Horsenapped! (10 page)

“Can’t believe what pigs some people are,” she said, tossing the wrapper into the bin.

“Oh, right,” Carole agreed. She stuck her hand into her own pocket and fished out the gum wrapper she’d picked up the day before in the woods. “And watermelon bubble gum at that. Yuck!”

“Watermelon?” Stevie said, peering into the trash bin, looking for the wrapper she’d just tossed there. “That was the flavor of the one I picked up, too.”

“In the woods?” Carole asked.

“No,” Stevie said. “It was by the telephone …” Stevie suddenly got the feeling of a lot of odd facts coming together, and sticking together, like
bubble gum
!

“Put your horses in the stalls and just loosen their girths. Make it quick, too,” she said. “We’ll meet in the hayloft in five minutes, flat!”

Stevie disappeared too fast for her friends to ask any questions. Carole and Lisa decided to disappear just as fast. All their questions would be answered in the loft.

“E
VERY TIME
I look at all these pieces, I keep coming up with one name,” Stevie began. “And that name is Donald.” She told them about the phone call she’d overheard earlier. “At first, I didn’t think anything about it. But when I did think, I thought about gum wrappers and bubble gum. Everything here seems to be held together by gum wrappers and bubble gum.”

“Including ransom notes!” Carole said.

“Precisely,” Stevie agreed.

“Do you really think Donald is a horsenapper?” Lisa asked. It seemed impossible that somebody who was so industrious and hard-working could also be a crook.

“I don’t know,” Stevie admitted. “I am pretty sure that
he’s involved. The way he talked on the phone—and he
has
to be the person I heard on the phone—it sounded like somebody else was in charge and he just needed the money.”

Carole scratched her head. “So, if we conclude that Donald’s the errand boy for the crooks, where does that put the horses?”

“In the woods, of course,” Stevie said.

“But they weren’t at the quarry. What makes you so sure they’re in the woods at all?”

“The gum wrapper,” Stevie said. “Plus the fact that Donald was riding around those woods. I don’t think he actually followed us there. I think he was there already and just heard us. That’s when he made up the story about following us.”

“So where are the horses?” Carole asked. “And how did they get there without the van?”

“I don’t know,” Stevie admitted. “But we’re just going to have to go look. And this time, we’ll find them.”

“I think it’s time to tighten Pepper’s girth again,” Lisa said, standing up. “And on the way, I’ll check to make sure Donald is very busy doing something that will occupy him for a long time.”

They agreed to meet at the good-luck horseshoe in five minutes.

S
EVERAL THINGS MADE
The Saddle Club feel they needed to hurry. In Carole’s mind, it was that every minute the horses were captured, they were endangered. As far as Stevie was concerned, she wanted to rush so she and her friends would be the first ones to find, and free, the horses. Lisa’s main concern was that the mystery be unraveled before most people knew there was a mystery—and that the girls hadn’t told anyone about it.

Each of them knew this about one another as they rode quickly along the fire road that morning, and each found it comforting. It was as if they’d divvied up what had to be worried about and thus had everything covered. At least they
hoped
it was everything.

Once again, they followed the rutted path to the left when it forked. Carole reasoned that Stevie’s theory was
still good. The ruts
could
have been a horse van and everything seemed undisturbed on the right-hand fork. Once again, when they came to the creek, they were puzzled. The tire tracks not only stopped there, but seemed to turn around.

“So, now what do we do?” Stevie asked.

Carole thought. As she did that, Starlight leaned down and began to drink the fresh water. He even took a couple of steps into the creek where he could get the faster-moving water. It reminded her of how he’d wanted to drink the water when she was on the cross-country course. And that reminded her of how much horses enjoyed being in water on a hot summer day.

“The creek!” Carole said.

“No duh,” Stevie remarked sarcastically. “Sure looks like one to me.”

In spite of herself, Carole laughed. “That’s not what I mean,” she said. “I mean I bet they took the horses out of the van—which left a trail in the mud and which couldn’t go any farther than this—and walked them through the creek, which left no trail at all!”

“Oh!” Lisa exclaimed. “That would explain a lot.”

Stevie nodded excitedly. “It even explains why Donald was coming from upstream when he claimed he’d been following us from the other direction. Let’s go!”

“Quietly,” Carole added. She didn’t have to say it twice. They proceeded walking upstream in the creek.
Carole didn’t know the woods in this direction and it wasn’t even familiar to Stevie. They were at the edge of the state forest where it bordered on some old farmland, and riders had been advised not to risk trespassing. That seemed a small crime to add to horsenapping, and Carole thought they would be forgiven.

She watched the creek bed carefully. It was shallow and the water was clear. She still wanted to be alert to any problems that might come for Starlight, Pepper, and Topside. Three horses were already in peril. She didn’t want to make it six. And then she saw something that made her heart skip a beat.

“Look!” she signaled to her friends. “Manure!”

They all drew to a halt and looked. There, plain as anything, was a pile of manure.

“I never thought I’d see the day when manure looked good to me!” Stevie joked.

“Where there’s manure, there are horses!” Lisa declared. “Right now, I think I like that even better than the one about smoke and fire.”

“Somehow I doubt it’ll catch on like the smoke-and-fire saying,” Stevie joked.

Carole felt irrationally elated by the presence of manure on the bank of the creek. It certainly was evidence that they were on the right trail. But what lay around the next bend? How close were they? How much danger were the horses in? How much danger were
they
in?

The same thought seemed to occur to her friends then, too. The three of them sat silently, nervously, on their horses. Carole looked ahead thoughtfully. Starlight’s ears perked up, as if he were thinking, too. Then, over the gurgling sound of the creek, the occasional chirrups of birds overhead, and the rustle of leaves as squirrels darted back and forth, came a more familiar, welcome sound. It was the sound of a horse’s whinny.

