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Authors: Dandi Daley Mackall

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Bold Beauty (4 page)

BOOK: Bold Beauty
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I took that as a yes, knowing it was as close as I'd get to one, and hurried out to Bold Beauty.

I passed Summer in the middle of the arena. “Don't tell me. You're going to catch her. Big deal!”

Summer was right. I'd need to do more than catch a horse to convince Jeffrey to give me a chance with Beauty. Richard had him convinced the horse was a lost cause and I was Cinderella of the Stables. Even if I caught Beauty, Richard would say it was luck or they'd tired her out for me.

I had to convince them I knew what I was doing. “Easy, girl,” I called as I approached the mare.

She snorted and pawed the ground.

I eased my arms out from my sides, forming a
T
with my body. I stared directly at her, an aggressive move in horse language. “Don't you dare come to me!” I called. “Get moving.”

I stepped toward her, forcing her into a trot away from me. I stayed angled on her, making her trot in a circle around me. “That's right. I didn't say you could come in yet, did I?”

She broke into a canter but stayed to the circle, eyeing me, bobbing her head.

Still facing Beauty, I called back to the Howards. “Ever notice how, when you go into a pasture filled with horses, they all come to you except the one you want to catch?” My voice sounded raspier than usual. I swallowed.

“That's exactly right!” Adrianna laughed.

“It's not a coincidence. You're only trying to catch that one, and horses don't like to be caught. In fact, you should never try to catch a horse. Instead, let the horse catch you. That's what I'm doing here. I'm making Beauty want to catch me, to
join up.

“We don't have time for this!” Richard objected. But I didn't hear any of them leave.

I kept Beauty trotting. “Not yet,” I told her. “Not yet, girl.”

After a minute, her head lowered. Then I saw what I was waiting for. She licked her lips. In horse language, that means
Can I come in and hang out with you?

I lowered my arms and looked away from her. “Come on in now. Good girl.”

Bold Beauty walked straight to me. I scratched her withers. Without taking her reins, I turned my back and joined the others. Beauty followed at my shoulder all the way over.

“Bravo!” Adrianna cried. “Well done!”

“Not bad,” Jeffrey admitted, his lips curving into a grin.

“So you'll let me train her? Two weeks. That's all I need. I'll have her sailing over that high hurdle—”

“She can't train here!” Summer cried.

“Winnie doesn't work horses here!” Richard roared. “I can't allow it.”

I glared at them. It wasn't fair. They didn't want Beauty—or me—to have a chance. I knew if I asked their dad, he'd say the same thing. “I can train her in my pasture! There's even a hedge the same height as that high jump!”

“Really?” Adrianna turned to her husband. “We could loan her our cavalletti!” She pointed to the pole jump and the stack of red-and-white poles to the side.

I'd know what to do with them. Mom had used cavalletti poles to work with jumpers in Wyoming.

“I don't know . . .” Jeffrey looked at his wife.

“Jeffrey, if there's any chance Beauty could work out, I think it's worth a try. We could leave her while we're on our honeymoon.”

Jeffrey put his arm around her and turned to me. “My wife is impossible to argue with. We're leaving tonight. Can you bring your trailer and pick up the mare?”

Yes!

Summer laughed. “Her trailer? The day Winnie gets a trailer, I'll get a spaceship and fly to Venus!”

Note to self: Get a trailer.

“You won't be sorry! You'll see!” I couldn't believe it. They were going to let me train her! “And I'll just ride Beauty home!” I started to mount. My mucking boots barely fit into the metal stirrups.

“Ride her? On streets?” Adrianna asked.

“She's traffic shy. Since she started refusing jumps, she's scared of everything,” Jeffrey explained.

I swung up into the saddle. She had to be at least 17½ hands high, two hands taller than Nickers. “Then I'll cure her traffic shyness, too.”

“Didn't I tell you she had enough confidence for all of us?” Adrianna stood on tiptoes and handed me her hat.

“Two weeks then,” Jeffrey said. “We'll pay you what we were paying Spidells, if that's all right. Half the monthly fee?”

I gulped. Half the Spidell fee was four times what I charged Hawk to keep Towaco. With that much money, I wouldn't have to muck Spidells' stalls all winter. “Great!”

I rode out of the stable and down the long driveway.
God, thanks for giving them confidence in me.

The stirrups were too long, or my legs too short. It had been a couple of years since I'd ridden a hunt saddle, and it felt weird—light, like English saddles, but deep-seated, with padded knee rolls. Give me bareback any day.

Beauty still wore the sheepskin-lined leather tendon boots that protected her from clipping her front feet with her hind hooves. The boots clumped along as she pranced down the road.

The Howards drove by in a silver car and waved. Beauty tensed, but didn't bolt.

The orange sun hung low, leaving the air chilled and tuning up a chorus of crickets. I felt like jumping over the sun and almost believed I could. Beauty raised each hoof too high, springing from the road, flicking her ears at a woodpecker, snorting at falling leaves. Behind us, a horn honked.

Beauty stopped, her legs stiff, every muscle coiled.

“Easy,” I murmured, scratching her withers.

Richard pulled up beside us in his new black Mustang convertible. “We don't appreciate you stealing clients!”

“You'd given up on this horse, Richard! What was I supposed to do?”

“Well, you're fired!”

“I quit!”

He gunned the engine, squealing tires, spraying gravel and dust.

