Dream Horse

by Bonnie Bryant

  “What’s this?” Lisa asked, looking around her.

  “This is Rock Ridge,” said Carole. “More accurately, this is the bottom of Rock Ridge.”

  Lisa looked up to where the expanse of rock rose in front of her. “How the …”

  “I think we climb,” Carole said.

  “Where?” Lisa glanced around, looking for a way they could get up to the top of the ridge.

  “There,” said Carole.

  Lisa looked where her friend pointed. There was a very narrow set of steps, little more than footholds, chipped into the bedrock, that would carry nimble climbers up to the top of Rock Ridge. The girls looked at one another. It would be no trouble for them. But for a horse? This was why they had brought Blondie. Now they wondered, were they asking too much of her?

  “Maybe there’s another way,” Carole said.

  “Let’s look then,” said Lisa.

  Carole fastened Blondie’s reins to a branch. It went against her training to use reins to tie up a horse, but they hadn’t brought a lead rope.

  “Sorry, girl, but it’s for your own good,” Carole said.

  Blondie didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she seemed relieved to have a chance to rest. She sniffed out a bush growing close to the ground and took a bite of it as if she climbed mountains every day of her life and now it was time for another ho-hum meal.

  “We’ll be back soon,” said Lisa.

  The girls scrambled up the steps to the top of Rock Ridge. From there they had a view of the valley. It was breathtaking, and if they hadn’t been so hot, tired, and worried, they might actually have enjoyed it.

  While it seemed as if they could see the whole valley, what they couldn’t see was any way to avoid asking Blondie to climb the slippery steps up the ridge to get near where the airplane had been circling. To the east and west the mountain fell away sharply.

  Both girls were tired from walking and climbing. They sat down to think.

  “We could go back,” Lisa said. “Then we’d come up the other side of the mountain.”

  “And lose about four hours. We’d barely get there before dark,” said Carole.

  Lisa scratched her head. If ever there was a time for logical thinking, this was it. “We have to take the path that will get us there the fastest without risking our lives or the life of that brave horse. If we—Carole, what are you looking at?”

  Carole stood up and pointed across Rock Ridge. “Hey!” she said, and she started running. Lisa followed her.

  “What is that?” Lisa asked, looking at a suitcase-sized bundle.

  “It’s a parachute,” said Carole. Then they saw the remains of the little fire Phil had built.

  “They’re alive!” said Lisa, finally giving voice to the unspoken fear she and Carole had shared.

  “Then why haven’t they walked down to the valley?” asked Carole.

  “They must need help,” Lisa said.

  The girls didn’t talk anymore about what their choices were. There weren’t any choices. They had to get to the glider. They had to do it fast, and they had to bring Blondie with them.

  In a few minutes, they’d scrambled down the side of Rock Ridge and reached their willing horse. Lisa looked at the docile mare that had brought them so far.

  “Do you really think …?” she began.

  “I really think that’s why we’ve got a blind horse,” Carole said. “We already know that this lady will do whatever we ask of her. She just doesn’t know what it is we’re going to ask, and I’m never going to tell her. We have to trust her inner vision. It’s gotten us this far. I think it’ll take us the rest of the way, too.”

  Lisa took the mare’s reins and led her over to the steps on Rock Ridge. Blondie seemed to sense the urgency in Lisa’s walk. She followed perfectly.

  Lisa led from the left and Carole guided from the right. The trio paused at the bottom of the steep, narrow stone steps.

  “Ready?” Lisa asked.

  “Ready,” Carole answered. She took Blondie’s right foreleg and lifted it onto the first step.

  Blondie obeyed patiently, step by step. She never moved backward; she never shied to the side. She had total faith in the humans who told her where to go and how to do it—almost as much faith as Lisa and Carole found they had in the horse.

  It took more than forty-five minutes to make it up the steps to the top of Rock Ridge. Carole and Lisa both hugged the mare, whom they had come to love and admire more than they would have thought possible. Blondie lifted her head, turning it into the warm breeze that crossed the ridge. She sniffed eagerly, shook her head, and began walking forward. It was as if she understood there was no time to waste on silly signs of affection.

