Show Days (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 32)

by Claire Svendsen

  But Rags was practically foaming at the mouth. I don’t think slow and steady was going to be an option.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Trying to make a horse something that he wasn’t was never a good idea. I liked to work with what a horse had and try to turn that into something useful. If they liked to go fast then they went in the speed classes, if they were slow and careful then they could be a good jumper and maybe not win a jump off but still go clean and clear. I wasn’t sure why Rae would want me to try and turn Rags into something he wasn’t. He would never be a slow and steady horse. He’d always be one of those that liked to gallop flat out and go all in. He was hot blooded and you’d never change that about him and maybe she didn’t want me to turn him off completely, just tone him down a bit.

  But Rags was excited by the lights and the crowds, the cheers coming from the big ring when someone went clear and the groans when a horse pulled a rail. He pranced into the ring and arched his neck. His black coat shone like a polished stone under the lights and there was already a light sheen of sweat on his neck again. I placed my hand on his shoulder and tried to keep him steady. To control my breathing and slow my heart rate. It wasn’t easy. I was excited and nervous too. I wanted to do well to impress Rae and also to show Jessica that I wasn’t just a pony rider. There was a lot riding on one small class and a slightly crazy horse.

  I gathered my reins and tried to remember the course. I’d been so worried about everything else and trying to make sure that I was helping the clients that I hadn’t spent the time that I normally would have memorizing the course. We’d walked it once and that was it. And suddenly my mind was blank. The first fence was a purple vertical. We cantered towards it and Rags launched a foot over the rails. I followed the hoof prints in the footing to the second fence, a white oxer but then where? There was a yellow fan jump to the right and a blue and white vertical leading on to a double oxer to the left. Sweat was running down my back and I was running out of time to make a decision.

  But the fact that I wasn’t sure where we were going made Rags unsure too and instead of taking advantage of the fact that I was drawing a blank and internally panicking, he was calm. It was almost like he knew both of us couldn’t lose it at the same time. The reins were slack on his neck as I gave him his head. He turned for the blue and white jump and as we cleared it, I didn’t hear a bell to tell us that we were off course. I felt a wave of relief wash over me as we bounced through the double combination. After that it all came flooding back to me. The liverpool to the brush fence. The airy purple vertical to the triple combination and before I knew it we were coming through the finish line clean.

  “What was that?” Shelby said, looking amazed as we came out of the ring at a calm and collected walk. “He didn’t spook or freak out or do anything stupid. What did you do?”

  “I forgot the course,” I told her as I loosened Rags’ girth. “But don’t tell Rae. I completely blanked. I don’t know what happened to me.”

  “It happens to the best of us,” she said. “But yeah, don’t mention that one to Rae. She wouldn’t be amused.”

  Rae might not have been amused if she knew the truth but she was impressed. She told me that she’d never seen Rags that quiet before and she wanted to know what I had done differently.

  “Nothing,” I said with a shrug.

  We waited for the class to finish to see how many would be in the jump off. In the end there were only three of us. As I waited, I had burned the jump off course into my brain. I didn’t need Rags to be slow again. This time I needed him to be fast. The other two horses were not as fast as the black horse and their riders not as daredevil as I knew that I could be. We could win this one, if Rags kept all the jumps up.

  “We have to go fast now,” I whispered as I tightened his girth again. “Do your thing. Okay?”

  But it was like Rags had slipped into a coma or something. Maybe all the galloping on the lunge line had worn him out. Perhaps he just decided that it was past his bed time and he wasn’t really into it anymore but either way, I used way more leg than I thought I’d ever have to on him and we weren’t that fast. We finished second. I patted his neck, not really upset with him. Second at a big show was nothing to scoff at but I could see Jessica outside the ring smirking. We hadn’t made a disgrace of ourselves but we hadn’t come out victorious either.

  “I hope he’s not destined to be a second place horse forever,” Rae said.

  She seemed annoyed or maybe she was just disappointed. I wasn’t sure but it wasn’t the congratulations that she had given me the first time. I wondered how many more chances she would give me to win before she gave the ride to Jessica.

  “I think he got so excited when he first got here that he just burned himself out,” I said but Rae was already walking away, talking on her phone.

  “I thought she said that winning didn’t matter,” I said as Shelby and I walked back to the trailer, the black horse walking quietly between us.

  “There was a client here that she was hoping to show Rags to if he did well,” Shelby said.

  “Second place is well,” I told her. “Rae said it’s not all about winning.”

  “Maybe not to her,” she replied. “But it is to her clients. They pay to win.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I tied Rags to the trailer because he was now too tired to care and thanked him for doing a good job. I gave him a treat and he crunched it thoughtfully. There was a lot going on in that horse’s head and I knew that if I could just get through to him then we would be a winning combination. That didn’t mean that he would be with someone else. He was a quirky horse and not an easy ride. I don’t know who Rae was hoping to sell him to but I hoped that it wasn’t some novice who didn’t know what they were doing because they could easily get killed on a horse like Rags.

