Horse Talk

by Bonnie Bryant

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lisa said. “We’ve been having a little problem with Stevie’s brother. That’s why we’ve had so many prank calls.”

  “We’ve been having a big problem,” Carole corrected her. “And it’s still a problem. If Chad and his friends call in the way they did last time, Missa might not get through, either. Instead of a Reverse Chad, we’ll have our usual Normal Chad—that’s bad.”

  “I could kill him,” Stevie fumed. “I can’t believe my brother managed to make this much of a mess. Maybe we could put him in jail. I’m definitely paying him back for this.”

  “And all his friends, too?” Lisa asked. “We could get your parents to lock Chad in his room, maybe, but we can’t keep every middle-school student in Willow Creek away from the phone. And don’t forget, it was Chad who called in with a real question. I don’t think he planned to have his prank get carried so far.” She wished once again that they had spoken to Chad when he had first started calling. Now it was definitely too late; too many people were involved.

  “He should have,” Stevie said. “He should have thought things through.”

  Lisa had to laugh, thinking about how seldom Stevie thought her own pranks through. Then she sighed. “Maybe the joke will have worn off by Wednesday. Maybe they’ll have forgotten about us.”

  “I hope so,” Sam said softly. “If April is still alive, it’s really important that we find her soon.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” Carole assured her. She shot a look at Stevie. “We’re not worrying about revenge this Wednesday. The only thing that matters is finding your horse.”

  “Of course,” Stevie agreed. “And on Thursday we’ll murder Chad.”

  They went back into the office and Stevie called off the Reverse Chad.

  “Maybe it’ll help if we tell them about April,” Lisa whispered to Sam. “Do you mind?”

  “Of course not,” said Sam. “Anything that might help.”

  Stevie told the Pony Clubbers the story of the missing horse, and Sam passed her photographs around.

  Lisa urged everyone to spread the news. “If the kids at school know why this is important, maybe they won’t mess up the show,” she said.

  Polly Giacomin looked doubtful. She was in Lisa’s grade. “The ones that are doing this to you aren’t exactly considerate, or interested in horses,” she said. “I think even when we tell them it’s serious, they’ll just laugh.”

  “But we will tell them,” added Adam, one of the few boys in the Pony Club. “It certainly can’t hurt.”

  “Thanks,” Sam said. “It’s really important that we find her.”

  As the other kids left the room, Janey came up to Sam and shyly slid her hand into the older girl’s. “I know you must feel just awful,” she said. “My Fancy’s not even lost, I know she’s safe at home with our caretakers, but I can’t stop worrying about her.”

  Stevie stared at her little sister. A wave of realization swept over her. “You’ve got your own pony,” she said, “named Fancy.” She couldn’t believe how stupid she felt. All the time Janey had been muttering about ponies being fancy, Stevie had thought she was saying that the Pine Hollow ponies weren’t well bred.

  “Of course,” Janey said, looking amazed. “I’ve told you all about her.”

  “Right,” Stevie said, flushing a little. “I just didn’t realize that her name was Fancy.” No wonder Janey hadn’t taken to Nickel right away! She was homesick for her own pony!

  “Fancy Free,” Janey explained. “She’s a Welsh cob, like Corey’s pony, only she’s a chestnut. I’ve had her three years. Every night at home I go out to the barn and feed her a carrot, right before I go to sleep. I can’t sleep well here, because I keep worrying that Mr. Durgies has forgotten her carrot. What if Fancy thinks I don’t love her anymore? What if she misses me something dreadful? I told her I’d be back before autumn, but I don’t know if she understood. But she’s a very smart pony.”

  Janey sounded anguished. Without thinking, Stevie leaned over and gave the little girl a hug. Janey hugged Stevie back tightly. “It won’t be so long,” Stevie said soothingly. “Max said you were only going to be here a few months. It won’t be autumn before you see her again.”

  Janey laughed a somewhat shaky laugh. “Yes, it will,” she said. “Right now in New Zealand it’s the start of summer. By the time I go home, it’ll be spring here and autumn there. I’m going to miss summer entirely.”

  Stevie was horrified. “That’s terrible! You’ll have to go right back to school!”

