HUNTER PACE
BY
CLAIRE SVENDSEN
Copyright © 2014 Claire Svendsen
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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.
CHAPTER ONE
The trailer arrived two days after I got back. Miguel made all the arrangements with Esther. He would be paying board for Fury and I would ride her. When I begged him to keep her, it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Bluebird was my main priority and what with school, my riding time was limited. I wasn’t too keen on taking any of my attention away from him.
“It’s a big honor,” Esther said. “Being asked to ride one of Miguel’s horses.”
“But I only want to ride Bluebird,” I sulked.
“Don’t be so silly,” she said.
But it didn’t feel silly. The stall next to the one Bluebird used when it rained was all clean and ready. Esther was just happy because it meant she had another paying customer. Even though we’d been winning at the local shows, business wasn’t exactly booming and with Hampton and Harlow both gone, the barn was looking decidedly empty.
“Want to ride my horse too?” Ethan said, coming out of the tack room with a bridle in his hand. “He doesn’t like to work. Maybe you could convince him with some Toaster Strudels?”
“Very funny,” I said. “Besides, it wasn’t Toaster Strudels, it was Wild Berry Pop Tarts.”
“Oh, that’s okay then,” he said.
I picked up a wet sponge from the tack cleaning bucket and threw it at him. It hit him square in the face and bounced off his forehead.
“That’s it,” he cried, dropping the bridle.
We both took off running and he soon caught me and tackled me to the ground. But then it got all awkward so we just sort of got up and walked away.
“They’re here,” Faith cried from the barn.
Ethan’s little sister had been watching out for the trailer. She was obsessed with Bluebird and seemed to think that now I had two ponies to ride, maybe she’d get a chance to saddle him up. I already told her that was never going to happen but she wasn’t convinced.
The Black Gate trailer swayed down the drive and pulled to a stop. Dan jumped out. He was stocky and kind and had looked out for me at the clinic. I waved and he waved back as he went around to unload Fury.
“Is she okay?” I asked as he swung down the ramp.
“Worked herself up into a bit of a state,” he said. “She wasn’t too keen to leave.”
He backed the chestnut mare with the lightning bolt blaze down the ramp and she stood there snorting at her new surroundings. I’d come prepared and pulled a Pop Tart out of my pocket for her. She sniffed it cautiously before snatching it up.
“It still works then,” I laughed.
“Yes,” Dan said. “Now you get to buy out the grocery store.”
“Great,” I said. “I don’t think my mom is going to like that very much.”
We hung around outside Fury’s new stall and watched her paw at the shavings. When she’d drunk some water, pooped and started eating her hay, Dan left.
“Good luck,” he said.
“Thanks,” I called back. “Say hi to Miguel for me.”
Back in the barn, Esther was making notes on the board in the feed room for Fury.
“She’s cute,” she said. “I like her.”
“You wouldn’t have liked her when she jumped out of the arena,” I said.
“True,” she nodded, wiping the sweat off her forehead with her bandana.
It was May and getting hotter by the day. Soon the Florida humidity would kick in and turn the world into one great big sticky oven.
“She’s a bit on the skinny side though,” she said. “Think Miguel will mind if I fatten her up a bit?”
“You can try,” I said. “But she’s a worrier. Even at Black Gate she sometimes wouldn’t eat all her grain.”
“Well maybe she’ll settle in better here,” Esther said. “It’s quieter. She can eat in peace.”
“I wonder how long I’m supposed to keep riding her,” I said.
“Miguel didn’t say?”
I shook my head.
“I think I’ll saddle Bluebird and go for a trail ride while I still have time to ride him,” I said. “Besides, it’s too hot to do anything else.”
“Maybe I’ll join you on Saffron,” Esther said.
“Really?” I asked.
It had been ages since Esther had ridden. She was always too busy with the million and one other things that needed doing at the barn.
“Yes,” she said. “Who knows, maybe we’ll find a breeze out in the trees.”
I grabbed all of Bluebird’s stuff and was in his stall tacking him up when I heard a funny noise, almost like a tiny baby bird. I stopped for a moment to listen and it stopped and I thought I’d imagined it but then I heard it again, this time louder.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Bluebird.
I walked down the barn aisle, stopping and listening until finally I was outside Hampton’s old stall. That was where it was the loudest. Perhaps a bird had nested in the rafters and a baby had fallen out. It wouldn’t be the first time, although Esther’s fat orange cat Meatball usually gobbled them up before we could save them. Maybe this one would have a chance.
I peeked into the stall expecting to see a tiny, featherless blob but instead there was Mickey, sitting in the corner sobbing.
“Mickey?” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“I want Hampton back,” she cried.
CHAPTER TWO
“Hampton’s gone,” I said slowly. “Remember?”
“But I made a mistake. I was wrong. It was so stupid of me,” she sobbed.
