Pony Tails 03- Corey's Pony Is Missing

by Bonnie Bryant

  “If that’s the case, then he’s not really in trouble and someone will find him. I think we’d better look where he could be in trouble,” said May.

  That sounded scary to Jasmine, but it made sense. May went first, following a trail they knew. It was a curvy trail that snaked up a hill.

  The sun was fully up now. It was going to be a bright, clear day. Normally it was the kind of day the Pony Tails liked best for riding.

  Around them the woods were cool and fresh and inviting. The leaves were starting to turn, so there were patches of red, orange, and yellow among the green. In such a nice place, it was hard to think of bad things. Jasmine found herself feeling more and more confident that Samurai was safe and that they would find him.

  “I bet Samurai found sweet grass to eat,” said Jasmine.

  “What if it’s a weed that makes him sick?” asked May. “Horses and ponies often have trouble when their feed is changed.”

  “He probably found fresh water to drink,” said Jasmine. “That would be good for him.”

  “It could be, but some of the water in the woods isn’t too clean. Remember the pond that has all the green stuff in it?” May asked. “That wouldn’t be good for him at all.”

  Of course May was right. The green water would be no better than the bad weeds. “But don’t you think he’d enjoy walking through these pretty woods?” Jasmine asked.

  “As long as he didn’t trip on something or get a stone in his shoe or wander so far that we’ll never find him,” said May.

  Jasmine wasn’t feeling as good anymore. Every time she thought of something nice that could be happening to Samurai, May thought of something awful!

  “Oh, gosh, I hope he’s okay,” said Jasmine.

  “Me too,” said May.

  They rode the trail to the top of the hill. There was a lot of grass along the trail for a pony to eat, but there was no sign of Samurai. They came back down the hill along another trail. It followed the small brook that turned into Willow Creek. There was plenty of cool, clean water for a pony to drink along that trail. But Samurai wasn’t there.

  They rode through a glade where a pony could find shelter in case it rained. They didn’t find Samurai there, either. They followed a path to the old rock quarry. A pony could get into a lot of trouble there. He could slip or trip or get stuck in mud by the pond. They didn’t see Samurai there, either.

  They stopped in a clearing in the woods to have a snack. The girls loosened the reins and let their ponies graze idly on the grass that grew there. It seemed fair for the ponies to snack when the riders snacked. May unzipped the backpack. She handed Jasmine a granola bar and some apple juice. Jasmine looped her reins around her wrist and punched the straw through the top of the juice box. She was concentrating on her snack and didn’t see Outlaw’s ears flicking anxiously.

  She noticed that something was wrong when he lifted his head and began a nervous dance.

  “Calm down, Outlaw,” she said. She reached forward to pat his neck. That usually reassured him. This time it didn’t. He whinnied and stomped. Jasmine reached to tighten up on the reins. She found that she had a granola bar in one hand and a juice box in the other hand. She didn’t have the reins in any hand at all. The reins had dropped loosely on Outlaw’s neck.

  There was a sudden gust of cool wind. That was all it took to set Outlaw off altogether. First he bucked, and then he ran.

  Jasmine had totally lost control. When Outlaw bucked, she slid out of the saddle onto the ground and landed on her bottom. She found herself sitting there, completely unharmed, with a granola bar in one hand and a juice box in the other. She was helpless to do anything but watch her pony run away.

  Luckily Outlaw didn’t run very far. He went only to the other side of the glade. Then he stopped and turned around and looked at Jasmine. His ears weren’t flicking anymore. His feet weren’t dancing. He didn’t look nervous or frightened. He just looked surprised. That was how Jasmine felt, too.

  “Naughty pony!” she said. “You are a very naughty boy!”

  He stepped toward her. She stood up.

  “I’ll get him,” May offered.

  “No, I think he’ll come here,” said Jasmine. She was right. Outlaw hung his head in shame and kept his eyes on the ground, but he walked right back to Jasmine. “He knows he shouldn’t have done that,” Jasmine said.

