Cutting Horse (6 page)

Skye saved the girls from having to say anything in
response. He was due at a cast meeting for a run-through of a scene. Thanking them and patting Stewball again, he left them at the entrance to the main barn.

A
S
L
ISA AND
Stevie led Stewball inside, Carole joined them. She was red-faced and panting and looked ready to explode.

“What happened? Didn’t the lesson go well?” Lisa asked. It wasn’t like Carole to get so worked up.

“It hardly went at all!” Carole exclaimed. “The so-called animal trainer wouldn’t let me take her precious property out of his stall until I signed about nine release forms! And even then, he had to wear every kind of boot, bandage, and pad ever invented. Once I got on, it went from terrible to horrible! That horse doesn’t know the first thing about Western aids. He doesn’t even neck-rein properly. I got so upset comparing him to Stewball that finally I had to quit. I was getting nowhere fast.”

Stevie and Lisa felt their hearts sink. Carole’s news was grim. They had been entertaining a faint hope that maybe Sir Prize just needed a good rider to set him straight. Clearly, that was far from the case. Carole had worked with all kinds of ornery, disobedient, green, and sluggish horses, and she almost never lost her cool. Like any good rider, she understood that training required infinite patience.
But this situation was evidently more than she could handle.

“There’s a solution to our problems somewhere,” Stevie said. “There always is. We’ve just got to put our heads together and think.” She knew that it was crucial for them to stay optimistic. If they gave up now, Skye would have no hope of riding in the movie, and they would have failed him, not only as technical advisers, but also as friends. “If only Stewball could talk. He’d tell us what to do,” she said wistfully.

“C
OULD YOU PASS
the salt, Lisa? Lisa? Hello-o, Earth to Lisa.” Stevie waved her hands, and Lisa finally snapped to attention.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t hear you. What did you want? The sugar?” Lisa asked.

Stevie smiled tolerantly. “No, the salt,” she said gently, resisting the impulse to tease her.

Lisa had been distracted all through dinner. She hadn’t taken part in any of the conversations. Now she was staring at her plate, pushing her rice and beans around with
her fork. Stevie had a pretty good idea why. The confrontation between John and Skye had been ugly. John hadn’t acted like himself at all. In fact, he was the one who had
made
it a confrontation when it should have been a friendly introduction. Poor Lisa had been caught in the middle.

Back in the bunkhouse, Stevie questioned Lisa directly. “Is it what I think?” she asked.

Lisa nodded. “If you mean John, yes,” she replied.

“Tell Carole what happened,” Stevie suggested.

Lisa recounted the story, going back to the scene in the hayloft, where John had said that Skye wouldn’t care about the missing hay. “I can see why he’s annoyed about all the extra work and the attitude of most of the Hollywood people, but why does he have to group Skye with the rest of them?” she asked.

“I have one word,” Stevie said dramatically.
“Jealousy.”

“That’s what I was going to say,” Carole said.

“I did think of that,” Lisa admitted. “Practically every time John sees me I’m saying what a great guy Skye is.”

“Exactly,” Stevie said.

“But it’s true!” Lisa protested. “Skye
is
a great guy. And so is John. I’m not going to pretend to John that I don’t like Skye!”

“Too bad. Then it could really get interesting,” Stevie said, a wicked glint in her eye.

Carole threw a pillow at her. “Some friend you are!”

“Just kidding,” Stevie said. Then she added impishly, “Maybe you should pretend that you do like Skye. I mean
like
like him, you know? To make John even more jealous! Then John would confront Skye and they could fight over you.” Stevie’s hazel eyes lit up at the thought of so much scheming.

“Don’t listen to a word she says, Lisa!” Carole said, glaring at Stevie. “Honesty is the best policy. You should tell John how you feel—that you and Skye are just friends and that John had better stop acting like such a baby about it. Then the air will be cleared and you and John can go on the way you did before.”

“I keep meaning to say something to him, but we haven’t been able to spend any time together,” Lisa explained.

“Well, there’s no time like the present,” Stevie said brightly.

“You mean now?” Lisa asked. The three of them had already brushed their teeth and changed into their pajamas.

Stevie nodded. “I’ll bet if you went out to the barn right now you could catch John finishing up out there.”

“She does have a point,” Carole agreed.

Lisa thought for a minute. Stevie was probably right. She knew that John had the habit of going out to the barn in the evenings even if he didn’t have work to do. And with the extra duties the movie had brought, there was a good chance he had gone back after his dinner to finish a few barn chores. The more she thought about the idea, the less crazy it seemed. “All right, I’ll do it! I’ll go out and talk to him right now,” she announced.

Stevie and Carole helped her into her bathrobe and barn shoes and promised to stay up until she got back. Then they packed her out the door, wishing her luck.

Lisa stepped out into the night air. It was a clear evening, and the sky was lit up with stars. Lisa always noticed the difference between the sky at the Bar None and the sky at home in Virginia. Somehow out West it seemed larger—and the stars seemed brighter. Even with the ranch buildings and the Hollywood trailers nearby, the land felt vast and empty. Breathing the clear, sharp air, Lisa thought she understood why some people could never leave the West. John was one of them. His ancestors had lived in the Western states for centuries—before the states were even states. She knew that he loved the land as if it were a person. That might have been one of the reasons the Hollywood invasion had upset him so much.
Shivering a little, Lisa hurried toward the light in the stable.

Inside, John was wearily raking the dirt aisle so that it would be neat for the morning. Lisa hated to disturb him in his work, but she knew that if she didn’t, it would be impossible to talk to him anytime soon. “John?”

