Pony Stories (3 Book Bind-Up) (Red Fox Summer Reading Collections)

by K. M. Peyton

  ‘She’s here!’ Faith yelled back to Gem, who had just begun to size up a tall, freckled guy wearing a basketball jacket.

  Faith slammmed out the door, her pale, thin legs flying, red hair floating out behind. The horse – a real, trotting, breathing horse! She’d loved horses ever since, as a little girl, she’d seen the mounted police parade in downtown Chicago.

  ‘Hello,’ said Beth. ‘Thought you’d like a different sort of ride.’ She smiled a quiet smile and climbed down from the seat.

  Faith’s eyes were all for the horse, a chestnut – hair the color of her own. ‘Like new copper,’ her father always said. The horse’s red coat had a burnished shine that deepened into shadows under smooth muscles. He stood quietly, but Faith sensed a readiness in his waiting. She sent him a silent greeting with her mind and eyes – as one animal to another. He tipped his head and slid her a sidelong glance.

  Gem, who had finally torn herself away from the basketball jacket, came out the door with her snappy, self-conscious walk. Then she saw the horse and buggy. She stopped. Her mouth dropped open.

  ‘Faith, Gem,’ said Beth, ‘meet Shinyface.’

  The chestnut’s ears perked forward. People gathering to meet the bus stared with pleasant curiosity. This ordinarily would have embarrassed Faith. But Gem, the aggressive and daring sister, stood so dumbfounded that Faith was oddly comforted.

  The buggy was old, but tidy. Its leather seats were worn. Beth grabbed the three biggest bags and hoisted them into the back seat. She was wearing old blue jeans, really old, not bleached out or faded on purpose but jeans with real holes in them, and big, thick boots. Faith noticed for the first time that, although Beth was slender with a narrow waist, she had hefty legs and strong, smooth arms.

  Faith had never paid much attention to Beth when she had visited them. She had accepted her father’s view when he claimed Beth was ‘crazy living all by herself – ye gods! – doing a man’s job – never sure of where her next dollar’s coming from.’

  Now, at this bright, exciting moment, Beth didn’t seem at all crazy. She was the herald of lovely surprises.

  The ride to the farm was splendid. Forgotten were the new baby brothers wiggling in their pretty blankets. Beth let Faith hold the reins. The power and pull of the big animal pulsed through Faith’s thin arms as his great shifting hindquarters plunged them forward along the road. They drove beneath huge trees. An early summer breeze brought fresh meadowy smells across their faces.

  ‘Fortunately, we’ve plenty of unpaved roads,’ Beth told the girls. ‘Dirt roads are much kinder to a horse’s feet than pavement and a good deal less dangerous than our busy highway.’

  ‘You’ve got a highway somewhere?’ asked Gem with an edge of sarcasm in her voice. She sat, surrounded by luggage, in the wide back seat.

  Beth’s answer was cheery. ‘Oh yes. Not too far. Civilization is within reach.’ Then she added seriously, ‘But far away enough to forget most of the time.’

  ‘Where do you go to the movies?’ Gem asked in dismay. Faith wanted to add, ‘She means, where do you find the boys?’ but she was feeling too good to bug her sister.

  ‘We’ve got a movie house in town.’ Beth spoke over her shoulder. ‘It’s open on Wednesday nights and Saturdays.’ Gem groaned.

  ‘And I’m afraid my television is sort of sick.’ Beth didn’t sound sorry. ‘But you’ll never miss it.’

  The buggy rattled and sprang along. Gem slumped, sulking, in the back.

  ‘Don’t let the reins go slack,’ Beth told Faith. ‘Keep a light feel on his mouth.’

  Faith tried to sense the horse’s mouth through the reins. Her special gift with animals had never included control over them. She had a fine ear for listening to animals – hearing speech in their voices. Part of her listening was noticing their movement, the expression on their faces, their eyes. She could creep up close to rabbits; she could scold back at a squirrel. Her father called her Dr Doolittle.

  They passed fields of new corn, a cattle ranch and more fields bordered by great oak trees. Faith kept trying to tune her listening in to the horse. But it was a bit overwhelming. Shinyface was so large and powerful. She contented herself with keeping her hands firm.

  ‘How far do we go?’ asked Faith. She felt an unfamiliar sense of command and she could have gone on forever. The summer spread before her, alive with promises.

