She dismounted and then removed Delilah’s saddle and bridle. The mare seemed to be relieved, and that was good because that was how she was supposed to feel.
Carole snapped a lead rope onto Delilah’s halter and then secured the mare to a tree branch, giving her enough rope to reach some fresh greenery that grew on the forest floor and on the few nearby bushes that still had leaves.
For herself, Carole took a granola bar from her backpack. She untied the blanket she’d secured to the back of her saddle and, using the saddle for a pillow, lay down on the ground. She’d seen plenty of cowboys sleep this way in plenty of Western movies. She couldn’t think why it wouldn’t be a good enough way for her to sleep, too.
It was early for Carole to go to sleep, barely past eight o’clock. But it had been a long, difficult day. She’d been tense and strained until she’d decided to take this trip with Delilah. Now she realized that she was tired. Nearby, she could hear Delilah’s even breathing. It soothed her. Soon she slept.
“WHERE IS SHE?” Mrs. Atwood demanded.
Lisa shrugged. “I don’t know, Mom.”
“I’ve tried to be nice to her, but this is the second time she’s been late to dinner!” Mrs. Atwood said.
“Eleanor,” said Mr. Atwood, “it’s almost nine o’clock. I don’t think this is a case of being late for dinner. I think something’s wrong.”
“Definitely,” Lisa agreed. “You know Carole well enough to know that she isn’t the kind of girl who would be that late for dinner. Carole was all upset about her father, and now she’s missing. Something is definitely wrong. We’ve got to find her!”
“Maybe,” her mother said. Then she added, “Of course. I’m sorry. I know something has to be wrong. I just didn’t want to admit it. It was easier to think she was just late. Okay. Now, where would she have gone?”
“The way I see it, there are two choices,” said Lisa. Her parents waited. “The first is Pine Hollow. Max and Mrs. Reg said she wasn’t there. So the next choice is her house. Let’s call and see if she answers.”
Lisa punched in the number. There was no answer. She let the phone ring until the answering machine picked it up. As she had earlier, she spoke into the machine, asking Carole to pick up if she was there. Nobody picked up. She tried again. Still no answer.
“She might just be afraid to answer the phone,” said Lisa. “Maybe we should drive out there.”
Her father agreed. The two of them drove out to the Hansons’ house. The place was completely dark, and there was no sign that anyone had been there. They didn’t have a key and couldn’t go into the house, but it appeared to be deserted.
They drove back to Lisa’s house and reported to Mrs. Atwood.
“Well, according to Lisa, there are only two places she could be. Let’s try Pine Hollow again. Maybe she’s hiding somewhere there. There are lots of places at the stable where someone could hide, aren’t there?”
There were. There were stalls with and without horses; there were lofts, small rooms, basement rooms. The place even had a root cellar, from the days when it had been a working farm.
“Good idea, Mom. Let’s call Mrs. Reg.”
MRS. REG PUT down the phone with a worried look.
“Max?” she called up the stairs. Max appeared, carrying his daughter, Maxi, who had on a fresh, clean diaper.
“Mrs. Atwood just called. Carole never showed up there this afternoon. Apparently, this is the last place she was seen, and we were the last people to see her. I think we’d better look again. She’s been pretty distraught—”
“She’s had a lot to be distraught about,” Max said.
“Agreed. And she always finds it comforting to be with horses. This is the logical answer. Let’s look again. This time, let’s look hard.”
“I’ll be right there,” Max said. He took Maxi into Deborah’s study, where his wife was working on some research for her latest assignment, and put the baby in the crib next to the desk.
“Carole’s missing,” he explained to Deborah. “Mother and I have to do a thorough search.”
“Oh no, I hope she’s okay,” said Deborah.
“I’ll let you know as soon as we find her,” said Max. Then he hurried down the stairs to join his mother in the stable.
It took only a minute to assure themselves that she wasn’t in any of the stalls. Starlight looked at them curiously as they passed.
