More Than a Horse Read online

The next event was the rings. Each rider had to approach Leeann, who held a ring up where it could be reached easily. When Barbara's hand didn't connect with the ring, Leeann slipped it onto her wrist. Then each rider had to direct his or her horse to the other side of the corral, where Mr. Holden received the rings and thanked each child.

  Brent sat up on his horse this time, but he wouldn't let go of his ring no matter how Kristen tried to persuade him to. Mr. Holden finally had to let him keep it. Kristen looked as if she might burst into tears.

  Joey, with just Joy as his sidewalker and no leader, managed to walk Sassy around a barrel and under a string of balloons for the next event.

  He was supposed to be the only contestant, but Barbara wanted to go too, so she was allowed to try it. She walked her horse twice around the barrel and nearly fell off when she suddenly reached up to grab at a balloon. Zach caught her just in time as the audience cried out in alarm.

  Carrots figured in the next event. Each child had to dismount onto the mounting block with as little assistance as possible, take a carrot from Leeann, feed it to his horse, then pat the horse and thank it for the good job it had done.

  Brent, who had never uttered anything but unintelligble cries as far as Leeann knew, drew himself up straight in the saddle at the mounting block and said, "Ho." Loud and clear.

  His horse stopped instantly and Kristen yelled, "Brent, you talked!"

  Her excitement alerted the audience to the uniqueness of the happening, and they whistled and clapped. Kristen grabbed Brent when he got off Sassy and hugged him. He pulled away. But then he turned back, and Leeann saw him sign something to Kristen.

  "What did he say?" Leeann asked after she'd given Brent his carrot and he'd properly fed his horse.

  Kristen was so moved that she had tears in her eyes and could hardly speak. "He said 'I love you,'" she choked out. "It's the only sign I've learned so far."

  For the last exercise Zach had labeled one of the big trash barrels "The Wishing Well" and decorated it in bright red crepe paper. He set the barrel in the arena, and Mr. Holden explained through his bullhorn that each child was to whisper a wish to Zach, who'd write it on a slip of paper. Then the child was to lead his horse to the barrel and drop the slip of paper into it.

  Barbara whispered something when she had lurched beside her patient pinto to the barrel. "Sure, your wish could come true," Zach told her.

  Music had been provided for the final ride out of the arena. As "Happy Trails to You" sounded on the tape deck, each child mounted his horse again and rode it once around the arena and out through the gate.

  "Bye, bye, bye," Joey shouted.

  Brent went around with his head buried in his horse's mane this time. Nonetheless, the audience called goodbye to him, and Kristen waved shyly at them in his stead.

  Barbara was tired. She didn't want to remount her horse. She clung to Alan, so he got on her horse and Zach lifted her up in front of Alan. Alan held the exhausted child in his arms while she waved goodbye at her appreciative audience.

  "Bye princess," someone called out. "Bye, bye, bye."

  "The rodeo was a smash hit," Enid Childs said to Leeann and Zach as they stood holding the gate to the ring open. "You'll never know how much it did for these kids! It was wonderful. You were wonderful. Thanks." She gave them each a kiss on a cheek.

  "Nice lady," Zach said when Mrs. Childs had gone off to where her car was parked. He held out a piece of paper still remaining from the sheet he'd torn up. "One wish left for you, Leeann. What's it to be?"

  "Oh, I don't know," she said distractedly. She was watching the people straggling off to their cars, or back to the ranch house, with relief that it was over and satisfaction that it had been a success.

  "Well, I know what you wish," he said, and he scribbled something on the paper. "Here, go put it in the wishing well."

  She took the folded sheet with a smile and peeked inside it before dropping it into the barrel. "I wish for a horse of my own," he had written for her.

  "Did I get it right?" he asked when she returned to him.

  She shook her head. "No. Believe it or not, I haven't been thinking about that for a while."

  "So what's your wish, then?" he asked.

  "That we could all stay as happy as we were this afternoon. The rodeo was a great idea, Zach." She smiled at him.

  And that was when he kissed her, soft and sweet.

  CHAPTER 19

  Leeann came out of the kiss and saw Amos storming toward her.

  "What's wrong?" she asked anxiously as he planted himself squarely in front of her.

  "That woman wants them out of wheelchairs and on horseback next. She's crazy, and I won't have nothing to do with it. Nothing. No way."

  "The parents will take responsibility, Amos," Leeann spoke quietly to calm him. He was so agitated he was shaking.

  "No. I can't deal with that woman. You want to stay here and deal with her, then maybe. But I'm not having any truck with her on my own." He made an about-face and marched off.

  Zach was red in the face with suppressed laughter. As soon as Amos was safely in the barn, the sound burst from Zach like a firecracker on the Fourth of July.

