Horse Dreams (5 page)

Mom leans on the steering wheel. “Surely they can't all be here for that little horse.”

I hurry out of the car. Not only are the animal control people here, but the town's two police cars are parked on the school lawn. Orange cones block off the roads in all directions. Even the fire truck is here.

It looks like half the town found the horse before we did.

I spot Colt up the street and run to meet him.

“Ellie!” he shouts, waving both arms like he's directing traffic.

Larissa is with him. She doesn't wave. Not even with one arm.

“Cool, huh?” Colt says when we meet up in the center of the street.

“What are these people all doing here? Where's the horse? What's going on?” For the millionth time, I wish I were taller. I can't see over the heads in the crowd.

“It's been awesome!” Colt exclaims. “Nobody can catch that skinny horse.”

Larissa takes a sip from a long, curly straw poked into her pink drink. The giant plastic cup says Crazy Larry's Dairies. “All this fuss over a backyard horse?” She says this without bothering to look up from her Crazy Larry's cup.

“Backyard horse?”
I repeat.

Larissa sighs. “That's what my mother calls them. Backyard horses. You know. A horse without papers. Not registered. Probably not even a purebred. The kind of nag somebody would keep in the backyard instead of paying to board it in a stable.”

I stare at her and wonder why God gave Larissa Richland a champion show horse.
Her
horse has probably never even seen Larissa's backyard. Custer's Darling Delight (great horse, silly name) goes directly from the elite K. C. Stables to the horse show ring and back again.

I start to argue with her, then stop. “I don't have time for this.”

Suddenly the crowd lets out an “Oooh—aah!”

Larissa, Colt, and I spin around to see.

“There it goes again!” Colt laughs.

“What?” I stand on tiptoes and try to see. But I'm too short. Too many heads are in the way. “What's happening?”

“That horse just dodged a net,” Colt explains.

“A net?” It's like I imagined. This is not good. “I have to see what's going on.” I leave Colt and Larissa and take off running for the horse.

“You're not supposed to go up there!” Larissa calls after me. “You're going to get in trouble. Anyway, it's just a backyard nag, Ellie.”

I ignore her and her singsong threat. Just because
her
horse wins trophies all over the state doesn't give her the right to make fun of other horses. But she does it all the time. My friend Rashawn has a sweet gray farm horse named Dusty. Larissa calls him Musty or Rusty and laughs about it every time, like she's so funny. Rashawn's best friend, Cassandra, has a Shetland pony, and Larissa is always making fun of him too. She calls him Phony Pony.

I elbow my way through the crowd. “Excuse me, please!”

“Watch where you're going, kid!”

I glance up to see a guy in a baseball cap that says
Channel 5 News
. He has a video camera strapped to one hand. Two more cameras dangle around his neck.

Next to him, six middle school girls are snapping photos with their cells.

Finally I break through the pack. Somebody behind me gasps. I look up in time to see the spotted horse trot right in front of us. It's the first good look I've gotten of the horse. I hate to admit it, but if Larissa ever had the right to make fun of a horse, this would be the one.

If anything, the mare is dirtier than when I saw her the first time. And skinnier. I could count her ribs from here. Her backbone sticks up so far she looks swayback, although I don't think she is. What mane she has is knotted into tangles of burs and sticks. Her dingy black-and-white tail looks shorter than Miss Hernandez's ponytail.

The horse takes off again, tearing chunks out of the school lawn with her hooves. People scatter out of the way. I spot Principal Fishpaw. His face is as red as Larissa's hair. I'm not sure if he's screaming at the pinto or at everybody else.

On the other side of the lawn, Sheriff Duffy waves his cowboy hat at the horse and shouts, “Shoo!” When the pinto keeps trotting toward him, the sheriff explodes at his deputy. “Get her, Jeremy!” Then he dashes behind a tree. If Sheriff Duffy thinks he's hiding behind the tree, he's wrong. His belly sticks out on both sides.

I need to get closer to the horse. But I don't want to scare her. She's had enough of humans. I dash to the maple tree I observe every day from my classroom. Pressed against the rough bark, I can hear the pinto's breath coming in snorts. The sound seems to be getting closer with each breath.

Carefully, I peek around the tree for a better look.

The pinto is so close I could touch her spots if I had longer arms. She's definitely spotted black and white under all that mud. One spot on her back really is shaped like a saddle. Without measuring her, I can't tell if she's over 14.2 hands, which would make her a horse instead of a pony. Her neck looks long, but it might be because it's so skinny. And that might be why her ears look too big for her head.

All in all, this horse is not much to look at. But she sure can run.

“Chase her this way!” a tall man in a white uniform shouts from the other side of the lawn. This guy I recognize. Mr. Yanke from animal control.

About a year ago he captured Squash, our cat. And Squash wasn't even lost. He'd just wandered off to explore. He would have come home if Mr. Yanke had left him alone. We had to fight—and pay fifty dollars—to get our own cat back.

Mr. Yanke has something in his hands. Sunlight gleams off the object when he lifts it and points it at the pinto.

I have to find out what he's holding and what he's planning to do with it. I shoot off a prayer. Then I step from my hiding place and jog over to him.

I've almost made it when, from the far end of the lawn, I hear, “Yee-haw!”

I spin around to see the other person from animal control, Yanke's partner. She's waving her arms and running behind the pinto.

The poor horse lunges left. But Sheriff Duffy is there, screaming. With a screech like that, he could star in a horror movie.

The horse breaks right. But the deputy is there. Then the animal control lady, the sheriff, and his deputy join forces to chase the pinto up the lawn . . . and straight toward Mr. Yanke.

