A Summer Without Horses (9 page)

I cackled for them then, too. I’m a pretty good cackler. I cackled so loudly that it made Leslie jump. I had them all frightened out of their wits. I’m so good it scares me sometimes.

“When they got into the darkest part of the woods—you know the stand of pines near the quarry”—they did, of course. The trees are very close together there and it’s always dark, even at noon—“that’s when the woman got off her horse and made the little girl stand in front of a tree while she cast her spell.”

“What did the witch say?” asked Leslie.

“I don’t know, but if I did, I wouldn’t say the words. As soon as the witch had finished her incantation, the little girl started sneezing and wheezing. Then her eyes started itching and got all red. Then the tears began and she was sneezing even harder than before. The witch’s spell had made her desperately allergic to horses! She was so miserable that the only thing she could do was to run from Merlin and the faster she ran, the harder the old woman laughed.

“Now, nobody’s sure just exactly what happened next, but it appears that Merlin was very smart and understood what had happened and he wasn’t happy about it because he loved the little girl. Since he didn’t have any tack or even a lead rope, he took off—after the little girl. That made her sneeze all the harder and run all the faster. But she was in the dark woods, at night. The inevitable happened. She tripped on something and fell down and Merlin caught up with her.”

“Didn’t she get sicker?”

“At first, she did. You’re right, but remember, Merlin is a magical horse so then the magic began. The little girl always said she never actually heard anything, but she swore that horse talked, uttering a chant, an incantation, and when he was done, she didn’t sneeze anymore.”

“Magic?” Natalie asked.

“That’s what they say. Then Merlin sort of waited for her and the little girl just knew she could trust the horse. She climbed onto his back. Some people say the horse cantered back to town. Others say he flew. Nobody but the little girl knows for sure and she’s not telling. What the world does know is that the little girl turned out just fine and never sneezed at another horse again. Nobody ever saw the old woman on Garrett Road again.”

“What about the horse?”

“They say he lives in the deep piney woods and whenever somebody there loves horses, Merlin knows. And if they need his help, he’ll be there for them. On the dark
nights when the wind blows and the shadows dance on the forest floor, some people say the shadows are branches. Others say they’re horse tails. Me? I don’t know.”

“Wow!” said Leslie.

She loved that story. So did the other kids. They hadn’t thought about Red O’Malley from the moment I’d started talking.

T
HE
NEXT
MORNING
started off okay. In spite of my sore you-know-what, I’d had a pretty good night’s sleep so at least until I got downstairs for breakfast, things were looking up.

Then came the day’s first piece of bad news. It was my mom’s annual You-can’t-have-a-good-day-unless-you-start-with-a-good-breakfast attempt to improve the world. That means oatmeal in case you can’t figure it out. Then, as I was staring at the globulous mess, Mom handed me two pieces of mail and for once neither of them was addressed to “Or Current Resident.” They were both for me and they were postcards from Lisa and Carole, arriving from opposite coasts on the very same day.

Much as I wanted to hear everything my friends had to tell me, I didn’t want to get all the good news with the
bad news of the oatmeal, so I stuck them in my pocket, explained to Mom that I was too full from dinner to eat the oatmeal, and dashed out of the house to get to Pine Hollow before she could corner me with another lecture on the benefits of iron and fiber.

When I arrived, Max was just giving final instructions to the older riders about the trail ride they were going to take in the woods. Red and I were to be in charge of the littler kids again. That was basically okay except for the fact that I love trail rides more than anything. Max knows it, too. I actually think he was trying to get the riders out of there before I arrived so I wouldn’t feel so bad about having to miss it, but it didn’t work. I saw everything and I was really envious of what they were about to do. That, combined with the oatmeal, made me feel sort of overwhelmed. I was watching the older riders leave for their trail ride when Red came up to me.

“Uh, Stevie, can I make you a deal?”

“Like what?”

“Like this morning, I’m going over tacking and untacking with the beginners. After I’m done with that, I’ve got a dentist appointment at lunchtime. So, my deal is that I’ll do the tacking demonstration if you’ll look after the kids at lunch. I shouldn’t be more than an hour and a half. That’ll give you time to eat and then begin the mucking demonstration.”

Mucking demonstration!
So much for all the good I did teaching the kids three-point riding. I’d already been demoted
to mucking demonstrations. This did not make me happy. Instead it made me think about eating oatmeal for breakfast and receiving postcards from my lucky friends who got to go to glamorous places.

“Sure, Red. Whatever you say.”

See how agreeable I can be even when I’m not feeling it?

That seemed like as good a time as any to read my postcards. I needed a little peace and quiet. The older riders were off in the woods; Red and the young riders were in the stable. I walked through the stable and out to the paddock where there was one horse standing in the summer sun.

When you’re in a paddock, there’s only one place to sit down and that’s on a fence. Without thinking, I ootched up to the top of it. (Ootching is what I call it. It’s sort of a backward climb using the heel of your boots to give you leverage on the fence boards.) Then I perched on the top of the fence, just like I always do. Later, they said my scream could be heard three towns away, but I think they were exaggerating. I’d just forgotten about the fact that my bottom had the bone bruise and when I sat on the fence, it really hurt. Red and the kids came running out of the stable to see what had happened. This was a case of crying leading to laughing because I had tears of pain rolling down my cheeks and Red thought it was hilariously funny.

