Nightmare (16 page)

The policeman called after them to stop. Then they heard Mrs. Reg talking to him.

“You could no more keep those two girls from riding after their friend than you could hold back the tide. Now, come back into the office where you can do some good!”

Lisa and Stevie looked at one another and laughed.

“Mrs. Reg has a lot of common sense,” said Stevie.

“A lot more than that policeman, anyway,” Lisa agreed. She leaned forward and whispered into Starlight’s ear. “Find Carole!” she said. She could have sworn that Starlight lengthened his stride as soon as he heard her words.

D
ELILAH
’
S
PACE
SLOWED
. She was doing all she could to satisfy her rider’s request, but her best wasn’t very fast now.

“Want to stop, girl?” Carole asked.

Delilah’s answer was to take a deep breath and push forward. A lifetime of doing what she was asked by her riders made her willing to move ahead, blindly doing exactly what she was asked.

“You don’t know any other way but the right way, do you, Delilah?” Carole asked.

Delilah let out her breath. It sounded like a sigh. Carole held the reins ever so slightly closer to her own hips.
Delilah responded to that subtle signal as she always had. She stopped.

Carole climbed down out of the saddle. She stepped around and looked at the mare. The signs were unmistakable now. The symptoms that had been slight the day before were now readily apparent. Carole was even more certain: Delilah had EIA, and she was dying.

Carole reached up and patted the mare’s neck. Delilah looked at her, her eyes filled with trust. She’d always been treated well by people. This was not a time when she was going to stop trusting humans. Carole was touched by Delilah’s willingness. She also understood, or was pretty sure she understood, that she was doing the right thing for this horse.

This mare—always a faithful stable horse, a fine, caring mother, and a good, obedient school horse—was not one to give up and die in a stall. She deserved to be in the woods, her favorite place, and she deserved to be with someone she trusted—Carole. Sure this was a slightly irrational thing for Carole to be doing with Delilah, but if Delilah was going to die, she should be able to die in a place that made her happy, and she should be able to be with someone she liked and who loved her.

“Don’t worry, Delilah,” Carole said softly. “I’m here with you, forever.”

The only thing she didn’t know was how long forever would be.

* * *

“C
AROLE
! C
AROLE
! A
RE
you there?” Lisa called out into the thick woods.

There was no answer. She hadn’t thought there would be. Carole had been gone almost fifteen hours. She and Stevie had been on the trail for only one hour. Surely Carole had gotten farther than this!

“We’ll find her. She’ll hear us and she’ll call out to us,” Stevie said. “In the meantime, what we can do is ride and talk so that she can hear us.”

“You don’t think she’ll be hiding?” Lisa asked.

“Not from us,” Stevie said. Lisa knew Stevie was right.

“Okay,” Lisa agreed. “I guess that for now, the most important thing to do is to cover land so we can catch up with her—wherever she is.”

“Right. This way, then,” said Stevie, pointing left when they came to the first fork in the trail.

“Why that way?” Lisa asked.

“I have no idea,” said Stevie.

Together they turned left.

C
AROLE
LOOKED
UP
at the sky. It seemed a little threatening. Then she realized it wasn’t threatening rain. It was threatening evening. Was it possible that she and Delilah had been riding all day long? She looked at her watch. It was six o’clock already. They’d been going for eleven hours, ever since they’d left their camp. She’d ridden some of the day and walked some of the day.
Delilah, ever willing to do what was asked of her, kept on going, moving as she was told, with or without a rider on her back.

Carole had never seen anything like the courage the mare was showing. With every step, she became more convinced that she was doing what was right for Delilah. Otherwise, why would the mare keep going? This wasn’t a horse that would be satisfied to wait for death.

Well, it was getting dark now. Carole was both tired and hungry. It was time to find someplace that might offer shelter for her and for Delilah for the night.

She signaled Delilah to stop. She took her feet out of the stirrups and allowed them to hang loosely. It helped relax her. She looked around. The woods seemed slightly familiar, but that didn’t seem possible. They’d been moving for hours and hours, and unless they’d been making a gigantic circle, they had to be at least twenty miles from Pine Hollow.

Carole looked around her again. She knew so much of the forest in the area, but a lot of unfamiliar forest could seem familiar because it was similar. The trees were the same kinds that grew right next to Pine Hollow. The rocks were the same sort that filled those woods. It was comforting to be so far from home but so close to the familiar.

There was a rustle in the underground. Carole looked. It was a squirrel. He was running very fast. Carole wondered what he was running from, and then her question
was answered. She heard the sharp bark of a coyote, then saw it dash across the trail. It startled her.

It startled Delilah even more. Without warning, Delilah took off. Carole was unprepared to have this ill horse bolt from under her. She grabbed the reins tightly and then tried to regain the stirrups with her feet, but that only made her legs flail wildly and threatened to unbalance and unseat her completely. Carole gripped with her legs and grabbed the palomino’s mane as tightly as she could.

It wasn’t enough. As the coyote disappeared, chasing the squirrel, Delilah veered downhill, off the path—and right toward a tree!

The mare shifted to the left of the tree, but Carole could tell this was going to be bad news for her. A horse, even a sick one, would always make room for itself to pass by an obstacle like a tree, but there was no guarantee that there would be room for the rider’s legs to clear it, especially when they were flapping without the aid of stirrups. She could be bruised, crushed, or pushed off the horse. Carole had no choice. She let herself fall off Delilah two feet before she would have been scraped off by the tree.

When she landed, her hip hit a rock or a root, she didn’t know or care which. She knew it hurt a lot and was going to leave her with a big swelling and, eventually, a gigantic bruise.

