Horse Wise

by Bonnie Bryant

  “What’s the first step?” Lisa asked.

  “I’m feeling his legs to make sure we’re not dealing with any broken bones here. I can also see if any of the cuts are deep.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, if he’s losing a lot of blood from something, I won’t have time to cut away gently. We’ll have to slash at the briars and take our chances on giving him fresh wounds in order to get him out as fast as possible.”

  Carole clipped a few of the briar’s tendrils, snagging her hands as she went. She was closest to Samson’s left foreleg. As soon as she could, she reached down and ran her hand along the outside of it. It felt moist, but okay. She felt along the inside, coming back up. “No problem there,” she reported to her friends. “Yet.”

  They were in a very shady area of the woods, and the autumn sun was beginning to sink in the sky, casting long shadows through the forest. Along with all of the other problems they had, Carole couldn’t see very well. She was going to have to do the entire check on Samson with her hands.

  She reached into the briar again, groping for his right foreleg. “Ouch!” she said. Samson flinched at the sound of her voice.

  “Problem?” Stevie asked with concern.

  “It’s me, not him,” Carole told her. “I just got scratched. It’s not serious. It just hurts.”

  “Pull your sleeves down,” Stevie suggested.

  “Now, why didn’t I think of that?” Carole said, withdrawing her scratched arm from the tangle of briars. She tugged her shirtsleeves down and hoped they’d stay that way. “I wish I were wearing one of Dad’s shirts today. They’re so big, they always come down over your hands.”

  “Wait a minute,” Stevie said. “I think I can help with that. I’ve got my riding gloves—the ones you guys gave me.”

  “But they’ll get ruined. Those are really nice gloves,” Carole protested.

  “And you are a really good friend,” Stevie reminded her. “Your hands are a lot more important than my gloves.”

  “Okay. I’m not going to argue. I need all the help I can get.” Gratefully, Carole pulled the gloves on, noticing that there was blood on her hands. Was it her own blood or Samson’s? Probably some of both, she told herself. She reached back in to check the second foreleg. This time, she felt the sticking of the briar, but it only scratched at the leather glove.

  “The gloves help a lot,” Carole said. “Thanks, Stevie.”

  “You’re very welcome,” Stevie said. “And besides, you gave those to me for my birthday. Christmas is just around the corner. You won’t have to think for very long to come up with something for that!”

  Carole smiled and was about to come up with a retort for Stevie’s remark when she found that Samson’s right foreleg was lying in a very awkward position. She didn’t like that at all. The leg was bent too high, as if he were reaching for something. Did that mean he had a broken bone? The elbow and forearm were fine, although they were stretched out of position. It didn’t make sense. Then, as Carole got to the fetlock, she realized that the colt’s leg was hooked on a root that protruded from the ground. It was quite possible that that alone was keeping Samson from sliding farther down the steep sides of the gully.

  Samson’s leg was scratched, but intact, as far as Carole could tell, but the fact that it was hooked onto something was dangerous.

  While Carole shifted her position to examine Samson’s rear legs, she turned to Lisa. “If Delilah’s okay for a while, could you go to my saddle and get the ropes? I’m afraid Samson may shift around and slide much deeper into this place.” She spoke calmly so she wouldn’t alarm the colt, but the message to her friend was clear. Lisa wasted no time in following Carole’s instructions.

  While Lisa retrieved the ropes, Carole checked Samson’s hind legs. There was at least one fairly deep scratch on one of them, but it didn’t seem to be bleeding too badly. Carole proceeded with her original plan. She began cutting at the briars, silently thanking Stevie for the gloves with every painless snip.

  Lisa returned with the ropes. “Here they are, but how are we going to manage this?”

  Carole thought about it for a minute. She hadn’t been sure exactly what she had in mind when she sent Lisa for the ropes. That part just seemed logical. But what was the next logical step? “What I want to do is to get at least one rope, preferably two, around his belly so that we have him in a sort of a sling in case his leg unhooks from this root here. The problem is that he’s pretty heavy and maybe just trying to put the ropes under him will dislodge him. But it’s a risk we’ve got to take.”

