Quarter Horse (6 page)

Sal stood the barrel up on one end. It was lightweight but deep enough for a person to squeeze inside. “Let me give you a brief course in rodeo clowning. If you’ve ever noticed before, rodeo clowns usually work in teams of three. We have a bullfighter, a point clown, and a barrel man. The bullfighter is a clown who jumps around and tries to distract the bull after the rider’s off his back. You have to be nimble and quick to be a bullfighter.”

“And brave, too,” added Carole.

“Absolutely,” Sal agreed. She thumped the barrel. “The barrel man stays inside here and watches the bullfighter work. If the bullfighter is having trouble with a bull, he leads him over to the barrel man, who stands up inside the barrel and draws the bull over to him. Then the barrel man scrunches down inside in case the bull decides the barrel would make good target practice for his horns.” Sal laughed and pointed to a large dent on one side of her barrel. “That was put there by a bull named Percy who just didn’t like the color of my wig one day.”

“What does the point clown do?” asked Lisa.

“The point clown coordinates everybody else. If she sees the bullfighter needs help, she goes there; if the barrel man’s getting tossed around too much, she helps out there. If everything’s going okay, the point clown entertains the audience.”

“That sounds like the toughest job of all,” said Carole.

“Oh, they’re all tough in their own ways, but they’re also a lot of fun.” Sal noticed Lisa’s wary expression. “Anyway, we’ll be working the junior events, so we won’t have any broncs or bulls to worry about. Just calves and goats.” She laughed. “They’re not real strong, but they can be slippery little devils.”

She banged on the barrel. “Okay. Who wants to be the barrel man? Or should I say barrel girl?”

Lisa shrugged. “I’ll give it a try.”

“Great,” Sal said. “Hop right in there and Carole and I
will roll you around the arena. We can work on our routines as we go along.”

Lisa squirmed down into the barrel.

“Are you ready?” said Sal.

“Ready!” called Lisa.

“Okay, then, clowns. Let’s go!”

A
S THE PURPLE
evening shadows grew long over the corral, Stevie’s lasso finally fell exactly over the calf’s head.

“All right!” she cried as she wearily climbed off Tumbleweed. “After about a hundred throws, I finally got him!” She sighed as she loosened the rope from the plastic head. It was getting too dark to practice anymore, and she knew she was still far from good.

“Okay,” she said to herself. “I may not win the calf roping, but if I’m lucky, at least I won’t totally disgrace myself.” She re-coiled the rope, then started to walk Tumbleweed back to the barn. The setting sun turned the filmy clouds a brilliant shade of orange.

“I wonder if Phil is having as pretty a sunset as we are?” Stevie asked aloud as Tumbleweed clopped along behind her. “I wonder if he’s toasting marshmallows around a campfire or strumming a guitar or skipping rocks across a river?” She felt a sharp pang in her stomach as she imagined Phil with a new girl by his side. She would enjoy doing all the things Phil liked to do, and they would be sitting side by side every day, telling each other jokes, holding hands when the river was calm and paddling furiously
through the rapids together, all the while gazing into each other’s eyes.

“And here I am, alone in the middle of a dusty corral, throwing a rope around a plastic calf head,” Stevie moaned. “I’m dirty and I’m sore and now I’ll probably lose the rodeo tomorrow and then I’ll have to do some stupid, humiliating thing that Gabriel dreamed up!

“Oh, Tumbleweed,” she sighed, reaching up to rub the horse behind one of his soft ears. “How do I get into such messes?”

“T
HIS IS THE
first soft thing we’ve sat on in over a week!” Lisa exclaimed, nestling into the old movie theater seat. “It almost seems like we’re back in civilization again.”

“I know,” Carole said. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does.” Lisa laughed. “Particularly after spending most of the afternoon rolling around in a barrel. I feel like I’ve been launched into outer space!”

The girls were attending, along with all the other pioneers, a prerodeo talent show put on by the people of Clinchport. An old theater on the town square had been made into an auditorium, and the seats were filling up fast. When the houselights blinked three times, everyone realized the show was about to start.

“But you’ve got to admit clowning was fun,” Carole
said. “I mean, putting on all that crazy makeup and then learning how to do those tricks with the horses. This was one of the neatest days I’ve ever had!”

Lisa and Carole giggled, then turned to Stevie. “How did your day go, Stevie?” Lisa asked. “We saw you practicing hard for the goat wrestling when we went to get Sal’s bull barrel.”

“Huh?” Stevie turned her gaze away from the hay bales that decorated each corner of the old stage and looked at her friends.

“I said, how did your day go?” Lisa repeated.

“Oh, great.” Stevie rubbed her right shoulder as if it were sore. “After I practiced what San Antonio Sal told me about pole bending, Pete from the stable helped me with the other events. I worked on my dismounts in goat wrestling for most of the afternoon. Then I finished up by perfecting my lasso release for calf roping.”

“Gosh, Stevie,” said Carole. “That sounds like something my dad would dream up for his new Marine recruits. You should have joined us and had some fun learning how to clown.”

“Yeah.” Lisa looked at Stevie with concern. “It doesn’t sound like you had nearly as much fun as we did.”

“Oh, I’ll have my fun tomorrow,” Stevie promised with a wicked grin, “when I win the rodeo and that creep Gabriel has to do the dare of my choice.” She frowned. “What do you think of making him put on my old pioneer dress and do ‘women’s work’ for a day?”

Carole laughed. “For Gabriel, I think that would be a fate worse than death!”

“Hi, girls,” someone called. They looked toward the stage. Bouncing on the seat in front of them was Eileen, her blond ponytail flying in the air with every bounce.

