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lost out there,” Kate said. “And neither of you is that. Are you?”
    Carole and Lisa exchanged glances, then giggled. There was just no telling.
    “I THINK P EANUTS here needs some fresh hay,” Stevie said. She was glancing into one of the barn’s few box stalls where the horses needing special care were housed from time to time. “I’ll get him some water, too.”
    “Good idea,” Eli said.
    There was a lot of hay and straw kept in the upper loft of the barn and it had to be pitched down as needed for food and bedding. Stevie and Eli had worked side by side until the lower bin was filled. Stevie was good at pitching hay. She knew just how to use a pitchfork. It wasn’t that it was the hardest task in the world, but there were some tricks to it, and Stevie had learned them over the years at Pine Hollow. She couldn’t help notice that Eli had watched her carefully, then grinned when he saw how good she was at the chore.
    Stevie put the fresh hay in Peanuts’s bin and filled hisbucket with cool water. While the horse took long gulps of water, she patted him comfortingly. He’d injured the tendon in his left foreleg and would be laid up for quite a while.
    “It’s got to be tough on him to be boxed in here after all that time outdoors, doesn’t it?” she said to Eli.
    He nodded. “Range horses just don’t like being indoors, particularly when they’re laid up like Peanuts.”
    “He’ll get used to it, though,” Stevie said. “I knew a horse once who would fuss every time he was brought into the stable—until he discovered that every time he got there, there were oats and hay waiting for him! When he’d healed and was ready to go out into the pasture, he’d just hang around the gate by the stable until somebody took pity on him and gave him a handful of oats. He was quite a horse!”
    Eli looked at her quizzically. “You ride a lot?” he asked.
    “Almost every day,” Stevie said. “At least during the summer. In the wintertime, I usually can only ride twice a week.”
    “I watched you on Stewball yesterday,” Eli told her.
    Stevie was pretty sure he had been watching her until they’d gone around the rise behind the main house.
    “You did pretty well. For a dude.”
    It didn’t exactly
sound
like a compliment, but from Eli, Stevie suspected that it was high praise.
    “I watched you cut out the riding horses yesterday,” she said. “How did you train the dog?”
    “I think he was born knowing how to cut horses,” Eli said, taking the pitchforks and returning them to the equipment room. He took a large bucket and began mixing a blend of grains for Peanuts and the two other horses in the barn. “Wait until you see him working with cattle,” Eli said.
    “I’ve heard that dogs are really great on roundups,” Stevie said. “Is it
really
instinct?”
    “Some are good, some aren’t,” Eli told her. He poured two cans of oats into the bucket. “I’ve never been able to train one that wasn’t.”
    “Have you trained a lot of them?” she asked, handing him a long-handled wooden spoon so he could mix the mash.
    “Lots,” he said, stirring methodically. “Lots.” He seemed to be concentrating so totally on his mixture that Stevie didn’t want to interrupt him for more details. When he finished blending the grains, he hung the spoon back up and stored the mixture in a cool bin. Then he put his hands on his hips and regarded Stevie carefully. She felt as if she were being x-rayed.
    “Come on,” he said finally. “Follow me.”
    He turned abruptly and left the feed room, closing the door behind him. He walked along the main aisle of the barn, past the horse stalls and the hay bins.Almost at the end, there was an old rough wooden door, covered with cobwebs. Eli turned the handle and it swung open easily. After switching on a light, he led Stevie down some stairs into the lower-level cellar of the barn. Since the barn was built into a hill, there were only a few windows high up on