  Stevie stayed at her post, keeping Samson quiet. She stroked his neck and sang to him.

  “Good job, Stevie. Keeping him calm is more important than ever now,” Carole said, though she was sure Stevie knew that without being told.

  “And it’s a good thing he likes Beatles songs. I thought ‘Hey Jude’ was a good idea.”

  Carole laughed. Jude, as she knew, was the saint of impossible causes. She hoped Samson’s rescue wasn’t an impossible cause! She quickly used Stevie’s knife to cut two lengths of rope, each about twelve feet long.

  Lisa held one end of each of the lengths of rope. Carole slid the other ends under Samson’s hindquarters, bringing one forward to his front legs and leaving the other at his rear. He didn’t seem to like it, but he let her do it. Carole sighed with relief as she passed the rope ends to Lisa.

  “Very good!” Lisa said. “I don’t know how you did that!”

  “I’m not sure I do, either,” Carole said. “But it worked, didn’t it?”

  Just then, Samson announced that he’d had enough. He began to flail around wildly, rocking his head, jostling Stevie, and kicking violently.

  This was good news and bad news. The bad news was that, exactly as Carole had predicted, he unhooked his foreleg from the root and began sliding down farther into the gully. The good news was that, because of Carole’s foresight, they’d already planned for that. Lisa held both of the rope loops by herself until Carole scrambled up the hill to help her.

  The two girls not only held Samson up, keeping him from slipping farther, but they began stepping backward, away from the gully, tugging Samson upward as they went. The colt struggled to get a purchase on the loose dirt, crying out a couple of times as briars scratched at him, but within a few seconds, he was able to scramble his way up the hillside, out of the dangerous briar patch.

  “Give him a hand!” Carole cried to Stevie. Stevie jumped to her feet and grabbed Samson’s scruffy mane. She pulled as hard as she could, knowing that she wasn’t hurting him because a horse doesn’t have any nerves in those hair roots. He certainly didn’t seem to mind.

  When Samson had gotten his front legs up over the top of the gully, Carole handed her rope to Lisa and went to check the progress of his hind legs. One of them, the one with the deep scratch, was still tangled in a briar. Carole reached over the edge and yanked at the weed. She hoped she had made enough slack to allow Samson to free himself. It worked!

  By the time Carole turned around, Samson was standing at the top of the gully, free from all briars, panting with fatigue, but safe.

  There was nothing Carole wanted to do more right then than hug Samson and her friends with joy and relief, but she knew the work wasn’t finished. They couldn’t take the chance, however slight, that something might make Samson run back into the gully. While Stevie and Lisa patted him and led him away from the edge of the gully, Carole retrieved Samson’s halter and lead.

  “Are you going to put those on him?” Lisa asked, a little surprised.

  “We have to,” Carole said. “We just can’t take a chance with him now. Once he’s in the field, we can let him loose. Until then, it’s halter or bust.”

  Carole knew from experience with Samson’s earliest training that Samson sometimes fought when the halter was put on him. Sometimes, he’d shake his head quite violently. He just wasn’t accustomed to it. So Carole was more than a little nervous.

 
“What can we do to make him not notice the halter, then?” Lisa asked.

  Carole thought for a second. “Delilah!” she exclaimed. “Bring his mother here. He’s really too tired to put up much of a fight, and I’ll bet you anything his stomach is empty and he’s starving. Bring on the Nursing Mama!”

  Laughing, Stevie unhitched Delilah and reunited her with her son. The mare checked him thoroughly, sniffing and nuzzling him, apparently trying to be absolutely certain that this dusty, dirty, scratched-up colt was really her little baby. While the two of them got reacquainted, Carole slipped the halter on Samson and clipped on a lead rope. He didn’t pay any attention to her. When Delilah was satisfied that the colt was her lost son, she allowed him to nurse.

  “Look at his poor legs,” Lisa said, watching the procedure. “Are they going to be okay?”

