Purebred (11 page)

C
AROLE RODE WITH
the reins in one hand. With the other she held the flashlight up like a beacon or headlight in front of her. The thin beam of light shone faintly in the dark woods. It illuminated a line straight in front of her, but seemed to throw the sides of the trail into deeper shadow. The woods were no less scary than they had been before—and this time the roar of the snowmobile’s engine wasn’t there to mask the eerie silence. Carole was not used to a world whose sounds were muffled by snow. The wind blew and sometimes whispered through the pine trees, but there was no other noise except Spice’s breathing and the beating of her own heart.

She squinted into the falling snow. The flakes burned her cheeks and the wind made her eyes water so that she
could hardly see. She tried desperately to be sure where she was going. What if she couldn’t remember the way? The trees looked so different in the dark. She had to find the lake. Otherwise she would be lost. She could freeze to death quickly in the cold.

Spice was a comfort. At least she knew she wasn’t alone, and she felt a little less scared on horseback. Spice couldn’t find the lake for her, but he could and was carrying her safely through the storm. She wondered if he sensed how much her life depended on him. She hoped he wouldn’t let her down.

“Ginger!” she called. The dog had kept close to Spice’s heels at the start, but now he was gone. She turned around in the saddle to look, but couldn’t see or hear him anywhere. She hoped he was okay. Had he been hurt? She tried not to worry about him. She had too many other things to worry about now.

She was so cold that she could barely move. Her legs felt like lead; she almost couldn’t feel her feet. The flashlight wavered and she nearly dropped it; instead, she tucked it under her arm and clamped her elbow firmly to her side. She switched the reins from hand to hand and tried to warm the other hand in the pocket of her parka.

She yawned. The cold was making her sleepy. Suddenly she sat up straight, alarmed. The cold would make her sleepy, but if she lost her ability to concentrate she’d get
lost and freeze for sure. She had to think of something to keep her mind busy.

She thought of Jessie, Lawrence, and Joy. She thought about the story of Jackson Foley, and the story of the unknown woman from Africa, who had come across the ocean with the amulet Carole was now wearing around her neck. She had endured much more danger and suffering than Carole was facing right now. How had the woman survived all of it—the slave boat, the auction, the horrible harshness of her life? She wondered how many daughters the woman had had, and how the daughter who next wore the amulet had felt about it.

Her family was all of those people. It reached across thousands of miles and hundreds of years. So many of them she didn’t know and would never know—some had been lost forever. Some of them had been good people, and some of them had not been so good. But who was she to judge? They were just people, after all, doing their best—sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

Her head nodded despite herself and she yawned again. She couldn’t let herself be tired. She forced her back straight and took a firmer grip on the reins, which helped her stay on when Spice suddenly stumbled. Carole pitched forward onto his shoulder, then back into the saddle when he righted himself. It shook her up, and shook her awake.

She looked around closely. The terrain was rougher, as it should be—they were getting close to the lake. And Spice
was making his way through the heavy going and uneven footing with diligence and surety. His head was lowered, but his steps were steady. The wind blew harder, and made a funny muffled sound.

“Good boy, Spice,” she said, leaning low on his neck. “Good boy, it’s not much farther. Come on.” Catching her urgency, he plunged forward. The muffled sound came again and Spice’s ears shot to attention. He brought himself to a quivering halt and whinnied loud and high. For a moment Carole thought the sound would shatter the frozen forest. She leaned forward in her stirrups to see what was wrong.

Something was moving in the woods ahead—something large, something fast. In her flashlight’s beam she caught a glimpse of white. Then she recognized the sound—it was the gallop of a fleeing horse, made awkward and muffled by the deep snow.

Kismet raced past them, his saddle empty and the stirrups flying. Spice shrieked again, and whirled to follow Kismet, but he obeyed Carole when she forced him to turn back around and go the way Kismet had come.

Carole’s mouth was dry. She knew then that she had been right to follow Jessie and Louise. Someone was going to need her help.

Spice gave another little cry. This time Carole recognized the figure of a horse right away—a horse and rider. Jiminy Cricket and Louise. “Louise!” she shouted.

