Lucky Horse (10 page)

“Hang on.” Stevie went to the hayloft ladder and scampered up. A few moments later she came back down with an extra red sweater she’d brought in case they got cold.

“I’ll tie this over his ears,” she said, letting herself into Starlight’s stall. “That should fix everything so it won’t be quite so loud.”

At first Starlight tossed his head at Stevie’s sweater, but he finally stood still while she positioned it over his ears and tied it under his chin.

“There!” she said, stepping back to admire her work. “What do you think?”

Lisa laughed at the sight. “He looks like someone’s grandmother, Stevie,” she giggled. “I’m glad Carole’s not here to see her horse wrapped in a babushka.”

Stevie shrugged. “She probably would think it was strange, but it seems to work. He’s calmer.”

“Maybe we should go see how everybody else is doing, since we’re already up,” Lisa suggested.

“Good idea,” agreed Stevie.

They started walking all around the big U of the stable. Most of the horses had gotten used to the guitars shrieking through the barn and had settled back down to go to sleep. Though Stevie’s music drowned out a lot of the thunder, the girls could still hear the rain beating down on the roof.

“I wonder if the roof has any leaks,” Stevie said, peering into Doc’s stall.

“Yes,” answered Lisa as she checked on Danny.

“How do you know?” said Stevie.

“Because Danny’s standing here in a big puddle.”

“Uh-oh.” Stevie frowned. “That won’t be good for his leg. We’d better get him out of there, and fast.”

Lisa ran to the tack room and got two cross-ties while Stevie put Danny’s halter on him and led him to the center of the aisle. Danny didn’t look as nervous about the music as he looked miserable from standing in a wet stall.

“Let’s get a rag and dry him off,” said Stevie as Lisa cross-tied him. “Then we’d better change his leg wrap.”

“Poor baby,” said Lisa. “He’s worked so hard to get well, and now he’s stuck in a leaky stall.”

Lisa dried Danny with a towel while Stevie found a clean leg wrap to replace the wet one. Just as she was
tying off one end, a heavy thunk came from the other side of the stable.

“Now what?” said Lisa. “I can barely catch my breath from one thing when something else goes wrong.”

“I don’t know. You go and see while I finish up here.”

Lisa left Stevie with Danny and hurried over to investigate. The thunk sounded as if it had come from Max’s office. Slowly Lisa cracked open the door and turned on the light.

“Oh no!” she cried. Someone had left the window open, and the wind had blown Max’s big bookcase over. About fifty horse books were scattered on the floor, wet from the rain blowing in the window.

“Gosh,” Lisa said, hurrying across the room and pulling the window shut. “I wonder what else could possibly go wrong tonight?”

She pushed the bookcase back against the wall and spread the books out on Max’s desk. They would have to dry before they could be reshelved. She and Stevie could take care of that in the morning.

She turned off the light, closed the door, and hurried back down the aisle. Stevie had just finished drying Danny off, and he looked clean and neat once again.

“That’s one lucky horse to have us taking care of him,” said Lisa, admiring Stevie’s leg wrap.

“Oh, it just makes up for the bad luck of being owned by Veronica,” Stevie muttered. “She probably would have just left him standing in a wet stall all night.”

Suddenly Lisa cocked her head to one side. “Do you hear that?”

“Yeah. It’s my favorite song on this whole album.”

“No, not the song. That other, fainter sound. That weird
scree, slam; scree, slam
.”

Stevie turned her head and listened. “Yeah, I do. Wonder what it is? It doesn’t sound like a horse.”

“It doesn’t sound like a bookcase falling over, either.” Lisa frowned. “Do you think it could be one of those spooky noises Max warned us about?”

“I don’t know. Let’s turn the music down a little and see where it’s coming from.”

They went to the office and turned down the PA system, then made a two-person patrol of the stable. Most of the horses were asleep again, and the girls felt as if they were suddenly all alone.
Scree, slam; scree, slam
. The eerie noise continued, now louder and echoing through the barn.

