Nightmare

by Bonnie Bryant

  EIA stood for equine infectious anemia. If Carole remembered correctly, anemia was a condition that affected blood so that there wasn’t enough iron in it. Blood that wasn’t working right wouldn’t be able to carry extra fluids around the body properly. Fluids could end up staying in the places that were farthest from a horse’s heart—like the lower legs. And blood without enough iron in it wouldn’t be the same color as regular blood. It would be pale—like Delilah’s gums.

  Carole didn’t have to wait for a blood test. There was no need to worry about a phone call. She had the answer. Delilah was sick. She was very sick, and what she had was the same disease that had killed King Perry only a few days before. They might have been infected at the same time when Delilah first arrived at Hedgerow Farms, or Delilah might have been infected by a tabanid that had just bitten King Perry. They might never know exactly how it had happened, but Carole was as sure as anything that it had happened. Delilah had swamp fever.

  She couldn’t die, though. She was carrying a foal—King Perry’s foal. She had to live. She had to have this foal, and it had to be perfect, just like its brother, Samson. If people thought Delilah was sick, they wouldn’t take care of her. They might even euthanize her.

  The thought took Carole’s breath away. This beautiful horse—gone. Maybe even worse was the idea that she might be separated from all the other horses for the rest of her life. She’d never be ridden again. She’d never jump, she’d never turn on the forehand, enjoy the deep peace of the hilly woods of Virginia. Nobody would ever love her as much as they did before she became ill.

  Carole couldn’t let that happen to her beloved Delilah. This horse was born to love, to be loved, to be ridden, to be free, happy, cared for. If nobody else would do it for her, Carole would.

  “I’ll be right back,” she told Delilah.

  Carole knew what she was going to do, but she didn’t have a plan. She only knew she was going to be with Delilah, to love her and look after her as nobody else could. Carole would give her health and strength. They would be together. It was all Delilah would need; it was all Carole would need.

  Max and Mrs. Reg were still in the office as Carole slipped into the locker area and put on her riding clothes and boots. There was no sign of Red anywhere, and there was nobody in the tack room. Carole picked up Delilah’s saddle and bridle, took a crop, fastened her own helmet under her chin, and headed for the feed shed.

  Delilah didn’t protest at all while Carole tacked her up, and it only took a minute. Carole tugged gently at the bridle, and Delilah willingly followed her out of the shed. Delilah sniffed at the fresh, cool autumn air. It seemed to energize her. She nodded appreciatively. Carole mounted her, adjusted the stirrups, and headed toward the gate to the field and the woods beyond.

  As Carole and Delilah left Pine Hollow, two thoughts crossed Carole’s mind. First, she vaguely heard the ring of the stable telephone and wondered if that was the call from Judy. It didn’t matter when the call came. Carole was with Delilah, and she would take care of her.

  Her other thought was to remember that she hadn’t touched the good-luck horseshoe.

  “WELL, WHAT’LL WE do now?” Lisa asked Stevie.

  “Wait, I guess,” Stevie said. Waiting wasn’t her favorite activity by a long shot, but there didn’t seem to be much choice. The two of them stood, side by side, at Lisa’s house, glowering at the telephone.

  It had seemed like a great plan. The two girls had met at Lisa’s after school. Their idea had been to call Sergeant Fowler and explain to her that Carole really, really, really needed to talk to her father. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong, but Carole seemed to think there were things wrong and was very upset at having missed her father’s earlier call.

  They were convinced that Sergeant Fowler would understand and would find a way to get word to Colonel Hanson to call at a specific time. They’d decided on eight o’clock that night. Carole had been so upset about being late for dinner that she was sure to be on time; it was a guarantee that she’d be there half an hour after dinner started. Mrs. Atwood didn’t normally let Lisa take calls while they were eating, but they were sure she would make an exception if Carole’s father called from a top secret place.

  Stevie had just found Sergeant Fowler’s telephone number and had been about to pick up the phone when it rang. It was Sergeant Fowler calling Carole. Was Carole going to miss another call from her father?

  Not if they could help it. Sergeant Fowler had explained that she’d talked to Colonel Hanson that afternoon.

