Riding Camp (9 page)

She put the horse’s hoof down and stood up. “That’s a good boy,” she said, patting him.

“Thank you, Stevie,” Phil said. “You’re the best at that.”

“I’m glad to know you think I’m the best at something!” Stevie retorted and, without another word, returned to grooming Topside.

She thought Phil Marston had a lot of nerve trying to make her feel better by saying she was good at getting stones out. She
was
good at it, but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear him say.

When she finished with Topside, she turned him out into the paddock with the other horses and she returned to the cabin. Lisa had said something about a swim before supper. That would be good—especially if there were no boys there.

L
ISA WAS HAVING
a wonderful dream. It was all about the camp-out—the trail ride, the games, the ghost stories around the camp fire. She was listening to more ghost stories around the camp fire. She could almost smell the pungent smoke. It tickled her nostrils and irritated her eyes. She was roasting marshmallows. But there was no smell of marshmallows. There was just the smell of smoke.

Lisa sat upright in bed. There was
still
a smell of smoke. “Fire!” she whispered, almost too frightened to say it out loud.

“Hmph,” rumbled one of her sleeping cabin mates.

She sniffed again. There was no doubt about it. Something was burning and Lisa had the awful feeling it wasn’t a camp fire. She hopped out of her bed and
ran to the window. She could see the barn at the top of the hill. A flicker of orange was coming from the hayloft.

“FIRE!”
Lisa yelled. Everybody was awake at once.

The girls didn’t wait to dress. They ran out of their cabin, screaming out the frightening word
fire
as they rushed through the cabin area. Other campers quickly joined them.

Lisa raced up the hill, Carole and Stevie beside her.

“It’s the hay,” Lisa said. “I know it’s the hay! All that moldy hay, and Fred left it in the barn. It started a fire!”

“Come on,” Carole urged. “Right now, that’s not important. Someone’s told Barry. He’ll call the Fire Department and they’ll take care of the barn. We’ve got to help the horses!”

The Saddle Club knew they only had a few minutes and every second could mean a horse’s life! Barns were filled with things that burned well. Hay, grain, straw, dry wood—all of it would fuel the fire, and within a short time the whole thing could just about explode.

Carole pointed to the upper paddock on the far side of the barn, where the horses were beginning to panic. The horses clustered near the barn, as if they were looking for the safety of a familiar shelter. They shifted and pranced, nudging and frightening one another. Their ears were pinned back in fear and tension, their
eyes were opened wide, showing white all around. The horses were in terrible danger and every instinct they had was putting them at greater risk.

“Get them away from the barn!” Carole cried. “It could collapse on them!”

Lisa saw at once that she was right. If the animals could be moved to the other end of the large paddock and kept there, they’d be safe no matter what happened to the barn. Cooped in the paddock next to the barn, they only terrified one another, endangering themselves even more. But what could the girls do?

“The hilltop!” Lisa cried to Carole. “If we can get them on the other side of the hill, they won’t see the fire, and maybe they’ll stay away.”

Carole nodded. There wasn’t a second to spare on conversation. She barked orders at everybody nearby, and everybody began following them.

“Lisa, Debbie! Climb the fence on our side—don’t go inside, the horses could crush you—and try shooing them away from the barn. Jack, Nora, Elsa, go get cavalettis, jumps, barrels, anything you can think of to create a makeshift fence to restrain the horses in the far end of the paddock. You four, bring water, hay, grain, anything you can lay your hands on, to give the horses when they get there. We’ll need a big welcoming committee to make them feel at home. Seth, you help Lisa and Debbie. Use your shirt to wave at them if
you want. Anything to get them to move, because I’ve got the feeling that wall’s going to collapse. And when it does, the horses aren’t the only ones who will have to be out of its way!”

Lisa looked over her shoulder at the barn. The long upright slats of wood were glowing red with the heat and licking flames were visible behind them. The hay in the loft was burning so fast that the entire barn could be gone in just a few minutes. She began waving her arms at the frightened horses, just as Carole had told her. It was hard to imagine that this frantic herd of horses, prancing, jumping, and whinnying with fear, were the same horses who had been so obedient just a few hours ago when they’d been ridden. Her eyes searched among them for her own horse. But she didn’t see him. Maybe he was smarter than the others. Maybe he was already safe at the far end of the field.

Then the realization hit her. Major wasn’t safe in the field. He wasn’t safe at all.
Major was in the barn!

S
TEVIE RAN TO
the lower entrance of the barn where the horses were stabled. The fire had started in the loft, at the top of the barn. “Hot air rises,” she told herself. “It’ll burn, the whole thing will burn, but it goes up faster than it comes down. I’ve got time. I’ve got time.”

But when she got to the barn, she wasn’t so certain.
The air was filled with the sound of crackling fire and it was close, too close. She could barely breathe, but the only thought she had was for the horses. Especially one horse—Teddy. She had put him in the barn, and she would get him out. There wasn’t time to get Barry or Eleanor to help. All she had to do, she told herself, was to open the door. The horses would run.

She could hear their loud whinnies and cries above the terrifying crackling of the consuming fire. The horses stomped on the wood floor in complete panic, drumming their hooves irregularly.

The she heard one cry, louder than the rest. She couldn’t wait. She had to free the horses. It didn’t matter where they went. It just mattered that they didn’t stay.

Without another thought, Stevie grabbed the handle to the door and pulled.