  We spend the rest of the evening doing our work. There were times where we had a few minutes to watch the clients ride their horses. To cheer when they did well and commiserate when they didn’t. Faye wasn’t there and neither was Trixie so the only one I really knew was Marty. The rest were a nameless bunch of women in breeches whose names I still couldn’t remember.

  It was well after midnight when the last class finished and we finally got to pack up.

  “Do you think they’ll let us sleep in tomorrow morning?” Jessica said with a yawn, tossing an expensive saddle carelessly into the trailer.

  “You mean this morning,” I said.

  “What do you think?” Theresa snapped as she went to retrieve the saddle. She shoved it back in Jessica’s arms. “Horses still have to eat and don’t throw around expensive tack unless you want to get a bill for replacing it.”

  “It slipped,” Jessica said, taking the saddle and placing it gently on the rack.

  “Well make sure it doesn’t slip again,” Theresa said.

  She could see through Jessica’s fake smiles and that made me happy, even if Rae couldn’t. She would in the end though, I knew that I just had to be patient.

  The clients started to leave, patting their horses and waving goodbye. They wouldn’t be coming back to the barn with us. They’d be going home to shower and crawl into their nice, comfy beds while we’d be hosing and wrapping and settling the horses in for what was left of the night and then rolling into our own lumpy, bumpy beds, too tired to fight over who got to use the shower.

  “Come on,” Shelby said, swinging the lead rope at Roxy’s butt.

  The mare had planted her feet and refused to get in the trailer. There was always one who decided that they couldn’t be bothered to go home and it was always when it was late and you were tired and just wanted to yell at them to get up in there like they’d done a thousand times before even though you knew that would only make matters worse.

  “I think there is a bag of carrots somewhere around here,” I said as Shelby looked at me desperately. “I’ll get some.”

  If she couldn’t get the horse in the trailer it would not only make her loo
k incompetent but also mean that she’d have to ride her back along the trail in the dark. Rae had already left with the biggest rig, taking Infanta and the most expensive horses back to the barn. Theresa had gone with her. Julio was loading up supplies in the other trailer, getting ready to take these horses back. He would see our failure if we didn’t get the mare inside.

  “Come on Roxy,” I said, walking up the ramp and showing the mare a carrot. “Your friends are inside and look, a nice carrot is waiting for you if you come in here.”

  I waved it just out of reach. She stretched out her neck but refused to move her feet.

  “Try walking her away and trotting her in,” I suggested but the mare just slid to a stop when she got to the ramp.

  We tried everything. Grain. Carrots. A crop. By now Julio had found out we were having a problem and was behind the mare trying to push her in. She pinned her ears and kicked out at him, narrowly missing his shin. He swore under his breath in Spanish then smacked the mare on the rump. She jumped away from him, her eyes wide.

  “I’ll get her in,” Jessica said, snatching the lead rope away from Shelby.

  “Be my guest,” she said, putting her hands up in defeat.

  But Jessica couldn’t get her in either, she wouldn’t go in for Julio and even I had to try but by now the mare was having none of it.

  “You walk her back,” Julio told Shelby, who now looked pale.

  “Through the woods, alone?” She gulped.

  “You.” He pointed at me. “Go with her.”

  “Me?” I said.

  It was like we were being punished for something we hadn’t even done wrong. Julio had been around these horses forever. I knew that if he really wanted to, he could have got Roxy to go in the trailer but he couldn’t be bothered and now he was taking it out on us.

  “Have fun on the trail,” Jessica said as she got in the truck with a smile. “Don’t get eaten by alligators.”

  “I really hate that girl,” Shelby muttered through gritted teeth.

  “She’s certainly not here to make friends,” I said as we watched the trailer drive away.

  We were left standing there with one bay mare, two flashlights and our cell phones.

  “I don’t see why we can’t just leave her here,” Shelby said, looking longingly at the temporary stabling where people were still putting their horses away.

  But I knew why. Marty couldn’t have afforded it and if she got a big bill for overnight stabling at the show, she’d want to know why and that would mean Rae would have to tell her that her seasoned show horse wouldn’t get into the trailer. And no one wanted to tell a client that.

  Plus, Marty usually did her own trailering and had only decided to let Roxy come with us because it would be so late when we were done and she wanted to get home. That would mean that the owner could get her own horse to load but we couldn’t and certainly made us look like we didn’t know what we were doing. I wished that I had a magic wand, something I could wave over the horse and make her magically load but it was too late for that now. She was tired and frustrated and so were we.

  “Come on,” I told Shelby. “Let’s get this over and done with.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “This isn’t right,” Shelby said as we left the show grounds and the safety of the lights and the people. “Rae would never approve.”

  “Well maybe she doesn’t know and won’t have to know,” I said.

  I thought of how Rae would be disappointed in us and the fact that Jessica would make sure that she told us that we were incompetent.

  “She’ll know,” Shelby said. “Julio will tell her. He tells her everything.”

  “Then maybe he’ll be the one who gets in trouble,” I said.

  “Julio never gets in trouble for anything.” She sighed.

  “He has to do something wrong sometimes?” I said but Shelby just shrugged.

  Roxy was tired but seemed excited to be leaving on an adventure. Unlike how she planted her feet and wouldn’t get in the trailer, now she pricked her ears and picked up her step as we walked into the dark woods.