  “He’s fine,” she’d said. “And I know that you believe me when I tell you that, but I also know that no matter what I say, Carole won’t believe he’s fine until she hears it from her father himself.”

  “I couldn’t have said that better,” Lisa had told her.

  “So what I’ve done is to arrange for him to call her this afternoon, in exactly half an hour. She’ll be there, right?”

  “If it’s humanly possible, she’ll be here,” Lisa had said.

  “Good,” said Sergeant Fowler. “The colonel has gotten permission to let his family—in this case, Carole—know where he is. She can’t tell anyone, so I can’t tell you, but once she knows where he is, I am sure she’ll feel reassured of his safety. So now, the really important thing is to be sure she’s there to take the call—in, um, twenty-eight minutes.”

  “Aye-aye, ma’am,” Lisa’d said, looking at her own watch.

  “Thanks, Lisa,” Sergeant Fowler had said, and then they’d hung up.

  As soon as they’d gotten off the phone, Lisa had called Pine Hollow. It was a sure bet that when Carole wasn’t home, she was at Pine Hollow. Lisa was glad, for once, that Carole was so totally predictable!

  The phone had rung and rung. It had rung eight times before Mrs. Reg had picked it up. She’d seemed a little annoyed. Lisa knew she’d interrupted something and had apologized, but she explained that she was looking for Carole because her father was going to phone.

  Mrs. Reg had called out Carole’s name. No answer. Max had looked around the stable. Carole wasn’t there. Mrs. Reg had vaguely remembered seeing her there earlier, but had assured them she wasn’t there now and that Starlight was in his stall, so Carole must be on her way back to the Atwoods’. She’d hung up. So had Lisa.

  And that was how the two girls had come to be glaring at the telephone.

  “We can’t just wait,” said Stevie. “I mean, if she shows up, that’s just fine, but if she doesn’t and she misses this call from her father, she’ll never forgive us for just waiting.”

  She ran to look out the door. She looked both ways on the street. There was no sign of Carole. She suggested that Lisa call Carole’s house. Maybe Carole had been homesick enough to go there. Lisa tried. She got the answering machine.

  “Carole, if you’re there, pick up the phone,” Lisa said. No response. Lisa hung up. It had been worth trying. It just hadn’t worked.

  “If she’s on her way back from Pine Hollow, she could use a lift,” Stevie said. “I’ll borrow Alex’s bike and ride in that direction. I should meet up with her on the way.”

  “Good idea,” said Lisa. “But what’s the matter with your bike?”

  “Flat tire,” Stevie explained.

  “Won’t Alex mind?” Lisa asked logically.

  “He’s at soccer practice,” said Stevie. “So what he doesn’t know …”

  “Hurry,” said Lisa. They were down to twenty-three minutes now.

  Alex’s bike was lying on the Lakes’ front lawn. Stevie picked it up, mounted it, and in a second was on her way toward Pine Hollow. It would be easy to find Carole. There was only one logical route between the stable and the Atwoods’ house, so it wasn’t as if Carole might choose another way. The route also ran past the shopping center, where Carole might possibly have stopped to pick up something or to look for her friends. Stevie turned into the center’s parking lot and rode, illegally, along the sidewalk so that she could look into each of
the shops. Carole wasn’t in any of them. No sign of her anywhere.

  Back on the street, Stevie looked over her shoulder to be sure that Carole hadn’t walked by the shopping center while Stevie had been inside. The sidewalk was deserted. No sign of Carole.

  And a minute later, there was Pine Hollow. No Carole. Stevie trusted Mrs. Reg and Max to have checked for her, but maybe they’d just checked quickly. She dropped Alex’s bike outside the stable, dashed in, yelled, “Carole!” and waited for an answer.

  “I told you. She’s not here,” Max said.

  “Just checking,” said Stevie.

  Without further explanation, she ran out, picked up Alex’s bike, and headed back to the Atwoods’. She must have missed Carole. Stevie looked at her watch—fourteen minutes left. With some people, “I’ll call you in half an hour” meant that sometime during the afternoon a phone call would come in. With Colonel Hanson, it meant half an hour exactly. Stevie put more pressure on the pedals and kept her eyes peeled. How could she have missed Carole? There weren’t that many people who walked around Willow Creek. Surely one, her best friend, would be obvious to Stevie when she saw her.

