Autumn Trail (14 page)

“What? Who?” Stevie demanded eagerly, looking from one to the other. “Where is she?”

Lisa glanced at the car Max and Mrs. Reg had just exited. There was no one waiting inside it as far as she could see. Max had to be talking about his girlfriend, but where was she?

“Did you bring your girlfriend back with you?” Carole blurted out without thinking. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, her face turned bright red. “I—I … mean … I,” she stammered.

Max looked confused. “What are you talking about?”

Carole just shrugged, unable to speak.

Stevie, who was almost never at a loss for words, decided it was time to try the direct approach. “Isn’t that what you were doing this weekend, Max?” she asked. “Visiting your girlfriend?” She smiled triumphantly, proud that The Saddle Club had figured out his secret.

But much to her surprise, Max burst out laughing. “Whatever gave you that idea?” he asked when he was able to stop laughing long enough to speak. Mrs. Reg was laughing, too.

“Well,” Carole said uncertainly, “we thought that’s what this trip was all about.” She glanced at her friends, who were beginning to look almost as embarrassed as she felt. Feeling somewhat responsible for the whole situation, which suddenly seemed to be turning out to be some kind of huge misunderstanding, Carole tried to explain. “I sort of accidentally overheard you talking on the phone about a special lady named Lillian, so naturally we thought you were going to visit your girlfriend for a romantic weekend.” She decided to leave out their speculations about his impending marriage and/or elopement.

“And why do you think I came along on this romantic weekend, then?” Mrs. Reg asked with a chuckle. “After all, Max is old enough not to need a chaperon.”

“I guess we didn’t really think about that,” Stevie mumbled.

“Besides,” Max said, “if you thought I was about to introduce you to a girlfriend, where did you think she was now? Did you think I made her ride in the trailer?” He gestured to the empty car.

“I guess we didn’t think about that, either,” Stevie admitted, her face flaming.

“Hey, Max, why did you bring the trailer with you, anyway?” Lisa asked curiously.

“Well, girls, I’m not even going to lecture you about listening to other people’s phone conversations,” Max said, ignoring Lisa’s question. “
This
time,” he added quickly, making it clear that he did not approve of their eavesdropping.

“So who did you want us to meet?” Stevie asked, partly to change the subject before Max changed his mind about that lecture, but mostly because Max still hadn’t told them what he’d really been doing that weekend.

“Well, you were partly right when you thought I’d been spending the weekend with a very special lady,” Max began. He started walking toward the horse trailer, and the girls followed eagerly.

“Oh, Max!” Carole exclaimed, catching on at last. “Did you buy another horse?”

Max smiled, and Carole knew she’d guessed correctly.

“Oh, Max, that’s wonderful!” Stevie cried. “Is she in the van now?”

Max nodded. “As you know, ever since I got Geronimo,
I’ve been looking for a new mare to breed with him. And I finally found her.”

By this time they had reached the van, and Max carefully swung open the wide back door. The girls peered into the dark interior of the van, where they could see a tall, slender horse cross-tied in one of the two stalls.

“How wonderful,” Carole said breathlessly. “Can we bring her out now so we can see her better?”

“Did you think I was going to leave her in there all day?” Max asked, trying—unsuccessfully—to sound gruff. Carole could tell that he was just as excited about the new addition to Pine Hollow as they were. “Carole, why don’t you do the honors. But be careful. She’s had a long ride.”

Carole nodded. She knew that even the gentlest of horses could sometimes be upset by a long van ride. But she also knew that Max wouldn’t let her bring the horse out if he wasn’t fairly certain she wouldn’t act up. He was just reminding her to be cautious, which was always a good reminder to have when working with horses.

She climbed into the van. Stevie and Lisa helped Max lower the ramp off the back as Carole approached the mare carefully from behind, talking reassuringly to her all the while. It was never good to surprise a horse by coming up to it suddenly from the rear, especially a strange horse who might be a kicker.

The mare’s small, delicate ears flicked backward, and she turned her head as far as the lead ropes would allow.
Carole could see that the horse had the delicate, aristocratic head and the long, slender neck of a Thoroughbred. “You’re a beauty,” Carole whispered to the horse, reaching forward slowly to unhook the lead lines from the side of the van. “Now come on out with me so you can check out your new home. You’re going to love it here.” She knew that the horse couldn’t understand what she was saying, but that the tone of her voice was what mattered. She tried to make it as soothing as possible so that the mare would know she didn’t have anything to fear.

In a matter of moments, Carole had the mare out of the van. Both the girl and the horse blinked in the strong November sunlight. Carole handed the lead line to Max and then stepped back for a better look.

“Wow! What a great-looking horse,” Stevie exclaimed, echoing Carole’s thoughts.