The figure waved frantically. “Carole! Carole, hurry!” Carole raced to her side. “It’s Jessie … Kismet …” Louise had been crying. She was clearly terrified—her body shook with fear and cold.

“I just saw Kismet,” Carole said, speaking calmly in order to sooth Louise.

“Jessie …” Louise gulped down another sob.

“Where is Jessie?”

“On the ice—stuck in rocks. Oh, Carole, I don’t know what to do!”

Carole pushed Spice closer to Jiminy and reached out to touch Louise’s arm. “It’ll be okay,” she said, in the gentle voice she’d used when little May Grover fell off her pony. “It’ll be fine. Tell me what happened, so we can go help Jessie.”

Louise nodded tearfully. “She was up on the rocks. She wanted to get a picture from a certain angle, and she couldn’t quite get it. She kept asking Kismet to turn—and she wasn’t paying attention to the footing. Kismet slipped on the ice and threw her. She’s fallen into a crevice in the rocks, and she’s hurt and she can’t get out.” Louise drew in a quivering breath. “I’ve got to get help—I’ve got to get home—but it’s going to take too long and I don’t know what to do.”

Her last words were an anguished cry. Carole understood and agreed. It was too cold for Jessie to lie unmoving. She
would freeze to death before either Carole or Louise could get back to her with help.

“We’ll have to save her ourselves,” Carole said.

“But I don’t know what to do,” Louise wailed. Carole felt a moment’s frustration. By getting so upset, Louise was only making things worse. Carole wished fervently that Stevie and Lisa were there to help her. Together the three of them could do anything—and right now, she needed Stevie’s ingenuity and Lisa’s logic as well as her own horse sense.

Good friends never leave you, she told herself. They’re always with you. The thought gave her the courage to go on.

“Show me where Jessie is,” she commanded Louise. Louise nodded and turned Jiminy around, and Carole urged Spice after them.

At the edge of the lake Lover’s Point looked like a rocky finger pointing to the sky. Louise pulled Jiminy to a halt and gestured to a spot halfway up the slope. Carole nodded. She could see Jessie, a dark shape against the snow-covered rocks. “Stay here until I need you,” she told Louise, and she cautiously walked Spice onto the rocks.

Carole paid attention to the footing. She watched for sharp juts of rock and bits of glare ice and tried to steer Spice around them, but otherwise she gave him his head. He climbed the slope with the agility of a mountain pony. When they were near Aunt Jessie, Carole stopped him and
dismounted. “Stand,” she said gently, laying her hand against his chest. Spice lowered his ears and stood patiently. Carole began to think that she would trust him to do anything.

She knelt in the snow. “Aunt Jessie, Aunt Jessie,” she called. Her aunt didn’t move or open her eyes.

“Go ’way,” Jessie mumbled. Carole had to lean in to hear her words above the wind.

“Where are you hurt?” Carole shouted. She was afraid to move Jessie without first finding out what was wrong. Jessie might have hurt her back or her head—Carole knew she could make things worse by moving her.

“I don’t know; she isn’t home right now,” said Jessie.

“Where are you hurt?” Carole shouted again.

There was a pause. Jessie opened her eyes and seemed to be considering the question. “The light meter isn’t set right,” she said finally.

Carole felt desperate. Jessie wasn’t making any sense—was she just too tired? Was she falling asleep from the cold? “Are you falling asleep?” Carole bellowed.

Jessie smiled. “Yes, ma’am. Nice sleep. Good night.” She shut her eyes again.

Carole had to wake her up. What could she do to make Jessie respond to her? What would Stevie do in a situation like this?

Suddenly she bent her face to Jessie’s ear. “Knock, knock,” she said loudly.

Jessie’s eyelids flickered open. “What?”

“Knock, knock,” Carole repeated.

“Who’s there?” Jessie responded automatically.

“Banana.”

“Banana who?”

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Banana.”

“Banana who?” This time Jessie definitely looked more alert.

“Knock, knock,” Carole said. One good thing about this joke was that it was long.

“Who’s there?” Now Jessie looked irritated.

“Orange,” Carole said.

Jessie smiled. “Orange who?”

“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”

Jessie laughed. “No more bananas.” She blinked, and said in a tone of recognition, “Carole.”

“That’s right, it’s me,” Carole said. “We’re going to get you home. But first tell me where you’re hurt.”

