Autumn Trail (9 page)

“Hi, you guys,” she greeted them all. “You’re just in time. I have jobs for all of you. But we have to hurry. Dinner will be served promptly at four.”

“Dinner?” said Carole and Lisa in a single voice. Then they groaned. They had both eaten so much at their families’ Thanksgiving dinners that they didn’t think they’d ever want to so much as look at food again in their whole lives.

Stevie ignored their groans. “Lisa, Veronica, you guys go and get all the horses and tie them in a circle around the table,” she said. “Carole, you can help me fill these baskets with apples and oats.”

“Baskets?” Carole repeated, staring in confusion at the pile of paper bowls in Stevie’s hand.

“Stevie, when are you going to fill us in on what’s going on here?” demanded Lisa.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Stevie exclaimed. “We’re going to put on a Thanksgiving play for the horses!”

“W
E
’
RE
WHAT
?” C
AROLE
couldn’t believe she’d heard Stevie correctly. “Did you say we’re putting on a play for the
horses
?”

“Right,” Stevie said with a grin.

“But I thought you hated Thanksgiving plays,” Lisa said.

“No, no. That’s what I was trying to explain before. It’s not the plays themselves that I hate,” Stevie said. “I guess it’s people’s reactions that I hate, like when they think that just sitting back and watching a play means they’ve celebrated the spirit of the whole holiday. But this play is going to be different, because we’ll be
in
it, not just watching it.”

“I don’t get it,” Carole said flatly.

But a look of comprehension was dawning on Lisa’s
face. “I think I do,” she said slowly. “We’ll be doing something nice for the horses, by giving them a special feast. And by doing the play—which they won’t understand, though they might think it’s interesting—we’ll also really be doing it for ourselves, to remind ourselves what the whole holiday is really about. Am I close?”

“Bingo,” Stevie replied, looking pleased. “I also figured that using the props from my school’s stupid play would be a nice touch.”

“I thought that fake turkey looked familiar,” Veronica said. “Now I know why. I have to stare at it every year through that whole stupid, boring play.”

“Right,” Stevie said with another grin. “Now, come on, let’s get started!”

Despite their initial skepticism, the other girls soon found themselves getting caught up in what they were doing. Stevie’s enthusiasm was catching.

As Stevie had directed, Lisa and Veronica brought the horses into the ring and tied their lead ropes to the table or the benches. Soon almost every horse in the stable was standing patiently in a wide circle. The only horse they left in his stall was Geronimo, the stallion. “Sorry, big boy,” Lisa said to him, stopping by his stall to pat his nose. She felt bad that Geronimo would miss all the festivities, but she knew better than to take chances by bringing him to the Thanksgiving play. Stallions were much too unpredictable to be safe in such a situation. If
he got overexcited, he could hurt himself or someone else.

Lisa wasn’t sure that it was a good idea to subject Pepper to all the excitement Stevie had planned either, but when she went to his stall to check on him, he seemed so happy to see her that she couldn’t bear to let him miss out on the fun.

In the meantime Stevie and Carole had filled all of the bowls with oats and apples and set them on the table. “All right,” Carole said when everything was ready. She stepped back and brushed off her hands on her jeans. “Now what?”

“Are all the horses here?” Stevie asked. She glanced around the ring. “Yep,” she said in answer to her own question. She was pleasantly surprised to see that Veronica had brought Garnet out with the others. She hadn’t really been sure that the snobby girl would want anything to do with her scheme.

“All present and accounted for,” Lisa said.

“Good,” Stevie said. “All right, then. Lisa, you and Veronica can be the Pilgrims.” She grabbed the bushel barrel that had until recently contained the oats that were now in bowls on the table. “This is Plymouth Rock.”

Lisa thought she saw Veronica roll her eyes, but the wealthy girl didn’t complain. The two of them stepped up onto “Plymouth Rock” as Stevie had directed, and
Lisa, thinking quickly, even came up with a little speech to begin the play.