John looked up and smiled—his old, warm smile—when he saw her. “What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“I came to say hi. We all sort of figured you’d still be out here,” she said.

John let out a long breath. “You got that right. I grabbed a bite at home and then came back.”

“Do you want some help?” Lisa asked.

“Sure. That would be great. There’s another rake just inside the door there.”

Lisa took the rake, and they worked without speaking for several minutes. She didn’t want to break the companionable silence, and suddenly she had cold feet about bringing up Skye. She was glad when John spoke first.

“It’s nice out here at night, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes, it’s great,” Lisa agreed. “It’s so quiet and peaceful.”

They came to the end of the aisle and stood leaning on their rakes. “I used to sleep in the barn all the time when I
was little,” John said. “I’d always find some excuse—some horse that had a cold or a foal that needed watching. Dad was pretty nice about pretending that whatever I thought up was important enough for me to be here.…” John’s voice drifted off as he lost himself in the memory.

“Well,” Lisa said, chuckling, “if you need an excuse now, I’m sure Sir Prize could use another twenty-four-hour guardian.”

The minute Lisa made the joke, she was sorry. John’s face changed from content to frustrated in a matter of seconds. “The way they treat that horse is ridiculous!” he said. “Not to mention flying him in to the ranch in the first place.”

“I know. We think so, too,” Lisa said, relieved that the two of them could agree on something to do with the movie. “And he’s barely even trained. Carole was riding him this afternoon and she couldn’t get him to do anything.”

“Why was Carole riding him?” John asked.

Lisa bit her lip. She’d come this far, though—she couldn’t stop now. “She’s helping get him ready for Skye to ride in the movie. We’re all helping Skye get ready. That’s why Stevie and I were giving him a lesson on Stewball this afternoon.”

“I
had
noticed that you’ve been spending all your time
with him,” John said pointedly, pressing his lips into a tight line.

Lisa clenched her hands in annoyance. “Why shouldn’t we? We’re his technical advisers for the movie. Not to mention his friends,” she said. She tried to keep her voice calm, but she could hear it quavering.

“His
best
friends, from what I can tell,” John shot back.

“Skye has a lot of friends,” Lisa said hotly. “He’s a friendly person—which you would have noticed this afternoon if you hadn’t been so bent on insulting him.”

“That Hollywood pretty boy could use a couple of insults to take him down a peg or two!” John retorted.

“He’s not stuck-up!” Lisa said. “You just think he is because the other Hollywood people are.”

“Well, I can tell you one way he’s like the others: He’s an idiot! He asked
me
if I knew how to ride! What does he think I am, some kind of servant who’s not allowed to go near the horses?”

Lisa stared at John, astonished by his outburst. She knew that if he could have heard himself, he would have understood how ridiculous he sounded. But he was so upset that he was saying whatever came into his mind. “Skye was just being polite this afternoon,” she said finally.

John didn’t respond. Instead he began to rerake the aisle. Lisa watched him attack the dirt for a minute or two. Reasoning with him was clearly not going to work tonight. But if it didn’t work tonight, she wondered, when would it?

B
ACK IN THE BUNKHOUSE
, Lisa hardly had to say anything to Carole and Stevie. One look at her deflated expression and they guessed how the conversation had gone. “The plan backfired?” Stevie asked, gesturing for Lisa to climb up and join them in Carole’s bunk.

Lisa nodded. “Instead of telling John that Skye is only a friend, I ended up defending Skye again.” She swung up into the bunk.

“It’s too bad that John doesn’t know Skye. If he could get to know him, he’d realize that Skye is a good guy,” Carole mused.

“But they’re both too busy. Skye’s trying to get ready for the final shoot, John has tons of extra work—how are we supposed to find the time for them to hang out?” Lisa asked. After the movie crew left, things could go back to normal. But by then, The Saddle Club would be back in Willow Creek, and Lisa’s friendship with John might be beyond repairing.

“I know!” Stevie exclaimed.

“Let me guess. You have just one word to say,” said Carole.

“Nope, sorry: two,” Stevie said.
“Technical advisers.”

“Huh?” said Carole and Lisa in unison.

“Why don’t we ask John to join the team?” said Stevie.

“But he hates Hollywood and he thinks Skye is an idiot. Why would he want to help out?” Lisa asked.

“Maybe he hates Hollywood because he’s not involved. He’s stuck doing all the hard work while everyone else has a glamorous job. And we know the reason he doesn’t like Skye is that he doesn’t know him. If he worked with us, it might solve both problems,” Stevie reasoned.

“If we could convince him somehow,” Lisa said.

“Oh, convincing him will be easy,” said Stevie. “We’ll just make it boss’s orders. I’ll bet if we speak to Frank Devine and explain the situation, he can order John to be part of the team.”

Carole raised her eyebrows doubtfully. “You mean Lisa is supposed to tell Frank Devine that John Brightstar thinks she has a crush on Skye Ransom, so we need him on the technical advisory team?”

“Not exactly,” said Stevie. “We’ll have to edit the story somehow—rearrange it, change a few details, recast the leading lady—”

“—cut to the chase, change the makeup—Stevie, I think you’ve been hanging out with Blake Pratt too long!” Carole kidded.

Stevie grinned. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” she said.

“So, when on a movie set, do as the Los Angelenos do?” Carole said suspiciously.

Lisa sighed. “All I can say is that I’m glad Stevie’s directing this scene.”