Holiday Horse (11 page)

Carole signaled for Starlight to lengthen his stride a bit more as the others pulled farther in front of her. Then she looked down. Maxi looked back up at her, her eyes wider and brighter than ever.

“Hey, you guys,” Carole called to her friends. “I think Maxi likes riding!” As soon as Carole had mentioned her idea to bring Maxi with them in the infant carrier, Lisa had remembered something. Deborah had told her that Max kept threatening to take the baby for a ride in the carrier, and that had been all the encouragement The Saddle Club had needed. They would bring the baby with them!

Since Carole was the best rider of the three, she had volunteered to be the one to carry Maxi. And so far, the
experiment had gone very well. She had been worried about jostling Maxi while mounting, so Stevie had held the carrier until Carole was safely in the saddle. Then it had been a simple matter to take the carrier and fasten it on while Lisa held Starlight’s head to keep him still.

Of course, that hadn’t stopped all three girls from pausing for longer than usual at the lucky horseshoe. The battered shoe nailed to the wall by the door was Pine Hollow’s lucky charm. No one who had touched it before setting off on a ride had ever been seriously hurt. The girls hoped its luck would help them tonight. Carole even stretched Maxi’s little arm to brush the horseshoe with the baby’s fingertips.

“You’re never too young for good luck,” she had told Maxi.

Now she glanced down at the baby again. Despite all The Saddle Club’s jokes, Carole had been afraid that Maxi wouldn’t like riding. Starlight’s gaits felt very smooth and easy to Carole, but she knew that a tiny baby might have a different opinion.

Maxi, however, didn’t seem to mind the jostling and bouncing one bit. If anything, she appeared to be enjoying herself.

“I guess that Superbaby thing was no fluke,” Carole called ahead to Stevie, remembering the swooping and swaying game Stevie had invented earlier. “Maxi likes action and excitement.”

“Of course she does,” Stevie called back, sounding a bit smug. “I could have told you that. She’s a natural horsewoman, after all.”

Carole laughed. She took both of Starlight’s reins in one hand so that she could tug the baby’s hat a little lower over her forehead and ears. Fortunately, the wind really had died down for the moment, and the air, while still cold, was no longer as biting as it had been earlier that evening. Still, the girls hadn’t taken any chances. Maxi was bundled up as tight as ever.

“Snug as a bug in a rug,” Carole murmured, remembering the phrase her father sometimes used when he tucked her in at night.

The three girls covered the miles to Hedgerow as quickly as possible. Finally the woods started to thin out and lights twinkled at them through the trees.

“There’s Hedgerow,” Stevie said, urging Belle into a canter. “Let’s go.”

The others followed. Carole checked on Maxi, who was fine. Then she glanced forward to check on Lisa. She looked as comfortable on Topside as if she’d been riding him for years. Carole looked farther ahead at the buildings that were just becoming visible as the three horses left the tree line behind and cantered side by side across a small pasture.

What she saw made her gasp in horror. She had seen the big, old-fashioned stable at Hedgerow many times. But she had never seen it looking like this.

The main length of the building stretched across the flat ground just ahead of them. The left side of the stable looked much the same as always. But the right side, which, as Carole knew from previous visits, held the main stable entrance as well as the tack room, a small indoor exercise ring, and a few big box stalls, looked as though a giant had wandered by and stomped on it. A large section of the roof had ripped free and caved into the stable in huge, jagged chunks. Several pieces stuck up at odd angles, while others had disappeared entirely into the building’s interior.

“I hope there were no horses in the stalls on that end,” Carole said, staring at the destruction.

The others just nodded grimly and kept riding.

When they got closer, Carole spotted Elaine. The woman was hobbling awkwardly out of the smaller back entrance on the far left side of the stable. She had one crutch tucked under her arm, and her other hand was clutching a lead line. A small bay horse was on the other end of the line, dancing nervously and rolling its eyes until the whites showed.

“Hold this,” Stevie said. In one smooth motion, she leaped out of Belle’s saddle and tossed the reins to Lisa, who caught them expertly.

