Scarecrow on Horseback (14 page)

“Someday maybe. I'm in no rush.”

Mel didn't want to take any chances she
didn't have to take. She was too happy as things were. Cheyenne and
she had become as close as family, closer than most family. Their
attachment to each other was wordless and cemented by touch. She
could feel his affection for her when he nuzzled her or bumped his
head against her chest. She could kiss his buttery soft muzzle and
revel in the healthy smoothness of his muscular body and the coarse
strength of his long black mane and tail. He moved toward her when
she came into his corral as if he liked being near her. It thrilled
her to be near him.

“We're going to be together forever,” she
told Cheyenne, “or at least until we're both old.” Most likely
Cheyenne would die before her even if he lived to be old for a
horse, thirty maybe. But by then she'd be as old as her mother and
that was too far in the future to imagine.

“That horse wouldn't mind having you on his
back now,” Sally told her. “Lead a few trail rides with him, and
you'll pay off what Davis loaned you fast.”

“I'm not in a hurry.”

“Well, maybe not, but once you've paid up,
you won't have to worry about losing him.”

“But he's mine
now
, Sally.”

“No, he's not. It's like the bank owns your
house so long as you've got a mortgage, Mel. The ranch owns
Cheyenne till you pay them back.”

“There's no rush,” Mel said stubbornly,
unwilling to risk being toppled from her peak of happiness.

Chapter
Fifteen

She should have listened to Sally. Late in
August, a week of cold, rainy weather set in. One of the guests
fell off a horse on a muddy trail and was hospitalized with a
cracked pelvis. Guests, who were paying to ride and couldn't
because of the rain, wanted refunds. Jeb was tense and irritable.
He snapped at the wranglers. He put Sally down in front of guests
and staff alike for not getting the experienced riders, who had
gone out in the rain anyway, back in time. He accused Sally of not
stopping to check cinches a second time, and one day even for not
changing his shirt, which smelled faintly of horses and sweat.

And then Mel overheard the cook talking to
her helper in the kitchen. “I hear Joy's on her way back.”

“Jeb's girlfriend? How do you know that?”

“She sent the Davises an e-mail that she was
thinking of it. You'll see. She'll turn up one of these days.”

And the very next day, the van came from the
airport bringing late season guests from the east and one young
woman from the west.

Joy breezed into the dining area that
evening, came up behind Jeb and Mr. Davis, and threw her arms
around both of them. “Oh, it's so good to see you guys again. I
feel like I've come home. Tell me all the news. Tell me how
everybody's doing.”

“How about you, Joy, how are
you
doing?” Jeb asked. His eyes shone with pleasure as he covered her
hand with his.

“Just fine now I'm here.” Joy smiled at him,
her pert face alive with affection. “I've been everywhere and done
everything. Now I'm ready to settle down and work. You got room for
me? Can I have my old job back?” Her hair was auburn, and Mel
thought Joy might even be prettier than her mother, who was Mel's
gold standard for beauty.

“The season's about over,” Jeb punished his
old girlfriend by saying. “Not much use for another wrangler
now.”

“Well, there's got to be
something
for
me to do around here.” Without waiting for his response, Joy turned
from him to renew acquaintance with the others on the staff. She
asked about Mrs. Davis's ailing mother, whether somebody's sister
had had her baby, and if Sue was going off to college soon.

She smiled at Mel and said, “Hi, there,”
without much interest when Sally introduced her. When Joy ran out
of questions, she regaled the supper table with stories about her
adventures since she'd left the ranch. She'd gone out to Hollywood
and worked as a stunt rider, a stand-in for some actress whose name
she obviously expected them all to recognize, although Mel, for
one, had never heard of her. Joy had been to Mexico and tried
surfing until a shark got too close to her board. She'd spent time
with her family in Duluth and been a bridesmaid in her sister's
wedding.

“But it sure feels good to be home again,”
she repeated as she licked her dessert spoon clean.

“Is she a good worker?” Mel asked Sally when
the meal was over and they were walking out together.

“She's a lively one.” Something in Sally’s
tone made Mel think he had more than work in mind.

