“I hate to say this,” Lisa said at last, checking her watch, “but shouldn’t we be thinking about heading back? It’s going to take us over half an hour just to get back to the car, and we promised Mrs. DeSoto we’d help with dinner.”
But we haven’t seen the ponies yet, Carole felt like arguing. Still, she knew Lisa was right. They turned and began the long walk back to the car.
“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Denise promised them. “Thank you for letting me spend so long on the beach.”
AS THEY WERE passing the edge of Snow Goose Pond on their way back toward Chincoteague, they saw two things. First, standing on one foot in the water at the edge of the pond, was a huge bird with blue-gray feathers and a wise expression. A large crowd of people had gathered around him, some of them taking his picture. The bird seemed to regard all the attention with benevolent acceptance, Lisa thought, rather like a king receiving adulation from his subjects.
Denise slowed so they could get a closer look. “That’s a great blue heron,” she said. “I’ve never seen one. They’re endangered, you know.” She drove on past the Visitors’ Center toward the bridge to Chincoteague.
“Wait!” cried Stevie. “Stop the car!”
“What’s wrong?” Denise hit the brakes, and the car screeched to a halt.
“There!” Stevie pointed. “I think we scared them.” They looked. Something was moving among the pine trees—a large something—many somethings—a pinto something?
“The ponies!” cried Carole. Sure enough, it was a band of wild ponies. The Saddle Club could see long manes and scruffy tails, darting glimpses of piebald and skewbald flanks, and the tiny movements of foals running close against their mothers.
“We scared them,” Stevie repeated. “I think the car scared them.”
“Ohh.” Carole let out her breath with a rush of pent-up excitement. “At least we saw them. Now we know they’re real.”
Stevie gave her a strange look. “You knew they were real,” she said.
“I knew,” Carole said simply, leaning back against her seat, “but I didn’t know until I saw them for myself.”
“STEVIE? YOU’RE COMING with us, aren’t you?”
Stevie let the dressage book slide out of her hands and land on the floor with a thump.
Lisa stood in the doorway of their bedroom, hands on her hips. “I thought you just came up to get your tennis shoes,” she said.
Stevie shrugged and gestured toward the book. “I saw this lying here, and I just thought I’d look at it for a minute,” she said. “Sorry if I kept you waiting.”
“That’s okay.” Lisa looked around the room. Bright sunlight streamed in the open windows, and the ocean breeze pulled at the curtains. Outside, sailboats swept across the bay. It wasn’t like Stevie to read a book on a day like today, especially now, when Denise was taking them back to Assateague. Lisa could tell that Stevie was still upset about Belle.
“You should try to just enjoy yourself this week,” she told her friend as they hurried to meet Denise and Carole. They’d worked hard all morning, sweeping the dirt out of the parlor and priming the walls to be painted. “We’re supposed to be having fun.”
Stevie groaned. “Last night I dreamed that all the wild ponies on Assateague were doing flying changes,” she said. “I’m trying to have fun, Lisa, but it hasn’t been easy. There has to be some way to teach Belle!”
They had reached the front porch, and Stevie saw Denise’s face light up with interest when she heard Stevie’s words. Stevie shut her lips tight and wished she hadn’t said anything about Belle. It was bad enough that her best friends in The Saddle Club didn’t really understand. Carole had even criticized her! Stevie didn’t feel like talking to Denise about it.
“You know,” Denise said, as they drove through town and down the main road toward Assateague, “if you’re interested in horse training, Stevie, I’d really like to tell you about natural horsemanship.”
There was silence. Stevie, hunched in the backseat, didn’t say a word. “We’re all interested in horse training,” Lisa said politely. “But I’ve never heard of natural horsemanship.”
“That’s because it’s still pretty new,” Denise explained. “It’s a system for training horses that doesn’t involve any force at all—I think I told you that. What you want to be able to do is get the horse to move in any direction you want, as fast or slow as you want, without force and with hardly any cues. Like, Carole, how do you get your horse to back up when he’s on cross-ties?”
