Lucky Horse (6 page)

“Did you see that sunset?” Carole asked as her father came trotting up the path, carrying the telescope over one shoulder.

“I think I saw the grand finale about fifty feet below, through the trees.” Colonel Hanson’s breath came heavily.

Carole sighed. “It was so beautiful! If we’d gotten up here about five minutes earlier, we could have seen the whole thing from here. At least we saw most of it on the way up.”

Colonel Hanson surveyed the darkening sky around the top of the mountain. “Now we won’t have to wait as long for the stars. I hear they come out up here fast, just like flashbulbs at a rock concert.”

“Is that so?” Carole couldn’t help smiling at her father’s choice of words. He sounded as if he were more at home at rock concerts than on a Marine Corps base.

“Yep.” Colonel Hanson grinned. “Let’s set up the telescope so we can see them up close.”

Carole turned in a circle. The bare top of the mountain offered a long-range view for miles in every direction. “Which way should we point it?”

“Let’s try east,” Colonel Hanson suggested, walking over to the opposite side of the mountaintop from where the sun went down. “Planets usually follow the path of the sun, more or less, so they should rise in the east, just like it does.”

Carole followed her father and held the body of the telescope steady while he adjusted the legs. He aimed the lens at a point in the distant sky and smiled at Carole.

“You take the first watch,” he said, pointing to an eyepiece on the side of the telescope.

Carole bent over and looked through the lens. She expected to see a million tiny lights twinkling, but all she saw was a circle of dark gray.

“I can’t see anything,” she said, disappointed.

“Let me have a look,” Colonel Hanson replied. “Maybe it’s not adjusted right.”

Carole moved back and let her father have a turn. “Hmm,” she heard him say. “I see something, but it’s nothing like a star.” He tilted the telescope to the right. “There it is again.… It’s a big cloud bank!”

He straightened up and frowned at Carole. “I don’t get it. I checked the electronic barometer twice before we came up here. It showed no signs of a front coming through, yet I’m seeing a whole bunch of clouds.”

“Maybe a fast storm system’s moving in. We learned about those in the meteorology unit of earth science last year.”

“I don’t think that’s possible with the barometer reading as high as it was.” Colonel Hanson shook his head. “I think it must be just a quick-moving part of a ‘partly cloudy’ forecast. Why don’t we sit down and wait for it to clear?”

“Okay,” said Carole. She was happy to be up on Mount Stringfellow. It was beautiful, with or without the stars. She sat down close to the telescope, and her father sat beside her.

“Want to tell knock-knock jokes?” he asked.

“No, Dad. That’s Stevie’s thing. Let’s play a game. Let’s take turns naming all the movies with one-name titles.”

“Okay,” Colonel Hanson chuckled. “You go first.”

“Amistad,”
said Carole.

“Rocky,”
her father replied.

“Mulan,”
Carole shot back.

“Indiscreet.”
Colonel Hanson laughed.

“In the Street?”
Carole frowned. “Dad, that’s three words.”

“No, Carole.
I-n-d-i-s-c-r-e-e-t. Indiscreet
. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.”

“The movies have to be from the age of sound, Dad,” Carole warned with a grin.

“That one is—it’s from 1958.”

“Well, then, the last twenty-five years. Something I could have seen on the late show.”

“Okay, okay.”

The night remained dark and without stars. Carole and her dad played on, laughing, almost forgetting about the telescope altogether. Finally Carole saw something on the distant horizon.

“Look!” she said, rising to her feet. At first she was afraid it was something ominous, like a thundercloud, but then she realized her father had been right. What she was seeing was the last edge of a cloud cover, and the breeze that had suddenly begun to blow across Mount Stringfellow was sweeping the clouds ahead of it.

“I think it’s going to clear up!” she cried.

They stepped back over to the telescope. When they looked up just a few minutes later, the sky was filled with a billion glorious stars, twinkling just like camera flashes at a rock concert, only never going out.

“Oh, wow!” Carole breathed.

“Now we’re cooking,” said Colonel Hanson. “Let’s see what we can bring into focus.”

