Nightmare

by Bonnie Bryant

  WHAT ABOUT DELILAH?

  “Uh, this is Elaine Thomas from Hedgerow,” the woman on the phone began. She seemed a little upset. “It’s about King Perry.”

  “Isn’t that the stallion that Delilah was mated to?” Carole asked.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Thomas. “But … But—”

  “He’s okay, isn’t he?” Carole asked.

  “No,” said Mrs. Thomas. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Carole wrote the word on the message pad as she spoke, but it looked odd to her. “Was there an accident or something?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Thomas. “He was sick. The vet was just here. She says it was swamp fever. Tell Mrs. Reg to call me, will you?”

  “Sure,” Carole said, hanging up the phone. Swamp fever. It didn’t sound good. She opened her book to the section on infectious diseases.

  There it was—swamp fever. Her eyes scanned the page, and then she gasped. Swamp fever was the common name of a disease called equine infectious anemia. It was incurable, it was fatal, and, worst of all, it was infectious. If King Perry had it, what about Delilah?

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  NIGHTMARE

  A Bantam Skylark Book/October 1997

  Skylark Books is a registered trademark of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and elsewhere.

  “The Saddle Club” is a registered trademark of Bonnie Bryant Hiller.

  The Saddle Club design/logo, which consists of a riding crop and a riding hat, is a trademark of Bantam Books.

  “USPC” and “Pony Club” are registered trademarks of the United States Pony Clubs, Inc., at The Kentucky Horse Park, 4071 Iron Works Pike, Lexington, KY 40511-8462.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1997 by Bonnie Bryant Hiller.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82573-5

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada.

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  I would like to express my special thanks to Ernie Zirkle, D.V.M. for his patient explanations to me. Everything that’s accurate about EIA and epidemiology is because of him. Any mistakes are mine, all mine.

  —B.B.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Bantam Skylark Books You Will Enjoy

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  CAROLE HANSON SETTLED into her seat on the bus. She smiled so broadly that it was impossible for the other riders not to notice how happy she was. She didn’t notice that they noticed. The only thing she noticed was her happiness.

  She was on her way home from an afternoon at Pine Hollow Stables. Pine Hollow was her favorite place in the world, and that alone would normally be enough to make her happy, but today she was especially happy.

  Pine Hollow was where she boarded her horse, Starlight. He was a half-Thoroughbred gelding, and as far as she was concerned, he was the most wonderful horse in the world. Considering how wonderful all horses were from Carole’s point of view, being considered the most wonderful was quite a compliment. Carole had been taking a private lesson with Max Regnery. Max was her riding instructor, and he was the owner of Pine Hollow. He’d trained many riders and many horses, and he was very particular. In fact, Carole and her two best friends, Stevie Lake and Lisa Atwood, had once counted six mistakes that he corrected for the same rider at the same time! “Heels down, keep your arms steady, straighten that back, show your horse who’s in charge, you’re on the wrong diagonal, and fasten the strap on your riding hat!” And that was to a rider he thought was doing a pretty good job.

  Today, however, he hadn’t said that at all to Carole. What he’d said to her was “Nice job, Carole! All your work with Starlight has really paid off. He’s behaving like a perfect gentleman and showing you to be the distinguished young rider that you are.”

  Distinguished. He’d actually said distinguished. For a moment, Carole almost wished she kept a diary. This would surely be a red-letter day for that reason alone. However, that wasn’t all that had happened.

  After her lesson, Carole had joined her friends Stevie and Lisa, who had been watching her. The girls were helping around the stable the way they usually did. That meant that Carole and Stevie and Lisa had been sitting on a bale of hay, talking about what Max had said, until Max’s mother, Mrs. Reg, came and told them there were four stalls that still needed mucking out and if they needed a reminder, she could tell them where the pitchforks were kept. They didn’t need a reminder.

  The girls understood that the only way Pine Hollow could keep its costs down was if everybody pitched in and helped. They were accustomed to making themselves useful.

  Carole, Stevie, and Lisa often observed that it would be almost impossible for three girls to be more different from one another and yet completely devoted to one another. Their common bond could be summed up in one word: horses. They were all totally horse-crazy. In fact, they were so horse-crazy that they’d formed their own club called The Saddle Club. It was a simple club because it had only two rules. The first was that the members had to be horse-crazy. They all passed that requirement with flying colors. The second was that they had to be willing to help one another out, anytime, anyplace, anyhow. That was a trickier requirement because the girls got into tough scrapes, and it took a lot of imagination, some scheming, some precision, and a fair amount of luck to come to one another’s aid successfully. What they’d discovered was that helping could be a lot of fun, too, and that was why these three very different girls were always together.

