Lucky Horse

by Bonnie Bryant

  “Let’s go over to those rocks!” he yelled, pointing to a pile of boulders on the very top of the mountain. “We’ll be safe there as long as there’s no lightning!”

  He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to her feet, and together they ran toward the boulders. They hadn’t taken three steps before rain began to pour down so hard that Carole had trouble keeping her eyes open. It was impossible to see anything, and the wind howled like some savage animal. It whipped the rain against her even harder. She lowered her head and ran hard to keep up with her father.

  Finally they reached the boulders. There was a small outcropping of rock that sheltered them from the rain, but not the wind. “Are you okay?” her father yelled, frowning with concern.

  Carole nodded. “I just hope it doesn’t start lightening.”

  “If we’re lucky, it won’t,” Colonel Hanson said just as a huge clap of thunder broke overhead. He turned to scan the northwest horizon. As he did, blistering fingers of lightning crackled down from the clouds. First one, then another, and a third. All reaching from the heart of a dark black cloud down to the earth below; all seemed to be heading straight toward Carole and her father.

  “Did you see that?” her father shouted as another clap of thunder rent the air.

  Carole nodded; she was too scared to speak.

  Colonel Hanson looked at her gravely. “We’ve got to get off this mountain now! That storm’s tracking straight at us, and this is the absolute worst place to be in a thunderstorm.”

  “Where can we go?” she asked in a squeaky voice.

  “We’d be better off under a lot of trees in a valley, but anyplace is better than this,” her father yelled. “Grab your flashlight and we’ll try to find the trail back down the mountain!”

  “Okay.” Fortunately, Carole had remembered to pick up her flashlight when the storm had started. She switched it on, but its normally bright beam looked more like a candle in the thick, wet darkness.

  “Hurry!” Her father yelled. “And stay close behind me!”

  They scurried away from the shelter of the rocks, the raindrops once again stinging them like needles. The wind almost toppled them, and they had to bend forward at the waist to get anywhere at all.

  Carole followed her father blindly, trailing after his dark shape as he pushed his way through the wind and rain. The thunder crashed directly over them, and just a few hundred yards away, Carole saw a bolt of bright lightning streak down from the sky. It crackled around the top of one tall pine, and the highest tree limbs exploded like a bomb. Carole could make out the dark outline of birds fleeing the sudden inferno.

  “Keep your head down!” her father called. “I think the trail’s over here!”

  Shaking with fear, she followed him to the edge of some scraggly trees. Underbrush tugged at their jeans as they tried to press themselves beneath the branches. Abruptly her father stopped.

  “Wait.” He turned and tried to peer through the rain at where they’d just been. Carole turned and looked too, but her flashlight was useless and she could see clearly only when the lightning flashed. Unfortunately, that was when it was hardest to keep her eyes open.

  “Oh, no!” she heard her father cry.

  “What?” She was barely able to make herself heard above the wind and rain.

  “We must have gotten disoriented when we got up so fast,” he called, his voice now hoarse from yelling. “The trail’s over there, right across from where we just were.”

  Carole’s heart skittered with fear. “You mean we’re going to have to cross the mountaintop again?”

  Her father nodded as raindrops dripped off his chin. “These trees won’t be safe if that storm stays on track.” He looked down at her and grinned. “Are you with me, kiddo?” he asked softly.

  Again, she only nodded. She was afraid that if she spoke out loud he’d know how scared she was.

  “Okay, then, let’s go!” He shifted the telescope to his other shoulder and gave her a thumbs-up. “Semper fi!”

  Colonel Hanson waited until a clap of thunder rolled away, then stepped out from the shelter of the skinny trees. Again they had to bend at the waist and throw themselves into the wind. The rain seem to hit them from all directions, and Carole felt icy raindrops sliding down her back, under the collar of her jacket. Everything she had on was soaked, and her feet slid inside her shoes. Still, she slogged after her father.

  They had almost reached the middle of the mountaintop when suddenly the sky lit up as if a million fireworks had all exploded. A crash of thunder like no other boomed around Carole’s ears. The earth itself seemed to tremble beneath her feet. The sky went bright, then dark; then she couldn’t see anything. Where was her father? He had been there just a moment before. The sky lit up again, and she saw his crumpled form.

