Lisa (9 page)

HALLOWEEN, BAR NONE RANCH.
Little did Stevie Lake know what a long, strange ride she would have last Halloween night!

Miss Lake was one of the co-planners of the fabulously successful Halloween Fund-raising Fair at Two Mile Creek High School. As such, she was responsible for arranging transportation for the amazing door prize, a beautiful handmade adobe dollhouse. Miss Lake, a resident of Willow Creek, Virginia, is a very intelligent young lady with many fine personal qualities. However, in this instance her memory failed her and she was left at the eleventh hour with the prized dollhouse several miles across the desert from where it was supposed to be. She had to find a way to move it from its creator’s home to the high school-pronto.

Miss Lake first attempted to telephone the house in question, but she quickly deduced that the local phone service had been disrupted and was out of service. Not wanting to waste
any more time, Miss Lake hurried outside, mounted her trusty steed, Stewball, and prepared to ride to the rescue. She alerted her friend, Miss Christine Lonetree, of her intentions. Miss Lonetree loaned Miss Lake the white cloak from her costume as protection against the chilly desert evening, and Miss Lake set off.

Among Miss Lake’s other fine qualities is a vivid and sometimes overactive imagination. As she rode across the moonlit desert, she found her mind overrun with thoughts of all the spooky ghoulies that were supposed to roam on Halloween night.

Then, breaking into her thoughts of imaginary dangers, a real threat appeared. A coyote howled nearby. Miss Lake’s horse, spooked by the sound, took off. Unfortunately, Miss Lake was left behind, flat on her—well—behind.

Obviously, the situation was already rather grim for poor Miss Lake. She was stranded, on foot, all alone at night, miles from where she was supposed to be.

Then things got worse. Somewhere nearby—way too close, in fact—Miss Lake heard a familiar, menacing sound. The sound of a rattlesnake.

She froze immediately, aware that the slightest movement could attract the deadly snake’s attention. She tried to determine where the sound was coming from, but the night was dark and the surrounding rocks threw too many echoes. Before long it seemed as if a whole pack of monster snakes surrounded her, and Miss Lake understandably began to panic. She
screamed in terror, loud and long.

Then another sound broke through the echoes of her screams. The sound of hoofbeats. Miss Lake felt a flicker of hope. Had her horse returned for her?

But it wasn’t her faithful skewbald coming toward her. It was a stallion—a silvery white stallion with a nick in his ear. There was a rider on his back, cloaked in white. A long, strong arm reached toward her, and in one smooth motion she was drawn up behind the rider. They raced across the desert, away from the snake, away from all danger.

Miss Lake clung to the rider with all her strength, not speaking a word. She was so grateful that she hardly knew how to thank her rescuer.

He never gave her a chance. After depositing her safely at her destination, the horse and rider whirled before she could speak and disappeared into the night. It was a Halloween Miss Lake would never forget.

Dear Diary
,

Okay, I decided writing newspaper articles is harder than I thought. It was impossible to work in everything that happened that night and have it make sense in that “who, what, when, where, how” kind of way that reporters do. Because you see, so much of what happened didn’t make sense in that factual way. I can’t explain it. I can only write down what
happened and hope that someday, somehow, I’ll figure it out.

First of all, before I even get to the fair, I should mention what happened the night before when I was trying to get a rock out of Chocolate’s foot. It was wedged in there pretty tightly, and I guess I looked like I was having trouble, because John came over to offer his help. I managed to get the stone out myself, but then we started talking. After a few lame comments about decorating for the fair, John reached over and took my hand. Yes, took my hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“I want to show you something,” he said. “Come with me.”

I was feeling a little off balance, having my hand in his. John seemed to have that effect on me a lot. I sort of forgot about that, though, when I saw what he wanted to show me. It was the mare—the one he’d been with the night before. Standing at her side was a tiny, wobbly, adorable little foal!

“Oh, when was it born?” I asked breathlessly. The foal stared at us curiously with liquid brown eyes that seemed almost too large for its head.

“This afternoon,” John replied. “Isn’t she cute?”

