Snow Ride (10 page)

“Definitely,” Stevie agreed. Stevie’s feeling about horseback riding was that it was so much fun that nobody should miss out on it. She wouldn’t have minded at all if her parents had decided to take it up—as long as they weren’t in her class and didn’t try to tag along on her fun with Carole and Lisa.

“Is your mother good, too?” Stevie asked.

“She mostly likes to go on trail rides. Fortunately there are zillions of trails through the woods here, so she doesn’t get bored.”

“Oh, I know there are,” Stevie said.

“You do? How?” Betsy asked.

“Well, Dinah and I—” Stevie stopped short. Betsy didn’t know about Dinah’s accident. She also didn’t
know that Stevie and Dinah had been on a trail at the time. Nobody knew that. Nobody
could
know that. “—Dinah and I were talking about them last night. She told me there were zillions. I wish I could go on some of them, too.”

“Too bad you can’t,” Betsy said. “That’s the one drawback of the sugaring off. Mr Daviet won’t let anybody ride on the trails. By the end of the week, he’ll relent a little. He usually takes a couple of riders out on a trail ride or two, but don’t count on it. For now, he’s too busy at the Sugar Hut anyway.”

Stevie sighed silently to herself. She’d come close to giving away the secret, but she hadn’t. She didn’t think Betsy even suspected.

Betsy told her they should be getting back. If they worked quickly, they’d have time for one more run on the mountain before they had to go home. Very carefully Stevie took the ball of snow she’d been shaping, formed it back into a flat piece of snow, and put it back approximately where she’d found it. It didn’t look exactly undisturbed, but it was the best way Stevie had of leaving the magical cathedral close to the way she’d found it. She wanted to find it that way when she returned, and she promised herself she would, someday.

*

“S
KIING IS WONDERFUL
!” Stevie announced to Dinah when she returned to the Slatterys later that day. “Oh, I wish you could have been there. It was such fun!”

“Did Betsy show you the castle?”

Stevie grinned and nodded. “Is that what you call it? I couldn’t decide between a castle and a cathedral.”

“Well, the throne …”

They took some time to decide which it was. In the end they concluded that it was a cathedral in a castle that had thrones for the reigning royals. Even more important, they decided they would go together someday soon.

“Your mother told me you wouldn’t eat anything. She’s getting worried about your stomachache. But how
are
you doing?” Stevie asked, noting with some disappointment that Dinah was still in bed.

“More or less okay,” she said. “Fortunately, I’ve managed to keep my mother from noticing my face, but everything really hurts.”

“Let’s take a look,” Stevie said in her most matter-of-fact, mother-taking-charge tone of voice. Obediently Dinah swung her feet over the edge of the bed and sat upright. First Stevie checked the scrape on her face. It was definitely ugly, but it seemed to be healing. Then Dinah hiked up her pajama bottoms to display the damage on her legs. Stevie examined them, pretending that Dinah was a horse who needed some tending. Stevie was pretty good at tending to horses. She didn’t have much experience with humans, but
she figured they couldn’t be terribly different. At least she hoped they weren’t.

The long scrape on Dinah’s leg was red, but less so than it had been. “The infection is going away,” Stevie said. “See how the redness is paling. So keep putting the goo on it. The same goo should go on your face, too. It helps.”

There was a deep purple bruise on one thigh that Dinah said hurt, but was okay. Stevie agreed. It was just a bruise. No swelling or anything. Then, on one of Dinah’s knees Stevie found something that worried her a little. It was purplish and swollen. The bruise had the distinct shape of a horseshoe.

“I think I remember Goldie using that knee as a starting block for his hundred-meter dash,” Dinah joked weakly. “It’s hard to put weight on it.”

Stevie wrinkled her brow and pursed her lips thoughtfully. “You need a leg wrap,” she said finally.

Dinah laughed. “You think I’m some kind of a horse?”

“Not really,” Stevie said. “But you know if you saw that kind of swelling on a horse, you’d wrap it, right?”

“I guess,” Dinah agreed. “But you were always better at horse care than I was.”