Carole lay on her back and looked up into the sky while her father adjusted the focus on the telescope. She felt as if the stars were so close she could reach out and touch them.

“Awwrriiiight!”
her father cried. “Carole! Come have a look at this!”

Carole hurried over to the telescope. She looked through the eyepiece, expecting to see more glittering stars. Instead she saw a beautiful yellow planet with
deep silver rings around it. “Gosh,” she cried, “the rings of Saturn!”

“Pretty impressive, huh?” Her father asked, smiling.

“I can’t believe that’s really Saturn. And I’m actually seeing it right now, with my own eyes!”

“You sure are. The light that we’re seeing from Saturn right now left the planet back when we were having supper. It takes a little over an hour to get to Earth. Want to see if we can find Jupiter?”

“Absolutely!”

Carole stepped back to let her father readjust the telescope.

“Can you name the planets of the solar system in order?” he asked as he turned the knobs on the eyepiece.

“Uh, I used to be able to, but I get confused after Jupiter,” Carole admitted.

Colonel Hanson grinned. “Just remember My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets.”

“ ‘My very educated mother …’ ” Carole frowned a moment, then smiled. “Oh, I get it. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Cool, Dad. Now I’ll never forget again.”

“Okay, come have a look at this.”

Carole looked through the eyepiece again. This time, instead of a yellow planet with silver rings, she saw a huge golden striped ball with a pink swirl on one side. “Wow! Is that Jupiter?”

“None other.”

“It’s so big!” she cried. “It practically fills the whole lens.”

“It’s the biggest planet in the solar system,” her father explained. “In fact, the gravitational pull of Jupiter helps keep Earth in her orbit. How’s that for a big ecosystem?”

“Unbelievable,” breathed Carole.

They looked at the stars for the rest of the evening, finding Mars and Venus and some nebulae that could be seen only with a telescope. Carole could have stargazed forever, but when Colonel Hanson checked his watch and saw that it was eleven o’clock, he suggested they turn in.

“I think we’d better go back to our camp now, honey,” he said. “It’s been a long day, and it’s time for us to hit the hay.”

“I thought we were hitting the solar-powered down, Dad,” Carole teased.

“Hay, down, whatever,” her father replied.

Though she hadn’t realized it till then, Carole actually was pretty tired. “I guess you’re right, although stargazing really makes the time fly by.” She smiled at her father. “This was one of the best nights I’ve spent in my entire life!”

“Me too, honey.” Colonel Hanson smiled. “And we’ll have several more. Right now, however, it’s time to turn in. If you’ll light the way down the trail, I’ll
carry the telescope. Get my solar flashlight over there.”

Carole ran to where her father pointed and picked up his solar flashlight. She turned it on, expecting a bright beam, but all she got was a dim flicker, then darkness.

“Guess what, Dad?” she said with a laugh. “Looks like your solar power set with the sun.” She clicked on her own flashlight, into which she’d just put fresh D batteries. “But my old battery-operated one works just fine!”

“Guess you can’t improve on everything,” her father said with a laugh as she lit their way down the mountain.

C
RAAAAACK
!

Stevie and Lisa bolted upright in their sleeping bags at the same time, each blinking at the other in the dim hayloft.

Craaaack—splat. Craaack, craaack, craaack! Splat, splat, splat!
Then—the high yip of a horse in pain.

“Stevie!” Lisa cried. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” Stevie hurriedly unzipped her sleeping bag. “But that was Belle. I’d know her voice anywhere.”

Stevie leaped up from the hay and crawled down the ladder. Lisa followed close behind. They switched on the light in Belle’s stall and peeked over the door. The pretty bay mare was standing there with several CD cases scattered around her left foreleg.

“What on earth?” Stevie blinked as she hurried into the stall. She rubbed Belle’s nose and felt her legs, making sure the startled horse had not been injured.

“Is she okay?” Lisa asked.

“I think so,” Stevie replied. “But she’s as mystified as I am. She doesn’t find CDs in her stall every day.”

