Trail Ride (6 page)

All too soon they reached the end of the open area and pulled reluctantly to a halt. The horses snorted and nodded their heads, eyes bright and tails twitching.

Carole laughed with unabashed delight. “Yesss!”

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Lisa declared.

“Wait until you see what’s coming,” Kate said mysteriously.

“What could possibly beat galloping a wonderful horse across an amazing field of wildflowers on a gorgeous day with two of your very best friends in the world?” Lisa asked.

Kate leaned forward. “Show ’em for me, will you, Stewball?”

With a gentle snort her horse headed off at an eager walk.

“He knows where we’re going?” Carole asked skeptically.

“Of course. I told him this morning,” Kate replied lightly.

Lisa’s eyes met Carole’s. “That’s some horse.”

Kate called back over her shoulder. “Come on, we’re almost there.”

As they rode on, Lisa and Carole continued to admire the passing landscape, oohing and ahhing over the exceptional scenery. After a short time Kate disappeared from view over the top of a small rise. When Carole crested the hill, she pulled Berry to a halt, hardly able to believe her eyes.

Below her, the woods fell away to reveal one of the most beautiful sights she had ever seen—a pond of the
deepest, purest blue fed by a roaring waterfall, which spilled down a sheer rock cliff. The water sparkled in the early afternoon sunshine, and its edges reflected the surrounding meadow. The grass was so lush it looked like someone had colored it all with a single shade of green paint. Magnificent trees, whose leaves rustled in the soft breeze, invited them to shelter in their shade from the growing heat of the day. One tree arched its branches far out over the water, and some enterprising person had tied a long, thick rope to one of them.

“It’s spectacular,” Lisa murmured.

Carole thought that was an understatement. “
National Geographic
should see this.”

Kate was already off her horse and waving at them from below. “Come on,” she urged. “It’s all ours.”

The girls didn’t need to be told twice. They eased their horses down the gentle slope to the waiting paradise below, joining Kate under one of the choicest trees.

“Last one in is a rotten egg,” Kate yelled, pulling off her boots.

“But Kate, we can’t go swimming,” Lisa lamented. “We didn’t bring our bathing suits.”

“You’ve got T-shirts and undies, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

Kate pulled off her jeans. “That’s more than they had in Eden.”

Carole almost laughed out aloud at the shocked look on Lisa’s face. “Come on, Lisa, there’s no one here but us,” she said, following Kate’s lead. “And I’m not sure this isn’t Eden.”

“I did it the other day when I found this place. I don’t think anyone else on the planet knows about it.”

“I guess it’s not like we’d be skinny-dipping,” Lisa said cautiously.

Carole was struggling out of her own clothes. “That’s the spirit.”

Lisa threw herself on the ground and began yanking at her boots with enthusiasm. “We’better take care of the horses first, though. I bet they’re thirsty.”

“Can we give them a drink from the pond?” Carole asked Kate, who was unsaddling Stewball.

“The water’s great for drinking—rocky mountain pure—but I have something else in mind for the horses. Get their stuff off and give me those ropes I put on your saddles.”

Carole hurried to obey.
What is she up to?

Moving quickly, Kate made the soft ropes into makeshift hackamores—bitless bridles. Carole
admired her technique and made a mental note to ask her to teach them how to do it.

Kate surveyed her work. “All right, everybody on board. Any of you tenderfoots need a leg up?”

“We’re going bareback riding in our underwear?” Lisa said doubtfully.

Carole understood her concern. Bareback riding in a bathing suit might look glamorous in a television commercial, but in reality it would cause a nasty rash on the inside of your thighs from rubbing against the horse’s hair.

“Nope. We’re going swimming and the horses are going to join us,” Kate announced triumphantly, mounting Stewball with ease.

Carole scrambled up on Berry, thankful that he wasn’t as big a horse as her own, Starlight, was. “Are you sure about this?”

Kate led the way to the edge of the water. “They love it,” she assured them. “Horses are natural swimmers. Cowboys use them to cross raging rivers they’re unable to swim themselves.”

If Carole had any doubts, they were quickly banished when Berry headed for the water with obvious eagerness. Moments later she found herself sitting
with her feet submerged while her horse satisfied his thirst.

Stewball, having already quenched his, was pawing playfully at the mirrorlike surface. He blew noisily when he accidentally splashed some water up his nose.

“Carole,” Lisa cried, “look at me!”

She turned to see her usually cautious friend up to her waist in water and Chocolate’s head bobbing up and down as she swam in an easy circle.

Not wanting to be left out, Carole encouraged Berry to go deeper. The water rose around her, and she felt Berry swimming eagerly forward. She reveled in this unique experience and felt a wide smile stretching across her face.

After a while, Kate called them out. “I think the horses have had enough for now. We can tie them to the trees and let them graze while they dry off.”

As soon as the horses were secured, the girls headed back into the water.

It turned out that Kate was the one who had tied the rope to the branch stretching over the water. The girls took turns swinging on it and seeing who could jump the farthest. With no grown-ups to tell them to be quiet, they all felt free to do exactly as they wished,
which meant whooping and hollering and splashing like maniacs. Finally they crept onto a dry boulder to warm up in the sunshine.

