Mystery Ride (9 page)

“Look at this,” said Lisa with a grin.

Stevie wondered how Lisa could be smiling at a time like this. But when she looked down she saw that there
was a set of bar-heeled prints leading to the jump. And then another set leading away on the same side.

“The thief jumped in, saw he was stuck, and jumped back out,” Lisa said. “This gives us catch-up time. It means he can’t be far ahead.”

“Great,” said Stevie grimly. “When we catch him, that prankster is going to get a piece of my mind.”

“Look,” Carole said. The dark bar-heeled prints led toward a trail that edged the woods.

“Excellent,” said Lisa, pressing her knees to Prancer’s flanks, encouraging her to trot.

Carole shook her shoulders, getting rid of the cricks that came from sleeping on the floor of the loft.

The trail ran into the forest.

“This is where we heard the hoofbeats on Thursday,” Lisa pointed out. “We were almost back to the barn when we heard those clops—the ones Stevie thought belonged to a jackrabbit.”

Stevie wondered if the mysterious hoofbeats had anything to do with the bar-heeled shoe prints they were following. But they couldn’t have, she thought, because the girls had heard the hoofbeats on Thursday, and the Mystery Weekend hadn’t begun yet. A spiderweb caught Stevie across the forehead, and she peeled it loose.

Truly, Stevie thought, it wasn’t easy to follow hoofprints
and trot at the same time. It was kind of like a competition event. Stevie leaned against Belle’s neck to avoid a low-hanging branch. “Branch,” she yelled as she pushed it out of her way.

Lisa saw the branch bob back in front of her. If she didn’t do something, it would knock her off Prancer’s back. “Whoa!” she yelled. She pulled on the reins and sank her weight into her heels. This was what Max called an emergency stop.

Prancer dug in her hooves and came to a halt.

“Yikes,” yelled Carole, pulling up Starlight behind her.

“It’s like a freeway pileup,” said Lisa.

“It’s a good thing I just had Starlight’s brakes tuned,” Carole said with a laugh.

“You’re telling me,” said Lisa, whose heart was still pounding. She looked at the threatening branch. It was naked except for a spot of red at the tip. Something about that red was familiar. Lisa reached up and pulled the branch toward her. It was a piece of red yarn. “Look!” She held it high so that Stevie and Carole could see, and then she put it back on the branch.

“We know we’re on the right trail now,” said Lisa.

Stevie turned back to the path. “You trot, I’ll look for clues,” she said to Belle. “Soon we’ll have that saddle back. I miss it just as much as you do.”

There were bar prints around the edge of a puddle. Then prints crushed into moist grass. Then a wet bar print on a fallen pale maple leaf.

“I saw two more pieces of yarn,” Lisa called.

There was a patch of gray sky ahead, and suddenly Stevie and Belle were trotting across an upland meadow filled with wiry silver grass. Stevie could feel Belle wanting to gallop, but Max had forbidden it.

At the other side of the meadow was a rider on a small gray horse. The rider was a blur of blue.

“There,” Stevie called back to Lisa and Carole. “On the other side of the field.”

When Stevie looked ahead again, the gray horse was jumping a fallen log. And then horse and rider disappeared.

“Let’s go,” Stevie said. She pressed her knees against the mare’s sides and put her heels down. Belle took off in a swift canter, her hooves pounding the ground. Stevie knew they’d catch the thief soon, because there was no way an ordinary horse could outrun Belle.

Stevie could see the log the gray horse had jumped. She urged Belle toward it. Belle’s stride lengthened and lightened.

They were sailing across the log when she saw the man
on the gray horse crashing down the trail ahead of her. He disappeared into a stand of hemlock trees.

Lisa and Prancer came flying over the log, followed by Carole and Starlight.

“He’s just ahead,” Stevie said. “In the trees.”

They trotted to the edge of the trees and saw the man at the far side of the grove. He must have heard them, because he urged the gray horse into a gallop.

“We can’t let him get away,” Stevie said. “Let’s gallop.”

Trotting beside her, Lisa shook her head. “Prancer might go crazy,” she said, Prancer was an ex-racehorse. Lisa had never ridden her all out, and she had promised Max that she wouldn’t until he gave her permission.