Carole thought. “I usually push on his chest and say ‘Starlight, back up.’ ”
“Right,” said Denise. “That’s the way most people would do it. But with natural horsemanship, you could teach a horse to back up whenever you wiggled a finger back and forth under his nose. He’d back up without your even touching him.”
“But my pushing on Starlight’s chest isn’t hurting him,” Carole said. “I don’t push very hard.”
“Oh, no, that’s just one example,” Denise said. “Natural horsemanship is a whole system for ground training and teaching horses to go under saddle. It isn’t really a riding system—it’s more like a way to get a horse to listen to you and respect you, and obey you without ever being afraid of what you asked it to do. Both English and Western riders use it. For example, another thing I could do with a horse under this system is get it to walk straight into a horse trailer on a voice command.”
Lisa leaned forward, interested. “You mean you could just tell it to get in the trailer, and it would?”
“Once I’d trained it, sure. It would just walk right in.”
“Wow.” Lisa could see the value in that. Some horses hated horse trailers. She could remember several times when one or another of the Pine Hollow horses had refused to load. After urging it forward and offering bribes of oats and carrots, Max and Red would occasionally have to resort to running a long lead rope behind the horse’s rear and trying to pull it on board. Sometimes the horse would fight for half an hour. “Wouldn’t that be great, Stevie?” she said. “Think how much more quickly we could get to horse shows if the horses all loaded that easily.”
“Sure.” Stevie didn’t sound interested at all. “What part of the island are we going to see today?”
Denise glanced at Stevie. “I thought maybe the trail you saw with the pony sign on it,” she said. “Dorothy told me this morning that there really are a lot of ponies near there. I know how much you all want to see them.”
She parked the car on the side of the road near the trail marker and carefully locked the doors. “So a pony doesn’t break in,” she said, laughing, “or maybe yesterday’s heron.”
“He looks like he could pick a lock with his beak,” Lisa agreed. “Tell us more about natural horsemanship, Denise. It sounds interesting.”
“Well,” said Denise, “if you wanted to start working with your horse this way, one of the first things you would do is start to touch it very lightly, all over its body. Most horses have a few sensitive areas—some don’t like to have their mouths handled; others don’t want you to touch their ears, or the tops of their tails, or the insides of their legs. So what you do is gently rub the horse, finding out where its sensitive areas are and moving very lightly over them at first. You teach it to trust you and also to allow you to handle it. And since most horses really enjoy being rubbed, overall it’s a pretty positive experience for them.”
“Prancer loves to be groomed, so I know she likes to be touched,” said Lisa. “But she absolutely hates having her mouth handled. I always wondered if it was because they tattooed the inside of her lip with an identification number when she was on the racetrack. Anyway, whenever Judy comes to check her teeth we have to tranquilize her.” Horses needed to have their teeth checked at least once a year.
“Exactly,” said Denise. “So if, very gradually, you worked at handling Prancer’s mouth, and you always backed away whenever she started to fuss and never tried to force her, she might learn that
you weren’t going to hurt her. She might learn not to be afraid of having her teeth checked, and maybe you wouldn’t have to tranquilize her anymore.”
“It’s worth a try,” said Lisa. “It’s pretty traumatic for her the way things are now.”
“Traumatic for both her and Judy Barker,” confirmed Carole. “Prancer really puts up an argument.”
“You know, I just don’t agree with this,” Stevie broke in. “Max always taught us to correct a horse whenever it misbehaved, to remind it to pay attention to the rider’s instructions. Horses are taught to respond to a crop or a firm voice command. Max is a super horseman, and he’s certainly not abusive. His way seems fine to me.”
They rounded a bend in the trail, and Carole suddenly held up her hand, her eyes shining. “Look!” she whispered. At the far edge of an open field in front of them, a band of wild ponies grazed. The piebald stallion regarded them warily, but the mares didn’t stir. Foals grazed beside nearly every mare.
