Horse Talk (9 page)

“That would be fine,” Max said. “A few phone calls can’t hurt. But even if the call was real—even if this child thinks she saw a horse—I wouldn’t get too worked up about it. In the first place, she might have seen a deer or a really big dog. And second, she said she saw it a while ago. Any escaped horse has probably found its way home long before this. I’m sure any horse would be fine now.”

“Sure,” Carole said. “We understand.” She wandered out of the office and went to give Starlight a hug. Lisa and Stevie trailed after her.

“If Starlight ran away, I would just die,” Carole said fiercely.

“I know,” said Stevie. “But Starlight wouldn’t run away. Horses know where their homes are. They’ve got great homing instincts, remember? So even if there was a missing horse, it probably did go home.”

“That’s right,” Lisa said. Privately she was not convinced. The more she thought about the last call, the more she was convinced that the little girl’s story was genuine. And if there was a loose horse … “The caller said she thought the horse needed help,” Lisa said.

From the pained expressions on Stevie’s and Carole’s faces, Lisa knew they were worried about that, too.

“How would she know?” Carole said. “She was probably just saying that. She didn’t seem to know much about horses.”

“That’s right,” said Stevie. “I’m sure she didn’t know what she was talking about. She probably saw a deer, anyway.” Stevie tried to sound convincing. What were the odds that the call would lead to a genuine horse in distress? Stevie knew that they had to be small. Still, she worried. What if the horse needed them?

“I wish I hadn’t hung up on Missa,” Lisa said. “We could have talked to her after
Horse Talk
was over.”

“It’s not your fault,” Carole said. “I thought she was a prank caller, too.”

“We all did,” said Stevie.

T
HEY WENT BACK
to Max’s office and asked if they could use the phone. First, they called Judy Barker. “I haven’t heard of any missing horses,” she said, “but I’ll call the other vets in the area if you’d like.” After that,
they called the tack shop, the feed store, and a few of the other boarding stables in the area. All promised to ask around for news of a missing horse, but no one had heard of one so far.

“That’s that,” Stevie said as she hung up the phone. “No missing horse.”

“I guess it must have been a prank,” Lisa said. “At least we tried.”

A
T SCHOOL THE
next morning, Mrs. Klemme stopped Carole and Lisa as they walked in the door together. “Nice job,” she said.

Carole made a face. “You must be joking,” said Lisa.

“I’m not,” Mrs. Klemme answered. “That couldn’t have been easy, and you two handled yourselves gracefully. Look at it this way:
Horse Talk
really has a lot of listeners!”

“I’ll tell you how I’m looking at it,” Carole said. “Only one week left!” Mrs. Klemme gave them an understanding smile.

O
N
F
RIDAY NIGHT
The Saddle Club had a sleepover at Lisa’s house. Carole arrived first, and she and Lisa were setting the dinner table when Stevie burst in, wild with excitement. “We’ve got to call Judy!” she said.

“What happened?” Lisa cried.

“Is one of the horses sick?” Carole asked. “Starlight?”

“No!” Stevie threw down her overnight bag and grinned at them. “I just came from Pine Hollow. Judy left a message for us there. I tried to call her back already, but the line was busy. She found a missing horse! Our call was real!”

T
HE GIRLS TRIED
three times to reach Judy, but her phone was busy each time. Since it wasn’t an emergency, they didn’t want to beep her. Finally, just before supper, they reached Judy’s husband, who said that Judy was out on a call but would call them back at Lisa’s house when she returned.

“He didn’t know any details,” Lisa said glumly, sliding into her place at the dinner table. The others nodded. After dinner they helped wash the dishes and clean up the kitchen. Still the phone didn’t ring.

“Do you think we should try calling her again?” Stevie asked. They left the kitchen and went up to Lisa’s room. “Maybe Judy’s husband took Lisa’s phone number down wrong.”

Lisa shook her head. “He repeated it to me. He said Judy would be a while.”

