Heart Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 27)

by Claire Svendsen

  “Isn’t he going to go back out again?” I asked Cat, wondering why she wasn’t at school.

  Maybe it was the weekend. I wasn’t even sure what day it was. At this point they had all blended together.

  “He says there isn’t much point,” she said. “We’ve covered all the places that a horse might be and we can’t just keep aimlessly driving around. It’s a waste of time.”

  “A waste of time?” I spluttered.

  “That’s just what he said,” Cat replied, shaking her head. “That is not what I’m saying.”

  “I’ll give him a waste of time,” I said.

  I untacked Bluebird and quickly ran a brush over his back where the saddle had been before tossing him back outside, all the while mumbling to myself. A waste of time? How could he think that looking for a lost horse was a waste of time? A horse that we’d lost. That we were responsible for. I stomped into the house to give him a piece of my mind.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dad was standing in front of the open refrigerator obviously trying to decide what to have for lunch. There wasn’t much to choose from except a moldy lump of cheese, some questionable lettuce and a lone squishy tomato. The bread looked okay though. He grabbed the bread, a jar of peanut butter and one of jelly, then started making a sandwich.

  I stood there looking at him, seething. I wanted to yell and scream but so far all I could manage was some heavy breathing but it wasn’t having any effect at all. In fact Dad was completely ignoring me.

  “You can fume all you want,” he said after he’d made his sandwich, poured a glass of milk and sat down. “It won’t work.”

  “But we have to keep looking,” I said. “Wizard is our responsibility.”

  “So are all the other horses,” Dad said. “And I have a responsibility to them too. If they don’t have pastures to go out in, how long do you think they’ll stay here?”

  “They’ll understand,” I said.

  “You really think that Molly will understand?” Dad said.

  I knew he was right. She wouldn’t.

  “Well what about Jordan?” I said. “How do you think he is gong to understand the fact that we’ve stopped looking for his horse? That we’ve just given up?”

  “No one has given up,” Dad said, sounding angry now. “But there is only one of me. I don’t know what you want from me. I can’t be in two places at once.”

  I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him either. I wanted him to find Wizard and fix the farm and put everything right but he was only one man and it was impossible for him to do everything by himself.

  “I’ll help you fix the fences,” I said, stifling a cough.

  “Jordan is coming over to help me fix the fences,” Dad said. “And the only place you are going is back to bed.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said.

  I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sat down next to my father, both of us munching angrily in silence. Both too stubborn to admit that we were only two people, three if you counted Cat and that running a farm was turning out to be harder than we thought. We needed more help, someone like Jordan. But not just every now and then, all the time. And why was he coming here to help us when he should have been out looking for his own horse? I would have been. If it had been Bluebird I would have stayed out there until I found him. But like Dad had said, I was stubborn like that.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Because I was feeling utterly rebellious and I wasn’t about to have my father tell me when I should and shouldn’t go to bed, I went down to the barn after lunch and took Socks out of his stall. The horse bounded out through the open door like a rocket and narrowly avoided stepping on my toe, the toe that was only just starting to recover after Oscar had stepped on it.

  “Easy boy.”

  I patted his neck, his muscles hard beneath my hand. His eyes were bugging out of his head. I didn’t even bother and groom him. There wasn’t much point. I knew he’d never stand still long enough. Instead I put on his splint boots, bell boots and his bridle. Then I grabbed the lunge line and whip. If I didn’t at least get him some exercise soon by the time Dad and Jordan fixed the fences, he’d launch into orbit, hurting himself and then Missy would take him back.

  In fact I still wasn’t sure why she hadn’t. She’d only sent Socks over because she knew that without him I wouldn’t be able to compete on the Junior Olympic team but now I was riding Bluebird so I technically didn’t need Socks, although that didn’t stop me from wanting him. I loved the goofy, silly horse that was so hot headed that he actually leapt up off the ground on all fours when I took him out into the bright afternoon sun.

  He was like a little kid hopped up on sugar and I could only imagine what jumping him would feel like today. It would feel like we were on fire, blazing over the fences at top speed. But it would also be dangerous and not exactly fair to him or me. This was much safer and practical. Dad would be proud, if he wasn’t still mad that I wouldn’t go and lie in bed.

  I closed the gate to the arena and took Socks into the middle of the ring. Then I asked him to walk away from me in a circle. He took one look at me as if I was joking and then bolted out to the end of the line with a couple of bucks thrown in for good measure. I let him get it out of his system. Asking him to walk would only make him mad. I was just glad that today I’d remembered to wear my gloves as the crazy bay horse strained and pulled at the lunge line.

  I managed to keep him in somewhat of a circle, even if it was a bit lopsided but we weren’t going for any kind of equitation points here. This was Socks losing his mind and then slowly getting it back again. When I asked him to reverse direction he did so with a sliding stop and a spin on his haunches and eventually his gallop slowed to a canter. Finally I was able to get him to trot and only then was I actually able to start asking him to do what I wanted.

  When he was finally tired I asked him to walk and he let out a sigh. His sides were white with sweat and he was still puffing in and out like he’d just run a race.

