Ghost Rider

by Bonnie Bryant

  No, she realized with a start. That wasn’t all she had to do. She had to get the dollhouse as well. She felt the blood drain from her face. How could she have forgotten? Mrs. Lonetree had had to walk over this morning. Christine had ridden her horse. Neither could bring the dollhouse. Stevie had promised to call Frank and ask him to stop by the Lonetrees’ and bring it on his way, but she’d completely forgotten. Now she was about to have a winner, and she didn’t have a prize.

  She’d spent too much time watching how excited the children were at the prospect of winning. After seeing those faces she couldn’t tell the winner he or she was going to have to wait. Somehow she had to get the dollhouse back to the fair before the winner was announced—in exactly one hour.

  Stevie looked around for help. Everybody was busy. Carole was still taking kids on rides. Mrs. Lonetree was up to her elbows in clay, showing a group of fascinated children how to make miniature bowls. Phyllis Devine was overseeing the cupcake decorating. Kate was turning masked kids in circles so they could pin the stem on the pumpkin, and Christine was doing something with two sugarplum fairies. Nobody could help Stevie. She was going to have to do this herself. But what was she going to do?

  Stevie realized that Mr. Lonetree wasn’t there. That probably meant he was at the ranch and would be able to drive the dollhouse over to the school. It wasn’t a long distance. All she had to do was call.

  She dug into her pocket, found change, and located the students’ pay phone on the first floor of the school.

  I’m sorry. We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please try to place your call again later.

  She checked the number. She had it right. She tried again.

  I’m sorry.…

  For how long could there be technical difficulties?

  I’m sor—

  She couldn’t wait. She didn’t have time to wait. She had to do something. The only thing she could think of was to go to the Lonetrees’ house herself and hope that Mr. Lonetree would be there to bring her and the dollhouse back.

  She tucked the quarter back into her pocket. She would ride Stewball there. She knew the way. It wouldn’t take long. But she had to tell somebody what she was doing.

  She found Christine standing outside the girls’ bathroom.

  “The sugarplum fairies had to go,” she explained. “I’m waiting for them, and then I promised to take them through the horror house.”

  Stevie wasn’t sure she understood exactly how Christine had gotten to be the girls’ personal attendant at the fair, but Christine said it had something to do with a consolation prize for the costume parade. That made some sense—not much, but enough.

  Stevie explained her dilemma. “Do you think your dad’s at home?” she asked.

  “I’m sure he will be,” she said. “I’m also sure he’ll drive you back. Too bad about the phones, but it happens. Do you know the trail?”

  “Yes,” Stevie assured her. “It’s not hard to follow. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  “I’m sure you will be, too. But it’s going to be cold. Do you have a jacket?”

  “No, just this sweatshirt,” Stevie said.

  “Well, it’s not much, but here, take my cloak. It should help some with the breezes.”

  “Thanks,” Stevie said, slipping the cloak over her shoulders. Then, when the girls’-room door opened, Stevie got a look at herself in the mirror. There she was, one blind field mouse, wearing a silvery white cloak. It seemed about right for a Halloween ride.

  STEWBALL SHOOK HIS head and snorted. Stevie thought that was his way of saying he was happy to be out of the corral and out on a trail. Stevie agreed. It was quite dark outside, and it was cool, but it was pleasant. She leaned forward and patted the horse on his neck just to show that she felt the same way. Then she nudged him a little, and they began trotting. Much as she was enjoying the ride, she didn’t want to be gone too long from the fair. Besides, she couldn’t wait to find out who won the adobe dollhouse.

  There was a screeching sound. Stewball’s ears flicked eagerly. Stevie looked to where she’d heard the noise, but saw nothing.

  “It must have been some kind of bird or something, boy,” she told the horse. “I mean, just because it’s Halloween …” Her voice trailed off.