Stevie rushed forward to help Elaine. Soon she had taken the bay horse’s lead and was coaxing it toward a small paddock that lay between the back entrance of the stable building and the long, low-slung house where
Elaine lived. Carole could see that there were already more than half a dozen horses milling around in the paddock.

“It looks like you’ve been busy,” Carole called as Elaine approached The Saddle Club’s horses, leaning heavily on her single crutch. When Elaine got closer, Carole noticed that the woman’s forehead was beaded with sweat.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” Elaine gasped. “I’ve been doing the best I can to get them out, but I feel like I’m going to collapse. I’ve called the police for help, but they’re not sure when they can get here. I guess this is a busy night for them.”

Carole was already unhooking the straps of Maxi’s carrier. “Go inside and rest,” she ordered Elaine. “And take this baby with you. She shouldn’t stay out here in the cold.”

Elaine looked startled, but she reached out to take Maxi as Carole carefully handed down the carrier. “Who is this?” she asked.

“It’s Max’s daughter, Maxi,” Stevie said as she rejoined them. “I told you we were baby-sitting, remember?”

Elaine smiled for a split second as she glanced down at Maxi, who stared back up at her curiously. Then the woman looked over at what remained of her stable, and her face grew grim once again.

“I’ve got to get off this leg for a few minutes,” she said. “But I’ll be back out to help as soon as I can. I’ll rig
up something inside that will make do as a playpen. Okay?”

Carole nodded. She couldn’t imagine that Elaine would recover anytime soon. But she didn’t say so. “Sounds good,” she said.

“I’ve been bringing out the horses closest to the door first,” Elaine told them as she hooked the straps of the infant carrier around her shoulders and then grasped her crutch tightly again. “There’s a lot of debris farther in, and with this leg I haven’t been able to get back there. So I don’t know if …” Her voice trailed off, and her face twisted with pain. This time, the girls were pretty sure her broken leg had nothing to do with it. She was afraid for her horses, afraid that some of them might have been injured in the accident—or worse.

“We’ll do everything we can,” Lisa assured her quickly. They couldn’t promise any more than that.

“Okay,” Elaine said. “But keep your riding hard hats on, just in case. And be careful. If the wind starts up again, come right out. I don’t want you to take any chances.”

The girls were already busy tying their horses’ lead lines to a nearby fence post. Then Carole handed Lisa a few of the extra lead lines she had brought, and the girls raced toward the stable.

Miraculously, the electric lights hadn’t gone out in the collapse. As they entered through the back door, they saw that the stable aisle was brightly lit.

It was also noisy. Terrified whinnies and neighs came from every side. Several horses had their heads stuck out over their half doors as far as they could reach. Carole could only assume that the others were huddled in the backs of their stalls. At the far end of the aisle, she saw where the collapse had taken place. Dust was still floating, obscuring her view, but she could see the jagged edge of a large piece of roof. She shuddered, thinking how close it had come to the farthest stall in the row.

“Uh-oh,” Stevie said, pointing to a stall about halfway down the aisle.

The others looked and immediately recognized the problem. A large gray horse had managed to get one of its forelegs hooked over the top of the half door.

Carole was already running down the aisle. “He must have been rearing in the stall,” she shouted. “Quick—we’ve got to calm him down before he breaks that leg.”

The horse was terrified. He neighed repeatedly as the girls approached.

Carole forced herself to slow down as she neared the stall. She began talking soothingly to the animal, hardly noticing what she was saying.

The horse pricked his ears toward her, seeming to listen. He stopped thrashing about almost immediately.

“It’s okay, boy,” Stevie said, adding her own soothing voice to Carole’s. “We’re here to help.”

“I know this horse,” Carole said quietly, keeping her voice as soft and gentle as before. “Judy had to give him
some shots last summer, and I helped. We may be okay. He’s actually very calm, and he loves people.”

Her words were soon proved correct. As soon as the girls touched him, the gray horse seemed to understand that they were there to help. Unhooking his leg was tricky, but the horse was cooperative, and the girls managed it.

“I’ll take him out,” Lisa said. There was a halter hanging beside the stall door. Lisa slipped it on the gray and hooked a lead line to it. The horse followed her without protest.

