Secondhand Horses (13 page)

“Ha!” Vee pointed a finger at Aneta and looked stern. “You’re one of the bravest people I know. Stop saying that. Remember all the times you were brave for Wink?”

Esther stroked Which Way. Sunny didn’t think a goose would be nearly as cool a pet as Major. Would they find a forever home for Which Way? Especially since the orange-beaked fowl created a never-ending supply of goose poo that Sunny had to hose off the barn floor and ramp daily. It was slippery stuff.

Forever homes.

Major leaving her.

Ughness
.

She made herself concentrate on the latest clue.

Esther said, “We’ve got to go over this before Aneta’s mother comes back and we all have to go.” She grimaced. “I wish we didn’t have to leave.”

Sunny picked up the tale. “Right. We saw a camouflage tent. He thought he was being clever by sticking it under the big bushes. And it was there we found”—dramatic pause—“the clue!”

Vee added, “Sticking out of the tent!”

Sunny jumped in. “Only a part. Guess what part?” They all knew what part, but it was so fun to shout it again. Her Great Idea to keep on
just five minutes more
had worked. She’d followed through with it and look what had happened.

“The part where the fabric was ripped off!” Four voices shouted loudly enough that Which Way flapped into the air, Piggles snorted, Bob reared up, and Major stood and shook.

While they were still chortling at their cleverness and calming down the zoo, Sunny held up a hand. “The question now is—what’s our next Great Idea?”

“Tell the police. Show them the fabric. Take them to the camp.” Esther ticked off her ideas, one finger at a time. “End of story. The Squad saves the day!”

Vee shook her head. “There’s more to it than that.”

Esther stuck out her chin. “So what’s
your
great plan?”

Vee took out her notebook and tiny pen from her back pocket. She began to write. Esther rolled her eyes. Would there ever be an adventure where Vee and Esther didn’t butt heads at least once? The trouble was, they both thought they had the best ideas. Sunny swallowed a smile and a snort that almost—almost—popped out.
She
was the one with the
Great
Ideas.

“Okay, I just had to write some things down to help my brain,” Vee said, glancing up from her notebook. “Here’s the thing. Why was The Shirt in the barn at all? What’s the difference between trashing the barn the second time and doing nothing the first time?”

Silence.

“Oh.” Aneta furrowed her brow. “I see. What’s different? That will be what he is really after.”

“And he wouldn’t tell the police if we turn him over now.” Sunny began to nod. It wasn’t a Great Idea yet, but it did sound like adventure. She looked over at Esther. Would their friend jump on board with their thinking, or would she stubbornly stick to her own idea?

She decided to try what her dad did with her sometimes. He asked what she thought he and Mom should do when he already knew. That way she thought it was her idea and would be more willing to go along. Sunny was pretty sure her dad didn’t know she was onto him. It was a fun game. Most of the time. Except when she suggested they give the brothers away rather than come up with ideas on how to keep them out of her room. To Esther, she said, “So the guy gets away with—what? Murder?”

“Murder!” Aneta gasped. “Oh, Sunny.” She stood up on the bale, looking around like she expected a corpse to suddenly appear. “Was he in the barn hiding a dead body?”

“No.” Esther snapped her fingers and straightened. Which Way muttered and waddled off her lap to go lie next to Bob. “He was looking for something. The animals were the same. The hay and straw are the same. The …” She turned slowly and took stock of what was in the barn. “The saddles are the same, the bridles and the reins, all that horse stuff is the same. So what …” Her voice faded. She spread out her hands in inquiry.

Aneta said, “What is different?”

What was? Another scan of the barn’s floor unleashed a rush of knowing. Sunny had to spin. Of course!

The girls waited.

“It’s the
wagon
, guys. I moved it from the barn to the tractor shed because I was tired of tripping over it.”

Two beats of each heart and then a flurry of running feet as the girls dashed toward the tractor shed. The zoo followed, nickering, grunting, flapping, and “bahhhhhbbb”-ing. The wagon remained where Sunny had placed it.

“Okay.” Vee whipped out her notebook and pen. “Tell me what you see, and I’ll write it down.”