  Of the three horse-crazy girls, Carole was the horse-craziest. She was certain that whatever her future was, it was going to be with horses. Naturally, she’d always own them, or at least one. She’d also ride and would probably compete. She might teach, too. And then, she loved training—and did it well, as Max had reminded her today—so maybe she’d be a trainer. Some days she asked herself if there was anything more exciting than watching a foal be born and then grow into a fine riding horse. Those days, she decid
ed she’d be a breeder. She had spent a lot of time working with Judy Barker, the stable’s vet. She’d learned a lot about diagnosing and dosing ailing horses. Could there be anything more wonderful than saving a horse’s life? Perhaps she’d be a vet. Carole suspected that one day she’d have to make a decision—or at least cut out a few of the options—but for now, she had a hope that she could actually do all of them.

  When it came to horses, Carole never missed the tiniest detail. She wasn’t as good as Max at spotting a half dozen mistakes at a time, but she never forgot to give a horse special feed when it was required. She might leave her own jacket at home on a chilly fall day, but she’d never forget to put a cozy blanket on Starlight so that he wouldn’t get cold at night. She might leave her school book bag on the table in the morning, but she’d never forget to bring her riding clothes to school.

  Carole’s house was on the edge of town, which was why she had taken the bus from Pine Hollow. Sometimes she envied her friends their quick walk home from the stable, but living so far away gave her father a shorter commute to the Marine Corps base where he worked. He was a colonel. Carole lived alone with him in the first house they’d ever had that wasn’t on a base. Carole’s mother had died a few years earlier of cancer. She had loved having a real home of her own, and Carole and her father loved it and took care of it for her now that she was gone. Carole didn’t talk about her mother very much, but she thought of her often. She treasured the memories of times spent with her, playing together, cooking together, just being together. Although Carole was quite certain she had the best dad in the whole world, that didn’t mean she didn’t miss her mother. Even now, riding on the bus, Carole wished she could tell her mother what a great day this had been.

  Lisa Atwood was a year older than Carole and Stevie. While Carole could be quite forgetful about a lot of things that didn’t have to do with horses, it seemed to everyone that Lisa was just about incapable of ever being forgetful. She was totally organized. She was always perfectly dressed and groomed. She didn’t get smudges or rips. She never turned in a homework assignment late, and she almost never got anything less than an A. She was the kind of student who didn’t just read the three books the teacher required from the summer reading list, she tried to read all twenty!

  In a crisis, Lisa was coolheaded, logical, and straightforward. She was never intimidated by a large project. She’d break it down into small components and attack it with a plan that actually made sense.

  Lisa lived with her mother and father in a house right down the street from Stevie’s house. Everything in the house was always as neat and organized as everything else about Lisa.

  Lisa was also multitalented. Her mother believed that her daughter should be well-rounded (though Stevie insisted that that meant she was supposed to eat a lot!). Mrs. Atwood had seen to it that Lisa had instruction in a number of areas she considered critical to the well-roundedness of a proper young lady. Lisa had taken lessons in dance (ballet, ballroom, even tap), art (painting and sculpture), sewing, knitting, and walking with a book on her head for posture. In another girl, all these lessons might have combined to make a pretty snobbish teenager; in Lisa’s case, they only added to her enormous fund of knowledge about almost everything.

  Lisa was the newest rider in The Saddle Club. Both Carole and Stevie had started riding when they were little girls. But Lisa had approached riding the same way she did everything else. She was methodical, thorough, and precise. She studied hard and worked hard, and she learned fast. There were times when Carole and Stevie could give her pointers, but she was almost as good as they were, and she always kept up with them when they went riding together—which was as often as they possibly could.

  Both Stevie and Carole owned their own horses. Lisa didn’t. She felt that as long as she was still in the process of learning so much, she was better off riding a variety of horses. Stevie and Carole thought that was a good idea, but they also thought it showed some restraint! Most of the time, Lisa rode a Thoroughbred mare named Prancer that had been retired from the racetrack because of a congenital problem with her leg. It was a problem that mattered a lot in a racehorse but not at all in a pleasure and show horse.

  Stevie was as different from her two friends as they were from each another. Sometimes her friends thought it was a good thing that The Saddle Club helped each other out, because Stevie was always needing it! There was an irresistible quality to Stevie: a gleam in her eye that spelled fun—and trouble. Stevie was an expert at getting into trouble, and every time her friends pointed that out to her, she reminded them that she was as good at getting out of it as she was at getting into it … well, almost. The one part of her school that she seemed to know the very best was the principal’s waiting room. She’d spent a lot of time there, but she remarked that some of her finest hours had actually been in the principal’s office because she was such an expert at talking the principal out of being angry at her or punishing her. Even her best friends thought the principal might not agree with Stevie about that, though.