“How beautiful!” said Denise. “Let’s stand here a minute so we don’t frighten them.” She turned to Stevie. “I do understand what you’re saying,” she said. “And you’re right, Max is a wonderful horseman. He never abuses his animals, and anything he teaches you will be sound. His methods are good, accepted, and appropriate.
“But Stevie, there are different ways to teach and learn just about everything. The method I’m talking about—natural horsemanship—is really only a slight variation on what Max is teaching you, but it’s a variation I really like.
“The other important thing to remember is that there is a big difference between disciplining a horse that already knows correct behavior and trying to teach a horse correct behavior in the first place. I think natural horsemanship is an easier way to train horses—easier on the horse and easier on you.”
Denise looked at the wild herd thoughtfully. “I know I shouldn’t do this,” she said. “But let me try to show you what I mean.” She began to walk very slowly toward the nearest pony, a dark bay mare grazing a bit apart from the rest of the herd. Ever so slowly, The Saddle Club followed.
The stallion shifted his weight back and forth a few times before deciding that these strangers didn’t pose a threat to his mares. He dropped his head and began to eat. A ripple of relaxation went through the band, and they allowed the girls to come close.
“Easy,” Denise murmured to the bay mare. She moved slowly up to the horse’s shoulder. “Good girl.” Denise held her hand out for the horse to sniff, then carefully brought it up and began to rub the pony on its forehead. The mare looked surprised, but not alarmed. “Good girl,” Denise repeated.
She brought her hand over the pony’s poll, the area between its ears, and began to rub its neck as well, down the underside and then under the thick, rough mane. With her other hand she began to stroke its withers and back. The mare turned her head and blew out thoughtfully.
“She isn’t frightened,” Carole whispered. “She doesn’t seem wild at all.”
“Exactly,” whispered Denise, a note of triumph in her voice. She moved her hand down the mare’s flank. The mare shuddered and stepped away. “Easy, good girl.” Denise returned to rubbing the mare’s forehead, withers, and neck—all places she obviously enjoyed.
“Let me try,” Carole said. Imitating Denise, she held her hand beneath the mare’s nose and then began to rub its forehead. “She does like it! Lisa—”
Lisa rubbed the mare’s forehead, too. She looked over at Stevie, but Stevie shook her head. Clearly Stevie still wasn’t impressed by natural horsemanship.
“I’ll show you something else,” Denise said softly. “A really easy way to get a horse to pick up its feet is by squeezing its chestnuts. Watch.” She gently ran her hand down the mare’s leg and squeezed on the little patch of hairless skin that all horses have on the insides of their legs. The mare lifted her foot.
“Good girl!” Denise praised the mare. “And see, she’s probably never picked up her foot on command before,” she told The Saddle Club. “Let’s try it with a back leg.” She repeated her gentle squeeze. The mare hesitated, putting back her ears and tensing her haunches. Denise immediately let go of her leg and rubbed her neck some more. “You’re okay, good girl.”
“This is silly,” Stevie said. “I know how to pick up a horse’s foot. You do it like this.” She put her shoulder against the mare’s hip, ran her hand softly down the mare’s back leg, and pulled up on her foot. The mare lifted her hoof a few inches from the ground, then waved her leg wildly, trying to get away.
Stevie held on. Whenever a horse—Belle, Topside, or any of the other Pine Hollow horses—tried to pull its foot, the person was supposed to hold on, she knew. The horse was just misbehaving.
The mare squealed in panic. She kicked Stevie sharply in the leg, wheeled around, and ran for the woods. The rest of the band, frightened, followed her. The herd disappeared with a thundering of hoofbeats, and the only sound in the clearing was Stevie crying out in pain as she clutched her leg.
THEY CLUSTERED AROUND her. Stevie was holding her upper thigh, grimacing, and blinking back tears. Without a word, Denise gently pried Stevie’s hands away from her leg. She pushed Stevie’s long khaki shorts up a few inches. Blood oozed from a few scratches surrounding a reddened, hoof-shaped welt.
“I’ll be okay,” Stevie gasped. “It hurts less already.”
