Trail Mates (12 page)

“I’m glad you aren’t going to marry Lynne. But shouldn’t she get one of the tickets anyway, since she won the contest with you?” Carole asked.

“She probably should,” he told her. “But she’s scared to death of airplanes. Wouldn’t think of traveling anyplace by plane. I’m afraid we’re stuck with the tickets.”

“Oh, wow!” Carole said, feeling comfortable for the first time in a long time. “So, when are we going to the dude ranch?”

“
That’s
the bad news, Carole. My leave’s been canceled because General Melendez has planned an inspection. So I just can’t be away right now. And unfortunately, we have to use the tickets by a certain date, and I don’t think I’ll be free before then.”

“Old General ‘White Gloves’ Melendez, you mean?” Carole said with a grin. She had always loved that nickname for the general who was famous for his tough inspections. Then she sighed. It would have been great to visit Kate with her father, but at least he wasn’t getting married!

“The very one,” her father said. “Anyway, I’m sorry to have to disappoint you, but we still have the tickets. Two of them. I thought that, considering how much fun you and your friends had with Kate when she was visiting, you might want to invite one of them to go along with you, using the second ticket. I wish I had three, but …”

“Oh, Dad! That would be fabulous! I can’t believe it. I could actually go with one of my friends! But I can’t stand to leave you.”

“Stand it,” he said reassuringly. “I’ll be just fine. Besides, you know I’m no fun to be around when ‘White Gloves’ is on the base.”

“You turn into an old grouch,” she teased him.

“Maybe if I do, it’ll be a way to convince Lynne that I’m not the man for her.”

“Hey, that’s a good idea. But how will I convince Scott I’m not the girl for him?” Carole asked.

“I didn’t know we had the same problem,” the colonel said.

“Neither did I,” Carole said.

“What have you tried to solve it?” the colonel asked.

“I had him mucking out stables for an entire day. He loved it!”

“You should have seen Lynne on the obstacle course!”

“You took her on the o-course?” Carole asked, astonished. Quantico was famous for its rough physical training. It was hard to imagine Lynne swarming up a twenty-five foot rope.

“She told me it was better than her health club!”

“We should get these two together,” Carole said. “Lynne and Scott would make quite a pair.”

“That’s true, but I don’t think it will solve our problem. In fact, it could compound it.”

Carole was thinking about what her father had said when the phone rang.

“I’ll get it,” she said.

“I thought your ankle still hurt,” the colonel said in surprise.

“Not when the phone’s ringing,” she told him, springing to her feet.

In fact, her ankle was feeling a lot better. And the rest of her was feeling better, too. She reached for the phone. It was Stevie.

At the sound of Stevie’s voice, Carole recalled that she still had a few little problems to solve. One of
them was going to be deciding which one of her friends she would invite to the dude ranch. That was a problem she wasn’t ready to solve yet. On the spot, she decided not to mention it to Stevie.

Stevie didn’t notice her hesitation. She was talking too much and too fast to be aware of Carole’s uncertainty.

“… And Scott carried one zillion water buckets for me. I thought maybe I could help you by telling him all the things about you that aren’t so nice—”

“Like what?” Carole demanded.

“Oh, well, you know, like how you make your own clothes and you want to be a study-hall monitor and march in the Veterans Day parade. Well, that sort of thing.”

“Stevie! Those things aren’t true!”

“I know. I was just trying to help,” she said.

“By making me sound like a nerd?”

“Don’t worry, Carole. He didn’t believe a word of it anyway. If you want, though, I can try again tomorrow. He’s coming to clean tack with me.”

“Thanks, but no thanks! This guy is too much,” Carole said after a moment.

“He’s really kind of nice, you know.”

“Sure he is. He’s almost too nice. There’s really nothing wrong with him at all, except that I don’t
want to go out with him. Maybe be his friend, sure. I’m just not ready for dates.”

“Did you tell him that?” Stevie asked.