  Carole glanced out the bus window, barely noticing the lovely countryside they drove through. She thought back to her afternoon at Pine Hollow. It wasn’t wonderful just because of what Max had said. It was also wonderful because of what Judy had said.

  When Carole had finished riding, she had groomed Starlight and given him water. As she was wiping off Starlight’s tack so that it would be clean for the next time she rode, Judy Barker’s van arrived at Pine Hollow.

  Carole knew what that meant: Judy was bringing Delilah home. Delilah was one of Pine Hollow’s loveliest mares. She was lovely in every sense of the word. She was lovely because she was pretty. Although every serious rider knew that a horse’s looks were the least important part of the horse, a golden palomino like Delilah was a feast for the eyes. Even lovelier was her personality. Delilah was a gentle mare, always trying to please her rider or handler. Almost everyone who ever rode Delilah became a fan of hers. Carole was no exception.

  Delilah was returning to Pine Hollow from a very important visit at another stable near Pine Hollow called Hedgerow Farms. She had been mated with Hedgerow’s prize stallion, and everybody was hoping they would soon find out she was carrying a foal. She deserved special treatment.

  Carole had helped Judy bring Delilah out of the van and return her to her clean home stall. Carole looked at her very closely, hoping for some indication of impending motherhood, but the horse didn’t give a sign. Clearly, the only thing on Delilah’s mind was a nice chomp on some hay and a drink of fresh water. Carole had given her a final pat, closed the stable door, and clicked the lock.

  Judy had thanked her for her help. That had reminded Carole of something she had wanted to ask her about.

  “Can you take a look at Nero while you’re here?” Carole asked.

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “Well, he seems a little off. I’m not sure I can explain it, but he seems restless. It’s probably nothing. He hasn’t been ridden in a couple of days and that might be why, but, well, I don’t know …”

  “We’ll just see,” said Judy. The two of them walked over to Nero’s stall. He was a big old black gelding, part quarter horse. He’d been at Pine Hollow for years. He’d been trained by Max’s father. He always seemed unflappable, which was why it struck Carole as odd that he was being restless and fussy now.

  Judy just watched the horse for a minute. At first Nero just watched her back. Then he stomped his rear right foot on the stable floor, shook his head, swished his tail, and stepped back. He raised his rear right foot again, almost as if trying to scratch his belly, and then reached for his flank with his nose.

  “Could that be colic?” Carole asked.

  “Bingo,” said Judy. “It’s subtle, but it’s there—classic colic symptoms, the restlessness and trying to get at his belly. He’s not really feeling bad yet, but if you hadn’t noticed, he’d be feeling awful in a very short while.”

  Judy then went to her truck, got h
er medical bag, and returned to give Nero a full checkup. Before long, she had confirmed their suspicions and given the horse the medicine he needed.

  “You might have saved his life, you know. Without early treatment, this kind of colic can be deadly. Good work, Carole. I thank you, Max thanks you, but most of all Nero thanks you.”

  Carole had looked at the horse. He hadn’t looked terribly grateful right then. He eyed Carole and Judy suspiciously. Carole didn’t mind that he hadn’t enjoyed his medical treatment. Horses didn’t always know what was good for them. But Carole seemed to. Judy said she’d saved his life.

  As Carole stepped off the bus, she was still undecided. Which one of her exciting pieces of news would she share with her father first: being a distinguished rider or a life-saving veterinary assistant?

  What a nice decision that was to have to make.

  CAROLE SLIPPED HER key into the front door and was pleased to see that it wasn’t locked. That meant her father was already home. She pushed the door open, stepped in, and called out, “Dad! I’m home. And guess what?”

  Her father stepped out of the kitchen and reached out to give her a welcoming hug.

  “I’ve got some news for you, too,” he said. “You go first.”

  Carole went to drop her riding gear bag in the foyer, but she found that her usual drop point was taken up—by a suitcase.

  “No, I think you’d better go first,” she said uneasily. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to like her father’s news much. It would be better to know sooner than to worry about it.

  He hugged her reassuringly and they walked into the kitchen and sat at the table. It was their usual place for serious talks. This made Carole even more uneasy.

  “Honey, I have to go away for a while,” he began.

  “I figured that when I saw your suitcase,” she said. “Where? And how long?”

  “That’s the hard part,” he said. “I can’t say. I mean, I know, more or less, where I’ll be and how long I’ll be gone, but this is a classified operation and I can’t tell anyone.”