Ghost Rider Read Online Free Page A

business right now is to finish this ride and get back to the ranch. Christine’s coming over later tonight, and Mom said somethingabout wanting some help in the kitchen for dinner. Any volunteers?”
    Three hands went up. Helping Phyllis cook was always a pleasure because the results were always so mouth watering, and, as they thought about it, it had been a long day for the travelers. Some good food would be very welcome. They headed home.
    “I T ’ S A HEART !” Stevie declared.
    “No, an oval—I mean an egg! A penny, uh, a saddle!” Carole suggested.
    “A heart with some lumps around the edge—five lumps around the edge?” Stevie persisted.
    Lisa shook her head violently. She scribbled some more and then looked to Kate for help.
    “A treasure map?”
    The girls were playing Pictionary. They were one team. The other team had been made up from other guests at The Bar None. The other guests were definitely winning, and Lisa didn’t think her friends would ever recognize the turtle she was trying to draw. She drew a pattern on the turtle’s back that looked pretty realistic to her.
    “A bathtub!” Stevie was triumphant. But wrong. Lisa shook her head.
    Now desperate, she tried drawing a hare to suggest a tortoise. That was no more successful.
    “Time!” the other team announced.
    “A turtle,” Lisa said. Her friends looked at her scribbly sketch with a new point of view. “Three years of art lessons and I can’t draw a recognizable turtle.”
    “Don’t feel bad,” Stevie told her. “Remember, I had trouble drawing a bell. This game is not about great art.”
    “Yes it is,” a member of the opposing team chimed in—and then smiled gleefully. Considering all the very odd scribbles that had passed for pictures since the game started right after supper, everybody knew that was funny, and they all laughed.
    The person who was drawing for the other team reached for a card, frowned as she looked at it, and then asked Lisa to time the round. Lisa automatically looked at her wrist. There was nothing there. It didn’t make any difference in the game since they were actually using an egg timer, but it did make a difference to her wrist. She’d obviously taken her watch off sometime, and she had to try to remember where and when.
    She flipped the egg timer and set her mind to work while the other team struggled with a drawing of a vegetable peeler.
    Pencil. Sword. Lollipop. I mean sucker—you know, the kind with a looped handle. Pot. Pan. Knife
.
    Lisa remembered that she’d had it on when she andher friends had been riding. She didn’t remember whether she’d had it on when she was working in the kitchen and at dinner.
    Lasso. Lasso roping an egg. Lasso laying an egg
.
    She recalled unsaddling Chocolate and noticing how much lather the horse had worked up. She’d given her a bath, and that must have been when she removed her watch. The memory came back then. She had taken her watch off and hooked it on a nail protruding from a wall in the barn. She didn’t remember taking it off the nail, so it was almost certainly still there. It would probably still be there in the morning, but Lisa didn’t want to take the chance.
    Toothbrush. Knife. Kitchen something. It’s a—it’s a—cheese grater? Whisk? Spatula? Rolling pin. No, not that. I mean—peeler. It’s a vegetable peeler!
    Lisa had to smile at the way the other team all gave one another high fives for coming up with vegetable peeler. The sketches were unrecognizable to her, but it was enough to make it clear that they had won the match. Kate, Lisa, Stevie, and Carole all conceded good-naturedly and then politely refused the opportunity to get whupped again.
    “Tomorrow we’ll try Monopoly,” Stevie said. Then she turned to her friends and whispered loudly, “I’m a shoe-in to pick up Boardwalk and Park Place, and we won’t have to draw a
thing
!”
    “Now wait a minute. Do you play ‘Free Parking’?” asked one of their potential