Sunset Ranch (10 page)

Chapter
Ten

The air was damp and
fresh when I tiptoed out of the bunkhouse at dawn, holding my boots in one hand. For once, I'd beaten Dana out of bed. She was still a rumpled hump under her covers, sleep mask firmly in place. She had the morning off and had declared the night before that she was going to sleep until noon.

I paused and tugged on my boots. The sunrise was turning the sky a deep rose red, with streaks of purple and lavender, with the mountains a bumpy black silhouette and the last of the night stars fading in the western sky. I'd agreed to meet Stephen for an early Magic session, though he hadn't told me just what he had in mind. The last two weeks had been tense. Stephen just couldn't seem to connect with Magic, and the horse tried to bite him whenever he came near. It didn't help that Magic would let Zach tack him up and ride him. I tried not to notice how hard Stephen's hands were and how tense his body was whenever he handled Magic. The horse was picking up on Stephen's desperation. They always did.

I sniffed as I stood up from the porch. Pancakes. I was missing breakfast. Reluctantly, I climbed down from my rock, peeling the wrapper off the granola bar I'd stuffed into my pocket on the way out.

When I got to the stable, Stephen already had Magic out on a lead rope. He was leaning back against the fence, waiting for me, apparently. The golden morning sun glinted on his auburn hair, and he was wearing a soft gray plaid shirt, open just enough at the collar for me to admire the burnished gold of his skin. I didn't ask if Magic had tried to bite. It seemed better not to, especially when I saw Stephen's face. He was bursting with something, I could tell.

“I thought we'd try him out on a creek,” Stephen called when he saw me. He turned around almost immediately as I came up, and I hurried after him as he started to lead Magic across the field.

“Don't you think it's a little early to be trying him on water again?” I stumbled over tough tussocks of grass, trying to keep up. I cast a hasty glance around for Zach. Stephen was too worked up to handle Magic right now.

Stephen stopped and handed me the lead rope. “Can you hold him a sec? I've got a rock in my boot.” He bent down and tugged at his boot as I looked again toward the stable. Maybe if I just dawdled enough . . .

Stephen tugged at his boot. “Here, do you need help?” I offered.

“I got it.” He pulled it off, exposing a forest-green sock with a hole in the big toe, and dumped out a small pebble. “There.”

I kept my eyes fixed on the pasture gate. A figure with black hair appeared around the corner of the stable, and I breathed an imperceptible sigh of relief. Zach caught sight of us, and his steps quickened as he headed purposefully for the pasture.

Stephen had just pulled on his boot and stamped his foot on the ground when Zach came up.

“Hey, what's up?” he greeted us. He eyed Magic on the lead line. “You're taking him to the creek already? Don't you think it's a little early for that?”

Stephen's brow darkened. I could practically see him grow bristly before my eyes. “No, obviously I don't, or I wouldn't be doing it,” he retorted. He pushed past Zach with Magic. “Let's keep going,” he said to me over his shoulder.

I threw a quick glance at Zach, who grinned and shrugged. I turned and hurried after Stephen. It was a slow, sullen trip across the pasture to the bottom, where a small creek meandered through the grass before flowing into the aspen grove at the other end. The icy waters ran over the grass, wetting it, releasing a delicious peaty smell into the air.

As we walked across the pasture, I stepped to the side of one of the hillocky tufts of grass and came down hard on the side of my ankle, still sore from the fall. I hissed involuntarily and reached down to grab my leg with both hands.

“You okay?” I looked up to see Zach beside me. Ahead, Stephen was still walking with Magic. He must not have heard me.

“I'm fine.” I forced myself to stand up and gritted my teeth at the sharp ache in my ankle.

Zach's big hand was under my elbow. I looked up into his icy-pale eyes, which pierced right into mine. His fingers were strong and warm on my elbow. “This is going to be a disaster,” he murmured.

