Boot Camp (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 24)

by Claire Svendsen

  My three horses ran up and down the field, exploring the fence lines and their boundaries. They bucked and farted, then dropped and rolled before jumping up and galloping off again.

  “Do you think they’ll stop soon?” I said.

  “When they get bored of it,” Dad said.

  And eventually they did, settling down to graze beside each other. I was relieved. I wanted my horses to get along but you couldn't force horses to be friends any more than I could force Dad and Missy to make up.

  “Do you need help getting the others?” I asked.

  “No, you’d better stay here and keep an eye on them,” Dad said. “In case something sets them off.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He drove away with the trailer to pick up the next load and I wondered what exactly I was supposed to do if my horses did act up? I couldn’t bring them into the barn and put them in stalls. We didn’t have any. They were going to have to get used to living outside and that was that. But the grass was plenty to occupy my horse’s minds with and I sat on the fence and watched them, eating a granola bar and wondering which one I should concentrate all my riding efforts on. I needed a replacement for Socks. I just didn’t know who it should be. Dad said I should train them all. Put them through a sort of boot camp and see who came out the best at the other end. It wasn’t a bad idea and was better than what I usually did, which was play favorites.

  Dad eventually came back with our mismatched family and Bandit, Chantilly and Phoenix went into their smaller field. We’d thrown down some hay since they had less grass in theirs and they didn’t even bother and run around, just got down to the business of eating.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d get him in the trailer,” I said, pointing to Phoenix. “He’s never been in one before.”

  “I know,” Dad said. “I was worried too but he just followed the others.”

  It was a relief to know that almost all of our family was here.

  “Don’t forget the cat,” I called after Dad as he left to get Canterbury.

  He waved his hand and shrugged but I’d made him promise. He didn’t like cats much more than he liked dogs but I’d seen rats in the barn and a mouse in the house. Meatball had work to do here. I think it was the only thing keeping my father from leaving him behind.

  “What do you think little guy?” I asked Phoenix as I went in and petted him.

  He jumped backwards and then took off around their little enclosure before coming back to me all long legs and dished face. You could see the Arabian in him but there was something else as well. I was secretly hoping it was Warmblood so that he’d be big and strong and one day turn into a jumper. That day was a long way off though. Right now he was just a bandy legged foal that sometimes tripped over his own feet.

  But as I looked at my horses grazing, I realized that it finally did feel like home here. There was a peace that lay over the land. Maybe it was the spirit of the old woman who once lived here and refused to leave her horse behind and go into a nursing home. A woman who knew the value of animals and their companionship and valued them above all else just like I did and even though it wasn’t much, the place was ours and that had to count for something.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Dad took ages to come back. I thought maybe he was having trouble catching the cat and wished I’d put Meatball in his carry case before we left. Since all the horses seemed fine I set about unpacking our tack trunks and hanging up bridles, spare halters and the rest of our tack in the barn.

  I tipped bags of grain into mouse proof bins and made sure the hay was stacked correctly so that it could breathe. It didn’t look like enough. I was used to a feed room with grain bags towering to the ceiling and hay as far as the eye could see. This looked like it wouldn’t last us a week. I was a little nervous about that but Dad said we’d just go and get more and it would stay fresher that way. I wasn’t sure how he planned to do that since he didn’t have a job and he certainly didn’t have any money saved. I thought about how I’d pretty much just given Four to Dakota. Maybe I should have waited and sold him after all. I could have got a couple of thousand for him. And what about my other horses? How many of them would Dad make me sell when the time came and we didn’t have enough money for the feed bill?

  I sat down on a bale of hay feeling a little weak. I knew that a fresh start was going to be good for us but a fresh start without money and all these horses depending on us wasn’t so great. The barn started to spin and I put my head between my knees.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  It was Cat, coming to sit beside me.

  “I didn’t know you were here,” I said.

  “Your mom and I just drove over with the cat,” she said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Just a little faint, that’s all,” I said, sitting back up.

  “You do look rather green,” Cat said. “When was the last time you ate?”

  “I ate a granola bar,” I said.

  “Well your mom made sandwiches and brought them over so come and eat something before you pass out for real.”

  “Okay,” I said as she pulled me to my feet. After all, I didn’t have the energy to argue with her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  We ate ham and cheese sandwiches in the kitchen and watched Meatball slink around the room, sniffing out his new digs. He wasn’t impressed. His tail was all thick and bushy and his eyes were wild.

  “We need to keep him in the house for a few days to make sure that he doesn’t try to run away,” I said.

  “You can put butter on their feet for that,” Mom said. “Or is it milk?”

  “Or cheese?” Cat said. “Strap a couple of slices to his paws?”

  We all laughed. Mom was sober and coherent and trying to be nice. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe she’d figured out that without us she had nothing and nowhere to go. Perhaps Dad had given her an ultimatum after she basically got him fired. But for now it felt oddly comforting to have my old family back together and even though I missed Missy terribly, this almost felt right, in a different kind of way anyway.

