I was nervous.

Dad had managed to work me into the stock contractor's string of girls that night, I would be running sponsor flags around the arena in between events and taking them out with the round winners. On top of that, he'd also entered me in the big open barrel jackpot that was supposed to take place just after the slack that morning. Between those two things and my dinner date that I still knew very little about, I didn't know if I was afoot or horseback! I knew carrying flags that night was no issue, if I couldn't ride one of my dad's horses I knew the stock contractor would have one or two good solid horses I could use. On the upside, the flag gig would pay something, and who knew? Maybe I'd be able to pick up some cash from the jackpot as well.

I was glad to be getting a run in the Hawthorne arena, one of the regular season high school rodeos was held there every year. I was anxious to run my horse in the same type of rodeo set up to see how he'd handle the pressure. He'd done well so far, a handful of jackpots around home and some little open rodeos had been good for getting his feet wet to the rodeo world. He hauled great along with my calf roping horse when I took them both, so I wasn't too worried about how he'd feel when we unloaded him. We had four horses with us, Dad's two flag horses, my young barrel horse and my veteran roping horse. We had arrived with just a few hours to spare, enough time to get the horses taken care of then catch a little bit of sleep before starting all over again.