“It'll be fine,” I said with a conviction I was far from feeling. “Stephen knows all about horses.” I sensed Zach knew I was just mouthing the words.

He looked amused. “That's not how I would put it, exactly. Are you going to the dance tonight?”

“Yeah, of course.” He was talking about the big ranch square dance, the send-off for the pack trip. Everyone from all the sections of the ranch would come together to dance out under the stars, and then two days later, we'd all leave for the pack trip in our various sections. Our section was going to Durango Falls. It was a full day's ride out; then we'd spend the night and head back the next day, arriving at the ranch the following night. All the guests were excited about the dance and the trip—none of them had ever spent a night outdoors with the horses before.

Zach released my elbow. “Okay, just checking.”

We stopped at the banks of the creek. Magic was sniffing the air, his ears already pricked with apprehension. “There, boy,” I crooned, stroking his neck. Sweat was tracing dark rivulets down his chest, making him smell like a wet wool sweater. “It's going to be okay. Don't be afraid.” I splashed my hand in the water and showed it to him. “Look, see? Just water.”

He dipped his head and snuffled at my hand, his eyes large and his nostrils twitching.

“All right, so Chloe, you get on one side of the halter, and I'll get the other. Zach, you get behind him and give him a good whack on the flanks. I brought this.” Stephen reached into his back pocket and produced a short brown riding crop.

I hesitated. “Um, Stephen—”

Zach broke in. “Okay, first of all, who made you the boss? Second, I can guarantee you that horse is going to flip out if you force him across. He's totally not ready for that.” He faced Stephen across the horse's back.

“Who says he's not ready?
You?
I'm sorry, but I've been around horses my entire life.” Stephen was getting red in the face. “You just got here for the summer, bro.”

Zach shrugged. “Whatever. Find out for yourself.” A lazy, dangerous light was glinting deep in his eyes. I swallowed, looking from one boy to the other. Some instinct told me to keep quiet.

Stephen eyed Zach and then seemed to come to a conclusion in his head. “Okay, fine. Chloe, get his head. Zach, you—”

Zach shook his head. “That's where you're wrong, bro. You're on your own.”

Stephen stared at him, then took a firm hold on the lead rope. “Chloe, you get the other side.”

I felt a momentary rebelliousness at his presumptuous tone, but shrugged it off. He
did
know a lot about horses. Still, something in my heart told me that Zach was right, Magic wasn't ready, and he should be brought along more slowly.

But Stephen was already holding the halter on one side, looking at me expectantly. Reluctantly, I took hold of the other side. Stephen tugged on the lead rope, but I could tell immediately that there was no way the horse was going to move.

“Come on, boy!” Stephen urged. Magic planted his hooves and threw up his head, snorting. Stephen pulled harder and then smacked the horse on the flank with the loose end of the lead rope. Magic flattened his ears, whipping his head back and forth.

“Stephen, I'm not sure—” I said, placing my hand on his arm. The muscles beneath my palm were as hard as wires.

“I've got him,” he panted. “Get up, boy!”

I knew that the only way anyone would get Magic to cross the stream was to pull hard on his head, one person on each side, while someone else beat him with a crop on the flanks. He'd go forward to get away from the crop and cross the stream, but this was so clearly the wrong idea I couldn't even believe Stephen was suggesting it. All that would do was make Magic even more afraid of the water—
and
he wouldn't trust us anymore. He'd never let anyone who did that to him get within ten feet of him.

“He's not ready, Stephen!” I insisted. “Please, seriously, don't force him.”

“He can do it,” Stephen said soothingly to me. “I know he's ready; we've been working with him.”

“He's not!” Zach almost yelled. I'd never seen him get visibly angry. He leaned forward until he was right up in Stephen's face. “You jerk, you're just thinking about your stupid promotion, but this horse is
not ready
.” He drew out the last two words with dangerous slowness.

