English Rider (18 page)

The sky was as dark as it had been, and there were clues that there had been some rain there, but nothing nearly as hard as the rain they’d left on the interstate. Stevie sighed with relief and switched the windshield wipers to a slower rate.

“I think I’ll drop you off at Pine Hollow first,” she said, turning onto the road that bordered the stable’s property.

Pine Hollow’s white fences followed the contour of the road, breaking the open, grassy hillside into a sequence of paddocks and fields. A few horses stood in the fields, swishing their tails. One bucked playfully and ran up a hill, shaking his head to free his mane in the wind. Stevie smiled. Horses always seemed to her the most welcoming sight in the world.

“Then I’ll take Callie home,” Stevie continued, “and
after that I’ll go over to Pizza Manor. I may be a few minutes late for work, but who orders pizza at five o’clock in the afternoon anyway?”

“Now, now,” teased Carole. “Is that any way for you to mind your Pizza Manors?”

“Well, at least I have my hat with me,” said Stevie. Or did she? She looked into the rearview mirror to see if she could spot it, and when that didn’t do any good, she glanced over her shoulder. Callie picked it up and started to hand it to her.

“Here,” she said. “We wouldn’t want—Wow! I guess the storm isn’t over yet!”

The sky had suddenly filled with a brilliant streak of lightning, jagged and pulsating, accompanied by an explosion of thunder.

It startled Stevie. She shrieked and turned her face back to the road. The light was so sudden and so bright that it blinded her for a second. The car swerved. Stevie braked. She clutched at the steering wheel and then realized she couldn’t see because the rain was pelting even harder than before. She reached for the wiper control, switching it to its fastest speed.

There was something to her right! She saw something move, but she didn’t know what it was.

“Stevie!” Carole cried.

“Look out!” Callie screamed from the backseat.

Stevie swerved to the left on the narrow road, hoping it would be enough. Her answer was a sickening jolt as the car slammed into something solid. The car spun around, smashing against the thing again. When the thing
screamed, Stevie knew it was a horse. Then it disappeared from her field of vision. Once again, the car spun. It smashed against the guardrail on the left side of the road and tumbled up and over it as if the rail had never been there.

Down they went, rolling, spinning. Stevie could hear the screams of her friends. She could hear her own voice, echoing in the close confines of the car, answered by the thumps of the car rolling down the hillside into a gully. Suddenly the thumping stopped. The screams were stilled. The engine cut off. The wheels stopped spinning. And all Stevie could hear was the idle
slap, slap slap
of her windshield wipers.

“Carole?” she whispered. “Are you okay?”

“I think so. What about you?” Carole answered.

“Me too. Callie? Are you okay?” Stevie asked.

There was no answer.

“Callie?” Carole echoed.

The only response was the girl’s shallow breathing. How could this have happened?

Bonnie Bryant is the author of nearly a hundred books about horses, including The Saddle Club series, Saddle Club Super Editions, and the Pony Tails series. She has also written novels and movie novelizations under her married name, B. B. Hiller.

Ms. Bryant began writing The Saddle Club in 1986. Although she had done some riding before that, she intensified her studies then and found herself learning right along with her characters Stevie, Carole, and Lisa. She claims that they are all much better riders than she is.

Ms. Bryant was born and raised in New York City. She still lives there, in Greenwich Village, with her two sons.