SUMMER RIDER
BY
CLAIRE SVENDSEN
Copyright © 2016 Claire Svendsen
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, places or events is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
CHAPTER FORTY THREE
CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY TWO
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CHAPTER ONE
The team show was over. We hadn’t done well enough to earn a chance to compete in Paris but I didn’t even care about that anymore. All I cared about was finding Four, the horse that belonged to me. He’d been on a free lease to Dakota, a girl from Texas who lost her own horses when her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. At least that was what I thought.
I’d been doing her a favor. I thought I could trust her to take care of him while he was at Fox Run and I thought that Missy would take care of him too. But it turned out that Missy didn’t have my back at all. She’d turned a blind eye when Four left and now we’d tracked him down to a shamble of a farm at the end of a dirt road where two teenage boys had him hooked up to a cart and were beating him into submission. Only Four wasn’t the only horse hooked up to the cart. There was another gray horse. One that I knew and loved and had been trying to get back even longer than I’d been looking for Four. Harlow.
“Boys,” Dad yelled at the teenagers. “What do you think you are doing?”
Harlow had fallen to his knees in the mud and was scrambling to get back on his feet again. Four was tipping up on his hind legs, trying to get away from the long whip that was snapping against his rump. The boys turned to see us standing there. Dad with his arms crossed and me on my pony, hand clutching my cell phone in case things turned south and I had to call the cops.
“What are you doing here?” the older of the two boys shouted back. “No one invited you.”
For a moment I thought that Dad was going to get into a shouting match with the boys. All of them escalating the situation until it turned ugly and we never got our horses back but instead he walked over to them and began talking in the soothing tone that he used on wayward horses.
At first the boys were resistant, especially the older one. He didn’t want to look stupid in front of his friend. He even waved the whip in front of my father then snapped it around his heels. Dad didn’t even flinch. I longed to rush over there and tend to the two grays who were both now standing quietly. Harlow was shaking. Four still looked mad. But I had to think of my pony as well. I was sitting on his back because we couldn’t leave him in the trailer and the trailer wouldn’t get down the flooded road. All I could do was watch and hope that my father was saying things that would persuade the boys to give up the horses. Only I knew that they didn’t really have a say. It would be whoever owned the place and just as it looked like Dad was getting through to the teenagers, a burly man came waddling out of a shack by the side of the ring, smoking a cigar and pulling up his pants as he came towards us.
“What do you lot want then?” he said.
Dad walked towards him and stuck out his hand. He ignored my father. I could hear Dad trying to explain about the two horses. That Four belonged to us. That we had legal proof, papers that would show that whoever sold him didn’t have the right to. He also explained that we’d like to buy Harlow. A package deal. Take them both off his hands. The man listened and then laughed. It was the sort of laugh that was cruel and sinister. It sent a shiver down my spine.
“Look, I’m just trying to do you a favor,” Dad said.
The man laughed again and then spat on the ground. The glob of spit landed on my father’s muddy boot.
“A favor?” the man said. “I’ll do you a favor.”
Then he punched my dad in the face.
CHAPTER TWO
I was frozen on the back of my pony. I watched as the man’s big fist connected with my father’s chin in slow motion and he fell backwards into a puddle. The boys were out of the cart and cheering him on. The man kicked my father and I turned my pony and urged him on, galloping past the rusty gate and down the lane. By the time I got to the trailer my heart was pounding so hard that I thought it might actually jump out of my chest and my fingers were shaking so badly that I was hardly able to dial 911. I managed to get through on the third try, my voice wobbly and the tears flowing as I tried to explain to the dispatcher where we were. I begged them to hurry. By now the man and the teenage boys could have killed my father.
“I should have stayed with him,” I sobbed into the phone.
“You did the right thing,” the woman on the other end said.
She had a soft soothing voice and was calm in the face of danger. She probably spent all day trying to calm down panicked people like me but my panic was real and if anything happened to my father then I’d be all alone.
“Should I go back?” I said. “I should go back.”
“No,” she told me firmly. “Stay on the line honey. Stay with me until help comes.”
I got off Bluebird and ran up my stirrups. He was frightened now like I was. I wasn’t sure if I should load him into the trailer or keep him out with me. In the end I just held him, willing the police to drive faster.
“What if my dad is seriously hurt?” I said.
“I’ve dispatched an ambulance,” she said. “Don’t worry, everything will be fine. What is your name honey?”