“Maybe we should watch a video,” Carole suggested. “I’d say we should work on
Horse Talk
, but I don’t know what we could do.” Stevie nodded, and Lisa sighed. All the kids at both their schools had found the latest
Horse Talk
hilarious. Even the ones who clearly had no intention of calling in themselves, and who weren’t especially interested in embarrassing The Saddle Club, seemed to have listened and found all the stupid questions amusing.

“The joke I keep hearing is, ‘How is a cow like a squirrel? They’re both on
Horse Talk
!” ’ said Lisa.

Carole rolled her eyes. “Every time I walk into my homeroom, three of the guys who sit in back yell, ‘
Horse Talk
! It’s Carole!’ I’m about to punch them in the nose.”

“We sure don’t need to write out any more questions,” added Stevie. “I’ve still got all the ones from last week. I didn’t get to use any of them.”

“You’ll be lucky if you use any this week, too,” Lisa said. “I have a feeling we’ll get just as many calls.” She slumped into her armchair. “I never thought
Horse Talk
would be this popular. And I never thought I’d be sorry that it was.”

Carole shook her head. “You shouldn’t feel sorry—”

“Chad is such a jerk,” interjected Stevie.

“—and if we find a missing horse—” continued Carole.

“We haven’t found anything yet,” Lisa said. The phone rang shrilly, and she grabbed it. “Hi, Judy! Hang on!” Lisa punched the speakerphone button. Her most recent gift from her mother had been one she really appreciated: a telephone with all the latest gadgets. “There. We’re all here, Judy,” she said, “and we can all hear you now.”

“Hi,” Judy said. “I called to tell you you guys were right. There
is
a horse missing around Pine Hollow. I don’t know if it’s the one your caller saw, but it could be.”

“Fantastic!” said Stevie.

“It’s quite a story,” Judy continued. “One of the other vets around here takes care of the horses at Fox Meadow Farm.”

“We’ve heard of it,” Carole said. Fox Meadow was a boarding stable similar to Pine Hollow, on the other side of Willow Creek. It was supposed to be a nice stable.

“They have some students who compete in three-day eventing,” Judy continued. Three-day eventing was a type of riding competition that included crosscountry jumping. The Saddle Club sometimes enjoyed trying it at lower levels, but at higher levels it required a very athletic and specially trained horse. “One of them, a girl about your age, sold her first horse last
summer and bought one that was more advanced. It was a gray quarter horse mare, and it had completed a preliminary three-day event.”

“Wow,” Lisa murmured. She knew that, though the word
preliminary
sounded easy, preliminary three-day events were tough.

“Yeah,” Judy agreed. “It was a great little horse—named April Morning. The mare was up in Massachusetts, but the girl—her name is Samantha—and her parents looked at some videos of it and decided to buy it. The trainer at Fox Meadow knew the person in Massachusetts who owned the horse, and everyone thought it would be a great horse for Samantha.

“They arranged for April Morning to be shipped down to Fox Meadow. Unfortunately, the evening the horse was to arrive here, we had a really terrible thunderstorm. Do you remember, back in August?”

“The one where all the lights went out?” asked Stevie. She remembered, because she’d used the blackout as an excuse to try to roast hot dogs in her family’s fireplace. The sticks hadn’t been strong enough, and the hot dogs had fallen into the fire. They really blazed.

“I think so,” said Judy. “Anyway, just outside Willow Creek, on the highway exit ramp, the truck and horse trailer skidded on the wet pavement and rolled into a ditch. When the rescue squad got there, the driver of the truck was unconscious. The trailer was
pretty smashed up, and its door wouldn’t open, but the rescuers couldn’t hear any noises coming from inside it. They assumed that either it was empty or the horses inside it were dead.”

“Oh no,” said Carole.

“When the driver woke up, back at the hospital, he told them he had had one horse, April Morning, on board. So they called Samantha and her trainer and the vet who told me the story, and they all went out to the site of the crash. Because of the power outage, there were lots of emergencies, and nobody had gotten around to pulling the wreck out of the ditch.

