CHAPTER 1
Sue Ann awakens to see huge yellow brown eyes looking back at her. The pink tongue of her chocolate lab, Sable, lolls out of his mouth with great gobs of drool dripping from the tip. The steady thump, thump of his tailed asserts that he recognizes she is awake. She can't deceive him any longer. He sticks his nose deep into her covers, searching for her hand to give him a pet. Then a deep throaty `woof' echoes in the close quarters.
"Sable! Go away! It's too early." Sue Ann pushes away the big chocolate colored Labrador. He persists, nuzzling into the sleeping bag, looking for some love from her. She sticks her head out of the warmth of her bed to look around.
"Sable, it's way too early to be getting up. Do you really have to go out?" She asks the dog, knowing the answer.
She lies there for a minute looking around, not wanting to get up yet. She knows she really should but wants to put it off for just a little longer. She looks at the metal ceiling of her camper shell.
"It's cold Sable. I don't want to get up." She notices the drops of moisture overhead. She wonders if one will drip on her. She pulls the covers closer around her face in anticipation. She thinks about where she is and why she here. This was her decision; but was it really a wise one? She was in the rodeo last night. That was fun. She had a really good time. She snuggles a little deeper into her sleeping bag, looking for a little warmth to take with her when she decides to get up.
She continues to think about this decision to go on the road and rodeo. She's 18 and old enough to make the important decisions in her life. It was her life now.
Craig Colorado is a long way from her home in Montana. She could have found a job and stayed home like her best friend Peggy. All her life she has wanted to be a barrel racer. She has competed in Little Britches Rodeo since she was six years old. Then when she got to high school she competed in High School Rodeo for four years.
Turning her head to the side, she looks into two yellow-brown eyes, and asks, "Sable, did I win last night?" The heavy lab tail thumping, blinking eyes and his eager panting is her only answer.
"I s'pose you really need out, don't you?" Once again his reply is the same rapid thumping; just a little faster this time. Excitedly Sable turns around twice, wanting to be out; needing to be out.
Okay. I'll get up." Unzipping the sleeping bag she struggles to crawl out. She pushes back the heavy quilt on top and then opens the bag. Dressing is difficult. The space is so cramped between the bed and low ceiling of the camper shell that she bumps her head. Her bed is a piece of plywood fitted on top of a couple of two by fours across the bed of the pickup, covered with a piece of foam six inches thick. Her sleeping bag and a quilt, Mama made, are her bedding.
Her clothes are cold and feel damp. She shivers at the cold, clammy way they feel against her skin. The temperatures in the high Rocky Mountains can drop quite low at night, even in June. She hurries to get dressed, bumping her elbows and head several times. Sable squirms and wiggles in his eagerness to be out and going about his important dog business. He gets in the way as he begs for attention; hoping for a scratch behind the ear or a chance to give doggy kisses.
With everything on except her boots, Sue Ann rolls up her sleeping bag and foam pad; tying them with a piece of rope. She is shivering so badly from the cold, crisp air she can hardly tie the knot in the rope. She searches frantically for her coat, but can't find it. She remembers she left it in the cab of the truck last night. Wanting to be done in the camper and get her coat on, she hurries to puts everything in its place. She pulls on her stiff, cold boots and opens the door to the camper shell. Sable races to be the first one out; pushing roughly past her. The sun shines so bright she has to shield her eyes with her hand, but it hasn't warmed the morning yet.
. In the quiet of the early morning, the gravel of the parking lot crunches loudly beneath her boots as she steps from the bumper of the truck to the ground. She bends down to touch her toes stretching the tight muscles out of her back. A bladder screaming for relief hurries her into action. Grabbing her jacket from the front of the pickup, she slams the door, waking her mare. Chiquita sticks her head from the old, worn, wooden stall next to where the pickup and trailer are parked; she nickers at Sue Ann.
"You'll have to wait for your oats and hay for just a bit." Sue Ann tells her mare as she hurries towards the line of portable toilets left from the night before. Her barrel horse whinnies again; Sable is on the run. He circles several times; stopping now and then to cock his leg on a bush or a post. Then he finds a stick. Dropping it at Sue Ann's feet, he begs her to play his favorite game.
"You will have to wait too. I'll play fetch with you after I use the restroom." Sue Ann tells the big brown dog.
The sun is just peeking up over the top of the snow-capped mountain range to the east. Alternating fingers of scarlet red and flamingo pink streak upward across the crystal blue sky; spreading out like a giant fan, giving promise to a nice day in western Colorado. A few white cotton ball clouds dot the sky to the west. She pulls her jacket closer and takes a deep breath of the clean, crisp mountain air as she rushes toward the line of portable 'johns'.
