Lisa’s heart had contracted with fear. “Spotted fever! Is that deadly?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
The doctor looked at her gravely. “If left untreated it can have severe consequences: partial paralysis of the lower extremities, gangrene leading to possible amputation, hearing loss, possible movement and language disorders.”
Lisa realized she must have looked alarmed, because he had placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, we caught them both in time. You say Carole suffered a seizure this evening?”
Lisa nodded.
He nodded his head knowingly. “That’s rare. Only about ten percent of victims have that reaction, but it does happen. Good thing for her you were there.”
As the doctor checked Lisa out, cleaning and disinfecting her wounds, he questioned her closely about where they had gone and what they had done since arriving at the ranch.
She filled him in to the best of her ability and was surprised to find him smiling when she finished.
“You’re making me jealous,” he said. “Next time you girls come to visit, I’d sure appreciate an invitation to tag along.”
Lisa smiled, too, in spite of her aches and pains.
“Here’s my thinking.… Rocky Mountain spotted fever is carried by ticks and transmitted through their bite.”
Lisa had a sudden flashback to both Kate and Carole scratching their arms and legs over the last few days.
“Since no one else around these parts has complained of the same symptoms,” he continued, “I think we can be fairly certain you girls came in contact with it at that pond. That means it’s now officially off-limits. Sorry.”
Later Mrs. Devine made Lisa a bowl of hot soup and tucked her into bed. The bunkhouse, missing both Kate and Carole, had seemed lonely and big, and Lisa had been sure she would never be able to fall asleep. She was out almost before her head touched the pillow.
Now it was morning and, by the look of the sun, well into it. I’ve probably missed breakfast, but maybe I can scrounge something from the kitchen. I’m starving!
Crawling painfully out of bed, Lisa was forced to put on some of the new clothes her mom had bought because everything else was dirty. The clothes she had worn the night before were downright unsalvageable. She held up the jeans. Her slide down the cliff had really destroyed them—they were torn at the knees and stained with ground-in dirt and blood. The shirt was even worse—sleeves practically ripped from the shoulders, pockets torn off, the front in tatters, and several buttons missing.
She tossed the jeans in the trash and was about to do the same thing with the shirt when she changed her mind and returned it to her suitcase. It would make an interesting memento of the trip.
She limped to the main house, her body protesting every step.
There was nobody around when she got there, so she decided to check on Carole and Kate before looking for food. She didn’t knock, in case they were sleeping, but instead eased the bedroom door open quietly and peeked inside.
“Lisa,” Carole called to her. “My hero!”
Lisa felt herself blush.
“Come in,” Kate invited, propping herself up against a cushion of several pillows.
“How are you two doing?” Lisa asked, closing the door behind her.
Kate made a face and held up her hands. They were covered with red splotches sprinkled with tiny purple dots. “Something for Carole to look forward to,” she said ruefully.
Lisa perched on the edge of the bed. “Good thing the prom is a long time away. You might have a hard time getting a date looking like that.”
Carole and Kate exchanged looks and burst out laughing. “Have you looked in the mirror this morning?” Carole asked her.
“No.”
“Go on, take a peek,” Kate urged.
Lisa got up and moved to the vanity mirror. The image it reflected took her completely by surprise. Her lip was swollen and purple where she had bitten it, her chin and the tip of her nose showed nasty red scratches from sliding facedown in the dirt, and she had a shiner to beat all shiners encircling her right eye. She touched it tentatively and winced. “I look like I was in a boxing match!”
“I’d say none of us in this room is prom material,” Carole laughed.
“At least you didn’t catch this plague,” Kate said. “Something to be thankful for.”
Lisa smiled wearily. “True.”
“I have a lot more than that to be thankful for,” Carole said solemnly. “Thank you, Lisa. You saved my life.”
Embarrassed, Lisa shrugged. “You would have done the same for me.”
“I’m not sure I could have,” Carole told her. “Have you seen this?” She pulled something out from under her pillow. “Paula showed it to me this morning.”
Lisa went to the bed and took the object from her hand. It was a Polaroid photograph of the face of a cliff. Lisa shrugged. “So?”
“Lisa,” Carole said quietly, “that’s what you rode down last night.”
Lisa was totally stunned. She looked at the picture again, taking in the absurd steepness of the terrain and the teeny tiny trail she now remembered so vividly working her way down. She swallowed hard. “Yeah, well, Stewball did most of the work.”
Carole, with tears in her eyes, opened her arms wide. Lisa gave her a big hug, feeling infinitely grateful that the two of them had both made it through the night.
“What about me?” Kate demanded from the other bed.
Lisa laughed and went to hug her, too. The three of them chatted for a little while longer, and then Lisa left them alone to sleep and recuperate while she went in search of food.
Mrs. Devine was in the kitchen, and the minute Lisa showed herself she was enfolded in another warm embrace.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” Mrs. Devine gushed. “After what you went through last night, I thought you should sleep as long as you wanted this morning.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Devine,” she said, settling herself in a chair. “Could I have a couple of pieces of toast?” she asked hopefully. “I can make it myself.”