  The far side of Rock Ridge was level with the forest. There was no climb down or up. The girls and Blondie simply walked into the woods.

  “They can’t be far now,” Lisa said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have found that parachute.”

  “Well, let’s see,” said Carole. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Phil!” she called. “Uncle Michael! Hello!”

  There was no answer. They walked farther into the woods. Lisa spotted one of the blazes Phil had marked on a tree with the pocket knife. “It’s a trail!” she said. “That’s a fresh mark. They are definitely nearby.”

  Carole called out again. “Helloooooo! Phil! Uncle Michael! Can you hear me?”

  They waited. There was only silence. They walked farther into the woods, looking for another blaze.

  “Wait, do you hear something?” Lisa asked.

  They stopped. It was quiet.

  “Phil! Uncle Michael!” Carole repeated.

  The girls waited. Blondie stood absolutely still.

  There was a rustle in the woods ahead.

  “Helloooo!” Carole called out.

  They waited.

  Ahead there was movement. Someone was coming.

  “Phil?”

  The boughs of two pine trees parted, and someone emerged from the dense woods, running toward the girls.

  “Phil?” Lisa asked.

  “Lisa? Carole?” he called out in stunned surprise.

  “What are you doing here? With a horse? How did you get up here? How did you find us?”

  “We’ve come to rescue you!” Lisa announced.

  “I should have known The Saddle Club would come through!” said Phil, clearly near tears.

  “We always do,” Carole said calmly, giving him a hug. “Why didn’t you use your radio?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Phil.

  “We’ve got time,” Lisa said.

  “Not as much as you think,” Phil said ominously. “Come on!” He turned and hurried back the way he’d come. Carole and Lisa clucked their tongues and tugged gently at Blondie’s reins. She followed them as they followed Phil.

  Carole, Lisa, and Blondie scrambled through the thick forest to keep up with Phil. “It’s this way,” he called, following his own blazes between the crash site and Rock Ridge.

  And then he stopped. The girls could see where he’d put some of his gear, a knife, matches, and a first aid kit, but there was no sign of the glider or Uncle Michael.

  “Where’s your uncle?” Carole asked.

  “He’s up there,” said Phil, pointing. “He’s got a broken ankle and can’t climb down.”

  Carole and Lisa looked up. Stunned, Lisa put her hand over her mouth. Carole gasped. At once, they both remembered the words of Stevie’s dream—Phil is in a tree.

  “No, it couldn’t be,” said Lisa.

  “Of course not,” said Carole.

  “I don’t know what you girls are talking about, but Uncle Michael needs our help right now,” said Phil.

  Carole and Lisa looked back up the trunk of the tree. Whatever was going on with Stevie would have to wait.

  PHIL STARTED CLIMBING the tree, and Lisa followed right after him. Carole patted Blondie and began to secure the mare’s reins to a branch. This would be no time to have the mare wander off
.

  Then Carole had another thought. Maybe Blondie was going to be more helpful than she’d already been. She removed the lasso from the saddle horn of Blondie’s Western saddle and slung the wreath of rope over one shoulder and under the other arm. It might just come in handy.

  “Oh, wow, I wish I’d thought of that. It’s perfect,” Phil said as he watched Carole begin her ascent.

  As soon as Carole reached the glider, she knew she’d been right.

  Uncle Michael’s face was a mask of pain, but he smiled weakly when he saw them all gathered around him.

  “Is it visiting hours already?” he asked.

  Phil and the girls laughed. Being able to joke was a good sign. When Carole showed him the rope, he suggested that it might be used to hang him. “I’m no use at all, you know,” he said.

  “You will be,” Carole said, “as soon as we get you out of here.”

  “My ankle hurts so badly that I don’t think I can move it at all, and I certainly can’t climb down the tree.”

  “You won’t have to do any climbing, I promise,” Lisa said.

  “Blondie will do all the work for you,” Carole told him.

