Horseflies (12 page)

“We enjoyed it, Jamie,” Lisa replied. “You just concentrate on getting better.”

Carole waved and Stevie gave him a wink. They followed Mrs. Bacon back out into the living room.

“I really can’t thank you girls enough,” she said. “I feel like a new person. It’s amazing what two hours of sleep will do.” She reached for her purse. “Lisa, I want to pay you what I owe you for baby-sitting the first half of this week, and since you were so nice to drop by today, I’ll pay you what you would have earned Thursday and Friday.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bacon.” Lisa was so happy she leaned over and gave Mrs. Bacon a hug. With this money, she now had the fifty dollars she’d promised her parents. Her riding lessons would not end!

Mrs. Bacon gave a little laugh. “Gosh, Lisa, I had no idea you were this interested in baby-sitting. Would you like to come some more next week?”

“Oh, absolutely!” Lisa said. She realized it would be a perfect trade-off for her—the more she baby-sat, the more she could ride. “I could even come tomorrow afternoon if you’d like to take another nice long nap.”

“Actually, I’m hoping Jamie will sleep well enough tonight so that I won’t need a nap tomorrow, but it would be wonderful if you could come by Monday afternoon.”

“Sure,” agreed Lisa.

Mrs. Bacon frowned quizzically at the girls. “Say, I want to ask you something. What exactly happened Wednesday at the fair? I know Jamie came home cranky and sick, but ever since then all he’s talked about is what a wonderful time he had. What did you three do?”

Lisa smiled, pleased that Jamie had enjoyed himself in spite of being sick. “Well, we thought he was really upset about the merry-go-round being broken, so we tried everything we knew to distract him from that and make him feel good. You know, lots of rides, games, candy and popcorn and stuff.”

Mrs. Bacon laughed. “Oh, so it was good old-fashioned bribery!”

“Well, sort of, I guess,” Lisa said, embarrassed that Mrs. Bacon had caught on to their tactic so fast.

“Listen, Jamie’s dad and I have often resorted to the old bribe routine ourselves,” Mrs. Bacon said, chuckling. “The trouble is, it rarely works. The only thing we’ve found that really helps is getting down to the root of the problem, which, in this instance, was a case of chicken pox.”

“You know, that reminds me of a problem I was having with my horse,” Carole began.

Stevie and Lisa looked at each other and sighed. Only Carole Hanson could find a connection between a horse with a star on his forehead and a six-year-old with chicken pox on his face.

“Starlight has been misbehaving because he’s been shut up all winter, so I have to let him run around, and—”

“Wait a minute, Carole,” Lisa said with a frown. “Starlight hasn’t been shut up all winter. He’s been indoors, but you’ve ridden him nearly every day, just like you’re doing now.”

“But—”

“Lisa’s right, Carole,” added Stevie. “You must have forgotten how much you’ve ridden him.”

“But why does he still misbehave?” Carole asked, holding her hands out helplessly.

“Maybe he’s got chicken pox, too,” Mrs. Bacon said, laughing.

Everyone chuckled, but the words stuck in Carole’s mind. Chicken pox had made Jamie itchy and
cranky
. If Starlight had been anything lately, it was cranky. Though Carole knew it wasn’t possible for Starlight to have chicken pox, she suddenly had a sick feeling in her stomach. All at once she realized that she’d been treating Starlight for what
she
thought was wrong with him. She’d never actually looked at him to find out what else, if anything, might be the matter.

“Excuse me,” she said, interrupting a conversation Mrs. Bacon was having with Stevie. “But I’ve got to go and see about my horse. I think I may have been overlooking something really important!”

With that, she turned and let herself out the door. Lisa, Stevie, and Mrs. Bacon watched in amazement as Carole ran down the street and turned in the direction of Pine Hollow.

“Gosh,” said Mrs. Bacon with concern. “She seemed upset. I hope she didn’t take my remark about chicken pox seriously.”

Lisa and Stevie smiled. “Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Bacon,” said Lisa. “That’s just Carole. With her, horses always come first.”

