Scarecrow on Horseback (6 page)

“It's okay, honey,” Sally told her. “Hojo
probably wouldn't appreciate anyone else touching him.”

“He doesn't seem to mind me,” she
persisted.

“No, Mel. A horse that's hurting will take a
bite out of anybody who messes with him, and Hojo's hurting now.
Look at him eyeing us, waiting for one of us to get within
range.”

* * * *

Hojo was resting in a stall in the big barn
the next morning when it was time for his dressing to be changed. A
male college student who had been hired as a wrangler for the
summer season had called in sick. Jeb and Sally were rushing to get
the horses ready for the morning trail rides and didn't notice when
Mel stopped helping and slipped away to the barn.

Bright morning sunlight lit the open arena
inside, but the rays didn't reach the stall in the back where Hojo
was stamping his foot. Mel stopped at the opening above his door
and started talking to the pale gray horse bulking out of the
dimness of the stall like an outsized ghost.

“So how're you doing, Hojo? Do you still hurt
a lot? At least you don't have to carry any nasty dudes on your
back today. You can rest while you heal. Did they feed you yet this
morning? Probably not. Probably they'll feed you after they finish
tacking up everybody else.”

She went for some flakes of hay, opened the
door to the stall, and pitched them in.

While Hojo was chewing his first mouthful,
she stepped into the roomy box stall and closed the door behind
her. “You don't look mean,” she said to him. “And who could blame
you for not liking those riders they give you? Just because you're
big, they shouldn't muscle you around like you're some kind of old
tractor without feelings. Right, Hojo?”

She put her hand on his shoulder. He turned
his head to eye her, but he kept chewing and didn't move. She
stroked his neck, then reached up and rubbed behind his ears. He
snuffled.

She said, “I saw what that vet told Jeb to do
about the dressing. I bet I could do it as good as Sally. Would you
let me? Huh?”

All she got for an answer was the sound of
Hojo's steady chewing. She slipped out of the stall and got the
white first aid box. Setting the box down on the floor of the
stall, she went back to stroking Hojo. He was still chewing at his
feed, and when she stopped petting him, he bumped her shoulder with
his nose.

“Hey!” she said in surprise. “So you want to
be friends?” Still talking to him cheerfully, she pulled off the
adhesive bandage and the medicated gauze soaked with dried blood.
Hojo had stopped eating. His head was turned to watch her, but he
wasn't backing away and he looked calm.

She used skin swabs to clean the wound and
finished by applying fresh medicated gauze and an adhesive bandage
to hold it in place. Hojo had twitched at the swabs, nothing
more.

“Looks like you're going to heal fast, big
fella,” Mel was saying to him when Sally appeared in the open top
half of the door.

“What
are you doing in there?” Sally
yelled.

Hojo squealed and backed up, his big hooves
clomping loudly on the floor.

“There, I had him all calm and happy and now
you upset him,” Mel said. “I just changed his dressing the way the
vet said to do. Saved you one job at least.”

Sally stood there with his jaw hanging. “You
won't ride a horse, but you'll go right up to a heavyweight like
Hojo and handle him? What kind of sense is that?”

“My feet are on the ground. I keep telling
you when my feet are on the ground I know how to move. Besides,
Hojo likes me. See.” She put her arm around the horse's neck and
posed defiantly beside his head.

“You are something else, Mel. I can't believe
you did what you just did. I can't believe Hojo let you.” He took
his hat off and ran his gnarled fingers through his wavy,
gray-streaked hair.

Sally was standing there being amazed when
the
clop, clop
of a horse's hooves sounded inside the barn.
And there came Rover, swinging his head and himself from side to
side clownishly.

“Rover, you untie yourself again? What are
you doing in here, you fool horse?” Rover came over and nuzzled
Sally's back. “Fool horse,” Sally repeated affectionately and hung
his arm around Rover's neck.

Just then his cell phone rang. Sally listened
a second and said, “Yeah, Jeb. I can do it. Mel already took care
of Hojo. Yeah, you heard me right, Mel, little Mel, Dawn's
girl.”

She changed Hojo's dressing like the vet
said. Looks good, too.”

“I got to go,” he told Mel when he'd shut off
the phone. “Some kid hurt himself falling off his horse on the
trail. This is one of those weeks when everything goes wrong. Come
on out of Hojo's stall now, please. You did a fine job.”