“Do you think it could be a ghost?” said Stevie as they came to a dark part of the stable where the overhead light had burned out.

Lisa felt the gooseflesh rise on her arms. “I don’t think so.” She looked up at the shadowy ceiling. “But I sure wish there was a light up there.”

“Remind me to change that lightbulb in the morning,” said Stevie in a whisper.

“Why are you whispering?” whispered Lisa.

“I don’t know. Probably the same reason you’re walking on tiptoe.”

Slowly the girls crept forward.
Scree, slam! Scree, slam!
The noise grew louder. Nothing they’d ever heard in a stable made a noise like that. Stevie was just about to grab Lisa’s hand and run back to the bright end of the stable when Lisa stopped.

“Stevie, look!” She pointed to the last stall in the row—a big empty one that Max occasionally used for a foaling stall. The shutter had not been latched securely, and every time the wind gusted, it blew out with a
scree
and swung shut with a
slam
. “There’s our ghost,” Lisa said with a laugh. “An unlatched shutter!”

“I knew it all along,” said Stevie as she stepped into the stall and closed the shutter tight.

“Yeah, right, Stevie.” Lisa rolled her eyes.

“The rain seems to be letting up,” Stevie said, drying her hands on her pants. “Let’s go turn the music off and see if we can dry out Danny’s stall. Then maybe we can go back to bed and get some rest ourselves.”

They went back to the office and turned off the PA system. The stable now echoed with an odd, empty silence, but the horses didn’t seem to mind. Most were
already either stretched out in their straw or dozing on their feet as Lisa and Stevie hurried back to Danny.

“I’ll muck out Danny’s stall if you’ll go get some dry straw for him to sleep on,” Stevie offered.

“Okay,” Lisa agreed.

Stevie forked up Danny’s wet straw while Lisa filled the big wheelbarrow. Because they worked together the job went quickly, and soon Danny was standing in a nice dry stall full of fresh straw. He gave a big sigh as Lisa and Stevie latched the door behind him.

“Sounds like he’s glad to get back to bed,” Lisa laughed.

“I will be, too,” yawned Stevie. “Do you know what time it is?”

Lisa shook her head.

“Well, we’ve got about an hour before the first riders start knocking on our door.”

“You’re kidding!” Lisa’s blue eyes looked red and tired. “That storm took most of the night?”

“The storm, plus Patch, plus Starlight, plus Danny …,” Stevie rattled off.

“Okay, okay,” Lisa said. “Let’s just hurry so we can at least get a nap before everybody starts arriving.”

They turned off the barn lights, but not before Stevie had untied Starlight’s babushka hat and let the big bay fall asleep without any headgear on.

“Did you ever get a chance to check on Belle?” Lisa asked as she trudged up the ladder.

“No. Did you check on Prancer?”

“Only for about five seconds,” Lisa yawned. “I will first thing in the morning, though.”

“You mean first thing in about forty-five minutes,” Stevie said as she fell into her sleeping bag.

“Right,” answered Lisa. She collapsed just the way Stevie had, then suddenly sat up. “Is your sleeping bag wet?” she asked.

“Yuccch,” Stevie replied, feeling the damp material with both hands. “It is.”

“Oh, no. Look.” Lisa pointed at the roof above their heads, where a rosy sliver of light was peeking through. “Guess who else had a leak in the roof of their stalls?”

“Arrggghhhh,”
Stevie cried as she rolled up in a dry blanket and closed her eyes, desperate to at least get twenty minutes of sleep before the next long day began.

“D
AD
! A
RE YOU
okay?” Carole could barely make out her father’s form.

“Yes, I just slipped and fell.” Her father turned and squinted at her through the driving rain. “Could you give me a hand?”

“Sure.” She hurried over to where he lay, her feet slurping through the slick mud. She held out her right hand and then, when he grabbed it, pulled back. He rose to his feet slowly, still carefully holding the telescope on his shoulder.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked again, raising her voice to be heard over the pounding rain.

