Karen's Cowboy Read online

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Gabrielle Charbonnet

  for her help

  with this book.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 How Scary Is Too Scary?

  2 Cozy Little and Exciting Big

  3 A Surprise Adventure

  4 A Long Way to Colorado

  5 A Big Cowboy Breakfast

  6 Western Riding

  7 Annie Hancock

  8 Western Fishing

  9 Western Archery

  10 Western Dancing

  11 Jon Wayne’s Problem

  12 The Granny Chair

  13 The Ghost Town

  14 The Haunted Mine

  15 Western Rain

  16 The Real Annie Hancock

  17 The Real Jon Wayne

  18 The Wild, Wild West

  19 Annie and Jon — Happy at Last

  20 Back East Again

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  How Scary Is Too Scary?

  “Aaah!” cried Andrew. He grabbed my arm and squeezed it hard. I winced, but I did not tell him to stop. We were watching a Halloween show on TV. It was called The Scaredy-Cat Ghost. It was about a ghost who was so scared of everything that he forgot he was supposed to be scary himself. Parts of the show were funny, but some parts were spooky. Every time there was a spooky part, Andrew shrieked and grabbed my arm. I would probably have bruises the next day.

  Now you know about the TV program, but you do not know anything about me, or Andrew, or why we were watching TV on a school night. Well, I am Karen Brewer. I am seven years old, and I live in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. I have blonde hair and blue eyes. Andrew is my little brother. He is four going on five, which is why he was the one grabbing my arm and I was the one being grabbed. We were watching TV on a Tuesday night because it was a special Halloween show, and Halloween was only three weeks away! We were already getting into the spirit. Spirit … ghost … get it? I made a Halloween joke.

  “Aaah!” cried Andrew. His fingers clutched my arm again. I winced again. With his other hand, Andrew grabbed a sofa cushion and held it in front of his face. He peeped over the top of it. On the TV screen, the Scaredy-Cat Ghost was floating down a hallway in a haunted house. The Scaredy-Cat Ghost looked terrified. So did Andrew. I just felt excited, as if I were in a roller coaster car at the top of a hill, about to go down. I love being a little tiny bit scared.

  When the Scaredy-Cat Ghost saw a shadow cross the hallway, he gave a little shriek. So did Andrew. He hid his face. I patted his shoulder, not taking my eyes off the screen.

  “Andrew,” I whispered. “You do not have to watch this show. You can go put on your jammies and get ready for bed.”

  Andrew shook his head, but kept his face hidden.

  “It is okay to look now,” I told him. “It is not a scary part anymore.”

  Andrew peeped at the TV. He straightened up and put the pillow down.

  “This is a great show,” I said. “I love Halloween.”

  Andrew nodded, his eyes glued to the TV.

  “It would be fun to see a real ghost,” I said. “A real ghost, or a real goblin, or … ”

  Andrew looked at me as if I were crazy, so I quit talking. But I do think it would be fun to see something real like that. I already know a real witch — old Mrs. Porter, who lives right next door. She does all sorts of witchy things. But I am not supposed to talk about that.

  Now Halloween was on its way. I shivered happily. Maybe this year would be the one when I saw a real ghost or goblin!

  “Aaah!” cried Andrew again. I winced again. My arm felt like Jell-O. How could he be so scared, when we were sitting in the den in our little house? The little house is cozy and snug and small and safe. It is not like our other house, which is big and noisy and crowded, but also safe.

  “Andrew,” I whispered. “We are cozy and snug. Everything is fine. We are here in the little house.”

  Andrew nodded. But he picked up the pillow again.

  You know what? I forgot to tell you about our little house and our big house. I will do that right now, while a commercial is on the TV.

  Cozy Little and Exciting Big

  It is true — Andrew and I live at two different houses. Every other month, we live in the little house with our mommy and our stepfather, Seth Engle. During the months in between, we live in the big house with our daddy and our stepmother, Elizabeth. If you are already confused, maybe you had better sit down. It gets a lot more complicated.