“So wouldn’t that be right for a person, too?”

“Why not?” Dinah answered. “I think there’s an elastic bandage in the bathroom. You do the honors.”

Stevie felt comfortable doing this. Horses often needed to have their legs wrapped. Sometimes it was to help with
healing. Other times it was to avoid injuries. In any case, one of the first things she’d learned to do for horses was to wrap legs. She did it quickly and efficiently.

“Makes me feel like having oats for supper,” Dinah said. She giggled. Then she whinnied for emphasis. It was just about the first laugh Stevie had heard from her since her fall. It sounded very good to Stevie. She thought that maybe laughter would be better medicine even than leg wraps.

“No, hot mash,” Stevie said. “We believe in it for our sick horses. Of course, the vet says it doesn’t make a darn bit of difference to the horses, but it makes
us
feel better.”

Then Stevie finished checking the other wounds. Like the first bad scratch and the bruise, they all appeared painful, but healing.

“Now it’s time to walk you around the paddock a few times,” Stevie said. “If you don’t keep moving at least a little, you’re going to stiffen up.”

Dinah was afraid and Stevie could see it. She was afraid of how much it was going to hurt. Stevie didn’t know what to do for a person who was afraid, but she knew what to do for a horse who was. The first thing any rider did with a frightened horse was to talk. Stevie helped Dinah stand up, and she began talking.

“I couldn’t believe how high that beginners’ hill was when we first got off the lift,” she began, holding one of Dinah’s arms across her shoulder and putting her own arm
around her friend’s waist. She helped her stand. “The lift ride had made it seem like nothing at all, but the first look down …”

Dinah took a few steps.

“… then by the time I’d fallen down eighteen times, I seemed to be getting the hang of it—skiing, I mean, not falling down.”

Dinah laughed and walked some more. Stevie let her walk more on her own.

“I’ve got to tell you, though, there are a lot of people out on that hill who really don’t know what they’re doing. They’re just falling all over the place. One guy actually fell on me twice! Of course, I’d already fallen into the snow by the time he fell on me!”

Stevie could feel Dinah shaking. She looked at her in alarm. But Dinah was just shaking with laughter. She continued to walk around her own room, more confident with each step.

“Oh, I
do
wish I’d been there,” she said.

“You will be next time,” Stevie promised. And from the way Dinah was walking, Stevie was pretty sure she was right.

A
FEW DAYS
later Stevie found herself running up the stairs to Dinah’s room.

“You’ve got to get up,” she said. “All the while when your mother was giving me breakfast, she was talking about doctors. She also said something about Kaopectate and milk of magnesia. What I mean is you’ve
got
to get up.”

Dinah sat bolt upright in bed, swung her feet around, and stood up without hesitating. She grimaced instead. “I can do it. I
will
do it.”

“You’re darn right you will. We can’t have your mother taking you off to a doctor.”

“No way.”

Dinah got dressed. Slowly.

Stevie recreated her “makeover” look as she’d done each day since the accident.

“This hairdo is really something,” Dinah said, giggling, as she examined Stevie’s handiwork in the mirror over her bureau. “Do you think it will become fashionable sometime, someplace?”

“Wherever and whenever that is, I hope I’m not there,” Stevie said. Dinah agreed.

“I
S SOMETHING WRONG
?” Betsy asked.

The big flat sleigh with the collecting vat had just jolted to an awkward halt. Dinah was wincing in pain from the amount of pulling she’d had to do on the reins to get the horse to stop.

“No,” she said quickly. “I’m just not as good at this as you are.”

“Then let me do it,” Betsy persisted. She’d been trying to get Stevie and Dinah to let her take the reins since they’d started. The one thing Dinah and Stevie had agreed on before they’d gotten to the Sugar Hut that morning was that Dinah would have to be the driver. There was no way she could walk in the snow and collect sap. She still hurt too much.

“No, I’m fine,” Dinah assured her. “I’ve just got to learn to do this right.”

“That’s for sure,” Betsy said a little unkindly.

