Horse Spy (11 page)

As they entered the woods, it suddenly grew much darker. The dense greenery overhead nearly blocked out the sun. The horses were forced to slow to a walk, as the horse they were following had done.

And the trail rose again, too, twisting into a series of hairpin turns as it ascended the steep hillside. This was the
steepest and most dangerous part of the whole Rocky Trail. And it was where they finally spotted their quarry.

“Hey! Who’s there?” Stevie cried, gazing at the rider hurrying up the hill high above them.

The only answer the rider gave was to strike the horse with a riding crop. The willing horse flinched but responded, clambering up the treacherous hillside even faster.

“You’re going too fast!” Carole cried. “You’ll hurt the horse!”

Once again the rider struck the horse with the crop.

“That guy’s nuts!” Stevie said.

“That guy’s a girl,” Karya said. “Or a woman, really.”

“Who would do something like that?” Lisa asked.

“Someone who’s nuts,” Stevie said.

“That makes sense,” Lisa agreed.

“No, it doesn’t,” said Carole. “It’s dangerous.”

“So who is it and why?” Stevie said.

“I don’t know, but I know we’ll find out,” Carole said. All worries about herself and her friends fled from Carole’s mind. There was no way she would allow any rider to put any horse in that much peril. “Stevie, isn’t there another—”

“Yep! Come on, Karya—we’re going to cut them off at the pass!”

At that moment they came to a Y in the path. The main fork of the path continued up the hill, following more switchbacks to the crest, where the wild rider had gone. The other, straighter segment of the trail actually went around the hill. It was a longer route but an easier way to get to the top, something an inexperienced rider unfamiliar with the trails and the terrain would not know.

“Karya and I will go this way. Lisa, you and Carole keep after her!” Stevie said.

The riders split up. Carole looked ahead anxiously, still wondering who on earth would ride the way that woman was riding. And then the horse came into an open area where the sunshine streamed into the woods, almost like a spotlight. It was impossible not to recognize the horse when it was highlighted that way.

“Polaris!” Carole said in a loud whisper.

“Frieda?” said Lisa.

It was. They recognized Frieda, the beginning rider who hadn’t known to keep her heels down and toes in as recently as a week before. Now there was no doubt about it: The woman was riding like a champion. The only thing wrong with what she was doing was that the way she was riding, she was just about guaranteed to hurt the horse.

Carole called out to her as loudly as she could. “Frieda! It’s us! It’s me, Carole!” she yelled. “You can’t go that fast. It’s dangerous!”

In response, Frieda once again took the riding crop to Polaris’s flank, and this time she whacked him viciously.

And then Carole knew one other thing: Frieda didn’t care.

“We’ve got to stop her!” Carole said to Lisa. She didn’t have to say it twice.

Without saying a word to each other, Carole and Lisa urged their horses up the hill.

“W
HAT
’
S GOING ON
?” Karya asked.

“I don’t know,” said Stevie as the two of them rode as fast
as they safely could along the trail. “But whatever it is, it isn’t good.”

“So, tell me what you do know.”

“Well, I just realized who that horse and rider are—Polaris and Frieda.”

“That’s the woman we met, and she’s riding one of the champion horses, right?” Karya asked.

“Right,” said Stevie.

“So, what’s wrong with that?”

“For one thing, it’s not her horse. For another, the last we knew, she was a beginning rider, and she’s got that valuable horse riding on a dangerous trail at a pace that is sure to get at least one of them, probably the horse, hurt really badly.”

“Why would she do that?”

And that was the question to which Stevie needed an answer. She shook her head. Nothing was making any sense. All she knew was that there wasn’t any time to waste.

“We could really use some help here!” she said, thinking out loud.

“I think I can do something about that!” said Karya, reaching for her belt.

Stevie hit herself on the forehead. Why hadn’t she thought of that? They could bring the full force of the security agents of the ADR to their aid instantly!

