:include => :works, :select => ...

well, you're going to get a bunch of Client objects using find, however, you should only get the attributes you specify in the :select option, instead of all the attributes.

User.find(:all, :select => 'login')

=> [#<User:0xb771061c @attributes={"login"=>"foo"}>, #<User:0xb77105e0 @attributes={"login"=>"goo"}>, #<User:0xb77105a4 @attributes={"login"=>"bar"}>, #<User:0xb7710568 @attributes={"login"=>"baz"}>]

User.find(:all, :select => 'login').collect { |u| u.login }

=> ["foo", "goo", "bar", "baz"]

another option is to drop down into the connection and run your query, if you want to skip the above, but you'll have to write out your sql.

ActiveRecord::Base.connection.select_value("select login from users")

=> ["foo", "goo", "bar", "baz"]