“That’s one down,” Stevie said. “Let’s hope the others are all that appreciative.”

They weren’t. Some of the panicky horses did their best to kick or bite the girls who were trying to rescue them. Others backed into the farthest corners of their stalls and tried to elude them. But most seemed eager to escape from their suddenly terrifying stable and followed gladly as the girls led them, one by one, to the small paddock outside.

As she released a relatively calm Appaloosa mare into the now crowded paddock, Carole paused to scan the growing herd. So far they had been lucky. A few of the horses had cuts or bruises from throwing themselves around in their stalls. But none of the horses the girls had released so far seemed to have sustained any more serious injuries.

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Carole muttered, crossing
her fingers as she ran back to the stable to rejoin her friends.

She found that Stevie had just hooked a lead line to a plump gray pony. Despite his rather sleepy appearance, the little horse let out a quick buck and kick as Stevie tugged on the line.

“I’m glad Elaine hasn’t replaced her stallion yet,” Stevie said, taking a firmer grip on the line. “Otherwise we might have some real problems.”

Carole hadn’t even thought of that. Hedgerow’s stallion had been the first casualty of the swamp fever outbreak. And while Elaine had started searching for a replacement, she hadn’t found a stallion she liked yet. It was a good thing, too. Trying to deal with an unpredictable stallion in a frightening situation like this would have been downright dangerous for the girls. Carole wondered at the fact that something that seemed like pure, horrible bad luck—like swamp fever—could actually have a little bit of good luck hidden within it.

But there was no time for philosophizing. There were still four or five horses left to rescue. Carole hurried to the next stall, where a slender chestnut mare was letting out shrill screams of terror and dismay.

It took Carole a few minutes to coax the frantic mare out of her stall. By the time she released her into the paddock, Stevie and Lisa had freed the last few horses in the stable row.

“Is that it?” Carole asked Stevie, who was patting a bay
gelding on the rump to urge him into the ring with his stablemates.

Stevie’s face was grim. “Bad news,” she said. “We’ve got all the horses out of the main row, but there’s still a horse trapped inside. It must be in one of those box stalls you were talking about. The ones at the other end.”

Carole gasped. “You mean there’s a horse trapped under the roof?”

“I can’t tell where he is,” Lisa said, “but he’s definitely alive. As Stevie and I were bringing these last two out, we could hear him whinnying. We didn’t realize before that it was coming from back there because the other horses were making so much noise.”

Carole was already heading back toward the building. “We’ve got to find him.” She ran into the stable and down the aisle past the now empty row of stalls. At the end, she skidded to a stop. She heard what her friends had been talking about: A horse’s terrified screams were echoing through the damaged building from somewhere in the direction of the crash.

Stevie and Lisa were right behind her. “You know this stable better than we do,” Lisa told Carole. “Lead the way.”

“I’ll try,” Carole said, staring at the jumble of debris that blocked their path. She waved a hand to try to clear the dust, patted her hard hat to make sure it was settled firmly on her head, and plunged into the destruction.

She scrabbled over a roof section that had broken into
a dozen ragged pieces when it had landed on the bathroom fixtures below. Her friends followed. The area where the large box stalls had been was just beyond the bathrooms, if Carole remembered correctly. It was a little hard to tell. Everything looked a lot different now under all the rubble.

The lights were out in this section. Fortunately, the moon was still up, and its white glow gave enough light for Carole to see her way. Off to the left, there was the sound of gushing water—probably from a broken pipe, Carole thought distractedly. She was listening to the horse, which was still crying out from somewhere ahead. All they had to do was follow the sound.

“We’re coming, boy!” Carole called out.

“Or girl,” Stevie added.

The horse fell silent for a moment, and the girls paused, holding their breath. Then the animal let out another squeal of fear.

“That way,” Stevie said, crawling up next to Carole and pointing to the right.

Carole nodded and adjusted her direction.

The neighs got louder. The girls reached an area where a large, intact section of the roof had tipped into the building at a sharp angle. Stevie gave it a kick. When it didn’t move, they crawled beneath it, then emerged into what Carole guessed had once been the indoor exercise ring. Just beyond the ring was the area where the box stalls had been.