CHAPTER 25

The jolt she suddenly felt when the left front tire hit the pothole was enough to shift her focus from the piece of paper she was holding in her hand, back to the narrow road she was driving on. The directions seemed simple enough when Lloyd White, the customer she was delivering the yearlings to, gave them to her over the phone, and she was sure she scribbled them down correctly. Yet as she made her way through the rows of horse barns at the Humboldt rodeo grounds, she couldn’t seem to find the one landmark she needed in order to get to the barn where Lloyd was waiting.

After hitting the pothole, Jessie stopped the truck and re-read the directions. Use the Brine Street entrance, she read quietly to herself, reading off the piece of paper. Okay, did that. Then take a right just past the office…did that. Go past the grandstands, then left at the concession stand. Yup, did that. Go a short distance and look for the 4-H pavilion on the right, Barn C is two barns past the pavilion. She had already traveled what she considered to be a “short distance” but when she scanned the buildings on either side of the road, there was no pavilion.

She read the instructions again, and now convinced she had followed them to a T, decided Lloyd must have accidentally given her a wrong turn somewhere along the line. Jessie figured she’d try to find a place to turn the rig around and backtrack to see if she could find where the mistake was made. She slowly pulled the truck forward another one hundred yards and found what looked like a large parking area big enough to swing the forty-foot truck and trailer she was driving around. As she pulled into the open area, she noticed a sign that had big green letters that read 4-H PAVILION.

Jessie let out a sigh of relief, swung her truck back onto the narrow road of gravel and dirt, and continued on her way. She drove past barns A and B, and finally came upon Barn C. There, Lloyd White and his ranch help were tending to a barn full of Lloyd’s horses that he had brought to the rodeo grounds in preparation of an upcoming ranch versatility competition to be held over the weekend. Rather than having Jessie take the yearlings she was delivering out to his ranch, which was an additional fifteen miles away, he had her bring them to the rodeo grounds instead.

Lloyd, a heavyset man with a crooked smile, large nose and big laugh, met her as she pulled her rig to a stop just in front of Barn C. “I was starting to think you might have got yourself lost,” he chuckled, stepping up to the window, his deep voice filling the cab of her truck.

“Nope,” Jessie grinned back. “Drove right up to the place. You all ready for the weekend?”

“Purty much,” The big man smiled. “We got a real good chance of takin’ the whole thing. This year we’ll even be usin’ a couple of those colts we got from you a while back. They sure turned out to be nice horses.”