Sale Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 5)

by Claire Svendsen

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “I miss jumping him.”

  Harlow had been the horse that I won my first competition on but he’d been suffering with a suspensory injury ever since. Months of stall rest and wrapping had seen him slowly become sound again and his rehab was progressing nicely with long walks and now short bursts of trot work but it hadn’t all been good news. The last time the vet was out, I overheard him tell Esther that he didn’t think Harlow’s leg would hold up to any jumping. He was grounded for good.

  “I wish I could jump you one last time,” I told him as he looked at me with his big, soulful eyes.

  Where Bluebird was all bounce and spunk, Harlow was an old soul. Soft and sweet, I’d loved him from the first moment I laid eyes on him. But Esther ran a tight ship. There was not enough room or money at Sand Hill to keep a horse that couldn’t pull his weight. I’d been afraid of that from the first moment he was injured and now, with the talk of sale horses in the air, I was worried that Esther might decide it was really time to let him go.

  “Ready for me to kick your butt in our lesson?” Ethan nudged me out of the mind slump I’d been lost in.

  “Don’t you mean you’re ready to get your butt kicked?” I said. “You haven’t seen us ride since we got back from the clinic. Things have changed. We’re unstoppable now.”

  “I thought you were unstoppable before?” he laughed.

  “True,” I said. “But now we’re invincible.”

  “Cool,” he grinned. “Last one out to the ring is a rotten egg.”

  “Fat chance,” I ran off to the tack room.

  Thanks to Miguel Rodriguez, I was now a pro at not only getting out to the ring in record time but also getting there in good enough shape to pass an inspection that would include checking my bridle holes for saddle soap.

  “Come on boy,” I whistled for Bluebird.

  He was spending more time back in his field now that the weather had warmed up, which made both him and Esther happy. She hadn’t charge me any extra on the cold days when he’d stayed in the barn but I didn’t want to push my luck and I couldn’t afford anything more. But at least he would now go in a stall, which was something of a blessing considering the first time we’d tried to put him in one he freaked out and ran away, getting off the property in the middle of a bad storm and nearly giving me a heart attack.

  “Hurry up,” I encouraged him into a trot and he pranced his way into the barn, all puffed up and full of spunk.

  As predicted, we were already in the ring warming up by the time Ethan made it out.

  “I can see your tack is dirty from here,” I scolded him.

  “So?” he shrugged. “It’s just a lesson with Esther.”

  “Miguel says that if you want to be a great rider then you should respect your horse, yourself and your sport by making sure that every time you ride, your turnout is impeccable.”

  “Here, here,” Esther grinned as she came into the ring.

  “Well what about your breeches?” Ethan said. “They have holes in them. Look.” He pointed to the place where my mom had tried to sew them together.

  I felt my cheeks flush red and I turned Bluebird away. Ethan was right. Proper turn out should have included wearing clothes that didn’t have holes in them but there was no way I could afford new ones and even though Mom had offered, I knew that it would be stretching her budget too. Especially now that Cat was there, eating us out of house and home just like her father.

  “Her breeches are clean and that is enough,” Esther said. “Collected walk on the rail please.”

  “Sorry,” Ethan whispered as he went by. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, even though his words had really hurt me.

  As I rode, I thought of all the things Mickey had handed down to me since we’d been friends. Show jackets that were a little short in the sleeve for her. White shirts that only had one tiny stain. Breeches with nothing wrong with them. I realized that the only reason she’d asked her mom for new clothes was so that I could have her old ones.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat as Esther took us through the warm up and then set up the jumps. Bluebird took them in his stride just like he had before and I no longer felt like my pony jumped in a weird way at all.

  “Wow,” Ethan said. “Impressive.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I guess Miguel really knows his stuff,” he said, patting Wendell who’d had a couple of rails down. “And you’re right. I should have cleaned my tack. I was just being lazy.”

  “Forget about it,” I said.

  I left him in the ring and walked out on the back trail, my legs swinging free from the stirrups. Bluebird pricked his ears. It had been a while since we’d walked out through the trees. Jess’s farm skirted the back of Sand Hill and riding out on the trail, there was always a chance of running into her. Not exactly an exciting prospect. But I hadn’t heard anything about her since she drugged her horse and herself at the clinic and had been taken to the hospital. I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to Blue Midnight, the jumper she imported from Germany who just happened to be a horse whose death had been faked in an insurance scam. I wondered if he had been shipped back already. If he had, I knew it was only a matter of time before Jess got her father to buy another one. She changed horses as often as people changed shoes.

  When we got closer to the fence Bluebird stopped, his body rigid as he let out an ear piercing whinny and a horse answered back. Someone was out there.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I couldn’t decide what to do. Turn back to the barn or carry on up to the fence? Eventually my curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to find out what had happened to Blue Midnight, even if it did mean enduring the wrath of Jess. But it wasn’t Jess up by the fence. It was her twin sister Amber. The knot in the pit of my stomach started to unfurl, especially when she smiled and waved.

