Pack Trip (6 page)

Pretty soon the whole group was singing cheerfully together, and all unpleasant thoughts had flown from their minds. Nobody was thinking about the cold night or about Amy’s high jinks on the trail the previous day. They were simply doing what they’d come to do. They were having fun.

“Hey, let’s do the one Gene Autrey used to sing,” Lisa called out to the other riders.

“‘I’m back in the saddle again!”’ Eli began, but it turned out that nobody, not even Eli, knew enough words to sing that one, so they tried making up nonsense words to it. Everybody took turns. Not surprisingly, Amy was excellent at nonsense words.

“I sat in the saddle all day.

“Too bad my horse ran away!

“Since my horse was not there,

“I used my saddle for a chair,

“And I guess in this town, I’ll just stay!”

There was applause when she finished, and demands for another verse. “Okay, I’ve got another,” she said. Then she began.

“I’m out here, where my dog is my friend.

“I guess we’ll be friends to the end.

“We just ride here by the hour

“Where it’s hot and we can’t shower.

“No wonder there’s nobody to befriend!”

Carole and the other riders applauded again. Amy was very clever, and at that moment Carole was glad she was along on the trip.

When the sun was high in the sky, Eli led the riders off the trail, through a small patch of woods, and into a shady open area for a rest and some lunch. First, it was rest time for the horses. Everyone pitched in to untack them and let them drink from a nearby lake surrounded by rocks before they hobbled them in a grassy field near the water.

“Perfect!” Stevie announced when she spotted it. “It was obviously put here to give us a place to swim on this hot, dusty day!”

“No question about it,” Kate agreed.

“Definitely,” Christine chimed in.

“Can we?” Lisa asked Eli.

“Don’t know why not, as long as you’re careful,” Eli said. “Tell you what. You’ve been such good singers and riders this morning that Jeannie and I will make the sandwiches while you all take a dip. Then you all can clean up after lunch while we take our swim. Deal?”

“Deal!”

“Do I have to remind you that you should never dive in unfamiliar water, especially since it’s been a long, dry summer and the water may be much shallower than you think?”

“We promise, no diving and we’ll be super careful,” John assured Eli.

“Everybody promise?” Eli asked, looking directly at Amy.

She crossed her heart as she promised.

It took only a few minutes for the riders to don their bathing suits and head for the pond.

“Last one in is a—hey, Amy!” Stevie shouted. Everybody turned to look. Amy had climbed to a rocky ledge five feet above the water and was flexing her knees and swinging her arms.

“No diving!” John called out.

Amy grinned mischievously. She crossed her heart, just as she had when promising Eli she wouldn’t dive, and
without further ado she jumped high off the rock, tipped forward, touched her toes, straightened out, and dived straight into the water.

“Amy!” Seth shrieked.

Nobody else spoke or moved. They waited. Although the water was clear, the sun sparkled on it, making it difficult to see below the surface. There was no sign of Amy.

Seth ran for the water, ready to jump in after his sister.

John grabbed him. “You can’t dive in after her,” John reasoned. “Then we’ll just have two people to rescue.”

Lisa could barely believe the scene that was unfolding before her eyes. She’d been counting silently since Amy’s dive. It had been almost a minute, and there was still no sign of her. Now even the bubbles from her dive had dissipated.

Without thinking Lisa dropped her towel and hurried to the edge of the pond. She didn’t dive in, but she lowered herself into the cool water quickly and swam over to the place where Amy had disappeared.

Lisa looked around in the water below. She didn’t see anything. She also couldn’t see how deep it was. She would have to go down there herself.

She took a deep breath and went under. When she opened her eyes under the water, everything was fuzzy.
She could make out a few objects, like the large boulders that cluttered the bottom of the pond. There were stalks of pond grass growing at the floor. There was some movement that might even be fish. There was nothing that looked at all like Amy.

