't like your reasons for offering it. I didn't say I wouldn't take it.” He gave me a strange look and sniffed the air. “Interesting perfume you're wearing. What's it called? Cow Pasture Memories?”

I felt my face do an instant replay of the recent sunrise. “Cole, if you don't get out of my sight in the next…” But before I could finish he bent over and ran his hand down the mare's left front leg, the one she limped on. The mare laid back her ears and I could see she was getting ready to take a bite out of his backside—and I was going to cheer when she did. But Cole read her mind and straightened up in time to catch her with her teeth bared and nowhere to bite. He gave her a slap on the neck. “Knock it off, horse. You've got a worse disposition than your owner. Part owner, that is. How much did we pay again, Blue Jeans?”

I glared at him. “I paid $680 and you're taking your lousy $8.75 back.”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. I think we could've done worse. I'm stayin'” He started back toward his truck. “That's just a strained muscle in her leg. She'll heal up pretty fast.”

Oh, right, now Mr. Know-It-All was a horse doctor, too. I ignored him and started for the corral with the horse. Halfway there his voice stopped me again. “Hey, Blue Jeans, aren't you supposed to wear the picture on the front of your shirt?”

I soon found out that having Cole working for Dad didn't mean that I was going to spend the summer polishing my nails. Dad found plenty of work for both of us. Actually, I was glad he did.

I'd spent seventeen years being Dad's right-hand man. I wasn't going to quit just because there was a guy around.

Right after supper was the first chance I got to spend some time working with the mare. As soon as we finished eating,
I excused myself and headed outside. To tell the truth, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Good old Mom had decided that since Cole was working here right up until suppertime, he could just as well eat with us. Two meals a day across the table from that mocking grin was enough to spoil even my appetite.

I caught the mare easily enough in the corral and tied her up. Then I got my saddle and blanket. “Easy girl,” I soothed, letting her sniff the blanket and then laying it on her back. Then the saddle. No reaction. Not even when I pulled the cinch up tight. I led her around a little. Okay, there was only one thing left to do. Get on her and find out what she planned to do about it.

I lined her up facing into a corner. If she did decide to explode, I might at least have a chance to get settled in the saddle first. “Whoa now, roan. Be nice, okay?” I took the reins in my left hand and got a firm grip on the saddle horn with my right. Then I started to put my foot in the stirrup. That's
when I caught a glimpse of something over my shoulder. I brought my foot back to earth and spun around. “You work here, Cole. You don't live here,” I said, giving him a nasty look. “You can go home now.”

He just grinned and stepped up a rail higher on the corral fence. “I'll get there, Blue Jeans. Just wanted to see how our horse was coming along. Go ahead and get on. Unless havin' me here distracts you too much.”

I rolled my eyes. “You couldn't distract me if you ran through the pasture in your underwear throwing away hundred-dollar bills. But if you're gonna hang around, at least shut up so you don't distract the horse.”

“My lips are sealed.” He climbed up on the top rail and made himself comfortable.

I sighed and turned back to the horse. I tried to recapture the confidence I'd worked up a few minutes before but to tell you the truth, I was distracted as all get-out.

I gathered the reins and my wits. Then I stuck my foot in the stirrup and swung aboard, making sure to land lightly. There
was a long period of silence in which the horse tried to decide what to do about me. “Easy girl, I'm not gonna hurt you.” Whether she was planning to hurt me was probably a lot more to the point. The mare wiggled her ears a little. Nothing else happened.

It finally occurred to me that I couldn't just sit there on the horse forever. Especially with Cole sitting there watching me with that irritating little grin on his face. Okay, here goes nothing, I thought. I nudged the mare's sides with my heels—and waited for her to erupt like a volcano.

She moved forward at an easy walk. One trip around the corral and I remembered to start breathing again. Two trips around the corral and I loosened my deathgrip on the reins. Three trips and the mare started tossing her head restlessly. I knew what her problem was. All horses hate being ridden around and around in tight circles.

I glanced over at Cole. “If you're gonna hang around, you could at least open the gate so I can take her out in the pasture,” I said.

Cole lazily unfolded himself from his perch on the corral fence. “So you think you can handle her out there, huh?” he asked.

“Get real, McCall. This horse hasn't even twitched. What do you think, I'm scared of her or something?”

Cole shrugged and wandered over to open the gate. The mare moved smoothly out. We made a tour of the pasture. Halfway around, I gave her a little squeeze with my knees and she broke into a trot. I could feel her favoring her bad leg when she trotted so I turned her back toward home.

Near the fence she suddenly gave her head a little duck. In the next instant, her hind hoofs were kicking at the sky. The move surprised me so much it was a miracle I didn't sail over her head and do a one-point landing on my nose. But I stayed with her and followed my instincts—which were to pull her head up and give her a good kick in the ribs. “Knock it off!” I yelled, too mad to think about what she might do next. What she did was collect herself neatly and fall
back into a ladylike trot. One ear cocked back at me and she turned her head enough to glance at me with one calm, dark eye. Just testing, I think she would have said.

I rode her back to where Cole was waiting and got off. “She's gonna be just fine,” I said. “All she needs is a little time for her leg to heal and then she'll be ready to start on barrels.”

Cole grinned. “Yeah, either that or saddle bronc.”

“You mean that little crow hop? I hardly even noticed it. You didn't think she was gonna dump me, did you?”

He gave me a wicked grin. “Well, for a second there I did have hopes. But I guess I must have imagined that big patch of daylight between you and the saddle, huh?”

