Stray Horse (10 page)

“You mean you couldn’t stand one more second of those people?” Carole whispered. The last thing they needed was to get the Wainwrights angry at them.

“More or less,” Lisa conceded.

She had PJ on a lead rope and was walking him slowly around the ring, letting him sniff and explore. “One of these days I’m going to be able to ride him here,” she said. “I want him to be used to the place. That’s a good idea, isn’t it?” she asked Carole.

“Seems like a good idea to me,” said Carole. “Most horses adjust to new surroundings fairly quickly, but there’s nothing wrong with helping them along.”

PJ flinched at a stack of cavalletti.

“He’s seen these three times before,” said Lisa.

“Well, maybe the next time around will go more smoothly,” Carole suggested.

Carole and Stevie perched on the top rail of the fence and watched their friend lead PJ slowly around the far end of the ring.

“She hasn’t said another word about her parents’ divorce to me,” Stevie said. “Has she talked about it with you?”

“No,” Carole said. “All she ever talks about is PJ.”

“I suppose that means her volume is still off?” Stevie asked.

“Yeah, and the receiver’s on the blink, too,” said Carole.

“What do you mean?” Stevie asked.

“Watch her with PJ,” said Carole. “He’s okay with her,
but he still misbehaves with almost everybody else. She’s decided he’s the world’s most perfect horse. It’s possible that he might become the world’s most perfect horse, but right now he seems as tender and vulnerable as—well, I guess as vulnerable as Lisa.”

“Think he’ll change?”

“Only time will tell,” said Carole. “He must have had a pretty awful experience out in the wild. Maybe that changed him once and it’s just a matter of changing him back. Or maybe he’s always been like that. I don’t know, and neither does Lisa.”

“So this is where you’ve come to get out of the line of fire!” The girls turned to see Mrs. Reg coming out of the stable toward them.

“Do you need us?” Carole asked. She hoped the answer was no.

“No,” she said. “I’m just glad to have a little breather myself. I don’t want to be there when Marion Wainwright figures out that the water is actually fifty-one degrees. I’d rather watch Lisa give that horse a walk.”

Mrs. Reg leaned against the fence, relaxing, until Lisa joined them.

“I think he’s more confident now,” Lisa said. “Maybe that’s enough walking for a while, anyway. His leg is still swollen, you know.”

“I know,” said Mrs. Reg. “Judy says it’ll be healed in another couple of weeks. Maybe you’d better put him in his stall.”

Lisa took the horse back inside. Carole and Stevie began to lower themselves from the fence and return to their chores, but Mrs. Reg began speaking.

“You know,” Mrs. Reg said, “there was a pony once.”

It was going to be one of Mrs. Reg’s stories. There never seemed to be any warning when she launched into one, and there was no more a way of telling how long it was going to be than there was of telling what it was about. The woman just loved to tell stories about horses, and the riders at Pine Hollow were expected to sit still and listen. Carole and Stevie got comfortable on the fence.

“This old boy lived with a farmer who abused him. It wasn’t that he was mean; he just couldn’t take care of him. The owner was too old. Sometimes he’d sleep a whole day away without feeding the pony or giving him fresh water. Sometimes he’d forget. The animal rescue people spotted him, all bony and unbrushed, and took matters into their own hands. This was before the days of CARL, you know.”

It was hard to imagine that there had been days before CARL. The place was always so busy that many, many animals must have suffered without its kind help.

“Well, before CARL, the animal owners and lovers in
the area would just all pitch in in their own ways. The lawmen decided it was time for us to pitch in. They called my Max”—that meant her husband, Max’s father—“and they delivered the pony to us on a Saturday morning. No, I think it was a Friday. It was the same day the feed man used to come, and his regular delivery was always, uh, Tuesday. Yes, Tuesday.”

It didn’t matter to the girls what day it was, but it seemed important to Mrs. Reg to be specific. Stevie and Carole knew better than to interrupt. They remained silent.

“Tuesday. Definitely.” She seemed pleased, and she continued. “He was unhappy from the minute he walked into the place.”