  “Don’t I know it,” Janey said.

  “But your pony will be there waiting for you,” Carole said. “She won’t have forgotten you.”

  “Do you really think so? Four months is a long time.”

  Sam leaned on the desk. “I’m sure of it,” Sam said. “Fancy knows you better than she knows anyone else. Your smell, your voice—she knows everything about you. She’ll remember that you bring her carrots. She won’t forget.”

  Sam paused. “Four months is about how long April has been missing,” she added. “I wonder what she remembers. She can’t have forgotten me, since she never knew me.”

  “Do you want to go see Nickel, the pony I’m riding here?” Janey asked her. “He’s quite a good jumper.”

  Carole had to laugh. She had never thought of Nickel as a good jumper until she had seen Janey riding him.

  “Sure,” said Sam.

  “We’ll all go,” offered Lisa. “And maybe, Sam, you’d like to take a trail ride. I’m sure Max wouldn’t mind.”

  “With the four of us,” Stevie added. Janey beamed.

  Sam shook her head. “My mom’s coming to pick me up in fifteen minutes. I’ve actually got a riding lesson at Fox Meadow. I’ve been riding school horses, since I don’t have April.”

  They came to Nickel’s stall, and the pony whickered lovingly at Janey. “Here’s your carrot, good boy,” Janey said, pulling one from her pocket.

  “You’ll spoil him rotten,” Stevie said.

  Janey’s eyes opened wide. “Ponies are like babies,” she said. “You can’t spoil them by loving them.”

  “It’s a good thing,” cracked Lisa, “or Belle and Starlight would be the most spoiled horses on earth!” They all laughed, even Sam. They introduced her to the other horses in the stable, including Belle, Starlight, and Prancer.

  “Would you mind if I came on Wednesday and sat in on your show?” Sam asked. She held her hand out for Belle to sniff, then patted the mare’s soft neck. “I’d like to be able to ask some questions myself, if someone calls in who might have seen April.”

  “Of course,” Carole said instantly. “If you think that might help, we’d be happy to have you with us.”

  “We’ve got to find her before the weather gets too cold,” Sam said.

  Lisa frowned. “You’ve said that several times,” she said. “But if April survived the crash—if she is wandering around loose—why is it so important to find her now? If she’s doing okay on her own, wouldn’t she keep doing okay?” Lisa knew that winter weather didn’t bother horses any more than it bothered wild animals. Horses grew thick winter coats, and as long as they could find food and water, they would be fine.

  Sam looked surprised by Lisa’s question. Her eyes opened wide. “I guess I haven’t told you,” she said. “I didn’t realize that I didn’t say it right away. April might do fine if she were on her own, but she’s not. Her owner had her bred late last winter. She’s pregnant.”

  “I DON’T KNOW what to do,” Lisa said. “I’m panicking. Really, I am.” It was the night before the last Horse Talk, and she had gotten into a fluster just thinking about the show. She had called the rest of The Saddle Club.

  “Shhh,” Carole said soothingly. “It’ll be okay. Or even if it won’t, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Lisa gave a short laugh. “Thanks. That certainly makes me feel better.”

  “What exactly are you panicking about?” Stevie as
ked.

  “The whole thing,” said Lisa. “What if Horse Talk is even worse than last week? What if I open my mouth and can’t think of a single word to say? What if—this is the worst—what if Missa doesn’t call back?”

  “Great,” said Carole. “Now you’re making me worried.”

  “Sorry!”

  “Listen,” Stevie said softly. “There’s no use worrying. We’re as prepared as we can be, and we can’t control what Chad or Missa or anyone else does.”

  “I know,” Lisa said. “I just wish this didn’t matter so much.”

  “When I think of April’s poor little foal …,” agreed Carole. April’s pregnancy made Sam’s urgency perfectly understandable. Most horses didn’t give birth until spring; a foal born in the winter needed special protection from the cold. Out in the wild, it would probably not survive.

  “Don’t,” groaned Lisa. “That only makes me feel worse.”

  “We can’t do anything about it now,” Stevie said. “We’ll do our best tomorrow.”