  It was Halloween. That was supposed to be a night when ghosts and ghouls roamed free. Witches flew through the sky, casting spells. Vampires ruled the blood supply. Headless horsemen thundered along roadways after unwary victims. It was a night of unfettered evil.…

  “Oh, stop it,” Stevie told herself. She spoke out loud as if trying to be sure she heeded her own words. “It’s just another date on the calendar. There’s nothing special about it. It’s just the end of October and … and, uh …”

  She saw something. She’d definitely seen something. Stewball felt her tense up and took it as a signal. He stopped. That wasn’t what she wanted at all. She wanted to get out of there! She clicked her tongue and tapped him with her heels. He began walking again, very slowly. Stevie got a grip on herself and looked around cautiously.

  She had left the road and was now crossing the open land. It was the same trail she’d followed with her friends just over twenty-four hours ago. But it didn’t look the same at all. Now that she was alone, it didn’t look beautiful and exciting. It looked barren and dangerous. Stevie shivered.

  There was the screech again. She looked up to where the sound had come from this time. A dark shadow passed across the full moon, which stood just above the horizon. Stevie sighed with relief. It was a bird, probably some kind of owl, since they were night hunters. It had a big wingspan to be sure, but it wasn’t big enough to be a threat to Stevie or Stewball.

  “Come on, boy. Let’s just get this over with, okay?” They rode on.

  There were the familiar landmarks. She spotted the promontory where they’d seen the stallion rear. It was still outlined by the bright moon. This time there was no sign of the stallion, and what had appeared as an interesting piece of landscape when she’d been with her friends now seemed to be merely stark. Her mind was flooded with an image of riding the stallion to the edge of the cliff. He reared, she held on tightly. His weight shifted. She grabbed his mane. His feet slipped.…

  “Oh, stop it!” she said again.

  Something grabbed her hair. She screamed, and Stewball started. Stevie managed to hold the reins, and the horse stopped. She flailed wildly to free her hair from the unearthly creature that held it, harder and tighter with every motion. The more she struggled, the harder it was—until Stewball took two steps backward. That was when the tension was released on the branch and Stevie’s hair was freed. Still shaking, she looked over her shoulder to be sure. That’s all it was—just a branch.

  “I think we’d better get going,” she said to Stewball. Without further ado, he picked up a trot. Stevie was beginning to get the feeling that this exciting solo night ride couldn’t be over fast enough.

  She needed something to give her courage and decided that the best something would be a distraction. She decided to try singing. Horses liked singing. Stewball would probably get courage from it, too. Also, Stewball wasn’t likely to be much of a music critic, so he wouldn’t care if she hit a wrong note. She knew just the song to sing for him.

  “Old Stewball was a racehorse,

  And I wish he were mine.

  He never drank water;

  He always drank wi-ine!”

  She smiled at her choice. Not only was it good to sing a song about her very own horse, it was also a song with dozens of verses and would keep her mind and her voice occupied for miles.

  “His bridle was silver,

  His mane it was gold.

  And the worth of his saddle

  Has never been to-old!

  To-old!”

  Who was that? Stevie’s heart jumped.

  “Hello!”

  Hello?

  Her voice bounced back at her off the mountainside.

  “Oh, swell,” Stevie
said, disgusted with herself. “I’ve gotten so spooked that I’m fighting off branches and getting scared of a dumb old echo. Come on, Stewball. Let’s get back to work.” She took a deep breath and began singing again.

  “I bet on the gray mare,

  I bet on the bay.

  If I’d’ve bet on old Stewball,

  I’d be a free man today!”

  It wasn’t working. The singing didn’t make her feel any better, and she knew that Stewball could feel her tension right through the saddle. If Stevie had learned one thing about horses, it was that you couldn’t fool them. They knew when their riders knew what they were doing. If they sensed uncertainty, they were likely to decide to take charge. Stewball began to prance restlessly. Stevie had to do something about that. She brought him up to a trot, and then, when they were on open and smooth land, she decided to let him lope. That would have the advantage of covering the distance faster and would let Stewball work out some knots.