  “He looks the way I did when my mother found out I’d erased a whole file from her computer,” May said. “I really didn’t mean to cause trouble, but I sure managed to do it and I knew it. So did my mother.”

  “Outlaw didn’t mean to do it, either,” said Jasmine. “Sometimes he just can’t keep himself from being naughty, though.”

  “I wonder why,” May said thoughtfully.

  “Who knows?” asked Jasmine, taking Outlaw’s reins. She patted him and then remounted. He didn’t take a step. He behaved perfectly. “It’s just the way he is.”

  Nothing was broken; nobody was hurt. It was time to get going.

  The girls followed the trails in the woods for another hour. They found a group of hikers. None of them had seen a pony on the loose. Then the girls met up with a group of riders from Pine Hollow. They hadn’t seen Samurai. May and Jasmine even stopped some boys on dirt bikes to ask them if they’d seen Samurai. They hadn’t.

  Jasmine found herself feeling very sad about Samurai. She’d hoped for at least a small sign that he had been around, but there was nothing. Her mood didn’t improve when May said it was time for them to get back home. Their ponies had had enough of a ride for one day.

  “What if we never find him?” Jasmine asked.

  “Of course we’ll find him,” May said. “Remember how Outlaw returned to you when he ran away? Well, Samurai will do the same thing.”

  9 Corey Comes Home

  When she woke up Sunday morning, Corey blinked twice. She couldn’t remember where she was. The wallpaper in her bedroom was covered with ponies. It took a moment to remember that this was the new wallpaper in her bedroom at her father’s apartment. She smiled at all the ponies. She blinked again. Then she remembered that Mr. Grover had called yesterday to say he hadn’t found her pony. Samurai was still missing. She stopped smiling.

  “Good morning, sugar,” Mr. Takamura said, peering into her room. “I’ve got some pancake batter ready and the bacon is all done. Are you ready for your favorite breakfast?”

  Corey wasn’t ready for breakfast. She didn’t have any appetite at all. She hadn’t had any appetite for Pat’s pizza yesterday. She couldn’t be hungry when all she could think of was Samurai wandering somewhere alone.

  “I guess so,” she said to her father. He was trying hard to cheer her up. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She got out of bed and got dressed. She joined her father in the kitchen.

  He was pouring batter onto the griddle when she came in. She sat at the table and watched him.

  “I finished grading all my papers yesterday morning,” he said. “That means I have the whole day off to spend with you. Is there something special you’d like to do?”

  “Dad, I—I—” Corey stammered. She tried to smile for her dad, but she couldn’t. She felt the tears welling in her eyes.

  Her father hugged her. “It’s Samurai, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, feeling the comfortable softness of his shirt on her cheek. “All I can think about is him. I’m so worried.”

  “Why don’t you call your friends?” Mr. Takamura suggested. “Maybe Sam showed up this morning.”

  Corey thought that was a good idea. First she called May. May wasn’t in. Neither were May’s parents. Corey asked May’s sister, Ellie, where May was.

  “Oh, she’s off playing some sort of game or something on that pony of hers,” Ellie said. Ellie didn’t think much of her sister’s pony.

  Corey thanked her and hung up. Her mind filled with the image of May on Macaroni, having fun. Maybe they were practicing the exercises Max had given them. Maybe they were working on the j
umps in the schooling ring. Whatever they were doing, Corey felt terribly lonely because she and Samurai weren’t doing it, too.

  She called Jasmine. There was no answer. Corey didn’t want to leave a message. She was too miserable to say anything to a machine. She hung up the phone and stared at it.

  After a while she decided to call her mother’s house. Doc Tock’s assistant, Jack, was there. He told Corey he’d be there all day looking after a dog that was very sick. Corey asked him about Sam.

  “No,” he said. “No, there’s no sign of Samurai. I left the gate open to be sure he could get into his yard. I even put some fresh hay and feed out for him. He’s not there. I’ll call you the minute he gets here, though.”

  That will be nice, Corey thought. But it would be even nicer to be there when Sam showed up. Suddenly Corey knew what she had to do.

  “Dad, I have to go back to Mom’s,” Corey said.