  “She’s happy,” I said. “Look at her.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever look at her the same way again,” Shelby said, the lead rope swinging loose in her hands. “I thought she was one of the good ones.”

  “Even the good ones have their off days,” I said.

  Shelby made a grunting noise and so I didn’t say anything else. Our flashlights swung back and forth over the trail, making sure there were no obstacles in our way but they weren’t that powerful and it would have been hard to distinguish a stick from a snake. We picked our way over lumps of sand and around boulders and trees, following the sandy trail so that we didn’t get lost. I’d been lost in the woods before and I wasn’t too keen to repeat the experience but we both had our phones and the trail wasn’t that long. It was just the fact that it was spooky.

  “What was that?” Shelby said as a haunting noise rung out above us.

  “An owl I think,” I said. “Or some kind of squirrel maybe?”

  “A killer squirrel?” she said.

  We both laughed, breaking the tension but I knew that the dark woods were not a place for two girls and a show horse and that we never should have been told to walk through them alone, in the middle of the night.

  A few steps later and there was a sort of grunting noise.

  “What was that?” Shelby cried.

  I didn’t want to tell her that I thought it was an alligator so I just shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” I told her.

  We reached the stream and swung the flashlights back and forth, looking for eyes that were glinting in the water or the splashing sound that would mean an alligator was coming for us. They didn’t usually attack humans. We were too big for them. But anything splashing in the water was game for them and a horse’s hooves would make a nice thing for them to latch on to. That or one of our feet.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get this over and done with.”

  We crossed where the wooden planks were placed on a sandy rise and barely even a bridge but it was enough to get across without getting wet.

  Roxy balked at the crossing.

  “Oh no you don’t,” I said. “We are going home and not having any more of your nonsense.”

  Shelby tugged on the lead rope and I swung the extra one that I’d brought with me, tapping it against the mare’s rump. She scuttled across the bridge, almost slipping into the water but then we were across, safe on the other side.

  “That was a relief,” Shelby said as lightning flashed across the dark sky.

  “Yes but I think it’s going to rain. We’d better get a move on if we want to get back in the dry,” I told her.

  We ran with the mare, encouraging her to trot beside us. She was tired and didn’t want to but we made her anyway. None of us wanted to get stuck out there in a thunderstorm and just as the first raindrops fell there were the bright lights of the barn, welcoming us home. Rae was standing under them with a worried look on her face.

  “There you girls are. Are you alright? I can’t believe Julio made you walk back in the dark. I would have brought the smaller trailer and come back to get you if he’d just told you to stay put. Roxy likes that one better and can be a bit of a bear about going into the big one sometimes,” she said.

  “Would have been good to know,” Shelby mumbled.

  “Julio,” Rae called out, taking the mare from us. “Take care of Roxy at once.”

  Julio came over and gave us a steely glare before whisking the mare into the barn. I guess he could do wrong after all. I mean having us braid all the horses as a prank was one thing but making us walk back in the dark through the woods with a valuable client’s horse was something else. I was pretty sure that Julio had got an earful when Rae found out what had happened.

  “Jessica and Theresa are just finishing up so you girls can go to bed,” Rae said, putting her arms around our shoulders. “And
I’m sorry you had to go through that. It must have been very frightening.”

  “It was,” Shelby said. “There was an alligator and it almost got us when we crossed the bridge.”

  I looked at her and raised an eyebrow but she just smiled behind Rae’s back. I knew that she was going to milk this for all she could and I guess if it got us some special treatment then maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad.

  “You poor darlings,” Rae said. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

  Shelby winked at me. She knew what she was doing. And if walking through the woods at night was going to get us ahead in some way then I’d be more than happy to do it again but right now all I wanted was a shower and sleep. Long, glorious, uninterrupted sleep.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The sleep that I longed for may have been glorious and uninterrupted but it certainly wasn’t long enough. Even though we’d had a long day and a traumatic experience, apparently that didn’t mean that we were excused from barn chores.

  I got up, rubbing sleep from my eyes as I dragged on my clothes and stumbled out into the dark. It was normal to have to get up early to feed the horses, especially in the summer but on the show circuit, it was especially so. The horses all looked tired and grumpy after their long night and Rags pinned his ears at me as I dumped his grain into his bucket.

  “If you don’t want it, don’t eat it,” I told him.

  He swished his tail and made a grunting noise but stuffed his face in to eat the grain anyway. We got to work cleaning stalls. The schedule on the white board said that a couple of the clients were coming for lessons later and no one was showing today, for which I was glad. But Trixie was coming to ride Peter Pan and I was looking forward to helping her. She at least was thankful for the help and didn’t look down her nose at me.

  True to her word, Rae told Shelby and me that we’d both get a lesson later as payment for our late night journey through the woods. I think it was also for our silence. We’d all been told not to tell Marty that her mare wouldn’t load or that she was walked through the woods late at night. I didn’t exactly agree with the concept. Roxy belonged to Marty and yes she was a client of Rae’s and since Rae was her trainer, she was basically in charge of the horse but that didn’t mean that Marty shouldn’t know what was going on.