  You see, a long time ago, Andrew and I lived at the big house all the time, with Mommy and Daddy, when Mommy and Daddy were married to each other. Then Mommy and Daddy decided that even though they loved me and Andrew very much, they did not want to be married to each other anymore. So they got divorced. Andrew, Mommy, and I moved across town to the little house. Daddy stayed in the big house, because it is where he grew up.

  Not long afterward, Mommy met Seth Engle. They fell in love and got married. When they got married, Seth became our stepfather. (Seth is a carpenter. He makes beautiful furniture. He made the desk in my room.) Then Daddy met Elizabeth Thomas, and they got married. Elizabeth already had four children, so I suddenly had three new stepbrothers and a new stepsister!

  That was when Andrew and I became two-twos. I made up that name for us after my second-grade teacher, Ms. Colman, read us a story called Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang. Andrew and I are two-twos because we have two mommies, two daddies, two houses, two bikes each, two bedrooms, two sets of clothes and toys, two sets of pets…. We have two of almost everything.

  This month, October, we were at the little house, with Mommy, Seth, and our little-house pets — Midgie, who is Seth’s dog, and Rocky, Seth’s cat. The little house is small and cozy and quiet, as I told you before.

  Next month, we would be at the big house, with Daddy and Elizabeth. The big house is humongous and noisy and full of people and pets. Besides Daddy, Elizabeth, Andrew, and me, there are five other kids: Sam and Charlie, my stepbrothers who are so old they are in high school already; David Michael, my stepbrother who is seven like me but goes to a different school; Kristy, my stepsister who is thirteen and one of my all-time favorite people; and Emily Michelle, my little sister who Daddy and Elizabeth adopted from a country called Vietnam. Emily is two and a half and very cute.

  At the big house we also have Shannon, who is David Michael’s gigundoly big Bernese mountain dog puppy; Pumpkin, who is our fluffy black kitten; my pet rat, Emily Junior (I named her after my little sister); Bob, who is Andrew’s hermit crab; and our goldfish, Goldfishie and Crystal Light the Second.

  You will not believe this, but one other person also lives at the big house — Elizabeth’s mother, Nannie. She is my stepgrand-mother. Nannie helps take care of all the people and the pets. I just love her.

  Oh! I forgot to mention two other things I have two of. I have two best friends: Hannie Papadakis, who lives across the street and one house down from the big house, and Nancy Dawes, who lives next door to the little house. Hannie and Nancy and I call ourselves the Three Musketeers. The last thing I have two of is glasses: I wear a blue pair for reading things up close, and a pink pair the rest of the time.

  There. Now the commercial is over, you know almost everything about me, and I have to get back to my program.

  “What?” Seth shouted suddenly from the kitchen.

  Andrew and I stared at each other. What had happened in the kitchen? Had Seth seen a real ghost? Was it something spooky? I grabbed Andrew’s hand and pulled him off the sofa.

  “Come on!”

  A Surprise Adventure

  Andrew and I raced into the kitchen.

 
“What is it?” I yelled. I glanced around the room. Maybe I would see a witch flying back out through the window. Maybe I would see a ghost disappearing into a cupboard. Instead, all I saw was Mommy looking surprised and excited, and Seth talking on the telephone. He wore a big grin on his face, and he made a thumbs-up sign at Mommy.

  “What is it, Mommy?” I asked in an indoor voice. (Grown-ups are always telling me to use my indoor voice.) Andrew and I stood next to Mommy.

  Mommy smiled and put her finger to her lips. So Andrew and I had to stand there, burning with curiosity, until Seth got off the phone.

  Finally he hung up. He turned to us with a big smile and held out his arms.

  “Well, what do you say we all take a little vacation?” he asked.

  “Whaaat?” said Andrew and I.

  “That was Granny Engle on the phone,” explained Seth. (Granny is Seth’s mother. She is my stepgrandmother. She lives in Nebraska. Oh — I guess stepgrandmothers are another thing I have two of.)

  “How is she?” I asked.

  “She is terrific,” said Seth. “Especially since she has just won a trip for four to a dude ranch in Colorado!”