Lisa pulled herself as far down into the water as she could. The water was deep where Amy had dived. Lisa couldn’t even reach the bottom on one breath. It didn’t make sense that anything would have happened to Amy.

Lisa searched frantically, aware that her lungs were aching for fresh air. She tried to fight the urge to return to the surface, certain that if she could just go a little deeper, swim a little farther, maybe she could find Amy. Maybe she could save her.…

Lisa couldn’t hold it anymore. She fled to the surface and gasped for breath when she reached it.

“I didn’t see anything,” she said, panting. “I’ll go again!”

She filled her lungs with air and went down again, this time searching to the left and the right, her eyes straining with the discomfort of the water. But there was still no sign of Amy. Once again she returned to the surface.

“Nothing,” she said. “There’s nothing there at all.”

“Oh, no, Amy!” Seth cried out.

“
Moi?”
a voice answered from the cattails. It was followed by a familiar giggle.

“Amy? Is that you? Are you okay?” Seth ran around the edge of the pond in time to see his sister stand up in the middle of the reeds.

“I’m just fine,” she announced cheerfully. “I’ve always liked cattails. Haven’t you? I’d like to pick a few, but the stems are so tough. Did you bring your knife?”

Lisa felt a tremendous rush of relief. When she hadn’t been able to see anything in the water, she was sure of the worst. Now she could hear the brother and sister chatting in the cattails, and she was so filled with relief that there wasn’t room for anything else in her heart.

Stevie, Carole, John, Kate, and Christine stood stunned on the edge of the pond.

“Come on in, the water’s fine,” Lisa invited them. They stared at her in surprise, expecting her to be at least a little bit angry. Lisa shrugged in answer to the questions in their eyes. “Amy’s fine, so am I. No harm done.”

“Maybe she’s right,” Carole said to the others on the shore. “Besides, it’s still hot out here and cool in there.” One by one they dropped their towels and joined Lisa in the water.

Later Lisa pulled herself out of the water and lay on her towel in the sun to dry off. Kate and Christine joined her.

“Wasn’t that wonderful?” Lisa said.

“Part of it,” Kate said. “I mean the part where we were all swimming carefully and sensibly. Not the part where someone took a reckless risk, endangering somebody else who tried to rescue her.”

“I wasn’t in danger,” Lisa protested. “It’s perfectly safe there. The water is more than ten feet deep.”

“True,” Christine countered. “But you didn’t know that at the time. You could have been swimming down into four feet of water covering dangerous sharp rocks.”

“But at least Amy’s okay,” Lisa said.

“Sure Amy’s okay,” Kate said. “Amy will always be okay, or else she won’t be, and it will be her own fault. It’s
Lisa
I’m worried about.”

“She’s trouble, Lisa,” Christine said. “Amy is the kind of person who will always be getting herself, and anybody else she can bring along, into lots and lots of trouble.”

“You don’t understand,” said Lisa. “She’s had a hard life. Her parents are divorced—”

“Lots of parents are divorced,” Kate said. “That doesn’t give their children the right to risk their lives.”

“Or anybody else’s,” Christine finished.

Lisa propped herself up on her elbows and looked at her friends. “Amy isn’t the only person in that family,”
she said. “There’s Seth, too. He’s got his hands full with Amy, and I really feel sorry for him. I just want to help.”

“Helping isn’t going to help,” Kate said.

Stevie pulled herself out of the water and spread her towel out next to the cluster of her friends. “What’s up?” she asked. “Am I missing a Saddle Club meeting?”

“Sort of,” Kate told her. “The kind where we help other members, even when they don’t know they need help.”

“Only in this case they’re trying to tell me
not
to help someone else, namely Amy.”

“She can be pretty funny,” Stevie said, recalling some of her song lyrics.

“Sure.
Sometimes
,” Kate said pointedly.

“If you like sick jokes,” Christine added.

“All she needs is a little help,” Lisa insisted.

