Quarter Horse (10 page)

“They seemed to like it,” Gabriel replied. “Although I have to admit, it wasn’t as funny as watching you and that goat flop around in the dust!” He laughed again and eyed Stevie’s filthy cowboy shirt. “Too bad about your nice clean shirt.”

“Too bad about yours, too,” she said sadly.

“Mine?” Gabriel frowned and looked down at his almost spotless white shirt.

“Yeah.” Stevie grinned. “In about two minutes it’s going to be covered in my dust when this race begins. By the time we cross the finish line, you’ll be able to write your initials across it!”

“Oh, right,” Gabriel snorted. “In your dreams.” He pulled his hat down over his eyes and gave Napoleon’s golden shoulder a pat.

“More like in my nightmares if you’ve got anything to
do with them,” Stevie snapped back, getting mad all over again at the idea of him making her kiss him.

“Riders, get ready to go!” the man with the bullhorn announced. “Halfway around the track is a quarter mile.” He lifted the starting gun.

Suddenly the riders grew silent and concentrated on the stretch of track ahead of them. Even the horses quivered with anticipation, eager to burst down the track as fast as they could go. Farther away, by the first turn, Stevie could see Sal and Lisa sitting on their horses, looking toward them, waiting for the race to begin. How proud they would be when she won! She leaned low and forward in the saddle and grasped the reins tightly, waiting for the blast of the starting gun. She had turned her head one last time to shoot a menacing scowl at Gabriel when suddenly an odd movement caught her eye. Just behind Carole and Pogo, the angry bull was hooking the flimsy fence with his horns. The fence wobbled, then sagged to the ground. The bull was free! He leaped forward and pawed the ground once as he sniffed the air, then lowered his head and began to charge. And he began to charge straight at Carole and Pogo!

T
HE CRACK OF
the starting gun split the air. All the other horses sprang forward. Tumbleweed’s first impulse was to do the same, but Stevie reined him hard to the left. Immediately he obeyed, pivoting with his quarter horse agility.

“Come on, Tumbleweed!” She squeezed with her legs and urged him forward, faster than she’d ever wanted him to go before, but he seemed stuck in his regular lope. Though it was fast, it wasn’t nearly fast enough to get to Carole in time.

“Come on, Tumbleweed,” she said again. She leaned closer to him and squeezed him again, but it did no good. It was as if he were stuck going fifty miles an hour when he could easily have gone eighty. Then Stevie remembered something Pete had told her. “Don’t use your spurs on
Tumbleweed unless you want him to take off like a rocket.”
Your spurs!
That was what Carole had been trying to signal her right before the race! Instantly Stevie jammed her heels into Tumbleweed’s side. He hesitated for an instant, then leaped across the track faster than he’d ever gone before. His flying mane whipped Stevie’s face, but she maintained her race position—low and forward in the saddle. Some of the spectators, astonished by her actions, were just beginning to realize what was happening. Several people had seen the bull and began running away from the track, their children clutched in their arms.

From the corner of her eye, Stevie could see that Lisa and Sal had also spotted the trouble Carole was in and had begun to race toward her. The other rodeo clowns were scrambling from the adult arena to help, and the pickup cowboys were galloping to the exit at the end of the arena. Still, Stevie was closest to the bull. She was the only one who could reach Carole in time.

Tumbleweed was now halfway across the track. Though Carole and Pogo were trying to side-pass around the bull, he had them trapped in the corner between the grandstand and the back of the concession trailer. They had no room to maneuver, and his deadly horns were getting closer and closer. Carole kept Pogo moving from side to side, but Stevie could already see the whites showing around Pogo’s terrified eyes. If Pogo grew any more frightened, she could panic and buck Carole off, leaving her totally defenseless in front of the bull.

Frantically, Stevie racked her brain. Why hadn’t she listened when Carole and Lisa had talked about clowning? What had they said clowns did when bulls went crazy? Banged on a barrel or something like that. But Stevie had no barrel to bang on. All she had was Tumbleweed and herself. “Think!” she whispered as they thundered closer to the bull. “Think!”

Stevie was almost there. She could see white foam curling from Pogo’s mouth. She jammed her heels into Tumbleweed’s side again. He bore down and went even faster. “Hey!” Stevie screamed at the bull at the top of her lungs. “Hey! Bossy! Over here!”

The bull paid no attention. He kept moving closer and closer to Carole, now snorting, now shaking his horns from side to side. “Hey!” Stevie yelled again. Then she spied Sal’s big red scarf lying on the ground. Sal must have dropped it after she’d lured the bull into the pen the first time around. If that scarf had worked with this bull once, maybe it would work again.

Stevie shifted her weight slightly to the left and leaned low in the saddle, using the same motions she’d used when she was trying to slide off Tumbleweed on top of the goat. Instinctively Tumbleweed veered slightly to the left, carrying Stevie closer to the scarf. In all her life she’d never leaned so low to the ground on horseback before, but with one swooping motion, clinging to the saddle horn, she stretched her left arm out as far as it would go. Her fingertips grazed the silky red material. She stretched
to her absolute limit and tried to grab it. She got it! She clutched it in her hand as she pulled herself back into the saddle and urged Tumbleweed forward again. She wondered for a moment whether Tumbleweed would sense Pogo’s fear and balk at running so close to the bull. Most horses would flee from an animal that was snorting and bellowing in rage. But the little quarter horse didn’t flinch. He galloped on, obeying her commands without question.