Stephen's fists clenched, and for a minute I thought he was going to punch Zach. Instead he wheeled around and grabbed Magic's lead rope. “Come on, get up,” he said roughly to the horse and, ignoring Magic's up-flung head, trotted him, snorting and pulling back, into and across the stream so fast I don't think the horse had time to think about it.

“There.” Stephen looked at us from the other side, the panting, sweating horse, beside him. “He did it.”

But no one was cheering. Zach's eyes met mine.
It
was
a disaster,
I said silently back.
You were right.

Chapter
Eleven

“I
'm so excited!” I squealed
that evening. My room was littered with clothes draped over the beds, flung on the floor. The closet door hung open, with empty hangers scattered everywhere. My flatiron and Dana's blow-dryer were perched precariously on the dresser.

“I think this is going to set those T-shirts on fire.” I gingerly picked up the flatiron and clicked it off. “What do you think, straight or wavy?” I displayed the opposite sides of my head to Dana.

“Straight, definitely.” She was applying eyeliner, leaning over the tiny spotted mirror propped on her bedside table and stretching the skin of her eyelid out taut. “Is Stephen coming by for you?”

I picked the flatiron up and clicked it on again, then opened and closed it a couple times, clacking the metal plates together. “I told him I'd meet him there.” I carefully closed the iron on a section of hair and drew it downward, listening to it hiss.

Preparations for the dance had been going on all week. Rick and Jack, with the help of Todd, Jeremy, and Chris, the wranglers, had laid a beautiful wooden temporary floor right on the short-mowed grass near the main house. Stephen had explained that you needed a hard surface for square dancing so that people's feet could make a loud noise when they stomped them down.

I'd always associated square dancing with insanely dorky yee-hawing in the school gym when we were forced to learn it in fourth grade. But out here it seemed like that was just the way people danced.

Mrs. Coleman even seemed excited—she was talking to me during her riding lesson about how she used to take Arthur Murray with her late husband. I didn't know what Arthur Murray was until Dana told me it was ballroom dancing, like the fox-trot, with dresses and tuxedos. Dancing on boards in the middle of a ranch sounded pretty different, but heck, whatever made her smile was good.

Despite my excitement, I did feel a little nervous. I was having bad flashbacks to the various bar mitzvah dances I'd been subjected to in seventh grade. Charlie Myer wouldn't dance with me, which at the time felt truly traumatic.

“So, explain to me how this works?” I asked Dana as I finished ironing one side of my head and started on the other side.

She was sorting through a little silk sack of jewelry, holding different earrings up to her ears. “Well, there's a band and a caller for the guests, and they have the dance out on the floor. We're supposed to dance too. Jack hates it when people hang back on the sidelines.”

“That sounds great.” I was ready to banish the ghosts of my seventh-grade dances, and this seemed like the perfect place to do it.

Dana and I grabbed our room keys and clattered down the stairs and out into the dusky, sweet mountain night. The sunset flared its last light behind the peaks in the distance, and all was quiet around us, except for the faint sound of music coming from behind the main house. We detoured briefly through the stable so I could just say good night to Magic.

The long, low building was peaceful with its dusty horse scent and occasional rattle of a water bucket. Magic's head nodded sleepily over the half door of his stall. “Hey, boy.” I patted his velvety nose and he opened his eyes a bit wider. I leaned over and kissed him on his broad, flat cheek. “Don't be bothered by the music tonight.”

“They'll be fine.” Dana steered me away from the horse by my elbow. “Come on, we're going to be late.”

We went around the corner of the house. Masses of people were gathered there in scattered clumps, some standing around on the shiny board floor laid on the grass, some clustered near a long table that was loaded with food. I sniffed appreciatively at the scent of tamales that drifted over to me on the wind.

I didn't recognize most of the people, but that was because they were from different sections on the farm. A group of little boys was running around, chasing each other and yelling. Some parent types were holding drinks and looking on indulgently, while at one end of the dance floor a band was setting up. I spotted a bass, and a fiddle, and a banjo. My heart leaped a little at the thought of hearing live music after all this time. Jack was down near the band, holding a portable mike in one hand and talking with a tall, stringy man in a cowboy hat. He must be the caller Dana had told me about. She said he went around to ranches and farms all summer, calling dances.