  Stevie still didn’t see Carole. She did, however, see her brother Alex, standing in the middle of the street, forcing her to stop.

  “How nice of you to bring me my bike,” he said. “You just knew I’d be tired from soccer practice …”

  “Alex, I—” she began, but she could tell from the look on his face that there was no changing his mind. She relinquished the bike wordlessly and turned her attention to getting back to Lisa’s as fast as possible.

  She was completely out of breath when she reached the Atwoods’ house, and she could hear the phone ringing as she rushed into the foyer.

  “Hello?” Lisa said, answering the call.

  “Oh, no, she’s not here, Colonel Hanson. We’ve done everything we could to get her here, but she isn’t home yet. Well, you could try the stable—” Stevie dashed in and shook her head. “No, don’t. Stevie just went over to see if she’s there, but she isn’t. We don’t know where she is. The only thing we’re pretty sure of is that she’ll be back here in time for dinner at seven-thirty.… Oh, you’ll be in bed by then?”

  Lisa chatted easily with Carole’s father. Carole was convinced that he was the best father in the whole wide world, and while Lisa and Stevie both thought their own fathers were great, they had to agree that Colonel Hanson was seriously into the range of Terrific, and they were always glad to talk with him.

  Lisa told him that if he couldn’t talk to Carole today, they should decide now when would be a good time, because there probably wasn’t anything she could say that would assure Carole that he was okay. “She’s really worried about you,” Lisa said.

  “I don’t blame her,” Colonel Hanson said. “I’m simply not permitted to say where I am. I can suggest that if she looks at the newspaper, she might get an idea.”

  “She’s been combing through every page of it every morning,” Lisa said. “The only international story seems to be that summit meeting in Paris. Carole said this morning that the newspaper reporters are no good at sniffing out the real news.”

  “Hmmm,” said Col. Hanson. “Tell her she shouldn’t sell them so short.”

  “Right, we’ll do that. Anyway, you do sound fine, and we’ll do our best to convince her that you’re okay. Can you call again tomorrow?”

  “Same time,” he said.

  “We’ll see that she’s here—even if we have to hog-tie her,” Lisa promised.

  “But we won’t have to if she knows you’re calling!” Stevie shouted toward the phone.

  “Is that my friend Stevie?” the colonel asked. “May I talk to her? I’ve got a bad joke for her.”

  “In the flesh,” Lisa said, handing the phone to Stevie, who had finally caught her breath. “He’s got a bad joke for you.”

  “Hi,” Stevie greeted Colonel Hanson. The two of them shared a love of bad jokes, and when either had a new one, he or she had to tell it to the other.

  “Do you know what’s in the middle of Paris?” he asked.

  “Oh, that’s easy. It’s an old one!” Stevie said. “The answer is r.”

  “Well, there might be another answer this time around. I’ll tell you when I get back, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Stevie, disappointed. She’d been hoping for a new joke to stump her brothers with. On second thought, they were so dense sometimes that she could probably stump them with this one again. “We promise to have Carole here tomorrow,” Stevie said.

  “Thanks, and bye,” Colonel Hanson said, and hung up.

  The two girls looked at one another, very sorry that they hadn’t been able to get Carole there for the phone call. No matter what else was going on in their lives, Carole’s worry about her father was real and serious. They felt as if they’d really let their friend down.

  “She’s more likely to believe us than she does Sergeant Fowler when we tell her that he sounds just fine,” said Lisa.

  “But can we really say that?” asked Stevie. “I mean, he sounded just fine, but then he told me that dumb joke!”

  “What was so dumb about it?” Lisa asked.

  “Well, it wasn’t really a dumb joke, but he’d told it to me a long time ago. If there’s one thing I can count on with the colonel, it’s that he never forgets a joke he’s told me.”

  Lisa sat at the kitchen table and began thumbing through the newspapers. She had to find a hint. Colonel Hanson was sure it was there, so it had to be.