The parking lot is quiet now and almost totally deserted. Only her old red Ford with her two horse trailer attached to it and one other outfit remain. Across the parking lot is a new model Chevy four-door pickup with a nice cab-over camper and a larger four horse trailer with a dressing room.
As she walks across the short distance to the potties, she remembers the crowd from the night before. She recalls the excitement of the spectators; the noise of the people as they pushed and wormed their way through the throngs to find seats, buy refreshments and wave at friends as they waited for the rodeo to begin. The livestock had been penned behind the bucking chutes. The rough stock riders had climbed on the fences looking for the animal they had drawn. While others sat on the top rail for the best vantage point. Now the lot is littered with empty beer cans and trash is scattered everywhere. The noise is replaced with silence. The trash barrels are over filled and raining their excess onto the ground.
She kicks the door of the port-a-potty before opening the door. Mama had taught her to always kick the door before you open it; `that runs the snakes out before you go in' Mama had told her. She had won the barrel racing completion the night before. Grinning she sighs and reminds herself she has to do it all again today.
There will be more traveling and another rodeo at the end of the day. That's the way the game is played; sometimes five rodeos in just three or four days. It's not easy. But if you want to be the world champion that's what you have to do. There's lots of traveling to get from one rodeo to the next; pulling a horse trailer; going without meals, sleeping in the camper, doing whatever it takes to become a world champion. That's her dream; to become a world champion barrel racer.
She promised Mama she would finish high school before she started traveling full time. So the day after graduation, she had loaded her barrel horse and her dog in her truck and trailer and began her journey towards her dream; the National Finals Rodeo held in Las Vegas, Nevada in December.
Now that she has graduated from high school she can't compete in those competitions and she was too old for Little Britches now. She was sure she was ready for the pros. She had done well in Little Britches and High School. She is sure she has what it takes to go pro. She's going to give it all she has and find out.
CHAPTER 2
Jim is tired of this. He has been paying for all the gas and most of the food and motel rooms. When he started traveling with Rick and Tom, all three had agreed that expenses would be split evenly. But it seems to Jim that every time the truck needs gas or someone is hungry, neither Rick nor Tom has any cash, or so they say.
This is Jim's rookie year on the pro circuit. He had been on the college rodeo team while he was getting his degree. Since the first of the year and even more since his graduation he has been going to the pro shows. He had been glad to team up with Rick and Tom at first, thinking it would be nice to split expenses and have someone to travel with. He didn't really have his own truck and trailer either. He would have had to use one of his dad's; and since he and his dad didn't really see eye to eye on this rodeo thing, he wasn't sure his dad would even let him use one of the ranch's trucks and horse trailers. Traveling with Rick and Tom had just made it a little easier for him to do what he wanted to do; rather than stay home and work on the ranch like his dad wanted him to do.
Now he's beginning to have regrets. He has formed a plan to try to change things a little. He's tells Rick and Tom he's broke. Hoping then one of them will cough up some money. He has actually hidden most of his cash in one of his dirty socks. Jim's been winning more than either of them, but they have been winning a few and taking some seconds and thirds pretty regularly.
"What do you mean you're broke?" Rick asks. Rick is a little shorter than Jim's six feet two inches, but he's stout; weighing about 180. Jim probably weights about the same, but he looks a lot thinner. Rick has strawberry blond hair with light skin that always wants to burn in the sun. His face looks as red as if it had been in the sun for two hours. He looks angrily at Jim. Jim begins to wonder if he was doing the right thing.
"I don't know what happened to it. I had it in my pocket last night and now it's gone." Jim answers.
"Did someone pick your pocket?" Rick asks
"Are you sure it's not just lying around here some place?" Tom wants to know. All three are looking around the inside of the camper; Jim getting on his knees and looking under everything. Tom is darker than both Jim and Rick. He is the smallest of the three. He's only five feet - ten inches tall and weighs 153. His close cut hair is dark brown and his skin tone loves the sun. He's always tanned to a beautiful bronze.
"Maybe you dropped it outside. Let's look around out there." Tom suggests. As the trio single file out the camper door, they step on the tongue of the horse trailer where it's connected to the pickup and then to the ground. They walk around and around the truck and trailer; looking under the vehicles and spreading in a larger and larger circle around the truck.
"I don't see any sign of any money." Jim says. He shrugs his shoulders and raises his empty hands. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how I can pay my entries at the next show, unless one of you can lend me some money." Jim hopes he sounds convincing. He feels like his plan just might work out.
"I can't believe you lost your money." Rick is getting madder by the minute; his face getting redder.
"Now Rick," Tom says, trying to calm him down. "Sometimes shit happens. There's nothing we can do about it. It's his loss."