Rick was standing by the food with his hands stuffed in his pockets, talking to Miguel. Then I spotted Stephen, who was in a cluster in the corner with a bunch of what looked like wranglers from the other sections. I could always tell the wranglers because they dressed super cowboy, with pegged jeans and big belt buckles and boots.

Stephen spotted us and waved. “Hi,” I said as we walked over. The wranglers nodded.

“Hi.” He seemed cooled off from our bad morning.

“What's up, guys?” a voice said behind me. Stephen scowled. I whipped around to see Zach, grinning and standing there with a cup in his hand. My heart gave a quick double thump. He was wearing a gray V-neck sweater over a white T-shirt and leather flip-flops. It was the first time I'd seen him wearing anything other than boots or sneakers. He had nice toes.

Zach nodded at me. “You clean up pretty nice, McKinley.” One of the wranglers nodded agreement.

I felt the tips of my ears turn red. “Oh, well. Thanks.”

He smiled easily and gave my shoulder a little squeeze. Stephen's scowl deepened.

An awkward silence fell in our little group. I sensed Dana looking from Stephen to Zach to me and back again. “Well!” she said after a minute. “I'm hungry. You think Jack will mind if we eat now?” Without waiting for a reply, she strolled toward the food table, trailed by the wranglers.

A burst of music started from the other end, and I looked over. “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your places for the four-square,” the caller called in a deep western twang.

The guests shuffled excitedly into place, holding hands and trying to form the squares of four couples as the caller instructed them. Oh God. Who was I going to dance with? I looked around for Dana to rescue me, but before I could spot her, Stephen grabbed my hand in his. “Come on! This is a great dance.” His hand was sticky, the way it had been that first day when we'd held hands on the driveway. My eyes found Zach, who grinned at me and leaned against a post, folding his arms across his chest.

Stephen led me to the center of the dance floor. I noticed the rest of the staff forming little squares also. The fiddle crashed and the banjo twanged into song. The music was infectious—I couldn't keep my feet still. Holding on to Stephen's sweaty hand, I tried as best as I could to follow the nasal instructions the caller was calling out in time to the music.

The squares of people turned toward each other, bowing and then turning away. I tried to bow to my partner, left and right, like I was being instructed. I felt the twang of the music deep in my throat, and I was swept away by the foot-stomping harmony.

The caller blared out directions that sounded like a song in themselves, clapping his hands and stamping his feet until he was almost dancing up there too, sweating under the crude lights rigged up on long poles. All around me faces twirled. I swirled one way and then another, barely able to catch my breath. Stephen swung into my field of vision, laughing, and then I swung back to the pudgy middle-aged man with a mustache, who grabbed my hand and do-si-doed me with great seriousness. Across the bright crowded room, I glimpsed Dana in another square, dancing with one of the long, lean wranglers, and Zach, still lounging against one of the poles.

Then a new dance started, a reel, another dance I'd never done before. The dancers, following the caller's instructions, formed two lines down the center of the room, holding hands with the person across from them to form a long archway of arms. The couple at the end held hands and danced down through the archway to the other end, then back down the floor once more.

Laughing, sweating, the dancers broke apart and reorganized into the long lines. “Chloe!” Stephen beckoned me over, arranging us across from each other so we would be partners. I stood waiting, slightly breathless from the dancing. The square dance was turning out to be much more fun than I thought—it was banishing all the ghosts of bar mitzvahs past.

I grinned at Stephen. His face shone a little with perspiration, and his auburn hair stuck to his forehead. “Yee-haw,” I called out, not caring how insanely dorky I sounded. I just felt good.