That night, Mel's mother came home early.
“Where were you?” Mel asked.

“At the bar in the lounge with Jeb and
Joy.”

“Do you like her?”

“Well, she's interesting. And Jeb's obviously
still in love with her. Anyway, they didn't need me around. Looks
like I'll have a lot more time for quilting now.”

It didn't occur to Mel then that Joy's return
might have an effect on her life as well.

* * * *

The next morning, Jeb came up beside Mel in
the corral where she was combing stickers out of a horse's tail.
“Listen, Mel,” he said, “school's about to start anyway, so you
might as well take a vacation from the horses in the time you got
left.”

“What do you mean? I don't want a vacation. I
have to earn the rest of what I need to pay off my loan on
Cheyenne?”

“Maybe the kitchen staff can use you,” he
suggested lamely.

Mel gritted her teeth and glared at him, but
he'd already turned to walk away. She went to the new cook who
shook her head. The cook said she could handle the current batch of
guests. After they left, even with a diminished staff in
off-season, she could manage by herself.

“What am I going to do, Sally?” Mel asked
that night.

“Well, I can lend you a few bucks. I don't
know,” he said. “Maybe Davis will extend your loan till next
summer. Maybe your mother can help you out some.”

“Mom doesn't have any extra to lend,” Mel
said gloomily. She had known she couldn't trust Jeb.
My instinct
was right,
she told herself.

“You rat,” she snapped at Jeb outside the
main building when he came whistling along to breakfast the next
morning. “You were going to help me get Cheyenne, and now you're
acting like you never promised me anything.”

He narrowed his eyes at her and fought back.
“I didn't promise you anything. What's more, kid, you'd better get
that useless horse ready for riding. You got to add his winter-feed
bill to what you owe, you know. And if he can't be ridden by next
spring, we won't have room on this ranch for him.”

Jeb strode off into the dining hall. Mel
stood outside fuming. She felt as trapped and angry as Cheyenne
when he had first been brought up to the dude ranch. All afternoon
she stewed about what to do without coming up with an answer she
could accept. That night, the moon was round and ripe enough to
burst. In the cabin, Dawn was working on the second pillow cover
she'd quilted that summer.

“My sewing just isn't as straight and even as
Mrs. Davis's,” Dawn said.

“It looks great, Mom. It cheers up the room,
all that bright green and blue.”

Suddenly she couldn't bear staying inside
that confining space another minute. Mel went to the door. “I'll be
back in an hour or so, Mom. I'm just going to see how Cheyenne's
doing.”

Dawn nodded, still frowning at the pillow
cover.

Cheyenne was alone in the small arena, and
her familiar cluck called him to her at once. She ducked under the
railing and slung her arm around Cheyenne's neck. He bumped his
head gently against her chest, nickering in satisfaction.

“So what am I going to do?” she asked him.
“Do you think that big jerk really means to get rid of you?” She
stroked Cheyenne's neck while he muttered softly. “I could ask
Sally to ride you maybe. If he rode you, nothing bad would happen.
And I suspect you wouldn't mind being ridden, especially if it got
you out of this corral, huh? What do you say?”

He tossed his head. “Yes, huh?” she said.
“You're willing to try it? You're wonderful,” she told him. “You're
absolutely the most wonderful horse on this ranch, maybe in all of
Colorado, maybe in the world. Okay, we'll see. Maybe if Sally rides
you, that'll do it.”

The moon lit Mel's way back over the bridge
above the gurgling stream and across the road up the dark path to
the cabin where tree limbs shut out the moonlight.

It was late when Mel got back to the cabin.
“I was just about to go out looking for you,” her mother said.

“I think I've figured out a way to satisfy
Jeb,” Mel said. The quiver in her voice was the only sign she gave
of her struggle to accept a compromise.

“That's good, dear,” Dawn said on auto-pilot,
obviously too sleepy to understand what Mel was telling her. But
Sally would understand, Mel knew, and tomorrow she'd tell him what
she wanted him to do.

Chapter
Sixteen

She didn't have a chance to get Sally alone
the next day. Too much else happened, and none of it good.