I can still see that silver thing in his hand.

“Ellie!” Mom comes running up. “I've been searching all over for you, and—” She gasps. “Oh no. He's not going to—”

“Mom, what? What's he going to do?”

“That thing in his hand,” she whispers. “I think it's a stun gun.”

8

Caught

I know what a stun gun is. I've seen it on TV. Policemen use it to shock bad guys. That thing can zap even a big man off his feet.

But this pinto isn't a bad guy. She didn't do anything wrong. The only reason she's running away is because everybody's chasing her.

With the sheriff, the deputy, and the animal control lady coming after her, the pinto breaks into an unsteady gallop. She's getting closer and closer to me . . . and to Yanke, who is ready with his stun gun. The siren on the fire truck goes off. People are shouting. It's a disaster movie. The only thing missing is a sky filled with helicopters to film the big event.

That's it!

“Mr. Yanke!” I leap in front of him and point to the sky. “Are those helicopters? Are they filming us?”

Mr. Yanke's eyes grow big. He lowers his stun gun and straightens his cap. Then he peers up at the sky . . . just as the pinto races past us. “I don't see any helicopters.”

“Really?” I take a step back. “Huh. Guess I'm seeing things.”

Sheriff Duffy is the first to reach us. He glares at Yanke. “What happened? You let that nag run right past you!”

The deputy is behind him. “Yeah! We had him right where we wanted him!”

“Her,” I correct.

The three of them frown at me.

Yanke's partner storms up to him. She whips off her cap and smacks it against her thigh. “What gives? You could have reached out and stunned that creature and been done with this whole circus!”

Mr. Yanke jumps in. “Well, I
was
going to stun her. Then this kid . . .” He glares at me.

I smile back at them. “He's right. Mr. Yanke was totally ready to stun that horse all by himself.”

Mr. Yanke gives them an I-told-you-so nod and waits for me to finish.

“That's because . . . how did you put it, Mr. Yanke? Everybody else here is too chicken-livered scared to help?”

“Hey!” the sheriff cries. “
I
wasn't scared.”

“Me neither!” his deputy claims.

“
You're
the one who hates horses,” Yanke's partner mutters.

“Me?”
Yanke shouts. “What about
you
?”

I leave them outshouting each other while I sneak off to find the pinto.

The crowd has thinned. It's starting to get dark, and I've lost sight of the horse. Then I see her by the flag pole. I move in closer and can see every muscle of the horse's skinny back quivering. She looks ready to fly out of there the second she senses danger.

I'm no danger. I just have to convince her of that. “Hey, girl,” I say in a cheery voice as I inch closer to her.

Behind me, I hear Colt's voice. “Stand back, people! Give Ellie a chance. She's good with horses.”

I'm grateful to Colt for holding back the crowd.

“So,” I tell the pinto, “you've had quite a day. Me too. Don't get me started. First I see you, but nobody believes me. Then—”

I keep a steady stream of babble going. Inside, I'm praying, although I'm not even sure what I'm saying—inside or out. I figure God understands anyway.

I carefully inch toward the mare. “Who likes to be chased, right?”

She sidesteps.

“Whoa, now.”

She takes a few steps backward. I go with her. I stop, and she stops.

Now what?

I keep talking. “Sure glad we found you, Ms. Pinto. My mom's really sorry she lost you. She loses things a lot. But you're the first horse she's lost.”

The chatter isn't working anymore. I can see the muscles in the pinto's shoulders knot. She's thinking about bolting. I don't know what to do to stop her. She'll run away. She'll be lost again.

Before I realize what I'm doing, I hear myself singing:

“I once was lost but now am found

Was blind but now I see.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound . . .”

The pinto's big, fuzzy ears prick up. I keep singing, even though Granny used to say I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket with the lid on. I take a step toward the horse, and she doesn't move away.

I've watched Mr. Harper catch the horses he lets us ride in horsemanship practice. And I've noticed a funny thing about those horses. They play hard to get. If Mr. Harper walks into a pasture full of horses, the only one that runs from him is the one he wants. I've always wondered what would happen if he pretended he was there for a different horse.

It's worth a try now. This pinto sure has been playing hard to get.

I keep singing as I walk closer to her. But I look past her, off to the side, like I'm going for a different horse—not her. I get so close I feel the heat of her sweaty neck.

Slowly, without looking at her, I reach up and scratch under her neck. She lets me. I ease my hand up toward her mane.

With my arm draped around the horse, I start singing again. This time I sing my own words to the tune of “Amazing Grace”:

“I need a rope for this spotted horse.

Won't somebody slip me a rope?

'Cause if you don't,

This horse will lope.

And will I catch her? Nope!”

I keep singing, glad that—thanks to Dad's soap jingle—I know so many words that rhyme with
rope
.

“She should stop singing,” Larissa complains. “That's not how the song goes.”

But Colt gets it. He disappears for a minute. When he comes running back, he's carrying a rope behind his back. I don't know where he found it, and I don't ask. He slips it to me. I loop it around the pinto's neck and pull the end through, and I've got myself a lead rope.

I take a step, and so does the pinto. The way she's panting, I'm not too worried about her running off on me now.

Mr. Yanke comes jogging up to us. I wish he wouldn't. I can feel the pinto tense up at the sight of him.

“All right then,” he says. “You, uh . . . you shouldn't stand so close to that horse, girl. Don't know what you were thinking. I'll take it from here.” He reaches for my rope.

“I don't think so,” I say.

“Well, maybe it wouldn't hurt for you to take her on up into my trailer.” The pinto swishes her tail. Mr. Yanke jumps back.