Still moving uphill at a rapid clip, Karya switched on her walkie-talkie. She was instantly inundated with a barrage of clicks, buzzes, and whistles, followed by several angry and insistent voices.

She spoke into the machine. Someone answered her. She
issued rapid-fire instructions in a language that meant nothing to Stevie, and then she looked puzzled as she held the device to her ear. “Huh?” she said.

She spoke again, nodded, then hooked the transmitter back onto her belt so that she could listen for progress while keeping both hands on Barq’s reins.

“They tell me they’ve already got the helicopters deployed,” she said after a moment.

“Won’t do much good in these thick woods,” said Stevie.

“Well, it might scare that woman, Frieda.”

“Maybe,” said Stevie. “But I wish I knew what was going on.”

“Well, why would she ride that other girl’s horse?”

“I have no idea—unless she was trying to steal it … Oh, my,” Stevie said, a light breaking over her.

“What?”

Before Stevie could answer, Karya’s walkie-talkie buzzed. Karya took it off her belt and responded into the mouthpiece.

While Karya spoke with the agent on the other end, Stevie’s mind raced. She wished both that she’d been smarter to begin with and that she’d studied Arabic.

“What’s going on?” she asked when Karya stopped talking.

“He said they are after the person who is chasing us.”

“Nobody’s chasing us. We’re chasing someone!” said Stevie.

“That’s what I told him,” Karya said. “And he said the helicopters are getting closer.”

“Not to us, they aren’t,” Stevie said, vaguely aware of the distant sound of helicopters—still way too far in the distance
to be menacing anyone. “Come on, we’d better get a move on!” Stevie nudged Belle, who once again obediently responded and picked up her pace.

“Hurry, Belle, hurry!”

On the other side of the hill, Carole and Lisa were beginning to gain a bit on Polaris and Frieda. The horse was a dressage specialist, which meant that he could ride elegantly, but that didn’t guarantee the kind of stamina needed for a mountain chase.

“Frieda, stop now!” Carole called fruitlessly.

“What’s going on?” Lisa asked, utterly confused by the very strange turn of events.

“She’s a spy,” Carole said. “We thought she was just a student, but she’s a spy!”

“How can she be spying on Karya when she’s running ahead of us?” Lisa asked, following Carole as well as she could.

“Not Karya,” said Carole.

“Who’s she spying on, then?” Lisa asked.

“Polaris!” said Carole.

“What’s Polaris got to do with spying?” asked Lisa.

“Later—I’ll explain later,” said Carole, carefully guiding Starlight along the final rocky ascent.

Lisa sighed. She’d figure it out later. For now, she just had to follow, and it wasn’t easy. Prancer wasn’t made for riding on this kind of terrain any more than Polaris was. She could get badly hurt, and Lisa didn’t want to risk that.

Badly hurt
. The phrase stuck in her mind.
Badly hurt
. That could happen to Polaris. There was only one person who
would want Polaris badly hurt. There was only one person who hated Polaris and who would see it as a good thing if Polaris was put out of commission, either temporarily or permanently. It could only be Mrs. Walker.

Mrs. Walker hated Lucy Hatfield, hated Mrs. Hatfield, and hated Polaris, the only real competition her daughter had. The girls didn’t hate each other, but the mothers did.

“She’s spying for Mrs. Walker!” Lisa blurted out.

“That’s what I said!” Carole retorted. “Now, pay attention. There’s another patch of rocks ahead!”

Lisa paid attention.

“Where are you?” Karya spit into the walkie-talkie in Arabic. Even though she couldn’t understand the language, Stevie knew exactly what Karya was saying, because she was also looking up at the sky, hoping to see a helicopter coming to their aid.

“No!” Karya called out. Annoyed, she stuck the walkie-talkie on her belt again.

“They keep telling me they’re closing in and have the kidnapper in their sights, but there’s no sign of them. I don’t know what’s going on and neither do they.”

“Then we’re just going to have to do this ourselves,” said Stevie. She gave Belle one final kick and the horse sprang up the last ridge of the hillside, coming to a stop where the trail opened out into a small hilltop meadow.