Most of the dude ranch guests had been
families with children. Generally, they were pleasant people who
gave the staff little trouble. But now that the summer season was
ending, Mr. Davis had booked a group of three men who knew each
other from a singles' group they belonged to. One had never been
married. One was a widower, and the third had just gotten divorced.
They laughed too loudly and kept the bar open, drinking on the
self-serve honor system, until late at night. Although they had
claimed on their personal information forms to be expert horsemen,
Jeb said only one even came close. That one, Grant Hague, was a
broad, stocky man with a fleshy face and a grating laugh. He
flirted openly with Joy, and by mid-week he was pursuing her so
insistently that she complained to Jeb at breakfast. “I'm having a
hard time keeping him off me, Jeb.”

“I'll talk to him,” Jeb said.

“Well, but he's a guest,” Joy said. “What can
you say?”

“That you're my girl, and he should leave you
alone.”

“I don't know,” Joy said doubtfully. “I've
handled other guys like him, and he's only here a week. Maybe you
should keep out of it.”

“Suit yourself,” Mel heard Jeb say as she
walked away.

Some gentleman he is
, Mel thought in
disgust.

* * * *

At sunset that evening, while the sky behind
the western mountain peaks blushed pink, Mel discovered Mr. Hague
alone at the small corral. Beer in hand, he was studying Cheyenne,
who was playing with a knotted rope she'd given him to keep him
from being bored. The horse took the rope in his teeth and tossed
it in the air, then reared to try and catch it before it fell. He
was acting more like a playful puppy than a horse, and Mr. Hague
was laughing at him.

“You know why that horse's here by itself?”
he asked Mel.

“He's a mustang. He hasn't been broken yet,”
she told him.

“Oh, yeah? How about that, a wild
mustang.”

His enthusiasm made Mel uneasy. Sure enough,
the next morning, Jeb stopped her on her way into the tack room to
say Grant Hague was willing to pay a hundred dollars to be allowed
to ride Cheyenne.

“No!” Mel said.

“Hey, it's easy money. The horse'll buck him
right off, and you'll be a hundred closer to owning him.”

“No,” Mel said. “I don't like that man.”

“I don't either. That's why I want to see him
try and ride the mustang.”

“It'll upset Cheyenne,” Mel said.

“Listen, I don't really need your approval.
The horse still belongs to the ranch.”

“I've paid off more than half of the
loan.”

“Yeah? Not if you figure on doubling what
Jeffries wants for him. You got to pay for your horse's board,
remember? And winter feed don't come cheap, not to mention shoeing
and worming and whatever.”

“You never told me I'd have to pay extra. You
never said I'd have to pay for board here.”

Jeb looked embarrassed. “Listen, I can see
how good you're doing with that horse, and I'd hate to take him
away from you. Why don't you try talking to Mr. Davis. See what he
says.”

Mel ran to do just that. She found Mr. Davis
in the game room setting up a projector for the movie that was to
be shown that night. To her question about whether she'd have to
pay for Cheyenne's board and keep over the winter, Mr. Davis said,
“Well, tell you what. You get him trained to be used for trail
riding next spring, and we can make a trade off. I'll rent him from
you against the cost of his winter board here. How's that
sound?”

It sounded terrible to Mel, but she could
tell by the smile that emerged from Mr. Davis's clipped red beard
that he thought his offer was generous. “Uh, well,” she said. “I'll
think about it.” And she took off for the little corral to confer
with Cheyenne about the deal.

A hundred dollars for the privilege of riding
her horse began to tempt Mel after she'd brooded about it for a
while. What could happen? Either Cheyenne accepted the dude on his
back or he threw him off on the soft dirt of the arena. Either way,
she'd be a hundred dollars closer to owning him. “Okay, he can try
it,” Mel told Jeb. The minute she said it, she began worrying that
she'd set her horse up for another disaster.

* * * *

Grant Hague's mastering of Cheyenne became a
special event. It was scheduled for late in the afternoon when most
of the staff would be available to watch his performance. He had
invited everyone to come see him ride, apparently eager to show off
for as big an audience as possible. By four o'clock, a fair number
of people were sitting on the tiers of benches outside the little
arena.