Racehorse (6 page)

“I’ve never seen a horse in such pain,” Carole told her friends.

“I hope I never do,” Lisa said. She swished her spoon idly around in her root beer float. Carole’s story about the gelding with tetanus had taken her appetite away. “You know, all people who own horses should be required to belong to Pony Clubs and pass the Pony Club tests. Max would never let any of his students do such stupid things.”

“That’s what I told Judy,” Carole said. “She told me it was too bad that horses don’t come with instruction booklets.”

Stevie put her arm around Carole’s shoulder. “If it’s so hard to be with sick horses, maybe you shouldn’t go out with Judy again,” she suggested.

“That was hard. Definitely,” Carole said. “But there are other things that aren’t hard—that are really wonderful. I wouldn’t want to miss a minute of those. As a matter of fact, I’ve even got some good and exciting things to tell you about.”

“Like what?” Stevie asked.

“Well, for starters, right after we saw the horse with tetanus, we visited a newborn foal. He was born last night. He looked like he was all legs with a little bobtail
that he flicked. He cuddled up to his mother and I watched him nursing. I could practically see his little tummy filling up with milk, and then he lay down to take a nap. He sort of sighed happily before he fell asleep. He was about the cutest thing I ever saw.”

“Did that make up for the sick horse?” Lisa asked.

“Not exactly,” Carole said. “But what happened at the next place we stopped certainly did.”

“Yes?” Lisa asked. She took a sip of her float and waited expectantly.

“Well, remember the guy with the racehorses—Mr. McLeod?”

“Yes?” Stevie replied.

“We went back to his stable for another check on the horses who are going to race. You wouldn’t believe how much care those horses get. It was a great antidote to the stable with the sick horse, I’ll tell you. Anyway, I got to see Prancer again. She’s this sweet mare.…”

Carole enjoyed talking about Prancer, and her friends loved hearing every detail.

“So when is Prancer going to race?” Stevie asked.

“A week from Saturday,” Carole told her.

“Too bad you can’t be there to watch,” Lisa said.

“But that’s the good news,” Carole said, her eyes lighting up mischievously.

Two pairs of eyebrows shot up.

“You can?” Stevie asked. “Is your father going to take you?”

“Nope, Judy is. See, Mr. McLeod wants Judy to be there and she invited me. It’s pretty common for owners to bring their own vets. I’m just lucky enough to be this vet’s assistant. Can you believe it?”

“Of course I believe it,” Stevie said logically. “It makes complete sense to me. And I bet Prancer will run better because of you.”

“I don’t know about that,” Carole replied, “but I do know I’ll have fun and learn an awful lot. Can you imagine what it will be like to be at a racetrack, the place absolutely filled with incredibly valuable horses?”

Lisa pushed away the root beer float in front of her, staring at the milky residue left on the glass. “Horses are funny,” she observed.

“Well, Prancer definitely is,” Carole began. “You should have seen the way she nuzzled my neck—”

“No, that’s not quite what I meant,” Lisa interrupted. “I mean, you know I wrote that essay about Pepper for school, just the way Stevie suggested. The teacher really liked it because she thought it meant something to so many of the kids in the class, though I didn’t think it was very good. But it isn’t just Pepper who means a lot and who can show us things. Look at the day you just had. You saw death, you saw birth, you saw health and sickness.
You saw just about everything, all within a couple of hours. What an afternoon!”

“Yeah,” Stevie echoed.

“Definitely,” Carole agreed, once again flooded by mixed feelings of joy and sadness.

L
ISA WAS STILL
thinking about The Saddle Club meeting at TD’s when she arrived at Pine Hollow the following afternoon. She and Stevie had agreed to take care of Starlight for Carole for one day so that Carole and Judy could get an earlier start. Lisa and Stevie were more than willing to take care of Starlight. He was a wonderful horse, and he didn’t really need much care.

Lisa paused at Pepper’s stall and gave the horse a good hug, which he seemed to like. She also gave him the carrot she’d brought from home. He crunched down on it and chewed contentedly. Lisa gave him another hug and moved on to Starlight’s stall.