  Carole examined them carefully. “Probably,” she said. “There’s only one deep scratch and it seems to be closing naturally. However, we could have an infection problem, which would be a lot worse than scarring. Let’s get the first-aid kit and kill some germs.”

  While Samson was concentrating on his meal, Stevie sprayed his legs with the disinfectant, Lisa applied scarlet oil, and Carole wrapped his legs in bandages.

  “Hey, check this out!” Stevie said softly, trying not to disturb their patient. “We’re all nursing. Samson’s doing the baby kind of nursing and we’re three Clara Bartons out here on the battlefield of horse care!”

  Lisa and Carole laughed, both because it was funny, and because they felt good. They’d done something important and they’d done it right.

  “Isn’t it wonderful that Samson’s okay?” Lisa asked. “What a job you did!” she told Carole admiringly.

  “In the first place, we did it, not just me,” Carole corrected her. “In the second place, we’re not quite done.”

  “Oh, sure,” Stevie said. “Judy’s going to want to re-bandage all the cuts, maybe take some stitches …”

  “No, before that,” Carole said. “Look at Samson.”

  The colt licked the last splash of milk from his lips and then glanced around. The look was unmistakable. He was ready for his nap. He would never make it back to Pine Hollow and there was no way they could carry him safely.

  The girls decided to make him walk with Delilah, at least as far as the safety of the first fence in the fields. Then they would wait with him until help arrived. Max was sure to come looking for them with his truck. Until then, no harm would come to any of them.

  A few minutes later, The Saddle Club settled into the sweet grass, not far from Samson, and waited, glad for the quiet and the rest.

  Samson was asleep before Carole could get the halter off of him.

  “STAR LIGHT, STAR bright, first star I’ve seen tonight,” Stevie said, looking up into the early-evening sky. It was still light out, but the evening star was clearly visible above the southern horizon.

  “I know what I’m wishing for,” Lisa said, staring up into the sky as well. The minute she said it, she knew it was time to tell her friends her secret. They waited for her to continue. “I’m wishing for words to tell you something I haven’t been able to tell you.”

  “Bad news?” Stevie asked, alarmed.

  “No, just hard to figure out. Hard to talk about. But I think I’ve figured it out now, so I can talk about it.” There was a long silence. Lisa continued to look at the sky as she spoke. “My parents had this idea about buying me a horse. I think my mother got the idea because she heard the diAngelos were buying Garnet for Veronica. We even looked at three different horses.”

  “And you didn’t tell us?” Stevie asked. She sounded hurt.

  Lisa knew she deserved that, if not a lot more. “No, I didn’t. And I felt terrible keeping it from you.” Lisa took a deep breath. “I want a horse. It’s my dream. The problem was that something told me it wasn’t right. And the problem with that was I didn’t know what the ‘something’ was. So I developed this wild notion that you two would be jealous.”

  “Well, we would be, of course,” Stevie said. “But we’d understand.”

  “That’s the part I forgot. Of course you’d understand. Now I know that, but I also know that it’s still a bad idea. See, I was concentrating so hard on the idea that you were jealous of Veronica that I forgot what the real reason was for Veronica not to have a horse.”

  “And that is?” Carole asked.

  Lisa had the feeling Carole knew the answer and was testing her. “Because she doesn’t know enough about horses to care for her own properly,” Lisa answered.

  “Go to the head of the class,” Carole said.

  “Thanks. It took me a long time, but the lesson Veronica gave about responsibility by bad example was as clear as a bell.”

  “But Lisa, you’re more responsible than Veronica,” Stevie said.

  “Thanks, but a lamppost is more responsible than Veronica. I think I do all right on that part. The part that I’m not so good on is just plain horse knowledge. I’m learning. I know I’m learning, but that’s not enough yet. One day, I will have learned enough. Until then, I’m going to thank my parents for the wonderful idea and I’ll happily continue riding Pepper.”

  Carole smiled. “I think you’re absolutely right, except about one thing. It’s not going to be as far in the future as you may think. You’re learning at an amazing rate.”