“You’d better stop, Eileen,” Lisa warned. “You’re going to break that seat.”

“You can’t make me!” retorted Eileen. “Nobody can make me do anything!”

“Probably not,” Carole agreed with a sigh. She turned back to Stevie and Lisa. “Anyway, Stevie, guess what we learned to do with the horses today—”

“I know a secret!” Eileen blurted out in a singsongy voice.

Stevie and Lisa ignored her as Carole told about the fun they’d had learning Sal’s fall-asleep-on-your-horse routine.

“I said, I know a secret!” Eileen jumped harder on the seat and singsonged even more loudly.

“Okay, Eileen.” Stevie frowned at her. “So you know a secret. Good for you.”

“No, I know a really
big
secret!” Eileen insisted. “One that you probably would just love to know yourself!”

Just as Stevie was about to tell Eileen to sit down and be quiet, the houselights dimmed. “Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice announced over a loudspeaker. “The people of Clinchport proudly present the Clinchport High School Drill Team!”

The red velvet curtains opened. Three rows of high-school girls marched onto the stage. Some carried white rifles on their shoulders, while others waved American flags. They marched around the stage in a close-order drill to a recording of “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Everyone began to clap in time to the music, and for once Eileen had to be quiet.

Three hours later the talent show was over and the girls slowly walked back to their wagon.

“That was fun, wasn’t it?” said Lisa. “Those cowboys who yodeled were terrific.”

Carole nodded and laughed. “They were. And I really loved the guy who danced with the pig.”

“Wasn’t he cool?” Stevie giggled in agreement. “That would be a terrific thing for me to make Gabriel do.”

“Stevie, did you sit through that whole show just thinking about what hideous dare you could dream up for Gabriel?” Carole asked.

“Well, not the whole show,” said Stevie. “Just a few parts of it. And they gave me some wonderful ideas!”

The girls got back to their wagon and pulled their sleeping bags out into the cool night air. Carole found a soft patch of ground under a tree, and soon all three of them had snuggled down for the night.

“Good night, everybody,” yawned Lisa.

“Good night, Texarkana Lisa,” Carole replied. “Good night, Stevie, queen of the rodeo.”

“Good night, you guys.”

Stevie rolled over on her side and fell into a deep sleep. At first she did not dream at all; then she began to have weird visions of horses and goats and dancing pigs. At one point Carole and Lisa floated across her dream sky in their clown costumes, while in another dream her brother Chad kept holding up a valentine heart and laughing at her. In her longest dream she and Phil were out in the desert on horseback. They were getting ready to run a quarter-mile race. San Antonio Sal stood at the starting line with a pistol in her hand, while Gabriel waited by the finish line on Stevie’s side of the track.

Across from Gabriel stood a girl with beautiful green eyes and golden-red hair, smiling and waving at Phil. Phil blew her a kiss, then turned to Stevie. “That’s Meghan,” he said dreamily. “She speaks fluent Italian, she won a full scholarship to Harvard when she was in the sixth grade, and she plays polo.” Phil smiled and patted his horse’s neck. “She even loaned me her horse to ride.” Stevie looked down at Phil’s horse. It was a huge bay stallion that tossed his head and snorted fire. Stevie saw the name
Secretariat
stitched on his red sequined saddle pad.

“Meghan owns Secretariat?” Stevie heard her own voice come out in a mousy squeak. Phil grinned and nodded. “She’s rich, too.”

“Uh-huh.” Stevie blinked and looked down at her mount. It was not Tumbleweed she was on, or her own
horse, Belle. Stevie was getting ready for a race against Secretariat on Nero, the oldest, most decrepit gelding in Pine Hollow!

“Wait!” she cried, her words seeming to come out in slow motion. “That’s not fair! You can’t expect Nero to keep up with Secretariat!”

Phil shrugged. Then it was too late. San Antonio Sal fired the starting gun, and Phil and the big bay stallion bounded off in a cloud of dust.

“No!” Stevie cried. “Wait! It’s not fair!”

She sat up and opened her eyes, fully expecting to see Phil and Secretariat disappearing before her. Instead she saw Mr. Cate, struggling to get his water bucket back inside his wagon.

“I’m sorry if we woke you up!” he called in a hoarse whisper. He started to laugh. “Mrs. Cate kicked the bucket in her sleep and knocked it out of the wagon!”

“It’s okay,” Stevie whispered back, grateful to have been awakened from her nightmare. “It didn’t bother me a bit.”

Stevie tried to catch her breath as Mr. Cate climbed back inside his wagon. She rubbed her eyes and looked up at the million twinkling stars overhead. Though she knew a part of her was being crazy and irrational about Phil and his new girlfriend, it seemed as if that part was taking over the other, more normal parts of her. Not only did she worry about them during the day, but now they were showing up in her dreams at night!

Maybe this is some kind of ESP
, she thought with alarm as she gazed up at the stars.
Maybe my dreams are trying to prepare me for the worst. Maybe there really
is
a girl with golden-red hair whom Phil has fallen in love with
!

She sat up straighter and shook her head.
You have no proof of that
, she lectured herself firmly.
You don’t even know if any girls are on Phil’s trip in the first place. And if there are any, you don’t know that they’re cute. And you certainly don’t know that Phil has fallen in love with any of them. All you have is a bunch of feelings and dreams and worries
.

She looked over at Lisa and Carole, who were sleeping soundly, then settled back down in her sleeping bag. “Even if he has fallen in love with some wonderful red-headed girl, there’s nothing I can do about it tonight,” she sighed. “The best thing for me to do right now is to try to get some sleep. There’s a big rodeo tomorrow, and I’ve got to win it!”