We rode in single file through the narrow part of the trail. Macaroni was in front, his dun head down as he plodded along. He seemed to think that the trail was boring and not worthy of his time, until we started jumping. Then he was all in and I had to keep an eye on him to make sure that he didn’t get too strong for Faith.
“I saw you guys together at the ball, remember?”
“Right,” I said.
I’d forgotten that Faith had been there with her little friend Fernando. They’d been so cute together but much like Macaroni’s supposed crush, Lady Gray, Fernando had not really been interested in things like dating and love and really who was at ten? He’d joined the soccer team and stopped coming around to the barn to ride which was actually a shame because he’d been a really good little rider and a great counterpart for Faith. It had helped her to up her game. He’d pushed her to be better and I suddenly thought that maybe that was how I should be treating the whole Dakota situation, as an opportunity to better myself instead of being such a brat about it. After all, I’d risen above Mickey’s childish behavior. It didn’t seem right that I was doing exactly the same thing to Dakota.
Later that evening I was about to take Four out on the lunge line when Dakota showed up. Mickey had left ages ago. She was alone, walking through the barn and looking at the horses.
“Are you here for a lesson?” I asked her. “Because I think Missy is up at the house. Did she know you were coming?”
“No,” Dakota said vaguely. “I just came to see the horses.”
She had a bag of carrots and a lost look on her face.
“Okay,” I said. “Well let me know if I can help you with anything.”
“Alright,” she said.
I thought it was best not to press her. I knew she was probably missing her horses. I would have been devastated if I’d been forced to sell my horses. I knew from what Mickey had said before that she lived with her grandparents. They’d been the ones picking her up and dropping her off at the barn and I’d seen them pay for her lessons. They drove an older model car that had seen better days and didn’t exactly look like they were flush with money. If they were living off their retirement funds then I didn’t think there would be much left over for regular lessons. Maybe that was why she wasn’t riding today? But she’d come anyway, just like I would have done because she probably needed her horse fix. To inhale that scent you couldn’t find anywhere else, horse and shavings and leather all blended together. I didn’t know why someone hadn’t made that into a candle or room spray yet. I knew that I couldn’t have been the only one who kept random stinky horse things around to smell when they couldn’t go to the barn.
I worked Four for a while on the lunge line and when I say worked, what I really mean is tried to teach him the concept of going round and round in a circle, one that he didn’t get at all. Someone had trained him once upon a time but they’d never taught him to lunge and it was something we did quite a lot of. It was a good skill for a horse to have because they could get a work out on the lunge line if you didn’t have time to ride or you could lunge them if they were worked up and needed to get a few bucks out of their system like at a show. Even Arion had benefitted from his time on the lunge line where I was teaching him voice commands. He thought it was fun. Four didn’t. He wanted no part of it. I ended up chasing him around in a circle instead of standing still and by the time I was done I was sweaty and dirty and cursing the fact that we didn’t have a round pen because it would have made life so much easier.
When I got back to the barn, Dakota had gone. I hadn’t seen the car come and pick her up but I had been pretty distracted. I kind of felt like I should have stayed longer to talk to her. To let her see that I was willing to be her friend and that I knew what she was going through. How she could talk to me if she needed a shoulder to cry on and maybe I could fix her up with working some of the horses to help us out.
“You were very naughty,” I told Four as I put him in his stall. “What makes you think you deserve a treat?”
He nudged me with his nose and tried to shove his tongue into my pocket.
“Fine,” I said. “One treat but you still don’t deserve it.”
He crunched the treat and pushed me for more but I pushed him back into his stall and closed the door. He was a sweet horse and smart but he was still learning his boundaries. Now wasn’t the time to let him walk all over me.
I doled out the other treats. One for Bluebird. One for Arion and there was one left for Wizard. It was a good job that he couldn’t understand what was going on because then he’d probably feel as bad as I did but until Jordan came back all I could do was love him and tell him that everything was going to be okay.
Only he wasn’t there waiting for his treat. Instead his door was open and his stall was empty.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
I stood there staring at the empty stall. One of the grooms must have put Wizard outside. Only I knew that all the grooms had gone home. There was no one else here. Only Missy and Dad who were up at the house. I ran to the end of the barn, scanning the paddocks and the jump field anyway. There was always the possibility that my father or Missy had decided to take Wizard out for a ride but I knew that wasn’t what had happened because there had been one other person in the barn, Dakota, and now both she and the horse had vanished and I knew that couldn’t be a coincidence.
I ran up to the house, flinging the front door open and clutching a stitch in my side.
“Wizard has gone,” I said breathlessly. “I think Dakota has stolen him.”
Missy and Dad were sitting at the kitchen counter eating. They both looked at me like I was crazy.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Missy said. “Why would Dakota do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But she came to feed the horses carrots and I went out to lunge Four and when I came back she’d gone and so had Wizard.”
“Did you check the paddocks?” Dad said. “Henry could have put him out before he left.”