  My mouth fell open.

  “Granny entered a raffle at a fair,” Seth continued. “She won the grand prize, which is a trip for four people to a dude ranch for a week. As a special gift, she wants to send the four of us. She will go too and pay her own way. We will be leaving very soon.”

  “Cool!” I said.

  “It does sound like fun,” said Mommy.

  “What is a dude ranch?” asked Andrew.

  “A dude ranch is a place where you can ride horses and live like a real old-time cowboy,” explained Mommy.

  “Oh, boy!” I shouted. I just love horses. I even have a pony of my own: Blueberry. He lives at a nearby farm. Then I thought of something. “But there are no school vacations coming up,” I said. “How can I go?” For a moment I was afraid that my little-house family would go without me.

  “I will have to call Ms. Colman,” said Mommy. “We will ask for special permission to miss school. You will have to make up all the work you miss,” she warned me.

  “Oh, boy!” I shouted again. I started to jump up and down. I did not mind the idea of making up all the work. I was too excited about being a real cowgirl!

  * * *

  For the next few days, everything was in a whirlwind as we got ready to go. Ms. Colman gave me permission to miss five days of school. But she gave Mommy a big stack of worksheets for me to fill out. And I had a special assignment: I was supposed to keep a travel journal of my trip and share it with the rest of the class when I returned.

  “Okay,” I told her. “That sounds like fun!”

  “I am glad, Karen,” said Ms. Colman. “I hope you have a wonderful time.” Ms. Colman is a gigundoly nice teacher.

  I have to tell you that the other two Musketeers were not as happy about my trip as I was. I wished I could take them with me, but I could not.

  “I will miss you,” I told Hannie and Nancy. “I will send you postcards. And show you pictures when I get home.”

  “We will miss you too,” said Hannie.

  “But we will try to keep busy while you are gone,” said Nancy. “And when you get back, it will be time for us to make our Halloween costumes!”

  “That is right,” I said. “By the time I get back, I am sure I will have a terrific idea for my costume.” The Three Musketeers hugged.

  A Long Way to Colorado

  “Up and at ’em, Karen!” Seth said, switching on my overhead light. I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes. Outside my window, it was still dark. “What time is it?”

  “Five-thirty in the morning,” Seth said. “We have a plane to catch at seven. So as we cowboys would say — saddle up, partner, it is time to hit the trail.”

  * * *

  “Yee-haw!” Andrew hollered. “Giddyap, Thunderbolt!”

  I pushed the luggage cart, with Andrew on top of the pile of suitcases, through the airport terminal. “Ride ’em, cowboy!” I yelled. “Hang on, this bronc is going to buck!”

  I slammed on the brakes and jerked the cart from side to side. Andrew whooped and shouted and clutched at the suitcases beneath him.

  “Karen! Andrew!” Mommy said sharply. “Do not play roughly in the airport. Andrew, get down from there. Karen, bring the cart over here. It is time to check our bags.”

  Andrew clambered down, and I pushed the cart to the man in a red jacket and cap. We would be boarding our plane to Colorado in just a few minutes. I was so, so excited!

  * * *

  “May I have more gum, please?” I asked Seth as the plane took off. Seth handed me a stick. I have found that chewing gum on an airplane keeps my ears from getting that yucky underwatery feeling. One stick will do, but three or four is more fun.

  I chewed busily and looked around the cabin. (“Cabin” is what the flight attendants call the inside of a plane. This would make more sense if the plane were made of logs.) I adjusted the overhead air-spray-nozzle thingy. I switched my overhead light on and off. I looked out the window. We were in the middle of some clouds, so there was nothing to see. I think clouds are more interesting on the ground, when they are fog.

  “I am becoming bored,” I announced.

  “Read one of your books,” said Mommy.

  “Okay.” I dug out my backpack, which I had stowed (“stowed” is another flight-attendant word) beneath the seat in front of me. I brought out Danny, the Champion of the World. That is a book by Roald Dahl. It is about a boy whose father poaches pheasants. It is very good. I have read it four times.

