Rodeo Rider Read Online Free

carried away,” Carole advised. “Why not let nature take its course?”
    Stevie grinned impishly. “On some things, Carole, nature can be very careless. This is going to require something more than that!”

S TEVIE OPENED HER eyes. At first, she couldn’t see anything. The bunkroom was completely dark. She glanced at the luminous clock on her bedside table. The clock said it was five-thirty. It was seven-thirty back in Willow Creek. Her internal clock was telling her to get up. The bedside clock told her to go back to sleep. The internal clock won the battle.
    Stevie crept out of bed, pulled on a sweatshirt over her pajamas, and tiptoed out onto the bunkhouse porch, where she could sit on one of the aged deck chairs and look at the sky.
    There was something very different about the nighttimesky at The Bar None. At home, the sky was just a dark area with a few dim stars scattered here and there. Here, in the open country, without a sizable town for more than fifty miles, the sky was a rich black velvet sprinkled with thousands of bright stars, reaching from one end of the horizon to the other.
    Although it was warm in the Southwest, it was late fall and the sun wouldn’t be up for more than an hour. Until then, there was blackness, studded with brilliant pinpoints of light.
    Stevie sighed. It was beautiful. It made her think of other country nights and other starry skies she’d seen. That, naturally, made her think of Phil Marston, her boyfriend. They didn’t see each other very often because they lived about twenty minutes apart by car, but they talked on the phone a lot, and they’d be together again in the summer at camp, where they’d met in the first place. Stevie suddenly remembered that this trip had come up so fast she hadn’t had time to tell Phil about it. She promised herself she’d get a postcard to send to him as soon as she and her friends could get to town.
    Stevie leaned back in the deck chair and closed her eyes. She wasn’t as wide-awake as she’d thought. She drifted toward sleep.
    “Good morning.” A voice awoke her.
    Stevie sat up, startled. The sky was gray now, cloaking the world in its dim light. In front of her, a young girl was sitting bareback on a horse. Next to the horse, a half-grown puppy was gnawing playfully on a stick.
    “Christine!” Stevie said, jumping up out of the chair and running to her friend. “How are you!”
    Christine slid down off Arrow’s back and greeted Stevie with a hug. “I’m fine, but what are you doing sleeping out on the porch at this hour? I mean, there are a thousand things to do. You going to sleep the day away?”
    Stevie laughed. Christine Lonetree took an early-morning bareback ride every day. She always rode by The Bar None, and nobody had ever known it until Stevie had seen her on The Saddle Club’s earlier visit to the ranch. When the girls became friends, Christine had taken them with her on her early-morning ride. It had been a very special ride, ending up at Christine’s family’s house across the valley from the ranch. Christine’s mother had given them a wonderful pancake breakfast.
    “Me, sleeping?” Stevie said innocently. “Why, I’ve already had my first ride of the day. I was just waiting to see if a lazybones like you would ever show up this morning.”
    “I can tell you’ve been up for hours, by the way you’re rubbing your eyes and yawning,” Christine teased. “And I love the riding duds. I ride in pajamas all the time.”
    Stevie laughed. “No fooling you, huh? Well, let’s just get everybody else—” She turned to go into the cabin, but was stopped by something tugging insistently at the ankle of her pajamas. “What in …”
    “Dude wants to say hello,” Christine said, pointingto the culprit, her curly-haired brown-and-white puppy.
    Stevie remembered Dude well. In fact, she had been the one to give him to Christine. The last time she’d seen the puppy, he’d been little more than a sleepy, fuzzy ball.