“He didn’t,” I said. “But yes I checked anyway. Why don’t you believe me? I’m telling you, she’s taken Jordan’s horse.”
Missy shook her head like I was just over reacting and went back to eating her dinner. Dad stood up with a sigh, putting his napkin down next to his plate.
“I’ll come and look,” he said.
We went back down to the barn but of course Wizard wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. Not in the ring or the paddocks. Not in the big fields out back either.
“She was acting weird,” I said as we stood in the middle of the barn aisle. “She wasn’t her usual bubbly self. I think she was depressed about losing her horses. Maybe she just snapped?”
“Maybe,” Dad said, shaking his head. “This is all I need. Another missing teenager and a horse to go along with it? We don’t need any more bad publicity.”
“Well she can’t have gone far,” I said. “Perhaps she just took him out on the trail, you know, to clear her head. That’s where I go when I need to think.”
“She might have done,” Dad said. “It makes more sense than riding down the road but if she wasn’t just thinking about clearing her head, if she was actually intent on stealing the horse, she’d go that way.”
“I’ll take the trail,” I said. “I’ll tack up Bluebird and ride out there and look for her. You could take the truck and drive around the neighborhood to see if you spot her anywhere.”
“I’ll have to call her parents,” Dad said, shaking his head.
“Grandparents,” I corrected him. “That’s who she lives with but can’t we just wait and see if we find her? She’ll be in so much trouble and if she’s out on the trail then maybe no one needs to know.”
“I thought you didn’t like her?” Dad said.
“I feel sorry for her,” I said. “And I think maybe I was wrong about her.”
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Bluebird was not impressed that I was asking him to go out again. He gave
me a dirty look when I pulled him out of his stall and started tacking him up.
“I’m sorry boy,” I told him. “But you’re fast and you know the trail better than the other horses. If I want to find Dakota and Wizard out there, you are my best shot.”
I knew that it was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. The trail was long and the woods were vast. There were places off the beaten track that even I hadn’t explored yet. You could get lost out there. I almost had. And Dakota didn’t know the trail at all. Neither did Wizard. She was asking for trouble going out there alone but at least it was better to hope that she was out there and not on the roads where cars had no regard for riders and horses. At least on the trail she would be safe. Or safer anyway.
“Call me if you find her,” Dad said as I took Bluebird out and mounted up.
“You call me too,” I said.
He looked at his watch. “We only have an hour before it starts to get dark. Two before we’ll have to give up the search and if we can’t find her by then you know we’ll have to call her grandparents and the police.”
“The police?” I said. “But why?”
“The girl stole a horse that didn’t belong to her and took him for a joy ride. Why do you think?”
“We’ll find her,” I said. “We have to.”
I rode off as Dad jumped into the truck. He didn’t seem so sure that we would find Dakota and Wizard and to be honest, I wasn’t that sure that we would either but I had to hope that we would before anything bad happened. After all I was supposed to be taking care of Wizard for Jordan and if anything happened to the horse while he was gone, it would be awful. I wanted him to come back to see that Wizard had won a handful of blue ribbons at the show, not that he’d broken a leg because a depressed girl had stolen him just so that she could feel better about herself.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
We’d had a couple of rain showers and everything on the trail was overgrown. In the winter when the weeds and brush died off you could follow the hoof prints of horses that had gone before you but now there was no hope of telling which way Dakota had gone and even if the hoof prints had been visible, it still would have been hard to tell which ones belonged to Wizard. I’d been out on the trail earlier with Faith and the cross country students had a lesson out there, churning up the damp ground as they practiced over the fences that they had made.
“Dakota?” I called. “Are you out here?”
I stood in my stirrups, straining for a flash of bay rump or blonde hair, listening for the sound of galloping hooves or the whinny of a horse. But there was only the sound of insects buzzing all around me and the breeze gently rustling through the trees. Off in the distance I heard a rumble of thunder and hoped that it wasn’t going to rain. The last thing I needed was to get stuck out there in a thunderstorm.
“If it comes closer, we’ll turn back,” I told Bluebird, nudging him into a trot.
I wanted to find Dakota and Wizard but I wasn’t going to put my own safety and that of my pony on the line. I wasn’t the one who had done a dumb thing for a change and I wasn’t about to put myself and my pony in harm’s way because of someone else’s stupid mistake.
I rode down all the familiar paths. The trail to the cross country jumps. The winding path that led out to the clearing. There I could see quite far across the long grass that shimmered and swayed like a sea of green water.
“Dakota,” I called out, cupping my hands to my mouth so that my voice would echo and it did but there was still no reply.
If Dakota had come out here to get away, maybe she didn’t want to be found. Perhaps she could even hear me now and was choosing to keep silent but that was a mistake. The trail was not a safe place to be in the dark. There were snakes and coyotes and the thunderstorm that was getting closer. Lightening lit up the darkening sky and thunder rumbled after it, shaking the ground beneath us. Bluebird shuddered.
“It’s okay.” I patted his neck. “Good boy.”
