Horsenapped! (6 page)

“Three!” she said out loud, scoring herself harshly. In a way, though, she felt that the mistake helped her. It reminded her that she could make mistakes—even bad
ones—and she’d have to pay attention. She’d been lucky once; she might not be lucky a second time.

After the second jump, the trail turned uphill toward the woods. And there, right before the path entered the woods, was the third obstacle. It was a steep bank about three feet high. The horses couldn’t jump it or even go around it. They had to climb it.

Pepper slowed to a walk and, without hesitation, began the climb. Lisa let him do the work. The only thing she had to do was stay in the saddle. To accomplish that, she leaned forward, almost to his neck. Up he went. “Ten,” she said, but she knew it was Pepper who had earned it, not her.

The path through the woods and across the creek was a familiar one. She and Stevie and Carole had ridden it many times. On summer days, they liked to stop at the creek, take off their boots, and cool their feet. This was a hot summer day, but there was no time to stop. Pepper looked longingly at the fresh water.

“Later,” she told him. “Do what I tell you now, and I’ll give you a whole bucketful of water when we get back to the stable.” He didn’t hesitate. He proceeded right through the shallow, but swift, water and they continued along the trail.

There was a long straightaway ahead, and a jump coming up, Lisa knew. Max hadn’t marked the map with the jumps, but logic told her this would be where they would
find the first jump set up in the woods. In preparation for it, Lisa brought Pepper to a trot so she could control his canter from the start. She signaled for a canter with one foot and kept the opposite calf on him. It worked like a dream and it paid off when they rounded the bend in the trail. There, just where she’d suspected she would find it, was a two-and-a-half-foot-high jump. Lisa and Pepper sailed right over it.

“Ten,” she told Pepper. This time, she took some of the credit for herself.

The trail followed the contour of the hill and then descended again to the creek. Lisa let Pepper walk across it and then began cantering again. She was having such a good time with his pleasant rocking gait that she barely noticed they’d almost reached the field again. Suddenly, Pepper slowed. He’d seen something she hadn’t. He’d spotted the sharp descent and if he’d gone at it at a canter, he could have taken a serious tumble. Instead, Lisa was unprepared for the sudden change of gait and she was afraid
she
was going to take a serious tumble.

It wasn’t easy to maintain balance when you weren’t prepared for a gait change, especially when that also meant the horse was climbing down a sharp hill. Lisa slid forward precariously and tilted off to the right. She clasped with her knees, but she was afraid it was too late. She tried to shorten the reins. She couldn’t, though, because Pepper was using his head for balance and he
needed freedom of movement. Lisa could feel herself going. She had to do something. She did the only thing she could do. She grabbed onto Pepper’s mane and held on for dear life. At that point, she completely lost her seat and she could feel her left leg coming right over the saddle. She was going down!

Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Pepper had managed to get down the hill and he was standing level, apparently waiting for Lisa to do the same. Quickly, she adjusted the weight on her right stirrup and used that, plus leverage from Pepper’s mane, to push herself back up and into the saddle. She found her left stirrup with her toe, settled into her seat, nudged Pepper with her heels, and it was as if nothing had ever happened.

“Nice recovery!” said a voice behind her. Lisa looked over her shoulder. It was Red O’Malley.

“Oh, thanks,” she said.

“You’re ten minutes out and you’ve got three to seven minutes to finish the course,” he said. “You’re doing fine and you’ll make it. See you later.”

With that, he seemed to disappear behind a bush. That was when Lisa remembered that all of the obstacles had judges at them, checking to make sure that the horses
and
riders made it over or across safely. It was Max’s policy to have the judges out of the way. They weren’t exactly hiding, but they weren’t in obvious
places. Lisa had just been so busy giving herself and Pepper scores that she’d forgotten about the judges altogether until Red had spoken. Lisa felt a flush of embarrassment. Then she shrugged her shoulders. What did it matter? She and Pepper had made it over all of the obstacles safely. That’s what counted.

Lisa nudged Pepper into a canter. It was slow and easy, just right to clear the next two jumps. Five minutes after she’d seen Red, she rode smoothly across the finish line.

“Go!” Mrs. Reg said to Anna McWhirter, who was just starting the course. Anna and her pony bolted across the starting line, heading for the trail Lisa had just completed.

“How was it?” Stevie asked excitedly. “Did you have any trouble?”

Lisa grinned. “Nah,” she said. “It was just like you told me. I set the mark you all have to come up to.”

“How many faults?” Stevie asked suspiciously.

“None,” Lisa told her.

“I knew you could do it!” Carole said. She leaned over from her perch on Starlight and gave Lisa a hug. “This is your event!”

“Oh, you’ll both do wonderfully, too,” Lisa said. “And I wish I could be out on the course watching you.”

“No, there’s something more important you have to do,” Stevie said.

“Oh, what’s that?” Lisa asked. She was suspicious because
the look on Stevie’s face said it was something mysterious. Then Lisa remembered that there
was
something mysterious going on—the horsenapping.

“Stevie, you’re next!” Max said sharply.

“Wish me luck!” Stevie said, waving to Lisa and Carole.

“You’ve got it!” Carole assured her.

Carole watched Lisa walk her horse to cool him down near the starting line waiting for Stevie to get the go-ahead signal. While they waited, Lisa told them both as much as she could about the trail and the obstacles. She particularly warned them about the downhill obstacle coming out of the woods. Then, Lisa and Carole cheered Stevie on until Mrs. Reg’s handkerchief flew downward and Stevie headed for the first jump. The last thing Lisa and Carole saw before Stevie was out of sight was that she was aimed too far to the right for the first jump.

“Oh, no,” Lisa said.