  ‘Almost there,’ Beth told her, holding out her hands for the reins. At a break in the line of trees, Beth slowed the chestnut and manoeuvered the buggy on to a drive. Gem sat up, interested in spite of herself.

  They approached a rattly, wooden bridge. Water sparkled and chortled beneath. Beth spoke soothing sounds to the chestnut, who drew his head down and arched his neck sideways at the busy water as they started across.

  ‘Easy, Shiny, easy . . .’ Beth murmured over and over. The buggy veered dangerously close to the bridge rail. Gem gasped. Faith knew an instant of panic. With high, tense steps, the horse pranced and twitched over the bridge. Now Faith had no trouble hearing the big chestnut. The signals were strong. She could almost see through Shiny’s eyes – the water flashing and quivering like a great snake. A thrill of danger slid across Faith’s skin.

  Once on the other side, Shiny calmed down and trotted out quite smoothly. They passed a field with sheep in it. A big, old farmhouse came into view perched on a grassy rise. Faith noted it needed a coat of paint. Beyond the rise poked the top story of a barn, dark red with a sturdy roof. As they drew closer, Faith saw smaller buildings scattered about, all freshly painted. A stretch of grassy hills dotted with horses rolled up to the horizon.

  Somewhere from these hills, Faith heard a wild, high-pitched whinny and the lower, calmer answer from a distant horse. She felt, beneath the sudden goose bumps on her skin, the stirrings of adventure.

  2

  HOLBEIN FARM WAS bigger than Faith had expected. Beth proudly informed the girls that the sheep they had just passed were hers and that the farm also supported many cats, three dogs and a donkey. Somewhere among the hilly fields were a small lake and several acres of woods. Her nearest neighbors, Beth told them, were a couple of miles away.

  They drove past a corral where a gleaming dark horse trotted nervously. ‘That’s Apollo, my stallion,’ said Beth. She explained that he was kept separate from the other horses ‘because he gets sort of crazy whenever a mare is in season.’

  ‘What’s “in season”?’ asked Faith.

  ‘When she’s ready to conceive,’ said Beth. ‘And sometimes more than one mare is ready at the same time. We isolate Apollo to protect him as well as the other horses – and ourselves.’

  Faith was just beginning to find the discussion fascinating when it ended. Beth’s attention focused on easing Shiny into a turn towards the house. She halted the buggy by a sagging back porch. A huge, woolly white dog came joyfully padding to greet them. Gem stayed nervously in the buggy, but Faith slipped down from her seat and clucked and mock-growled. The dog’s tail wagged furiously. She stroked his ears and scratched above his tail.

  ‘Wolfie usually terrifies people with his friendliness,’ remarked Beth. She took a long, approving look at Faith before she turned to hoist the luggage from the buggy. Gem climbed down uneasily. She didn’t care for dogs. She usually relied on Faith to keep one busy until she got away.

  While Beth led Shinyface and the buggy down toward the barn, the girls lugged their suitcases into the kitchen. Wolfie panted eagerly at Faith’s heels. ‘You stay here, Wolfie,’ said Faith, closing the screen door gently in his face.

  Beth’s house was a crazy mess – ‘chaos’ their father had called it. ‘You girls should get along fine in Beth’s chaos, judging from the condition of your bedroom,’ he had said.

  The kitchen floor was crowded with various kinds of boots – tall riding boots, muddy work boots, fat moon boots. Magazines, catalogs and unopened mail were piled on the kitchen table. A tangle of harnesses hung over the back of one chair. Dishes from past m
eals were balanced precariously in the sink.

  Does our room look like this? thought Faith. She herself was rather inclined toward neatness. Her chair in their bedroom back home was piled as high as Gem’s with soiled clothes, but hers were all folded. When she sat in the chair, it sort of pressed them neatly together. Gem created chaos around her, changing in and out of clothes and hairstyles until she only had time to drop her discarded things on the floor. ‘Dump and dash,’ their mother said of the older sister. ‘Miss Dump-and-Dash.’