Max checked the tack room; his mother checked her office. Max looked in the feed room; Mrs. Reg checked the locker area.
“Max!” she called out. He joined her there. “Here’s her book bag and her school shoes,” she said. “She must have brought her riding clothes and changed into them.”
“But her horse is here,” Max protested. “I triple-checked Starlight’s stall.”
“And I double-checked it, but neither of us has checked Delilah’s stall, have we?”
“Delilah’s not here now,” Max said. “She’s over in the—Oh, my! Let’s go.”
He grabbed a flashlight from the shelf in his mother’s office, and the two of them hurried over to the feed shed. This had to be the answer, and they both knew it.
The door of the shed was open. Delilah’s stall was empty.
Mrs. Reg and Max stepped outside and looked at the woods that lay beyond the fields. “Oh no!” said Mrs. Reg, shaking her head with concern.
Max tugged at his mother’s sleeve. “We’ve got some phone calls to make,” he said, steering her back to the office.
“And no time to waste,” agreed Mrs. Reg.
CAROLE FELT SOMETHING brushing her cheek. She swatted at it. It was still there. She swatted again. Still there. Reluctantly she opened her eyes.
That something was an oak leaf. Carole shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. It took a second, but then she realized that she was in the woods. She’d been sleeping on the ground, which began to explain how uncomfortable she’d been, and it was a cool, gray morning. The coolness suggested a reason for her dreams about the North Pole a full two months before Christmas!
“Oh,” she said, finally remembering why she was in the woods. There, to her left, was Delilah, resting quietly. Carole and Delilah were on a trail ride—a long trail ride, but a trail ride. They’d gone to sleep when it became dark, and now that it was becoming light, they were waking up, or at least Carole was. She looked at her watch. It was six-thirty. The sun was up, a little bit. It was another day, and Delilah was still alive.
Carole stood up and brushed herself off. Breaking camp was a pretty simple matter. All she had to eat was another granola bar. There was grass for Delilah if she wanted any, but she didn’t seem to. A few minutes after waking, Carole had Delilah tacked up, and the two of them were off for another day of riding.
Carole had done a lot of trail riding in her life. She’d ridden trails wherever she’d lived before she moved to Willow Creek; she’d ridden trails out West when she and her friends visited Kate Devine at the Bar None Ranch. She’d ridden in the Rockies; she’d ridden in the Appalachians; she’d ridden through snowdrifts in Minnesota. And she’d been riding the trails near Pine Hollow ever since her family had moved to Willow Creek. She’d always known where she was headed and how she was going to get there, though she hadn’t always gone the right way.
This was another trail ride. It had to be because she and Delilah were on a trail. The big difference was that Carole didn’t have any idea what trail they were on or where it headed. She knew that the woods behind Pine Hollow went on for miles. Some of it was state forest. Some of it was private land. All of it had trails, but none of it was well marked. They were completely lost. And it was okay.
“Come on, girl, let’s get going,” Carole said, knowing it didn’t matter where they went, just that they were going. Delilah picked up her pace to a slow walk, and they continued on their way.
“ALL RIGHT NOW, groups of three,” Max was saying to all the people who stood around him in a circle. Next to him was a policeman. He was handi
ng out maps to one person in each group.
“Each of these maps is marked with a sector. You should be looking on and around the trails in that sector only. If you leave your sector, you’ll be doubling somebody else’s efforts.”
“Where do we go?” Lisa asked, reaching for a map.
“Back home!” ordered the policeman. “We don’t want any kids joining in the search for this girl, or the next thing we know, we’ll be looking for three girls, not two.” He turned his back on Lisa and Stevie.
The girls glared at him. “Like he knows as much about Carole or the woods as we do,” Stevie said.
Lisa rolled her eyes.
The policeman also gave each group a flare and a noisemaker so that anyone who found Carole and Delilah could signal all the other searchers.
It wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning, but there were loads of people at Pine Hollow. Max and his mother had spent a good deal of the evening before marshaling neighbors and stable riders to find Carole. Everybody knew Carole. Everybody knew Delilah. And everybody cared about both of them. Since the Pine Hollow horses were quarantined, all the searching was to be done on foot. A few people who did not keep their horses at Pine Hollow had them trailered nearby so that they could ride into the woods on them.
“Okay, off you go!” said the policeman. As if it were the beginning of a race, a hundred people ran across the field and headed into Pine Hollow’s woods. Max was among them. Mrs. Reg showed the policemen to her office, where they could set up a command center. A number of people had radios with them, and quite a few also carried cellular telephones. All information was to come to Mrs. Reg’s office.
As soon as the area was clear, Stevie and Lisa looked at one another. The policeman might have thought that they belonged at home, but they knew better. Their job was to look for Carole. Also, they knew it was against the rules, but sometimes there were things that were more important than rules. They were going to ride, and nothing and nobody would stop them.
The girls surreptitiously tacked up Belle and Starlight, paused to touch the good-luck horseshoe, and were halfway across the field before anybody noticed.
The policeman called after them to stop. Then they heard Mrs. Reg talking to him.
“You could no more keep those two girls from riding after their friend than you could hold back the tide. Now, come back into the office where you can do some good!”
Lisa and Stevie looked at one another and laughed.
“Mrs. Reg has a lot of common sense,” said Stevie.
“A lot more than that policeman, anyway,” Lisa agreed. She leaned forward and whispered into Starlight’s ear. “Find Carole!” she said. She could have sworn that Starlight lengthened his stride as soon as he heard her words.
DELILAH’S PACE SLOWED. She was doing all she could to satisfy her rider’s request, but her best wasn’t very fast now.
“Want to stop, girl?” Carole asked.
Delilah’s answer was to take a deep breath and push forward. A lifetime of doing what she was asked by her riders made her willing to move ahead, blindly doing exactly what she was asked.
“You don’t know any other way but the right way, do you, Delilah?” Carole asked.
Delilah let out her breath. It sounded like a sigh. Carole held the reins ever so slightly closer to her own hips. Delilah responded to that subtle signal as she always had. She stopped.
Carole climbed down out of the saddle. She stepped around and looked at the mare. The signs were unmistakable now. The symptoms that had been slight the day before were now readily apparent. Carole was even more certain: Delilah had EIA, and she was dying.
Carole reached up and patted the mare’s neck. Delilah looked at her, her eyes filled with trust. She’d always been treated well by people. This was not a time when she was going to stop trusting humans. Carole was touched by Delilah’s willingness. She also understood, or was pretty sure she understood, that she was doing the right thing for this horse.
This mare—always a faithful stable horse, a fine, caring mother, and a good, obedient school horse—was not one to give up and die in a stall. She deserved to be in the woods, her favorite place, and she deserved to be with someone she trusted—Carole. Sure this was a slightly irrational thing for Carole to be doing with Delilah, but if Delilah was going to die, she should be able to die in a place that made her happy, and she should be able to be with someone she liked and who loved her.
“Don’t worry, Delilah,” Carole said softly. “I’m here with you, forever.”
The only thing she didn’t know was how long forever would be.
* * *
“CAROLE! CAROLE! ARE you there?” Lisa called out into the thick woods.
There was no answer. She hadn’t thought there would be. Carole had been gone almost fifteen hours. She and Stevie had been on the trail for only one hour. Surely Carole had gotten farther than this!
“We’ll find her. She’ll hear us and she’ll call out to us,” Stevie said. “In the meantime, what we can do is ride and talk so that she can hear us.”
“You don’t think she’ll be hiding?” Lisa asked.
“Not from us,” Stevie said. Lisa knew Stevie was right.
“Okay,” Lisa agreed. “I guess that for now, the most important thing to do is to cover land so we can catch up with her—wherever she is.”
“Right. This way, then,” said Stevie, pointing left when they came to the first fork in the trail.
