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The variety was astonishing. Some of them seemed to have more retriever blood than anything else. A couple of them looked like there was English sheepdog blood in them. Two tended toward a shepherd look. Stevie didn’t think that was a good idea. And one had curly brown-and-white fur. His markings reminded Stevie of Stewball and she thought that was a good idea for what she had planned. She stroked the puppy’s head gently as he slept. His eyes popped open and he stared at her for a second. Then, as if to thank her, he began licking her hand. His soft tongue tickled her skin. As he licked, Stevie could see that his hindquarters were going into action. In a flash, the little puppy was standing up because his tail was wagging so excitedly that he had to.

  “I know a winner,” she said, patting the puppy for a few more seconds. Then, while Mel watched dubiously, Stevie picked up her puppy. She gave the mother one more reassuring pat and left the room, closing the door carefully behind her.

  In a few minutes, Stevie was back at the bunkhouse. During her absence, her friends had awakened to their alarm clock and had dressed as she had.

  “Where have you been?” Carole asked.

  “I’ve been working on my surprise,” Stevie told her friends. And then, as she stepped up onto the porch, she produced the puppy.

  “Where did that come from?” Carole asked, enchanted.

  “It came from the barn,” Stevie began to explain. She sat down on the floor of the bunkhouse and crossed her legs to make a little pen for the puppy. She put him down gently and began playing with him as she explained. Her friends took turns patting the puppy, and having their hands licked, while Stevie talked.

  “Eli has this dog, Mel,” she began. “She had a litter of puppies and Eli wanted to keep it a secret so a whole bunch of dudes wouldn’t bother the puppies too much. But they’re almost old enough to be weaned now, and he wants to find homes for them.”

  “What on earth will your mother say?” Lisa asked, trying to think how she would explain it to her mother if she showed up with a puppy from a dude ranch.

  “My mother?” Stevie said in surprise. “What’s she got to do with it?”

  “Aren’t you planning to take him home?” Carole asked.

  “Oh, no,” Stevie said. “It’s not for me. It’s—”

  There was the sound of steps on the bunkhouse porch. “Good morning!” Christine called to her friends. “You guys up now that the sun’s already been up for a half an hour?” she teased.

  And then all of The Saddle Club members understood what Stevie’s surprise really was about.

  “Come on in,” Kate welcomed Christine. “We were just talking about you—or at least we were about to, weren’t we, Stevie?”

  Stevie nodded.

  Christine opened the screen door and walked in. The four girls were sitting in a circle, surrounding a puppy who seemed intent on sniffing and exploring the entire universe in the next few moments.

  “Oh, he’s cute!” Christine said, leaning down between Carole and Lisa. “Whose is he?”

  “He’s Eli’s now,” Stevie said. “But he wants to find a good home for him. Tells me his mother’s the finest herder he ever had. Don’t know much about his father, though, but Eli thinks it’s another herder.”

  “Eli knows good dogs, doesn’t he?” Christine asked.

  “Yes,” Stevie said. “And I know good owners.”

  “Are you taking him back to Virginia with you?”

  “Nope,” Stevie said. “This dog belongs on the range. He belongs with horses and cattle. He doesn’t look like much now—”

  “Sure he does,” Christine interrupted her. “He looks a lot like Stewball.”

  “My thought exactly,” Stevie said. “See, we think alike.” Christine laughed. “But I’m serious now,” Stevie continued. “I’m always serious when it comes to animals and their owners.”

  Christine glanced at Stevie curiously. The puppy loped over to greet the newest arrival. Christine squatted down and automatically reached out to pat him. He automatically began licking her hand. When Christine picked him up, he began licking her neck. She giggled from the tickling and fell over backward. The puppy started nibbling at her earlobes. Christine, who was normally quite reserved, couldn’t stop laughing—or patting the puppy.

  “See,” Stevie said. “You’ve got to have him.”

  Christine’s smile disappeared. “Stevie, I can’t replace Tomahawk. No dog could replace him for me. I know you feel responsible, but you shouldn’t. It wasn’t your fault. It was a rattlesnake. They live here. Sometimes they kill dogs.”

  “I know,” Stevie said. “I understand that now, though it wasn’t easy for me to realize it. I also know that you can’t replace Tomahawk. No dog can replace Tomahawk. He was one of a kind. But this little guy—well, he’s one of another kind. Seems to me that he’s another kind of dog you ought to have.”

  Christine removed the puppy’s paws from her shoulder and lifted him into her lap. She patted his head and scratched him behind the ears as she spoke. “You could be right,” she began, “but I’m not sure I can decide.”

  “I’m not sure it’s you who’s doing the deciding here,” Stevie said sensibly. “Looks to me like it’s already been done.”

  She pointed to the puppy who, exhausted from his exploring, tail wagging, and licking, had suddenly fallen sound asleep on Christine’s legs.

