More Than a Horse Read online

  More than a Horse

  C. S. Adler

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  ...

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CLARION BOOKS

  NEW YORK

  My thanks to Jeanne Place for reading this book to check my horse lore

  and lingo.

  Thanks to Ann Long who was kind enough to read the manuscript for

  correctness on the therapeutic riding program.

  Much appreciation to Fern Pivar and her daughter Stephanie who

  welcomed me into their home and taught me a lot, and not only about the

  therapeutic riding program.

  Clarion Books

  a Houghton Mifflin Company imprint

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003

  Text copyright © 1997 by C. S. Adler

  The text for this book was set in 12/15-point Galliard.

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections

  from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003.

  For information about this and other Houghton Mifflin trade and

  reference books and multimedia products, visit The Bookstore at

  Houghton Mifflin on the World Wide Web at

  (http://www.hmco.com/trade/).

  Printed in the USA

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Adler, C. S. (Carole S.)

  More than a horse / by C. S. Adler.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When her mother takes a job on a guest ranch in Arizona,

  twelve-year-old Leeann hopes to be able to ride whenever she wants,

  but it takes her own perseverance and the help of new friends,

  including the mother of a handicapped child,

  to win over the ranch's crusty wrangler.

  ISBN 0-395-79769-1

  [1. Horses—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction.

  3. Dude ranches—Fiction. 4. Arizona—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.A26145Mo 1997

  [Fic]—dc20 96-42175

  CIP

  AC

  QUM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4

  For Jeanne Place

  and Helga and Mervyn Prichard

  whose friendship has brightened my life.

  CHAPTER 1

  "We're going to be lucky this time," Rose said. "I can feel it." Her round face glowed with hope as she drove west toward her new job, even though the Arizona sunshine glared fiercely along the empty road.

  Leeann had always enjoyed her mother's optimism and wished she had more of it. Now she made herself say deliberately, "It'll be great to ride whenever I want."

  "Good enough to make up for not getting that horse Big John promised you?" Rose asked.

  Leeann swallowed hard. "Almost," she said. She even managed a smile when Rose's eyes turned from the road long enough to read her face. The current of affection flowing between them energized them both. Maybe they would be lucky this time, Leeann told herself. Why not? If anyone deserved to be lucky, it was Rose who tried so hard and loved so much.

  Ahead of their station wagon, the mountains lay like sleeping dinosaurs against the stainless blue sky. Leeann had never seen such mountains. They weren't green like the ones in North Carolina where she'd been born, but brown and jagged. The flat desert through which Leeann and Rose were driving was speckled with scraggly little bushes and cactuses. A tall cactus, the kind that the man at the gas station had called saguaro, stuck up like a huge green thumb against Leeann's first view of the ranch. Thumbs up, right on, welcome—she got the message and laughed when her mother's childhood friend Hanna came lumbering toward them from the porch. Arms flung wide, Hanna was yelling, "Welcome to Lost River Ranch!"

  Rose stepped out of the car and the two women hugged each other hard.

  "See, I told you your old wagon would hold up," Hanna concluded triumphantly.

  Rose patted the nearest dented fender and said, "The poor thing deserves a medal. These western highways go on forever. And how it got us over the mountains I'll never know. But anyway, we're here."

  Leeann returned Hanna's embrace warmly when it was her turn to be hugged, even though she only knew Hanna from a couple of visits. The most recent one had been two years ago when Leeann was ten. That had been before Big John had blown through their lives.

  "So, I hear you're quite the horsewoman," Hanna said. The cast on her right arm whacked Leeann clumsily on the back. "Sorry," Hanna said. "I keep forgetting I'm packaged in plaster." Her eyes were kind in a weathered face that looked years older than Rose's although they were both only in their late thirties.

  "I haven't had a chance to ride much," Leeann said, "so I don't know how good a horsewoman I am. But I love horses."

  "Too bad that bum your mother fell for took off before he gave you the horse he promised you," Hanna said.

  Leeann's eyes went to her mother for help. Rose had warned that Hanna could be blunt. Goodhearted but forthright, was how Mother had put it.

  "Big John meant well," Rose said calmly. "He just got carried away with his own ideas."

  "Leaving you to pay his debts." Hanna pointed at Rose and said, "She always believes the best of people. I hope you're tougher." She studied Leeann for a minute. Then she said, "You look like your daddy. He was long and lanky and blond. But you got your mother's eyes."

  "Thanks," Leeann said. She thought Rose was beautiful and wished she had her mother's ruddy cheeks and red-gold hair.

  "Well, there's plenty of horses here," Hanna said. "But you may have to muck out a few stalls and clean a few hooves before Amos lets you ride any. He's our head wrangler, and he's got more work than he and the two that work under him can handle."

  Even with her broken arm, which was the reason Rose had been hired to help Hanna do the cooking for the guest ranch, Hanna insisted on helping them unload the station wagon. It was stuffed up to and on top of its roof with all their remaining belongings, including the good dishes and silverware Rose had inherited from her mother. To cover Big John's debts, Rose had sold off the business she'd struggled so hard to build, but she'd hung onto her family treasures.