Stevie had beaten her to the job. She’d removed Starlight’s bandages and was leading him over to the hosing area.

“I think the swelling is beginning to go down,” Stevie said, pointing to Starlight’s knee.

Lisa approached the horse cautiously and then ran her hand down along his leg until she got to the joint. She could feel the swelling all right. She was pretty sure it wasn’t any worse. She just wasn’t sure it was better.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Me neither,” Stevie conceded. “I guess I’m just hoping.”

“I’m sure he’s going to be all right. After all, he’s getting the best care in the world, isn’t he?”

“Not compared to what Carole was telling us about those racehorses. Boy, wouldn’t you like to be able to see that? And isn’t Carole lucky to be going to the racetrack?”

“She sure is,” Lisa said. She reached for the hose while Stevie cross-tied Starlight. “I’d give just about anything to be there with her.”

“So would I.” Stevie turned the spigot and the water came gushing out. Lisa squeezed the hose, forcing the water into a strong stream, and aimed it at Starlight’s swollen knee. They had to do it for a few minutes, but it was all they had to do. It wasn’t hard work, and Starlight apparently enjoyed it. At least he stood still for it, and that allowed Stevie and Lisa to talk.

“Have you ever been to a racetrack?” Lisa asked.

“No, but my parents go sometimes,” she said. “As a matter of fact, they were talking about going again soon.”

“How soon?” Lisa asked.

Stevie looked at her and her face lit up. “What a great idea!” she said. “I’ll start nagging them about it right after dinner!”

“Do you think it’ll work?” Lisa asked.

“It will if I have anything to say about it,” Stevie assured her. “And I can tell that I already have a lot to say about it. I know they’re not going anywhere this weekend. My mother has been talking about building a rock garden near the swimming pool. Every time she talks about it, my dad gets this look of desperation. I have the funny feeling he’ll be only too willing to go to the racetrack. But will your parents let you go?”

“You know my parents, Stevie. They think your parents are wonderful—and of course, they’re right. So if your parents say it’s okay, they’ll let me go.”

Stevie turned off the water and began toweling Starlight’s leg gently, massaging the swelling as she did. When Starlight was completely dry, the girls took him back to his stall. Stevie watched while Lisa put a fresh wrap on his knee.

“You’ve learned a lot in a little while,” Stevie said.

“My friends are good teachers,” Lisa told her.

“I guess so. And you must be, too. Isn’t it funny that just last week
I
was giving you help on a school assignment, and now today
you
were coming up with a scheme that will get us to the racetrack? The whole world is turning upside down!”

Lisa laughed. It was nice to think that the best parts of Stevie were rubbing off on her!

“How’s it coming, girls?” Max asked, peering over the door to Starlight’s stall.

“Just fine,” Stevie told him. “We think the swelling is going down. Maybe. A little bit.”

“Glad you’re so certain,” he said, chuckling. “But don’t worry. As long as it’s not getting worse now, it’s a good sign. When you’re waiting for a horse to heal, patience is a good quality.”

“At least
he’s
healing,” Lisa said. Max looked at her in surprise. She had even surprised herself by how harsh the words sounded coming from her own mouth. One of the things she really liked about Max, though, was that you never had to spend a lot of time explaining the obvious things.

“How did it go with Comanche?” he asked.

Lisa shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

Max scratched his chin. “You know, I just stopped by and checked on Pepper. He seemed a little restless to me. I think he could use some gentle exercise. Would you have time to take him out on a trail ride—say a half hour—if somebody could go with you?”

“Like me? On Topside?” Stevie asked.

“Like you, on Topside,” Max confirmed.

“I bet we could squeeze it in,” Stevie said, keeping a straight face.

“Don’t get Pepper overtired,” Max said. “Mostly just walk, a little trotting, and no cantering.”

“We can definitely squeeze it in,” Lisa said.

“Thanks,” Max said. “I’d do it myself, but …”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to, because nobody was fooling anybody and everybody knew it.