“As we Pilgrims land here in the New World,” she declared in a very dramatic tone of voice, placing one hand on her chest, “we are determined to live in freedom, free from oppression, free from persecution …”

“Free from fifty-cent words like ‘persecution,’ ” Carole heckled from the sidelines.

“Free from people who don’t study their vocabulary lessons,” Lisa continued, shooting Carole a dirty look as Stevie and Veronica giggled. “Here we will live in peace, with our trusty horses as companions. They will live in peace with the native American horses, just as we will live in peace and brotherhood—I mean sisterhood—with the native American people we find here.…”

“There’s really no such thing as native American horses, you know,” Carole said to Stevie as Lisa continued her silly speech.

“What do you mean?” Stevie asked, looking surprised. “You always see the Native Americans riding horses in those old cowboys-and-Indians movies your father likes so much.”

Carole nodded. “They had horses then. But they weren’t really native to this country. They came over with the Spanish conquistadors. When the native people first saw the Spanish explorers riding on horseback, they were really scared. They had never seen anything
like it, so they thought it must be some new kind of half-human creature.”

“Really?” Stevie tried to imagine what someone who had never seen a horse before would think of one, but she couldn’t picture it. “It figures you would know something like that,” she told Carole. Carole knew more horse facts, obscure and otherwise, than Stevie could learn in a lifetime. And, as her friends liked to tease her, she was ready to share them with everyone at the drop of a hat.

“Hey, what’s going on over there?” Lisa demanded from her position on the basket. “Aren’t you listening to my inspiring speech?”

“Sorry,” Stevie and Carole chorused, doing their very best to sound contrite.

“Well, that’s okay,” Lisa conceded. “I was just wrapping it up anyway.” She cleared her throat and dramatically concluded, “And so I hereby declare that we will work in harmony with all the people here, and do stuff together, and be thankful, and all that kind of thing.” She concluded with a little bow, and stepped down off the basket.

“I think it kind of lost something there at the end,” Carole commented.

But Stevie had already moved on to the next part of the play. “Now you Pilgrims should build houses and plant food and stuff,” she directed Lisa and Veronica.
The two girls exchanged a glance and a shrug and began to pantomime the activities Stevie had suggested.

“What about us?” Carole asked Stevie. “Don’t we get to do anything?”

“Of course. I was just getting to that,” Stevie said. “We get to be the Native Americans.”

“Cool,” Carole commented with a grin. “Okay, Pilgrims, here we come!” She and Stevie joined the other two in their playacting, all of them making up the script to their “play” as they went along.

“Look, the horses are watching us,” Stevie commented. Sure enough, all of the horses seemed to be observing them closely.

“I hate to disappoint you, Stevie, but I’m afraid it’s not your acting ability,” Veronica said. “They just smell the apples and oats.”

Stevie grinned, not even minding for once that Veronica had sort of insulted her. The snobby girl had actually made a joke!

The girls finished their play, stressing the generosity and cooperation exchanged between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans who had helped them survive in the New World. “Okay, time for the feast,” Stevie declared at last.

The girls hurried over to the table and started passing out the treats to the horses, who accepted them eagerly. “Look, Topside has the Thanksgiving spirit,” Stevie said. The others turned to see the big bay gelding bobbing his
head as he took the pieces of apple Stevie was offering him. “See? He’s saying thank you!”

The others laughed, but they had to admit that it did seem that way. After all the food was gone, Lisa made another little speech about all the things the Pilgrims had had to be thankful for, and how good it was for people today to take time out not only to be thankful but to think of ways they could help others.

When she had finished, Stevie clapped enthusiastically. “That’s exactly what I was trying to say with this play,” she told Lisa. “Thank you for saying it better than I ever could.”

“Well, thank you for inviting me to be a part of this,” Lisa replied graciously.

“And thank you all for all your help setting it up and everything,” Stevie said.

“Let me guess,” Carole put in. “Now you’re going to thank us in advance for helping you clean up this mess.”

