Dude Ranch Read Free

setting. One arm circled her bent legs, the other rested along the side of the truck. She looked out across the hilly countryside, covered with lush grassland. Across a field to their right, a mare and her foal stood comfortably under a shade tree, munching at the grass.
    “Look familiar?” she asked Carole, pointing to the pair of horses.
    Carole smiled. “Sure, it reminds me of Delilah and Samson.” Delilah was a mare at Pine Hollow and Samson was her foal.
    “And how about that one?” Kate asked. She pointed to a gray horse with black dappling.
    “That one looks like Pepper,” Lisa said. Pepper was the horse she rode most of the time at the stable.
    “Right, and that one over there is sure to remind you of Patch,” Kate said. “And the horse you ride, Stevie—that’s Comanche, right? There’s a chestnut in a pasture ahead that looks a lot like him. You won’t find any Thoroughbreds or the other fancy horse-show breeds like Holsteiners out here. You will find QuarterHorses, Arabians, and Appaloosas. Those, especially the Quarter Horses, are good
working
horses. But underneath, they’re all horses.”
    “You mean there aren’t
any
differences between English and Western?” Carole asked, wrinkling her brow.
    “Well, not exactly,” Kate told her. “There are lots of differences. You only hold the reins with one hand, for instance, and when you want to turn, you just lay the rein on the opposite side of the neck. That stuff’s easy, though. You’ll get used to it right away.”
    “And if we don’t, Eli’s going to be there to laugh at us! That’s going to make us learn fast!” Stevie said.
    “Maybe it will,” Kate said. “And maybe there are a few things
Eli
could learn, too.”
    “Like how to post!” Lisa suggested.
    Kate smiled to herself and then began laughing. The girls knew that the very idea of Eli Grimes rising and sitting in the saddle with the beat of the horse’s trot was just plain funny. “I don’t think you could ever teach a wrangler to post,” she said. “But I think you can already sit a trot. So, see? Western’s going to be easier for you than English would be for him.”
    “Oh!” Stevie said after a moment, surprise in her voice. The girls looked where she was looking. Evening was coming and the sky was beginning to darken. The sun, sitting on the crest of the mountains to the west, had streaked the clouds with brilliant shades ofpink, red, and purple. “I think this must be where they put the camera for
those
postcards, too,” she said, recalling Eli’s remark at the airport. “I’m really glad I brought my camera. Does it always look like this?” she asked. She carefully framed her friends against the backdrop of the sunset and snapped a photo.
    “Not always,” Kate said. “Usually it’s prettier. And wait until you see the sun
rise
! It’s as pretty as can be and we can see it from the porch of our very own bunkhouse.”
    “Sunrise? You must be kidding,” Lisa said. “No way I’m going to be up early enough to see that!”
    “That’s what
you
think!” Kate said. “Listen, we’ll be at the ranch now in about ten minutes. Mom’ll feed us some supper and then we can start planning the things we want to do while you’re here.”
    “Ride,” Lisa said.
    “Check,” Kate said. “We’ll be doing plenty of that. We’ve also got a barbecue planned and a couple of picnics, and we’re going to have a roundup this week. That should be neat! Anything else you especially want to do?”
    Lisa and Carole were full of suggestions. Carole wanted to learn about breaking in horses. Lisa was interested in swimming and mountain riding.
    As they chatted, Stevie felt a small pang. There
was
one sour note to this trip, but she didn’t want to makea big deal of it. It was that her thirteenth birthday was coming up in just a week. Birthdays were always very special to her, particularly since she shared them with her twin brother, Alex. He could be a bore and a