Lisa gathered the cases up while Stevie calmed Belle. They were all Stevie’s—mostly the heavy metal music she’d brought with her—but how had they gotten into Belle’s stall? Frowning, Lisa looked up at the ceiling. There, exactly where Stevie’s feet would have been in the hayloft, was a hole big enough for the CDs to fit through.

“I know what happened,” Lisa said, pointing to the ceiling. “You must have kicked them through that hole in your sleep.”

Stevie peered up at the hayloft. “Well, I was having a dream about dancing sandwiches.”

“Dancing sandwiches?” Lisa blinked.

“Yeah. The turkey and cheeses were waltzing with the chocolate coconut surprises.” Stevie shrugged. “Maybe I overdid it a little at dinner last night.”

“Oh, Stevie,” said Lisa. “What if these CDs had fallen in some other horse’s stall? What if another horse had gotten hurt?”

“I know.” Stevie shuddered. “We were awfully
lucky. Although Belle does have a little bump on her withers. Look.”

Lisa watched as Stevie gently pressed a small swelling at the top of Belle’s shoulder. Belle flinched and again gave a short squeal of pain.

“Poor baby,” Stevie whispered, wrapping her arms around Belle’s neck. “I’m so sorry. I promise nothing like that will ever happen again.”

Belle nickered in reply.

“I think she’s okay,” Stevie said.

“Then let’s turn out her light so that she can get back to sleep,” suggested Lisa. “And we can do the same.”

“Okay.” Stevie gave Belle a final hug and turned out the light. Then both girls climbed back up the ladder. Lisa gave Stevie her CDs to store in a safe place.

“Maybe I’ll put them at the top of my sleeping bag instead of the bottom,” said Stevie. “Surely I won’t head-butt any off the hayloft in my sleep.”

“Not unless you start dreaming about sandwiches playing soccer,” Lisa giggled.

“Speaking of sandwiches”—Stevie sat up again—“are you hungry?”

“No.” Lisa sat up, too. “But I’m not sleepy anymore, either.”

“Me neither.” Stevie reached for the tray of
wrapped sandwiches. “Maybe a little snack will help me get sleepy again.”

Stevie ate another sandwich while Lisa made some notes on her to-do list. Then Stevie listened to one of her CDs while Lisa played Stevie’s electronic game.

“Are you sleepy yet?” Lisa asked after she’d killed off a hundred space raiders and saved planet Earth.

“What?” Stevie said loudly, holding out one earphone.

“I said, are you sleepy yet?”

Stevie shook her head. “I don’t think we should have had those sodas with dinner. They supposedly have a lot of caffeine.”

“Well, we had to drink something,” Lisa said. Suddenly she tilted her head to the floor below. “Listen!”

Stevie took her headphones off and tilted her head, too. Belle was shifting in her straw, having her own dream. The girls could hear the soft rasp of her breathing, broken by an occasional half whinny.

Stevie grinned. “Wonder what she’s dreaming about?”

“Dancing apples?” Lisa said with a giggle.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the stable this quiet,” Stevie whispered.

“Me neither,” said Lisa. “It’s kind of neat, isn’t it?”

Stevie nodded, and they both lay in their sleeping bags listening to the horses and talking quietly. They
fell asleep only when dawn rose up over the Virginia hills.

M
ILES AWAY
,
SNUG
in a sleeping bag deep in the Virginia wilderness, Carole awoke with a start. She was almost certain she’d just heard the soft whinny of a horse.
You must have been dreaming about Pine Hollow
, she told herself, but she sat up anyway. Though she was in the forest camping in a state-of-the-art tent, she was sure the sound had been real. Being careful not to disturb her sleeping father, she crawled out of her sleeping bag and stepped through the tent door. She smiled. There, just at the edge of their campsite, stood the shadowy form of the strawberry roan Appaloosa she’d met the day before.

His ears pricked up the moment he saw her. Slowly she began to walk toward him. He seemed happy to see her and took a few steps in her direction.

“Hi, boy,” she whispered as he came up and sniffed the top of her head. “What are you doing out so late?”