  “You’ve got someone else with you?” asked Uncle Michael.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Lisa said. “Only it’s not exactly a someone. It’s more like a something.” She began her explanation while Carole and Phil worked on the mechanics of the problem.

  “Look, we can use the harness he’s already wearing for his parachute,” said Phil.

  “Perfect,” Carole agreed. She tossed one end of the rope over a large branch right above the pilot’s seat and then slipped the end of rope through the parachute harness straps, securing it tightly with a knot.

  “Where’d you learn to tie a knot like that?” Uncle Michael asked, clearly impressed.

  “Oh, it’s one of those Marine Corps things,” Carole said. “Dad had to learn a bunch of knots when he was taking a survival course. He couldn’t follow the instructions in the manual, so I figured them out and then taught him myself.” Carole gave the rope a final tug, and, satisfied that it would hold, she began her descent to the ground.

  She tied the rope to Blondie’s saddle horn. On a signal from Phil, she got Blondie to move away from the tree.

  Without ever discussing the matter, Carole, Phil, and Lisa each took a part of the task that they could do best. Carole was in charge of knots and Blondie. Phil took responsibility for guiding his uncle up and out of the glider and then down to the ground with the help of the rope and the parachute harness. Lisa knew that Phil’s uncle was in a lot of pain, and she also knew that there wasn’t anything she could do about it except to try to get him to concentrate on something else.

  “Carole and I have a friend named Deborah,” she began. “Deborah is an investigative reporter for a newspaper in Washington. You may have read some of her stories, like the time she discovered there was a scam going on in one of the federal departments. She does stories like that, but she also does more interesting things. Like a week ago, she heard a rumor that there was a horse trader not far from here …”

  “Ouch!”

  “Here you go, Uncle Michael. It’s working!” As Blondie drew the rope tight, Phil helped guide his uncle out of the glider, where he’d been sitting for more than twenty-four hours.

  “… so Deborah needed a believable cover to be totally ignorant about horses …”

  “You’re out of there!” Phil said excitedly. He signaled Carole to stop Blondie while he helped Uncle Michael swing clear of the glider. Then he signaled her to walk back, slowly. “Okay, I’ll climb down the tree to be sure you don’t get tangled in any branches,” Phil said, leading the way.

  “… and you wouldn’t believe what this guy did,” said Lisa.

  Carole kept one eye on Blondie and another on Phil and his uncle. Slowly, step by step, she and Blondie approached the tree and lowered Uncle Michael. Phil guided the man around the tree’s lower branches, signaling Carole to pause from time to time. Carole wasn’t sure what Lisa was doing, but whatever it was, Uncle Michael was paying attention to her and not to Phil and, best of all, not to his ankle.

  “He thought you’d buy a horse without having a vet check it?” Uncle Michael asked. “You must have done a wonderful job playing an ignorant, fatuous, horse-loving girl!”

  Lisa smiled proudly. “I guess I just have star quality,” she said. “Anyway, both Carole and I knew something was really wrong with this horse …”

  Suddenly there was slack in the rope and Uncle Michael wasn’t moving. Phil looked up. The rope had gotten tangled in some small branches. He made Carole move back again to pull the rope taut, and he climbed back up the tree, leaving Uncle Michael dangling freely.

  Uncle Michael looked up. A worried expression crossed his face.

  “Well, what it was, of course, was that the horse was blind.”

  “How did you know?” asked Uncle Michael, letting Lisa’s tale distract him again.

  “The first hint was when the trader had to talk to her constantly while she was walking over to him. The next was that he insisted on the lead rope …”

  Phil tugged at the little branches, but they wouldn’t budge. He shook his head to clear his mind. Someway, somehow. There had to be a way. “The knife, dummy,” he said to himself. He patted his pocket and sighed with relief when he felt the bulk of the Swiss Army knife in his hip pocket. He flipped the large blade open, smiled to see the freshly honed blade glint in the sun, and started hacking off the small branches. With the right tool, it took only a second. The rope got a little frayed, but it held.