Her eyes were all red and bloodshot and her face blotchy. She looked awful and part of me wanted to comfort her but another part of me wanted to slap her. She knew this was going to happen and I’d tried everything to stop it myself and then get her to change her mind. What good was changing her mind now when Hampton had already gone?
“I was so horrible to you. I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what was wrong with me. Can you ever forgive me?” she said.
I thought of the note. The one I found in her tack trunk that she’d written but never given to me. It said how she wished she’d never been friends with me in the first place. How I was just a nobody who came from the wrong side of the tracks. Someone beneath her. Someone she hated. But I couldn’t just stand there staring at someone who was sitting in the corner of a stall crying their eyes out.
“Come on,” I said.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her up.
“You can’t just sit in here. It’s not going to bring him back.”
I dumped her in the office with a cup of coffee and a box of tissues and then went to find Esther. She’d know what to do. She was grooming Saffron, the Paint mare with one blue eye who was looking a little horror struck that she was actually going to have to do something that resembled work. She was dancing about on the crossties.
“Mickey is here,” I said. “She’s crying and she wants Hampton back.”
“What am I supposed to do about that?” Esther said.
“Help her? Fix it?”
“I can’t,” she shru
gged. “The lease has been signed. The horse has gone. It’s a legal binding document. She should have thought of that before the money changed hands.”
“Well what am I supposed to do?” I said.
“She’s your friend,” Esther said. “Comfort her.”
“She told me she hated me and that she wanted all her stuff back,” I said. “I’m not even sure we are friends anymore.”
Esther put down her brush and pulled me to the side.
“You may not be best friends anymore,” she said. “But you must still feel something for her or you wouldn’t be here hounding me. Just be there for her, give it time.”
“Alright,” I sighed. “But why do I always have to be the one who takes the high road?”
“Because you are a good person,” Esther slapped me on the back. “Now go on.”
She pushed me back down the barn aisle towards the office.
“And hurry up and get tacked up so we can ride. In fact why don’t you let Mickey ride Bluebird and you can ride Fury?”
I put on a fake smile but inside I was fuming. Why did everyone assume that now I had two ponies to ride, I should share them? I’d missed out on a whole week of riding Bluebird while I was away at the clinic and I couldn’t wait to get back to working him again. But now that I had Fury to train as well, everyone assumed I should hand off Bluebird just like that. Well they had another thing coming because that was never going to happen.
Mickey had abandoned her coffee and curled up in a ball on the couch in the fetal position. Esther’s fat cat Meatball was sitting on her head.
“Um, we’re going for a trail ride,” I said. “Do you want to come? You could ride one of the lesson horses?”
“No,” she said, pushing Meatball off. He fell to the floor with a plop, shook himself and jumped right back on top of her head. He was annoying like that, in a super cute fluffy sort of way.
“Suit yourself,” I shrugged.
“Wait,” she sat up. “You’re going to leave?”
“I have to get Bluebird ready,” I said. “Esther is waiting.”
I didn’t know what Mickey wanted from me. I didn’t have time to sit there holding hands, crying over Hampton’s demise. That wouldn’t bring him back.
“Why don’t you talk to your parents?” I said. “Get them to talk to Mr. Eastford. Break the lease?”
She shook her head and the tears started to fall again.
“They already spent the money,” she said. “On a new roof. Like I care if there is a leak over my bed. I could have slept with a bucket.”
I was pretty sure that Mickey would never have slept with a bucket on her bed to catch a drip from the ceiling but I bit my tongue.
“Well I guess there is nothing you can do then except wait for the six months to be up,” I said. “At least they didn’t sell him. Then you’d never get him back.”
“But I’ll just die without him,” she wailed, flopping over again into a heap.
I knew how she felt. I felt the same way when Esther told me that she was going to sell Harlow but he wasn’t mine and there really wasn’t anything I could do about it. Esther said that horses coming and going was a part of life and if I was going to be a professional in the horse world, then I was just going to have to get used to it. I wasn’t sure that I would ever actually get used to it but I did know that sobbing for the next six months would do absolutely nothing to help Hampton. The time for saving him had passed. He was with Jess now whether he liked it or not. Although from what I had seen, he seemed to love her for some reason.
“Oh come on,” I said. “Why don’t you ride Bluebird for me?”
“If I ride Bluebird, who are you going to ride?” she gulped back her tears.
“Fury,” I said.
“Who’s Fury?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
CHAPTER THREE
Standing in the stalls next to each other, Bluebird and Fury could have been twins. Except that Fury was finer and thinner and she had the lightning bolt blaze which made her look kind of crazy. That and the fact that she was still digging in her bedding like a mad mare.
“Miguel wants you to train her?” Mickey asked, her mouth open.
“Yeah,” I said.
“But why?”
“Probably to teach me a lesson or punish me or something,” I said.
“I don’t understand,” Mickey said.
“Neither do I,” I sighed.