  “Dad!” she screamed, just as another thunderclap crashed above her head.

  “YEOW!” LISA SAT straight up in her sleeping bag, her heart thumping in her chest. “What was that?”

  “I think it was a horse.” Stevie blinked sleepily, but she was already sitting up. “Something’s wrong downstairs. We’d better go check it out.”

  They switched on the hayloft light and began to crawl down the ladder. Suddenly a loud boom shook the roof overhead; then the shrill scream of a horse split the air.

  “That’s what woke me up!” cried Lisa.

  “I bet it’s Patch,” said Stevie as rain began to ping like marbles against the barn’s tin roof. “You know how crazy he gets when we have thunderstorms.”

  The two girls hurried down to Patch’s stall. Sure enough, the old pinto stood there terrified, his ears slapped flat against his head, the whites of his eyes showing all around.

  “Whoa, boy,” Stevie said softly, reaching out and trying to pat the horse’s nose. “Take it easy.” Patch swished his tail and stomped his right foreleg. Stevie wanted to go into the stall and put her arms around him, but he looked so terrified that it was safer to stay outside.

  Another thunderclap rattled the barn, and Patch seemed to jump a foot into the air.

  “He looks upset enough to hurt himself,” said Lisa. “What should we do?”

  Stevie frowned. “Max usually gives him a tranquilizer when bad weather’s on the way, but this storm sneaked up on us. I guess we could give him one of his pills and stay with him until it takes effect.”

  Lisa reached over and rubbed Patch’s soft nose. “Too bad we don’t have any equine earplugs.”

  “Wait a minute!” Stevie snapped her fingers. “You just gave me a fantastic idea. Stay right here!”

  Lisa watched as Stevie ran back to the ladder that led to the hayloft. She scurried up, and in just a moment she came back down, clutching her CD player in one hand.

  “Stevie, what are you going to do?” Lisa asked as Stevie ran back down the aisle.

  Stevie looked at her and grinned. “Earplugs blot out unwanted noise, right?”

  Lisa nodded.

  “Well, so does other, louder, constant noise.” Stevie held up her CD player. “If I play my new CD over the PA system, the horses won’t be able to hear the thunderstorm so much. This music will lull them back to sleep, just like babies!”

  “But Stevie, you played me that CD last night—it’s all screaming guitars and thumping drums and weird synthesizers. It would be more likely to wake the dead than lull anything to sleep.”

  “I’ll bet it works, though. I’m going to go hook this up. I bet we’ll have a barnful of drowsy horses in no time!”

  “I think I’ll give poor Patch his tranquilizer, anyway,” said Lisa. “He looks like he’s about to have a nervous breakdown.”

  As she was getting one of Patch’s blue capsules and an apple, all sorts of strange, electronic noises started chirping from the speakers overhead. When she walked back to Patch’s stall, she noticed that all the horses that had been sound asleep were now standing at their stall doors, their ears flicking at the electric guitar music that was bouncing around the ce
iling.

  “Okay, Patch,” Lisa said as she reached the distraught horse. “Just a few more minutes and you’ll feel fine.” She cut the apple in two, then opened the capsule and poured tiny grains of yellow medicine across the fleshy part of the fruit.

  “Here, boy,” she said, holding one half out to Patch. “Eat this.” As terrified as Patch was, he still couldn’t resist nibbling an apple. In just a second, he’d swallowed the half with a satisfied crunch.

  Lisa held the rest of it out. Patch was just as excited about the second half as he’d been about the first. He was chomping happily away when someone started singing over the PA system.

  “You’ve got to know-ow-ow-ow-ow,” a high-pitched singer yowled, “The best time to go-o-o-o …”

  Lisa looked at Patch, expecting him to jump straight into the air. Instead he just stood there, once again the calm horse she’d always known him to be.

  “Well, Patch, maybe Stevie’s on to something,” Lisa said, again rubbing his nose. “I know your medicine couldn’t have worked that fast.”