“My arm. My left arm.”

“Anywhere else?”

“No.” Jessie grimaced. “Believe me, that’s enough. It’s hurt so badly that I can’t pull myself out.”

“Top of your arm or bottom?”

“Bottom. Below my elbow.”

“Okay.” Carole examined the way Jessie lay. Her hips
had been caught between a gap in the rocks. Her left arm had come down hard on a rock, but her head and shoulders were not trapped. “If I hold you up, can you wiggle free?”

They tried it. Jessie gasped when her arm moved. She began to shiver uncontrollably.

“How are you stuck?” Carole asked.

“It’s more of an … in-and-out … than an up-and-down,” Jessie said between clenched teeth.

Carole rocked back on her heels to study the problem. What would Lisa do? Carole decided to try the only approach that came to her. She took the rope she had brought and passed it under Jessie’s arms and across her back. With one of the stirrup leathers she tied Jessie’s upper left arm tight against her side to keep her forearm from moving. She tied the loop of rope against Jessie’s body. With the long ends she made another loop and put that over the horn on Spice’s Western saddle. She went back to Jessie’s side. “Pull, Spice!” she ordered.

Spice began to strain against the rope. Jessie slowly slid free, crying out in pain. Carole tried to ease her down into the snow. “Whoa!” she shouted. Spice stopped, and Carole untied the makeshift harness.

Jessie was so cold that she had a hard time standing, even with Carole to support her. Carole felt that she could hardly move herself. The snow was thickening and she could barely see Louise, who stood anxiously on the edge of the lake.

“She’s okay!” Carole tried to shout, but now her voice seemed lost. Her lips were numb. She raised her arm in a half wave instead, and Louise waved back.

She maneuvered Jessie to Spice’s side, and held her against the horse’s thick fur, hoping that Jessie could feel some of the warmth of Spice’s body. Jessie moaned and tried to support her left arm with her right. Carole undid the leather that tied Jessie’s upper arm down and used it and the other leather to make a sort of sling.

“Is that better?” she whispered. She could feel her own movements becoming uncertain and weak.

“Thank you,” Jessie whispered. She closed her eyes and leaned against Spice’s shoulder. To Carole the horse suddenly seemed to have grown to twice his normal size. He was so big. How were they going to get Jessie into the saddle?

Carole usually mounted a horse so automatically that she didn’t think about what she was doing. Left foot in the left stirrup, left hand grabs the pommel, right leg swings over—but Jessie couldn’t use her left hand. Could she mount from the right? Riders never did—it would seem awkward. But she said to Jessie, “Let’s turn you around.” She put her hands gently on Jessie’s shoulders.

A gust of wind hit them so hard that Carole fell to her knees against Spice. Jessie cried out. Carole wanted to sob. She’d tried so hard, but she was so cold. What if she couldn’t get them home?

“Come on,” she said to herself and to Jessie, and she used Spice’s leg to haul herself back to her feet.

She heard a faint sharp noise like a dog barking and the wind became a roar. On the bank Louise shouted. Carole saw a light bouncing through the woods. A pair of lights—headlights! It was a snowmobile, flying at top speed!

Ginger rushed out of the woods and flung himself at Jiminy’s legs, barking madly. The snowmobile, with two people on board, came partway up the rocky point and slid to a stop in front of Carole and Jessie. Uncle John cut the engine and climbed off, but Carole’s father was already by her side. He looked down at her and Carole felt tears of relief come to her eyes.

“Jessie’s hurt,” she said. Colonel Hanson went to Jessie and gently helped lower her to the snowmobile seat. Uncle John wrapped a thick blanket around Carole’s shoulders. “How did you know to come?” Carole asked him.

Uncle John grinned with a mixture of joy and relief. “That mutt,” he said, pointing to Ginger, who now came cavorting up to Carole. “He came all the way to Christina’s house and stood outside whining and barking. When we saw him, we figured something was wrong. Christina said that you had all gone home. Once we got there, we followed your tracks—Spice leaves a big trail, and the wind hadn’t blown it shut yet.” He bent over Carole and gave her a warm hug. “Let’s go home,” he said.

Carole thought that was the best idea she’d ever heard.