  At first Stewball seemed as glad as Stevie was to be going faster. Then something happened. A coyote howled. Two more joined it, and one of those was very close. No matter how well trained a horse was, he was still a creature of the wild, and in the wild a threatened horse had two choices: He could fight or he could flee. Most would flee. At night, unprotected by the presence of a herd, Stewball’s innate senses took over his domesticated side. He felt the immediate threat of the presence of a predator. His instinct left him no choice. He took off.

  Stevie was totally unprepared for it. Suddenly the horse who had been loping along pleasantly was racing. The three-beat gait turned to a four-beat gait, and at that it was so fast it was almost indistinguishable from a one-beat gait. Stewball was really covering ground.

  He veered off the trail, frantically seeking safety. He leapt over a small cactus, turned sharply around a rock, and fled. Through all this Stevie held on, trying desperately to regain control of her horse. She lost a foothold in one of her stirrups and couldn’t tighten up on the reins. With every step she came closer and closer to falling off. When Stewball took another turn to the right and shifted immediately to the left, further spooked by some unseen danger, that was it for Stevie. She flew up and out of the saddle and landed smack on her bottom. It hurt like crazy, but she was too angry to cry. All she could do was watch the retreating rear of her very frightened horse.

  When the dust settled, she stood up, wiped her seat tentatively, decided it was going to be a good thing she wouldn’t have to look at the bruise she was sure to have, and began walking. She didn’t sing this time. She just grumbled.

  “Here I am, in the middle of nowhere, walking when I should be riding, heading for Christine’s house, so I can see if I can find somebody who will drive me back to the fair. All because I forgot to call earlier and because the phones weren’t working right and there is a little child back at the high school who is going to be the happiest kid in town if and when I get back with the dollhouse, but I don’t know if I can, except that just knowing some child is going to own that makes me want to keep on walking in spite of the fact that my stupid horse …”

  She went on like that. It kept her focused on what she was really doing, but it didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t exactly thrilled with the circumstances. It also kept her mind off the spooky things that had bothered her before—the owl and the branch and her own Halloween-y thoughts.

  “… and I don’t know what I’ll do if Mr. Lonetree isn’t there, but somehow I’ll find a way because, after all, my friends and I have traveled a couple thousand miles to be able to do this, so how could I possibly give up when I’m within about a half …”

  A noise.

  “Oh, come on, Stevie. The night is full of noises. Is this another echo scaring you?”

  There it was again. She stopped.

  It wasn’t an echo, but when she listened to it, she wished it were. She wished it were an owl screeching or a witch or a vampire or any of a dozen imaginary things that had frightened her before, because this wasn’t imaginary. This was real. This was dangerous. It was a rattlesnake.

  Stevie had heard them before. She’d even seen them. She’d seen one kill. She froze, aware that the slightest movement could attract the snake’s attention. She waited.

  The sound came again. But where was it coming from?

  There were several rocky places right around her as well as a bush, any one of which could be hiding the viper.

  Again, she heard it. Was it to the right? Or was it from straight ahead? Or was it that it came from the left, but the sound bounced off the rocks to the right? Nearby? Far? Would it strike? Would it hurt? Would it kill?

  Terror took over. Stevie had never felt anything like it. She had nowhere to turn and no hope for escape. The terror filled her heart and her lungs. She gasped for breath, and when she got it, she screamed, long, loud, and hard. When she was done, she screamed some more, hearing only the echo of her own voice—and the rattle, constant, now drumming in her ears. Where? When?

  Then there was another sound. It was the sound of hoofbeats. Stewball?

  Stevie’s eyes flicked upward. It wasn’t Stewball. It was the stallion with the nick in his ear. There was a rider on his back, cloaked in white. A long and strong arm reached out to her. She reached up. In a smooth motion she was drawn up behind the rider and they flew across the desert, away from the snake, away from all danger.

  Stevie clung to the rider with all her strength, not speaking a word. She couldn’t have, anyway. She couldn’t even utter a thank-you. She was shaking too hard. She could still hear the rattles. She could still hear the tones of her own screams echoing off the hills.