“How could any horse—?” Stevie started. Mrs. Reg glared at her. Stevie stopped talking.

“He nipped at anyone who walked by, human or horse. If we put a saddle on him, he’d puff like nobody’s business. Sometimes it took four tries to get the girth tight enough. He was so naughty with a rider on him that the youngsters began yanking on his mouth. Worst possible thing, of course. That made him even crankier. That made them yank more. Not that my Max would let them get away with that any more than Max does today. He wasn’t young, you know.”

“Your Max?” Carole asked.

“No, the pony,” Mrs. Reg snapped. “I don’t even remember his name now. Anyway, my Max figured he’d never be able to retrain him and make him into a good school pony, and he couldn’t keep using him the way he behaved. He gave up on him.”

“He sold him?” Carole asked.

“No. He gave the pony away. He hadn’t paid anything for the creature; he certainly wasn’t going to charge anyone else for him. He gave him to a woman who had a field where he could live out his days.”

“Then what happened?” Carole asked. She had the feeling Mrs. Reg was about to walk away, as she often did, just when the story was getting interesting.

“He eventually got used to being treated well,” said Mrs. Reg. “Oh, look! Mr. Wainwright is waving his arms about something. I’ve got to go rescue Red. And you girls should go give Barq a grooming. He needs it.”

She left them scrambling down the fence.

“What was that about?” Stevie asked Carole. “Was that another weird Mrs. Reg story?”

“I don’t think so,” said Carole. “I think she’s telling us that PJ is having trouble adjusting and he might not make it here,” she said. “It’s a good thing she didn’t tell that to Lisa.”

“Maybe,” said Stevie.

T
HE AFTERNOON DIDN
’
T
slow down after that. It only seemed to get busier. The Wainwrights kept waving their arms and people kept doing whatever they commanded.

When Carole stepped into the tack room to pick up a longe line for Mr. Wainwright, she found Red tucked into a dark corner.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Hiding,” he admitted readily. “Since that man refuses to do anything for himself, it’s a sure bet he’ll never come in here. I thought I’d get a moment’s peace.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Carole said, chuckling. “But remember, while you’re hiding, he’s ordering other people around. Here’s the longe line he asked me for.”

“Yeah, well the last time I took that one to him, he rejected it, saying it was too old.”

“Then I’ll tell him it’s our
new
longe line and see how he likes that. Or maybe that it’s the one we save for the best horses. What do you think?”

“Go with the best horses thing. And give me five more minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” Carole said, taking the longe line with her as she left. She delivered it to Mrs. Wainwright with the “best horses” message. Mrs. Wainwright smiled. So did Carole, who quickly escaped down the stable aisle.

“Look at this, Carole!” Lisa called out to her. Carole paused. Once again, Lisa was grooming PJ. It seemed to be the one activity he would always tolerate—well, that and eating. There was no doubt about it. The horse was getting better. His ribs were no longer so prominent, and the constant brushing, combing, and rubbing of his coat was bringing out a distinct sheen.

“You’ve got that coat shinier than the Wainwrights’ horses’,” Carole said.

“I know,” said Lisa. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Carole sighed and swallowed the words she wanted to say. Carole and Stevie were working like crazy at Pine Hollow just to help their friend, and the only thing Lisa could think to do was groom PJ one more time.

“It’s wonderful,” Carole agreed, reminding herself that Lisa was going through a very hard time. Normally Lisa would have been the first to recognize what was fair and what wasn’t. The fact that she couldn’t do that now was a measure of how much she needed support from her friends. Carole was willing to overlook her actions for a while.

“I’ve got to get to work,” said Carole. “Mrs. Reg asked me to assign ponies for the lesson Max is giving after this class. If I don’t do it right, Penny will have six lessons today and none tomorrow. All the little kids are crazy about her! See you!”

“Okay,” Lisa said, picking up another brush.

Carole met Stevie in Mrs. Reg’s office. Mrs. Reg was laying out the grooming tools for the Wainwrights’ horses as if they were a surgeon’s tools (and as if the Wainwrights couldn’t do that for themselves). Carole sat in Mrs. Reg’s chair with the daily horse chart spread out in front of her. Stevie sat across from her with the list of students for the next class. Through the window the girls could see Max giving a class for intermediate riders. Beginners were next.