“For somebody carrying a big metal telescope across the top of a mountain in an electrical storm, I’m doing
as well as can be expected,” he said with a small laugh.

Carole felt better immediately. As long as her father was still cracking jokes, everything was okay.

“Let’s see if we can find our trail again,” he called, shielding his eyes against the rain. “I think it’s over that way.”

“Okay, but let’s go more slowly so nobody will fall,” Carole called back.

Her father signaled another thumbs-up and began to pick his way carefully across the muddy mountaintop. Carole followed a few feet behind him. The rain was not falling as hard now, or as fast. Nor was the lightning so close. A strike of light and three seconds of silence before the rumble of thunder suggested that the storm was moving on. If they could just find their trail through the woods, they would be out of it altogether.

Suddenly she saw her father raise one arm and motion her forward.
He’s found the path
, she thought. She walked as quickly as she dared behind him. A second later she could see the tall shapes of trees all around them. They had made it! They had escaped Mount Stringfellow!

“Let’s hurry on to camp now,” her father called. “The wind’s blowing the storm away, but the lightning will probably hang around for a while. Just follow me!”

“Okay,” Carole replied.

She watched as her father scrambled down the path they’d climbed up so many hours before. His dark leather jacket blended in with the trees, but the white telescope bouncing on his shoulder acted like an arrow, pointing the way back to camp. She followed him past some familiar logs, then past a huge pine tree, then over a rocky place in the trail. She saw the telescope bob around the edge of a small clearing; then she stopped.

Suddenly she felt funny. Her heart began to beat faster. A strange, high-pitched whine hummed through the air, and she felt as if someone were trying to pull her into the sky by her hair.

“Dad!” she started to cry, but her throat seemed to close up around her words. An eerie blue light lit the clearing and her cheeks began to sting as if someone had slapped her. Her whole body started shaking, and she closed her eyes. A noise like a jet engine slammed into the ground behind her, shuddering the earth beneath her feet. Her brain seemed to spin.
What’s going on?
she wanted to cry.
A plane crash? An earthquake?
She felt weak all over, but she managed to open her eyes. To her horror, her father had disappeared again.

“Dad?” It took all her strength to speak, and her voice sounded funny and far away. She shook her head, then tried to hurry on through the clearing, her legs tingling all the way down to her toes.

“Carole!” she heard a faint voice calling. “Carole!

Are you all right?”

“I’m here, Dad.” She tried to see into the darkness. “Where are you?”

“Over here!”

She squinted. There, beneath a large oak tree, she saw the skinny white shape of the telescope. She hurried over. Her father lay on the ground beside it, his face etched with pain.

“What happened?” she gasped, gratefully sliding down in the mud beside him.

“Lightning struck right behind you! I turned around to run back to help you and tripped over that root.” Colonel Hanson winced. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” she said, her words still coming out slowly. “How about you?”

“I think I’ve sprained my ankle.”

She looked at his ankle. It was lying at an odd angle to the rest of his leg, looking far worse than sprained. “Oh, Dad,” she cried. “I think it might be broken.”

“No, it’s not broken,” Colonel Hanson said, out of breath. “Let’s just sit here a minute and think about how we can get out of this mess. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I don’t know,” Carole said woozily. “I feel strange.” Her heart was still beating rapidly, and her palms were clammy.
So that’s what almost being struck
by lightning is like
, she thought.
Wow. I must be really lucky
. She sat still for a long moment, letting the now gentle rain cool her hot face. After she’d taken a few deep breaths, her head seemed to clear and she felt more like her old self.
Okay
, she thought.
We’re in trouble and I’ve got to help out. How?
She stuffed her cold hands in her jacket pockets. Then she smiled as her fingers touched Starlight’s leg wrap. If she could bandage her father’s ankle with it, he might be able to hobble back to camp.

“Okay, Dad,” she said, turning to him. “Let’s see what that ankle really looks like. Hold the flashlight.”