She sat up and looked to see what had happened to
Delilah. It wasn’t much. The horse had made it past the tree that had frightened Carole, but a large boulder sat right in front of her. She could have run around it. She could have run left or right. There was plenty of room, but as soon as she’d gotten to the boulder, she’d stopped. On another day, Carole might have thought that Delilah had stopped because she was embarrassed to have thrown Carole. Today, however, Carole was pretty sure that Delilah had stopped because bolting and running had taken all her energy. From where she sat on the ground, Carole could see Delilah’s sides heaving in and out, gasping for air from the very brief sprint.
It’s time to stop running
, Carole thought.
It’s time to rest.

“Okay, Delilah,” she said, pulling herself slowly to a standing position. “This is where we’re going to camp for the night.”

Delilah didn’t even turn around to look at her.

“W
HAT
DO
YOU
mean, you’re going to get a C in history!” Stevie couldn’t believe her ears.

“That’s right,” said Lisa. “I can get whatever grade I want to get, and just think what it’ll show people if I get a C.”

“Well, it’ll show them you’re nuts, for starters,” Stevie said. She wasn’t very good at holding her tongue. She hoped she wouldn’t regret what she’d just said, but she didn’t care if she regretted it. She meant it.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Lisa. “It’ll show people that I’m not obsessive about my grades. I can get As all right. Everybody knows that. What they don’t know is that I can let go a bit and get a C.”

“You’r going to have to work very hard to get a C,” said Stevie.

“I know,” Lisa told her. “But I can do it. I just know I can.”

Stevie was glad Lisa was in the lead, because that meant Lisa couldn’t see her face and the contortions it was going through. This decision was even crazier than Lisa’s determination to get an A+ and the fact that she was working on a paper six months early.

Stevie needed help. No, actually, it was Lisa who needed help, but Stevie knew that she, Stevie, was going to need help in order to help Lisa. When were they going to find Carole?

“It’s getting dark,” said Lisa. “What do you want to do?”

“Camp, I guess,” said Stevie, pulling Belle up next to Lisa and Starlight.

“You brought a sleeping bag?” Lisa asked.

“Sure, and we can share. And I brought some stuff to eat, but I don’t think it’s very good. Just some candy.”

“It’ll go perfectly with the fruit and yogurt I brought along. And we don’t have to share the sleeping bag. I brought mine, too,” Lisa said, pointing to the bundle on the rear of her saddle.

“Two great minds with a single thought,” Stevie said. It was nice to know that even while she was worried about finding Carole, Lisa was right there and totally prepared to help her with Carole’s problem.

“Here, this looks like a nice enough place,” Stevie said, climbing down out of Belle’s saddle. Lisa dismounted as well.

“It does look like a nice place. In fact, it looks like such a nice place that I think somebody else found it before we did.”

The two girls looked around them. They had to look hard in the fading light, but it was clear that someone had been there very recently. There was an area where the ground had been flattened in a manner that looked suspiciously like a sleeping body. The tree nearby had a branch hanging down that was perfect for tying a lead rope.

“Look at this!” Lisa said. Stevie’s eyes followed Lisa’s finger. There, on the branch, was a small knot of hair. It was long hair. It was silver.

“Delilah’s mane?” Stevie asked.

“Either that or a long-haired old lady got tied to the tree.”

“We’re definitely on their trail, then,” Stevie said, excited.

“Sure, but a day late, I think,” Lisa said. “That’s good news, bad news.”

“Well, at least it’s the right direction,” Stevie reminded her friend.

“There’s that,” Lisa agreed.

The girls cooled down their horses by walking them gently for a few minutes. Then they found some grass
and leaves for them to eat—though they were careful to keep Belle away from the kind of grass that she was allergic to—and they found a rill that they presumed would eventually lead downhill to Willow Creek.

It had been a very long day for the two of them, and they’d hardly slept the night before because they’d been so worried. They hadn’t wanted anybody to worry about them, but they knew Mrs. Reg knew where they were. Mrs. Reg also had excellent vision and would have seen that they each had a sleeping bag. Nobody would seriously worry about them, except maybe Lisa’s mother, but Mrs. Reg would calm her quickly.

They shared some of the food they’d brought along, saving enough for breakfast, and then laid out their sleeping bags. The sun was fully down now. They couldn’t see much, and they couldn’t light a fire. There was really only one thing to do, so they did it. They slept.

C
AROLE
OPENED
HER
eyes. It was still dark, but something had awakened her. When she and Delilah had stopped for the night, they had been on a gentle slope, next to a very big rock—a boulder, really. It had split at some point, and a small chunk of it had fallen down next to the larger, main piece, making something like a tent-shaped cave. Carole had secured Delilah to a tree branch as she had the night before and then settled in under the cover of the cave in the rock. She’d been exhausted
and had slept soundly, but now something woke her up.

She stepped out from under the rock and looked around. Her eyes were completely adjusted to the dark of the woods. The moon shone overhead, and small bits of moonlight made splatters on the ground nearby. There was something else light on the ground, too, and then Carole knew what had awakened her. It had been Delilah, lowering herself to the ground for a rest.

Some horses sleep lying down, some standing up. Delilah was a standing horse. Carole thought the only time she’d ever seen Delilah lying down was when she was giving birth to Samson. It was unlike her, but then, so was being sick.

Carole picked up her blanket and went over to Delilah. The mare was shivering. It wasn’t cold that night, not even as cool as the night before. Delilah’s fever was up, though. Carole knew it just by touching her. She put her blanket over the mare, who blinked once in acknowledgment, perhaps thanks. Carole got down on the ground next to her, lying against the mare’s back and resting her head across her neck. Delilah’s soft mane was all the pillow Carole needed.