Riding Camp (10 page)

She nudged his belly with her bare feet. He tensed under her. She felt his uncertainty. She didn’t want him to be uncertain. She wanted him to follow her instructions without question. She kicked him. At that, Topside seemed ready to take orders from her, but by then Carole was in the middle of a sea of horses, with no place to go!

At that instant, the first gigantic arc of water reached upward from the other side of the barn, suddenly visible to the horses. As one, the animals stepped back in fear, opening up their ranks ever so slightly. Carole held her hands low and pulled on the lead rope and prayed that Topside would recognize the signal as if it were from a bridle with a bit. For a moment, he stood still. Then, slowly, carefully, he began to walk backwards.

“Good boy!” Carole said, and she meant it!

“O
UCH
!” S
TEVIE SAID
. One skittish mare had just kicked her. She rubbed her shin. It was swelling already, but it wasn’t bleeding. She’d be okay. The mare would be all right as well. Her skittishness was actually
helping her, because it meant she was anxious to escape. As soon as Stevie unbolted the door to her stall, the mare hightailed it out of the barn to safety.

“Teddy, Teddy! Where are you?” she called, coughing. The smoke was beginning to billow down into the lower level. It was much harder to see than it had been just a few minutes before.

Stevie found a gray horse cowering in the corner of a stall. She reached in over the half-door, hooked her fingers through his halter, and pulled gently.

But there was nothing gentle about the horse’s reaction. The horse reared on its hind legs, terrified, shrieking loudly. His movement was so sudden that he pulled Stevie right up off the ground and halfway over the edge of the door. She managed to release her fingers from the halter and backed out of the stall before the horse could land on her.

“Swell—I’m trying to give you a hand and you think this is the right time to get on your own two feet!”

It wasn’t much of a joke, but it was the best Stevie could do. In fact, she was quite proud of the fact that she could still make a joke, even a feeble one, at a dreadful time like this.

“Listen, let’s save the fun and games for tomorrow. Then you can do your Hi-ho-Silver imitation. I might even clap. For now, let’s stick to routine. I tell you what to do, you do it.”

The gray eyed her warily, but didn’t protest when she snapped a lead on his halter. He also didn’t move when she tugged at it. She tugged it harder. Then she yanked it. He yanked back. This horse wasn’t going to budge.

One of the very first things a horse is taught to do, is to obey a halter lead rope. This horse was so upset and frightened that he had obviously forgotten everything he’d ever been taught. Stevie was trying to save his life, but he was acting as if she were trying to make him do something unpleasant, like lead him onto a van—

That was it! There were lots of tricks to putting horses on vans, and the first was a blindfold. Within a few seconds Stevie had torn off one of the legs of her pajamas. It was the only thing she had that would work, and besides, she’d never liked the little flowers on them. For a moment she imagined explaining to her mother what had happened to the pajamas. “See, we had this barn fire, Mom …” Stevie smiled to herself as she worked. Talking reassuringly to the gray horse, she slipped the homemade blindfold over his eyes. If he couldn’t see anything, he’d have to rely on her. At least that was the idea.

It worked. Stevie tugged at the lead rope. One foot came forward. Before the horse knew what he was doing, he had followed Stevie out of the stall and was
letting her lead him to the door. She took him all the way out of the barn before she took off his blindfold. She was afraid that once he could see, he might make his escape back into the barn. That would be awful.

“Get out of here!” Stevie yelled at the gray. She released the lead rope and slapped him hard on the rump. He looked over his shoulder at her with what she was sure was a dirty look. She whacked him again, harder. He bolted for freedom at full speed.

Now seven horses had been freed.
But where was Teddy?

O
NCE
C
AROLE WAS
on Topside and Topside was paying attention to her, it began to seem as if everything were easy—especially when she had so much help from the other campers and the staff.

She got Topside to canter toward the herd, which made the horses shift over toward one side, even though they were still terrified of the fire. On Carole’s signal, the campers at the fences began waving their towels. Eventually they got the horses’ attention. Topside, whose bloodlines were one hundred percent Thoroughbred, now worked the horse herd like an experienced quarter horse. Quarter horses were the breed preferred by cowboys for their strength, stamina, speed, and intelligence. Topside was showing all these qualities. It was as if he understood the task before
him, not just from command to command, but as a whole job. Topside began charging the herd and getting it to go in the right direction.

Not all the horses were cooperative. There were several who just wouldn’t join the ranks as the herd began to back away from the barn.

Debbie saw the problem and found the solution. Her own horse, Bellevue, was one of those at the fence. Debbie found a way to climb up near him and, before he could object, she mounted him bareback. Holding his mane like reins, she began to ride him.

It was what Bellevue had needed, just like Topside. Debbie circled the herd, moving around to the side opposite Carole. When Carole approached the herd from one side, Debbie did the same from the other. Lisa and the other campers at the fence continued to wave.

Just three horses remained at the fence. One of them was Basil, whom Lisa had been riding just a few hours earlier. It seemed impossible that so much had happened in such a short period of time. Lisa glanced at the barn. This was no time to get philosophical. She hopped into the paddock and when she could get Basil’s attention, she gave him a firm smack on his rear. It was just what he needed. Basil and the other three horses ran after the herd.

“Yahoo!” Nora called, running back to the fence. “You were fabulous.”

“You did exactly the right thing!” Elsa said. The other campers standing by the fence applauded.

“It was teamwork,” Lisa reminded them. “
We
were great. All of us.”

“We’re not done, though,” Elsa said. “We brought everything we could find to make a fence, but now we’ve got to set it up. If we don’t look out, we’ll have every one of those horses back here in no time.”