  “Oh,” Christine said, as the puppy sighed contentedly. Then she smiled. “I guess it is decided.” She hugged her new puppy very gently, so as not to wake him.

  Then, while the puppy slept, the girls returned him to his mother. Eli had told Stevie they’d all be ready to leave Mel and go to their own homes in one week. Christine could have her pick of the litter, but it was clear that Stevie and the puppy had made the choice for her. They put the sleeping puppy down next to his mother. He snuggled up to Mel and then, still half-asleep, began nursing. Mel licked him.

  The girls left the mother and her puppies, tiptoeing out of the room. It was time for their breakfast. It was time to finish packing. It was almost time to go.

  “I’ve got it!” Christine announced at the breakfast table as she ate her steak.

  “What have you got?” Stevie asked her.

  “I’ve got the puppy’s name,” Christine told them all. They looked at her expectantly. “His name is Dude,” she announced. “And every time I call him, I’ll think of you all. That’ll be great!”

  Stevie and her friends thought so, too.

  “WHERE ARE WE now?” Lisa asked Carole wearily. “I keep losing track.” The three girls were sitting in a row of identical chrome-and-plastic chairs in an airport that looked very much like the previous two they’d been in—only bigger.

  “We’re in Denver,” Carole said. “Stapleton Airport, it’s called. We just have one more flight and it’s going to leave in a half an hour from that gate there.” She pointed to a desk where they had already checked in for their flight. “Until then, we wait.”

  “I don’t know about you guys, but I had a great time at The Bar None Ranch.”

  “Me, too,” Carole said.

  “Especially me,” Stevie added. “It hardly seems possible that only a week ago, we’d never ridden Western, never herded cattle, never met Christine or Eli. Now it all seems familiar, and they seem like good friends.”

  “Is it going to be hard going back to English riding?” Lisa wondered out loud.

  “I don’t think so,” Carole said. “After all, if we learned anything from our Western riding experience, it’s that horses are horses and the kind of saddle you put on them doesn’t change that. But don’t forget to post when you trot.”

  “Max’ll see to that!”

  There was a click and the public-address system came to life, announcing that they were boarding all passengers bound for Washington, D.C. The girls picked up their hand luggage and headed for the gate, filing quietly onto the plane. Stevie couldn’t help feeling that every airplane was taking her farther away from The Bar None—in more w
ays than one. Of course, each plane took them more miles from the ranch and their friends, but on each plane, there were fewer and fewer passengers dressed in Western clothes. There were fewer people around them who talked the way Eli liked to drawl. It was as if the trip itself were a way for them to make the long and difficult transition from ranch life to suburban Virginia.

  The girls settled into their seats, three in a row, buckled their seat belts, put their tray tables and seat backs into their full upright and locked positions in preparation for takeoff, and started talking again.

  “The Saddle Club’s split up, now,” Stevie said glumly. “Kate’s way out west. We’re in the east.”

  “Kate is the Western division of The Saddle Club,” Carole said. “We are the Virginia branch.”

  Stevie grinned and thought that was an interesting way to look at it.

  The three girls were all lost in their own thoughts as the plane began to taxi down the runway. Shortly after takeoff, flight attendants began to pass out sodas and snacks.

  “You know,” Lisa said as she ripped open her bag of nuts, “I’ve been thinking about what Carole said before.” Both Carole and Stevie looked at her. “To me, The Saddle Club is what we are, who we are, wherever we are. Being together is nice, but just being The Saddle Club is nice, too. It’s not as if we’re split up by a measly couple of thousand miles. It’s that we’re joined by a common interest, a common bond. We’re us. We’re The Saddle Club.”

  Stevie looked at Lisa and smiled. “That’s a pretty neat way to look at it,” she said. “You just might be right, too.”

  “Lisa’s given me an idea,” Carole said. “Why don’t we try to make The Saddle Club a worldwide operation? Everywhere we go, we’ll try to start new groups!”

  “You planning to do a lot of traveling?” Stevie asked Carole. “International branches in London and Amsterdam and all that? Maybe even Sydney?”

  Carole smiled sheepishly. “I guess I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself,” she admitted. “For now, I think two branches are just fine. And Lisa’s right, The Saddle Club is wherever we are.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Stevie quipped as she twisted open a bottle of soda. They clinked their plastic glasses together.

  “One thing, though,” Stevie said. “I think that maybe we should get at least one more Saddle Club pin.” She glanced down at the silver horse head on her shirt collar. “And I think that the next time we go to The Bar None, we should give it to Christine.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea!” Carole said as the three girls clinked their glasses again.

  And as they did it, each thought that it was hard to tell which was the better part of the idea: having Christine join The Saddle Club, or returning to The Bar None.

  It didn’t matter. They were both great ideas.

  About the Author

  Bonnie Bryant is the author of nearly a hundred books about horses, including the Saddle Club series, the Saddle Club Super Editions, and the Pony Tales series.