  “You did it to yourself,” I told him.

  He rubbed his sweaty face on my arm and a big glob of saliva came off on my sleeve.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He was too hot to put away so we went back to the barn where I threw my saddle on him and my helmet on my head and then got up on his back. He was too tired to fight or be silly now and we walked down the drive and out on the lane. Socks wasn’t exactly a trail horse so I didn’t want to stray too far but I also knew that he was too tired to do anything stupid and I held onto the hope that maybe we’d stumble across Wizard, out grazing on the grass verge or slowly making his way back home after an adventure in the woods.

  We walked along the road, Socks’ shoes ringing out as we went. He was soft in the mouth now, easily pliable. There was no traffic so I made him do a half pass across the road and then back again, smiling to myself. Wizard may have gone but there were still all the other horses that were begging for attention, that needed to be ridden and worked. The next show was coming up in a few weeks. I hadn’t really jumped Bluebird that much but I knew he was ready. I was the one who wasn’t. Thanks to my cough I could barely breathe and I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage a whole course of jumps when I couldn’t get any air into my lungs.

  We got to the end of the lane and the house with the goat. I’d forgotten that I was going to turn Socks around before we got there because I was pretty sure that he’d never seen a goat before and also that he was the sort of horse who would think that a goat might possibly eat horses. I was right.

  Socks froze and then let out a snort. The goat looked up at us and shook himself. He had a collar on with a bell, which made a jingling noise. I think maybe Socks thought the goat was some kind of deranged elf or something. He scuttled backwards, his steel shoes slipping on the road. I gathered my reins, ready in case he decided to spin and high tail it back to the barn. Only he didn’t. He snorted and sniffed and then he took a step closer. Then another one. And eventually my brave
horse decided that the goat was just a goat and he let out a sigh and relaxed.

  “Good boy,” I said, patting his neck and turning for home. “Good boy.”

  Crisis averted. Well, one of them anyway.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When I got back to the barn Jordan was there, out in the pasture with my father, both of them working hard to mend the fences. I felt a wave of relief that I hadn’t been around when Jordan showed up and now that he was busy, I could slip past without talking to him. I didn’t know what else to say. Sorry we lost your horse but I’ll make it up to you? How was I supposed to do that?

  I slunk into the barn with my tail between my legs only to find a rather exuberant Faith tacking up Macaroni.

  “Look,” she said excitedly brandishing her arm. “No more cast. Now I don’t have to ride western anymore and I can start jumping again. Isn't it awesome?”

  “That’s great,” I said, my voice kind of flat even though I didn’t mean it to be.

  Of course I was pleased for Faith. I just had a lot of other stuff going on right now. Stuff I wasn’t exactly ready to share with her but she squeezed it out of me anyway.

  “What is wrong?” she asked, taking one look at my face.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Everything is fine.”

  “You are such a bad liar,” she said. “I know something is wrong Emily Dickenson and I’m not leaving this spot until you tell me what it is.”

  She stood there with her hands on her hips, Macaroni in our one and only set of cross ties. I walked around her and her pony and took Socks into his stall where I unsaddled him and then got to work brushing out the now dried sweat stains with the soft brush because Socks was far too sensitive for the hard one. Faith came and stood in the doorway, watching me.

  “Why won’t you tell me?” she said.

  I thought about confiding in her but it wasn’t quite the same as talking to Mickey or Rose. Faith was younger and she was a client. That felt like it meant I shouldn’t tell her everything but I did anyway. If I was ever interrogated I’d fold in five seconds. I was hopeless.

  I told her about the storm and the loose horses and how Wizard got out and now he was lost, making sure she knew that Macaroni had been safe and snug in his stall the whole time and never in any danger. The last thing I needed was her telling her parents that we couldn’t even keep our horses safe on our own farm. Her mom was still kind of mad about the fact that her daughter had been allowed to ride off unsupervised and in doing so had broken her arm.

  “But you’ll find him, won’t you?” Faith said. “I mean he can’t just stay lost forever.”

  “We’re trying and the police and animal control know to look out for him but he could be anywhere.” I sighed.

  “But if he was just loose by the side of the road then someone would have found him by now,” she said. “They would have reported him, wouldn’t they?” She was silent for a moment, then she said, “What if he’s been stolen?”

  “Don’t be silly,” I told her, not adding that I thought exactly the same thing. There could only be two possibilities as to why we hadn’t found Wizard yet. One was that he was dead. The other was that he was sitting safe and sound in someone’s barn. Someone who hadn’t reported that they’d found him. Someone who would try to keep him for their own. Finders keepers. Someone like Jess.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jordan came and went without talking to me. I wasn’t sure if that made me mad or glad. I was hoping to avoid him but if he wanted to avoid me as well then it was clear we had a serious problem. That despite what he’d said he did blame me for Wizard’s disappearance.

  “If someone finds a loose horse,” I asked Dad later. “They can’t just keep it, can they? That would be stealing, right?”