  "What's so funny?" Leeann asked.

  Zach got control of himself finally and answered, "Amos needs you, Leeann. Did you hear him? I can't believe it. What'd you do to him?"

  "Nothing," she said. "I guess he just realized that I'm dependable."

  "Yeah." Zach was grinning at her with admiration. Then he grew thoughtful. "You know something," he said. "If you're game to stay here a little longer, we might be able to use old Amos as a lever."

  "I'd love to stay longer," she said. But she had no idea what Zach was getting at.

  Instead of explaining, he turned and ran over to the parking area where Mrs. Childs had lingered to chat with some of the parents of the special-needs children who had come to watch the rodeo. Joy and Alan were chasing Joey around the ramada, empty now because the ranch guests had gone to change for dinner.

  Kristen was talking to her mother, who'd just arrived. Nobody had unsaddled the three horses that had participated in the rodeo. Leeann took pity on them and set about the job herself.

  She hadn't finished Sassy before Kristen appeared to help her. "Something's going on," Kristen said, reaching for the saddle on Barbara's pinto pony. "Zach's got Mrs. Childs all riled up, and she's gone to speak to your mother."

  "My mother?"

  Kristen nodded. "I didn't hear it all but I think they were saying that if you can't stay a while longer, Amos won't let them put the wheelchair-bound kids in the program."

  A bud of hope sprouted in Leeann. She tried not to let it flower until she had a chance to talk to her mother. That wouldn't be until after the busy dinner hour.

  Before Zach left in Kristen's mother's car with Alan, he told Leeann, "Boy, that Mrs. Childs is a tiger. I can see why Amos is scared of her. I pointed her toward your mother, and she charged right into the kitchen like she had a right to be there. Fierce lady. And she looks so sweet."

  He shook his head wonderingly as his eyes began to twinkle. "Is that how Joy's going to turn out?"

  "I think it's just because Mrs. Childs feels the special-needs kids have to have somebody to fight for them," Leeann said.

  "Zach," Kristen called. "We have to go."

  "Coming," he said over his shoulder. "Don't forget to let me know what your mother says, Leeann, okay?"

  "Okay," she promised.

  When everyone had left, Leeann realized how tired she was from the tension of trying to make everything go right at the rodeo. But she went around picking up the trash left near the refreshment table anyway. She'd been too busy to try any of the cookies and punch, or the chips and dip the Childses had brought. Now she was hungry. Suppertime, she thought, and headed toward the ranch house, wondering if Mrs. Childs could have changed Rose's plans for leaving. Leeann doubted it, but then, with Mrs. Childs, anything was possible.

  Much lat
er, when she and Rose were alone in their cabin, Leeann asked, "What did Mrs. Childs say to you, Rose?"

  "She wants you to stay here another month at least. She even suggested I let you finish out the school year here. It would be her 'pleasure,' she said, to have you stay with Joy and Joey."

  "So what did you tell her?"

  "Well, I said you and I have never been separated, but I'd think about it."

  "So I can't stay?" Leeann asked quietly.

  Rose raised her eyebrows. "I don't know, honey. I wasn't enthused about the idea, but Hanna—she was there when Mrs. Childs put in her plea—Hanna pointed out that if I could stand being separated from you for a few weeks, it would be easier for me to find us an apartment and get set with the business."

  Rose began undressing to get ready for bed. From the bathroom, she continued, "See, Lydia offered to let me stay with her, but she made it plain she couldn't take us both in. She's fussy about her privacy. Or maybe she thinks a teenage girl would be hard on her antique chairs or something. Anyway, if I lived with her it would save us some money."

  Leeann caught her breath. "Then you might let me stay?" she asked.

  "Hanna said you could bunk with her." Rose stuck her head out the bathroom door. "She's got a daybed she'd be glad to let you use. And then if you wanted to spend a few weekends with the Childses, that wouldn't be too much to accept from people I barely know. That's if you want to stay, Leeann." Rose was watching for Leeann's reaction.

  "Oh, Mama, I do want to stay. Not that I don't want to be with you, but I'm involved in so much going on here right now."

  "I don't know how you got so important to the people here so fast," Rose said. "And to Amos of all people!" She laughed.

  "I don't know either," Leeann said. "But it feels really good to be needed."

  Rose nodded. "I'm glad," she said. "It's nice you found that out about yourself. Just don't forget that I need you, too."

  "I won't," Leeann promised.

  Impulsively she ran out to the corral and whistled for Sassy. "It's just a temporary reprieve," she told him when he poked his long head over the railing next to hers. She still had to go back to Charlotte eventually. She'd leave Sassy and Zach and Kristen and Joy and the people at Lost River Ranch—but not now, not for a while, not just yet.

  She was amazed to find how happy that made her.