Horse Care (14 page)

“Okay, what were we talking about again?” she murmured. She wiggled her sore foot a little. It was starting to go numb from the cold. But when she moved it, the pain woke it up again. “I have an idea,” she said. “I’ll tell you what color all the ribbons are at a horse show. Let’s see.…”

This time it took her quite a few minutes to think of what she wanted to say. The darkness was coming back, and it was claiming more and more of her mind. Besides that, she was starting to wonder if she had ever been
quite this sleepy. Suddenly nothing seemed more important than closing her eyes, resting her head on the nice big soft thing in front of her—what was it again? Oh yes, a horse.

“No!” Lisa said out loud. The sudden noise startled Tiny, who had dozed off. The horse let out a loud, harrumphing snort that brought Lisa back to full consciousness.

She couldn’t let herself sleep. She had to stay alert or she might never get out of this.

“Ribbons,” she said firmly. “Um, okay. First place is blue. Second is red. Third place is yellow. Fourth is—um—white.”

Lisa paused to smother a yawn. She was so tired. So tired.

“Fifth place,” she went on slowly. “Fifth is green, I think—no, wait, it’s pink. Definitely pink. Green is for sixth. Seventh, um, purple, and then …”

She had trouble retrieving the next number. Her head swam with the effort.

“Oh, Tiny,” she murmured. “I think you’d better take over now. I’m too tired.… But it’s a brown ribbon. I’m sure it’s brown.…”

She couldn’t keep her head up anymore. It dropped forward onto Tiny’s shoulder. Lisa’s eyes closed. Tiny woke up again and snorted quizzically, but there was no answer except the sound of the steadily falling rain.

* * *

L
ATER—HOW MUCH LATER
? There was no telling. Lisa’s mind started to come back to her. Where was she? She was cold, she knew that. And sleepy. Very sleepy. Why wasn’t she still sleeping?

A noise came. A loud noise, very close. A horse, snorting and grunting loudly.

The earth shifted beneath her. It moved, and she started to slide.

She caught herself just in time. It wasn’t the earth moving—it was the horse. She had been sleeping against the horse, and now the horse was moving and making a lot of noise. Why was she making so much noise? It made it hard to sleep.

The horse quieted down again, and that was when Lisa became aware of another kind of noise. It was coming from farther away. Could it be … voices?

It was! Human voices. Was she dreaming? Or did she hear one of the voices calling her name?

“Stevie?” Lisa whispered. Her voice came out in a hoarse croak. She tried to make it louder. “Hello?” she said. But she could hardly hear herself above the noise of the rain and the stream.

The voices came again. They were in the woods, not far, but not near, either. Not near enough. Lisa knew that they could move on and never notice her lying there.

She still wasn’t sure if this was a dream or real life, but
she had to find out. She had to get the people’s attention.

Her own voice was no good at all. She had to go to them. She had to stand up.

She tried. She pushed her feet under her and shoved off the horse’s side. For a second, she thought it had worked. She was standing!

Then she tried to take a step, and the pain shot through her again, so strong that it almost overwhelmed her completely. She let out a croaking cry as her back spasmed and her legs collapsed under her, sending her crashing to the ground.

Tiny let out a neigh. With a great effort of will, Lisa looked up at her. The horse was staring at her, seemingly agitated. As Lisa watched in exhaustion, Tiny clambered awkwardly to her feet and came toward her, neighing loudly and anxiously.

Then Lisa heard answering shouts. The voices had heard Tiny! They had heard her! They were coming.…

Seconds later, half a dozen riders on horseback burst out of the darkness toward her.

“Lisa!” cried one of them. It was Stevie.

Another was already dismounting and running toward her. “Here she is!” the figure cried.

“C-Carole?” Lisa murmured. It seemed too good to be true. She looked up at the others. All the riders had
dismounted by now. One of them—could it really be Max?—was talking into a portable phone. Lisa thought she also saw Red and Marguerite.…

Carole and Stevie were kneeling at her side. Carole was unrolling a blanket, which she tucked around Lisa carefully. It felt warm and dry and very, very good.

