Ivy Takes Care Page 9

  “What happened, Dad?” Ivy asked as her father pulled onto the highway north to Reno. She thought Billy Joe had gotten away with his rattler ball adventure.

  “Well,” he said, “at first Jim Butterworth just wrote off the whole snakebite business to bad luck: sleeping snake wakes up in the middle of winter. Snakes are snakes, and they’ll bite your horse, never mind if you’re a saint in heaven, even in the dead of winter.”

  Ivy waited for her dad to wind this story out. She was still not going to tell on Billy Joe. He was in enough trouble.

  “Well, nothing more was made of it until last night,” her dad continued. “Jim Butterworth had filled the wood bag with firewood, brought it into the house, and emptied it. Tumbling out after the firewood was a rattler head, neatly chopped off at the neck. Anyone who had the bad luck to brush a finger or two over one of those fangs, still full of venom, coulda been countin’ sheep in heaven this very minute.”

  “Oh, Billy Joe,” said Ivy.

  “Yup,” agreed her Dad. “Seems he was on purpose looking for hibernating rattler balls up there on Spooner Summit. Wanted to sell the skins to some boot maker in Reno. So he’s got a winter of nasty outdoor work ahead. Cora says it’ll learn him. I don’t reckon anything’ll learn that boy till he maybe blows a hand off with his danged fireworks. If they’d lost the horse, Billy Joe’d be strung up by his thumbs. But Texas is going to be okay.”

  Through the truck window, Ivy watched the bleached winter landscape fly by.

  “What kind of guest is flying out here on Christmas Day, Dad?” asked Ivy.

  But either her dad had no idea or he wasn’t telling. Could it be a movie star from California? Ivy wondered. No. Movie stars didn’t stay at the Red Star Ranch, with its one little radiator in each cottage. They went to Reno or Las Vegas and relaxed at the big ranches with heated indoor pools and people who gave you massages.

  Ivy and her dad could hear the eleven o’clock plane a ways off in the sky. Because of the short landing strip, flights into Reno had to circle like paper airplanes in a stairwell.

  They pulled up to the tarmac, got out of the truck, and watched the plane land.

  Ivy looked at the travelers’ faces one by one as they emerged into the bright Nevada sunshine. Her dad didn’t flag anyone and no one stopped.

  “Where’s the Red Star Ranch sign, Dad?” Ivy asked. “Shouldn’t we be holding it up so the person knows who we are?”

  “Don’t need one,” said her father mysteriously.

  “Why? Who’s coming?” asked Ivy again.

  “Here he is!” said Ivy’s dad.

  Ivy recognized the man immediately. She didn’t think she’d ever forget his crew cut and the American Airlines uniform. He was holding a leash. At the end of the leash was a much bigger shepherd than she remembered, the tip of one ear gone now. Inca knew her at once.

  Late Christmas afternoon, Ivy decided she’d pay Billy Joe a visit in the south pasture, where he was deep in drifts of snow.

  “Billy Joe!” Ivy called. He saw her. A big smile lit up his face.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I was in my living room, where it was nice and warm,” she explained. “I thought of you out here, with your fingers freezing off. So I figured, no matter what stupid thing you’d done, I should bring you a thermos of cocoa.”

  Billy Joe stood up from the hole he was clearing out, brushed the snow off his jacket, and reached for the thermos as if it were the Holy Grail itself.

  “Who’s that dog?” he asked.

  “It’s Inca!” said Ivy.

  And before Billy Joe could react, the dog pushed him over into the snow and kissed him. Billy Joe laughed.

  Ivy poured hot chocolate into the thermos cup and gave it to Billy Joe. “What happened to his ear?” he asked.

  “Mr. Burgess says he got into fights with Siegfried and Tristan,” Ivy explained. “They nearly killed him. So Mr. Burgess decided to send him back to me. He arrived on the eleven o’clock flight just this morning, with a year’s worth of dog food right in the baggage compartment.”

  Inca leaned against Ivy. Her fingers found his bitten-off velvet ear. Inca was twenty pounds heavier than when he’d left, but he had forgotten nothing. In his eyes Ivy could see that she was his “one” for all time.

  Billy Joe took a slug of the hot chocolate.

  “You’d better come in, Billy Joe,” Ivy said. “It’s getting dark.”

  The two walked home with Inca dancing and prancing between them.

  “This afternoon, I got a telephone call,” Ivy told Billy Joe. “Somebody’s ranch man down in Sandstone Canyon broke an ankle. Three paddock horses. Ice breaking, water carrying, three flakes a day. You wanna help out when you’re finished here?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” said Billy Joe. “I’m nothing but trouble.”

  “I’ll watch you like a hawk,” Ivy said.

  “Fifty-fifty?” he asked.

  “No snakes, no firecrackers, and no trouble,” said Ivy.

  “Deal!” said Billy Joe. He held out his dirty work glove, full of icy holes and fence post splinters.

  Ivy slapped it. “Deal,” she said.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2013 by Rosemary Wells

  Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Jim LaMarche

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First electronic edition 2013

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2012942383

  ISBN 978-0-7636-5352-1 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7636-6363-6 (electronic)

  The illustrations were done using acrylic washes and pencils on watercolor paper.

  Candlewick Press

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  Somerville, Massachusetts 02144

  visit us at www.candlewick.com