Pack Trip (10 page)

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A
S SOON AS
her horse was in the creek bed, Lisa paused to let Stevie catch up to her and to let Chocolate have a little drink. In a minute they would be moving faster, but for now she had to take a few seconds to get something off her chest.

“Thank you,” she said to her friend.

“For packing up your stuff? It was nothing,” Stevie assured her.

“Thank you for that, too, but what I meant was thank you for sticking with me while I was being a jerk about Amy.”

“And Seth,” Stevie said. “You were an even bigger jerk about him.”

“I know. I was hoping you hadn’t noticed. He and Amy are hopeless cases, and one day she’s going to do something really selfish and dangerous, and she won’t be as lucky as she has been.”

“I’m not sure I care,” Stevie said. “Do you?”

“It nearly took getting killed by a forest fire, but I’ve figured out that there are times when you can’t protect people, even from themselves.”

“Welcome back,” Stevie said.

“It’s nice to be back,” Lisa told her. “Now to see that I
stay back, let’s get going and catch up with the others. I don’t think we’re out of this yet.”

Her point was emphasized by the thundering crash of a tree less than a hundred yards behind them.

The horses bolted into action, moving as quickly as they could along the stony creek bed.

“W
HAT IS IT
?” Kate asked Carole. There was some kind of barrier ahead of them in the creek bed.

“I don’t know,” Carole answered, drawing Berry to a halt. “Mel?” she called out, hoping that once again the brave dog could show her the way.

Mel came instantly, appearing from the darkness. Her tail waved eagerly, and she sniffed her way toward the barrier. Carole waited for the diagnosis. Mel barked.

Berry stepped forward tentatively, and Carole squinted in the darkness. Then Carole could see that a large tree had fallen across the creek bed. It wasn’t a result of the fire, since it obviously had been there for some time. The water flowed under it easily, but the horses would have to go around it.

“Find a way, Mel!” Carole urged the dog. Mel stood her ground and barked.

Carole thought maybe Mel didn’t understand her, and she didn’t know how to make the order clearer. She also
thought that since she was at the front of the line of riders, maybe this time it was her job, not Mel’s, to forge the path. She dismounted and began to explore.

The tree was enormously long. It had been rooted in a hillside to the right that was much too steep to climb, so there was no path on that side of the creek. On the other side the tree lay tangled in a dense undergrowth that would take hours to cut through. They didn’t have hours. They might not even have minutes. Carole returned to the creek bed, checked the ground on either side of the tree trunk, and made her decision.

“Over,” was all she said.

She remounted Berry and rode him back in the creek bed about ten yards. She didn’t have any idea whether Berry knew how to jump, and she could give him only one chance to learn. Jumping was a skill that English riders worked on for style and precision. Carole was a good rider; she could do this. She hoped.

She took a deep breath and nudged Berry into a canter. She directed him right toward the treek trunk. It was about three feet high and at least as wide. Carefully she took stock of the distance and height. At exactly the right moment, Carole leaned forward and rose out of the saddle, moving her hands forward to give Berry the rein he’d need. Carole felt the surge of power as Berry’s
strong rear legs propelled him into the air and over the log. He landed smoothly while Carole shifted her weight back into the seat of the saddle.

“No faults!” Kate cried joyously from the far side of the log. Carole laughed, feeling giddy with her success. Competitive jumpers were charged with faults when they made mistakes going over jumps. This wasn’t exactly a competition, though. This was real life!

One by one the other riders did just what Carole had done. John’s horse refused to jump at first, but he made it over on the second try. A few of the packhorses chose to climb over the log rather than to jump it. It was slower and more cumbersome, but it worked. Seth was too frightened to jump. He dismounted, clambered over the log himself, and then let his horse jump without him. He remounted and was on his way. Not surprisingly, Amy made the jump without difficulty. Stevie and Lisa brought up the rear of the young riders, and Eli came last of all.

On the other side of the log, the creek bed began a gentle slope downward. It became both wider and smoother. The horses automatically began going faster. Stevie sniffed the air. There was a noticeable change for the better.

“There’s less smoke,” she told Eli. He sniffed and agreed.

“We’ve come all the way around the mountain, and we’re entering the valley now. There’s not so much wind here, so the fire should stay on the other side of the mountain. We’re not totally out of harm’s way yet, but we’re not far from safety.”

Suddenly a breeze hit Stevie’s face. She immediately noticed two things about the breeze. The first was that it was coming toward her face, not at her back. That meant that it also had to be pushing the fire back. The second was that it was fresh, containing no smoke. That meant there was no fire in front of them. And then a third thing came to her about the breeze—it had splattered her face with water.

“Rain!” she cried.

“A lot of it!” Lisa echoed, shielding her eyes from the brisk storm that seemed to have come very suddenly from nowhere.

“Are we safe now?” Lisa asked Eli.

“I think so,” he said. “I’ve been hoping for rain. Now that we’ve got it, I hope we get enough.”

“Yippeee!” Carole and Kate shouted almost in unison. “Doesn’t it feel wonderful?”

“Absolutely mahvellous!” Christine confirmed.

“Does somebody have a poncho I can borrow?” Amy asked.

“No,” five people answered in chorus.

It took another hour, riding slowly in what turned out to be a drenching rain, for the riders to reach an area close to a lake in the valley where Eli felt they could be assured of safety through the night. It wasn’t an easy ride, but the Saddle Club girls and John hardly noticed the difficulty at all. They were too relieved and too tired. The only thing that really seemed to matter was that they were alive, and safe.

S
TEVIE OPENED ONE
eye and then closed it again. It couldn’t possibly be morning already, could it? The brilliant sunshine peeking through the tent suggested that it was.