In another minute Sally had swung into
Rover's saddle and ridden out of the barn.

Mel ambled around the outside of the barn
picking up tufts of long grass until she had a good size bundle of
it. The horses loved a fresh grass treat. But no grass grew inside
the arena, or the barn, or up in their well-trampled corral on the
mountain—only dirt and chewed down vegetation there. She returned
to Hojo's stall and spoke softly to him.

“Hey, big boy, want a treat? Do you like
green stuff? Hmm?”

He approached the open top half of the door
and took the grass gently from her open hand.

“Poor Hojo. That man was gross, and you were
just obeying him, weren't you? It wasn't your fault you got hurt.
It was his. And of course, nobody gave him a hard time because he's
a paying guest, and a guest can do no wrong. Right, Hojo?”

The horse listened to her with his ears
cocked forward. She talked to him some more, quietly repeating what
she had said, oozing sympathy over him. He ducked his head and
nosed her. She rubbed his long nose with her knuckles. “So what do
you want? Want me to groom you a little? Would that feel good?”

She collected the white first aid box and
stowed it where it belonged on the shelf, taking a pail of grooming
tools back into the stall instead. For a long while she curried and
brushed Hojo. She took care to avoid his wound and the area around
it that might be sore. When she combed out his mane and tail, it
pleased her that he sighed with pleasure.

“You're a brave boy,” she told him, “and much
nicer than everybody thinks.”

“There now,” she said when she was finished
and he looked as handsome as a bulky, rough-coated animal like him
could look. “There. Now show everybody how fast you can heal.”

* * * *

That evening Mel was sitting alone at the
staff supper table waiting for her mother who was having a quilting
lesson with Mrs. Davis. Sally came in and plunked himself down in
the seat next to Mel's. “I still don't get it,” he said. “How come
you're not scared of Hojo?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. He needed help,
and I could tell how he felt.”

“Lucky he didn't stomp on you.”

“No. He wouldn't have. He wanted me to help
him. Anyway, now Jeb can't bug you about him.”

Sally's head came up, and he said seriously,
“You don't have to protect me from that fella, Mel. He can't get to
me. I'm better with horses than he'll ever be, and he knows it.
That's one reason he tries to bait me.”

Later, when they were leaving the main
building after dinner, Jeb passed them, coming in late. “Hojo looks
okay,” he said to Sally. “You were kidding about who doctored him,
weren't you?”

“No, it was Mel. I think she's got a calling.
I think we have a little horse whisperer on the ranch, not to
mention a junior vet. Anyway, she sure did a good job with
Hojo.”

“It's stupid,” Jeb said without meeting Mel's
eyes. “Letting a little girl near a horse like Hojo. I'm getting
rid of him before he hurts someone.”

“It wasn't Hojo's fault he ran into the
nail,” Mel said.

“Maybe not, but he's too much horse for a
dude to handle. And way too much for a girl to play doctor
with.”

“Says you,” Mel sputtered, but Jeb just
laughed at her and she didn't say what she was thinking, that she
and Hojo were both big and clumsy and maybe they belonged
together.

* * * *

If Hojo's wound healed well or needed further
attention, Mel never knew. A horse trailer came and took him away a
day later.

Life on the ranch was as unfair as at the
horse show in Cincinnati when Lisa had talked her into showing a
horse Mel had never ridden and didn't know how to ride, Mel thought
bitterly. For the first time she asked herself why Lisa hadn't
chosen one of her horsey friends to show Wonder Boy at the
competition.

“He'll do anything you ask him to do. You got
him wrapped around your little finger,” Lisa had said. And Mel had
been proud, stupidly proud that Lisa realized that her horse
behaved better for Mel than he did for his owner.

“You're too much like him
,” Mel could
have told Lisa. “
You're nervous and jumpy and your voice is
shrill and you jerk him around and snap that whip.
” They'd even
looked alike, Lisa's proud mane of flaxen hair matching Wonder
Boy's mane and tail.
Had Lisa been jealous
, Mel asked
herself,
that her horse obeyed me more readily than he obeyed
Lisa and that he came to me more willingly
? Talent? Mel might
be helpless as a scarecrow in the saddle, but on the ground she had
a way with horses, some horses anyway. Was that a talent? The idea
made Mel smile.

