Scarecrow on Horseback (11 page)

“So what? There's no horse for me to buy
anyway now. And even if I find another special one that I have a
feel for and that takes to me, I don't know if—”. She stared at a
spider's web as if she could see through it to the past.

“Don't know if what?” he asked, squinting at
her as if he were trying to read her mind.

“Well, what if I bring them bad luck?”

“Oh, come on, Mel. That's foolishness.”

“Is it? Every horse I take to, something bad
happens to it. Every one, Sally.”

“What about Lily? Lily don't look like she's
suffering with your friend Denise.”

“But something bad happened to Lily before
Denise got her, didn't it? Lily got hurt. And Hojo did, too. And
Wonder Boy acted up in the show, and Lisa said I ruined him. And
Colby acted up in the storm.”

“Things happen, Mel. You can't control
everything that might happen.”

“No,” she said. “I can't. But I don't have to
put myself in the way of trouble either.”

Neither of them spoke for a while.

Finally, Sally said, “You got that idea in
your head that you make bad things happen. I guess you got to get
it out of your head.” He stood up. “I need to get back to work. You
coming to help me?”

“First I better talk to Jeb.”

Sally nodded. “He'll be along soon.”

She sat alone in the dim light of the tack
room, smelling the leather and dust and sweat. She had told Sally
everything, and he had understood, and so what? She still felt
jinxed. If she got attached to a horse, something bad would happen,
just as it had been happening over and over this year.

Finally, Mel rose and went to track Jeb down.
She found him in the big barn where he was hammering a shoe onto a
horse's back hoof. She braced herself, standing next to him, and
asked flat out if he'd rehire her as a wrangler. Any regrets he had
about what he'd done to her didn't stop him from launching into a
fifteen-minute harangue about quitting when he needed her, and that
that wasn't fair, and why should the ranch pay someone who wasn't
reliable and so forth. He never mentioned being sorry that he'd
sold Colby without even warning her he might. It was only when he
was winding down and beginning to list the duties she'd have if she
resumed her job that she admitted she wasn't leading any trail
rides.

He did a double take. “What? You can't be
serious. What use are you if you won't do that?”

“Who else is better with horses that get
hurt?”

“We don't get many injured horses.”

“Well, there are other things I can do,” she
said.

“Yeah, you can take on family trail rides.
That's what we need you for, short on wranglers as we are.
Otherwise, forget it.” He turned his back on her and resumed
hammering on the horse's hoof. Without another word, she marched
out of the barn.

The bright sunlight struck her like a slap in
the face. She was crying when Sally found her back in the darkest
corner of the tack room cuddling the red-and-gray saddle blanket
that she'd always chosen for Colby.

“You can ride Rover,” Sally said. “Rover's
special. He'd eat barbed wire before he'd let you down. You could
fall asleep in the saddle and stay put up there all night, and he'd
just wait patiently for you to wake up.”

“No,” she said. “I don't want to jinx
Rover.”

“Life is full of risks, Mel. You want to
live, you got to take some.”

“No, I don't.” But she stopped crying. She'd
never been much of one for tears.

Chapter
Eleven

Even though she was no longer an official
wrangler, Mel continued attending to any horse that seemed
neglected. She cleaned wounds, bandaged legs, made poultices to
draw out the infection in a puncture wound, and treated swollen
joints with cold water and leg wraps. Jeb had to be aware of her
volunteer doctoring, but he didn't thank her, didn't even offer so
much as a grunt to show he'd noticed.

One evening the regular chitchat around the
staff's supper table took an interesting turn. They began by
talking about why the new beds they'd been promised hadn't arrived.
It seemed the owner of the ranch who lived in Arizona was short on
cash this summer. Some big family group celebrating a fiftieth
wedding anniversary had cancelled because of a death in the family.
And now the cook, who had been there forever, was quitting to get
married.

“How'd she find a man? She never steps out of
the kitchen,” Jeb said.

“That's where he found her,” Sally, who knew
everything, said. “He's the guy delivers the meat.”

“No kidding,” Jeb said. “So they putting you
in charge of cooking for us, Sally? Might get some use out of you
that way, though I don't know as our stomachs could take it.”