“But the side of the trailer was open—it looked as if it had been kicked open—and April Morning was gone. There was a little bit of blood inside the trailer, but not much. Any other clues the mare might have left were washed out by the rain. They still haven’t found her.”

The Saddle Club looked at each other in stunned silence. It was an incredible story. Carole tried to imagine the desolation of buying a horse and then losing it before you ever got to know it.

“Girls?” said Judy. “Are you there?”

“We’re here,” said Lisa. “We’re just trying to take it all in.”

“Samantha and her family have been looking for April for over three months,” said Judy. “Up until
now, they’ve concentrated their search on the other side of Willow Creek.”

“And we found her!” Carole said.

Judy hesitated. “You found a person who saw a horse,” she corrected Carole gently. “It may or may not have been April Morning. After all this time, Samantha and her parents have pretty much given up hope. What color was the horse your listener saw?”

Lisa felt embarrassed. “We didn’t ask,” she said. “We assumed the call was another joke, until it was too late.”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes too high,” Judy cautioned them. “The vet who saw the wreck said it was amazing that any horse had gotten out of it. April could have been injured badly enough that she died. Or someone could have found her and kept her without tracing her back to Samantha. August was a long time ago.”

“I know,” Carole said. “I guess it wouldn’t be fair to get Samantha’s hopes up.”

“Why not?” asked Stevie. “She needs to know what we found out.” Stevie’s horse, Belle, had actually been stolen from a previous owner, and once they discovered this, it had been a long week before she’d known whether she’d be allowed to keep Belle. Stevie would’ve died if she hadn’t known what was going on.

“I agree,” Judy said. “Samantha knows what the odds are. In fact, I’ve already told her about you
guys and
Horse Talk
. I said that you’d probably be at Pine Hollow tomorrow morning if she wanted to stop by.”

Carole had to laugh. “Us be at Pine Hollow on a Saturday morning? I’d say that’s a pretty good guess.”

Judy laughed and said good-bye. Lisa reached up to turn the phone off, and the three members of The Saddle Club stared at each other for a moment. Then Lisa started to grin. “I guess I don’t feel so bad about
Horse Talk
now,” she said. “What if our show actually helps Samantha find her horse?”

Carole didn’t look happy. “I’m just worried that it can’t be the right horse,” she said. “What are the odds of a horse surviving a crash like that and then living for months on its own?”

Lisa sat down on the floor and reached for a pad of paper. She always thought better when she was doodling. “First, I’d say they were separate odds,” she said. “The odds of the horse surviving the crash may not have been very high, but we
know
the horse survived the crash. And we know that it kicked the side of the trailer out, so it couldn’t have broken all four legs or anything like that.”

“It still could have been badly hurt,” Carole said.

“Well, sure,” Stevie said. “But it might not have been. There isn’t any way for us to know that.”

“Then there are the odds of a horse living for three months on its own,” Lisa continued.

“Now, that could happen,” Carole admitted. “Remember the herds of wild horses out West?”

“Sure,” Lisa said. “All horses need for survival is food and water, and they can find food anywhere there’s enough grass.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Stevie said. “The caller—Missa—said she lives near the library, remember?” Carole and Lisa nodded. “That’s not really too far from Pine Hollow. It’s all subdivisions, but the back of the subdivisions border the woods that connect to the woods behind Pine Hollow.” There were miles of trails in the hills behind Pine Hollow.

“So why wouldn’t April come hang out with the Pine Hollow horses, the way the horse Janey found hung out with her family’s sheep?” asked Carole. Horses were social animals, and they didn’t like to be alone.

“Think about it,” Stevie said. “There’s a wire fence between Pine Hollow and the subdivisions. There are a couple of gates in the fence, but a horse couldn’t unlatch them.” Carole nodded. She remembered that Max was glad there were fences through part of the woods. It meant that any horse that might run away from Pine Hollow wouldn’t be able to reach a highway or downtown Willow Creek.