  Her father nodded. “I’m not surprised you feel that way,” he said. “I’ll drive you over and stay with you there until your mother gets home tonight.”

  “I know you wanted to do something special today,” Corey apologized.

  “We’ll have other times to do something special together,” Mr. Takamura said. “Right now, the most special thing that could happen would be for Samurai to come home. Let’s go—okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  It took her only a few minutes to eat some pancakes and then pack her bag. Not long after that, they were walking up the path to her mother’s front door. Corey pushed open the door.

  “Jack?”

  “Hi, Corey,” he said. He came into the hall from Doc Tock’s clinic. He had a parrot on one shoulder and was holding a kitten in his hands. “No sign of him yet,” he said. It was typical of Jack to understand that Corey had come home early because of a pet.

  Corey thanked him. She left her suitcase in the front hall and went out into the backyard to Samurai’s stable. Her father went to sit in the kitchen.

  Sunshine came cheerfully through the slats of the stable. Corey could see hay dust in the streams of light. She could smell the sweet scent of clean hay. A fresh breeze brushed her hair. The stable was a nice place to be, except for one thing. It was silent. There was no welcoming whinny, no eager stomp of hooves. She could hear no contented chomping of a well-fed pony. Samurai was gone.

  Corey slipped into the empty stall and looked at the bare straw that lined the floor. The gateway outside led to an empty yard.

  Corey sat down in a corner of the stall and hugged her knees. She thought about Samurai. She thought about all the wonderful times they’d had together. She didn’t know if she would ever ride him again, ever feed him again, or ever jump him again. And then her tears came. She cried silently. Her tears fell, one by one, onto the straw beneath her knees.

  And when her last tear had fallen, there was still silence.

  Then Corey heard something. She almost felt the sound before she heard it. Something was thumping on the ground outside. Then it was stronger. It was definitely a pony’s hooves. No, it was two ponies’ hooves.

  May and Jasmine were here! If she couldn’t have her pony, at least Corey could have her friends. She went into Samurai’s yard to greet them.

  “Come on, Corey,” May said from the yard where she was sitting on Macaroni. “Let’s go over to my hayloft. At a time like this, the Pony Tails have to stay together.”

  Corey couldn’t agree more. She hurried after her friends.

  10 The Pony Tails Meeting

  “And we put posters on every single telephone pole in all of Willow Creek,” Jasmine said.

  “A hundred of them?” Corey asked. She couldn’t believe all the work her friends had done for her.

  “Well, almost a hundred of them,” May said. “We also asked the stores at the shopping center to put them up. They all did—except for the liquor store. That doesn’t matter. People who buy liquor probably aren’t thinking about ponies.”

  “Probably not,” Corey agreed.

  “But we called the places that do care about ponies,” said Jasmine. “We called the animal shelters, the stables, the 4-H, and the nearby Pony Clubs, including Cross County. Everybody said they’d be on the lookout for Samurai.”

  “He’s somewhere near,” said May. “He just has to be. And if he is, someone will find him and call.”

  Corey blinked in disbelief. Was it only yesterday that she’d actually accused her best friends of carelessness? Now she couldn’t believe how much love and care they were showing. She was ashamed all over again. She didn’t know how to tell them how much it meant to her. “Thanks so much for everything you guys have done for me and Samurai,” she said.

  “But it hasn’t worked yet,” said Jasmine.

  “It will,” May said. “It will. And until he comes home, we’ll go for a ride in the woods every single day.”

  The phone in the stable rang. May scooted down the ladder to answer it. It was Corey’s mother, home early from New Orleans. It was time for the Pony Tails’ meeting to end.

  The girls promised to meet after school the next day with Mr. Grover to look for Samurai.

  11 The Samurai Hunt

  On Monday when Corey got home from school, there were three phone messages on the answering machine for her. Her heart raced as she listened to the messages.

  “I’m calling about the missing pony …”

  “I saw that poster …”

  “We have a pony here that might be of interest to you …”

  Corey called each person back right away. She was so nervous that her hand was shaking as she held the phone.