Mel turned to see if her mother had caught
Jeb mocking Sally, but Dawn was busy cutting her meat.

“Pasta every night if you put me in the
kitchen,” Sally said. “It's the only thing I can cook. My Italian
mama taught me.”

“We know, Sally,” Jeb said. “Anyone can see
you're a pasta eater. Anyways, I hope your mama taught you to make
good red sauce.”

“No, that was my father who came from
Norwegian stock,” Sally said. “He made the best spaghetti sauce in
our town. Of course it was a little town.”

“Where was that, Sally?” Her mom looked up
from her plate to ask.

“In Texas,” Sally said. “My father was a farm
boy who joined the navy to see the world. He married my mother in
Italy and brought her back to his ranch, but he lost the
ranch.”

Her mom smiled. “And then you became a
cowboy.”

“Well, I had a thing for horses, like Mel
here,” Sally said.

Sue, who hadn't said a word up to that point,
suddenly leaned forward to get everybody's attention. She said,
“You know how Mr. Jeffries lets us ride through his ranch to get to
Cathedral Rock? Well, this morning I was leading a group through
his fields, and you'll never guess what I saw him unloading into
that big empty pasture he fenced off.” Expectant faces turned her
way, and she told them. “Three mustangs! He told me he bought them
at a government auction a year ago. You should have seen those wild
horses race around like crazy when they were let out of the van.
They were something else.”

“Jeffries got himself mustangs?” Jeb asked
with a grin. “
He's
something else. Him and his wife only use
their fancy spread weekends. I wish I had half the dough he's gotta
have to run that place.”

“What's he going to do with the mustangs?”
Sally asked Sue.

“Just watch them I guess,” the girl said.
“They were amazing. I wanted to stay there and watch them
myself.”

“Can you imagine what it'll cost Jeffries to
feed them when the snow starts in a couple of months?” Jeb
said.

“Want to go down and take a look?” Sally
asked Mel. “You could ride double on Rover with me.”

“Or she can ride in the truck with me,” Jeb
said. “Soon as I finish off this apple cobbler, I'm going down
there. How about it, Dawn?” he asked Mel's mother, who was sitting
next to him. “Want to see some wild horses?”

“Not especially,” Dawn said. “I have some
personal correspondence to take care of tonight. You and Mel can
go.”

“I'll go with Sally,” Mel said.

“I'm not going to eat you,” Jeb said. “You as
afraid of me as you are of riding?”

“I'm
not
afraid of riding,” Mel said.
“You don't understand.”

“You don't never talk to me, so how do you
expect me to understand?” Jeb said reasonably.

Her mom sad, “Mel, you're hurting Jeb's
feelings.”

That was how Mel found herself in the cab of
Jeb's pickup an hour before sunset heading down the road to
Jeffries' valley ranch.

“So,” Jeb said as soon as they got started.
“What bad things does Sally say about me that makes you hate
me?”

“Sally doesn't say anything bad about
anybody.”

“So why do you act like you do? Won't even
sit next to me at meals if you can help it. Do I smell bad or
something?” He gave her a sideways grin. His thick brown hair fell
in a wave over his forehead. He even had a dimple.

“Well,” Mel said, letting him have it since
he'd asked her, “you get rid of every horse I care about, so how
should I feel about you?”

“You think I'm picking on you, huh?” he said
earnestly. “Being mean to you? No way, Mel. You're a big help
around the horses, and I'd accommodate you if I could, but I can't.
My job's to cull the mounts that might cause us trouble. We got
dudes coming here to ride that don't know one end of a horse from
the other. They need to be protected.”

Mel knew Jeb was just making excuses. Colby
had been her mount, not meant for any dude to ride. She'd never
been able to argue though, so she stayed silent and stared at a
purple cloud with a frill of crimson sunset lying between the two
mountains ahead of them.

“How about I promise not to mess with the
next horse you pick no matter what? Then can you and me be
friends?”

“Why should you care how I feel about you?”
Mel asked.

“Wow!” he said. “You are one intense little
girl. I care because your mother's my friend, and you're a good kid
when you're not moping around giving everybody a hard time.”