“No, of course not,” Carole said. “The whole idea has been to turn him off.”

“And the whole idea’s been totally unsuccessful,” Stevie reminded her.

“That’s for sure. It’s not working for either me or Dad,” Carole told her.

“Your dad? What’s this about?”

Quickly, Carole filled Stevie in on the
real
story of the romance between Lynne and the colonel.

“I can’t believe it. You guys are in the same boat,” Stevie said.

“And it’s sinking, fast!” Carole concluded.

Stevie laughed. “It may not be as bad as you think. For one thing, you got some lousy advice.”

“From
you
!” Carole said.

“That was the first time around. This time, I think you should try the direct method instead of the indirect one. After all, Scott and Lynne aren’t mind readers! Say,” she said, changing the subject. “Are you coming to Pine Hollow tomorrow? We want to have a Saddle Club meeting at TD’s after class. Are you going to be there?”

“You bet I am!” Carole said. “If I’m not there, you’ll
have Scott scrubbing every bit of tack in the place and believing that it’s my lifelong ambition to drive a tractor-trailer!”

“I never thought of that!” Stevie teased.

“So don’t start now!” Carole teased back. “Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll be able to ride, but I’ll be at the stables. See you tomorrow.”

“Bye-bye,” Stevie said, and then hung up the phone.

When Carole hung up, she returned to the living room. “It was Stevie,” she said to her father. “And she had the most amazing suggestion. Listen to this wild and crazy idea of hers,” Carole began.

“Y
OU REALLY WANT
to soap saddles?” Carole asked Scott when he appeared at Pine Hollow the next morning at chore time.

“Whatever,” he said agreeably. “I just like being with you,” he added.

“Well, I like being with you,” she told him, handing him a can of saddle soap and demonstrating the short circular motions that cleaned the leather. “And I think we could be good friends.” She applied some polish to her own saddle and worked at it for a few seconds. Scott was working silently, waiting for her to go on. “In fact, I’d like to be your
good
friend,” she concluded.

“And not my
girl
friend?” he asked, getting the message.

“Yes,” she told him. “I’d rather be your friend than your girlfriend. Of course, Max’ll be furious with me if that means you won’t be doing chores here anymore!” she teased.

Scott laughed. “No, it’s no problem. I’m only going to be here with my folks for another couple of days anyway. But I’ll do chores until then. I like working around horses. I think I’ll do more of it when I get home to Ohio.”

“So you really got to like horses this vacation, then?” Carole asked.

“You bet,” he told her. “It’s been a great vacation. I’ve gotten a love of horses. But best of all, I’ve got a new friend.”

Carole looked up at him from her saddle. He was smiling warmly at her. He understood. Things could be pretty easy when you tried to do them the direct way, not the roundabout way. She grinned back at Scott.

“Will you write to me?” Scott asked.

“Sure I will, if you’ll write and tell me about the horses you work with in Ohio.”

“It’s a deal,” he said. They shook saddle-soapy hands.

“I
T WAS YOUR
wild and crazy idea, Stevie,” Carole said to her friend that afternoon at TD’s. “You told me that
I should just be direct. So I told that to Dad. He’d been doing the same thing I had. He even had Lynne out on the obstacle course at the base—and she loved it as much as Scott loved mucking out stalls! Anyway, he called her last night and explained how he felt. He told me she seemed almost relieved! It worked so well for him that I tried it this morning. Guess what?”

“You broke his heart?” Lisa asked.

“Nope. We’re going to be friends. He’s a really nice guy, you know. I think we may even be good friends! Who knows, maybe one day I’ll even visit him in Ohio!”

Stevie and Lisa were very excited about their news for Carole and they were about to get down to business when the waitress arrived to take their orders. Stevie ordered a blueberry sundae on coffee ice cream. She always tried to be outrageous. Lisa accused her of eating weird combinations to keep from having to share with her friends. Stevie denied it, but she never had to share, either! Lisa ordered a butterscotch sundae. “On vanilla ice cream,” she said pointedly to the waitress, who seemed a bit relieved after Stevie’s order. Carole asked for a root-beer float.