“Get your eyes checked, Cole.” I started to lead the mare away.

“Hey,” he said. “Hang on a minute.”

“Now what?”

“Just lookin' at this brand,” he said, running his hand along her shoulder. “Never seen it before. Wonder where she came from.”

“The bill of sale said some outfit called Wagon Wheel Ranches. I figured that's what the brand was supposed to be—even if the spokes don't line up very even.”

“Sure is a sloppy job. But what can you expect from somebody who keeps their horses in this kind of shape?” He gave the mare's thin, scarred-up body one more look and shook his head. Then he checked his watch. “Hey, I didn't know it was this late. I gotta get home.”

“No kidding? So soon?” I said with a sigh of relief.

Cole just laughed at me. “See you in the morning, Blue Jeans.”

“Not if I see you first,” I muttered as he jumped into his old truck and took off in a spray of dust and gravel.

Mom and I were just finishing breakfast the next morning when the phone rang. Mom picked it up. “Hello? Oh, yes, hi, Cole.”

Cole? Now what? Maybe one day of exciting life on a dairy farm had been enough for him. Maybe he wasn't coming back. That thought should have made my day. I wondered why it didn't.

Mom was talking again. “No, he's already gone out to milk. Can I take a message for him?” She listened a minute. “Oh, I'm sure that will be okay. Half an hour won't matter that much. All right. Bye.” She hung up.

I was going to ask what that was all about when Sara stumbled into the kitchen, still in her pajamas. “Was that for me?” she asked through a yawn.

I jumped at the chance to rattle her chain a little. “No, Princess, it was not for you. Who do you know that gets up before noon?”

She stuck her nose in the air. “Well, at least I have friends who call me. I don't spend my life looking at, talking to and smelling like a horse. You never have time for people.” Then, with a sly grin, she added, “Except for Cole baby, that is. Are you actually going out with him?”

“You shut up about me and Cole. I wouldn't go out with him if he was the last…” Before I had the words out I was halfway out of my chair and getting ready to wring her scrawny neck. But my mother's
strong hand landed on my shoulder and plopped me back in my chair.

“Stop it, both of you. There are two months of holidays ahead and there is no way I plan to spend that time as a referee. Get along or, so help me, I'll have the two of you washing every wall in this house with a toothbrush.”

My mother can and will make good on that kind of a threat. Sara and I sat glaring at each other until Mom broke the silence. “Speaking of Cole, that was him on the phone. He's going to be a little late for work because he has to drive his dad somewhere. Strange,” she added thoughtfully, “I always thought his mother was a single parent. She waits tables at the Sunshine Cafe, I've seen her around town a few times and met her on the road. But she's never had a man with her.”

Sara narrowed her eyes. “I bet his dad's an escaped convict and he has to stay home so nobody sees him. Maybe Cole's gotta take him to meet his partners so they can do another bank job.”

Mom groaned and rubbed her forehead like she might have a headache already. “Spare us, Sara. Since you're up, hurry and eat and then go ahead and clean up the kitchen. It's time I was out helping your dad.”

“Yeah, me too,” I muttered. The faster we dropped the subject of Cole McCall and his family, the better I'd like it. Still, all the way to the barn I wondered just what was going on. If Cole's dad needed to go somewhere, why didn't he just drive himself? And why didn't anybody ever see this Mr. McCall around? Maybe he was a hopeless drunk who just sat home drinking up the grocery money and couldn't drive because he'd lost his license. Maybe he was mean and violent and beat Cole and his mom. Maybe that was why Cole hung around here half the night—because he was scared to go home. I was so busy thinking crazy maybes that I almost walked into a fence post.

Cole came to work before eight-thirty, apologized to Dad for being late and mainly ignored me. He didn't have any more to say
to Dad than what it took to be polite, either. Before I had time to wonder about that, Dad announced what we were going to do. First we had to tear out a big section of old barbed wire fence. Then we'd cut out all the willows that had grown up and tangled in the wire, and put in all new posts. Real fun. So much fun that I almost decided to skip working with the horse and just collapse for the evening instead. But I didn't. Now that I knew the mare was actually going to let me ride her, I wanted to find out more about her.

As soon as I'd shoveled in the last spoonful of dessert, I excused myself and headed for the corral. With the mood Cole had been in all day, I thought I wouldn't have to bother with him hanging around me. Wrong again. I'd no sooner got the mare saddled up than there he was, leaning on the fence and watching me.

I got on the mare with more confidence this time. She sensed it, too. I could feel a calmness in her muscles. I rode her twice
around the little corral. Then I looked at Cole and nodded toward the gate. He bowed like a well-behaved slave and opened it. I trotted the mare around the pasture. The lameness was still there, but a little less than yesterday, I thought.

Then I nudged her into a lope. I felt her muscles tense and saw her head start to go down. “Oh, no you don't,” I growled, giving the reins a sharp pull and digging my heels into her ribs. She collected herself neatly and moved into a smooth-as-silk lope. Chalk up one round to me.

I tried a couple of figure eights and was amazed at how light on the bit she was. For a beat-up, sour old horse, she reined like she had power steering. I could have loped around there for half the night, but I didn't dare risk damaging her bad leg. I took her back to the corral and jumped off. Cole was waiting.

“Did you see the way she reined?” I asked, patting her neck and then giving the itchy spots under the cheek pieces of the
bridle a rub. “She's got the most beautiful lope.” I caught myself babbling—and to Cole McCall of all people. But horses sometimes do that to me. I get carried away.