“Take your places!” the caller bawled, and the music crashed into rollicking strains. It felt very appropriate there under the stars, evoking the ghosts of cowboys and cattle herds. We all joined hands, which looked very cool—a long archway all made of arms, with every smiling, sweating face turned toward the first couple dancing their way down the center. One by one, each pair sashayed down the line with varying degrees of proficiency, but everyone was laughing at themselves and at each other. It was a nice feeling, all of us together, the parents and us, and the kids running around, like we were all one big group. Bit by bit, the line inched up. It was our turn. All the eyes turned to us—at least, that's how it felt—and Stephen looked at me and grinned, and I took a deep breath and smiled back. He reached out and grabbed my hand and whisked me down the aisle. I tried to sashay as well as the others and I felt encouraged with the clapping hands all around us from the watchers standing on the edges.

At the end of the aisle, though, just as Stephen and I separated, Zach suddenly appeared before me. He grinned and held his hand out. Without thinking, I let go of Stephen and grabbed Zach. We galloped back down the archway before I realized what I'd done.

“I knew you had some cowgirl in you, McKinley!” Zach shouted over the music. He pulled me toward him, his hands on my waist.

“What's happening here?” Stephen said from behind us. I whirled around to see him standing there with his hands on his hips. Guilt washed over me. I'd abandoned him.

“No—nothing,” I stammered. “I—ah—”

“I was dancing with Chloe. She's here with me.” Stephen's face was flushed bright red, his fists balled up.

A little flare of annoyance rose in my chest. “Actually, I'm here by myself.”

The music ended and everyone applauded. Stephen looked around, seeming to get ahold of himself. The crowd was surging toward the food table, where the tamales were disappearing quickly. “Look, let's just get some food, okay?” I looked from Stephen to Zach and back again.

The rest of the night passed in a blur of dancing, eating, then dancing again. When I think back to that night now, a few images stand out: The look on Rick's face when Miriam Taylor got sick all over his shoes after eating half a cream pie. Dana and Jeremy the wrangler, who was built like a sunflower, giggling together in a corner, her face as happy and goofy as I'd ever seen it. Miguel and Nora dancing together behind the food table at the end of the night, gazing into each other's eyes. Mrs. Coleman standing with a man from one of the other sections, smiling—smiling!—at him and talking. I almost cried, I was so happy for her.

Later, much later, I found myself in the common room, sprawled on one of the couches, with my head pillowed on Dana's leg. Zach was there too and Stephen and a bunch of the wranglers and a couple of other girls who were guests in the western section. They weren't supposed to be here, technically, but I think the wranglers invited them, and who cared, anyway? We were all drowsy and giddy from the night, draped over the furniture, making stupid, half-asleep jokes and giggling at them. Two of the girls were stealing the wranglers' hats, which they never took off, and making a game of trying them on. Stephen had my guitar out and was lazily plucking the strings.

“I love Colorado,” I said dreamily, stupidly, staring at the ceiling. “I want to marry Colorado.”

Dana snorted a laugh, her head resting on the back of the sofa.

“Don't lie. You're homesick, McKinley,” Zach said from the armchair next to us. “I've heard you crying into your pillow at night.”

“Seriously?” one of the wranglers said, looking at me incredulously.

I threw a pillow at Zach. “Shut up, you liar. No,” I said to the wrangler. “He just likes to make trouble. It's like his job.”

A discordant twang startled us out of our half-asleep talk. One of the girls had the guitar and was trying to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” but was just screwing it up over and over and giggling at her mistakes.

Zach winced. Then he saw me watching and rolled his eyes toward the girl. I giggled.

Dana spoke up. “Zach, play for us. We need a lullaby.” She leaned forward and plucked the guitar from the girl's hand.

Zach's shoulders tensed. “Nah. Not tonight.”

“Oh, come on,” one of the girls urged. “Play!”

“Getting stage fright?” Stephen spoke casually, but I heard the challenge in his voice. He took the guitar from Dana and shoved it at Zach. I inhaled sharply.