“There are some more of our buckets!” Stevie said,
attempting to change the subject. Dinah got the horse moving and drew up near the next grove of their sugar maples.

Stevie and Betsy hopped down off the sleigh and headed for the buckets. It took only a few minutes to empty the buckets into the vat. It took only a few more minutes to remove the spiles from the tree trunks. Sugaring time was coming to an end, and all the riders had been instructed to remove their equipment, too. All the buckets and spiles were loaded onto the back of the sleigh, and they went off in search of another grove with their buckets on the trees.

The sleigh went over a bump in the road.

“Ouch!” Dinah said.

“What’s the matter?” Betsy asked automatically.

“Nothing,” Stevie and Dinah answered in unison. Keeping a secret from Betsy was turning out to be a very hard thing to do. This time it was Dinah who attempted to change the subject.

“How are your parents coming with their riding lessons?”

“Oh, great,” Betsy said. “In fact, they’re going on a trail ride this morning.”

“They are? I thought Mr. Daviet said nobody would go out on any of the trails until after sugaring off was over.”

“He did,” Betsy said. “But you know how convincing my father can be. He told Mr. Daviet that he wouldn’t
have time to go again for another couple of weeks if they couldn’t go today. And guess what? Mr. Daviet said he’d take them on a trail that’s been closed because of the snow this winter. He wants to see if it’s ready to be opened to other riders soon.”

Stevie got a bad feeling in her stomach. Dinah, standing next to her and holding the reins, stiffened.

“What trail?” the two of them asked in a single voice.

“Rocky Road. Isn’t that neat? I’m sure they’re going to love it. It’s such an exciting trail ride—or so I’ve heard.”

Exciting.
Yes, it was that, Stevie thought, depending on how one felt about tumbling rocks, landslides, and avalanches. That trail wasn’t safe for an expert like Mr. Daviet, and it especially wasn’t safe for novice riders like the Hales. Her mind suddenly filled with images of falling rocks, terrified horses, and wounded riders. The same thoughts had occurred to Dinah.

“They can’t go!” Dinah said.

“Don’t be silly. Of course they can,” Betsy said. “Like I said, Dad told Mr. Daviet …”

“I don’t mean they can’t go riding; they can’t go on Rocky Road.”

“Why not?”

“It isn’t safe!” Dinah said urgently.

Betsy seemed annoyed by Dinah’s reaction. “I think Mr. Daviet’s a better judge of that than you are,” she snapped. “After all, if
he
thinks my parents—”

“That’s not what I mean,” Dinah said. Then she began talking quickly. “The trail isn’t safe. I mean, it can’t be safe at this time of year. All that snow melting is probably dislodging some of the boulders and rocks, and it could—” Dinah stopped talking because Betsy was staring at her.

“You were on it,” Betsy said. “That’s how you know.”

Dinah stopped talking. She merely nodded.

“That’s what happened, and you’re hurt, aren’t you?” Betsy asked.

“It was a big boulder,” Dinah said finally. “It missed me by inches. Stevie saved me. The same thing could happen to your parents—only Stevie won’t be there to save them. We can’t let them go on the trail.”

Betsy paled. “We’ve got to get back and warn them,” she said, taking the reins from Dinah. “Hold on tight, or we won’t get there in time! They’re going out at eleven!”

Stevie looked at her watch. It was ten minutes to eleven. That didn’t leave them much time at all. They were going to have to race.

Betsy slapped the horse’s rump vigorously with the reins, and the lumbering old workhorse sparked to life.

“Hyaaa!” Betsy cried, turning him around as sharply as she dared. He responded.

“This isn’t a sleek and speedy sleigh,” Stevie said somewhat nervously.

Stevie gripped her seat.

Their trip into the forest had been at about two miles an hour. Their trip back to the Sugar Hut was much faster. The old horse finally got into a trot at Betsy’s urging, and Stevie was surprised to see that he seemed to like it. He shook his head, loosening his mane, and seemed pleased to breath in some of the cool air. He snorted it out smartly.