To her amazement Mrs. Devine looked like she was going to burst into tears. “A couple of pieces of toast?” she cried. “After riding down a cliff in the middle of the night to save your friend? When I saw that photograph my heart nearly stopped.”
I guess Paula has been making the rounds this morning. I hope she didn’t show the picture to the whole ranch.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Devine. It’s over now.”
“You must be starving,” she said, wiping her eyes on her apron. “I saved you some breakfast. Ham and eggs and cottage fries.” She pulled a heaping plate out of the oven and presented it to Lisa.
“Wow. Thanks, Mrs. Devine,” Lisa said gratefully. Her mouth watered as she picked up her fork. “It looks wonderful.”
Mrs. Devine smiled happily. “I baked you a fresh batch of biscuits, too. No cowboy leaves home without biscuits in her belly.”
Lisa smiled. She remembered Kate’s thoughts on biscuits, but it didn’t stop her from slathering them with fresh honey and filling herself until she thought she would burst. She would have stopped sooner, but the more she ate the happier Mrs. Devine seemed to look.
While she was eating, Lisa wondered what would happen next. The events of the night before all seemed sort of unreal now, but what was undeniable was the fact that both her friends were confined to bed for the rest of their stay. What was she going to do on her own? She could hang out with Paula, but the woman wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. Certainly not when compared to Carole, Kate, or Stevie.
Mrs. Devine interrupted her thoughts. “Lisa, there’s someone here to see you.”
“Really?” she asked, surprised. “Who?”
Her question was answered when Professor Jackson poked his head through the kitchen door. “May I come in?”
Lisa almost knocked her glass of milk over in her rush to rise to her feet. “Of course, Professor.”
Professor Jac
kson crossed the room and took hold of her hand. “Lisa, I can’t thank you enough for what you did last night.”
“Did they catch the thieves?” In her concern for Carole she had almost forgotten about the attempt to loot the dig site.
“They did,” Professor Jackson assured her.
“How much did they get away with?” The idea that those horrible people would be selling the professor’s hard-earned fossils really made her mad. Especially after they had practically killed her to get them.
“Not much at all,” he told her. “Several of the crooks were very happy to turn on their employer in exchange for more lenient sentences. As a result we recovered almost everything they took.”
Lisa was gratified. “I’m glad. How did they get there without the guards being alerted, anyhow?”
The professor looked chagrined. “Apparently I was outbid. They bribed the guards to look the other way.”
Lisa shook her head in disbelief.
“Lisa,” the professor continued softly. “You do realize that you saved hundreds of irreplaceable artifacts, worth millions of dollars, from disappearing into the black market, don’t you?”
Lisa didn’t want to disappoint him, but she felt she had to be honest. “I was only trying to save Carole,” she confessed. “I sort of stumbled on the other stuff.”
The professor reached out, held her chin in his hand, and looked her in the eyes. “My dear girl. I’ve heard what you did, and I saw where you went. You’re amazing. Really amazing.”
What did Paula do? Publish the picture in the newspaper?
“How can I possibly thank you?” he asked.
Lisa broke into a smile as an idea came to her head. For the rest of her vacation, Kate and Carole would be out of commission. Maybe she could use the time to learn something new. “Professor,” she said slowly, “I’m really fascinated by your dinosaurs. Is there anything I could do to help?”
Professor Jackson smiled broadly, his eyes sparkling. “Oh, my dear … funny you should ask. We made a most remarkable discovery only yesterday, and we certainly could use some extra help excavating it.
“You could?”
“Absolutely. Do you know anything about Triceratops?”
FINALLY, after what seemed like a very long time, The Saddle Club was back together again.
“It’s so nice not to look like a plague victim anymore,” Carole said, examining herself in her bedroom mirror. “I finished all my medication today.”
“It’s too bad, though, that Stevie will never get to see the pond,” Lisa said wistfully. “That was an amazing day.”
“And this is an amazing souvenir,” Stevie told her, looking at a dinosaur tooth that Professor Jackson had given to Lisa. “I can’t believe he let you keep it.”
“By the end of our stay, the professor told me he would be pleased to work with me any time,” she said proudly. “He even told me how to go about applying for an assignment with him when I get to college.”
“That’s a long way off yet,” Stevie reminded her.
Carole clucked her tongue. “It’s never too soon to begin planning for your future. But I have to admit, I thought you wanted to do something with horses, Lisa.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“What?” Stevie cried with consternation.
Lisa laughed. “Take it easy. You know I love horses, and I can’t imagine not being involved with them somehow for the rest of my life.” She hesitated. “I’m just not sure that they’re going to be my career. That dinosaur dig was really fascinating!”
“Sounds like the two of you had the greatest summer of your lives,” Stevie moped. “I always miss out on the good stuff.”
“Stevie!” Lisa cried. “There’s nothing good about having Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and there’s nothing fun about riding down a cliff in the dark, wondering if your friend will still be alive when, and if, you manage to return!”
“By the way, the picture of that cliff sent chills down my spine,” Stevie told her. “I can hardly believe you could get a horse to go down that thing.”
“Stewball is an exceptional horse,” Lisa said quietly. “You were right about him all along.”