“Four old wheels, two poles for Major to get in between.” If Esther hadn’t been quickly scanning the wagon while she spoke, Sunny knew Vee’s eyes would have narrowed, thinking that Esther was making fun of her and her notebook. But Esther was absorbed in looking at
all
the details of the wagon. Vee started to write.

Aneta ran her fingers over the uneven, weathered sides of the small wagon. “This is so the kid can’t fall out. It would have to be a very small kid. Nothing I see here.” She ran her fingers over the glued-down piece of old carpet. “And an icky old piece of carpet for them to sit on.” She crinkled her nose. “That carnival man was not clean.”

Thumping back down to the floor, Sunny planted her elbows on her knees and then her head on her hands. She squinted. What was so amazingly important about this wagon? Vee wrote down everything Aneta and Esther continued to report while Sunny kept thinking. Who was The Shirt? What did he want with the wagon?

“Okay, I have the answer.” Vee made one last note and climbed into the John Deere seat. “Ready for the report?”

The girls nodded. Esther wiped her hands on the back of her capris and joined Sunny on the floor. Aneta sat sideways on the old saddle nearby.

Vee cleared her throat. “It’s a wagon.” She made a face. “That’s all it is.”

Groans greeted her announcement. Vee smiled a tiny smile. “Sorry, there was nothing really to tell so I thought I better make it sound sort of interesting.”

After that, nobody spoke for several minutes. The shed was dark enough Sunny could barely make out the faces she knew so well. Thinking. They were all thinking. “I guess we need to write down everything since the first time we saw the wagon,” Sunny said with a sigh. “Who knows how long we’ve got until Aneta’s mom hauls you guys away.”

It was better, though, that Uncle Dave talk to Aneta’s mom than be on the phone to those sport pony people. “I wish my uncle would do secondhand horses.” She drifted off for a moment, imagining her uncle’s ranch with happy horses and happy people adopting happy horses or coming to see them and learning how to care kindly for happy horses.

“And—earth to Sunny,” Esther raised her voice.

“Oh.” Sunny came back to earth. “Just thinking about how cool it would be for my uncle to have a secondhand horse ranch rather than sport ponies for Arab sheiks.”

“Sunny’s right. We need a list,” Vee agreed. Aneta shrugged and said okay. Esther sighed, but nodded.

“I’m ready,” Vee said, pen poised over the notebook.

After much back and forth and a teeny bit of arguing between Vee and Esther about what was important enough to go on the list, the girls came up with this:

“I remember now.” Sunny snapped her fingers. She’d been the one to provide the last two items on Vee’s list. “I thought it was kind of cute that Major liked his wagon.”

Sliding off the saddle and standing up, Aneta brushed off the back of her black leggings and frowned. “But Major does not care about the wagon. You put the wagon in the tractor shed, and he does not care.”

Esther nodded. “Yeah. Anyone think they’ve seen him looking for it?”

Vee snorted. “He’s only looking for those baby carrots you give him, Sunny.”

The grating of gravel.

“Girls? Time to go.”

“Aneta’s mom,” Vee said. “Everybody keep thinking about the wagon. It’s
got
to have something to do with that wagon.”

S
unny, don’t think that this lovely afternoon snack of pretzels and hummus is going to change my mind. I’m done adding secondhand horses. It’s sport ponies for me now.”

Today, for the first time since his accident, Uncle Dave looked like himself. The brown puddles of pain were no longer hanging under his eyes. He stood straight on the crutches, and he’d eaten her very wonderful homemade hummus at the kitchen table with her. All wonderful. What was not so wonderful was his insistence that finding more secondhand horses would not be a good thing for the ranch.

Sunny ordered her face to look pitiful. “So many horses already living and needing homes. Why make more?”

He raised his eyebrows over his coffee cup, took a sip, and made an ugly face. “Where did you read that argument, my favorite niece?” He set the cup down. “I need to teach you how to make coffee. Are you done with school?”

“Yep. And all the animals are fine. Major likes history better than science. Me, too, except the Middle Ages are kind of gross and dirty.” She’d read out loud as she worked through her assignments. School was so much more fun with a miniature horse breathing down your neck. “The Squad will be here soon.” This weekend while they were all at the ranch, they had to figure out
why
The Shirt wanted the wagon.