  The first person she reached said she’d definitely seen a pony over the weekend. Was it Samurai? Corey wondered. She asked the woman to describe the pony she’d seen. “It was white with black patches,” she said. Corey didn’t know what pony that was, but it definitely wasn’t Samurai. She thanked the woman for calling.

  The second person was a girl who had a pony, too. She was calling to tell Corey how sorry she was that Samurai was missing. Corey thanked her, too, though she wasn’t feeling very grateful. She was only feeling disappointed. But she still had one call to return. Maybe this would be the one.

  “Hello—you called about my missing pony?” Corey said to the man who answered the phone.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Thanks for calling me back. Listen, I have a pony here—”

  “A dark bay with a crescent-shaped blaze?” Corey asked eagerly.

  “Oh, no. This one’s a gray. He’s a real nice pony, gentle as can be. He’s been ridden by a lot of kids and he’s a fine pony, I can assure you. Since you’re going to need a new pony …”

  Corey couldn’t believe it. This man wanted to sell her another pony! She didn’t thank him. Instead she told him she wasn’t interested and slammed down the phone.

  How could three phone calls be so useless! And so disappointing, Corey thought with a sigh. Samurai, where are you? she wondered for the hundredth time since he’d disappeared.

  Corey pulled on her jacket and hurried over to May’s stable. She was supposed to meet May, Jasmine, and Mr. Grover there so that they could all go out and search the woods again.

  Mr. Grover was in the schooling ring setting up jumps for his student, Double-O-Seven. “Hi, Corey,” he called. “Any sign of Sam yet?” She shook her head. “That’s too bad,” May’s father went on. “I was hoping to help you girls search the forest this afternoon, but it looks like I’ll have to stay here. Double-O-Seven’s owner is due any minute. He wants to take a look at his horse’s progress.”

  “That’s okay, Mr. Grover,” Corey replied. “Maybe the three of us will get lucky this afternoon. Sam has to be out there somewhere.”

  “C’mon, Corey,” May called as she walked out of the Grovers’ stable and mounted Macaroni. “Let’s get going before it gets dark.”

  Corey hurried over to her friend and climbed on Macaroni’s back behind May. The gentle pony didn’t seem to m
ind the second passenger at all. In fact, Corey thought, it’s as if he knows that we’re going to search for his friend Samurai.

  By four o’clock the girls were on the trail. By five o’clock they’d covered the hill, the stream, the quarry, and the glades. There was no sign of Samurai, and it was beginning to get dark.

  They returned home, untacked their horses, and promised to go out again the next day. Corey’s parents had decided to let Corey stay at her mother’s house for the week, just in case Samurai showed up. On Saturday she would go to her father’s after her Pony Club meeting. That gave her five long days to look for and to worry about Samurai. She and her friends made the best of the time, but the rest of the week was no better than Monday.

  On Tuesday Corey had one phone message. She called back.

  “I remember seeing Samurai,” a girl named Elspeth said.

  Corey’s heart quickened.

  “I came to Horse Wise once. You were there, with Samurai.”

  “Yes?” said Corey. She was trying to remember who Elspeth was.

  “He’s a really nice pony,” Elspeth told her. “I just want you to know that I’m sorry he’s missing.”

  “Thank you,” said Corey, though she didn’t mean it. She remembered Elspeth now, and she knew she was just trying to be nice, but it wasn’t helpful. The only thing that would help was information about where Samurai was!

  “Good luck,” said Elspeth.

  Again the girls rode on the trails in the woods. This time Corey rode with Jasmine on Outlaw. Again they found nothing.

  Every day Corey ran from the bus to the telephone answering machine to see if anyone had called. There were four more phone messages about the posters that May and Jasmine had put up. Two of them were from people who thought they’d seen ponies that might be Samurai, but when they described them, Corey knew neither was Sam. One was another call about the white-and-black pony. The other call was a total mistake.

  “Oh, he’s a pretty little fellow,” said one man. “He has long spindly legs and a tiny little tail. He was standing in a field with a much bigger horse,” he said.