Читать книгу Should've Been a Cowboy - Vicki Lewis Thompson - Страница 8

May 14, 1956, from the diary of Eleanor Chance

I LOVE GIVING birthday parties. And when your only child turns ten, well, today was a big day at the Last Chance Ranch. We had unseasonably warm weather in Jackson Hole, and after the kids left, tummies full of birthday cake and ice cream, Archie went to the barn and brought out Johnny’s big present.

She’s a beautiful little filly who looks exactly like the horse that the Lone Ranger’s sidekick, Tonto, rides—white with bay patches. While most kids would want an all-white horse like the Lone Ranger’s, Johnny loves Tonto’s horse, Scout.

And so this filly will be named Scout, even though she’s a girl. Everyone around here calls Scout a pinto, which is what Tonto’s horse is, but she’s actually a registered paint. That means she has pinto coloring, but she also has papers and can be bred later on.

She cost us a fair bit, but the money went to a good cause. One of our neighbors needed to sell this filly so he could pay for his wife’s back operation. The operation was Ginny’s last chance to avoid living in a wheelchair, and I’m happy to say the surgery was a success.

That’s what this ranch is about, giving people and animals one last chance. So everyone came out ahead on this deal. Besides, Archie says Scout is an investment as well as a birthday present for Johnny. Cattle ranching has been good to us, especially during the war when the army needed beef, but Archie thinks we should diversify, and for years he’s dreamed of raising horses.

Scout’s a dream come true for Johnny, who’s begged us for a pinto from the moment he saw his first episode of The Lone Ranger. But Scout could be the beginning of Archie’s dream, too. I sure hope so, because spending all that money on a registered paint was a gamble, even if it was for a good cause.

I keep reminding myself that Archie won the Last Chance in a card game nineteen years ago, and that’s turned out pretty well. As Archie always says, “Chance men are lucky when it counts.”