  Now, at Beth’s house, Miss Dump-and-Dash was looking for the bathroom, where she could lay her makeup and colognes. Just off the kitchen was a large, modern, half-finished bathroom. Gem gasped and Faith followed her in. The bathroom was a mess. Back home there were rules about picking up towels and putting toothbrushes back where they belonged. I guess Beth doesn’t have any rules about the bathroom, thought Faith. Gem moaned.

  The short laugh behind them made them turn around. Beth explained that one of her sheep had been sick during a spring frost and she had brought her in to keep her warm. The sheep had lain on the bathroom rug, messed on the floor, eaten from the bathtub and drank out of the toilet bowl.

  ‘I cleaned up the worst part,’ said Beth. ‘I keep meaning to get to the rest, but I haven’t found the time.’ The sisters just stood there speechless until Beth suggested, ‘Best to use the old bathroom just across the kitchen.’

  My, my . . . two kitchen bathrooms, thought Faith.

  ‘Ye gods!’ said Gem when she saw the other bathroom. A doorless linen closet was piled full of dirty laundry which spilled out into the room. A tall avocado plant sat in the tub, its leaves green and perky. Faith giggled. She wasn’t fond of baths. Gem found the mirror to her liking and calmed down.

  ‘You can explore the farm a little bit today, if you want,’ said Beth. ‘You’d better put on some boots.’ Then, noticing the confusion in both girls, she said sneakers would do. ‘Did you bring any old ones?’ she asked, eying their soft leather flats.

  Faith and Gem changed into old tennis shoes right out of their bags, opened in the kitchen, and set out to explore the farm. Beth stayed behind to answer a ringing phone.

  The girls, joined by the strangeness of a new place, stuck close together. They found a path down to the barn. It was a huge, old barn built into the slant of a hill. A short distance away was a fenced rectangle similiar to Apollo’s corral. There were no horses in it, just standing sections of fence, crossed poles and barrels on their sides. Faith grew excited. This must be the ring where riders practised. They probably rode around those barrels – or jumped their horse over them! The ring looked as if it was used a lot.

  They entered the barn into a room which Faith noted with surprise was clean and tidy. Saddles sat on wooden racks in neat rows. Bridles hung on the wall beside them. Passing through a narrow door between saddle racks, they discovered the stable. The odor of damp wood, manure and hay filtered warmly from a row of stalls. Faith peered into the nearest one and was disappointed to find it empty.

  A ladder in the ceiling led into a giant hayloft overhead. The girls ventured up cautiously and climbed out on top through a square hole.

  Hay was stacked in neat bales almost up to the two-story ceiling. Light came dustily through little, high-up windows. Cats sat about, some of them stretching, some of them crouching, one of them clawing its way into a large bag of cat food. Faith thought this would be a cozy place to come with a book on a rainy day.

  Next they wandered off to a field where they had seen some horses. ‘They must live out-doors in summer,’ Faith reasoned aloud. A number of them were grazing in the middle of the field. The girls climbed the fence and sat on top. The horses, after first looking up, bent their heads back to the grass.

  ‘Let’s go nearer,’ suggested Faith with a confidence gained from her ride in the buggy.

  ‘Forget it,’ drawled Gem. ‘You’re the big animal lover. Besides, Mom said to take it slow with big animals. And she meant you.’

  But Faith slid down from the fence into the big field. Immediately she felt smaller; a faint chill of apprehension cooled the back of her neck. This was their field. But the horses continued to graze.

  She stood for a while watching them in their field, trying to feel their life. Not one of them looked up.

  Near her a butterfly flickered out of the grass. The sun shone down. Faith could feel the warmth rising from the earth beneath her. Insects hummed. She began to walk towards the group of horses.

  Nearest to her was the big chestnut, Shinyface. On his neck and hindquarters his hair was ruffled up and drying. He seemed enormous now that Faith was on the ground. Beyond was a small, pretty brown mare with a shaggy mane. A black horse bent his long neck quietly to the grass. The closer Faith got, the bigger the horses loomed. She hadn’t realized just how big they were. Tails switched at flies, horse skin shivered. The sun surrounded them all in a lazy peace.

  Faith walked on a little slower, feeling her way. The black horse lifted his head and looked at her. She stopped and sent him her special signal, a little trembly with a strange nervousness. Hello, horse.

  His gaze reached into her eyes, an alien stare. A quietness seemed to radiate from his body. His tail flickered. Faith could see, from the corner of her eye, the other horses raise their heads. They were all silent, looking at her, the intruder in their field. The sun beat down. The air seemed to grow thick.

