THIS STORY IS MARY SUE! Everyone from the stables is a real person. The horses are real horses. In fact, I work with them every day ('cept Wednesday and Thursday – or Monday and Friday at the time of the rewrite – unless Kathy calls me in). The song mentioned is called "(This Ain't) No Thinkin' Thing" and is sung by Trace Adkins. Kevin's speech is also real and I ran the words together because that's exactly how he says it. *wink* Special thanks to my beta reader for helping me in the rewrite.
          Reviews (from old version): DMFAN: Descriptions and the burning question of how they met have been added to Chapter One.
                          Betty: You know, I was gonna rewrite the DM ep "Murder Can Be Contagious" since it's one of my favorite episodes. I'd need to get it on tape again, first, though.
                          BlanaPirahna: Where she came from is a story in itself, but how she met Mark et. al. has been added to Chapter One.
                          Anonymous: Chapter Two ended up being 7 pages because there was so much I wanted to cover before I started Chapter Three. Chapter One is what I call the "Dummy Chapter". It's nearly the same situation as my Power Rangers/Diagnosis Murder crossover "Road Trips Can Be Hazardous to One's Health". Basically a goofy chapter to get the story rolling, as it were.
                          J0: Chapter One now has how they met.
                          sax-chick: Thanks. ^^
                          Seana Louisie: As you can see, I'm advertising for a beta-reader. Without one, I always go over previous chapters before adding a new one. Habit.
                          adsh: Mary Sue/MarySu is defined as (in an article I can't link to because FF.net doesn't like hyperlinks or URLs) "Often done by many inexperienced fanfic writers, the Mary Su has the author portrays himself or herself as a 'super character' in the story, one with all the answers, and someone the other characters look up to. The term is taken from an early fan fiction work for 'Star Trek,' in which the author created a character based upon herself named Mary Su."
                          Tracie1: Back-story's now added to Chapter One.

Chapter Two: Echo Lake Stables

After twenty minutes, Mark had finally gotten everyone out of bed and they had converged in the small kitchen to eat breakfast. Well, everyone except Lisa. For some reason, she'd opted to skip it instead. She stood by with a sour look on her face while her three friends munched on the various cereals in her pantry.

"Your face is going to freeze like that," commented Mark with a small smile.

"Feh," she grunted. "Too damned early."

"This was your idea," the tall, dark-haired man seated at the table pointed out, though Steve Sloan, homicide detective for the LAPD, tried to conceal a yawn.

His only response was a sleepy-eyed glare, but he ignored it. After many years of friendship, they were all used to her personality quirks. In fact, they were just a few of the reasons Jesse fell in love with her.

Resident in ER medicine Jesse Travis ran a hand through his sleep-tousled, dirty-blond hair. Lisa's bed was not the most comfortable thing to sleep on, as it was a pull-out sofa bed with a paper thin mattress, but she had only one AeroBed and Steve was using it for the duration of their stay.

"I don't blame her for being grumpy," Jesse said. "Getting up at seven…crazy."

"Exactly." Lisa nodded, then headed to her room to get dressed. "Remember to put on jeans, guys."

It was just past eight when the four of them were finally ready to leave. Lisa grabbed her red jacket and straw cowboy, or cowgirl, in her case, hat with the turkey feather in the band and handed Mark the keys with a muttered "Here, you drive", dragged Jesse into the back seat of her red Plymouth Sundance and promptly dozed off using the young man's lap as a pillow.

Luckily, just before she'd fallen asleep, she'd given Mark very specific directions to the place. "Follow route twenty-three north, take a right on Echo Lake Road, it's the first right you come to. Can't miss it. Wake me when we get there." So, he happily obliged.

The one good thing about Lisa sleeping was that she didn't sing along with the radio. Not normally, anyway, but she was too tired now to speak let alone sing. It didn't stop Mark from doing so, however, but no one minded. Mark was a very good singer, unlike Lisa who couldn't carry a tune if it had handles.

Traffic was good for a change, so it only took forty-five minutes to get to the stables instead of an hour.

Turning onto Blakely Lane, the first thing they saw was houses along the road. Mark steered the car to the right to enter the stable area itself.

As they came up the rocky driveway, they saw pens with horses on either side, three on the right and two on the left. There was also a ring with poles, cones, and barrels inside.

"Lisa," Jesse said, tugging gently on her hair, "we're here."

"Yeah, I know," she replied, somewhat more coherently than she'd spoken all morning, opening her eyes and straightening up. She pointed to each of the areas in turn as they passed them. "That's the Shelter Pen. Taco, Cinco, and Deer live there. Just there's the Pony Pen, but some of the boarders' horses go in there, too. There's the ring. And, on the other side, is A, B, and C Pen for the other boarder horses. Or C, B, and A since we're passing them in reverse." She pointed to a porch where another car was sitting. "Park right there, next to that black car."