  “I suppose,” Lisa said. Talking to her friends always made her feel better, even when they couldn’t change what was bothering her.

  “We will do our best,” Carole promised.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, the panic butterflies in Lisa’s stomach had been replaced by a new and more insidious sort of insect, one that seemed to be tying her stomach into a series of tight knots. Sam sat bolt upright in her chair while The Saddle Club set up the equipment for Horse Talk. Lisa, looking at Sam’s hopeful expression, knew full well how crucial this show could be. She could hardly stand the pressure.

  “I brought a map,” Sam said. “So we could figure out where Missa lives.”

  “Good,” said Carole. Like Lisa, she could hardly stand to look at Sam. Horse Talk had started out as something fun to do. Then the prank had turned it into something awful, and now it seemed much too important for a school project. The life of a foal could depend on it!

  “Did you work out what you were going to say?” she asked Lisa in an undertone. They had agreed that Lisa would begin the program.

  “No,” Lisa said. “I mean, yes. I thought about it, but whenever I tried to write anything down, it didn’t come out right. So I’m going to just talk.”

  “Sounds fine,” Carole said, giving her an encouraging squeeze of the hand. She and Lisa took their places behind the table. The clock said three minutes to four.

  Stevie plugged in the last electrical cord. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go over to Mrs. Reg’s?” she asked. “I could try to get a few calls in. Maybe I could ask questions that would encourage other people to call.”

  Lisa shook her head. “I don’t think so. We’ve got to give Missa every chance.”

  Sam looked at the clock. “Almost time.”

  Carole cued Horse Talk’s opening music. Lisa moved the microphone closer to her mouth and let the last note fade. “We’re Horse Talk,” she said, in a quieter, more compelling voice than she had used so far. “We’re coming to you live from Pine Hollow Stables with a special mission today. At the end of our last show, a young girl named Missa called in to report a runaway horse she’d seen. We have reason to believe that the horse might be April Morning, a pregnant quarter horse that has been missing in the area since August.”

  Lisa sounded as professional as a television anchor. Carole was impressed. “We need to find this horse,” Carole said urgently. “Anyone around Pine Hollow who has seen or thinks they might have seen a loose horse needs to call us right now. And Missa, please call back. We want to talk to you.” Carole repeated the phone number twice.

  Lisa took a deep breath. She was about to add something else to what Carole had said when the phone rang. Lisa answered. “Horse Talk,” she said. “Thanks for calling.”

  “Hi,” said a voice that sounded like a boy’s. “I’d like to speak to Carole. My name is Pinkerton Pinkley, and I’ve got a horse that can climb—”

  “Now, look.” Lisa interrupted “Pinkerton Pinkley” in midsentence. “You and people like you are wasting our time. That was fine last week, when we didn’t have anything else to do. This week we’ve got a missing horse to find, we have only one hour to try to find it in, and you’re taking up our phone line with nonsense. We don’t have time for it.”

  Lisa hung up the phone, but not before they could hear a muffled “Sorry” coming out of it. Lisa repeated the bulk of her earlier message. “Missa, please call back,” she added.

  The phone rang again. This time it wasn’t Missa or a prank, it was an adult who said he’d seen a mysterious horse several times. “It’s always at night, when I’m coming home from work,” he added. “I work the late shift. The horse is eating grass by the side of the road. It’s a big white horse. The first time I saw it, I thought it was a ghost.”

  “Gray,” Lisa murmured. Most people mistakenly called gray horses white.

  “Yeah,” the guy said. “It was spooky-looking. But it was definitely a real horse. I tried to catch it once, but it ran away.”

  “Great,” Carole said. “It sounds like it could be the right horse. What road did you see it on?” The caller named an intersection not too far from Pine Hollow.

  Sam circled it on the map. “That’s not far from the library, either,” she whispered excitedly. “Fantastic!”

  “Thank you for calling, sir. Please, call in, anyone else who has seen this horse,” Lisa implored. The phone rang again. In quick succession, two other callers reported that they had seen a horse—white or gray—somewhere around the edge of the woods near the library. Both had seen the horse within the past two weeks, and both said that the horse ran away when approached.