Beauty reared, then bolted sideways. I tried to get her back on the road. But her hooves slid on the grass. Her hind legs scrambled.

“Whoa!”

She couldn't whoa. We slid toward the ditch in slow motion. Right fore and hind foot plunged down the ditch. And, like a plastic horse knocked on its side, Beauty toppled over.

My elbow brushed the ground, but I managed to stay in the saddle. Beauty and I were practically lying on the side of the ditch.

“Easy,” I murmured.

I thought I heard someone calling my name. But I couldn't look. It was all I could do to stay on.

Beauty thrust her head forward. With a lunge, she stumbled up and out of the ditch. My heart pounded. Beauty shook herself off like a dog coming out of a pond.

“Man, you okay?” Catman Coolidge hopped off his back bike, Dad's first sale. Catman's blond hair flowed behind him, and his wire-rimmed glasses scooted down his nose.

I don't think I'd ever seen Catman un-calm before. He's so cool, a throwback to the 60s. He looks like a hippie in an old movie about protests and flower children.

Catman touched my muck boot, as if he didn't care how dirty it was. “Bummer about the fall!”

I felt like crying. It might have been from Beauty's close call . . . or because I didn't know Catman cared so much. He was probably the best friend I had, although neither of us would have said so. I hated that he'd seen me almost fall.

“I'm still on,” I pointed out. “And in one piece. Meet Bold Beauty. I'm training her to jump.”

“Already pretty jumpy.” He retrieved his bike and turned it around to head in my direction. “That's a lot of horse, Winnie.”

The last thing I wanted was for Catman to doubt me as a horse gentler. “She's
not
too much horse for me. Mom told me about a horse foaled in England over 150 years ago, a Shire gelding that measured 21½ hands. That's almost 7½ feet tall.”

“Maybe the trainer stood over five feet.” He was teasing. I
am
over five feet. But I knew he didn't totally believe I could handle Beauty.

As I rode home with Catman walking his bike beside us, I filled him in on the details. “I've got two weeks to get Beauty over the high jump. I'll bet I could get her to take that big hedge right now if I wanted to.”

“Pretty sure of yourself for a cat who just came out of a ditch.”

“I am! And that's what Beauty needs. Nine times out of 10, a bad jump is the rider's fault. If the rider loses confidence, so will her horse.”

“I'm hip.”

As we walked, cats fell in behind us. Burg, a.k.a. Cat Burglar, one of Catman's brood, crept out from a bush, his black mask ruffled against his white fur. Churchill, a big, flat-faced cat, trudged along with Nelson, my barn cat. Four kittens darted out of a ditch. Catman was the pied piper of cats in Ashland, Ohio.

“Wilhemina!” Catman called.

Wilhemina is a fat orange tabby, named after the author Charles Dickens' cat. She plodded up behind us just as a pickup approached ahead of us.

Beauty froze, nostrils flaring. She jerked sideways, but I held her to the road. The truck passed us slowly, and I felt her relax.

Catman shook his head at Beauty.

“I told the Howards I'd cure her of shying, too,” I admitted.

He glanced up at me. “You got that kind of time?”

Why didn't he understand how good I am with horses? He'd seen me gentle my own horse, Nickers, and several other horses, too. But I guess Catman Coolidge was hard to impress.

When we reached my house, Catman beeped his bike horn. But instead of a beep, out came a sound like a rush of wind, a tornado.

Beauty shied, then kept walking.

“Catman, what did you do to your horn?” Before it had meowed, thanks to Dad's invention, the cat horn.

Catman grinned his catlike grin. “Your dad's idea. He figured out what they used for the tornados in that movie
Twister.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Camel. I went to the Cleveland Zoo and recorded a camel moaning.”

Note to self: Never go to the zoo with Catman.

Catman and his cats hung out with me in the barn. When Dad first rented our house from Pat Haven, he hadn't even known we'd be getting a barn thrown in. The building needed paint and a few repairs, but I loved the smell of horse and fresh hay and the way light poked through knots in the barn wood. Nickers loved her home, too.

I cooled Beauty down and introduced her to Towaco and Nickers. I'd planned on getting the three together slowly. But Nickers surprised me by being a good hostess and making up fast. Usually, she's as lousy with horses as I am with people.

Catman and I crossed the lawn, littered with “works-in-progress” people had dropped off for my dad, Odd-Job Willis, to fix. Dad can fix anything from radios to washing machines, but he'd rather work on his inventions. He claims that even in his insurance days he dreamed of becoming an inventor. He just never had time to work on stuff.

Dad stopped hammering and waved. “Catman! Come see this!”

“Hey, Dad!” I shouted, knowing he didn't mean to ignore me. He just gets so wrapped up in his inventions. And Catman had been helping him.

We headed for the pile of wood Dad was working on.

“Stop!” Lizzy dropped from a tree and threw herself in front of us. “Don't take another step!”

“Lizzy—,” I started.

“Can't you see what you're walking into? There!” She pointed, but I didn't see anything.

“Far out!” Catman stared into space.

“It's an orb weaver, Catman!” Lizzy exclaimed. “I watched him weave it. He got interrupted twice, and each time he started over from scratch, like the whole weaving pattern was memorized but only if he started from the beginning.”

I moved closer to Catman, and then I saw it. A fantastic web stretched between two trees, hundreds of thread-fine spokes crisscrossing circle after circle. I shuddered, glad I hadn't walked into it. “Where's the spider, Lizzy?”

BOOK: Bold Beauty
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