Then the whole night came back to her. She remembered the frantic ride through the pitch black, smoke-infested forest, the dramatic jump over the log, the arrival of the soothing, cooling rain, and the fresh breezes that combined with the rain to protect the riders from the onslaught of the forest fire. She remembered their arrival at the campsite, the rush to unsaddle the horses, water them, and secure them for the night in the drenching rain. She recalled helping to pitch the tents
hastily and deciding to share a sleeping bag with Carole because they were both too tired to try to find another in the confused mess of camping gear that they were able to unload from the packhorses. After that she didn’t recall anything. It had been well past midnight before the riders were ready to sleep. Sleep, when it was finally allowed, came quickly.

Stevie opened both eyes. She hauled her arm out of the sleeping bag and looked at her watch. It was already nine-thirty. She crept out of the sleeping bag, being careful not to disturb Carole, and emerged from the tent into a bright, warm, and sunny day.

“Good morning!” Eli greeted her cheerfully.

“Is everything okay?” she asked, barely able to believe it.

“Just about,” he said. “One of the packhorses lost his pack somewhere along the way. We don’t have as much food as we would like, but we’re really fine, especially if we can catch a few fish from the lakes today. Also, it seems that a lot of personal belongings were abandoned at the campsite in the rush last evening, so some people—”

“Oh, there you are, Stevie,” Amy interrupted. “I’m glad you’re up, because now you can lend me a clean pair of jeans.”

Stevie recalled then that they had left Amy’s belongings at the campsite while Amy fiddled with her bandage and refused to help break camp. Although she had several perfectly good pairs of jeans, she couldn’t think of a single reason to share them with Amy.

“Sorry, this is all I’ve got,” she lied, and she didn’t feel bad about it at all.

Amy stared as if studying Stevie’s face for a hint of a lie. Stevie gave her nothing.

“Too bad,” Amy said, and went off in search of another victim.

Eli said nothing. He just showed Stevie where she could wash up and accepted her offer to dig for worms for fishing.

Before too long Stevie had a hook baited and had found a comfortable place to sit and pass the time until she could catch some breakfast. Carole and Lisa soon joined her. They were too groggy to talk, but that didn’t seem to interfere with their fishing skills. By the time Eli had the camp fire going, they’d caught enough fish among them to make a delicious breakfast for everyone.

“The fish probably smelled the smoke last night. It must have psyched them for a camp fire!” Stevie announced, displaying their catch.

The rest of the riders were up by then, and since there
hadn’t been any dinner the night before, breakfast seemed like an awfully good idea.

Jeannie asked Kate and Amy to help her clean the fish. Kate rolled up her sleeves and opened up her pocketknife. Amy just looked at the fish distastefully. Kate had the feeling she was searching for an excuse.

“Is your ankle bothering you?” she asked.

“Quite a bit,” Amy said.

“Well, then this is a perfect job because you can do it sitting down,” Jeannie said, handing her a sharp knife.

“I think I did quite enough last night,” she said. “I don’t see why I should have to do any more work today. Seth! Come give me a hand, will you?”

Seth came running. With his help Amy limped off.

“Good riddance,” Jeannie declared, picking up the first fish for cleaning.

Stevie decided later that the best part about Amy’s limp was that, even with Seth’s help, she and Seth were the last ones to arrive when breakfast was served. There were just small morsels of the fresh fish remaining for them. That was enough to put both Seth and Amy into a pout, but it didn’t upset anybody else at all.

“Okay,” Eli announced after breakfast. “We’ve got a few things to do. I saw to the horses this morning, but I want each rider to check his or her own mount and do
some grooming. Then it’s our own turn for some well-deserved grooming. All I will say about that is, the last one into the lake is a rotten egg!”

Stevie, Carole, and Lisa hurried over to the temporary corral together. Kate was already there, along with Christine and John. When Kate whistled, Spot came over to her. The other horses moseyed over as well.

“I think they’re as tired as we are,” Lisa observed, reaching for Chocolate to give her a hug.

Stevie entered the corral and clipped a lead rope on Stewball. She picked up some grooming gear, and when she’d tied the rope to the branch of a tree, she began working.

“Has Stewball got a bunch of burrs and stuff on him? Chocolate does,” Lisa said from the other side of the tree.

“I don’t know yet because I just started, but I do know that he’s got so many smudges, he almost looks like a chestnut instead of a skewbald. How could anybody get that dirty?”

Lisa stood up and stared at Stevie. Then she started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Stevie asked.

“You,” Lisa said. “But I guess you can’t help it. You
don’t know it because nobody has a mirror, but you’ve got even more smudges on you than Stewball does.”

“Me?” Stevie asked.

Lisa nodded. Nearby, Carole and Christine nodded, too.

“Okay, okay, so I’ll groom myself right after I groom Stewball. The bad news is that I only have enough soap and shampoo for one horse and one person. Poor Amy won’t be able to borrow a single bubble from me!”

“Awwww, too bad!” the girls agreed.

I
T TURNED OUT
that Amy and Seth couldn’t even borrow bathing suits, so while everybody else was splashing around in the cool water, the two of them just rinsed their hands and faces and retreated to the campsite, where they sat glumly, complaining about how miserable they were.

Stevie pulled herself out of the water, poured a dab of shampoo in her hand, and lathered up her hair and the rest of herself. She doused herself with a couple of buckets of water to get the suds out and then she dived into the lake and swam as far as she could under water. She splashed up to the surface.

“Oh, that feels wonderful!” she declared.

Once all the swimmers were clean, they began the serious business of play. Eli brought out a Frisbee he’d managed to fit into his pack, and they made a large circle in the water.

“I was going to have us try this on horseback,” Eli said. “So to make it an extra challenge, let’s try it in the water—over our heads.”