“No, I don’t think so,” said Lisa. “It’ll show people that I’m not obsessive about my grades. I can get As all right. Everybody knows that. What they don’t know is that I can let go a bit and get a C.”
“You’r going to have to work very hard to get a C,” said Stevie.
“I know,” Lisa told her. “But I can do it. I just know I can.”
Stevie was glad Lisa was in the lead, because that meant Lisa couldn’t see her face and the contortions it was going through. This decision was even crazier than Lisa’s determination to get an A+ and the fact that she was working on a paper six months early.
Stevie needed help. No, actually, it was Lisa who needed help, but Stevie knew that she, Stevie, was going to need help in order to help Lisa. When were they going to find Carole?
“It’s getting dark,” said Lisa. “What do you want to do?”
“Camp, I guess,” said Stevie, pulling Belle up next to Lisa and Starlight.
“You brought a sleeping bag?” Lisa asked.
“Sure, and we can share. And I brought some stuff to eat, but I don’t think it’s very good. Just some candy.”
“It’ll go perfectly with the fruit and yogurt I brought along. And we don’t have to share the sleeping bag. I brought mine, too,” Lisa said, pointing to the bundle on the rear of her saddle.
“Two great minds with a single thought,” Stevie said. It was nice to know that even while she was worried about finding Carole, Lisa was right there and totally prepared to help her with Carole’s problem.
“Here, this looks like a nice enough place,” Stevie said, climbing down out of Belle’s saddle. Lisa dismounted as well.
“It does look like a nice place. In fact, it looks like such a nice place that I think somebody else found it before we did.”
The two girls looked around them. They had to look hard in the fading light, but it was clear that someone had been there very recently. There was an area where the ground had been flattened in a manner that looked suspiciously like a sleeping body. The tree nearby had a branch hanging down that was perfect for tying a lead rope.
“Look at this!” Lisa said. Stevie’s eyes followed Lisa’s finger. There, on the branch, was a small knot of hair. It was long hair. It was silver.
“Delilah’s mane?” Stevie asked.
“Either that or a long-haired old lady got tied to the tree.”
“We’re definitely on their trail, then,” Stevie said, excited.
“Sure, but a day late, I think,” Lisa said. “That’s good news, bad news.”
“Well, at least it’s the right direction,” Stevie reminded her friend.
“There’s that,” Lisa agreed.
The girls cooled down their horses by walking them gently for a few minutes. Then they found some grass and leaves for them to eat—though they were careful to keep Belle away from the kind of grass that she was allergic to—and they found a rill that they presumed would eventually lead downhill to Willow Creek.
It had been a very long day for the two of them, and they’d hardly slept the night before because they’d been so worried. They hadn’t wanted anybody to worry about them, but they knew Mrs. Reg knew where they were. Mrs. Reg also had excellent vision and would have seen that they each had a sleeping bag. Nobody would seriously worry about them, except maybe Lisa’s mother, but Mrs. Reg would calm her quickly.
They shared some of the food they’d brought along, saving enough for breakfast, and then laid out their sleeping bags. The sun was fully down now. They couldn’t see much, and they couldn’t light a fire. There was really only one thing to do, so they did it. They slept.
CAROLE OPENED HER eyes. It was still dark, but something had awakened her. When she and Delilah had stopped for the night, they had been on a gentle slope, next to a very big rock—a boulder, really. It had split at some point, and a small chunk of it had fallen down next to the larger, main piece, making something like a tent-shaped cave. Carole had secured Delilah to a tree branch as she had the night before and then settled in under the cover of the cave in the rock. She’d been exhausted and had slept soundly, but now something woke her up.
She stepped out from under the rock and looked around. Her eyes were completely adjusted to the dark of the woods. The moon shone overhead, and small bits of moonlight made splatters on the ground nearby. There was something else light on the ground, too, and then Carole knew what had awakened her. It had been Delilah, lowering herself to the ground for a rest.