  Just then she heard a bump in the neighboring stall. She left Patch and peaked inside. Prancer had woken up and was anxiously looking out her stall door.

  “Hey, girl,” Lisa said as Stevie’s music shrieked even more loudly. She had just begun to scratch her favorite horse behind the ears when she heard a high-pitched whinny of panic from the far end of the stable.

  “Oh no!” she said, giving Prancer a last pat. “That’s Starlight! Sorry, girl. I’ll be right back!”

  She ran down to Starlight’s stall. He stood just as Patch had a few moments earlier, with his ears slapped back and his nostrils flaring wide, showing the pink insides of his nose. He paced back and forth in his stall.

  “Uh-oh,” said Lisa, reaching out to give him a reassuring touch.

  “Hi!” Stevie suddenly turned the corner. “How’s it working? Is everybody back to sleep yet?”

  “Well, Patch is fine, but now Starlight looks wired.” Lisa frowned as the big bay stomped his foot. “I think he might be more of a Mozart horse, Stevie. Heavy metal doesn’t seem to be doing a thing for him.”

  “Hang on.” Stevie went to the hayloft ladder and scampered up. A few moments later she came back down with an extra red sweater she’d brought in case they got cold.

  “I’ll tie this over his ears,” she said, letting herself into Starlight’s stall. “That should fix everything so it won’t be quite so loud.”

  At first Starlight tossed his head at Stevie’s sweater, but he finally stood still while she positioned it over his ears and tied it under his chin.

  “There!” she said, stepping back to admire her work. “What do you think?”

  Lisa laughed at the sight. “He looks like someone’s grandmother, Stevie,” she giggled. “I’m glad Carole’s not here to see her horse wrapped in a babushka.”

  Stevie shrugged. “She probably would think it was strange, but it seems to work. He’s calmer.”

  “Maybe we should go see how everybody else is doing, since we’re already up,” Lisa suggested.

  “Good idea,” agreed Stevie.

  They started walking all around the big U of the stable. Most of the horses had gotten used to the guitars shrieking through the barn and had settled back down to go to sleep. Though Stevie’s music drowned out a lot of the thunder, the girls could still hear the rain beating down on the roof.

  “I wonder if the roof has any leaks,” Stevie said, peering into Doc’s stall.

  “Yes,” answered Lisa as she checked on Danny.

  “How do you know?” said Stevie.

  “Because Danny’s standing here in a big puddle.”

  “Uh-oh.” Stevie frowned. “That won’t be good for his leg. We’d better get him out of there, and fast.”

  Lisa ran to the tack room and got two cross-ties while Stevie put Danny’s halter on him and led him to the center of the aisle. Danny didn’t look as nervous about the music as he looked miserable from standing in a wet stall.

  “Let’s get a rag and dry him off,” said Stevie as Lisa cross-tied him. “Then we’d better change his leg wrap.”

  “Poor baby,” said Lisa. “He’s worked so hard to get well, and now he’s stuck in a leaky stall.”

  Lisa dried Danny with a towel while Stevie found a clean leg wrap to replace the wet one. Just as she was tying off one end, a heavy thunk came from the other side of the stable.

  “Now what?” said Lisa. “I can barely catch my breath from one thing when something else goes wrong.”

  “I don’t know. You go and see while I finish up here.”

  Lisa left Stevie with Danny and hurried over to investigate. The thunk sounded as if it had come from Max’s office. Slowly Lisa cracked open the door and turned on the light.

  “Oh no!” she cried. Someone had left the window open, and the wind had blown Max’s big bookcase over. About fifty horse books were scattered on the floor, wet from the rain blowing in the window.

  “Gosh,” Lisa said, hurrying across the room and pulling the window shut. “I wonder what else could possibly go wrong tonight?”

  She pushed the bookcase back against the wall and spread the books out on Max’s desk. They would have to dry before they could be reshelved. She and Stevie could take care of that in the morning.

  She turned off the light, closed the door, and hurried back down the aisle. Stevie had just finished drying Danny off, and he looked clean and neat once again.

  “That’s one lucky horse to have us taking care of him,” said Lisa, admiring Stevie’s leg wrap.