Lisa smiled to see that everybody who had been working with the herd was now joining Elsa in building a temporary fence. It had always been her experience that when people worked together, things got done. She was pretty sure this team could contain a mere herd of horses!

“Where are the horses?” someone asked. Lisa spun around. It was Phil.

“They’re over on the other side of the hill,” Lisa answered. “We got them away from the barn. They’re safe now.”

“All of them?” he asked.

“Sure, all of them,” Lisa said. “You don’t see any here now, do you?”

“Did you see Teddy? Was he there?” Phil asked.

“It’s hard to tell them apart in the dark, Phil,” Lisa said, with more patience than she felt. “But the horses
that were in the paddock are safe. They’re over the hill.”

“But Teddy wasn’t in the paddock,” Phil said, almost stumbling over his words. “Stevie told me to put him in the barn—for the farrier.”

Lisa had been concentrating so hard on the horses in the paddock that she’d completely forgotten about the horses in the barn. Phil’s words reminded her that Major was in the barn, too. Major and Teddy were both in the barn—and where was Stevie?

“Oh, no!” Phil gasped. He ran. Lisa followed him. They couldn’t get within thirty feet of the side entrance to the barn, though. The firemen wouldn’t let them.

“Too dangerous,” one said. “The whole side’s about to go.”

“But there’s someone in there!” Phil said urgently.

“And it’s my best friend!” Lisa added.

“Nobody’s in there,” the fireman said. “That would be crazy! Stand back now. And stay clear.”

“T
EDDY
?”

The horse answered with a nicker. Stevie kept calling his name and followed the sound of his nicker to find him.

He was there all right, but Stevie knew as soon as
she found him that the fire might not be his worst problem.

Teddy was in a box stall, larger than the others. He was lying down, completely immobilized with terror. Experience had taught Stevie that every horse had his own distinct personality. At that moment, Teddy’s wasn’t helping him at all.

Stevie remembered how Phil had had trouble with Teddy when his foot hurt. She also remembered how she’d calmed him with her voice and gotten him to lift his foot. Now she had to do something similiar, only it was going to be very hard to sound reassuring with the fire crackling above her and the heat increasing every second. She didn’t feel calm at all.

She started talking to the horse. She didn’t think Teddy cared what she said, but he listened. She babbled on, not really aware of what she was saying, but as she spoke, she hooked on a lead rope and began matter-of-factly getting the frightened horse to his feet. She was surprised to find that she’d been telling him the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears—Teddy Bears, of course.

At first, Teddy seemed to like it. Slowly but steadily, he rose to his feet. Then he stopped. He wouldn’t move an inch. Stevie tried the makeshift blindfold. It didn’t work. She tried tugging, then she tried yanking.
He wouldn’t budge. Teddy felt secure in his box stall, and no matter how treacherous it really was, he didn’t want to leave it.

But Teddy was also a trained riding horse, and there were some things which were always true about a riding horse. Stevie decided it might be the one way left that would work with Teddy. She entered the box stall, gave herself a boost on an overturned water bucket, and mounted Teddy. She was right about one thing. Once he had a rider on board, he wasn’t going to stand still. Before Stevie even got a good grip on his mane, he was off!

The horse seemed to smell the fresh air and, having made up his mind that that was where he was going, wasted no time about it. He flew out of the barn, up the small incline of the entry path, and along the trail toward the pond. Stevie held on for dear life! This horse hadn’t been named after the Rough Riders for nothing!

Most of the horses had headed for the pond. Stevie was certain Teddy would do the same. Teddy did, but he didn’t stop at the beach the way the other seven horses from the barn had done. He kept on going at full gallop! The last voice Stevie heard as she and Teddy flew past the cabins was Phil’s. It was faint but distinct.

“Stevie!”

Stevie was a good rider. She knew a lot about how to control a horse, how to make it do what she wanted, and how to keep it from doing what
it
wanted to do. But all of these things were difficult riding bareback without a bridle. On a still-terrified Teddy, they were impossible. There was only one thing she could do, and that was to hold on. The horse raced through the woods, snorting and sweating up a lather. He stumbled on rocks and roots, brushing up against branches, trees, and briars. Stevie’s legs got scratched a dozen times and she could feel blood trickling down them. It didn’t matter, though. The only thing that mattered was saving Teddy. As long as she was with him, there was a chance she could keep him from killing himself. Until he was ready to stop running, there wasn’t much she could do, but she could be with him to calm him when he wore out. She clutched his thick mane with both hands, gripped his sleek belly with her cut legs, and leaned forward, making herself as small a target as possible for the branches that lashed at her body.

All the time she talked soothingly to the horse. “And then Goldilocks sat in the great big chair. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘This is much too big for me.’ ” She couldn’t believe she was telling a fairy tale to a horse. It probably wasn’t doing Teddy much good, but she knew she needed to talk. It was a way of keeping herself from being terrified, and it was a way of reminding
him she was there—not that it was working very well for either of them.

Teddy was a big strong horse. Stevie was afraid he could keep on running for hours. She was more worried for his safety than for herself. Every time he stumbled on something, he risked seriously hurting himself. If the brambles and prickles were hurting her, she hated to think what they were doing to his beautiful and delicate legs. She’d once seen a horse hurt so badly that he’d been put down. She didn’t want the same thing to happen to Teddy—especially not after she’d saved him from a fire!

Stevie clung tightly to his neck. She couldn’t let Teddy get hurt. She just couldn’t!

She kept on talking to him, and finally he began to slow down. His gallop wound down to a canter. It should have been an easy rocking gait, comfortable even bareback, but Teddy was lame. He stumbled with almost every step, now feeling the pain of wounds that had been numbed for a while by his terror.