Mark did as she instructed and they opened the doors, which resulted in the scent of horses wafting their way. Almost immediately, the sound of crowing roosters assaulted their ears.

"Aren't they a little late?" Steve asked.

Lisa shrugged as she attached a red lead rope to her jeans pocket. "They have no concept of time," she said, then advised, "Try not to step in any manure, guys." She had on work boots that had already been drowned in ankle-deep mud, manure, water, and all sorts of different tortures, and said boots were most definitely not waterproof, so she didn't really care about where her own feet landed.

As they rounded the corner, the horses tied to the hitching posts started to nicker the moment they saw the group. One horse in the Catch Pen – an area used to catch horses to be readied to saddle – whinnied the moment they came into view. He was a gorgeous gelding, light brown in color with a crooked white stripe running down his nose.

As Lisa had the ability to understand animals, what she heard was: "Lisa! Gonna ride me today?"

Smiling, she replied, "No, Diego. I told you: Kathy needs you for hack."

The horse, Diego, hung his head, disappointed. Jesse took notice. "What was that about? What's a hack?"

"A hack is a horse that takes the trails, not leads them. As in, they follow the guide horse. That horse is Diego," Lisa explained as she led her companions to the side of the barn. "He's my favorite. I love him."

Diego whickered appreciatively.

"I just can't use him for a guide."

As they walked past the tack room, they could hear singing and a rhythmic chink, chink, chink coming from inside. There was a space big enough for the three of them to stand near the post without getting kicked, so they came closer. They could see the source of the song inside: a young man in a black cowboy hat with a hawk feather in the band, blue Wrangler jeans, long-sleeved shirt, leather calf-length chaps called chinks, boots and spurs (the source of the chink sound) was lifting a saddle off one of the bottom racks.

                                                   "Forget mathematical equations
                                                             Self help psychology
                                              Gray matter don't matter much, darlin'
                                             When it's gettin' down to you and me…"

Recognizing the voice, grinning, Lisa joined in.

                                                       "This ain't no thinkin' thing
                                                           Right brain, left brain
                                                   It goes a little deeper than that…"

He came out of the tack room carrying the saddle. As he placed it on a large buckskin named Amigo, Lisa made a gesture the guy took to mean: "C'mon, let's finish the chorus!".

                                         "It's a chemical, physical, emotional devotion
                                                  Passion that we can't hold back
                                            There's nothin' that we need to analyze
                                               There ain't no rhyme or reason why
                                       'Cause this ain't, this ain't no thinkin' thing!"

"Hey, Kevin!" she said when the last word had been sung.

He smiled as he cinched up the saddle. "Mornin'," he said, voice lightly coated with an Oklahoma accent.

"Meet Mark, Jesse, and Steve."

"You sounded great," Mark complimented.

"Better than me, eh, Mark?" Lisa joked and the men chuckled. Looking around, she noticed that the place was strangely abandoned for nearly nine in the morning. "Where is everyone?" she asked Kevin.

"I'm not sure where Kathy is, but Sarah and Bob are turning out boarders. Kim went to empty the wheelbarrow. Jim will be back in a minute. Carrie and Kayleigh are kicking down bunkers."

Jesse tapped Lisa on the shoulder. "What's that?"

"Huh? Oh, it's spreading out the hay to the sides so the horses can eat it." She returned her attention to Kevin. "I'm taking the guys out for an hour; I just need to know who I'm using as a guide."

"Check with Kathy," was Kevin's advice. "If you find her."

Lisa saluted as a joke – Kevin was a private in the army national guard, not someone one saluted to, but she did anyway – then turned to her guys. "I'm going to find Kathy, so you guys wait here. Go say hi to Diego or something. Chat with Kevin, whatever." She jogged off towards the office.

Mark and Jesse spent about half a minute near the Catch Pen, Jesse saying hello to Diego via a pet on the neck, but curiosity got the better of them and they started poking around the place. Steve nervously followed to make sure they stayed out of trouble. Anybody would be nervous about turning Jesse and Mark loose in some place with as much potential trouble as a barn.

They headed for the big barn. Jesse took notice of a pink post-it note tacked to a stall door reading "Do not use this stall baby Silkies inside". Wondering just what "Silkies" were, he peeked through the bars. They were, in fact, baby versions of the chickens roaming around the stables.

 Mark opted for the stall next to it, which was full of hay, tools, and bags of what looked like sawdust, which was used as bedding for the horses. He put his head in to look around, and ended up knocking over brooms and shovels, resulting in a loud clatter that echoed through the building.