“Why that way?” Lisa asked.
“I have no idea,” said Stevie.
Together they turned left.
CAROLE LOOKED UP at the sky. It seemed a little threatening. Then she realized it wasn’t threatening rain. It was threatening evening. Was it possible that she and Delilah had been riding all day long? She looked at her watch. It was six o’clock already. They’d been going for eleven hours, ever since they’d left their camp. She’d ridden some of the day and walked some of the day. Delilah, ever willing to do what was asked of her, kept on going, moving as she was told, with or without a rider on her back.
Carole had never seen anything like the courage the mare was showing. With every step, she became more convinced that she was doing what was right for Delilah. Otherwise, why would the mare keep going? This wasn’t a horse that would be satisfied to wait for death.
Well, it was getting dark now. Carole was both tired and hungry. It was time to find someplace that might offer shelter for her and for Delilah for the night.
She signaled Delilah to stop. She took her feet out of the stirrups and allowed them to hang loosely. It helped relax her. She looked around. The woods seemed slightly familiar, but that didn’t seem possible. They’d been moving for hours and hours, and unless they’d been making a gigantic circle, they had to be at least twenty miles from Pine Hollow.
Carole looked around her again. She knew so much of the forest in the area, but a lot of unfamiliar forest could seem familiar because it was similar. The trees were the same kinds that grew right next to Pine Hollow. The rocks were the same sort that filled those woods. It was comforting to be so far from home but so close to the familiar.
There was a rustle in the underground. Carole looked. It was a squirrel. He was running very fast. Carole wondered what he was running from, and then her question was answered. She heard the sharp bark of a coyote, then saw it dash across the trail. It startled her.
It startled Delilah even more. Without warning, Delilah took off. Carole was unprepared to have this ill horse bolt from under her. She grabbed the reins tightly and then tried to regain the stirrups with her feet, but that only made her legs flail wildly and threatened to unbalance and unseat her completely. Carole gripped with her legs and grabbed the palomino’s mane as tightly as she could.
It wasn’t enough. As the coyote disappeared, chasing the squirrel, Delilah veered downhill, off the path—and right toward a tree!
The mare shifted to the left of the tree, but Carole could tell this was going to
be bad news for her. A horse, even a sick one, would always make room for itself to pass by an obstacle like a tree, but there was no guarantee that there would be room for the rider’s legs to clear it, especially when they were flapping without the aid of stirrups. She could be bruised, crushed, or pushed off the horse. Carole had no choice. She let herself fall off Delilah two feet before she would have been scraped off by the tree.
When she landed, her hip hit a rock or a root, she didn’t know or care which. She knew it hurt a lot and was going to leave her with a big swelling and, eventually, a gigantic bruise.
She sat up and looked to see what had happened to Delilah. It wasn’t much. The horse had made it past the tree that had frightened Carole, but a large boulder sat right in front of her. She could have run around it. She could have run left or right. There was plenty of room, but as soon as she’d gotten to the boulder, she’d stopped. On another day, Carole might have thought that Delilah had stopped because she was embarrassed to have thrown Carole. Today, however, Carole was pretty sure that Delilah had stopped because bolting and running had taken all her energy. From where she sat on the ground, Carole could see Delilah’s sides heaving in and out, gasping for air from the very brief sprint. It’s time to stop running, Carole thought. It’s time to rest.
“Okay, Delilah,” she said, pulling herself slowly to a standing position. “This is where we’re going to camp for the night.”
Delilah didn’t even turn around to look at her.
“WHAT DO YOU mean, you’re going to get a C in history!” Stevie couldn’t believe her ears.
“That’s right,” said Lisa. “I can get whatever grade I want to get, and just think what it’ll show people if I get a C.”
“Well, it’ll show them you’re nuts, for starters,” Stevie said. She wasn’t very good at holding her tongue. She hoped she wouldn’t regret what she’d just said, but she didn’t care if she regretted it. She meant it.
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