“Lisa, what happened?” Stevie asked. Her worried face swam in Lisa’s vision. “Can you tell us what’s wrong?”

“Um, my leg hurts,” Lisa said. But suddenly that didn’t seem so important anymore. She looked over toward Red, who was holding Tiny by the bridle, calming her down. “Tiny saved me,” Lisa said. “She was … um …”

Max joined the others at her side. “Don’t try to talk now, Lisa,” he said soothingly. He unfurled an umbrella and held it above her head to keep the rain off. “The paramedics are coming. Everything is going to be all right now. Just rest.”

Lisa opened her mouth again. She wanted to tell them about Tiny, about how brave and wonderful the horse had been. But somehow the words just wouldn’t come. Maybe Max was right. Her friends were here now. They would take care of everything. It was time to rest.

“I
SN
’
T SHE ADORABLE
?” Carole whispered.

Stevie and Lisa nodded. It was a Tuesday afternoon about two weeks later, and the three girls were leaning on the half door of Calypso’s stall, watching the mare and her new baby filly. The foal had been born several days earlier. And as it turned out, Calypso hadn’t had any problems foaling. She had done it all by herself, in the middle of the night, with no one there.

“I still can’t believe Max slept through the whole thing,” Lisa said.

Stevie grinned. “Me neither,” she said. “I guess having a baby of his own taught him how to sleep through just about anything.”

A week before the foal was born, Red and Max had
set up a cot in the next stall and started taking turns sleeping there in order to keep a close eye on Calypso. But Max had ended up sleeping soundly through the whole thing, waking up after it was all over and the foal was already nursing.

Carole smiled down at the tiny, long-legged foal sleeping in the straw at Calypso’s feet. “I guess that just goes to show that you really can’t predict these things,” she said. “We thought Calypso was going to have trouble, but she had it all well in hand. Or is it well in hoof?”

Lisa laughed and leaned farther across the half door to give Calypso a pat on the rump. She felt light and free without the back brace she had been wearing since the night of her fall.

Her friends noticed, too. “You look good, Lisa,” Carole said. “Does your back hurt?”

“Not really,” Lisa said. She swung her arms and twisted gently from side to side at the waist to prove it. “I’m glad my doctor finally said I could stop wearing that brace yesterday. It helped my back a lot, but as the weather got warmer it was starting to make me itch. And the best part is, she said I could probably start riding again in a week or two if I take it easy at first.”

“Does that mean your ankle’s better, too?” Stevie asked. “And your wrist?”

Lisa shrugged. “Almost as good as new,” she said, flexing both joints for her friends. “My doctor said they
really weren’t that badly hurt—not even sprained, just twisted and strained.”

“Wait a minute,” Carole said. “I thought that was what was wrong with your back.”

Lisa laughed. “No, that was twisted and
wrenched
,” she corrected.

“Whatever,” Stevie said. “I’m just glad we found you before you were twisted and strained and wrenched and frozen.”

Her tone was light, but both Carole and Lisa nodded seriously.

“Believe me, so am I,” Lisa said. “I could hardly believe it when I heard your voices coming toward me. I thought I was dreaming—or maybe hallucinating.” She smiled. “Oh, and while we’re at it—I’m just glad Tiny is so talkative. If she hadn’t called you over, who knows when you might have found me?”

Before the others could say anything, they heard loud voices coming down the aisle toward them. “Oh no,” Stevie whispered with a groan. “It’s the battle of the bores. And they’re headed this way.”

“Quick,” Carole whispered. “We’ve got to hide!”

Without another word, the three girls silently opened the door of the stall and slipped inside. Calypso gave them a quizzical look, then turned and pointed her ears toward the aisle, where Tate’s and Veronica’s loud voices were getting even closer. The foal didn’t wake up.

The Saddle Club crouched down behind the half door, pressing themselves against it just in case Tate or Veronica stopped to look inside the stall at the new foal.

