Horse Care (9 page)

Carole was so excited about her theory that she almost blurted it out right then and there. But she bit her tongue. Saying anything about it would embarrass Tate—not to mention herself. But she couldn’t wait to tell Stevie later.

L
ISA HAD BEEN
growing steadily more nervous for the past twenty minutes. She and Marguerite were deep in the woods, and Lisa had completely lost her sense of direction.
The path they had been following had twisted and turned and branched off so many times that she wasn’t sure they would be able to find their way back. It was hard to see what was happening with the clouds because of the thick canopy of trees, but the chilly breeze snaking through the forest told Lisa that rain was probably coming soon. And by now she knew that they were a lot more than a ten-minute ride from the shelter of the stable.

Besides all that, she was getting heartily sick of Marguerite. The girl was shallower, stupider, and even less responsible than Lisa had originally thought. Ever since they had started following this trail, Marguerite had been babbling on and on about her friends and their parents and their houses and their purebred horses. Lisa was starting to suspect that those friends were the only reason Marguerite rode at all. She certainly didn’t seem to have any real interest in horses or riding. Every time Lisa tried to change the subject to something horse-related, Marguerite found a way to change it back. It had turned into a sort of battle.

“So where do you think we are?” Lisa asked nervously. “Does Fox Crest’s land extend this far, or do you think we’re in the state park by now?”

Marguerite shrugged and pushed aside a branch that was in her way. “Who knows?” she said. “And what difference does it make, anyway?”

Lisa didn’t answer. She was too busy catching the
branch that Marguerite had just carelessly released. “It’s getting kind of late,” she said instead. “Maybe we should—”

Marguerite’s cry of delight interrupted her. “Wow! Look up there!”

Lisa urged Tiny forward until the big gray mare was shoulder to shoulder with Amber, and looked in the direction Marguerite was pointing.

They were approaching a different kind of landscape than the thickly growing trees and rambling underbrush that had surrounded their path up until now. Ahead, the trees thinned out to several yards apart. Grass and wild-flowers, rather than thorns and shrubs, sprouted around them.

“Wow,” Lisa said. “Someone must have cleared it out. It looks like a town park or something.”

Marguerite nodded. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait.” Lisa put out a hand to stop her. Marguerite paused and looked at her questioningly. “Look, Marguerite,” Lisa said. “This has been a nice ride and everything. But I have a bus to catch. We really ought to start heading back now. It’s going to pour any second, and it will take us a while to find our way—”

Marguerite was scowling. “What’s your problem, Lisa?” she snapped. “You’re such a total wet blanket! Don’t you have any sense of adventure?”

Lisa frowned. That stung a little. Sure, she was more cautious than Marguerite was. That made her a good,
safe rider, not some kind of old fuddy-duddy, the way the other girl was making it sound.

“I have a sense of adventure,” she said sharply. “But I also have
common
sense. Something you might not have heard of.”

Marguerite rolled her eyes. “Okay, now you’re really starting to sound like my mother,” she said, shortening her reins. “Look, I don’t care what you do. I’m going to go check out the landscape up there.” She tossed her head defiantly. “In fact, I think I’ll try galloping in and out around those trees. Sort of like an obstacle course. It’ll be fun. But I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

Lisa gasped. “Are you crazy?” She couldn’t believe that Marguerite was serious. “Amber isn’t a barrel racer, you know. All it would take is one misstep or one exposed tree root and—”

Marguerite interrupted again. “Look, I’ve had enough of your lectures,” she said. “Are you coming with me or not?”

“No way,” Lisa said. “And you shouldn’t go, either. Let’s just head back.”

“Forget it.” Marguerite clucked to Amber, and the mare started forward eagerly. “You can go back if you want to. In fact, be my guest. Go get on your stupid bus and go back to Willow Creek.”

“Fine!” Lisa exclaimed, exasperated. “Maybe I will!”

“Good,” Marguerite replied with a smirk. “Have a nice life!” With that, she urged Amber into a trot, then a canter. The mare burst through the last few yards of underbrush, then broke into a gallop as she entered the parklike area. Lisa shouted after them, but it didn’t do any good. Within seconds, Marguerite and her horse were out of sight.

Lisa’s heart was pounding with fear. Not for herself—for Amber. The beautiful bay could be badly injured with such an irresponsible rider on her back.

Still, there was no way Lisa was going to risk Tiny’s safety—and her own—by trying to catch Marguerite. “There’s just one thing to do, old girl,” she told Tiny. “We’d better get back to the stable as quickly as we can and tell someone what Marguerite is up to.”

Tiny snorted and bobbed her head, seeming to agree. Then, as Lisa clucked to her and gave her her head, the gray mare moved forward into the parkland and then turned to one side, picking her way carefully between the trees at a walk.

Lisa sighed and tried not to worry too much about all the terrible things that could happen to Marguerite and her horse. She wasn’t normally a tattletale, but this time she knew she had no choice. She had seen a few bad spills in her day. Recently, even Max had been seriously injured in a fall. She knew that accidents could happen to the best of riders. But she also knew they were much
more likely to happen to those who were careless or reckless, and Marguerite definitely qualified on both counts.

A drop of rain splashed onto Tiny’s mane, and Lisa groaned. “It figures,” she muttered. If it had started raining five minutes earlier, maybe she could have convinced Marguerite to turn back with her.

Tiny was still moving steadily through the forest. Lisa knew that horses had an innate sense of direction that would lead them home. She also knew that Tiny wouldn’t necessarily pick the same path back as the one they had followed to get there. She wasn’t worried about that, but she was still worrying about Marguerite’s foolhardy behavior. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more upset she got.