Stevie leaned back in a chair and propped her feet up on the bed. “Yeah, I’ve got good instincts when it comes to horses,” she admitted. She grew serious. “He wasn’t hurt or anything, right?”
“I was the one who was trashed,” said Lisa. “Outside of a skinned knee and a few little nicks and cuts around his ankles from the loose rocks, he was raring to go the next morning. You’d have thought he’d had the time of his life,” she laughed. “It was nice of Paula to ride out and take that photo for me.”
“That was some front-page headline that ran with it, too,” Carole chuckled.
“ ‘Girl Foils Thieves in Daring Midnight Ride,’ ” Stevie quoted. “Thanks for bringing me a copy, Carole.”
“No problem.”
“I can’t believe Paula actually submitted it to the newspaper,” Lisa grumbled.
“Sounds like she really warmed up to you two by the end of the visit,” Stevie said.
“I can’t blame her for not liking us at first, not after Kate built us up like that,” Carole said. “You know, Paula may not be the most sociable person in the world, but she sure does know about horses.”
“I, for one, have had about all the being social I can stand for one year,” Stevie declared.
“Tell us about the wedding,” Carole urged her. “Was the bride’s dress to die for?”
Lisa settled herself in Carole’s window seat. “Go on, Stevie. Give us all the details.”
“I have to admit, it was pretty cool. Robin’s parents pulled out all the stops. The place was filled with flowers, especially yellow roses, which were the bride’s favorite.”
“What about the dress?” Carole prodded.
“My dress was very nice, thanks. Kind of a summery floral patterned vest with a knee-length pleated skirt. My mom even loaned me her pearls.”
“Not your dress!” Carole yelled. “The bride’s dress!”
“All right, all right,” Stevie chuckled. “It was white.”
Lisa rolled her eyes. “Duh.”
“The top was lace with long sleeves that dipped below her wrists, and the back of it was cut really low, with four strands of pearls draped across.”
Carole raised her eyebrows. “Sounds very sophisticated.”
Stevie nodded. “The skirt was satin and kind of bell-shaped, but it had this huge train in the back.”
“I definitely want a long train and veil when I get married,” Lisa declared.
Stevie frowned. “That could be a problem.”
“Why?”
“Who’s going to want to marry you?” Stevie replied, struggling to keep a straight face.
“Oh, thanks a lot!” Lisa laughed.
“Maybe if you kept the veil over your face.”
Lisa threw a little stuffed pony at her.
“Hey, careful with that!” Mrs. Devine had sent it home for Stevie. It was like the ones she had made for Carole and Lisa.
“I almost left out the best part,” Stevie told them when they had all stopped giggling. “The bride and groom rode away in a horse-drawn carriage!”
“You’re kidding!” Carole squealed. “What a great idea!”
“Dava didn’t think so,” Stevie said gleefully. “She spent the rest of the party telling anyone who would listen how a white stretch limo would have been so much more chic. After a while her mother got fed up and told her to be quiet or she would have to leave the party.”
“How wonderful,” Carole said.
“It sounds to me like you had plenty of adventures of your own while you were gone,” Lisa declared. “You attended the social event of the Massachusetts season, saved a horse’s life, and ruined an outfit you hated. So the visit wasn’t a complete washout.”
“How did your mom take it when she saw your clothes?” Carole asked Stevie.
>
“When she heard what had happened with Sugar, she was so proud that she didn’t care at all,” Stevie told her. “And the look on Dava’s face when she saw Will with me was worth the whole trip.”
Lisa sat up a little. “It turned out they knew each other?”
Stevie nodded with a satisfied grin. “Remember how I told you Dava had gone on a trail ride in order to impress a boy?”
Lisa and Carole nodded.
“Turns out that boy was Will!”
“You’re kidding!”
Stevie held up her hands for silence. “I’ve saved the best part for last,” she declared, pulling a folded piece of paper out of the pocket of her jeans. “This morning my dear cousin Dava sent me an e-mail.”
Lisa grimaced. “Uh-oh. What mean things did she say this time?”
“Lisa,” Stevie said in shocked tones, “you misjudge Dava. She has nothing but nice things to say about me. According to this, she can’t wait for me to come back.”
“What?” Carole snatched the e-mail away. “What’s up with that?”
“I wouldn’t trust her for a minute,” Lisa declared, running across the room to read over Carole’s shoulder. “She must want something.”
“You’re absolutely right. Turns out she’s desperate to get Will to like her and—get this—she wants me to send him an e-mail saying nice things about her!”
The three girls grew teary-eyed with laughter at the very idea.
“Of course you’re not going to do it,” Carole said.
“Actually I am.”
Her two friends stopped laughing and stared at her.
“Why, Stevie?” Lisa demanded. “She was so mean to you!”
Stevie smiled slyly. “This way she’ll never be able to hold it over my head that I didn’t try to help. And I’m going to explain to Will why I’m saying such nice things.”
Carole nodded. “Pretty smart.”
“Thank you,” Stevie said with grave dignity. “There’s just one thing I need from the two of you.”
“What’s that?” Lisa asked.
“Some help composing my e-mail to Will. I have to figure out something—anything—nice to say about my cousin.”
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