“Are you sure?” Carole asked anxiously. She had sprained her ankle once and had tried to pretend it wasn’t hurt. She didn’t want Stevie doing the same thing.
“I’m sure,” Stevie said. “Her hoof must have been pretty rough to scrape my skin like that, but at least she wasn’t wearing shoes.” They all nodded. They knew that a horse wearing steel shoes could do a lot more damage with its hooves than one that wasn’t. “So I’ll get a little bruise,” said Stevie, trying to laugh. “It won’t be the first time.”
Denise shook her head. “Stevie, I am so sorry. This was all my fault. And me an A-rated Pony Clubber! I should have known better than to bring you so close to the wild ponies. I knew they were wild—I wasn’t mistaking them for house pets. I’m really sorry.”
Stevie shook her head. “You shouldn’t be,” she said. “I should have known better, too. I knew they were wild just as much as you did.” She looked around at her friends. “Besides,” she admitted, “I think we all wanted to touch a wild pony. I think I would have tried to ride one if I thought I could get away with it.”
Her friends nodded. “It was really stupid of us,” Lisa said. “I’m just glad you weren’t seriously hurt.”
Denise smiled ruefully. “That’s what comes from being horse crazy, I guess. I’m just as bad as the three of you, even if I am older. Sometimes horse crazy turns out to be just plain crazy.”
“Do you think you can walk back to the car?” Lisa asked. “Otherwise, we can go ask the park rangers for help.”
“I can definitely walk,” Stevie assured her. “And please, don’t anybody tell Mrs. Reg or Dorothy or Nigel about this. I don’t want them to know how stupid I was.”
Limping back along the woodland trail, Stevie reflected that she had indeed been pretty stupid. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that the accident had been entirely her own fault—after all, the pony hadn’t kicked Denise. Stevie remembered how Denise had backed off whenever she did anything to make the pony uneasy, whereas Stevie had simply barged ahead and tried to force the pony do what she wanted.
She knew that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the way she had asked the pony to pick up its foot. And there was nothing wrong with the way she had hung on to its foot, either—nothing wrong, that is, if the pony had been trained to understand what Stevie was doing. As it was, the pony hadn’t understood, and it had reacted with fear. Kicking, Stevie knew, was one of the pony’s ways of defending itself.
The worst part, thought Stevie, was that she had known that the wild pony didn’t understand what she was doing, but she hadn’t chan
ged her own behavior to help the pony understand. “I should have known better,” she muttered.
Lisa turned. “What? Is your leg hurting?”
Stevie managed a small smile. “No. It’s my brain that hurts—you see, I’m thinking, for a change.”
THE NEXT DAY it rained, a steady, cold, soaking rain. Sailboats bobbed in the bay with their sails furled, and the tourist traffic on the island was noticeably thinner. All morning The Saddle Club repainted the parlor a delicate shade of shell pink. Lisa and Carole worked with rollers on the walls, and Stevie painted the trim with a small brush. First, however, Stevie outlined a life-size pink horse on one of the bare walls.
“Stevie!” Lisa said, turning just as Stevie was painting in a wind-tossed mane.
“You’re going to paint this wall with the same paint anyway,” Stevie said quickly. “I don’t think the horse will show.”
“But I didn’t know you could paint horses!” Lisa said.
Carole burst out laughing. “Sure you did, Lisa. Don’t you remember when we painted the barn?”
Lisa and Stevie started laughing, too. One of Pine Hollow’s horses had gotten loose and run underneath their ladder, and a bucket of paint had spilled on him. He hadn’t been hurt, but he had looked unusually colorful for a few weeks.
“Still,” Lisa said, “you ought to be taking painting classes this summer, not me. I’m going to tell my mom.”
Stevie shook her head. “I only do horses,” she said quickly. She stepped back to admire her work. “This is great, to have a whole wall to work on. Usually I’ve only got the margins of my math papers. Do you think it looks like Belle?”
Carole studied the painted horse’s happy expression. “Yes,” she said. “But I don’t think you could draw a horse that didn’t look like Belle. You know her best, after all.”
Flying Horse Page 6