“What she needs is a
lot
of help,” Kate replied.

Lisa knew that Kate meant well and that she was probably right about Amy, at least to some degree. But what Kate didn’t understand was that Lisa wasn’t helping Amy so much as she was helping Seth. Maybe Amy couldn’t be helped, but she was convinced that Seth could be. Moreover, she was convinced that she was the one who could do it.

“I
THINK WE
have about two hours before dark,” Eli said to the young riders after dinner that night. “Jeannie and I are going to relax here by the camp fire while you all go on a scavenger hunt. Two teams of four.” He looked at the group assembled in front of him and put Carole, Kate, Christine, and John on one team. Lisa, Stevie, Seth, and Amy were the second team. “Here are your lists.” He handed them to Christine and Seth. “The first team back with everything wins breakfast in bed, delivered by the other team. Everybody is due back here by dark. If neither team gets everything, then the team with the most items wins. Got it?”

They nodded.

“Then, go!”

Carole, Kate, and John circled Christine so they could read the list.

“Bird’s nest, piece of granite, animal tooth, pine cone …” Carole read.

“I know just where to start,” John announced. “Come on, this way.”

The team headed to the east, following John. As they left the campsite, Carole could already hear bickering from the other team. Amy was at the center of it. “Let
me
have the list,” she whined to Seth. Carole was glad Amy wasn’t on her team.

“The hardest thing on this list is going to be the bird’s nest,” Kate said.

“Oh, no, it’s not,” John said. “I saw one when Carole and I were watering the horses. It’s up in a pine tree not far from here.”

John knew right where to go. He took them to a scraggly pine tree that bordered the field where the horses were pastured. “See, it’s up there,” he said, pointing.

It was up, all right. It was about twenty feet up, and the lowest branches on the tree were a good eight feet above the ground.

“There’s a little problem, John,” Christine said politely.

“Here, stand on my shoulders,” he offered. “One of you should be able to reach from there, don’t you think?”

Carole didn’t think it would work, but she figured it was worth a try. She was the tallest of the three girls, so she volunteered, but it was clear almost instantly that it just wasn’t enough.

“Now if you were a basketball player …” she teased.

“I
do
play basketball,” John protested.

“NBA,” Carole specified.

“It’s not the sport, it’s the height,” Christine said. “We just need somebody taller.”

“We’ve
got
somebody taller!” Kate announced triumphantly. Then, before anybody could ask what she meant, she whistled loudly. The horses, who had been grazing lazily on the other side of the field, pricked up their ears and moved toward the familiar sound. Kate whistled again. Her horse, an Appaloosa named Spot, arrived first.

“I think he’s tall enough,” she said.

“Great idea!” John agreed. He hiked himself up onto Spot’s back and, using his legs to guide the horse, rode him directly under the lowest branch.

Kate and Christine held Spot’s halter while John rose to a standing position on the horse’s back.

“People in the circus always make this look so easy,” he said, using his hands to balance himself.

“In the circus they use draft horses with very wide backs. An Appaloosa doesn’t have that same broad, flat surface,” Kate said.

“I noticed,” he told the girls. “But I am as nimble as an aerialist and can rise above all adversity.” With that he grabbed onto the lowest branch and drew himself up into the feathery needles of the tree. Soon he was standing securely, looking for the next branch to climb on.

“Not only can he rise above adversity, he can even rise above the ground!” Christine joked. In response a bird’s nest hit her on the head before it tumbled to the ground.

“One down, nine to go,” John declared. He jumped down from the branch and landed safely next to Spot.

“Thanks, boy,” he said, patting the horse’s neck warmly. Spot looked at him expectantly. The look said
carrot
.

“I’ve tried to teach him not to beg,” Kate joked.

“It’s okay,” John said. “I understand. It’s just that I don’t have any carrots. All I’ve got is a bird’s nest, and he can’t have that.”

Spot returned to the herd followed by promises of carrots in the morning.