“Anyway, as I was saying,” Tate said loudly outside, “it’s important to know all the different kinds of jumps you might encounter in a hunter class so that you’re well prepared. For instance, there’s the simple post-and-rail, the in-and-out, the stone wall, the Aachen oxer, the chicken coop, the white gate—”

“Speaking of white gates,” Veronica interrupted, “did I mention that my parents and I had dinner last week at White Gates, that mansion over in Mendenhall? It was fabulous. They served caviar before dinner, and then …”

Her voice faded out of earshot, and the three girls stood up, grinning.

“Whew,” Carole said. “It’s a good thing they didn’t stop to look at the foal. I don’t think I could have kept myself from laughing out loud for another ten seconds.”

“Same here,” Stevie agreed wholeheartedly. “I almost lost it when I thought about Tate trying to jump a real hunter course. The way he rides, if he tried it he’d probably fall off at the first jump, whether it was a simple post-and-rail or anything else.”

“Please,” Lisa said, wincing a little. “Don’t mention falling off, okay? It’s a sensitive subject for me right
now.” But then she smiled so that her friends could see she was joking—mostly.

“Agreed,” Stevie said. As the girls let themselves out of the stall, she glanced down the aisle in the direction Veronica and Tate had gone. “So who’s winning the bragging contest between those two, anyway? I can’t tell.”

“I think they both think they’re winning,” Carole said with a chuckle. “But if you ask me, we’re the real winners here. Those two have kept each other so busy lately that neither one of them has had any time left over to bother us!”

Stevie grinned. “So does that mean you’re really and truly over your crush on Tate?”

Carole gave her a sour look. “Like I told you yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that,” she said, “I never had a crush on Tate. Not really. I just thought he was smart and interesting. And nice-looking, of course.”

“That sounds like a crush to me.” Stevie waggled her eyebrows.

Carole sighed. “Well, now those two have a crush on each other. Tate even gave Veronica that hunting horn of his as a present.” She rolled her eyes. “Since her family is so socially prominent and all, he thought she could use it.”

“I know who really could have used it,” Stevie said.
“Lisa. When she was lost in the woods, she could have blown it and—”

Lisa wasn’t paying attention. “Look!” she interrupted. “She’s waking up.”

Carole and Stevie dropped their conversation and turned to see. The foal lifted her head off the straw, blinked, and looked around. Then she gave a big yawn.

“Hi there, Tiny!” Carole crooned.

Lisa smiled. She still liked hearing that name. After the foal was born, Max had asked for suggestions about what to name her. Lisa had spoken up immediately. She knew of one very special horse who deserved to have her name passed on to a new generation.

That reminded her. She didn’t want to be late. “I’d better go,” she said, glancing at her watch. “Now that my brace is off, I think I should be able to handle the public bus system. I’m going to take a ride over to Fox Crest and visit Tiny. I’ve only seen her once since the accident. But from now on, I’m going to make a habit of stopping by whenever I can.” She patted her pocket, which was bulging with carrot sticks and other treats for the big gray horse.

“Want some company?” Carole asked.

Lisa smiled. “Sure,” she said. “Are you sure you want to come?”

“Definitely,” Stevie declared. “As long as you promise we don’t have to stop and chat with Marguerite.”

Lisa rolled her eyes. “Believe me, we won’t,” she said.

“I won’t be upset if I never have to spend time with Marguerite Mills again, and I suspect that feeling is mutual. We’re just not compatible.” She called good-bye to Calypso and the new Tiny, then turned and headed down the aisle toward the locker room with her friends beside her. “Even my mother saw the light on that one.”

“It sounds like your mother learned a lot from this whole thing, actually,” Carole said. “She learned to appreciate how wonderful horses are—at least a little more, right?”

“Definitely,” Lisa said. “At first she thought Tiny was to blame for my accident. But then I explained it to her, and she finally understood that Tiny probably saved my life. If I hadn’t had her to keep me warm and to talk to …” She shuddered. “Let’s just say that Mom thinks Tiny is a pretty special horse, too.”