Tiny continued making her way through the woods. Lisa left the reins loose, letting the horse choose her own pace and her own path. The wind had picked up, and the rain was falling now in slow, oversized drops. Lisa hardly noticed. She clenched her teeth angrily as she remembered all the dangerous games Marguerite had wanted to play. Didn’t she realize how stupid she was being? Riding was a fun sport, but you had to take it seriously if you wanted to do it well and safely. You couldn’t just do whatever you felt like and forget about everything else.

The rain was starting to fall more heavily now. Lisa’s hard hat was keeping the rain out of her face, though, so
she didn’t worry about it too much. However, she did glance down to make sure the ground wasn’t getting muddy or rocky. She saw that Tiny was taking them down a broad, sloping hill studded with trees and thickly carpeted with grass and moss.

See?
Lisa thought.
Marguerite never would have thought to check for mud and rocks. She never would have considered that her horse could fall because of this rain. She probably would have just gone galloping through it!

That thought made Lisa madder than ever. She still couldn’t believe that Marguerite had gone riding off by herself like that, never realizing that she could be putting herself and Amber in danger. Not to mention Lisa—

She never finished the thought. At that moment, Tiny stumbled and started to slide downhill. Lisa was jerked to one side, and her feet flew out of the stirrups. Too late, she realized that the hill had gotten a lot steeper since she had checked it just a moment before. She also suddenly remembered that grass and moss could be at least as slippery as mud when they were wet.

Tiny neighed fearfully and scrabbled at the slippery ground, trying to regain her balance. Her hindquarters slid to one side and she jerked wildly, trying to stay upright.

Lisa had stopped thinking about Marguerite now. Her only thought was staying in the saddle—and praying that Tiny didn’t fall and crush her. She grabbed at Tiny’s
mane with both hands and gripped the mare’s sides with her legs. But the horse’s mane was slippery, and Lisa’s left hand lost its grip. At the same time, Tiny whinnied and tossed her head.

That was all it took. Lisa was flung to the side, and the mane slipped out of her right hand. She hit the ground hard and slid downhill, unable to catch herself on the slick, steep, grassy ground. She came to an abrupt stop when she slammed into a large, solid tree that had suddenly loomed in front of her.

“Ow!” she cried as pain shot through her left arm, which had gotten caught between her body and the tree. A second later she felt a deeper, throbbing pain traveling down her back, and she squeezed her eyes shut and groaned as she waited for it to pass.

It didn’t pass, but after a moment it subsided a little, and she forced herself to open her eyes and look around. She was wedged against a tree trunk halfway down the steep hill. A few yards below, she could see Tiny. She could hear her, too. The gray mare was whinnying loudly and tossing her head as she stood at the bottom of the hill. Fortunately, she was standing squarely on all four feet—that meant that she probably hadn’t been injured in her wild slide.

“Thank goodness,” Lisa whispered. But she knew she didn’t have any time to waste. Tiny was obviously jittery. Lisa had to catch her before she panicked and ran off.

She tried to move, to push herself away from the tree
trunk, but the moment she lifted her left arm, she could tell that there was something wrong with her wrist. And when she tried to sit up, the pain flamed out from her spine again. Her head spun crazily, and for a second she thought she was going to pass out.

Her head cleared quickly. “Wow,” she muttered. She pushed her damp hair out of her eyes with her right hand, then tried again, moving herself more carefully this time. Every motion brought stabs of pain—to her wrist, to her back, and then to her left ankle as well.

She managed to drag herself to a sitting position, with her good leg wedged against the tree trunk. Her back felt as if it were on fire, but Lisa did her best to ignore the pain. She also ignored the rain, which was now coming down in wild, windblown spurts, and gazed down the hill at Tiny. The mare was standing still, but she kept jerking her head from side to side and snorting loudly, her eyes rolling with fear.

“Tiny!” Lisa called. She was surprised at how weak and shaky her voice sounded. Tiny hadn’t even heard her. She cleared her throat and prepared to try again.

At that moment, a thunderclap exploded somewhere in the near distance. That was all the nervous mare could take. Tiny threw up her head, neighed shrilly in terror, and took off at a run, leaving Lisa all alone.

L
ISA FELT READY
to panic, too. Her situation kept getting worse. The skies had opened up with the thunderclap, and it was really pouring now. Her ankle and wrist were throbbing, and her back screamed in protest every time she tried to move.

With an effort of will, she shoved herself away from the tree trunk, feet first. She slid over the grass, trying to slow her progress with her good arm, and managed to make it to the bottom of the hill without injuring herself any further.

Once she was on flat ground again, she sat up gingerly and tried to decide what to do. Her first thought was to try to walk, or at least limp. But after attempting to climb to her feet, she knew it was hopeless. Even if she
could have put some weight on her injured ankle—or found a branch to use as a cane—the pain in her back was too severe to let her take more than a step or two.

She collapsed flat on the ground on her stomach, squeezing her eyes shut tight as she waited for the shooting pains to subside again. What was she going to do? She was in a strange forest, far from any traveled trail, in the middle of a rainstorm. She couldn’t walk, and even if she could, she wouldn’t know which way to go. She buried her face in her uninjured arm and started to cry.

She was sobbing so loudly that she almost didn’t hear the sound coming from directly above her. A soft, tentative sound, almost lost in the pounding of the rain and the whistling of the wind through the treetops. A familiar sound. Lisa stopped crying. Could it be?

Gathering all her strength, she rolled onto her side and looked up. A pair of large, soft brown eyes stared back at her. Then the sound came again: a whuffling nicker.

“Tiny!” Lisa cried. “You came back!” She started to sit up quickly but remembered her injured back just in time. Taking it slowly, she managed to ease herself up into a sitting position without setting off a new round of agony.

Tiny watched her all the while. Lisa wasn’t sure, but she thought the mare looked worried and a little sheepish.