  “Becoming horse wise, you mean,” Stevie contributed. “Speaking of which, Horse Wise should be helpful. I was looking through The Manual of Horsemanship—you know, the Pony Club book Max gave us. Being Pony Clubbers is certainly going to speed up that day for all of us.”

  Carole sighed audibly.

  “What’s the matter?” Lisa asked. She was relieved that she’d gotten her troubles off her chest. She hated to think that something was bothering Carole so much that she had to sigh like that!

  “Horse Wise,” Carole said and then sighed again. “If the stars are granting wishes tonight, I know what my wish is.”

  “What?” Stevie asked.

  “You may not believe this, but my wish is to have Dad not be a Horse Wise sponsor anymore.”

  Stevie propped herself up on her elbow. “I don’t get it, Carole. You’ve got one of the neatest fathers this side of the Mississippi. Why don’t you want him to be a sponsor?”

  “Sure, he’s a neat guy. He’s good at being a father and a Marine, but he’s not good at horses. Sponsors are supposed to be able to teach. He can’t teach anybody anything about horses because he doesn’t know anything.”

  “Now, wait a minute. He’s teaching everybody! He’s terrific,” Lisa said.

  “Lisa, you’re supposed to be the logical one in this group. That’s just not logical,” Carole responded.

  “No, look at it from our standpoint, Carole,” Lisa persisted. “We know your father doesn’t know anything about horses, but he does know about teaching—and learning. See, what your dad does is make us think. Every time he asks why, two things happen. First, we have to think about what we’re doing, and that gives us information. Second, we have to tell him and that gives him information. Don’t worry, Carole, he’s not just neat, he’s smart. Before too long, he’ll stop asking because he doesn’t know and begin asking just to make sure we do. That is, if he’s not doing that already. In the meantime, what difference does it make?”

  Carole couldn’t think of a reply so she just stared up at the sky, which was now becoming a deep, rich blue. A few more stars had appeared. There was an autumn chill in the late-afternoon air.

  Carole’s mind was a jumble. She tried to sort it all out. She wasn’t quite satisfied that her friends were right about her father, though she accepted the fact that everybody liked him. But was that enough? Not really. In order for him to be a good sponsor, he had to contribute some skills to Horse Wise. No matter what her friends told her, Carole didn’t see what skills her father had contributed.

  Nearby, Samson snorted in his sleep. He seemed to be content and wo
rry-free.

  “I think he’s dreaming about a palomino filly,” Lisa joked.

  “Either that or the world-famous Saddle Club Rescue Team,” Stevie suggested. “A couple more jobs like the one we did this afternoon and we’ll have our own TV show. I can see it now. How about The Saddle Club Files?”

  “Nah, we need something jazzier. Saddle Club SWAT?”

  “I’ve got it! The Saddle Club to the Rescue!” Stevie suggested.

  “It’s not punchy enough,” Lisa said. “It has to fit on one line in bold type in TV Guide. How about …”

  The conversation went on like that, but Carole dropped out of it. She was thinking about Samson’s rescue. She remembered how worried and scared she had felt, lodged onto the edge of the gully with a foal just as worried and just as scared as she was. Every time she hadn’t known what to do, Lisa had asked her what came next. Every time she’d thought she’d known what she might do, Lisa had asked why she was doing it. Lisa’s questions had had a good effect. They’d made Carole think about what she was doing. She probably would have figured it out on her own, but having Lisa there to ask had made her consider the problem in a new way and think about the answers.

  Maybe, just maybe, that was what her father was doing in Horse Wise. Maybe having one sponsor who didn’t know about horses, but who did know about thinking and learning, wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  Only why couldn’t it be someone else’s father?

  “Well, I’m going to make a prediction. I predict Max will show up before the temperature drops another ten degrees,” Stevie was saying.

  Lisa sat up and looked out across the fields. “Well, if those headlights are any indication, your prediction has just come true!”

  “Impressed?” Stevie asked.

  “Yeah,” Lisa said. “Very.”

  “Don’t be,” Carole said drily. “Remember that Stevie’s taller than you are. She could see those headlights before you could.”