  I approached cautiously. Amber always seemed nicer than her sister but when Jess was around she didn’t have much of a back bone. When she was with Jess, she could be just as mean. I was never sure if it was an act she put on to protect her home life or whether she just couldn’t make her mind up to hate me or like me.

  “I thought maybe it was you,” she called out.

  She was sitting on the back of her black mare, Belle. Jess owned Beauty, the mare’s matching twin but I hardly ever saw her ride the horse since she’d made it her mission in life to beat me at show jumping. Beauty and Belle were accomplished hunters and not too keen to gallop around a course of jumps at high speed. Jess had tried it once on Beauty and it hadn’t been pretty. She ended up face down in the dirt at a show.

  “I thought maybe it was your sister,” I said as Bluebird and Belle sniffed noses over the fence.

  “No, she hasn’t ridden since the clinic.”

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  While I had been glad that Jess’s dirty tactics of drugging her horse had come to light, I hadn’t really wanted anything bad to happen to her. One girl in the hospital was bad enough.

  “She’s fine,” Amber said. “Her pride is hurt more than anything. Dad ripped her a new one after he found out that she’d talked him into buying a supposedly dead horse.”

  She pulled Belle’s head away right before Bluebird was about to take a bite out of her lip. Belle let out a squeal.

  “What happened to Blue Midnight?” I asked, backing Bluebird up a few paces. “Did he go back to Germany?”

  “The insurance company is sending someone for him tomorrow. They weren’t too happy to find out they had been stupid enough to make such a big payout on a horse that wasn’t dead.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “That’s too bad though. He was a really nice horse.”

  “Yeah, he was,” she said, patting Belle’s neck.

  “So I guess your sister will be getting another one soon then?” I said.

  “I guess,” she shrugged. “I don’t know. I told her she should just give
up showing for a while. The more Dad pushes her, the more she just mucks everything up.”

  “You seem to get by okay,” I said.

  “That’s because I don’t have any talent,” she said.

  Only that wasn’t true. I’d seen Amber and Belle go around a hunter course with grace and beauty. They were often in the ribbons. But apparently that wasn’t enough for her father. I wondered if this was what it would have been like if Summer had still been alive. Two sisters vying for the blue ribbon and the attention of their father all at the same time.

  “Well, I’d better get back,” I said, turning Bluebird away from the fence. “It was good to see you.”

  And it was nice to see someone over the fence and have a pleasant conversation for a change instead of insults being hurled back and forth. It felt all mature and adult like.

  “I heard your friend is in the hospital,” she called out after me.

  “Yeah,” I looked back. “She’s in a coma.”

  “I hope she gets better soon.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I hoped she got better soon too. Esther said that someone was coming to look at Hampton this afternoon. It had already started. People coming to potentially take my best friend’s horse away. I was going to do my very best to put them off but it wasn’t like Hampton was some old pasture puff. Even just standing in his stall he looked like a champion. I didn’t know how long I was going to be able to stall the sale and it wasn’t going to be easy with Esther around either. I was pretty sure that she was getting a commission out of the deal which meant it was in her best interest to sell him as well. I was the only one who was there to protect Hampton for Mickey when she couldn’t do it herself.

  “Do you think telling lies is bad, even if it is for a good cause?” I asked Bluebird.

  His ears flicked back and forth but he didn’t answer. If I was going to save Hampton, I was going to have to come up with the mother load of lies. I just hoped that the bad karma wouldn’t come back to bite me in the butt.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lunch was a sandwich out on the grass patch where I used to sit with Mickey. I scrolled through the texts I’d sent her while I was at the show jumping clinic.

  I’m having such a great time.

  You should see what Jess is up to.

  Why aren’t you answering me?

  Fine then, just be mad, see if I care.

  I wanted to erase the last one but I couldn’t. Mickey hadn’t even seen it. By then she had been in the hospital.

  I’d tried calling to see how she was but because she wasn’t family, they wouldn’t tell me anything. I even called back and said I was her sister but they didn’t buy it. It wasn’t fair. She was practically my sister. I didn’t see why they wouldn’t tell me anything. They could at least tell me that she was the same so that I could stop worrying about her.

  I scoffed down the last of the sandwich and went back in the barn to help Esther. Maybe if I did something good then it would cancel out the bad that I was about to do.

  “What time are they coming?” I asked Esther, dragging a broom down the aisle.

  “Around two I think,” she said.

  “Should I groom him or something?” I asked. “Do you think I should ride him, you know, to put him through his paces for them?”

  “I think the daughter will probably ride him,” Esther said. “But you can groom him. He’s all dusty.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I slipped into Hampton’s stall. He looked over at me and then went back to his hay. He’d never been an especially affectionate horse and he hated it when Mickey fussed over him but he’d been awfully subdued since she’d been gone. I knew that he missed her and I also knew that he was probably worried. Maybe he even thought that it was his fault.

  “Hang in there boy,” I said, hugging his thick bay neck. “She’s going to be okay but you just have to try and be naughty so that someone doesn’t buy you before she gets back. Can you do that? Not horribly naughty or anything, just kind of naughty. Please?”