  “The news should be on TV now,” Stevie said. “I’ll watch and see if they tell anything, though newspapers usually cover the stories better, and there are more and different—”

  “The eyes of the world are focused today on the disarmament talks in Paris,” the anchorman said as the TV flicked to life. “Traditional political and military foes have gathered to discuss the elimination of …”

  Stevie’s jaw dropped. Lisa put down the paper and stared at the screen. There, in front of them, from more than three thousand miles away, were hundreds of diplomats and military personnel from all over the world.

  “What’s in the middle of Paris if it’s not an r?” asked Stevie.

  “Colonel Hanson!” said Lisa. “Whenever they have a conference like this there are always people working secretly in the background. What we see on TV is the staged stuff. You know, the photo ops, the fake handshakes, the big smiles. I bet Colonel Hanson is one of the people doing all the real work behind the scenes!”

  It had to be. He was on a secret mission, but it wasn’t in the middle of any desert, and it wasn’t in a dangerous land. It was, as he had promised Sergeant Fowler, in a place where he really wanted to take Carole someday. He was in the middle of Paris, France!

  “Wait’ll we tell Carole!” said Lisa.

  “But we’ve got to find her first,” said Stevie.

  Right, thought Lisa. “Where is she?” she asked, a little annoyed. It was already dark outside, and it was getting late. There was just half an hour until dinner. Was Carole going to do something foolish—like be late again?

  THE MINUTE CAROLE and Delilah reached the woods, Carole knew she was doing the right thing. Delilah was tired, but she was definitely invigorated by being outdoors and being in the woods—her favorite place, as well as Carole’s.

  “Good girl,” Carole said, leading Delilah onto a familiar path.

  Carole had been riding Starlight almost exclusively since she’d gotten the bay gelding, but before she owned Starlight, she’d ridden every horse at Pine Hollow. Delilah had always been one of her favorites. It felt comfortably familiar to be back in Delilah’s saddle now.

  Even when she was ill—and Carole couldn’t ignore that fact—the mare had a smooth, gentle gait that was in itself soothing. Carole took a deep breath, appreciating the fresh, cool air, tinged with the ever wonderful scent of a horse and its tack. There might also have been a hint of smoke from a burning pile of autumn leaves.


  Soon the afternoon sun began to dip behind the hill. Carole looked at her watch. It was getting late. If she’d been at home with her father, they’d be working together to make dinner for themselves. But he wasn’t there. He was someplace mysterious and distant. If her father wasn’t home, there wasn’t any reason to make dinner. She was better off here, with Delilah.

  The two of them passed the creek and the rock where Carole so often stopped with her friends. It was one of their favorite places. In warm weather, they could take off their riding boots and dangle their weary feet in the creek. It was shady and quiet; the only sounds were leaves waving in a breeze, an occasional birdsong, and the pleasant sound of the water brushing over rocks in the creek that gave the town its name. Here in the woods, there were no signs of willows, but closer to town, where the creek ran flat through fields, willows had taken root a long time ago.

  Carole drew Delilah to a halt and dismounted. She led the mare over to the creek. The water here was high and easy for a horse—or a person—to reach. Delilah sniffed curiously. Her head hung low. She reached forward and took a sip, then stepped back. A sip was all she wanted.

  Carole stepped onto one of the rocks in the stream and crouched so that she could fill her hands with water, then lifted them to her lips. It was good and fresh. She wished Delilah would take more. Surely the mare must be thirsty, but she didn’t drink any more. She knew what she wanted. Carole accepted that.

  She remounted and they went on.

  Darkness came quickly now, slipping into the woods and surrounding the travelers. Delilah moved forward on the paths willingly. Carole knew horses had much better night vision than humans, but Delilah’s night vision didn’t help Carole much.

  She looked at her watch again. It was almost eight o’clock. They’d been riding for a couple of hours. She didn’t have any idea how far they’d gone or where they were, but she knew Delilah was tired, and so was she. It was time to stop for the night.

  Carole had brought some supplies with her. She smiled to herself, realizing that she hadn’t had any plan at all when they’d left Pine Hollow, but she had come prepared. Maybe she’d had a plan somewhere in her brain that her brain hadn’t told her about.