“Emily,” I said, my voice still shaking because I was.
“Well Emily I can see that the cops are just down the road. You should
be able to hear the sirens soon. Can you see them?”
I listened and stared through the trees and then I could hear them coming towards me. It seemed like it had taken forever. What if my father was dead by now?
“They’re here,” I cried. “They’re coming.”
“All right, well good luck,” she said. “I’m sure your father will be fine.”
Then she was gone and instead I had three cop cars streaking past me, closely followed by an ambulance. The last cop car pulled over and stopped and a big guy with a gun got out.
“You the one who called it in?” he said.
“Yes,” I replied, my voice small. “This big man punched my father and he fell to the ground, then he started kicking him. There were two teenage boys too. I think they were going to join in. I should have stayed but I just rode away.”
I was crying again. I couldn’t help it.
“You did the right thing ma’am,” he said. “No use two of you getting hurt. Is this your pony?”
He walked up to Bluebird and patted him on the neck. Bluebird sniffed his hand and then licked it.
“He likes you,” I said.
“You sound surprised,” he replied with a throaty laugh. “I had a pony as a kid. None of this fancy English tack though. We rode Western or bareback.”
“I ride bareback sometimes too,” I said. “And Bluebird is a show jumper.”
“Is he now?” he said. “Well isn’t that fancy.”
But he didn’t say it in a cruel or unkind way, he said it like he thought that Bluebird was really something special, which of course he was.
As I told the cop all about Bluebird, I realized that it was his job to keep me there and keep me calm so that I didn’t go wandering off into the line of fire. The other cops had guns and who knew what the punching man had. If it turned into a shooting match, I was sure they didn’t want me or my pony anywhere near it.
“What were you guys doing down here then?” the cop asked. “This isn’t a very good area you know.”
“Yes I know,” I said. “We came looking for a horse that belongs to us.”
I launched into the whole story of Four and how he was mine but had gone missing and I also told him about Harlow because if there was any chance that we could rescue him too then I was going to do so. I wasn’t going to leave both the gray horses behind this time and if the cops were going to stop us from taking them then I didn’t know what I’d do about it but I wasn’t above being arrested to save a horse if I had to. Though even to me that sounded a little dramatic. I could hear Mickey’s sensible voice in my head, telling me to calm down and not do anything irrational but all I wanted to do was jump back on Bluebird and gallop down the lane to see my father.
A voice mumbled through the static on the radio that the cop had pinned to his shoulder.
“Go ahead,” he said, pressing the button on the side as he talked.
“You might want to come down here boss,” the cop on the other side said.
“Stay here,” he told me.
He got in his car and drove off down the lane. I pulled my stirrups back down, mounted and followed him. There was no way I was not going to find out what was going on.
CHAPTER THREE
By the time we got back to the farm, everything had been resolved although probably not peacefully. The two teenagers and the man where both sitting on the ground in handcuffs and my father was sitting on the back ledge of the ambulance having his bloody nose tended to by a paramedic.
“Dad,” I cried, rushing over. “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?” he asked me.
His clothes were covered in mud and sand and a bruise was already spreading across his chin. He winced as the paramedic pressed some gauze against it, the antiseptic smell filling my nostrils.
“I should have stayed,” I said, hanging my head. “I shouldn’t have run.”
“Are you kidding me?” he said. “I’m glad you did. Those boys would have made mincemeat of you.”
“We would have creamed them,” I said with a laugh. “Bluebird would have pounded them to death with his hooves.”
The paramedic looked at me like I was crazy.
“Not literally,” I added. “But you are okay, aren’t you?”
“He’s got a broken nose and maybe a broken rib,” the paramedic said, touching my father’s side. Dad winced again. “He needs to come back to the hospital with us to get checked out.”
“No way,” Dad said. “I’m fine.”
“You should really get checked out,” I told him.
“And who is going to drive the trailer back home if I do?”
He had a point.
“But what if your broken rib punctures a lung or something?” I said.
“I’ll just have to be careful then, won’t I,” Dad said. “They don’t do anything for ribs anyway, right?” he asked the paramedic who reluctantly agreed that no they didn’t really do anything for broken ribs.
“Good,” Dad said, standing up. “It’s settled then.”
What wasn’t settled was the matter of the horses. Four was cleared to come home with us. I showed all his paperwork to the cops and since neither the man or the teenagers could provide any proof that they had purchased him, either legally or illegally, they reluctantly agreed that he was clearly mine.