C
AROLE HURRIED ALONG
the road to Pine Hollow. As her footsteps echoed on the pavement, she thought about all the things Starlight might have been trying to tell her that she had been too busy to understand.

“I thought I knew just what was right for him,” she whispered. “And all along I was just bribing him to behave. It’s just like Jamie at the fair. I haven’t been treating what was wrong with him.”

Quickly she turned off the road and into the parking lot. Though the late afternoon was still sunny, all the day’s riding lessons were finished, and only Max’s car was still parked there. The stable itself looked empty, with no riders leading horses in or out. When she walked inside, all she heard was the steady crunch of stabled horses eating oats. She scurried
down one aisle, turned past Chip and Patch and Barq, and opened the door to Starlight’s stall. Starlight was leaning to the right, trying to rub his neck against the stable wall.

“Oh, Starlight!” she cried. “I owe you a huge apology!”

The big bay stared at her, his ears pricked.

Carole looked into Starlight’s eyes. “Starlight, I haven’t been treating you as a friend deserves to be treated. I’ve ignored the things you’ve tried to tell me, and I’ve been dreaming about imaginary horses when I should have been paying attention to the real horse that loves me. I am so sorry for doing that. When I get home I’m going to put Pegasus on my bookshelf. Then I’m going to give you every ounce of my attention so that you can be the healthiest horse in the world.”

Starlight nickered softly and stamped his front foot, as if he agreed with what she said.

Carole smiled. “Don’t move, Starlight,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

She ran to the tack room, got her grooming supplies, and hurried back to her horse. “We’re going to start with the basics,” she told him as she led him out of his stall and attached him to the cross-ties. “I’m going to check you put from A to Z.”

Though she knew she did not have a vet’s training or experience, she did the same examination on Starlight that she’d watched Judy do on the Albergini horses. She checked his teeth, eyes, and ears, then felt along his legs and spine. Everything seemed normal. “I think all your body parts are
okay, Starlight,” she said, relieved that she had not overlooked some serious leg or back inflammation in her mistaken diagnosis of the winter kinks.

He watched with curiosity as she felt along his belly for infected mosquito bites, but there were no telltale bumps around his girth line. She looked under his tail and between his back legs for ticks, but again, his skin was smooth, with no engorged insects attached.

“That leaves just one more thing,” she said.

She ran to the bathroom and pulled a paper towel from the dispenser. Then she came back to Starlight and ran the currycomb gently under his jaw, catching all the dirt and dander on the towel. She took it over to the window and held it flat in the afternoon light so that she could examine it more closely. There, wiggling on the towel, was what she had feared: lice. Starlight was infested with lice.

For a moment she just stared numbly at the tiny, disgusting bugs crawling around on the paper towel. How could she have missed this? She had been on a vet call with Judy where she’d diagnosed a horse with lice. She’d known about them for years from her horse books. She’d even held Starlight in a demonstration about how to prevent bug infestation. And he had been sick with lice the whole time!

Carole felt her face grow hot with shame and anger. “You were so absolutely positive you knew exactly what was wrong with him you never once considered anything else,” she told herself sternly. “Some horse owner you are.”

She wadded up the paper towel and threw it in the garbage can. Then she walked back to where Starlight was cross-tied.

“I am so sorry, Starlight,” she said. “I owe you a hug, but not till you’re clean. I promise that I will never, ever let anything like this happen to you again!” She smiled up at him. “Get ready for the grooming of your life!”

She covered the ground where Starlight stood with old newspapers. Then she curried and brushed him until his coat was free of dust and dirt. After carefully combing through his mane and tail, she went to the tack room and mixed up a large bucket of the insecticide solution Judy had recommended at the demonstration.

“Okay,” she said as she lugged the full bucket back out to Starlight. “Here comes the fun part.”

She put on rubber gloves and soaked a sponge in the insecticide solution. Then, slowly and carefully, she doused Starlight in the stinky stuff, making sure it soaked through his hair right down to his skin. Starlight stood still for the process, but when Carole finished up at his tail, he looked around as if wondering when she was going to rinse everything off.