  “Oh, it just makes up for the bad luck of being owned by Veronica,” Stevie muttered. “She probably would have just left him standing in a wet stall all night.”

  Suddenly Lisa cocked her head to one side. “Do you hear that?”

  “Yeah. It’s my favorite song on this whole album.”

  “No, not the song. That other, fainter sound. That weird scree, slam; scree, slam.”

  Stevie turned her head and listened. “Yeah, I do. Wonder what it is? It doesn’t sound like a horse.”

  “It doesn’t sound like a bookcase falling over, either.” Lisa frowned. “Do you think it could be one of those spooky noises Max warned us about?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s turn the music down a little and see where it’s coming from.”

  They went to the office and turned down the PA system, then made a two-person patrol of the stable. Most of the horses were asleep again, and the girls felt as if they were suddenly all alone. Scree, slam; scree, slam. The eerie noise continued, now louder and echoing through the barn.

  “Do you think it could be a ghost?” said Stevie as they came to a dark part of the stable where the overhead light had burned out.

  Lisa felt the gooseflesh rise on her arms. “I don’t think so.” She looked up at the shadowy ceiling. “But I sure wish there was a light up there.”

  “Remind me to change that lightbulb in the morning,” said Stevie in a whisper.

  “Why are you whispering?” whispered Lisa.

  “I don’t know. Probably the same reason you’re walking on tiptoe.”

  Slowly the girls crept forward. Scree, slam! Scree, slam! The noise grew louder. Nothing they’d ever heard in a stable made a noise like that. Stevie was just about to grab Lisa’s hand and run back to the bright end of the stable when Lisa stopped.

  “Stevie, look!” She pointed to the last stall in the row—a big empty one that Max occasionally used for a foaling stall. The shutter had not been latched securely, and every time the wind gusted, it blew out with a scree and swung shut with a slam. “There’s our ghost,” Lisa said with a laugh. “An unlatched shutter!”

  “I knew it all along,” said Stevie as she stepped into the stall and closed the shutter tight.

  “Yeah, right, Stevie.” Lisa rolled her eyes.

  “The rain seems to be letting up,” Stevie said, drying her hands on her pants. “Let’s go turn the music off and
see if we can dry out Danny’s stall. Then maybe we can go back to bed and get some rest ourselves.”

  They went back to the office and turned off the PA system. The stable now echoed with an odd, empty silence, but the horses didn’t seem to mind. Most were already either stretched out in their straw or dozing on their feet as Lisa and Stevie hurried back to Danny.

  “I’ll muck out Danny’s stall if you’ll go get some dry straw for him to sleep on,” Stevie offered.

  “Okay,” Lisa agreed.

  Stevie forked up Danny’s wet straw while Lisa filled the big wheelbarrow. Because they worked together the job went quickly, and soon Danny was standing in a nice dry stall full of fresh straw. He gave a big sigh as Lisa and Stevie latched the door behind him.

  “Sounds like he’s glad to get back to bed,” Lisa laughed.

  “I will be, too,” yawned Stevie. “Do you know what time it is?”

  Lisa shook her head.

  “Well, we’ve got about an hour before the first riders start knocking on our door.”

  “You’re kidding!” Lisa’s blue eyes looked red and tired. “That storm took most of the night?”

  “The storm, plus Patch, plus Starlight, plus Danny …,” Stevie rattled off.

  “Okay, okay,” Lisa said. “Let’s just hurry so we can at least get a nap before everybody starts arriving.”

  They turned off the barn lights, but not before Stevie had untied Starlight’s babushka hat and let the big bay fall asleep without any headgear on.

  “Did you ever get a chance to check on Belle?” Lisa asked as she trudged up the ladder.

  “No. Did you check on Prancer?”

  “Only for about five seconds,” Lisa yawned. “I will first thing in the morning, though.”

  “You mean first thing in about forty-five minutes,” Stevie said as she fell into her sleeping bag.

  “Right,” answered Lisa. She collapsed just the way Stevie had, then suddenly sat up. “Is your sleeping bag wet?” she asked.

  “Yuccch,” Stevie replied, feeling the damp material with both hands. “It is.”