  He wiggled out of my arms and went to the back of the stall to sulk. Maybe his grumpy mood would be enough. If he kept this up, I wasn’t going to have to do much to dissuade people from buying him. He was going to take care of it all on his own.

  I fetched Mickey’s grooming box from the tack room and ran her soft brushes over his coat until he shone like polished mahogany. He was ticklish around his girth and under his belly and I used the extra soft brush that Mickey found online. It had a purple back with a heart in the middle of the bristles and I had to choke down a sob as I used it.

  Then I sat out in the barn aisle and waited, heart pounding in my throat. What if the girl was a really good rider? If she was half way competent then she would be able to make Hampton do whatever she wanted because although he could be grumpy he was rarely, if ever, disobedient.

  “What are you doing?” Ethan came and sat beside me.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just waiting.”

  “For the people to come and try Hampton?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That sucks.”

  “I know. I’ve been trying to think of ways to get Hampton to be bad. Not horribly bad but just a little bad so that they don’t want to buy him. But I can’t think of anything.”

  “You should get out those boots he hates,” Ethan said. “You know the purple ones that Mickey got on sale. They have that funny fleece inside and it drives him crazy.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I cried, leaning over to hug him and then feeling awkward and pulling away.

  I ran off to the tack room and got out Hampton’s saddle and bridle. Then added the purple pad and the boots that Ethan had reminded me of. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. It was perfect. As long as Esther didn’t remember that he hated them as well and force me to switch them out.

  “I got Hampton’s stuff ready,” I called out to Esther.

  “Thanks,” she replied from the office. “They here yet?”

  I peered down the drive. “No, not yet.”

  “They’d better hurry up. I have a million things to do today.”

  Score one for Hampton. Zero for the prospective buyers.

  But the hope that maybe they wouldn’t come at all faded as a bright red SUV came down the drive. This was it. They came spilling out in a tidal wave of little kids and big kids, all screaming and laughing and behaving as though they had just arrived at an amusement park, not a barn.

  “That’s them?” Esther looked out of her office and sighed.

  Score two for Hampton.

  Esther shuffled them all inside her office to sign release forms. They were the sort of kids who would have been doing cartwheels in the barn if you didn’t keep a tight leash on them. It wasn’t hard to imagine them getting kicked in the head and suing Esther.

  The girl who was here to try out Hampton was wearing brand new breeches and boots. I could tell they were new because they squeaked when she walked. She was tall but seemed younger than Mickey, maybe ten or eleven. She’d better hope that she could ride really well because otherwise Hampton was going to make mincemeat out of her. He wasn’t a bad horse but he knew when someone on his back didn’t know what they were doing and I was pretty sure that this girl didn’t have a clue.

  “Is that him?” she asked, her eyes wide as she looked in his stall.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Have you been riding long?”

  “Oh yes,” she said proudly. “I’m jumping two foot six and my trainer says that I’m the best she’s ever seen.”

  “That’s nice,” I lied. “Want to help me tack him up?”

  I picked up the itchy, purple boots and smiled to myself. The girl was toast.

  It went down pretty much like I had imagined it would. The girl couldn’t really ride, at least not a horse of Hampton’s caliber. He was push button but you still had to know which buttons to push and it didn’t help that the girl was pulling on his mouth and sloshing about i
n the saddle like a beginner.

  “I thought you said she could ride?” Esther whispered to me.

  We were both standing in the ring by the fence, waiting to save the girl in case Hampton decided he’d had enough.

  “She said she jumps over two feet,” I said.

  “Two human feet?” Esther said grimly.

  The girl couldn’t get Hampton to trot and when he did, it was a ragged pace and he went around the ring with his head in the air. The boots weren’t helping either. I felt kind of bad that I’d sabotaged the girl because she obviously didn’t need my help. Every now and then Hampton would kick out at an imaginary fly, only I knew it wasn’t a fly at all.

  “What is wrong with him?” Esther said.

  I just shrugged.

  “Come on Rose,” the mother said. “Kick him.”

  “No,” Esther stepped forward. “Please don’t do that. Perhaps you would like to see us ride him?”

  “Rose can do it,” the mom continued. “Just set up some jumps and she’ll show you. She got first place at her last show.”

  “What class was she in?” I whispered. “The lead line class?”

  Ethan, who was standing over by the fence watching, snickered.

  “I think we’ve got this one in the bag,” I said to him as Rose slithered off.

  “I don’t like this horse,” she announced loudly. “I don’t want him.”

  Ethan and I high fived each other as they left but this was just the first of many. I couldn’t keep doing this over and over again. All the girls couldn’t be like Rose. Deep down I knew that there would be some who would actually be able to ride.

  “See you tomorrow?” I called out to Esther.

  “Emily?” she said. “Can you come in here for a moment?”

  “I’d rather not,” I said.

  In my experience, when people wanted to talk, it was never good news.

  “Please?” she said.

  “Fine.”

  I threw myself down on the couch, remembering all the times that Mickey and I had sat there, joking and laughing.