Stevie looked at Carole. But Carole shook her head. “Horse honor,” she shouted. Her words seemed to get lost in the trees.

“My saddle,” Stevie groaned, but she knew Carole was right.

Stevie, Lisa, and Carole trotted out of the hemlock grove, past a creek bed filled with rocks, and up a rise where the trail turned slippery and treacherous. They slowed to a walk. At the top of the rise they looked at a winding upland trail. The ground was dry, so there were no tracks. Up ahead was a fork in the trail.

“No tracks,” said Stevie forlornly. She wished that they had taken a chance and galloped.

“I haven’t seen any yarn in a while,” said Lisa.

“We’ll just have to guess,” said Carole. She was feeling guilty, wondering if maybe it would have been all right if they had galloped a bit.

“Let’s go left,” said Stevie without conviction.

Listlessly the horses turned left. They could tell that their riders were discouraged. Belle looked over her shoulder, back toward Pine Hollow, and Stevie knew that she was thinking about an afternoon nap.

“I just thought of something,” Stevie said. When Lisa and Carole turned, they saw that Stevie was pale.

“The rider wasn’t wearing red.” Stevie realized that her worst fears had come true. Her saddle was gone, and the person who had taken it wasn’t playing by the rules of the game.

“C
HEER UP
,” A
MIE
said to Stevie. “If you keep trying, you’re bound to make progress with the mystery.”

Great
, Stevie thought,
I’m being given advice by a little kid.
But she knew that Amie meant well, so she said, “Thanks, Amie. I appreciate your concern.”

Amie patted Stevie on the shoulder and said, “Don’t feel bad.”

Stevie felt terrible. She and Lisa and Carole had totally lost the trail, and then the lunch bell rang. Now she felt as if she’d never see her saddle again.

Mrs. Reg passed Stevie a cup of chili. “It’s my five-alarm chili,” Mrs. Reg said.

Stevie looked at the chili with concern. She didn’t like fiery food.

“Minus four alarms,” Mrs. Reg said with a smile. “In other words, this is one-alarm chili.”

“That’s what I like,” Stevie said. She slid the relish tray toward her so she could add cheddar cheese chunks, cucumber slices, bits of onion, and sour cream. Now that she thought of it, the crumbled egg looked good, too. And then she added some lettuce strips. And bacon bits. “Is this all?” she asked.

“I ran out of snails,” said Mrs. Reg with a laugh.

At the mention of snails a large “yeeeeeew” went up from the riders.

“But I have some octopus in the refrigerator,” Mrs. Reg said.

“That’s okay,” Stevie said. “Let’s save the octopus for our midnight snack.” She went back to the rock where Carole and Lisa were sitting.

“What a bummer,” Lisa said. Lisa was usually so neat, but now her wavy light brown hair was escaping from her ponytail, she’d gotten a smudge on her forehead, and there was a streak of mud on the knee of her breeches. All three of them were tired and frustrated, and so were their horses.

“We have to think,” Lisa said. “There must be a solution to this problem.”

“I’ve decided to give up thinking,” Stevie said. “It just makes me feel worse.”

“The way I see it is this,” said Lisa, keeping her voice low so that the other riders couldn’t hear. “If the rider we saw was the one who stole Nickel, then he should have been wearing red. That red yarn has got to be one of Max’s clues. A rider might snag his sweater in a horse stall, but no one leaves piece after piece of yarn in trees.”

“It’s just like Max to plant a lot of clues to make sure the younger riders don’t miss out,” Stevie said.

“That’s just what I was thinking,” Carole said.

“So why wasn’t the rider we saw wearing red?” Lisa asked. She looked carefully from Stevie to Carole, wondering if they were thinking what she was thinking.

“It’s creepy,” Stevie said softly.

“It’s crawly,” said Carole.

But Lisa had to keep going to the end of her thought. “The man who was riding away from us was a real thief, not a pretend thief. He’s not part of the Mystery Weekend.”

“So if he’s a real thief, and not Max’s thief …,” Carole said slowly.