“Not now, Starlight,” she said, laughing at his puzzled expression. “We have to let this dry. Then we have to do it all over again in two weeks.”

Starlight blinked unbelievingly, and Carole laughed again. “But why don’t I let you drip dry out in the paddock while I clean your stall? That would be a lot nicer for you.”

She let him loose in the small paddock by the barn and returned to his stall. There she forked up every bit of his old bedding, sprinkled lime on the floor, dusted it with lice powder, and put down a thick layer of fresh sawdust. Barq poked his head around from the next stall and watched her as she worked.

“What are you looking at, Barq?” Carole laughed as his round Arabian eyes followed her every move. “You’re going to get exactly the same treatment as soon as I finish here.” Carole knew that it was very likely that Barq and Belle, who lived on either side of Starlight, were infested with lice, too. She also knew that as a responsible horse owner, it was her duty to take care of them as well.

She finished with Starlight’s stall and began the same lice treatment on Barq.

An hour later, when Barq and his stall were both lice-free, she started on Belle. She was halfway through soaking her with the insecticide solution when she heard footsteps down the hall.

“Pheewww!” she heard Max exclaim. “Who’s got the lice dip out?”

Carole looked down the hall. Suddenly Max appeared.

“Oh, Max,” Carole cried, “I was all wrong about Starlight! He didn’t have the winter kinks! He had lice!”

“Oh?” Max walked up and patted Belle on the rump. “What makes you think that?”

Carole knelt down. The hair of the three horses she’d groomed was intermingled on the newspaper—a mahogany-dark
brown combination of Starlight, Belle, and Barq. Carole picked up some of Starlight’s hair and held it up to Max. “Look. You can still see the bugs crawling around.”

Max frowned at Starlight’s hair sample, then picked up some from Barq and Belle. “They’re in Barq’s, too,” he said, squinting at the tiny, crawling bugs. He dropped the hair back on the newspaper and looked at Carole. “What made you think of this? I thought you were certain that he just had too much energy from not being ridden enough.”

“I was,” Carole replied. “But he never got any better, however much I rode him. Then Lisa reminded me that I’d never
not
ridden him, really. I rode almost every day during the school year.” She sighed. “It suddenly hit me that I hadn’t been treating him as much as bribing him, so I came back here and gave him a physical, just like I’d seen Judy do. When I checked under his jaws I found what had really been the matter with him. Lice. Barq and Belle had them too. Thank goodness Belle didn’t have them badly. I couldn’t have faced Stevie.”

Max looked at Belle thoughtfully. “Stevie would have understood, but I should have suspected that right away,” he said. “By nature Starlight’s not a temperamental animal. I should have known something like this was going on, but you seemed to know exactly what was wrong with him.” He smiled at Carole. “This reminds me of a set of parents who were certain their baby girl was just being fussy, when she happened to be coming down with a case of chicken pox!”

Carole laughed. “There seems to be a lot of that going around—chicken pox
and
certainty!”

Max gave Belle another pat. “I’ll tell Red that we’ll need to spray the whole barn. Have you cleaned out these horses’ stalls?”

“I’ve done Starlight’s and Barq’s. I’ll do Belle’s as soon as I finish dousing her with insecticide.”

Max nodded. “Okay. When you’re done with Belle, bring all this hair and newspaper out to the trash pile. We’ll need to burn it. I’ll go around and take a lice count on everybody else.”

Carole watched as Max went into Patch’s stall. Checking as expertly as Judy Barker had done, he felt beneath Patch’s jaws, at the base of his tail, and along his neck and flanks. “Good news,” Max reported as Patch nickered. “Nobody home. At least no lice, anyway.”

Carole breathed a sigh of relief. She would never have forgiven herself if every horse in the stable had been full of lice because of her negligence with Starlight.
Maybe not too many others will be infested
, she thought as she watched Max begin to work his way down the stalls.