Everyone was there.

Frieda was on Polaris, standing in the middle of the field. Carole and Lisa appeared out of the woods on the far side.

“You’re a spy!” Lisa called out.

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” said Frieda. “Just helping a friend even the playing field for her daughter.”

“By endangering a helpless animal?” Carole said.

“I wouldn’t put it that way, either,” said Frieda.

“Well, you were galloping along a rocky trail,” Stevie said. “That’s dangerous. You could have killed Polaris.”

“I never intended to kill him,” Frieda said. “I just wanted to borrow him for a few days. And I want to thank you three for all the help you gave me.”

“Not like you needed our riding lessons,” Carole said.

“Hardly,” Frieda agreed. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to pretend to be a bad rider when you’re not?”

“You nearly had us fooled,” said Lisa.

“I had you
completely
fooled,” Frieda responded.

She was right about that.

“Well, we’ve got
you
fooled now,” said Stevie. “You can’t get away from us. And we’ll protect Polaris.”

“I’ve already won,” said Frieda. “Polaris picked up a stone way down at the bottom of the hill. He’s good and lame by now. I don’t have to borrow him. He’ll never be able to perform in the show, and that’s all we ever really wanted. And there’s nothing you can do about it. If you tell someone, I just say I took Polaris out for a ride. So what? Okay, I didn’t have the authority to do it, but they can’t throw me in jail. What’s Max going to do? Ban me from the stable? I don’t plan on coming back anyway. And even if you do say anything, I’ll be long gone by the time you get back to Pine Hollow. So thanks for all your help—I’d never have been able to do it without you. Good-bye.”

With that, before anybody could stop her, Frieda slid down
out of Polaris’s saddle and walked straight into the thick underbrush that surrounded the hilly meadow. The girls couldn’t follow her on horseback and didn’t want to. They wanted to look after Polaris.

Carole slid out of Starlight’s saddle and walked over to where Polaris stood, favoring his right forefoot, confirming Frieda’s assertion that he’d been lamed.

Stevie looked at the woods where Frieda had disappeared and explained to Karya what was going on.

“The highway’s right down there, maybe a half a mile. I’m sure she’s got a trailer and a truck waiting. She’ll get away all right, but she won’t get away with this.”

“She won’t get away, either,” Karya corrected Stevie.

Once again she clicked on her walkie-talkie and spoke into it. She looked puzzled, glancing expectantly up at the sky.

When she was done talking, she told the girls that her agents swore they had the kidnapper surrounded.

“Kidnapper?” Lisa asked. “Frieda’s a horsenapper.”

“Well, they don’t know that,” said Karya. “But anyway, they assure me that nobody is escaping their—what’s the word?—dragnet?”

“That’s the word,” said Stevie.

F
RIEDA WAS GONE
, but Polaris was safe. Their dash up the treacherous hill had paid off, as had Stevie’s good memory of the paths, which had enabled them to surround Polaris and Frieda. Maybe Frieda had gotten away—just for now, if Karya’s agents were doing their job—but the girls had Polaris.

Carole patted Polaris’s neck reassuringly. The other girls joined her.

Polaris stood nearly motionless except for his chest, which heaved while he caught his breath from the exhausting chase up the mountain.

Carole picked up his reins and held him near the bit while she patted him. “It’s okay, boy. We’re here and we’re going to look after you.”

“We won’t let anything else happen to you,” said Stevie.

“We shouldn’t have let this happen, either,” said Lisa.

“We didn’t
let
it happen,” said Stevie.

“Of course we did,” Lisa said. “In fact, we practically gave Frieda instructions on how to do it!”

“What do you mean?” Stevie asked.

“Don’t you remember what she said? How she couldn’t have done it without us? Well, we told her all about the trails, especially this one that leads out to the highway.”

“I guess I did that,” said Stevie.

“And then I told her she’d be able to steal the Regnery family silver today because everybody was going to be so busy looking after Karya.”