Secondhand Horses by Lauraine Snelling

Author:Lauraine Snelling [Snelling, Lauraine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62416-008-0
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2013-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Not Esther Either

You just never know about parents.

Along with Sunny, Vee, and Esther, Aneta found out her mother had ridden quite a bit from when she was Aneta’s age all the way through college. She’d even won awards! I think she knows as much as Uncle Dave about horses. Margo Jasper made the girls laugh when she led Mystery to the living room window to allow Uncle Dave to see if he recognized him. He agreed with her that the horse seemed safe to put in with Shirley and Mondo.

More yayness than that was she received permission from Uncle Dave to start riding lessons with the girls. All four of them did a happy dance holding hands. Once again, Sunny remembered the tractor shed. For pizza sake, that shed was like a splinter you couldn’t get out. Always bothering you. No more putting it off.

About two hours later, Sunny surveyed the tractor shed with some pride and a great deal of thankfulness for her friends. The shed, where Uncle Dave had met his horrible fate, had a cracked cement floor you could see. Sure, a few chunks were missing and there were lots of cracks, but yes, there was a floor. It wasn’t a Great Idea and it wasn’t exciting or fun, but it was working.

What wasn’t working, however, was being good at being Esther. Sunny tried telling everyone what to do. Except she kept forgetting to think ahead to the next thing, and the girls kept coming up and asking, “Where does this go? What do I do with this?” Finally, she burst out with, “Okay, I’m not a good Esther. Everybody, do what you want. Just make it so”—she made an exaggerated sweep of her hand to include the entire shadowy, cluttered shed—“nobody”—she winced—“and I mean nobody, will trip over anything.”

“I could take over and tell everyone,” Esther offered.

“I can figure it out. Thanks, Esther.” Vee grabbed an open, dried-out paint can, tucked a canning jar of nails and screws under her arm, and began to drag an old carpet toward the shed door.

Esther huffed, looked like she might get mad—Sunny hoped she wouldn’t—then shook her head. “Okay, here we go! Operation Clean!” Bending over, she inspected a rusted, dented bucket. “There’s a pair of spurs in here.”

Sunny told her how those spurs had sent her sprawling her first night at the ranch.

“Ugh. They’re, like, sharp and dangerous and rusty.” Holding them as if they were bombs about to go off, Esther returned them to the bucket.

Once everything was out, the girls sorted it into piles. Vee’s idea: JUNK, which meant it got dumped in the Dumpster on the far side of the lean-to; KEEP (Esther’s insistence), which meant it was placed in the back left corner (Esther and Aneta’s job); and WHO KNOWS?, which meant they would have to ask Uncle Dave when he was next awake. Sunny did whatever she was told.

Aneta and Sunny stacked the WHO KNOWS? pile in the back corner, way out of the way.

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