Until she remembered what Jeb had done to
Hojo—that he'd sent the poor horse away, and not to some nice
girl's backyard either, Mel bet. She hoped the girl who had gotten
Lily was nice. Surely Lily would be that lucky at least.

Someday Mel was going to ask Sally how he
could stand having Jeb be his boss. And someday she was going to
have the power to protect any horse she cared about. Then they
wouldn't be whisked out of her life as if they were just meat on
the hoof and as if the relationship between a girl and a horse
meant nothing.

Chapter
Six

The next afternoon Sue, the skinny
eighteen-year-old wrangler from town, rode into the corral where
Mel was exercising a horse named Colby that Jeb had said needed
more training. “I got a treat for you, Mel,” Sue said. She had a
big grin on her long, freckled face.

“What?” Mel glanced at Sue, while continuing
to direct Colby in a wide circle around the inside of the ring.

“You know, Lily, that horse that got hurt at
the beginning of the summer? I hear she was your favorite. Well, it
was my cousin Denise who bought her, and she's riding Lily over
here to meet you.”

“Really?” Mel wasn't sure she wanted to meet
the girl who'd been lucky enough to get her horse, but she did want
to see Lily again to find out how she was doing. “That's nice.”

“Yeah, Denise is your age. I bet you two will
be in the same class this fall. Freshman, right?”

“Right,” Mel said.

Sue rode off and before Mel had time to sort
out her feelings about meeting Denise, a small girl with flyaway
black hair came loping up to the corral. Mel's heart skipped as she
recognized the girl who'd fallen off Zorro, the one with the
boastful father.

“Denise?” Mel asked.

“That's me.” She slipped off Lily and hitched
her to the rail. “And you're Mel, aren't you?”

Mel nodded, her eyes on Lily. The horse had
never looked as good. She'd put on some weight. Her coat was
glossy, and her eyes bright. Mel released Colby from the lead line
and left him in the corral, closing the gate behind her.

“Hi, Lily girl. How you doing?” Mel said.
Lily blew out her breath and dipped her head toward Mel, who gave
her a good nose rub with her knuckles.

“She remembers you,” Denise said.

“Lily's a love.”

“Oh, she is.” And you're the girl who was
here when I fell off that black horse, aren't you?”

“You were riding Zorro,” Mel confirmed. “Did
your father buy Lily for you?”

Denise wrinkled her nose. “Him? No way. He
said he was coming so we could get to know each other, but he left
after a couple of days and I haven't heard from him since.”

“I'm sorry.”

“That's okay. I don't mind.” Denise tilted
her chin up. “It was my stepfather who bought Lily for me.”

“Wow!” Mel said. “You're lucky.”

“Not as lucky as you. You've got all these
horses every day.”

“Lots of horses, but not one that's my own.”
Mel kissed Lily's nose.

“Well, but you could borrow a horse, couldn't
you? “You could come up the road to my house, and we could ride
around the fields there together. I mean, wouldn't that be fun? Sue
says we'll be going to the same school this fall.” Denise's smile
was eager.

“I'm not much of a rider,” Mel said to put
Denise straight. “I've only had a couple of lessons, and I'm not
very good on horseback.”

“Really?” Denise sounded disbelieving. “But
you're here with horses every day and you sure look as if you're
good with them.”

Mel shrugged. “It's just riding that—I think
my legs are too long or something.”

Denise laughed as if Mel had said something
funny. “But you can stay in the saddle, can't you?”

Mel shrugged. “I guess.” She was so drawn to
the warmth of Denise's big brown eyes that she added on impulse,
“Maybe I could get my mother to drive me over to your house. Where
do you live?”

Denise promptly drew a map in the dirt with
her finger. “Only one turn off Centurion Way. Can you
remember?”

“Sure. ”. Standing on the ground next to
Denise, she felt like a beanpole next to a sprout. Lily would
hardly feel the girl's weight on her back, and Denise rode as
gracefully as Lisa, who'd had hundreds of lessons. Lucky Lily.

“Our mailbox has a coyote painted on it,”
Denise was saying. “My stepfather, Ty, painted it. He's an artist,”
she added proudly.