  After awhile I put down Danny. I was getting bored again. Andrew was asleep. I closed my eyes, but I could not sleep.

  I decided to look at all the stuff in the seat-back in front of me. (“Seat-back in front of you” is yet another thing flight attendants like to say.) I read the what-to-do-in-case-of-emergency card. I noted the nearest exit. I opened up the barf bag. I pretended to barf into it until Mommy told me to stop. Too bad Andrew was asleep. I decided to do the pretend-barf thing again as soon as he woke up.

  I flipped open the airplane magazine, called Soar. It is funny that airplanes have their own magazines. Maybe my school bus should have its own magazine too. I would have to remember to suggest that to the driver when I got home. Most of the airplane magazine was boring. There were articles on places for grown-ups to vacation, how to buy golf clubs, and the different types of caviar. (Caviar is tiny raw fish eggs. People eat them as a treat. Ew.)

  Then I came to an article called “John Wayne, King of the Cowboys.” Since I was going to be a cowgirl for the next week, I definitely needed to read this article. It turned out to be very interesting. John Wayne was an old-time movie star. He made movies from the 1930s until the 1970s, when he died. He starred in hundreds of Westerns, including all-time classics like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Bravo, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. There was a picture of him in the magazine. He was wearing a big white cowboy hat, sitting on a horse in beautiful western country. (I sort of recognized him. I thought maybe I had seen him in some commercials on TV.) He looked exactly like what a cowboy is supposed to look like. I could tell why John Wayne was called King of the Cowboys, and I had never even seen any of his movies. I decided that as soon as we got home, I would ask Mommy to rent She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. I liked the title of that one.

  I closed the in-flight magazine, and suddenly I felt like closing my eyes. I pictured meeting real cowboys at the dude ranch. Maybe one of them would look like John Wayne….

  * * *

  I slept until the plane landed and then woke up for the long drive from the airport to the Arrow-A Ranch. That was the name of the ranch where we would be staying. It was three hours away. By the time we arrived at the Arrow-A, the moon was high in the sky and I was ready to go back to sleep.

  Seth and Mommy carried Andrew and me to our room in the big ranch house. Mommy tucked me into a twin bed and kiss
ed me good night. Even though I was really excited about being in a new place, I fell asleep right away. A girl can take only so much traveling in one day. Cowgirl adventures would have to wait till morning.

  A Big Cowboy Breakfast

  I woke up with sunshine staring me in the face. I was starved. I hopped out of bed and looked around. The room I was in was smallish and pretty, with two twin beds. Andrew was in the other bed, still asleep. I saw three doors. Two were open. Through one door I found Mommy and Seth, already dressed. They were waiting for Andrew and me.

  After I pulled on a pair of pink jeans and a pink sweatshirt, Granny walked through the other open door. We all had rooms in one big line. There was also a big, old-fashioned bathroom with a gigundo tub that stood on little feet.

  I decided that Andrew should get up.

  “Come on, Andrew,” I said, shaking his shoulder. “Time to go rustle up some grub.” Now that I was a cowgirl, I was going to do my best to use Western expressions.

  Andrew sat up and said sleepily, “What is for breakfast?”

  “Um, I do not know. Maybe in the song ‘Home on the Range,’ cowboys eat beans and bacon. That might be it.”

  With Mommy, Seth, and Granny, we left our rooms and headed downstairs. We were staying in a real ranch house. It was very big. Downstairs was one gigundoly huge room. Part of it was a living room and part of it was a dining room and part of it was a kitchen. In the dining room part were two long tables with benches. A big, open kitchen was at one end, with a counter you could see over.

  Upstairs was a balcony that went around the second floor like a U. Ten bedrooms were arranged around the U. At the open mouth of the U was a very wide, polished staircase that led down to the living room area.

  When we reached the bottom of the stairs, we followed our noses to the dining area.

  “Good morning!” said a friendly-looking woman behind the counter. She had tossed a dish towel over her shoulder. Her blonde hair was pulled into a bun. “I’m Kate — hostess, cook, activities director, and all-around gal Friday.”