Lisa checked the work she’d done on Starlight’s leg. Stevie double-checked it and they were both satisfied. They stood up. There was a sparkle in Stevie’s eye.

“Race you to the tack room!” Stevie challenged.

“Last one in the saddle is a rotten egg!” Stevie countered.

They were off.

Ten minutes later Topside and Pepper were ready for their trail ride. So were their riders, still breathless from the race to mount up. Stevie had won the race, but that was because Pepper was just slower than Topside when it came to walking to the mounting area. It didn’t matter at all. What mattered was that they were ready to go.

The girls each touched the good-luck horseshoe. Red O’Malley, amused by their excitement, opened the gate for them, and they were off—at a walk.

“I really love this horse,” Lisa said. “He’s just so gentle.” Pepper nodded his head as if he agreed.

It was a fresh day in the late spring. All around the girls, wildflowers were in bloom, and new grass shoots filled the rolling fields. The trees in the woods were
feathered with diminutive leaves, bursting from the buds on each branch and twig. Lisa might not have noticed these things except for the fact that they seemed to be at odds with the sweet, gentle, aging horse beneath her. If that was the case, though, Pepper was oblivious to it. He continued walking, surely and steadily, wherever Lisa told him to go.

“Want to trot?” Stevie asked.

“Of course,” Lisa said.

Topside and Pepper began trotting at the same time. Although Topside was in the lead, Pepper took the change of gait as a challenge. He picked up his head and lengthened his stride, speeding faster and gaining on Topside. It never failed to surprise Lisa to see how naturally competitive horses were—even old horses, near retirement.

“Just goes to show that you can’t keep a good horse down!” she said brightly, speeding past Stevie. Topside was not going to be outdone. He instantly picked up his own pace and the two horses crossed the field side by side, trotting happily.

As the girls neared the woods, they drew in on their reins and brought the horses back to a walk.

“That was wonderful,” Lisa said.

“And I think Pepper enjoyed it as much as you did,” Stevie said.

“More,” Lisa said. “And, you know, it turns out that
Pepper has been enjoying this kind of thing with a lot of people for a long time.”

“How’s that?” Stevie asked.

“Remember the essay I wrote? It was sort of surprising about Pepper.”

“What was surprising? You didn’t get an A?”

“Yes, I got an A, although I don’t really think I deserved it, but that wasn’t the thing I wanted to tell you about. It was the thing about Ms. Ingleby reading it out loud in class.”

“I had a teacher do that once,” Stevie said. “She wanted to make a point about my writing. See, I’d broken some kind of school record by using the word ‘but’ five times in one paragraph. I wanted to die.”

“That wasn’t why Ms. Ingleby read my paper,” Lisa went on. “But I would have wanted to die, too, if it had been. But I probably would have survived. But my parents would have heard about it, and they would have killed me, but they might not have. They—”

“Enough. I get the point,” Stevie said, giggling. “So why did Ms. Ingleby read your essay?”

“Because she liked Pepper. It turned out that practically every kid in my class had ridden Pepper at one time or another. A lot of them were pretty upset that Pepper is getting old. One girl, Eleanora Griffin, was even crying.”

“I remember Eleanora. She used to ride in our class. Then her mother got this idea that horseback riding was dangerous, and she had to give it up. She really adored Pepper.”

“She still does,” Lisa assured her. “And you know what? Even Ms. Ingleby had ridden Pepper when she was a little girl.
That’s
why she read my essay. It was kind of neat. It’s like this one horse ties a whole lot of people together. Isn’t that odd? I mean, how many riders have sat in this saddle, on this horse, and enjoyed it as much as I’m enjoying it now?”

“Hundreds, I guess,” Stevie said. “It makes it seem all the more as if Pepper had earned his retirement, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Too bad we can’t give him a black-tie dinner and a gold watch to take to Florida. I think he’d be happier with some warm mash anyway. What is the matter with you?” Lisa had just noticed an odd look cross Stevie’s face.