Some horses sleep lying down, some standing up. Delilah was a standing horse. Carole thought the only time she’d ever seen Delilah lying down was when she was giving birth to Samson. It was unlike her, but then, so was being sick.
Carole picked up her blanket and went over to Delilah. The mare was shivering. It wasn’t cold that night, not even as cool as the night before. Delilah’s fever was up, though. Carole knew it just by touching her. She put her blanket over the mare, who blinked once in acknowledgment, perhaps thanks. Carole got down on the ground next to her, lying against the mare’s back and resting her head across her neck. Delilah’s soft mane was all the pillow Carole needed.
Carole’s blanket wasn’t large enough to warm Delilah, but the proximity of her own body would help soothe the ailing mare. Delilah breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. Carole saw her eyes close. They both slept again.
* * *
STEVIE AWOKE WITH a start. Nearby, something had rustled—the wind, a squirrel, she didn’t know what. It didn’t frighten her. She’d slept in the woods enough to know there was nothing to be afraid of.
She sat up and looked around. Suddenly a feeling of familiarity swept over her. It took a moment to recognize where the feeling had come from, and then she remembered. It was from the book she’d been reading. She was actually sleeping in the same woods, perhaps on the same ground, that Hallie had slept on when she’d made her run on the Underground Railroad. Had she sipped water from the same rill where Stevie and Lisa had washed their faces the night before? Had she seen the same sky, the same stars and moon, whose light now filtered through the branches overhead? Had she heard the same rustling?
The story that had felt so real as she had read it felt even more real as she realized that she was sort of living it. A lot of people traveled on paths to freedom. Some of the paths were on the Underground Railroad; some paths took a horse somewhere to die in peace; some paths led straight to Cs. The trouble was that sometimes these paths were dreams come true, like Hallie’s path to Canada, and sometimes they were nightmares. Stevie hoped her friends would find their dreams and not their nightmares!
Stevie rolled over then and went back to sleep, dreaming of moonlight and successful journeys.
IN THE END, it was easy for Lisa and Stevie to find Carole. They knew they had started on the right path as soon as they woke up. What they didn’t know was that Delilah was so sick and so weak that she and Carole had hardly made any progress at all the day before.
Every time Lisa and Stevie found strands of Delilah’s silky mane and tail along the path, they knew they were getting closer. They called softly as they proceeded, only unsure how soon they would find their friend.
“Carole!”
“It’s Lisa and Stevie, Carole, are you there?”
“We’ve got Belle and Starlight with us!”
“Carole?”
By noon their voices were tired, but their horses were not. The girls proceeded slowly, carefully, calling less often and finding more signs of their friend’s presence. Here a swatch of silvery hair, there a small manure dropping. Then they found a granola bar wrapper.
“Carole?” Lisa called out softly. In the distance, she could hear the gentle trickle of a small brook. It made sense that Carole would be near water.
There was a sound. Was it a response?
“Carole?” Stevie called a little more loudly.
“Stevie?” came a hushed cry. “Lisa? I’m here. Come on over. But don’t bring the horses.”
“She’s there!” Lisa said to Stevie. “It’s Carole!”
Stevie and Lisa both knew they’d come to their journey’s end. Carole was somewhere in the woods, off to the right of the trail.
And Carole didn’t want them to bring their horses. Certainly Carole would know that they’d come on horseback to find her. But she would want to protect the horses. That confirmed what both of them already suspected. Delilah was sick with EIA. They couldn’t risk exposing Belle and Starlight to the disease.
“We’ll be there in a minute,” Stevie assured their friend. The girls dismounted and walked the horses back down the trail a few hundred feet. At this time of year, with the weather so cool, there was little chance of a tabanid’s being handy to carry any disease from one horse to another, but none of the three girls was interested in taking any risk. Stevie and Lisa secured the two horses to low-slung branches and took off into the woods toward the place where they’d heard Carole’s cry.