Lisa climbed to her feet. “I claim this land in the name of The Saddle Club,” she declared to the world.

Kate and Carole dissolved into giggles.

Carole shivered happily, stretching her T-shirt down over her knees and hugging them. She couldn’t remember feeling happier in her whole life. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m ravenous.”

Kate jumped from the boulder to the shore. “Say no more. Mom packed us a huge lunch. Fried chicken, cheese, pickles, fresh apple pie, and …”

“Homemade biscuits?” Carole guessed.

Kate nodded. “What else? Come on, let’s chow down.”

The girls ate a sumptuous meal sitting in the grass under the trees. They washed everything down with fresh water from the waterfall, which Kate caught in her canteen.

Everyone agreed it was the finest day ever.

All too soon it was time to get dressed and head back.

“It’s a longer ride than you think,” Kate warned them as she packed up.

“Oh no!” Lisa cried, jumping to her feet from where she had sat to pull on her boots.

“It’s not that bad,” Carole assured her.

“It’s not the ride home,” Lisa said mournfully. “It’s the e-mail.”

They all shuddered at the thought. How were they ever going to make this day sound dull to Stevie?

I
T WAS UNBELIEVABLE
. I almost fell over when she said it. “I love horses, I’ve been such a fool.
” Those were Dava’s exact words!

It was after supper at the Bar None, and Carole, Lisa, and Kate were gathered around the computer, unable to believe what they were reading in Stevie’s latest e-mail.

“This is so great!” Carole exclaimed.

Lisa, who was sitting at the keyboard, couldn’t have agreed more. “You know what this means, don’t you? It means we can tell her the truth about today.”

“You go first with the picnic, and then I’ll fill her in on the truth about the plane ride,” Carole suggested eagerly.

It took them a long time to finish the message to their mutual satisfaction. Finally they sent it off into cyberspace, and they all fell into bed, exhausted and satisfied.

The next day, Lisa and Carole rose bright and early, determined to show everybody they could pull their own weight around the ranch. They made it to the ranch house in time for breakfast with the rest of the hands. Lisa couldn’t help noticing Paula’s look of surprise when they walked in.

“So, you two ready for another hard day of picnicking?” she chuckled, clearing her plate from the table.

Lisa looked over at Kate. “Actually, I don’t know what we’re doing today,” she confessed.

“Come on, Paula, give them a break,” Kate coaxed. “Yesterday was their first day here. They deserved a treat.”

Paula shrugged as if it was a matter of pure indifference to her. “Whatever, but some of us have real work to do.”

“Anything we could help with?” Lisa offered.

“Doubt it,” Paula replied brusquely. Wiping her hands on her jeans, she strode out the door.

The girls took their places at the table next to Kate.

“I don’t get it. What did we do to make her dislike us so much?” Carole asked, buttering a thick slab of toast.

Kate shook her head. “I don’t know. I only told her good things about you.”

“Like what?”

“Well … like how Stevie could make any horse dance on the head of a pin.”

Carole nodded. “But what did you tell her about Lisa and me?”

Kate considered a moment while she nibbled unenthusiastically on a piece of crisp bacon. “I told her that you can jump a horse through the eye of a needle without brushing the edges, and that Lisa is a riding prodigy who learns so fast she would probably be able to do Paula’s job almost as well as she could by the end of the visit.”

Lisa groaned. “No wonder she doesn’t like us. She must think we have heads bigger than this entire state.”

“You think I overdid it then?” Kate said sheepishly.

Carole patted her on the back. “Yeah, but thanks for the compliments.”

“I think we should show her we’re not really so bad,” Lisa said thoughtfully. “I hate to leave her with such a negative opinion of us.”

“What can we do?” Carole asked. “What does Paula admire in people, Kate?”

Kate smiled. “Hard work.”

After a hasty breakfast the day passed in a whirl of activity. Buoyed by a determination to prove themselves
worthy to the touchy wrangler, the girls tackled chore after chore: moving a small herd of cattle from one paddock to another, cleaning tack, getting horses ready for the guests, feeding the animals, shoveling manure. They did anything and everything that was asked of them. They even helped prepare and serve the dinner for the staff and guests that evening.

Lisa wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and collapsed in a chair. “That’s it. Every last pot is scrubbed and every last dish is dried.”

“You girls certainly deserve time off for good behavior,” Kate’s mother told them. “I want you to have some fun tomorrow.” With that, she shooed them out of the kitchen.

“You know, it actually was a fun day,” Carole said as she booted up the computer to e-mail Stevie.

Lisa frowned. “The only bad part is, as hard as we worked, I didn’t see Paula all day. Which means she didn’t see us, either.”

“Guess you’ll have to be satisfied with a job well done,” Kate told her.

“I can live with that.”

“Oh no, I don’t believe it,” Carole groaned, staring at the computer screen. “You guys had better have a look at this.”

They gathered around her to read Stevie’s latest e-mail.