A Horse like Barney
Page 13
23
Guess What?
When they got home, there was still plenty of afternoon left. “Let’s put your saddle on Roy,” Missy suggested. “Make sure it fits.”
The saddle had the wonderful smell of new leather. It was dark brown with lighter suede patches for her knees, and it felt different from Missy’s. It balanced Sarah in a new and better way.
Roy turned to look at her, and she could see the question mark. Let’s go?
“Want me to get his bridle?” Missy asked. “You could ride him now.”
Sarah shook her head. “Later.” She was going to ride Roy when no one was watching. Whatever went wrong, she would work it out in private.
“You look great anyway,” Missy said. “Good choice.” She sighed. “I’ve got to go home. Sarah, will you do me a favor? Will you come check on Barney sometimes? Mom won’t get down there very often, and I’d just feel better if you’d keep an eye on him.”
“Sure—” Sarah started to say, and then, with startling brilliance, the sneaker tracks by Barney’s gate, the bright carrot confetti in the mud flashed before her eyes. She sat staring off between Roy’s ears.
“Sarah? I mean, I know it’s a long way over there, so if you can’t—”
“It is a long way,” Sarah said carefully. She had to do this right. “Maybe you should ask Jill. She’d probably do it, and she could get there every day.”
“Every day … that isn’t really necessary.” But Sarah could see that Missy liked that idea. “Would she?”
“Ask her! Jill loves Barney.”
“She was good with him.”
“Maybe she’d even feed him this winter,” Sarah said. “Then your mother wouldn’t have to go down at all.”
Missy looked at Sarah sharply. “Oh? And how would I pay her?”
“You didn’t pay me.”
“I let you ride him!” Missy said indignantly.
“So let Jill ride him! She can handle him. She’ll keep him in shape for you.”
At that Missy started to look interested. “It might not be a bad idea to have him already in condition when I get back, especially if we want to try some Combined Training next summer.”
“Say you want to hire her,” Sarah said. “You could give her riding lessons for pay. That way her mother might let her.” If there was one thing Jill’s family respected, it was work and pay.
Missy stood with her hand on Roy’s shoulder, frowning off into next summer. Sarah sat still, trying not even to breathe loudly.
After a moment Missy’s expression lightened. “I could do that,” she said. “Maybe I’ll even do it for my job next summer, instead of cleaning hotel bathrooms. But you and Jill could still be freebies.”
“I can pay you—”
“No,” Missy said firmly. “You’re my friend. You saved this summer for me—heck, you may have just saved next summer, too. Free lessons.” She reached up and shook Sarah’s hand. “Now I’m going home to call Jill and ride. Good luck with this beast!” She gave Roy a friendly slap on the shoulder and turned to get into Old Paint. As she drove away, she called out the window, “Keep your hard hat screwed on tight!”
When Missy was gone, Sarah looked around. Mom and Dad were in the house, and everything was quiet. She led Goldy into the stall and then got her new bridle. Just in the barnyard, she thought. Not much can happen in the barnyard.
Sarah was in the bathtub that night when Jill called, soaking and reading the sections of all her riding books that dealt with bucking. She had not fallen off. She had straightened Roy out, and she’d kept on riding. But what about next time? What about out in the open?
Mom knocked on the door. “Sarah? Jill on the phone. Shall I tell her you’ll call back?”
“Yes, just a few minutes.” “… usually a harmless display of high spirits,” Sarah read. “If bucking seems likely, warm the horse up for a few minutes on a lunge line before riding.” It looked as if she’d be needing to buy a lunge line next.
She got out of the tub, feeling the muscles that had kept her in the saddle when Roy bucked and that were going to make her walk just like Albert tomorrow. She toweled and got into her pajamas and went to the telephone. Her heart started to beat more rapidly as she dialed.
“Hello, Jill?” There was a lot of noise in the background. The family reunion must still be going on.
“Hi, Sarah, guess what? Missy called me, and guess what? She wants me to take care of Barney this winter, and she said—”
It was the old Jill again, not a second’s worth of space for anyone else to say a word. Sarah let out her breath in a big puff and pulled up a chair, half listening to the news she already knew. She could see Jill biking, jogging, skiing over that trail, Jill riding, proud and happy, Jill jumping the fallen tree.…
“And she’s paying me with lessons next summer, and I can ride him in the 4-H horse show.… I can’t believe it! I wanted to keep him last winter, and I couldn’t, and now—”
Sarah’s last little worry vanished. She’d been afraid taking care of Barney would seem like second best to Jill, like a crumb, when everyone else was eating a full meal. Now she had no doubt.
“—and my mother wasn’t going to let me, so I said, ‘Okay, can I take riding lessons next summer then?’ And she just looked at me for a minute, and then she said, ‘You know I can’t afford that, young lady.’ So I said, ‘But I could if you’d let me take this job!’ And she laughed, and she’s letting me! And so—hey, Sarah! Now we can go riding together, as soon as you get your horse—”
Then Sarah remembered; Jill didn’t know about Roy or about Thunder. And there was no way Sarah was going to spring news like that on the bus. Jill would shriek like a banshee and embarrass them fatally.
“Hey, Jill!” she interrupted. “Hey! Guess what?”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by Jessie Haas
Cover design by Jessie Hayes
ISBN: 978-1-4976-6258-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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