She definitely was that. We chatted about the filly and her mother for a couple of minutes. John said the mare hadn’t had any trouble delivering the foal, but he’d been there with her the whole time, just in case.

“How did you learn so much about horses and foaling?” I asked.

John hesitated for a minute. “My mother was a horse breeder,” he said at last. “She taught me everything I know. It’s part of the legacy she left me.”

“Left you?” I repeated, not really understanding.

“She’s dead,” he said bluntly. From the way he said it—and the way a sort of curtain seemed to fall over his dark eyes, making them impossible to read—I knew I shouldn’t ask any more questions about his mother. I felt a little hurt that he trusted me so little, but I didn’t want him to see that. I decided it was time to change the subject.

“We saw the stallion again tonight,” I told him.

“Still running free?” John asked.

“As you very well know,” I replied with a bit of a smirk. After the incident with the coyotes, when Kate and Christine and I had been sure we’d seen a rider on the stallion, we’d talked it over and decided it had to have been John playing a trick on us. We already knew he had a sense of humor and liked to use it on us. And what other explanation was there?

I guess I’d sort of hoped to one-up John by showing that I knew about his trick. But he just looked puzzled at my comment. “Why should I know?” he asked. “I don’t know when they round up the horses for adoption.”

“Nice try,” I said. “But we saw you. You were there
when the coyotes were calling.” I told him how we’d seen a rider on the stallion’s back.

John was silent for a moment. “You saw somebody,” he said. “I believe you. But you didn’t see me. I was here. I came home on the school bus, and I never left the mare’s side. The filly was born at five o’clock this afternoon, and I stuck around to keep an eye on her.”

That stopped me cold. I stared at the filly, knowing that he had to be telling the truth. I hadn’t known John very long, but I felt certain of one thing. There was no way he would have abandoned the mare just to play a trick on us. No way at all.

That was weird enough. But when Stevie told us about what had happened to her out in the desert, it seemed even stranger. She’d assumed the rider who helped her escape from the snake was John, out playing pranks again. But John had been at the fair with us the whole time. So how do you explain that? I guess you don’t, at least not in any way that makes sense.

Another thing that’s still kind of hard to explain about that whole trip is John himself. I spent quite a bit of time talking with him as we all cleaned up after the fair. It was really nice—he’s smarter and funnier than most guys I know, and there was something else. Something that happened while we were talking.

I don’t quite remember how we got on the subject. We were just chatting about stupid things like costumes and crepe paper, and suddenly John was looking very serious and telling me the truth about his family.

“I had a sister,” he said. “Her name was Gaylin. She was wonderful, always happy, always laughing. Then one day Gaylin got sick—very sick. My father had to drive her and my mother to the hospital. I came along, too. I sat in the front seat with Dad. Mother was in the back. Gaylin lay on the backseat with her head on Mother’s lap. She was so sick she was sweating with her fever. Dad knew it was bad, and he drove as fast as he could. But it turned out to be too fast, because when a deer ran across the road, Dad tried to stop and swerved to avoid it. He missed the deer but ran the car right off the edge of the road and down a shallow ravine. He and I were okay. We’d had our seat belts on. But Mother and Gaylin weren’t so lucky.”

I gulped, suddenly understanding why he had looked so strange when he’d mentioned his mother the day before. Poor John!

He told me the rest of the story. Some people thought his father had been drinking before the accident, and there were lots of rumors. That was why Walter seemed so somber and serious all the time.

My mind wandered back to John’s mother and sister. “You must miss them both.”

“I do,” John replied. “But in some ways I still have them, here in my heart. Every time I see a happy child, I feel I am with Gaylin again. And my mother? I remember her through the stories she used to tell us. She was the great-granddaughter of a chief, and it was her
family’s responsibility to carry the traditions to each succeeding generation.”

“You mean like the story about the stallion?”

“It was her favorite. She swore it was true, too. She believed that no matter what else happened, there was always the stallion to help those who tried to do good things for our people. Sometimes I’m sure it was White Eagle who carried her and Gaylin out of the car …”

“How beautiful,” I breathed, amazed by the thought.

