It Takes a Cowboy

“Experimentation,” Scott answered humorously. “You wouldn’t have wanted to try some of my earlier efforts.”

Jeffrey turned to his aunt. “Scott can tie a fly and make it look just like a real bug. He turned over a rock in the stream and showed me a bug and then he tied a little bit of fuzz and feathers and stuff and he made it look just like the bug he found. He’s got this little vise thing in his tackle box to hold the stuff while he ties it. It was so cool. Who taught you to do that, Scott?”

“Actually, I attended a class to learn how.”

Jeffrey blinked in surprise. “You went to a fishing school?”

Scott smiled. “You’d be amazed how many classes you might want to take when you no longer feel that you have to go to school. There are a lot of interesting things to learn out there.”

Wrinkling his nose, Jeffrey announced, “If I ever get out of school, I’m never going to another class.”

“That’s what I used to say, until I went to Lost Springs and figured out how to make school work to my advantage.”

Jeffrey frowned as if he’d forgotten that Scott had once resided at the boys’ ranch. Blair knew Jeffrey had encountered boys from Lost Springs at school; he’d mentioned occasionally that some of them were real troublemakers. He looked curiously at Scott. “How come you lived out at the ranch? Were you one of the orphans with no place else to go?”

“I was an orphan, but I had grandparents who took me in—until I gave them so much trouble they sent me to Lost Springs to be straightened out,” Scott replied easily.

“Oh. I thought only serious troublemakers went there. Some of the guys at school say Lost Springs is just a place for the punks to go until they’re old enough for jail.”

“Jeffrey...”

With a quick gesture of his hand, Scott signaled to Blair to let him handle this. Since he didn’t look particularly annoyed or offended by Jeffrey’s insensitive remarks, Blair fell silent.

“The boys at Lost Springs aren’t all punks, Jeff. It’s true that most have been in trouble and that a very few will end up in jail someday, but for the most part, they’re just kids who need some guidance.”

“Were you in trouble?”

Blair had to bite her tongue to keep from telling Jeffrey to mind his own business. She didn’t want to encourage him to ask intrusive questions, but she had wanted him to spend time with Scott precisely because of Scott’s troubled background.

Again, Scott accepted the boy’s blunt question with equanimity. “Yeah. I got into a lot of trouble. After my folks died, I was pretty mad, and I didn’t get along well with my grandparents, so I did some really stupid stuff. It’s like I was trying to punish everyone around me because life hadn’t worked out the way I wanted it to, you know?”

Jeffrey looked at his empty plate, as if the comment struck just a bit too close to home. “You weren’t a punk,” he said loyally, his rapidly developing hero worship in evidence.

“Sure I was,” Scott replied with a smile. “And I might have turned into worse if the staff at Lost Springs hadn’t convinced me that I was only punishing myself with my behavior. They made me realize that it was up to me to make something out of myself and to decide what I wanted to do with my future.”

“And you wanted to climb mountains and race cars and stuff, right?”

Scott chuckled. “Right. I was lucky enough to have some money—unlike most of the guys, who had to figure out how they were going to make a living when they left the ranch. But I had to learn how to take care of that money, so I went to college and majored in business. Finished in three years, because I didn’t want to spend any more time in classes than necessary.”

“College?” Jeffrey curled his lip. “More school? Oh, man...”

“School’s not so bad, once you figure out how to work the system.”

That captured Jeffrey’s interest. “Work the system? What do you mean?”

Scott responded with a question of his own. “What do you dislike most about school?”

The boy practically shuddered. “Everything.”

Patiently, Scott shook his head. “I know there are some things you must like better than others. But what do you dislike most?”

After a moment’s thought, Jeffrey answered, “The picky stuff. You know, little things that don’t make any difference, but the teachers still get all worked up about them.”

“For example?”

“You got a pencil and paper?”

“In that drawer behind you.”