  The stallion drew to a halt in front of the Lonetrees’ house. Stevie dismounted, took a deep breath, and tried to think how she could thank John for being there just when she needed him the most. But the horse and rider turned and rode off, as quickly as they had come, without saying a word. Stevie shook her head and promised herself she would thank him the next time she saw him. For now, though, all she could do was look at that shiny white cloak he wore with the beautifully embroidered eagle on the back. John really did love practical jokes—he must have borrowed the cape Mrs. Lonetree had made for Christine so his outfit would be perfect for the part.

  A night breeze cut across the land then. Stevie shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. That was when she remembered that she was wearing Christine’s white cloak—and the eagle on Christine’s cloak was painted, not embroidered with feathers. If the rider was John, this wasn’t just a hoax, it was a very elaborate hoax. And if it wasn’t John, just who—or what—was it?

  “STEVIE? IS THAT you?”

  The words gave Stevie a start. Then she realized it was Mr. Lonetree.

  “Yes,” she said, still confused by what had happened.

  “I was looking for you. Your horse showed up here a few minutes ago, and then Christine called. She said something about the phones being broken for a while. Anyway, I’m glad you’re safe. What happened?”

  Now there was a question.

  It took Stevie a while to pull all of the pieces together and to tell the story of her ride across the countryside without making herself sound like a fool or a fraidy cat. When Mr. Lonetree asked her how she’d gotten away from the rattlesnake, and assured her that she wasn’t a fool or a fraidy cat to have been frightened by that snake, she found herself telling him about the silvery stallion Kate wanted to adopt and its connection to the story John had told the girls in the bunk-house that night.

  “Yes, the tale of White Eagle,” Mr. Lonetree said. “I know it well. It’s a story our people have told for generations. Nobody quite believes it’s true, but everybody loves the tale.”

  “It’s so romantic!” Stevie said. “I guess John was just trying to tell us a romantic eerie story for Halloween.”

  Mr. Lonetree looked confused. “Never would have thought of that story as eerie,” he said.

  “You might if you were thinking of owning the ho
rse,” Stevie told him. “We thought he made it up just to keep Kate from owning the stallion.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Lonetree. “I wouldn’t have thought of it that way. See, to our people the traditional idea of ownership is very different from the way the Europeans who settled the land of America saw it. To us, all animals and land are something we have the honor to use for a while, but never own. Oh, sure, in America of the twentieth century, I have a deed for my property and a title to my car, but it’s contrary to our tradition. I’m sure John Brightstar feels the same way. Even if one does ‘own’ a wild animal, it’s not ownership in the sense you mean. I doubt he was trying to keep Kate from owning the stallion. I suspect he was rather saying that no matter what, she couldn’t. Besides, Stevie, you and I are forgetting for a moment that it’s just a story.”

  “Maybe,” Stevie agreed reluctantly.

  “Hey, we’ve got to get you back to the high school along with the dollhouse. Let’s put your horse in the back of the van so you’ll have transportation home—by the roadway, if you please.”

  “I promise,” she said without hesitation.

  THE MINUTE STEVIE walked into the party with the dollhouse, there was a hush. And then there was a rush. Everybody in the place wanted to make more guesses about the number of candies in the jar. She had a line of children following her before she could even get to the table. She wanted to tell her friends about what had happened out on the desert, but it would have to wait. Right now they couldn’t take the twenty-five-cent tickets and hand out the guess slips fast enough. It was wonderful!

  They even ended up agreeing to let the children put in guesses half an hour longer than they’d originally intended, just to make sure everybody who wanted to could enter the contest. Finally, when the last child had filled out the last slip, she took the jar of candies and the box of guesses out of the main room and went in search of a quiet place where she could sort all the entries and find the one or more that had the right number. The correct answer was known only to Phyllis Devine, who had written it on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope, and placed it at the bottom of the jar. Stevie thought that maybe she’d have to eat a lot of the candies in order to get to it, too.