Which Way sounded the “incoming” alarm seconds before Sunny heard the gravel. “That’s them!” Once through the front door and the screen, Sunny squinted at what was
not
one of the parents’ vehicles. Standing next to an old truck that looked like it had gotten a thorough washing was a tall man and a teenage boy. A horse trailer was hitched, and inside it Sunny heard the stomps of a hoof and saw a horse’s face through the open window.

Was this the first sport pony and her uncle had not told her? She walked over to the trailer and stuck out her hand like she’d seen Uncle Dave do. “Are you the guy with the sport pony?”

The man reached out his own hand, rough and scratchy, and clasped Sunny’s firmly. It felt, like Uncle Dave often said, “like he worked hard for a living.” “Don’t know about no sport pony, but I’ve got a great cutting horse in there.” His voice roughened; he cleared his throat.

“What’s a cutting horse?”

Another vehicle pulled in. Esther’s dad deposited Vee, Esther, and Aneta and drove off.

The three dashed over to stand by Sunny, their normal greeting extinguished by the unexpected visitors.

“He has a cutting horse,” Sunny volunteered to her friends.

The tall boy next to him didn’t say a word, but Sunny was sure he wasn’t blinking hard to keep the dust out of his eyes. The wind wasn’t blowing yet. Was he
crying?

The front door shrieked and popped. There was another stomp in the trailer. The boy stepped up on the wheel and spoke some low words. Uncle Dave stood on the porch, crutches under each arm.

“That your father?” the man asked Sunny.

She shook her head. “Uncle. We’re helping out here on the ranch until his ankle gets better.”

He gestured to the rest of the Squad. “Sisters?”

“Best friends,” Aneta said as Uncle Dave joined them. “Mr. Martin, this man has a cutting horse. What do you have that a horse needs to cut?” Her face revealed her curiosity.

The boy snorted. “You girls don’t know horses, do you?”

Sunny smothered the immediate grin that wanted to march across her face. That was going to fire up Vee and Esther. Esther had done a lot of Internet research on horses, geese, pygmy goats, and pigs that helped them on the ranch. Vee wrote everything down they had learned so they wouldn’t forget it for the next time.

“No, nothing.” Vee crossed her arms over her chest and widened her stance in the gravel. “Just that they have four legs.”

“A tail,” Esther added, her fists flying to her hips.

“And need to be saddled with the cinch tight. Some horses bloat on purpose so the saddle gets loose and you fall off,” Aneta said.

The other three girls’ eyebrows rose in perfect sync.

When did Aneta learn all that cowboy talk?

The boy’s eyes narrowed then he smiled. “Okay. I was a jerk. Sorry.”

“Is this horse yours?” Aneta asked.

The smile vanished. “Yeah.” He clamped his lips and strode off behind the back of the trailer.

The man asked if he could speak with Uncle Dave privately, so the girls retreated to the porch railing. Since they couldn’t see the boy, they began guessing what the man wanted.

“The man wants to sell the horse. Betcha.” Esther pushed hair out of her eyes as the wind picked up. “Did anyone figure out why the bad guy wants the wagon?”

“What is a cutting horse anyway?” Vee asked, turning to Esther. “And no, I didn’t. Did either of you?”

Esther promptly replied, “A cutting horse is used to cut cattle from the herd. I read on the Internet that a well-trained cutting horse can practically work by himself once he knows what’s going on.”

“No ideas on the wagon.” Sunny shook her head. So did Aneta. “Uncle Dave is shaking his head and pointing to the corral. I’m thinking he doesn’t want to buy the horse.” Sunny listened as hard as she could, but she could only hear the wind and the deep voices.

Shirley, Mondo, Mystery, and Major came to their corral railings to watch. Finally, Uncle Dave threw up his hands and nodded. The man stuck out his hand. The two men shook hands, after which the man called the boy. He reappeared, his shoulders bowed. He’d tipped his hat way down so you couldn’t see his eyes.

“Wow. He doesn’t want to hear what he’s going to hear,” Vee observed.

Sunny agreed. Little swirls of dust rose from his shuffling boots. The father—Sunny figured it was father and son since they had the same skinny nose and cheekbones—pointed to her uncle and spoke. At first the boy’s shoulders hunched as though he were expecting a blow. Then his head snapped up.