  “Of course it would be stealing,” he said, brushing off my concern. “Why would someone want to keep a horse that didn’t belong to them?”

  I could think of a lot of reasons, including the fact that the person might sell that horse to make some money for themselves. But I stuck with the more logical conclusion. That Wizard had gone through the gap in the fence to Jess’s property and that she was the one who was holding him hostage in her barn.

  “What about Jess?” I said. “And Mr. Eastford. Don’t you think you should at least go over there and find out if they’ve seen Wizard?”

  Dad looked as thrilled about the idea as I did.

  “You want me to go over there and talk civilly to the man who shot at my daughter?” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Well he didn’t actually shoot me,” I said. “He shot himself and besides, aren’t you curious about what their new barn looks like and what horses they have?”

  “Of course not,” Dad said. “I couldn’t care less.”

  But I could tell he was interested. He wouldn't be able to get the thought of Mr. Eastford out of his mind, right next door to us, rolling around in money and buying fancy things like boats and airplanes and more horses than Jess could ever ride.

  “Maybe we could even try and be neighborly,” I said. “Take them a cake or cookies or something.”

  “That’s a joke, right?” Dad said. “Now I know you are delirious.”

  And maybe I was but I just knew that the only place we hadn’t looked was on Jess’s farm and I hadn’t been over there since the time that Mickey and I snuck into Jess’s pool party. Back then she’d been keeping a pony tied up in its stall for hours on end. Who knew what other horrors awaited the horses in her care and what if Wizard was one of them? So close to home and yet trapped. I had to know for sure but there was no way that I was going over there alone. This time I was going to go with reinforcements and I’d force whoever I could to go with me so that Mr. Eastford didn’t get any funny ideas about shooting me again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  By the next day it seemed like Dad had changed his mind about going over to the Eastford’s farm. He’d been on the phone all morning with the cops and then with animal control. So far there had been no sightings of Wizard at all and even animal control admitted that it was rare for a horse to disappear off the face of the earth completely. Usually at least someone had seen something. A horse spotted running down the road, loose in a field with some cows or maybe standing on the outside of a field trying to make friends with the horses inside.

  The longer Wizard was missing, the less chance we had of finding him. At least that was what the police said. They were going to come by later so that we could file a proper report and a proper report would mean that we had failed. It would be on record for all time that we just casually lost a horse and never got it back. I couldn’t let that happen. Apparently neither could Dad.

  “You are right,” he said when he’d finished making notes at the kitchen table. “The police are coming over later and we just look like idiots if we admit that we haven’t even been over to see our neighbors about the issue.”

  “So we are really going then?” I said.

  “We are really going,” Dad replied. “And I’ll be sure to tell Mr. Eastford that a police report is being filed today. That means if they have the horse and don’t give him back then they could face criminal charges.”

  “I doubt Mr. Eastford would care,” I said. “I bet he has half the police department in his back pocket or at least a judge. He could buy his way out of anything.”

  “He can’t buy his way out of this.” Dad raised his fist.

  “Dad,” I said, starting to get worried. “We have to be civil to them. It’s not good if they turn around and call the cops on us and I still worry about Jess sneaking over here and doing something horrible to our horses in the middle of the night.”

  “From what I hear you and Jess are just as bad,” Dad said. “The last show? The feud? It’s starting to get around that one of these days you two girls are going to kill each other.”

  “The only thing I’m interested in is beating Jess in the show ring,” I said. “And making sure she stays away from my pony. I�
�d have filed a police report about her poisoning him if I had the proof.”

  “She admitted it though, didn’t she?” Dad said.

  “Yes and she could just as easily turn around and say that she was joking but if they’ve got Wizard then this time they won’t be able to get away with it,” I said.

  “And this time we’re together,” Dad replied. “So we’ve got each other’s backs. Now go and put on something nice. We can’t go over there looking like homeless people.”

  I didn’t think I looked anywhere near as bad as a homeless person but I had to admit that our clothes were looking a little shabby lately. I went upstairs and stood in front of my closet. There wasn’t much to choose from and I wasn’t sure what to wear anyway. Clean jeans and a shirt that said I was a professional working student, fresh from a day of handling the running of our farm? Or my best breeches and a clean shirt, which would say that I’d been riding or was ready to ride. I decided to go with the jeans. I didn’t need Jess making fun of the fact that my breeches weren’t the most expensive and if I did wear them then I’d have to decide between tall boots and paddock boots and that would take another half an hour to decide and I could already hear Dad down in the kitchen, getting impatient with me.

  “Are you coming sometime this century?” he shouted from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Yes,” I called back. “I’m coming.”

  I looked in the mirror as I passed. If I wore my paddock boots then I’d look like I belonged in a barn. I slipped them on and tried to do something with the mess that was my hair. I was trying to train it to part on one side because I thought it made me look more mature but so far all it had done was stick straight up like a horn. Turns out my hair was just as stubborn as I was. In the end I grabbed a clip and pulled it back, fastening it so that my hair was sort of flipped up like the models I’d seen in my mother’s magazines, even if it didn’t look anything like that.