Stevie pointed him straight at the bull’s side, then reined him up about ten feet away. “Hey, Ferdinand!” Stevie yelled at the bull. “Look at this!” She flapped the red scarf. The bull saw it out of the corner of his eye and turned to look. For a moment his vicious horns pointed away from Carole and Pogo.

“Hey, Ferdinand!” Stevie called again. “
Toro, toro, toro!
” She loosened her grip on Tumbleweed’s reins and held the scarf out beside her the way a bullfighter would hold a cape. Jiggling one end of the scarf, she waved it back and forth in front of the bull. He looked at it for a moment, then turned the rest of his huge body to face it. That gave Carole and Pogo enough room to leap out of the corner where they’d been trapped. Carole stopped Pogo just beyond the reach of the bull’s horns, then began to wave her derby at him from the other direction.

For a few more seconds the girls worked hard to keep the bull flustered. The bull didn’t know which one to try
to gore first, so he just stood there, shaking his horns at both of them and pawing the ground. After what seemed like hours, the adult team of rodeo clowns made it through the grandstand. They jumped around and further confused the bull, then joined hands and made a shield in front of Stevie and Carole while the two cowboys arrived and threw lassos around the bull’s neck. Finally realizing he was outnumbered and roped, the bull gave one last bellow and allowed the cowboys to lead him back to the main stock trailer.

“Are you girls okay?” one of the clowns asked after the bull had been led away.

“I think so.” Stevie looked at Carole and Pogo. They both seemed shaken.

“Maybe you two should go and take it easy for a little while,” the clown suggested. “Petunia can be a handful when he gets riled up, but you two did a great job containing him.”

Stevie frowned. “That bull’s name is Petunia?”

The clown shrugged. “So go figure. I guess whoever named him didn’t know too much about cattle.”

“Whatever.” Stevie chuckled with relief. She handed Sal’s red scarf to the clown and trotted over to Carole. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” said Carole. “But let’s go somewhere else. Pogo and I need to get as far away from Petunia as we possibly can.”

The two girls rode over to Lisa and Sal. Though it
seemed to Stevie that the whole incident had taken hours, in reality it had ended in less than a minute. Lisa and Sal had galloped at full speed from the other end of the track, and they were just now arriving.

“Stevie! Carole! Are you two all right?” Lisa looked sickly pale. Her eyes were wide with fear.

“We’re okay,” said Stevie, although her mouth was dry and her heart was thumping like a drum.

“You two sure did a great job of bull wrangling!” Sal said, beaming at them.

“Thanks,” Carole said. “Now I think I’d like to sit down a minute.”

Everyone dismounted, giving the horses a well-deserved rest. Carole soothed the still-trembling Pogo while Stevie rubbed Tumbleweed affectionately behind his ears. He had done a wonderfully brave job.

“I was so scared,” Lisa said, her voice shaking. “Sal and I came as soon as we saw what was happening.” She looked at Carole and Stevie with tears in her eyes. “That bull had you trapped! Both of you and the horses could have been killed!”

“I suppose.” Stevie took her cowboy hat off. “It’s funny, but that didn’t occur to me until the clowns led that bull away.”

“Me neither,” added Carole. She grinned at Stevie. “I kept wondering what you were going to do if he decided to charge that scarf!”

Stevie laughed. “I hadn’t figured that out yet.” She
looked at Carole quizzically. “Hey, were you trying to tell me to use my heels on Tumbleweed right before the race?”

Carole nodded. “Pete came by to wish you luck and hoped you’d remember what he’d told you about Tumbleweed and spurs.”

“I couldn’t figure out what you meant until we were halfway across the track,” Stevie said. “But I’m glad I remembered it when I did!”

“I’m glad you did, too!” Lisa shook her head. “You two nearly gave me a heart attack!”

“Then let’s have a group hug and be grateful we’ve got lucky stars,” suggested Stevie, holding her arms open wide.

The three girls clutched each other, happy that they were all alive and unhurt. Sal joined in, grabbing a handful of tiny silver stars from one of her deep clown pockets and sprinkling them over the girls. They had just begun to laugh about how funny Stevie looked with stars in her damp, tousled hair when Gabriel rode up on Napoleon.

“Hi,” he said, reining the big palomino in close. He hopped off and pulled the reins over Napoleon’s head. “I just heard what happened with the bull. Are you okay, Carole?”

“Yes, I am, thanks to Stevie.” Carole smiled.

“And are you okay?” Gabriel turned to Stevie and for once looked at her without a teasing expression.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she replied. Suddenly she remembered that this whole thing had started right as she was
beginning the quarter-mile race—the event that would decide who won their bet. “Hey,” she said. “Who won the race? I kind of got distracted and forgot all about it.”

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” Gabriel asked, his old teasing grin returning. “Me, of course. I beat Mary Corona by half a length.” He stuck his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. “Which means that I won three out of the five events. Which means that I also won the rodeo and our bet!”

Stevie stood still. Her face grew hot with embarrassment at having been beaten, but then she smiled. She had lost the rodeo fair and square, but she had lost it for a good reason—helping to save her friend. There was nothing to be ashamed of about that.

“You’re absolutely right,” she told Gabriel graciously. “Congratulations!”

She held out her hand. Gabriel took it and they shook.

“Now,” Stevie said. “What is it that you want me to do?”

“Oh, how about I tell you later?” he replied with another impish grin, his blue eyes looking bluer than ever.

“Okay.” Stevie gulped, her palms growing sweaty. “When?”

“How about tonight? Just before the big barbecue dinner?”

“That’s fine.” Stevie tried to smile through the butterflies that were beginning to flit in her stomach. “I can hardly wait to hear what you’ve dreamed up.”