That was the meanest, most thoughtless thing he’d
ever done and I told him so. I screamed at him. I was about as angry as I get—and I get pretty angry. “I’ve got this awful wound in a totally unmentionable place and you think it’s funny! I can’t sit down or lie down or even ride a horse. For all I know, it’ll never get better and I’ll never be on a horse again!”

I sometimes have what people refer to as a “flair for the dramatic,” which is a nice way of saying I exaggerate. I knew I’d ride again, but it had been almost a week since I had and it was going to be a lot more weeks until I could and I’ve got to say, it felt like a lifetime.

Anyway, Red must have gotten my point because he told me he was sorry and said I should relax and take a little time to myself—as if that hadn’t been exactly what I’d been trying to do. He went back into the stable. I climbed up on the fence again and perched very carefully and read the cards from Lisa and Carole. They should have made me feel better, but they didn’t.

The problem was that my friends were having wonderful times and they told me so. Lisa had been out to dinner with Skye Ransom! That’s every girl’s dream come true. Don’t get me wrong. I was happy for Lisa, all right, but I was unhappy for me. Things didn’t improve when I learned that Carole was having a blast in New York.

Never mind the Skye Ransom part. Just think how you’d feel if one of your two best friends was in glamorous Los Angeles and the other one was in exciting New York, and you were stuck in Willow Creek!

I carefully got down off the fence and walked back through the paddock. I needed to be someplace by myself and somehow it didn’t seem right for me to be in a beautiful place like the paddock when I was feeling so gloomy. I sneaked into the stable, climbed up the ladder to the loft, and lay down in a soft pile of hay.

I probably went to sleep. I was only vaguely aware of voices downstairs. First of all, Red was droning on and on about how to put tack on a pony. Then there were other sounds and I might possibly have heard Red yell upstairs about leaving. I’m being as honest as I can and I’ve got to tell you that I’m just not sure about that one. I was vaguely aware of the sounds of the younger riders fetching their lunches from the refrigerator and then I could hear them talking. I should have gone down to be with them, but by then I was definitely asleep because I was having this wonderful dream about riding on a movie set in New York with Skye Ransom. My dream was much more interesting than anything the little kids were saying.

Anyway, the first thing I really remember is nothing. That’s an odd way to put it, but that was what I thought of when I opened my eyes. There was nothing. No sounds at all.

A stable is usually a pretty noisy place. The horses stomp, snort, whinny, and neigh. And the riders make all sorts of sounds, especially little kids who are prone to shrieks. No sounds means no riders and no horses and
when I realized that, I knew for sure that something was wrong.

I sat up and looked at my watch. It was 12:30. That meant that the kids should have been having a quiet time after lunch, but not
that
quiet. The silence meant there were no horses and no ponies in the stable at all.

Mrs. Reg was running errands; Max was on a picnic with the older riders; Red was at the dentist. That meant I was in charge, but where were my charges and where were their ponies? That was the question I had to answer right away.

W
HEN
THINGS
ARE
going wrong, my mind can race pretty fast. So can I. I slid down that ladder so fast I picked up three splinters and I never even noticed them until the next day!

“Hey, kids! Where are you?”

Dumb question. If nobody’s there, nobody can answer.

It didn’t get any better with the next question.

“Ponies? Are you around? Hello????”

See what I mean. Like I said, though, I’m being honest here so you might as well know
all
the dumb things I did.

I thought maybe they might have let the ponies out into one of the exercise rings. Nope. One of the paddocks? Nope. The indoor ring? Nope. The field? I climbed up on one of the fences to see as far as I could. There was no sign of them.

About this time, it occurred to me that if the kids had gone someplace on horseback, they’d need to have their ponies tacked up so I checked the tack room. That’s when it really hit me. All of the ponies’ tack was gone. That meant, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the kids were riding the ponies and since I couldn’t see where they were, they had to be far away and if they were far away, I was in big trouble. Even worse, they could be, too.

I love trail rides of all kinds, but you’ve got to know what you’re doing to take a horse beyond the limits of a riding ring and these kids were just beginners. Not only that, they were just beginners who couldn’t possibly be strong enough to tighten their ponies’ girths enough to ride safely. The first thought that entered my mind was an image of Leslie falling off her pony. It wasn’t a pretty sight and it scared me more than anything else that had happened in the previous five minutes since I’d awakened in the hayloft.

If the riders weren’t in the paddocks and the fields around Pine Hollow, they had to be in the woods somewhere. That’s when I remembered Max asking Red about the coyote near the quarry. The image that came into my mind then was even worse than Leslie’s just being thrown.

I knew there was a possibility that absolutely nothing was going wrong and the kids were just having fun in the woods. I also knew that there were too many possible
dangers for me to think of counting on that. I had to get to them.

But how?

It was while I was pondering that question that I went into the locker area and saw the note they’d left. It was even worse than I’d thought.