  “What is taking so long?” I asked, looking at my phone. “Dad only had one horse to get.”

  “I don’t know.” Mom shrugged. “You know your father. He probably got roped into doing something.”

  “But what?” I said. “He doesn’t even have a job there anymore. What could he possibly get roped into?”

  I went outside. The clocks had changed and it got dark early now, the sun was already starting to dip low in the sky and my horses had figured out that we’d hung them buckets for grain and they were all standing there patiently waiting for dinner.

  “That didn’t take you guys long,” I said.

  I looked at the time again. If they were back at Fox Run they would have eaten by now. No wonder they were hungry but they were being so well behaved about it that I couldn’t help but smile, especially as I went into the barn to get the grain and Bluebird nickered.

  Everyone gobbled down their dinner like they hadn’t eaten in weeks, slobbering all over their buckets and dropping grain onto the ground.

  “I’m sorry you guys don’t have stalls,” I said as I hung on the fence and watched them eat. “But Dad said he might try and make you some soon and it's so hot right now that it's not like you’ll freeze to death.”

  We’d already had four days in the nineties. It felt more like August than November. How were you supposed to get into the Thanksgiving and Christmas spirit when it felt more like you should go to the beach than eat turkey and decorate a Christmas tree?

  “I really hope it cools off soon,” I grumbled to myself.

  Then I heard it, the faint rumble of my father’s truck and the trailer swaying behind it as he came down our terrible driveway. It was like a roller coaster but for trucks and cars. That would be the first thing we’d need to fix if we ever expected clients to come here.

  “What took you so long?” I said breathlessly as I ran to the truck.

 
“Stupid beast wouldn’t load,” Dad said. “And we have our first boarder.”

  “What?” I said.

  Dad jumped out of the truck looking weary.

  “She wouldn’t let me leave without taking him. She actually laid down in front of the truck in the middle of the driveway and I couldn’t get out.”

  He opened the back of the trailer and as the ramp swung down there was Canterbury, all chrome and white in the darkening light and next to him was scruffy little Macaroni, his buckskin coat all fuzzy.

  “No way,” I said. “She lay down in front of your truck? She hardly weighs anything. You could have just picked her up and put her out of the way.”

  “I did,” Dad said with a smile. “But by the time I got back in the truck she was laying there again.”

  “She is so stubborn,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Remind you of anyone you know?” Dad laughed.

  “Fine but what are we supposed to do with him? She does know that we don’t have stalls or a ring or jumps, right? And what about her parents?”

  “I wouldn’t even load him up until I talked to them but they said it was fine,” Dad said. “They’ll pay board to us and Faith will take lessons with me. Or maybe she’ll take lessons with you,” he said.

  “Oh Dad.” I sighed. “We have so much to do. I don’t think I have the time.”

  “You’ll make the time,” he said. “That kid looks up to you. She idolizes you. Probably wants to be you and now she’s given up a life of luxury for her pony and herself to be with you so you’d better darn well make her feel welcome.”

  “You know I will,” I said. “I just didn’t expect that we’d have clients so soon. And where are we going to put him?”

  It turned out that we didn't need to worry because Canterbury and Macaroni had bonded in the trailer and the horse that would apparently kill any other horse in his field, was happy to accept the mismatched pony as his friend. We watched them carefully, ready to yank Macaroni out of the field if anything bad happened but they sniffed each other, squealed a couple of times and then took three laps around the fence line before settling down to graze.

  “Faith has no idea what she is getting herself into,” I said.

  “I think she does,” Dad said. “She wants to go to the Olympics one day, just like you. I guess she figures that sticking to you is the best way to do that.”

  “Like a barnacle,” I said. “On my butt. Missy went to the Olympics. Why can’t she stick to her?”

  But deep down I was glad. A life on the farm with just my mother, Cat and Dad sounded awfully lonely. Now I’d have someone to ride with and we’d be able to go to shows together and I wouldn’t feel like I just been kicked out of the center of the universe and left to hang on the edge by the skin of my teeth because now I’d have an ally. My own little minion. That didn’t sound so bad after all.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sleeping in a new house was never a particularly exciting prospect. There were odd noises and bumps in the night and in a house as old as this one, everything made weird sounds. I lay there in my bed, surrounded by the boxes that I hadn’t had time to unpack and listened to a clanking noise above my head.

  My brain told me that it was just the pipes. The plumbing was old. Dad said that all the pipes were rusty and needed to be replaced. That had to be why they were creaking and moaning. But my fear told me that it was a ghost up in the attic, the ghost of the old woman who had died here and that she was mad that we’d moved in and taken over her home.

  Or it could have been rats, which somehow was even more terrifying than the ghost woman because I kept falling asleep and then jolting awake, terrified that something was gnawing on my toes. And Meatball was no help at all. He was sulking because he didn’t like it here. I saw a mouse run right past him in the kitchen and he just sat there and stared at it like it wasn’t his job to catch vermin. I told him that he’d better get his act together soon and start doing his job but he’d just growled at me, jumped out of my arms and gone to hide in a box. He didn’t like being forced to move any more than we did.