"Hey. I didn't do it on purpose. You think I would just throw my money away?" Jim tries to get Rick to back off a little.
Rick's body language expresses his anger as much or more than his words. "Here!" Rick says throwing a right jab at Jim. Jim doesn't see the punch coming when Rick throws it. It's so unexpected Jim is knocked off balance and falls down from the blow. "I'll throw a few things around. If you don't have any money for entries, you might as well stay here." Rick unties Jim's big buckskin horse and grabs his bag of ropes, along with his saddle from the tack compartment of the trailer; throwing them on the ground near where Jim is sitting.
"Now Rick," Toms says again. He puts his hand on Rick's shoulder, trying to push him back away from Jim. Rick shrugs the hand off, and turns on his heel.
"Get your horse loaded. We're leaving." Rick tells Tom. Rick loads his own horse and closes the door behind him. Tom follows his lead, loading his horse in the other side of the trailer. He doesn't like the idea of leaving Jim behind just because he's had a little hard luck. But, it is Rick's truck and trailer. Tom's thankful for the ride; he's not going to rock the boat. He jumps into the passenger side of the pickup and slams the door.
Rick gets in behind the wheel and starts the engine. The diesel engine roars to life as he guns it in an attempt to emphasize his aggravation. A puff of black exhaust smoke envelopes Jim. They speed out of the parking lot spraying gravel on Jim; adding insult to injury.
Jim just sits on the ground holding the lead rope hanging from his horse's halter. "That plan kind'a backfired on me." He says to the horse, but his only reply is his horse nibbling at his shoulder.
CHAPTER 3
When Sue Ann returns to her truck, she stands looking down at her half brother, Luke, who is still asleep on the ground. He started out under the front of the horse trailer, but has rolled out into the open. He's an old hand at this rodeo life. He's been at it for seven years. He was the world champion saddle bronc rider two years earlier and three years before that. Last year he qualified for the finals, but broke his leg when he got hung up on a bad bucker and had to quit before it was over; losing his chance at the championship.
Sue Ann doesn't even try to be quiet as she feeds her mare. She pulls a bale of hay out of one side of the trailer and cuts the strings with a small pocket knife she pulls from her jeans' pocket. She throws a large flake in the stall and then puts some in the feeder part of the trailer. She ties the rest of the bale back up and puts it back in the trailer. She gets a can of oats from a sack in the side of the trailer next to the bale of hay and puts it in a bucket, hanging on the door of Chiquita's stall. Sue Ann grabs the water bucket from inside the stall and fills it from a nearby water hydrant. Before she hangs it in the stall for the mare, she sets it on the ground so Sable can get a drink. "You better get filled up pretty quick. We have a long drive ahead of us" Sue Ann tells both her mare and her dog.
Sue Ann shades her eyes from the bright sunlight, looking around for Sable. She sees him lying under the bleachers a ways off, chewing on the stick he had earlier. She makes a circle with her thumb and first finger and puts the tips of them to the tip of her tongue whistling shrilly. "Sable, come wake up Luke."
"You don't need him with that whistle." A deep, sleepy voice mumbles from inside the ragged sleeping bag. She encourages Sable to play with Luke by pushing at the sleeping bag with the toe of her boot. Sable grabs the bag and shakes it, growling and pulling. "Luke, you have to be hauling it out." She tells him, knowing from experience that it will take him a little time to get up and moving. Sable continues pulling on the sleeping and growling. Luke groans and mumbles. The noise encourages the dog. He jumps on the bag and starts digging.
"Sunflower! Call 'im off." Luke growls. "I'm getting up. But I can't if he's standing on top of me." Sable's tail is wagging and he barks at the voice coming from the sleeping bag.
"Go get a stick, Sable." Sue Ann tells the dog pointing away from Luke. The lab runs off in hopes of finding a stick and getting to play fetch.
A mass of dark ruffled hair emerges from the sleeping bag. Luke's looks are in sharp contrast to his sister's. Their looks are as different as their characters. Luke is tall and muscular with a dark complexion. His dark brown hair is full and curly which usually makes it very unruly. His eyes are as dark as pieces of coal. His view of life is to take one day at a time; don't worry about tomorrow. His philosophy is 'what will be, will be'.
Sue Ann's waist long hair is blond and straight. She usually keeps it in a long single braid hanging down the center of her back. Her blue eyes and ivory skin are almost perfect. Her features are petite and dainty. She stands five feet &8211; two inches tall when she has her boots on. She might weigh 100 pounds if she is soaking wet. She has her whole life planned out; what rodeos she's going to for the next year and what she is going to do with all the money she makes. There's no room in her plans for failure. The thought has never crossed her mind.