  They each took what they could carry, and Hanna guided them to a cabin amidst a jumble of outbuildings behind the main house. Leeann had understood they were coming to a working guest ranch, not a luxury resort, but she was taken aback by the size of the one-bedroom cabin she and Rose had been assigned. "Rustic" was how Hanna had described it over the phone. Inside, the walls were raw wood and there didn't seem to be any storage space except for one small closet and a few shelves over the hot plate that would serve as their "kitchen" area.

  "We could stow Grandma's dishes under the bed," Leeann said quickly when she saw her mother's bright cheeks fade in chagrin.

  "It's small," Hanna said. "I told you it would be, but at least it's free with the job. You two don't mind sharing a bed, do you?"

  Rose shook her head distractedly. Even in their modest house in North Carolina, she and Leeann had each had her own bedroom. And in the house Big John had begun building for them there would have been five bedroo
ms and bathrooms galore.

  "We won't be spending much time indoors here anyway," Leeann said. She and Rose had agreed on their long drive to this south central portion of Arizona that they were on an adventure and they were going to enjoy it no matter what.

  "Maybe you'll be outdoors, but your mother will be spending her days in the ranch house's kitchen," Hanna said. "That's where you'll find her until the last guest leaves in May and the Holdens close up for the summer."

  "We'll be fine," Rose said. The old glow was back in her cheeks, and the dark amber of her hair and eyes reflected it. Leeann was buoyed up as always by her mother's unfailing good nature. Never mind how cramped this cabin was. Never mind that Rose wasn't trained as a cook. This was a new beginning, "a place they could both grow in" as Rose had put it.

  Through the flyspecked kitchen window, Leeann saw horses in a field. "Do those belong to the ranch?" she asked Hanna.

  "Far as the eye can see, everything's part of Lost River Ranch. Saturday is turnover day when the old guests leave and new ones arrive. There's no trail rides and the horses get turned out to pasture. Not that there's much there for them besides dry prickery stuff. This is the Sonoran desert, and what grows best is brittle bush and mesquite, cactus and creosote bushes."

  "Okay if I go out and say hi to a horse or two?" Leeann asked.

  "Go ahead," Hanna said. "Your mother and I need time for a real heart-to-heart chat. Better take a jug of water with you though. We don't go anywhere without water. It's real dry after the January rains." Hanna gestured at the empty plastic bottles lined up near the freestanding kitchen sink. "Oh, say, where's my head. If you're hungry, you'd best come out to the kitchen first."

  "No, thanks. We stopped for lunch," Leeann said. Lunch had been three hours ago, and she was hungry, but she was too eager to get to the horses to want to stop and eat.

  "Just don't tangle with any rattlesnakes or scorpions, Leeann," Rose said, but she was smiling.

  Leeann got a pungent whiff of horse manure and sweated leather as she walked past the barn. The ramada, the long shady porch that ran along the front of the main house, was full of suitcases and guests waiting for transportation. The biggest corral, to one side of the main ranch house, was empty. Leeann walked past it toward the barbed wire fence, which was held up every so often by crooked posts. They marched up hill and down as far as she could see. Behind them was the silent menagerie of mountains. Gorgeous, Leeann thought. Better than she'd dreamed.

  She slipped between the strands of barbed wire and approached a knobby-kneed horse munching on dry grass. It moved off to get away from her, but a small bay turned its head her way, then ambled toward her.

  "My first friend," she whispered to the bay as she stroked its neck. A saddle sore marred its smooth hide. Its soft muzzle poked at her as if it were looking for a treat. When it didn't find any, it lost interest and sauntered off.

  Leeann kept walking through the desert scrub toward sandstone cliffs that seemed closer than they probably were. Up a rise she saw a trail cobbled with hoofprints as if it were well used by riders. And there past a pile of truck-sized boulders stood a handsome mahogany-colored horse with black tail and mane. Leeann caught her breath at the way the animal's muscular beauty stood out against the dreamy blue of the sky. She climbed the hill to get to him, but he was watching her, and when she got close, he pawed the earth and snorted in a threatening way. The flare of his nostrils and the arrogant lift of his head made her hesitate. Maybe this one wasn't friendly. But she wasn't afraid of horses. Big as they were, she trusted in their good nature. Slowly she continued walking, talking to the animal as she got closer.

  "Hi, fella. It's just me, Leeann. I'm coming to say hello."

  The horse whinnied. Some tension in his stance warned her before the voice did.

  "Hey, you! Get away from that stallion." A man on horseback came riding at her. His long gray hair was tied back in a ponytail and he wore his cowboy hat so low it seemed hung up on his thick gray eyebrows. "What are you doing? You're on private property." The man sounded angry and his eyebrows bristled at her.

  "I'm not doing anything wrong," she said. "I was just making friends with the horses."

  "What you're making is trouble."

  "No, really," she said. "I'm Leeann Peters. My mother's the new cook. And I—"

  "No matter. I'm Amos, the head wrangler here. Now get out of this field and don't let me catch you pestering a horse again without permission."