Suddenly I noticed that John was looking at me deeply. There was no curtain blocking the emotion in his eyes now. I felt my heart start to pound as he moved a little closer.

“Got one!” Stevie shrieked at that moment, totally interrupting the moment as she rushed over to blab at us about the candy corn counting contest. I was more than a little annoyed with her, even though I knew she had no idea what was going on between John and me. Still, the moment was ruined … but only for that particular moment.

You see, we made up for it later. It was in the barn, just before I left to come back home. As my friends were doing some last-minute packing (well, actually, just Carole was packing. Stevie was frantically scribbling some notes for the essay she was supposed to write during the trip, which of course she hadn’t even started yet), I went to say good-bye to the new little filly. I was hoping a certain wrangler’s son would be
around for good-byes, too—I hadn’t seen much of him since Stevie’s interruption.

I wasn’t disappointed. John was leaning on the stall door when I arrived. He looked happy to see me. Nobody else was around—it was just us and the horses. We chatted a little bit about this and that, and then he reached out to take both my hands in his.

I looked down at our clasped hands, suddenly feeling strangely shy. It wasn’t that I’d never been close to a boy before, but John was … well, he was different from most boys.

“I wish you didn’t have to leave so soon, Lisa,” he said.

I looked up at him then. His gorgeous dark eyes were so close. “Me too,” I managed to squeak out. His face came closer, and closer …

As soon as our lips touched, I wasn’t nervous at all anymore. It just felt natural. Really nice, actually. Am I blushing? Well, I don’t care. It’s not like anyone is ever going to read this except me.

Anyway, that was our good-bye. It was a wonderfully perfect end to a fun, exciting, action-packed, sometimes confusing, always interesting trip.

Dear Diary
,

I’m pasting in a letter we all got from Kate today. Actually, she sent it to Carole. But it was meant for all
three of us, and Carole said I could keep it if I want. Here it is:

Dear Carole, Lisa, and Stevie
,

You’re hearing from the proud adoptive parent of a beautiful wild horse. She’s a mare—mostly quarter horse, I think, and she’s got a foal, too! They’re both sorrel. I’ve named the mare Moonglow. She’s so beautiful! I can’t wait to show her to you girls. You’ve got to come back and meet her. Walter says we should start gentling her—that means getting her used to a halter and a lead rope—within a week or so. After that, we begin the real training. She’s got wonderful lines. I know she’s going to be a fine riding horse for me someday, and her foal is a beauty, too.

I suppose you want to know about the stallion, and, frankly, so do I. I can tell you what happened, but I certainly can’t explain it.

Dad and I went to the adoption, looking for the stallion. We’d even spoken to the man in charge of it to warn him that was the horse we wanted. He said he didn’t know the horse we meant, but since we’d had our application in for so long, we should have a good selection, as long as we got there early.

It was the stallion’s herd all right. I recognized some of the mares. You would have, too. But there was no sign of the stallion. There was a stallion with the herd, but he wasn’t silvery, and he didn’t have a nick in his ear. In fact, he was a kind of ugly skewbald pinto.

Dad and I asked all the Bureau of Land Management people about the silvery stallion with the nick in his ear. Every single
one of them said they’d never seen such a horse with this herd. Never even seen a horse like that around here. So, what do you think?

Your friend,
Kate

Dear Diary
,

As I was turning in a history essay today in school, for some reason it made me think of that report Stevie promised to do for her headmistress during our trip to the Bar None the week before last. I realized I’d never asked her if she finished it or what Miss Fenton thought. When I mentioned it at Pine Hollow today, it turned out she’d just gotten it back. It was crumpled up in her backpack, but she took it out and showed it to me. When I asked if I could have it to paste in here, she said I could. Actually, what she said was something like, “Be my guest. I certainly don’t ever want to see it again.” I guess that’s because Miss Fenton gave her a stern lecture about thoroughness or something when she handed it back (and she didn’t even know that Stevie wrote most of it at the breakfast table the morning it was due!). After reading it myself, I could sort of see Miss Fenton’s point. Not that I would ever tell Stevie that, of course!