Stevie turned pale. “It means all of my suspicions were right. My saddle was really stolen.”

“How can a man on horseback steal a saddle?” Carole said practically. “There’s no way he could carry it.”

Lisa’s eyes grew large. “That’s easy,” she whispered. “He took the saddle this morning, right before I saw him riding away.”

“He rode up bareback, stole my saddle, and rode away on it,” said Stevie.

“It’s so simple,” said Lisa softly. “The woods around here are filled with trails and bridle paths. It’d be so easy for him to disappear.”

“Those hoofbeats we heard on Thursday were probably him,” Carole said.

“He was casing Pine Hollow. He was figuring out how to rob it,” Stevie said.

They shivered.

“If someone sees a rider on the trail, they don’t think anything of it,” Carole said.

“That’s right,” Stevie said thoughtfully. “These woods are part of the state park. Anyone can ride in them.”

“It’s kind of brilliant, when you think of it,” said Lisa.

“Too
brilliant, if you ask me,” Stevie said. “What kind of lunkheaded thief would ride a horse that leaves bar-heeled shoe prints all over the trails? Or steal a saddle from a stable that just happens to be jam-packed with kids?”

“You mean you think there’s more than one mystery in this MW?” asked Carole.

“That’s exactly what I think,” said Stevie. “Max is even more devious than we imagined.”
At least I hope he is
, she added silently to herself.

Stevie looked into her cup of chili. Somehow, during this totally upsetting conversation, she had eaten it all. She went and got another helping and came back.

“I want my saddle back
now
—not tomorrow afternoon,” Stevie said miserably.

“Don’t worry,” Lisa said firmly. “And after lunch we’re going to go back and find the thief.”

After lunch, and after their horses had a chance to rest, they set off on the trail again, but this time they were quiet and thoughtful.

The sky had changed. Now it was gray and flat, with hawks skimming low under the clouds. It was as if winter were just over the horizon.

When they got back to the fork where they’d lost the thief, they sat on their horses trying to decide where to go.

“Which way?” said Lisa, looking from one branch of the trail to the other.

“You know,” said Carole suddenly, “I think I remember where we are. This isn’t a fork, really—it’s a loop. It goes
back to the edge of a county road, follows it for a while, and then circles back. So we don’t have to make a choice.”

“We still have to pick one way,” Lisa pointed out.

Carole nodded to the right fork. “That way you have to cross the stream again and go through an apple orchard. It’s a long way to the road. This way,” she went on, pointing to the left, “you come to the road more quickly, and I think there’s an empty farmhouse with a barn.”

“A farmhouse!” Stevie said. “Maybe that’s where the thief is hiding out.”

“Let’s hope,” Lisa said with a quaver in her voice.

The three looked at one another. For the first time it struck them that they could be chasing someone who was dangerous.

“We have to be quiet.”

“Like mice,” Stevie agreed, “except quieter. That’s not easy for horses.” She looked at Carole, who was the best rider.

Carole took the lead, wondering if she was up to this. She knew how to get Starlight over a jump, and how to do a counter-canter, and how to pirouette to the right. But how do you get a horse to be quiet?

Carole made her hands light and her seat light. Starlight took a couple of prancing steps, which sent up a spray of gravel. “Easy,” Carole whispered. “Walk softly.” Somehow
Starlight got the idea. He advanced forward with slow, delicate steps. Behind her, Carole heard Prancer and Belle slip into the same delicate rhythm.

The landmarks on the trail passed slowly. First there was a stand of lady’s slippers with pulpy yellow stems and delicate red flowers. And then there was a fallen log with wedges of white fungus.

The path disappeared around a grove of white birches. Carole listened to Starlight’s breathing. It was peaceful, almost sleepy. As Starlight rounded the birch trees Carole saw a weather-beaten house and barn just beyond the edge of the woods.

Carole raised her hand for Lisa and Stevie to stop. They had to find cover so they could observe the barn. There was a bunch of giant rhododendron bushes with long, leathery leaves to the right. The normal thing would have been to circle into it, but Carole couldn’t do that. It would have been too obvious. She had to get Starlight to back into the bushes.