Harlow was another matter. They claimed to have bought him at an auction. They had a receipt. The paper was tattered and the writing illegible. I wasn’t sure how anyone could tell that it had anything to do with Harlow but I wouldn’t have put it past Jess and her father to send Harlow to the lowest auction they could find with hopes that he’d find his way to the slaughter house and not into my hands.
“We can’t leave here without Harlow,” I whispered to Dad.
I was holding both Bluebird and Four while Harlow was still standing strapped to the cart, his head down. Jess had broken his body and they had broken his spirit. I couldn’t let him stay. I wouldn’t.
“Maybe they’ll sell him to us?” I said.
“You really think they’d sell him to us now?” Dad said.
“They’ll need bail money, won’t they?” I said. “They don’t look like they have any just lying around.”
“That’s great but in case you forgot, we don’t have any money lying around either,” Dad whispered.
“Wait,” I said. “I know what to do.”
I pulled out my phone and dialed the number without a second thought because I knew she would help me. After all, like Four was still my horse, Harlow was still technically hers.
“Esther?” I said when she answered. “We’re in trouble. We need your help.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Esther showed up with her trailer and a rather large wad of cash. I could see the man’s eyes widen as Esther went over to talk to him. She offered him more than he’d probably ever seen all at once and definitely more than he deserved but as the cops looked on he took the money and they made him give Esther a receipt. It was official. Harlow was hers again.
“How did you get here my sweet boy,” she said as she rushed over to Harlow.
I hadn’t told Esther about how Jess had Harlow. There hadn’t seemed much point. It would have only tortured her soul like it had tortured mine and there was no way that Jess would have given him up to her. I’d been hoping that what with Jess being injured, maybe we could talk some sense into her but I hadn’t wanted to get Esther’s hopes up. Still, none of that mattered now.
She unbuckled the stiff leather, her fingers trembling and when he was free of the cart, she walked Harlow forward. Even I could see that he was still lame. Jess had sent a lame horse to auction knowing that he wouldn’t end up anywhere good when she had acres of lush grass and empty stalls in her barn. She could have taken care of him in his retirement. That was the risk you took when you had an older horse and she’d known that Harlow had problems. You owed it to the horses to care for them when they got sick or lame. You couldn’t just toss them as
ide when they weren’t any use to you anymore. But Jess could.
Harlow limped over to the trailer but had trouble getting up the ramp. In the end Esther gave him a shot and stood there pulling chunks of dirt and leaves out of his mane while she waited for his pain to subside enough to get him in the trailer and out of this hell hole.
The cops took the man and the boys away. My father had decided not to press charges for fear that they would find out where we lived and come after us and our horses but it didn’t matter. The cops found drugs on all three of them and so they were arrested anyway. After they had left, I checked the property just to make sure that there weren’t any other abandoned and abused animals that were going to starve to death while they were gone but the place was empty, the shack next to the ring filled with steel buckets, glass bottles and weird things that probably had something to do with making moonshine or drugs or both.
“Come on,” I said. “Let's get out of here.
“Thank you for calling me,” Esther said, pulling me into a hug. “I can’t believe Harlow ended up here.”
“I know,” I said, feeling guilty that I hadn’t told her the whole story.
I would eventually, it was just now wasn’t the time.
“Come on,” Dad said. “Let’s go home.”
Esther drove away and we followed back down the road to where our own truck and trailer sat. Esther’s truck was bigger and stronger than ours and so hadn’t had any trouble navigating the flooded road. Ours still sat on the grass verge where I loaded up a very tired pony and a very dirty horse.
“I guess I'm grounded now aren’t I?” I said when we finally had the horses loaded, the truck turned around and were headed for home. “I mean you didn’t get shot but you did get punched in the face.”
“And kicked,” Dad said, feeling his ribs again. “Don’t forget kicked as well.”
“Right,” I said. “So go on then. Lay it on me. What is my punishment? Three weeks of stall duty? Cleaning all the gelding’s sheaths for a month? Scrubbing the algae out of the water troughs?”
But it had to be a punishment worse than barn chores because I did all those things anyway. What would really be torture would be Dad saying that I couldn’t ride for a month but he wouldn’t do that, would he? I mean riding was my career now, not just a hobby. If I didn’t get to ride for a month, it would take the rest of the summer to get my horses back in shape and by then the summer circuit would be over.
Summer Rider (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 31) Page 1