Stevie grinned. “You know me too well. And I’m thankful for that.” She grabbed the fake turkey from the table and shoved it back into the bag it had come in.

As Stevie finished loading the rest of the fake food into the cart, the other girls all pitched in to help lead the horses back to their stalls. Veronica took Garnet’s lead rope and headed out of the ring.

Lisa was standing closest to Topside, so she turned and began to unfasten his lead from the table. She was smiling, thinking about Stevie’s unusual play, although she
was also wondering if she’d ever come up with a Thanksgiving project of her own. After all, with the play and the job at the stable, Stevie had
two
projects already.

Topside’s rope had gotten a little tangled as he moved his head, so it took Lisa a moment to undo it. By the time she and Topside were ready to go, Lisa saw that Carole had taken Pepper’s halter and started to lead him out of the ring. But she had stopped and stepped back to look at him. Lisa could see that her friend’s forehead was wrinkled with concern.

“Lisa,” Carole called, “have you noticed how uncomfortable Pepper seems? He doesn’t look well at all.”

Lisa nodded. “I’ve noticed,” she said shortly.

Carole and Stevie both turned to stare at her, surprised by Lisa’s harsh tone of voice.

“Sorry,” Lisa apologized immediately, looking down at Topside’s lead rope in her hand. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“That’s all right,” Carole said, coming over to Lisa and putting her arm around her shoulders. “But what’s wrong with Pepper? How long has he been like this?”

“At least since that night we brought him in from the pasture last week,” Lisa told them.

“So that’s why you asked me to check on him today,” Stevie said. “Has Judy been to see him? Does she know what’s wrong with him?”

Lisa nodded. “She’s seen him,” she said, so quietly that her voice was almost inaudible.

“And?” Stevie said expectantly.

“She said Pepper is … dying,” Lisa replied, looking up to meet her friends’ worried gazes.

“Oh, no!” Carole and Stevie gasped in one voice. “How awful,” Carole whispered. “Poor Pepper.” She hurried over to hug the old gray horse, who was still standing patiently by the entrance to the ring.

“There must be something Judy can do,” Stevie argued. “Hasn’t she given him any medicine or anything?”

Lisa nodded and reached into her pocket. “She gave me this to give to him whenever he seems to be in pain.” She showed the other girls the medicine.

“Well, I think he definitely needs some now,” Carole said. “Let’s take him back to his stall. We can give him some of the medicine after we put the rest of the horses away.”

The others just nodded without saying anything further, since Veronica had just returned from Garnet’s stall. Even though she had been so nice lately, they still knew without discussing it that they didn’t want her to know about Pepper. That was something that should remain within The Saddle Club.

“Hey, what are you all doing?” Veronica demanded. “I hope you’re not expecting me to put all these horses away myself.”

“No, no,” Stevie answered quickly. “We’re helping.” She grabbed Delilah’s halter and led the docile mare
toward the door. Carole followed with Pepper, and Lisa with Topside.

Soon all of the horses were back in their stalls. Stevie had been trying to come up with a plan to get rid of Veronica while The Saddle Club took care of Pepper, but she needn’t have worried. Veronica announced that she wanted to give Garnet a bath before they left and strolled off toward her horse’s stall.

Carole shook her head and stared after her. “She’s trying. I really think she’s trying.”

“Well, maybe,” Stevie said, sounding a bit skeptical. “But, really, what would she have said if you’d insisted on leaving right now? I mean, she didn’t even ask.”

Carole shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. As long as she’s taking care of her horse, I don’t mind waiting.”

Stevie grinned. She should have expected that response. Carole’s first concern was always for the horses’ well-being.

“Come on,” Lisa urged them. “Let’s go see Pepper.”

Remembering their mission, The Saddle Club hurried to Pepper’s stall. The old horse was again standing facing the back corner, his head hanging low. But Lisa noticed that his breathing didn’t seem quite as labored as it had for the last couple of days.