  “Ask if it was limping,” Sam whispered while Carole was talking to the second caller. “Ask if it looked hurt.”

  “No,” the caller said. “Looked fine to me.”

  Sam beamed. She and Stevie spread the map out on the one clear spot on the table and started marking the places where the horse had been seen. They were all in the same general area.

  “Sounds like we’re on the trail of a horse!” Lisa said into the microphone. “Please, anyone, if you’ve seen this mystery animal, call us now.” She repeated the phone number, but before she was halfway through, the phone rang again. Carole jabbed the button to answer it.

  “This is Missa.” The little girl sounded excited. “I called last week, remember?”

  “Missa!” Carole was thrilled. Sam and Stevie gave each other high fives. “Of course we remember. Tell us about the horse you saw.”

  “Well, remember you told me to put carrots in the backyard?”

  Carole didn’t remember, but she went along with it. “Sure. So what color—”

  “Well, guess what?” Missa’s voice squeaked with delight. “I did it, just like you said, and it worked!”

  “What worked?” Carole asked.

  Lisa thought she understood. “The horse came back?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Missa, “and he’s right here now! He’s eating them!”

  “What’s she look like?” Sam demanded. “Can you see her?”

  “Sure. Is it a girl horse? She’s white on her back and has black legs, and funny shadow-marks on her behind.”

  “Dapples,” Sam explained. “She’s a dappled gray.”

  “She must really love carrots,” Missa said. “Since you told me to last week, I’ve been putting carrots out every day, and she’s been coming to eat them. Yesterday she let me touch her nose.”

  Sam looked ready to burst. Lisa couldn’t believe their luck. Even though they hadn’t listened to Missa last week, she had listened to them!

  “Okay,” Sam said breathlessly, “look right now at her hip. Can you see her left side? Does she have any kind of a marking there?”

  “She’s got a funny spot that looks like a smiley face,” Missa reported. “It’s dark.”

  Sam shoved one of the photographs of April across the table to Carole. She pointed to the mark on April’s hip. �
��That’s a brand,” Carole explained. “That’s the right horse, all right. Now, Missa, you need to tell us your address.”

  “Come on!” Stevie grabbed Sam’s arm and pulled her into the tack room. “We’ll go get her—it’s not far cross-country.” She grabbed Belle’s bridle.

  Max came in, followed by Janey. “I thought I’d find you here,” he said when he saw Sam and Stevie. “Take Calypso, she’s fast.”

  “Thanks!” Stevie grabbed the other bridle from its peg. “We won’t bother with saddles—Sam?”

  “Bareback’s fine with me,” Sam said.

  Janey looked at Stevie. “Can I come?”

  “Sure,” Stevie said. “Hurry!”

  Janey was trotting Nickel down the stable aisle from one direction just as Stevie and Sam were coming from the other. Stevie and Janey quickly touched the Pine Hollow horseshoe for good luck and told Sam to touch it, too. “I grabbed Belle’s halter for April,” Stevie said. Sam took it and slung it over her arm. “What’s the address?”

  Lisa hurried down the aisle, looking stricken. “Here,” Lisa said, handing Stevie a slip of paper. “But April’s gone! While Missa was talking to us, April left!”

  “Oh no!” Sam said from the aisle.

  “We’ll find her!” Stevie promised. “We know where she was a minute ago.” She had a sudden idea. Thrusting Belle’s reins into Janey’s hands, she ran down to Max’s office and opened the big cabinet where he kept his show supplies. Along with the PA system they used whenever they had an event at Pine Hollow, Max kept a pair of walkie-talkies. Stevie grabbed them. “Here,” she said to Carole. “See if you two can track the horse down, and let us know where to go.” Stevie took the other walkie-talkie with her.

  Stevie and Sam had to use the mounting block to scramble onto their horses’ bare backs, but Janey managed to vault aboard the smaller Nickel. In a moment they were away from the buildings and galloping across the field. “If we ride fast, it’ll take us about ten minutes to get to where April was,” Stevie shouted. Sam nodded. They knew they had to hurry. All the time they were riding toward April, April could be moving away from them.