As soon as they saw Carole, they understood everything. Their friend was sitting on the ground, next to Delilah. The mare was lying limply, her head weakly resting on Carole’s knees. She was dying.
Carole rubbed the mare’s face softly in the way Delilah always liked best. Stevie sat down across the horse from Carole and began stroking her soft neck. Lisa sat next to Carole by the mare’s back and patted her withers.
Delilah took in a slow, difficult breath. The girls held their own and kept on patting. The mare breathed out. The girls sighed.
“It’s okay, Delilah,” Carole said. “You’ve been wonderful to us. You don’t have to thank us. Each of us has ridden you and loved you as long as we’ve known you. We need to thank you for all you’ve done for us.”
“We’ve been through a lot together,” Stevie said. “Remember when Samson was born? What a champion you were. You had the three most ignorant midwives in Virginia looking after you, and you didn’t let us down at all. You made us look good!”
“Best of all, you brought us Samson,” said Lisa. “That beautiful little colt. You can be proud of him, Delilah. People always think of Cobalt when they think of Samson, but the fact is that he’s got your fine character, your kindness, your stamina and willingness. Max says he’ll make a wonderful school horse one of these days. Personally, I think he’s championship material.”
“Just like his mother,” Carole added. “You never took a wrong step with me. No matter how hard I worked you, you always worked harder, teaching me with every step you took. That goes for the last few years, as long as I’ve known you, but it also goes for the last few days. No matter what, you were determined to please me. What a horse.”
“What a champion,” said Stevie.
“What a friend,” said Lisa.
The girls held the mare and patted her. Stevie reached to her belly and put her hand on the horse’s heart. They watched her breathing slow, and they waited. They didn’t talk. There was nothing more to say.
Delilah’s breathing grew more rapid and shallower. Her eyes stayed closed. Then the breaths became irregular. And then they stopped.
“Her heart’s stopped,” Stevie told her friends. They nodded.
Delilah’s journey was over.
“Dear God,” Stevie said, speaking softly, “take her and give her a home in horse heaven.”
“With Cobalt,” Carole added.
The girls reached to each other across Delilah and took one another’s hands, joining in a circle. And then they sobbed.
“GIRLS? STEVIE? CAROLE? LISA?”
“Max?” Carole asked.
“I guess,” said Lisa. “Someone was bound to find us. There must be a zillion searchers out here.”
“Looking for me?” Carole wondered.
“Worried about you,” Stevie said. “When you disappeared and a horse was missing from Pine Hollow, well, people were worried. There were police and a lot of people going through these woods, with maps, flares, and noisemakers, all looking for you.”
“Over here!” Lisa called.
Max found them and then ran over to Delilah. He nodded, understanding.
“Judy called us last night and told us her test was positive,” Max said. “But we knew it already. She was showing all the symptoms.”
“You knew?” Carole was surprised that they hadn’t said anything.
“We didn’t want anyone to panic We also didn’t think it would be this fast, but it was this fast with King Perry, too, so it appears to be a particularly virulent form of the disease. You girls were smart to park the horses down the path.”
“Carole told us to,” Lisa said.
“But we would have done it anyway,” Stevie added.
“When did she die?” Max asked, patting the mare softly.
“Just a few minutes ago,” Carole told him. “We were all with her. We took care of her. She wasn’t in pain. It was just like she was too tired to live.”
“That’s the way this disease goes,” said Max. “It’s a horrible disease. I hope and pray that all the other horses in the stable are all right.”
“Their tests were negative, weren’t they?” Carole asked.
“Oh, sure. And there’s really no reason to believe that they’ll be anything but negative. Delilah had just returned from Hedgerow. We know where she contracted swamp fever, and considering the fact that the weather’s been cool since her return—not a good season for tabanid—we don’t expect any of the other horses to get it. But we’ll take every precaution to see that they don’t.
“Anyway, although I can’t applaud your extended trail ride, Carole, I’m glad you were with Delilah and that you stuck with her to the end. You three have been a good friend to her.”