  He nodded at Carole. “Slow, slow,” Phil warned her.

  Blondie stepped forward again. The rope moved over the branch. Uncle Michael moved down another foot. And then another, and another.

  There was a groan. Phil, Carole, and Lisa all looked at Uncle Michael, but the groan hadn’t come from him. It came from above him. It came from the glider.

  It was the worst possible news. The glider, once securely tucked in the fork of the tree, was shifting its position because of the change in balance now that Uncle Michael was no longer in it. It loomed above them, perched precariously.

  “I think we’d better move a little faster now,” said Phil.

  “Roger!” Carole agreed. She and Blondie began a steady pace, approaching the tree while Uncle Michael descended much faster than before.

  “So, we just had to try this horse out again,” said Lisa. “You know, part of it was curiosity about whether the horse trader would tell us …”

  Another groan came from above. A branch snapped. Blondie sniffed. Her ears twitched anxiously.

  “It’s okay, girl,” Carole assured her. They moved forward.

  “We’re almost there now, Uncle Michael,” said Phil. He signaled Carole to bring Blondie right under the tree and Uncle Michael’s feet.

  Phil hopped off the last low branch of the tree. He and Carole adjusted the rope and the horse until Uncle Michael was lowered right into Blondie’s saddle.

  “You brought me up this mountain in your favorite form of transportation, Uncle Michael,” Phil said. “Now, I get to take you down in mine!” He cut the rope.

  Lisa jumped down from the lowest branch, glad to be on the ground, but not glad to be under the tree with the glider looming above. Another groan came from the plane.

  “Let’s move. Fast,” she suggested. She didn’t have to say it twice. Carole tugged at Blondie’s reins, and Phil gave her a gentle, encouraging pat on her flanks.

  They’d taken no more than three steps before the glider began tumbling down. Nobody looked back. They knew they were in danger. There was no way to predict what downward path the glider would take through the thick growth of the dense forest.

  “Come on, Blondie!” Carole urged. The tired horse broke into a trot. Uncle Michael clutched the saddle horn. Carole, Lisa, and Phil ran alongside.

  And then there was a final thunderous crash.
The earth trembled under their feet. Dirt flew up around them. The air was filled with splinters, leaves, dust, and pine needles. Then there was silence.

  All four of them stopped and turned around. The glider had slammed into the earth. The fuselage was cracked and smashed. It was hard for Phil to believe that only half an hour ago it had been sitting securely in the tree. What if it wasn’t the jostling it got when they lifted Uncle Michael out that made it fall? What if it had fallen while Uncle Michael was still in it? The same thought flitted through Carole’s and Lisa’s minds.

  “Don’t think about that,” said Uncle Michael, reading their minds. “We’re all safe, and thanks to this wonderful horse you brought with you, I’m going to ride down the mountain in style. Now, what did you say this fellow’s name is?” he asked Carole.

  “Blondie,” Carole told him.

  “What a coincidence,” said Uncle Michael. “Isn’t that the same name as the horse you were telling me about, the blind one?”

  “Not just the same name,” Lisa said. “It’s the same horse.”

  “Are you telling me this horse is blind?” he asked, astonished.

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you the whole time you were coming down the tree. And you thought I had just made up a good story to distract you, didn’t you?”

  Uncle Michael swallowed hard. “Uh, Phil, I think you must have given me too big a dose of that pain medicine this morning. I think I’m hearing things and seeing things that can’t be real.”

  “Don’t worry, Uncle Michael,” Phil assured him. “It’s all very real. You just have a thing or two to learn about The Saddle Club. See, there’s this bunch of riders who seem to think that any problem in the world can be solved with a horse—”

  “Is that true?” Uncle Michael asked them.

  “Of course it’s true,” Carole said. “And haven’t we just proved it?”

  An odd sound interrupted Carole’s explanation. Carole and Phil looked at Lisa because it was coming from her pocket.

  “Oh, the phone!” she said. She pulled it out of her pocket, flipped it open, and pressed SND. “Saddle Club Rescue Squad,” she said, answering the phone.