  Suddenly, without warning, the black horse spun up and around. His tail spread and his neck arched. His energy was like the crack of a whip among the others. There was a flurry and a springing and a lightning thrust of hooves. The horses bolted, twisted. Their necks tossed, manes flaring. A wild, shuddering cry came from the black horse. He stood up on his hind legs and pawed the air. His mane was like a flame behind him.

  Then he plunged and bucked. His hind hooves struck out at the air. Faith froze in her tracks. Behind her, Gem screamed. Faith heard a thundering as the horses began to spin and wheel towards her. The earth seemed to heave beneath. The pounding of hooves sent a beat up through her legs. Her body was rooted into the ground. Her scalp went cold.

  The herd came boiling towards her. The air was full of the frenzy of their huge bodies. Faith heard a terrible wail rise up from her own throat, an awful sound she hadn’t known she owned.

  The sea-wet chestnut was upon her. He wheeled and, flicking his hooves, passed by so close she could feel the warm wind he caused. Her arms flew up. As if at a command, the rest of the herd turned and raced in the other direction.

  On weak legs, Faith ran lurching back to the safety of the fence. ‘Some animal lover,’ snorted Gem. Her face was so white that the few freckles on her nose stood out like crayon spots.

  Later that evening, after a pizza supper, and after the dishes were all piled on top of the dirty ones in the sink, Beth said, ‘Tomorrow we’ll have a riding lesson.’ Gem and Faith exchanged looks of horror. Faith felt an awful coldness coil in her stomach.

  Never before had she been frightened of an animal. But these horses seemed so unlike the groomed and bridled animals of the mounted police. Even Shinyface in the field had not been the same horse Faith had known harnessed to a buggy. She could not understand what had happened in Beth’s field of unfettered horses. Their great size and uncontrollable wildness had filled her with terror.

  ‘I don’t think the horses like me,’ she said to Beth. ‘There’s a big black one who didn’t like me at all.’ She described how savagely they had behaved.

  ‘Oh,’ Beth said, unconcerned, ‘they were just feeling good, showing off for company. The black one is Thundercloud. He was probably just welcoming you.’

  Faith was quiet, thinking about Thundercloud’s welcome. His name alone was unsettling. He could have trampled her without even noticing it. She knew danger when she saw it.

  That night she dreamed she was in an empty field full of the smell of horses. The air was heavy with danger. Suddenly the horses were there, pounding
and thrusting towards her. She tried to make the right sounds – a whinny, a snort – but her throat was stopped. She turned and lifted one heavy foot after the other, pushing through the thick air with all her strength.

  And woke up sweating and whimpering in the big bed with her sister. ‘Will you stop wiggling?’ hissed Gem. ‘You’re ruining my hair!’

  Gem’s irritation drove Faith’s nightmare away. Comforted, she settled down in the bed and fell back to sleep.

  3

  WHEN FAITH WOKE up, the only trace of her fear was a vague uneasiness. The sun was sifting into the girls’ room through pretty eyelet curtains. Except for two boxes of books in the corner, the bedroom was as neat as a pin.

  Almost as orderly as the tack room, thought Faith. She was warmed by the idea that Beth had made a special effort for them.

  Gem was still sleeping soundly – her beauty sleep, their father called it. She tried to stay in one position all night so her hair would be manageable in the morning.

  Faith thought she smelled French toast. She put on her slippers and followed the smell down the narrow, steep old stairs.

  The grandfather clock by the door at the front of the stairs said 6:35, early for Faith. It’s Sunday, she thought, and was struck with a wave of homesickness. Their father cooked breakfast on Sunday – pancakes poured into the shape of their initials. She wondered if her mother was awake yet. Were the twins sleeping?

  Beth was at the stove when Faith wandered shyly into the kitchen. She looked as though she’d been up for hours. Her ‘Good morning, lazybones’ was bright and crisp. A rich, nutmeg-y smell came from a grill next to the stove burners. It was French toast for breakfast. Faith’s spirits lifted.

  ‘Thought you’d be first up,’ Beth told her then went to the foot of the stairs to holler up at Gem. ‘Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!’ She sounded like their father. ‘You’re getting old in bed!’