“She’s been a good friend to us,” Lisa told him.
“That, too,” Max agreed. “Now, let’s set everybody’s mind at ease as to your whereabouts, Carole, and then head back to Pine Hollow.”
The return. Carole hadn’t even thought about that. It had taken her two days on an ailing horse to get where she was. How long would it take them all to get back? She asked Max the question.
“About half an hour, I think,” he said.
“So fast?” Stevie asked.
“Well, we’re only about two miles away.”
Carole almost laughed. She’d ridden almost twenty hours and she’d only gone two miles!
“All the trails around here crisscross,” he said. “You could probably go fifty miles and never backtrack. It’s just a matter of knowing where you are.”
He stood up and helped Carole, Lisa, and Stevie stand up, too. Carole felt a little stiff. She’d been sitting there on the ground with Delilah for a long time. She stretched and shook out her arms and legs.
Stevie looked at Delilah and then at her friend. What Carole had done was foolish, of course, but it was courageous, too. It took the same kind of courage that—
Something caught Stevie’s eye. It was the very large boulder behind Carole. There it was, set on a hillside, a small creek nearby. A chunk of the boulder had somehow been broken off the larger piece and had fallen to the earth, leaning against the larger boulder, making a small tentlike structure, almost a cave. And there, above the tent on the main boulder, was a large, unmistakable arrow. Stevie could hardly believe her eyes.
“Oh, isn’t that neat?” Carole asked when she noticed what Stevie was staring at. “I slept in there last night. It seemed very cozy. I only came out when it was clear that Delilah was getting sicker.”
“Right,” Stevie said, but she wasn’t thinking about how cozy it must have been for Carole. She was thinking about how terrifying it must have been for someone else—Hallie! Stevie knew she was right. There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in her mind. She’d found Hallie’s hiding place! Hallie was real. Hallie had traveled on the Underground Railroad right through Willow Creek and Pine Hollow.
She gulped. Should she tell? Well, neither of her friends had read the book yet. It wouldn’t really mean anything until they had. She�
��d wait. It would be her surprise—well, hers and one other person’s. As soon as she got home, she was going to write a letter to Elizabeth Wallingford Johnson. She couldn’t wait.
“I guess I’m ready to go now,” Carole told Max and her friends. She picked up her granola bar wrapper. She didn’t want to leave anything behind. She looked at Delilah, who still had the blanket covering her. It seemed right and decent to leave it there.
“I’ll follow you girls,” Max said. “I just need to say good-bye to an old friend first.”
They understood completely.
“WHO’S THAT?” CAROLE asked, looking over Lisa’s shoulder at the crowd of people who stood outside the stable at Pine Hollow.
“Those are your searchers,” Stevie said. “It’s everybody who was worried enough about you to tromp through the woods yesterday and today.”
“I think they were also looking for us today,” Stevie said.
“Oh, right. I forgot that we broke the rules,” Lisa said.
“It’s good for you to break the rules every once in a while,” Carole teased her.
“I’m trying,” Lisa said.
Suddenly someone in the group spotted the girls emerging from the woods. Several people started waving. Then everyone was waving—and cheering.
“Aren’t they angry with us?” Stevie asked. She knew people would be relieved to find out they were all right, but surely somebody was going to be annoyed.
“Probably not,” said Lisa. “Max had a cellular telephone with him. As we were riding off, he was calling Pine Hollow to say we were fine. I’ll bet you he told everyone we’d done something heroic and should be welcomed.”
“It didn’t seem very heroic to me,” Carole said. “Just logical.”
“Well, it seemed heroic to him,” Lisa said. “Remember, Max cares about his horses as much as we do.”
That was true. Max had never been as worried about Carole as other people because he’d always understood exactly what she was doing—just as Mrs. Reg had, which was why she had pooh-poohed the policeman who’d tried to stop Lisa and Stevie.
Nightmare Page 12