“Don’t worry,” Carole told her. “Stevie will do just fine. She always thinks of everything. Now, here’s what she’s thought of for you …”

C
AROLE WAS HAVING
a hard time. It was easy for her to tell herself that this was Starlight’s first competition and he’d do better in the future. That was something that was easy to say, but it wasn’t very comforting. Starlight wasn’t doing well and Carole was sure it was her fault.

He’d refused one jump because he’d been startled by a butterfly just before he was supposed to jump. Then, he’d insisted on getting something to drink in the creek. Both times, Carole thought she saw the judge pursing her lips. That was all she needed! Taking a drink in the creek amounted to a refusal. Now, about halfway through the course, Starlight was suddenly hurrying. She’d have to bring him in at a walk not to beat the time, and walking on the open trail was breaking gait under Max’s rules. That meant another fault.

“It’s okay, boy. I know you’re doing your best. You did okay yesterday. You just like the showy events better, with lots of people in the ring to admire you, right?”

As if to answer her, Starlight approached the next jump smoothly and cleared it by at least two feet.

“Ahh,” Carole said. “You’ve heard that there will be jumping tomorrow. You want to win that one? Okay, then, I’ll give you a chance. But for now, let’s finish up properly. I want a nice, even canter.”

Starlight responded to her voice. Max always told his riders that their horses couldn’t understand English. And although Carole thought there were some things they understood very well indeed, they all understood tone of voice. Carole suspected that Starlight was as disappointed in his performance as she was in hers. He seemed glad to know she wasn’t angry with him. Now she looked at her watch and held her breath. According to her watch, she’d been on the trail for twelve and a half minutes. Would it be possible for Starlight to take thirty seconds to cross the short stretch of field to the finish line at a canter? She held her breath.

“Thirteen minutes, fifteen seconds,” Max said as she crossed the finish line.

Carole let out her breath. She might have more than a few jump faults, but at least she and Starlight had made it in within the time limit.

Carole dismounted and walked Starlight around the
paddock to cool him down. Several of the other riders were doing the same thing. She expected to see Stevie there, too, but she wasn’t in sight.

As she came around the second time, she saw both of her friends, standing at the fence. At first, she thought they were waving to her, but they weren’t. They were waving
at
her. They obviously wanted to talk to her. Maybe they’d heard about her poor performance on the cross-country course and they wanted to console her. She was fine, though, really. She just waved back.

The flailing arms didn’t stop. Carole turned Starlight around and walked to her friends.

“It’s Veronica!” Stevie hissed.

“Yeah, she’s not there!” Lisa added.

This didn’t make much sense to Carole. Right before she’d left on the cross-country course, she’d told Lisa that she should call Veronica, on some pretext. The girls wanted her to talk to Veronica to see if, by any chance, the horsenappers had gotten in touch with her. If they had called Veronica, then it was a sure bet they’d called everybody and then there would be nothing The Saddle Club could do to help the horses. It would be totally in the hands of the owners and, maybe, the police.

“What are you talking about?” Carole asked.

“I called Veronica, just like you said,” Lisa began. “But she wasn’t there.”

“So?”

Carole still couldn’t see anything to be worried about. But when Lisa continued, Carole understood. “I spoke with their housekeeper. It turns out that Mr. and Mrs. diAngelo are out of town for the day. So, the housekeeper is in charge of Veronica. She sounded totally frantic when I asked for Veronica and started blurting out all kinds of things, but the gist of it was that Veronica is missing! The housekeeper said she’d disappeared right after breakfast and they hadn’t heard a word from her and they are terribly worried.”

“Yeah,” Stevie said. “What if these creeps aren’t just horsenappers? Like, they think they’ve struck it rich when they realize they actually have
the
horse belonging to
the
diAngelos, so they get greedy and decide to swipe their daughter, too.”

“Veronica? Kidnapped?” Carole said numbly as the idea sank in.

“Wait a minute,” Lisa said. “The maid didn’t say anything about a ransom note. We don’t
know
she’s been kidnapped …”

“But we don’t know she hasn’t been!” Stevie said.

“Can we take the chance?” Carole asked. “I mean, if both her parents are out of town, who
is
there to help her?”

“I think we’d better have a Saddle Club meeting and we’d better not have it right here,” Stevie said, glancing around. “The paddocks have ears!”

Carole decided Starlight had cooled down enough.
She put him in his stall, cross-tied him, loosened his girth, and the three girls headed for the hayloft. It was a quiet place where they could talk without anybody overhearing them. Stevie moved bales of hay around so they could sit in a close circle.

“Come on,” she invited her friends. “We have to figure out what to do.”

“It’s obvious what we have to do,” Lisa said. “We have to figure out if Veronica really was kidnapped.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Stevie said. “We have to assume she was and save her. Otherwise, it might be too late.”

“Fine, fine,” Carole agreed. “But just how do you propose to save her? We don’t even know where to begin looking.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that,” Stevie said. “See, the way I figure it, the horses, and Veronica, have to be nearby. I wasn’t absolutely sure of that until Veronica disappeared. The horsenappers would only have taken Veronica if they’d been in the area. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have risked coming back. So, they’re here, and what does that mean?”

“Willow Creek’s a pretty small town,” Lisa reminded Stevie.

“Yes, so there’s no way they can be hanging out in any of the houses or farms. We know everybody. Somebody would notice them. Therefore, they’re not in a house.”

“Therefore, they’re hiding out in the woods,” Carole said.

“Precisely!” Stevie announced. “So let’s go find them!”

“How?” Lisa asked.

“Horseback, of course,” Carole said.

“Of course,” Stevie said, her eyes gleaming with excitement.

“Of course,” Lisa concluded.