  Since I couldn’t sleep, I got up a couple of times and went to the window. The moon was full and cast eerie shadows across the land. I could just make out the shapes of my horses, grazing in the darkness. I wanted to watch them all night to make sure they were safe but my eyes kept closing. I heard dogs barking in the distance. Maybe a wild pack or perhaps coyotes and I willed my horses to be okay in this new place that we’d brought them to. They hadn’t had a choice but then again neither had we.

  “Guess what I just realized,” Dad said cheerily as I stumbled down the stairs the next morning.

  “That you have finally cracked and gone insane because you are way too happy for this early in the morning.”

  “No grumpy face,” he said, sliding a hot mug of coffee over to me. “We don’t have any stalls to clean.”

  “Nice,” I said, nodding. “Just ten thousand times more grooming to do instead.”

  “I’m just trying to look on the bright side, Em,” Dad said, his face falling.

  “I know you are,” I replied, giving him a quick hug. “And no stalls to clean on this bright and cheery morning after no sleep is a very good thing.”

  “You didn’t sleep?” he said, stretching his arms behind his head. “I had the best night’s sleep of my life. Now, let's get to work.”

  “Can I at least change out of my pajamas first?” I said.

  “Why?” Dad said. “It’s not like there is anyone around to see you.”

  It had happened. My father had officially cracked.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Once I was out in the bright sunshine with a half-eaten Pop Tart in one hand and my second mug of coffee in the other, I kind of got what Dad was talking about. Our horses were standing by their buckets in the dewy grass and nickered excitedly when they saw us and a soft mist draped over the land. Our land.

  “We can make this place whatever we want it to be,” Dad said as he put his arm around me. “How amazing is that?”

  “Pretty amazing Dad,” I said.

  I didn’t add that we could only make it everything we wanted it to be if we had about a million dollars. But we fed the horses and Dad was right, it was pretty awesome not to have stalls to clean.

  “I was thinking,” Dad said as he tossed hay over the fence. “You could use that flat piece of grass up front to ride on. I checked it yesterday and there aren’t any gopher holes or anything. We can put the jumps up there if you like and I found an old can of paint in the barn so you can spruce them up a little.”

  “Sounds great,” I said, when really I wanted to say that it sounded like a ton of work but what else was there to do?

  We lugged the poles and standards to the front of the property where there was an unfenced piece of grass that had probably been the front yard at some point. Now it was going to be my ring. Or something like that anyway. Dad cracked open the can of paint and found me an old brush and I spent the morning painting the standards and poles until they were covered in white and so was I but now I had two jumps. It wasn’t much but it would have to do and it was better than no jumps at all, which was what I had before we found them hiding in the bushes.

  While Dad and I spent the morning doing farm things, Cat and Mom got to work making the house into something livable. By the time we went in for lunch, they had most of the kitchen unpacked and had made sandwiches and lemonade.

  “I could get used to this,” Dad said as he took a big swig from his glass. For a moment his face puckered up and then he spewed it out across the table. “Needs. More. Sugar,” he gulped.

  “I knew I forgot to put something in there,” Cat said and we all laughed as Dad made gagging noises and tried to rub his tongue with a napkin.

  It felt like we were this sort of weird, mismatched family, which I guess we had been all along. And it was working out, which I hadn’t expected it to. I glanced at my mother out of the corner of my eye
, smiling as she handed my father the jar of sugar and I didn’t know what she was up to and if any of this was real or was she just plotting her next disaster?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I had Arion in the barn later, trying to scrub the grass stains off him when I heard a car pull in.

  “Stay there and don’t move,” I told him.

  Dad had fashioned some cross ties in between two wooden posts just inside the barn but Arion seemed to think that they weren’t real cross ties because there wasn’t a wall behind him or anything beside him to stop him from swiveling around. I kept my eye on him to make sure he wouldn't strangle himself as I went to see who it was, not that there was really anybody else it could be but Faith. No one would just show up here out of the blue. Not out of choice anyway.

  “Macaroni,” Faith called as she jumped out of the car and ran to the field.

  She scrambled over the fence as her pony completely ignored her and ran to him and hugged him anyway because even though he didn’t care, she did.

  “I’m so sorry about this,” Faith’s mom said as she came over.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m sorry. We don’t have the facilities you are used to.”

  “She doesn’t care about the facilities. All she cares about is riding with you and your father. She really has a terrible habit of getting her own way.”

  “Well my father couldn’t exactly just run her over,” I said. “Besides, it will be nice to have someone to ride with.”

  “Are you sure?” Faith’s mom still looked worried. “I just hate to impose.”

  “Honestly, its fine,” I said.

  “Alright, well I’ll be back to pick her up later.”

  “Okay, bye,” I said as Faith’s frazzled mother called goodbye to her daughter.

  Faith waved her away with a flick of her hand. She didn’t care about all that mushy stuff anymore than I did.