“It’s our turn to tell, now,” Stevie said, looking at Lisa, who nodded agreement.

“Tell what?” Carole asked. “Have you two been keeping a secret?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be a secret, but once it started happening and it didn’t happen to you, it just sort of turned into a secret. At first it was a good secret, but then it became a bad secret, and now it’s just a funny secret,” Lisa explained.

“What
is
she talking about?” Carole asked Stevie, laughing at Lisa’s jumbled sentence.

“Our attempt at being models,” Stevie said, twirling her hair around her fingers casually.

“Models! You two! Tell me!” Carole said excitedly.

Then, because they had been holding it all in for so long, the whole story about their ill-fated careers as models came tumbling out. Stevie told about the class Carole had missed where Jackie was photographing everybody, and then Lisa told Carole about the phone call.

“Really, the most fun part of this whole thing was our daydreams,” Lisa said. “I don’t know about yours, Stevie, but mine were terrific.”

“Mine were in Paris,” Stevie said airily.

“Mine were in a sports car in Monte Carlo!” Lisa announced.

“It sounds like the dream life of a model isn’t the same as the
actual
life of a model. Is that true?” Carole asked.

Her best friends nodded. “We’re sadder, but wiser,” Stevie said. “In fact, it was awful.” Then they told Carole,
in gruesome detail, just how much fun it was groveling in the dirt to keep a saddle from tipping, or holding onto a horse’s halter for what seemed like hours so that the nameplate on the halter wouldn’t gleam too brightly in the sun.

“And the worst part was that there aren’t even any photographs of us! Just a little bit of my knee in
one
picture.”

“You’re being too modest,” Lisa said. “Remember that Jackie said she thought it was a particularly good knee.”

“Give me a break!” Stevie groaned.

“Well, look at it this way,” Carole said brightly. “A lot of girls dream of being models for years and are really disappointed when their dreams don’t come true. You two already know better, don’t you? That’s got to be worth something.”

“Trust her to find the bright side of that experience,” Stevie joked. “Now that
her
problems have been solved.” Carole laughed.

“Actually, there is a bright side,” Lisa said. “We got paid for our work. We each got fifty dollars!”

“Not bad,” Carole said. “What are you going to do with it?”

Lisa and Stevie exchanged glances. Then Stevie nudged Lisa. Carole couldn’t understand why both of her friends seemed a little embarrassed. “Ahem,” Stevie said, looking at Lisa again.

Lisa nodded and spoke. “We both felt pretty bad that you weren’t included in the modeling job, even when it turned out that it wasn’t much fun. Although it would have been more fun with the three of us together. Anyway, in order to make it up to you that you didn’t get to model, we’ve decided to give you all the money we earned. If you add that to the money you’ve already saved up to visit Kate’s dude ranch, you
should
have enought for the round-trip airfare now. So”—she reached into her pocket and brought out an envelope with Carole’s name on it—“here it is. For you. From us.”

Carole could barely believe her ears. Her friends were not only making an incredible and wonderful sacrifice for her, they were solving an awful problem she had. She
still
hadn’t decided which one she should invite to go with her—and now she didn’t have to decide at all.

“This is incredible!” Carole said.

“Well, generous, yes, but incredible, definitely not,” Stevie said matter-of-factly.

“No, I mean the coincidence.”

“What does coincidence have to do with it?” Lisa asked.

“It has to do with my father’s dancing,” Carole said.

Stevie scrunched her eyebrows and looked over at
Lisa. “Give her a few bucks and she goes crazy,” she announced.

“No, I haven’t,” Carole said, giggling. “But remember how Lisa just said that everything is more fun when we’re together? Well, going to the dude ranch will be more fun if all three of us go together, too!” Then, while her friends listened excitedly, she told them about the tickets her father had won and how they could use them.