A tall, blonde woman with an air of authority, wearing jeans and a shirt with cowboy boots embroidered on it, exited through a door near the front, Lisa behind her.

"Oh, good grief," Lisa said. "Mark! Guys! I told you to wait for me over there." She pointed outside the barn.

Mark chuckled sheepishly as he, Steve, and Jesse put the tools back in their place. "Sorry," he said.

Lisa just grunted and rubbed her forehead with her hand. "Sorry, Kathy. These are my friends."

"You guys have to be more careful," she said.

"Sorry about that," said Steve.

Lisa was silently grateful that her boss wasn't getting angry. At least the guys cleaned up the mess. "So, Kathy," she said, "am I using Cuatro?"

A little brown Mexican horse nickered from a nearby stall. Lisa went to him and scratched his nose. "Hey, bud." This horse, Cuatro, named such because he has four black legs, was Lisa's normal guide horse.

Kathy shook her head. "I need him for a lesson." She looked toward the Hack Pen, then the Catch Pen, surveying each horse. "Uh, use Diego."

To say that Lisa had to scrape her jaw off the ground was putting lightly just how utterly thunderstruck she was. "Really?!"

"Catch him and saddle him, quickly."

She was headed for the Catch Pen before Kathy had even finished speaking, smiling wider than ever and practically dancing with joy. As she unraveled her lead rope, she sang, "I'm using Diego! I'm using Diego!" Approaching said horse, she said under her breath, "I get to take you on the trail!"

Diego tossed his head happily and stood quietly as she attached the lead rope to his halter and led him out. After clipping him to the hitching post, she dashed into the tack room, nearly crashing into Kevin on his way out, grabbed a brush and curry comb and ran them over Diego's back and girth in record time.

"Watch out, Lis," said Kevin, placing two saddle pads on the horse's back. Lisa had to dodge to one side to keep from getting bopped in the head with them.

"Get his saddle for me, Kev, please?" she asked, falling back to the excuse that it was too heavy for her to lift. In truth, she could use a little telekinesis to levitate it and make it seem lighter, but she didn't want to use her powers too much.

"Yup," Kevin replied.

"Thank you," she said, sing-song, as he placed said saddle on Diego's back and adjusted the pads to fit. Lisa cinched it up as Kevin went to help Kathy get horses for Jesse, Mark, and Steve.

"Is that too tight?" she whispered to Diego as she tightened the girth strap. Usually, she asked Kevin or Kim tighten it for her, but they were both busy.

Diego took a breath. "It's fine," he said softly, the words coming out as a low nicker to anyone else listening in.

"Good," she said patting him on the neck, then looked to see if her guys had been put on horses yet.

Jesse had, on Dillenger, a white-and-brown paint horse who was over at the hay wagon, munching. Kevin was instructing Steve on how to steer Sancho, a brown horse with a white patch on his cheek and Kathy was doing the same to Mark on Amigo. Lisa noticed Steve looked a little stiff and realized how proud he always was. He did need some convincing to come along, after all, but she was pleased that they got him to loosen up a little.

"Jump on, Lis," Kathy said, noticing her standing there watching.

"Right!" she responded, beaming. "C'mon, Diego." She wrapped up her lead rope and attached it to the saddle. Taking the bridle from where it hung off the saddle horn, she placed the reins over the horse's head, then unclipped him from the hitching post and guided the bit into his mouth with her hands. Diego fought a little, only because he was known to not take it right away, but he tried to keep his head down so she didn't have to reach up that far.

Lisa led him to a mounting block, adjusted the stirrups, and climbed on. Unfortunately, she'd made them too long. "Urgh," she groaned. "Kevin, shorten my stirrups for me, please?"

Diego stood patiently as Kevin made the stirrups shorter. "Better?" he asked when he was done.

She placed her feet in. "Yep, thanks."

"No problem."

"Send them out, Kev," said Kathy, walking back towards the office.

Lisa made Diego walk past the hay wagon where Mark, Steve, and Jesse waited on their horses. She looked over her shoulder. "Say it, Kevin."

"But you know these guys," he replied.

"So? Say it anyway, please?"

He had to chuckle. "All right."

Lisa grinned and turned to her guys. "This is great."

"Okay," said Kevin, loud enough for all four of them to hear, "the lady up front is Lisa. Lisa'll be your trail guide. If y'all have any questionscommentsconcernscriticismscritiqueorscontroversies, give 'er a holler. Have fun, come back on top." He said it all in one breath without pausing, running the words together.

"What'd he say?" Jesse asked, laughing.

"Don't worry," said Lisa, "you'll hear it again later."

End part two.