The girls looked at one another. They all knew then that they had found what they were looking for.

“We’ve got to go for help,” Lisa whispered.

“We’ve got to stay and help the horses,” Carole told her.

“We’ve got to be absolutely positive,” Stevie said sensibly.

Without further discussion, the girls dismounted and secured their horses’ reins to a low branch. On foot they followed the bank of the creek around the next bend. They snuck behind a large rock and peered over the hill.

There, in a small hollow, was one of Willow Creek’s isolated farms. From the look of the condition of the barn and the house, Stevie thought it might even be an abandoned farm. The buildings were still standing, but they hadn’t seen the business end of a paintbrush for many, many years.

“What a dump,” Lisa said disdainfully.

“Nobody’s going to hide stolen horses at the Waldorf
Astoria,” Stevie said. “This place looks just about perfect.”

“So, where are the stolen horses?” Lisa asked.

“We’ll see them in a minute,” Carole said. From where they were crouched, they could see the back of the barn and the house. They couldn’t see anything in either building or on the far side of either building, and they couldn’t see any activity, human or equine.

“We’ve got to get to the edge of the barn there,” Stevie said.

“One of us does,” Carole corrected her. “I’ll go. You two stay here. There’s no point in all three of us getting into trouble.”

To Stevie and Lisa, the suggestion seemed a little silly, since it was clear that all three of them were probably already in a lot of trouble, but they nevertheless stayed put while Carole crept forward toward the barn.

Carole could feel it in her bones. She was right. They were right. The horses were here, and so were the horsenappers. All they had to do was spot them and then go for help.

It only took a few seconds to cover the thirty yards to the side of the barn. There were no windows on that side. She had to creep to the front and look around the edge. She flattened herself against the wall, afraid even of casting a shadow that might be noticed.

Carole peered around the edge of the old barn and
found that her greatest hopes and worst fears were all being fulfilled at once. For there were two strange men and three familiar horses. That was the good news. The bad news was that the men were trying to load the horses onto a van. They were going to move them, and there would be no way for The Saddle Club to follow them. The horses could be lost forever!

The men were trying to load Garnet first. The one thing working to Carole’s advantage, to say nothing of Garnet’s, was that Garnet hated riding on vans. The only way Veronica, or really Red, because he was always the one to do it, could get her on a van was to put a blindfold on her. It wouldn’t take the horsenappers long to figure that out, but it might take long enough for Carole to do what had to be done.

She had to get Lisa and Stevie there to help, plus Pepper, Starlight, and Topside, and it all had to be a surprise. She turned to her friends and waved, then pointed to their own horses. Stevie nodded. She was always eager for an adventure and she knew just what to do.

Stevie and Lisa disappeared. Carole held her breath for a few seconds until she heard the sound she most wanted to hear. It was Stevie and Lisa coming over the hill on horseback, bringing Starlight with them.

Carole knew they didn’t have much time. The horsenappers would hear the horses and know something was
up. They might have the advantage of surprise, but they wouldn’t have it for long.

Carole ran to meet her friends. In a second, she was in Starlight’s saddle.

“It’s roundup time!” she said.

She nudged Starlight hard with her calves. He responded instantly and the three girls rode around the corner of the barn into the open area by the van at the same time. Two men gaped at them in astonishment.

“What the …?” one of the men said.

Carole answered his question with action. Sat and Bodoni were in a small paddock next to the van. One of the men held Garnet by a lead rope.

“Open the paddock gate,” Carole called to Stevie. “I’ll get Garnet.”

“That’s what you think!” the other man said fiercely. He challenged her by swinging at her with his fist. That was a fight Carole would lose, so it was a battle she wouldn’t enter. Instead, she let Garnet do the “getting” for her. She rode up behind the mare and gave her a hard smack on the rear—not enough to hurt her, just enough to surprise her. Garnet, who hadn’t liked the idea of the van, was nervous anyway. The smack on her rump was all she needed to convince her to bolt, and bolt she did, right into the woods toward the creek, just where Carole wanted her.

Carole turned to see what her friends were up to. Stevie had the gate of the paddock open. Lisa rode Pepper in and circled behind Sat and Bodoni. “Hiyaaaa!” she cried, roundup style. “Git along little dogie!” Sat and Bodoni were as surprised as Garnet had been. They fled through the gate, and when they tried to veer to the left, Carole was there to steer them toward the woods, too.

“Let’s get out of here!” Stevie yelled, following the three freed horses into the woods.

“You took the words right out of my mouth!” Carole agreed. Starlight, Pepper, and Topside fled from the old farmyard as quickly as they’d entered it. The last thing Carole heard before she entered the woods after the horses was the sound of the engine on the horse van revving up.

The woods around the farmhouse were thick. There was no path there, except for the creek. The horses, perhaps because they’d been that way once before, naturally headed for the creek. That was a good thing, because The Saddle Club would have had a rough time trying to round them up out of the dense underbrush. The best part about the creek, though, was that it wasn’t too wide. It wasn’t, for example, wide enough for a horse van, though there was one trying to follow them into it.

Carole heard a loud noise that sounded an awful lot like metal hitting wood. It was followed by a loud outburst of words that her father told her Marines sometimes
said. Carole pulled Starlight to a halt and looked over her shoulder. It was a beautiful sight. The horse van was tightly wedged between two trees at a narrow section of the creek. The horsenappers would never catch up with them now.

“Hey, we’re home free!” Stevie announced joyously.

“As long as we can get the horses back to Pine Hollow safely,” Carole said.