“Okay,” Stevie began. “Alice?”

“Let’s put her on Dime,” said Carole, penciling in the assignment.

“Then what about Taisha? She always wants to ride Dime.”

“She should try another horse,” said Carole. “How about Peso?”

“Peso behaves better with boys,” Stevie reminded her. “So, if we put her on Nickel, then we can have Peter ride Peso.”

“But Peter cantered last week on Dime. He’s going to want to ride him again.” She sighed and took out her eraser. “And the only other boy in that class is David, and he just grew a whole lot, so he’s way too big for Peso, so maybe nobody should ride Peso this lesson.”

Stevie looked over her shoulder at the chart. “But nobody’s ridden Peso all day long,” she said.

Carole started erasing and was still erasing when the phone rang. Since Mrs. Reg and Red were busy with the Wainwrights and Max was teaching a class, the only thing for Stevie to do was to answer it.

“Pine Hollow Stables,” she said, trying to sound very professional.

“Hi, my name is Crawford, Louis Crawford.”

“Yes, Mr. Crawford. What can we do for you?” she asked. It sounded like something Mrs. Reg might say. “Both the Regnerys are busy now, but I’ll try to help you if I can.”

“I lost my horse,” he said. “I mean, my horse got loose when a drunk driver knocked down a couple of fence posts.”

“Oh, how terrible,” Stevie said. She could hardly imagine how she would feel if she’d lost her horse. “You can advertise in the local papers or put up flyers. I’m sure that would help. People around here are good about taking care of animals. Actually, there’s a place called CARL—”

“Right, I know about that,” said Mr. Crawford. “They put out some flyers recently and I got a call from my vet, too. I saw the photograph. I just know it’s Protocol. When I called CARL, they told me he was staying at Pine Hollow.”

“There’s no horse here by that name,” said Stevie. Even as she said it, she knew it was a dumb thing to say.

“I’m sure they gave me the right number. You did say this is Pine Hollow, right?”

“Right, Pine Hollow,” Stevie echoed.

“Well, look, why don’t you have the Regnerys call me when they have a minute and we’ll see what the situation is.”

“Right. I’ll do that,” said Stevie. She pulled the phone message pad over to her and borrowed Carole’s pencil. She wrote down his name, phone number, and the words
lost horse.
Then she hung up the phone and handed the pencil back to Carole.

“PJ?” Carole asked.

Stevie nodded.

“Oh, no.”

Stevie lowered herself back into the chair and stared at the message.

“I could lose it,” she said.

“He’d call again. You didn’t sound too swift there. I’m sure he’ll call again.”

“I’ll put it at the bottom of the messages,” Stevie suggested.

“Below the calls from people who want Mrs. Reg to change telephone companies?” Carole asked.

Stevie shrugged. “It might work.”

“He’ll still call again,” Carole repeated. “And then Mrs. Reg would be annoyed with you.”

“What would I be annoyed about?” Mrs. Reg asked, entering the office. “I mean, is it possible that there would be anything in the world more annoying than those people Dorothy DeSoto forced on us?” Carole started to stand up to relinquish her chair to Mrs. Reg, but Mrs. Reg shook her off and, instead, chose to stand in a corner, out of sight from the aisle.

Carole couldn’t help laughing. “That’s exactly the same thing Red was doing in the tack room,” she said.

“He was my inspiration,” said Mrs. Reg. “Five minutes, that’s all I ask! Now, what’s going on here?”

A little reluctantly, Stevie handed her the phone message.

“Lisa’s horse?” Mrs. Reg asked. Stevie nodded.

“Sounds like it,” Carole confirmed.

“Well, we’d better call this man,” she said, reaching for the phone.

It didn’t take long to confirm their worst suspicions. Mr. Crawford described PJ extremely accurately. There was no doubt. Mrs. Reg took some time describing PJ’s wounds and all the care he’d gotten at CARL and at Pine Hollow.