We cantered across the clearing and reached the other side where there was a patch of tall, gangly pine trees. The grass was sparse here, the ground littered with old damp pine needles. Then I spotted it. A hoof print. It had to be them. Faith and I hadn’t come this far. The cross country students wouldn’t have either. They would have stayed around the jumps for their lesson. There was only one reason that there would be a hoof print this far out and it was because Dakota and Wizard had come this way.
“Come on,” I said to Bluebird. “We must be close now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
We trotted through the pines. I’d only been this way once before and after a while I’d turned back because the path had been too narrow but it looked like Wizard had pushed his way through. There were snapped twigs and weeds that had been trampled. I wondered if he’d come this way on purpose or was he galloping out of control with Dakota lying off in a patch of long grass somewhere out of sight?
I called her name a couple of times but she didn’t reply. At one point I almost thought about turning back. Bluebird had his ears pinned as the long twigs scratched him. He wasn’t going to the schooling show but that didn’t mean I wanted him torn to shreds. I was about to turn around when we finally broke through the high overgrowth and came into a clearing.
There was a pond and some trees. The grass was sandy and I could see the hoof prints clearly now. They stopped at the pond and then there was a muddy mess. I rode Bluebird up to the clear water, wondering how deep it was. It looked like it was spring fed and probably cold. It would be a great place to bring the horses swimming. I couldn’t believe it had been hiding out here all this time and no one had known about it. We were going to have to trim the trail though if we wanted to come out on a regular basis.
I scanned the sand, looking for a new set of hoof prints and finally found them, heading off over a tree lined hill.
“Come on,” I told Bluebird. “We have to be close now.”
We trotted along the side of the pond, over the grass and up the hill. The trees were thick and it was cool under them, the air muffled but the breeze had picked up, tossing Bluebird’s mane and my hair and there was something else. It sounded like the faint rumble of thunder but it was constant so it couldn’t be and as we got closer I knew what it was. The ocean. Dakota and Wizard had found their way to the beach, something that I had been trying to do for a while now and had completely failed at, going round and round in circles and then giving up and going back home. Dad said that I had the worst sense of direction of anyone that he knew but Dakota obviously didn’t.
We broke through the trees to the sun setting over the sparkling blue water and the waves crashing up on the beach. Bluebird snorted. He hadn’t been to the beach in a while. I didn’t know if Wizard had ever been to the beach. Had he freaked out when he saw the ocean and galloped off? I’d expected to see them both standing there staring out to sea, Dakota drowning her sorrows in the sound of the ocean but there was no Dakota and there was no Wizard. Only a single trail of hoof prints and the fact that they could gallop for miles along the coast and never be found.
“I need to call Dad,” I said aloud to Bluebird.
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
“Where are you?” Dad said. “Have you found her?”
His voice sounded urgent. I could almost hear his hair turning gray over the phone. We were just getting over the drugging scandal. The second test sample had come back clean and all charges were going to be dropped. My father would be reinstated and everything would go back to normal. He could start riding in shows again and we’d have a completely awesome summer. Only we wouldn’t have an awesome summer if it got out that we let some random girl steal an expensive horse and if she got hurt we could just forget about people wanting to come and ride at Fox Run or board their horses there. The barn would close and we would be forced to move. I took a deep breath when I realized that I was imagining the worst possible scenario. I had to stop doing that. Perhaps things wouldn’t be that bad after
all.
“I’m at the beach,” I said.
“The beach?” Dad said. “How on earth did you get there?”
“Through a very overgrown part of the trail,” I said. “We found some hoof prints and followed them. Dakota has definitely been here but I can’t see her. I’m going to follow the tracks but it looks like she rode along the shoreline and they are getting washed away.”
Lightning cracked across the sky, reflecting in the vast ocean. The rumble was close behind it, letting me know that the storm was getting nearer.
“That storm is still coming,” Dad said with a sigh. “Keep looking. I’m going to go back to the barn and hook up the trailer so that you guys won’t have to ride all the way back. I don’t want you out there on the trail in that storm.”
“But what if I don’t find her?” I said softly.
“Then I’m still bringing you and Bluebird back in. You don’t need to get stranded out in the storm as well. Dakota made her choice. You don’t have to suffer because of it.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll find her.”
“Be safe,” Dad said and then he hung up.
I loved the beach and the ocean when it was all quiet and deserted, when it wasn’t filled with screaming kids and colored umbrellas. I couldn’t stand the people swimming and eating ice cream and leaving trash all over the white sand. I liked to have the whole place to myself and today I did but I couldn’t enjoy it because I had to find Dakota.
I rode Bluebird down to the wet sand where it was safe to canter and let him go. His chestnut ears flicked back and forth like he wasn’t sure if I really wanted him to run but I did. We had to catch up to Wizard before the storm hit.
There were places where the hoof prints had disappeared completely but then after a while they’d reappear again. Dakota must have been galloping Wizard as though her life depended on it. I could only hope that the horse was okay. If she broke him, I’d kill her.
Beginner's Luck (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 18) Page 7