N
EARLY FIFTY HORSES
pressed forward in the upper paddock toward the barn. The fence was strong, but it wasn’t designed to withstand pressure like that. Lisa could feel the wood wobbling under the crush of the horses’ power. She waved frantically at the animals, but it was as if they didn’t see her at all. They pushed her hands away with their noses. Debbie, next to Lisa, wasn’t having any more luck. Eleanor and Betty joined them, as did six other campers. Finally, with so many
people trying to get them to move away, the horses stepped back, but the horses in the rear hadn’t gotten the message. They pushed the whole herd forward again, surging against the weakened fence.

Lisa looked around, thinking furiously. They needed something really visible, something that would be impossible for the horses not to notice. She spotted a small stack of rags by the spigot that were used to dry the horses after their baths.

In a flash, she hopped down from the fence, retrieved the rags, and handed them out to all the people standing by the fence. A few campers looked at them, momentarily puzzled.

“Wave them!” Lisa yelled. “Anything to get the horses’ attention and frighten them away from the barn instead of toward it!”

The campers followed her instructions. It seemed to help, but Lisa didn’t think that it would be enough.

Then came two sounds that she had been expecting to hear—one bad, one good. The first was the collapse of the loft floor. There was a loud crash as it landed on the main floor of the barn, spreading the fire further and faster. The horses jumped back in surprise, but then quickly resumed their press toward the building.

The second sound was one of sirens. The Fire Department had arrived. The barn was burning too fast
to be saved, especially since the loft had collapsed, but maybe the firemen could keep the fire from spreading.

Lisa returned to her work.

N
EARBY
, C
AROLE WAS
thinking as hard and as fast as she could. She’d never seen anything like the horses’ frantic press to return to the barn, and she’d never seen horses less interested in nine people waving rags. If only just one horse would start to retreat, Carole was sure others would follow him to safety. Normally, waving a single rag would be enough to send a herd of horses on the run. She’d even witnessed Topside completely miss a jump in a horse show because a thoughtless spectator had waved her cloak.

Topside—where is Topside?
Carole asked herself. Although Stevie was riding Topside at camp, Carole had ridden him at Pine Hollow a couple of times and she knew what a wonderfully obedient horse he was. Then it occurred to her that if she could get on Topside’s back, she’d have a chance to convince him to run for safety—and maybe convince the rest of the herd as well.

Swiftly, she boosted herself up onto the fence. She just
had
to find Topside. Unfortunately, Topside was a bay horse, which meant he was brown with a black mane and tail—like almost every other horse in the paddock! Carole anxiously scanned the herd.

And there he was. Like the others, he was clearly
terrified. He was frightened by the sound and garish light of the fire, but he was also alarmed by what the other horses were doing.

“Here, boy,” Carole said as calmly as she could. Horses, she knew, couldn’t understand most words, but they were experts at tone of voice. She tried to keep her voice even and soothing. Topside’s ears flicked toward her in response. She was just able to reach out and pat his neck. Then the throng of horses moved to one side, carrying Topside with them. His ears flattened again. Carole followed them, shifting her position on the fence.

She could do it, she was sure. She
had
to do it, but she sure needed help. The best help in the world with Topside was Stevie.
Where was she?

T
HERE WERE EIGHT
horses in the stable area of the barn’s lower level. Stevie looked around. She was alone. She didn’t have time to go for help. She was going to have to do this herself.

Common sense told her to release the horses farthest from the door first. She dashed in, ran for the most distant stall, opened the door, and tugged at the horse’s halter. He whinnied a sound somewhere between angry and scared.

“I know just how you feel, boy,” she said. Firmly, steadily, she led him to the door and walked him
through it. As soon as she released his halter, she gave him a slap on the flank. He neighed loudly and took off in the direction of the pond. Stevie hoped the horses she released wouldn’t run too far, but she hoped they’d run far enough. There would be plenty of time to find them, as long as they were alive.

Wasting no time, she went on to the next horse. In the eerie, orangish light, she thought she recognized him. Major! Lisa would be glad she’d saved him. Major followed the first horse off into the darkness.

In the split second before she returned to the barn, she heard the sound of the loft falling—and the Fire Department arriving. Maybe, maybe, she’d get some help from them. Maybe they’d be able to save some of the barn.

As Stevie rapidly led the horses out one by one, she thought about the camp’s nice old barn—the cool feeling of the stable area on a hot summer day, the old-fashioned drive-through design, the tack room, and the other storage rooms with the wagons and the sled. She hoped some of those things would be saved. But horses came first.

Stevie kept looking for Teddy. She hadn’t found him yet, but it was very hard to see in the stable area at all. She knew he was there. She wanted more than anything to get him out, but she couldn’t waste time looking for just one horse. They all needed freedom.

And she needed time!

F
OR ONCE
, C
AROLE
was glad about Fred’s carelessness. He’d left a lead rope slung over the fence instead of putting it away as he should have. It was just the thing Carole needed.

The next time the horses surged toward her, she slipped her hands between the slats of the fence and clipped the lead rope onto Topside’s halter. It wasn’t exactly a snaffle-bitted bridle, but it would have to do because it was all there was.

Then she reached one hand over the top of the fence, took the lead rope in that hand, and climbed up. She knew she wouldn’t get a better opportunity than this.

Talking constantly, softly, surely, using his name, patting his neck, Carole slowly lowered herself onto Topside’s back. She was in pajamas and barefoot. She had no saddle, no boots, no spurs, nothing to tell Topside she meant business, except her calves and her voice.

She gripped him with her legs to let him know she was on board and she was in charge now. She wanted him to feel that he didn’t have to make any more decisions in this very frightening experience—Carole would do it for him.

“Okay, Topside,” she said. She clucked her tongue.
His ears straightened right up. It was a good sign. It meant he heard her and was alert for other signals. “This is going to test your skills as a roundup horse and mine as a cowboy. We don’t have any time to waste, so let’s get down to business. Let’s go.”