“I don't give everybody a hard time,” she
protested, and threw her last barb at him. “But I hate when you
make fun of Sally.”

He jerked back in his seat in genuine
surprise. “What do you mean? Sally's my buddy. He don't mind my
teasing.”

“Well,
I
do.”

“I guess I just can't win with you, can I?”
Jeb said, as if that really bothered him.

“Look,” she said, and pointed to the huge owl
with enormous wings aiming itself at a tree branch on the other
side of the road. Mel had never seen an owl so close before.

“Yeah,” Jeb said without interest.

She sat in silence, a little ashamed of
having come on too strong as she usually did when she expressed
herself honestly.

The silence lasted until they arrived at the
field. There were the horses! Immediately Mel forgot Jeb and
focused on the mustangs. The three were scrubby animals, sturdy
with thick necks and powerful hindquarters, not as sleek or pretty
as the horses on the ranch, but wilder and more active. One was
gray with black markings on its head and legs. One was a paint with
a black mask slipping down over his nose. The third mustang was a
mahogany colored horse with an especially long black mane and tail.
The bay had turned to look at them when they got out of the pickup,
and it was still watching them as they walked up to the fence.

“Pretty,” Mel said. Rays of the setting sun
had gilded the reddish-brown horse, which was taller than the
others.

“Yeah, that one's got a little class.” He
gave a high whistle, and the brown horse sidestepped until he was
facing them, head up and ears pricked toward them. “I wonder if
Jeffries plans to break any of them,” Jeb added. “Wouldn't put it
past him to just let them run free in his field and then sell them
to the glue factory when he gets tired of them.”

“He wouldn't do that!” Mel said in alarm.
“Sue says he loves horses, and Mr. Davis said he's a nice man. So
he wouldn't do that.”

“Maybe not.Maybe he'll just keep them around
for decoration. I wish I had his dough.” Judging by the number of
times he'd mentioned being rich, Mel guessed that was his big
dream. It figured he'd care so much about money being the show off
he was.

”What's wrong if Mr. Jeffries just keeps
them?” Mel asked. “If I were rich, that's what I'd do. I'd have a
ranch for every horse that nobody else wanted, and I'd take care of
them and let them roam around free.”

“Yeah? Well, don't you think a horse'll get
pretty bored running around the same field for years, never getting
anywhere and never being useful for anything?”

“You think a horse likes to be useful?” Mel
asked.

Jeb lifted one shoulder. “Maybe a horse is
like a man that way.”

She studied him. “Do you like your job?”

He nodded. “I always wanted to work with
horses, and here I am doing it. Sure, I like my job.” He smiled at
her. She smiled back, drawn to him for the first time.

“I want to work with horses, too,” she said.
It was the pleasantest exchange they had ever had.

“I have an idea,” he said.

“What?”

“Don't want to tell you till I see if it can
be worked out. But you'll be glad. I can promise you that.”

“Does it have something to do with me?” She
still didn't believe he could want to be nice to her, unless it was
to please her mother. Probably that was it, she thought.

“Yeah. It's something to do with you all
right. What do you say? Want to try being friends?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.” While he obviously
liked himself a whole lot, that didn't mean he couldn't care some
about other people's feelings. And to be fair, as Sally had pointed
out to her, the horses Jeb had sold out from under Mel had belonged
to Little Creek Ranch, not to her. As for how Jeb treated Sally,
possibly she did take the teasing too seriously. Mel held out her
hand, “Friends,” she said.

They shook solemnly. One last splash of pink
lingered in the V between the two mountains ahead of them. The
mustangs were huddled together now at the far end of the field in
the dark that was coming on. “Might as well go,” Jeb said.

On the way up to the ranch, Mel wondered
about Jeb's idea. She hoped it had something to do with paying her
a real salary for the work she did on the ranch. It seemed to her
that an assistant vet, even if only needed on occasion, and a
regular poop scooper and horse groomer should earn something. She'd
be a senior citizen before she could afford a horse at her current
savings rate. But if she pushed Jeb to pay her, he'd push right
back about needing her to lead trail rides. And if she gave in,
likely something else terrible would happen to the horse she chose.
No, she'd best wait and see what Jeb's big idea was.