  He turned his horse as smoothly as if it were an extension of his legs, and rode off without looking back. His confidence in her obedience impressed Leeann as much as his fierceness. But she wasn't worried. She trusted that Hanna would straighten him out.

  Later, when Hanna introduced Leeann to Amos formally after dinner and mentioned how much Leeann loved horses and that she would be willing to work with them for free, it didn't help. Amos glowered at her and walked off quickly into the dark.

  "He was mad because you could have gotten hurt. That horse was Darth Vader, the stud. He's dangerous, and you were challenging him on his territory," Hanna explained.

  "You said she'd have a chance to ride, Hanna," Rose said.

  "She will if she can get on Amos's good side," Hanna said. "He's a grouch, and unfortunately what he decides about the horses goes." Her voice poured sympathy thick as syrup as she added, "Better give Amos time to cool off before you try winning him over, Leeann."

  "How much time?" Leeann asked.

  "I guess till he stops glaring when he sees you." Hanna laughed as if that were funny.

  Leeann didn't think it was. If she couldn't ride, there was nothing here to console her for not getting a horse of her own. Nothing to keep her from feeling like a loose stone rattling around the world owning nothing, belonging nowhere. She stared into the darkness of the unknown night and was struck by how lonely it seemed.

  CHAPTER 2

  While she hung about the ranch that weekend waiting for Amos to relent, Leeann got more and more anxious about how the other part of her life here in Arizona would be. School. Monday she'd have to start out in the middle of seventh grade in a class where she didn't know anyone and where they might be well-launched into unfamiliar subjects. But she'd always been a pretty good student. What worried her most was how she'd fit in socially.

  She'd been so comfortable back in Charlotte, North Carolina, even though her two closest friends had moved away in sixth grade. Since kindergarten, she'd been an accepted member of her class, not a star but accepted, at least until Big John's scams had turned some of her schoolmates against her.

  The first shock had been an anonymous note. "Your mother married a crook, and where do you come off living in that big house he ripped people off to pay for?" Then the girls Leeann had been sitting with at lunch didn't leave a place for her at their table anymore. She had hidden her hurt, even when someone threw a wet clay ball that hit the back of her best white sweater, but the hostility devastated her. She had lost confidence that she was welcome, even among boys and girls who had nothing to hold against her.

  Before Big John's business ventures fell apart, he had promised so much. "My honey girls," he had called Rose and Leeann, and he'd put his strong arms around them and told them they'd never have to pinch pennies again. "And you know what, Leeann?" he'd said. "You're going to get a horse of your own." Like her mother and the people in town whose life savings he'd taken, Leeann hadn't doubted genial, dynamic Big John—not for a minute.

  When Big John disappeared from their lives, he'd left Rose liable for the loans she'd cosigned. She had sold her upholstery business, paid off their creditors, and talked about getting a job in an office. Leeann knew how bad her mother was at that kind of work. Ever since she'd brought home an A in math when she was ten, she'd been keeping Rose's checkbook for her and reminding her of when the insurance bills were due and the car needed inspecting.

  "Frankly, I'd be just as glad to leave town and start somewhere new," Rose had said when they
were packing to move out of the big house. Then Hanna had broken her wrist and called to ask if Rose thought she'd like to try out another career.

  "A cook? Rose, you don't know anything about cooking," Leeann had said.

  "Thanks a lot. Just because I let the Thanksgiving turkey stay in the oven too long..."

  "No, I mean," Leeann had corrected herself, "I know you can do anything with your hands, but cooking for a lot of people—"

  "I can learn. The thing is, Leeann, this is a dude ranch and there'll be horses for you to ride. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

  "Oh, Mama!" And Leeann had hugged Rose and been grateful.

  "Keep busy," Rose always advised whenever she caught Leeann brooding about something. So that Sunday, her first weekend on the ranch, Leeann got to work. After breakfast she cleaned the cabin with Hanna's vacuum, and then she scrubbed the worn linoleum of the closet-sized kitchen and washed out the tiny refrigerator with baking soda. She worked on the rust-stained metal shower in the cramped bathroom and rubbed ammonia-soaked rags over the windows until most of the flyspecks and spider webs were gone.

  When the cabin was as clean as she could get it, Leeann resettled the stacks of boxes that held all her mother's and her belongings. Finally there was nothing she could see to do, so she went to the corral fence and leaned on it to watch.

  The ranch owner, Mr. Holden, to whom Leeann had been introduced briefly, was busy matching horses to guests. Helping him were Amos and his two wranglers—a cross-eyed scarecrow of a boy named Robuck and a silent, thickset middle-aged man named Hank. Standing next to a guest who had to weigh more than two hundred pounds, the elegantly slim Mr. Holden said cheerfully, "Amos, this gentleman's an experienced rider. He needs a horse with some spirit. Think Ramses would suit him?"

  Amos nodded and brought out a large black horse that looked strong enough to handle any rider. "Don't rein him in too tight now," Mr. Holden advised the guest. "He'll fight you on a tight rein."

  Meanwhile Amos was listening to a teenage girl describe her riding experience. Before she'd finished detailing the last lessons she'd had, he muttered something to Robuck, who went off to saddle up a lively looking pinto.