Fury wasn’t too keen on being tacked up so soon after arriving but it was probably for the best since she was going to destroy her stall if she stayed in there any longer. I let Mickey finish getting Bluebird ready, even though I wasn’t happy about it. If the roles had been reversed and I’d treated her the way she treated me, I didn’t think she would be letting me ride her horse right about now. But I took heart in the fact that hopefully I was stocking up on some good karma that I could cash in later when I was the one who needed a favor.
“Hello Mickey,” Esther said as we walked the ponies out into the sunshine. She was sitting on the back of Saffron who was still dancing about, her eyes big and wide like she had never been ridden before.
“Hello Esther,” Mickey said sadly.
“I’m glad that you’ve decided to rejoin us,” Esther continued. “But I hope that you are ready to follow the rules now. As you can see, they are there for a reason.”
Mickey nodded solemnly. Riding to the beach alone had been a really bad decision. It had cost her a horse and almost her life. She didn’t have anyone to blame for that but herself.
“Okay ladies, let’s go then.”
We followed Esther and Saffron out past the arena and the fields. Saffron spooked and snorted at everything and so did Fury. There was a flowerpot by the arena that she was particularly upset by but Bluebird just wandered past, ignoring everything and giving the girls the confidence to continue on. Eventually the mares settled down and we walked along the trail in single file until it branched out a bit.
“Everyone ready for a canter?” Esther called out and before we had a chance to answer, Saffron was off with a swish of her white tail.
We bounded after them and a grin stretched across my face. Fury remembered me and was well behaved. A far cry from the pony who bolted away and then jumped out of the arena at Black Gate. And I couldn’t help but be glad that Miguel had sent her home with me. She would have been miserable if anyone else had tried to ride her.
Bluebird bounced along in front and I saw Mickey pat him a couple of times. I knew that deep down her heart was broken, just like mine would be if I ever had to give up Bluebird. I made up my mind that even though I was still hurt by all the things she had said, I would try and be nice to her until she felt better.
When we reached the top of the rise, Esther slowed Saffron to a walk and we followed. The trail was short compared to the ones I’d ridden at Black Gate but at least on Esther’s property there was no chance of getting lost.
We were skirting the fence line when Mickey stopped Bluebird.
“What is it?” I said. “Is he okay?”
I was worried that maybe Bluebird had hurt himself but instead Mickey just pointed, her face pale.
“Look,” she cried.
Sand Hill backed onto the farm that Mr. Eastford owned. Jess and her sister Amber kept their two hunters in a pretty little barn behind their pool and sprawling mansion. It was also home to the revolving stream of horses that Jess talked her father into buying so that she could beat me and win everything. Which right now included a show jumper that was being shipped down from New York and, of course, Hampton. I could see him now, a bay blob in the distance cantering over a course of brightly colored jumps.
“She’s riding him,” Mickey said faintly. “And he’s going well for her.”
I never would have believed in a million years that Jess would be able to ride Hampton but for some reason they had really hit it off. In fact, he went better for Jess than he did for Mickey. Not that I would ever
tell her that.
“Don’t watch,” I told her. “Just pretend he’s not even there. Imagine that he is off on some lovely vacation at a farm in the mountains with lush grass and other horses to play with.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Mickey said, yanking Bluebird away from the fence.
“Hey,” I called after her, trotting Fury to catch up. “Hey.”
“What?” she snapped.
“Don’t treat my pony like that. It’s not his fault that Hampton has gone and it’s not mine either. I warned you this was going to happen. I told you and you didn’t care. So don’t come back here and think you can blame me now. I’m not going to take it. I’ll help you and I’ll be your friend but I’m not going to be some door mat for you to wipe your feet all over for the next six months.”
Mickey sat there staring at me. I don’t think she could believe what I was saying and neither could I but if my friend Becka had taught me anything, it was that you couldn’t let people walk all over you and I wasn’t going to let Mickey do that now.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking down at her reins. “I know it’s not your fault. I’ve been a jerk and I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“Everything okay girls?” Esther walked Saffron past on the way back to the barn.
“Yes,” I said.
But I wasn’t really sure. I didn’t know if Mickey and I could really still be friends and I certainly didn’t want her riding Bluebird if she was going to take out all her frustrations on him. She was going to have to find another horse to ride while Hampton was gone. I just didn’t know who.
CHAPTER FOUR
“It’s weird between us now,” I told Mom that night. “Like all fake and artificial. I don’t know if things can ever go back to the way they were.”
“Maybe they won’t,” Mom said.
“That’s not very helpful,” I sighed.
We were sitting on the couch with a big bowl of popcorn between us and the empty wrappers of chocolate bars strewn about on the floor. My horrid stepfather Derek and his evil daughter Cat had gone to visit Derek’s sister who was apparently very ill and possibly dying. I didn’t know the woman and certainly didn’t want her to suffer but I hoped that whatever was wrong with her would drag out for a long time. It was heaven to have them both out of the house. Like a black cloud had been lifted and I could finally breathe again.
Hunter Pace (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 7) Page 1