The mare really was a beauty. She was tall for a mare, with a long, slender neck and an intelligent face. Her coat, which was a medium-chestnut shade, gleamed in the sun where it wasn’t covered by the blanket strapped on her. She had four white socks and a little strip of white on her forehead that resembled a question mark. “What’s her name?” Carole asked Max without taking her eyes off the mare.

“Well, her full registered name is Al’s Calypso Lady,” Max said, stroking the mare’s velvety nose. “She started
out as a racehorse. But I think around here we can just call her Calypso.”

“Calypso,” Carole repeated, trying the name out. She decided it fit the horse perfectly. While helping Judy Barker on her rounds, Carole had spent some time at a local racetrack, where she had learned a little bit about the sport of racing. In fact, she had been surprised to find out how much there was to know—it was almost like a whole new world. Since Carole was determined to learn as much as humanly possible about every subject having to do with horses, she had taken her own ignorance about racing as a challenge and checked out of the library a few books on the subject.

Among the things she had learned was that American Thoroughbred racehorses, who all had to be registered at birth with the American Jockey Club, sometimes had strange names because of the rules for registration. These rules stated that a horse’s name couldn’t have more than eighteen characters, including spaces and punctuation. The horse couldn’t have the same name as any other registered horse that was still living, or had been dead fewer than fifteen years. And it couldn’t have the same name as any of racing’s greatest stars, such as Man O’War or Eclipse, no matter how long ago they had lived.

“Calypso is the perfect name for her,” Stevie agreed. She stepped forward to pat the mare’s nose and get acquainted. Calypso turned her large, liquid brown eyes
toward Stevie, seeming to smile. Her delicate ears flicked forward alertly.

“She’s so beautiful,” Lisa said. “I mean, she’s
really
beautiful!”

Carole laughed. “You’re such a sucker for a pretty Thoroughbred face,” she teased her friend.

Lisa laughed, too, mostly because she knew it was true. Next to Pepper, Lisa’s favorite horse in the stable was a lovely bay Thoroughbred mare named Prancer. Like Calypso, Prancer also had started as a racehorse, but a weak bone in her foot had ended her racing career and made it possible for Max and Judy Barker to buy her.

“Lisa’s right, though,” Stevie said. “Calypso is a beauty, and she looks fast, too, and young. And she doesn’t look injured or anything as far as I can tell. So how come she’s not still racing?”

“I suppose that’s your tactful way of asking how I could afford such a fantastic horse,” Max said.

Stevie grinned. “Well, maybe,” she admitted.

Luckily, Max didn’t take offense. “You’re right, she is an excellent horse, with amazing racing bloodlines. And I wouldn’t have had a prayer of buying her, except for a lucky accident she had in her last race.”

“What do you mean?” Lisa asked. She’d thought that any accident a horse had was unlucky. “Did the same thing happen to Calypso that happened to Prancer?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Max hurried to assure the girls. “No, believe me, Calypso doesn’t have any hereditary
weakness in her bloodlines—anything but. And she wasn’t injured, not physically at least.”

“What, then?” Stevie demanded. She was getting tired of Max’s mysterious, roundabout way of explaining things today. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Well, this is what happened,” Max said. “Calypso here has some of the best bloodlines I’ve ever seen. Her first race was a maiden race, which means that none of the horses running in it had ever won a race before. She won it easily, even though she was running against colts as well as fillies.”

Carole, Stevie, and Lisa knew from their experience with Prancer that colts were usually faster than fillies. In fact, there were separate races exclusively for fillies and mares, although they often raced against male horses as well. So the fact that Calypso had won her first race against colts made her victory even more impressive.

“Then what happened?” Carole asked.

“Then what happened was her second race,” Max said. “Her owners were so pleased with her performance that they decided to run her against colts again. The jockey had told them that she hadn’t even exerted herself to win the first time. He was convinced that there was nothing this horse couldn’t do, and the owners agreed.”

Looking at Calypso, The Saddle Club could believe that. “Did she win the second race, too?” Lisa asked expectantly.

“Not exactly,” Max said. “She was in fine form on race day and was the favorite to win, but things went badly for poor Calypso from the start of the race. First she got boxed in behind several other horses. She just couldn’t find a way around them, and she got frustrated. She wanted to be out front where she knew she belonged, I guess. But that wasn’t the worst of it. About halfway through the race, one of the horses in front of Calypso stumbled and went down, taking a couple of other horses with him.”

“Oh, no!” gasped Carole. It sounded a lot like what had happened to Prancer, although in that case she had been the only one to fall. Even though most races went off without incident, Carole knew that accidents did happen.

“Yes,” Max said grimly. “It was a pretty bad accident from what I hear. Luckily for Calypso here, she managed to jump over the injured horses in front of her. But there was a lot of bumping going on both before and after the accident, and it must have spooked her pretty badly, because instead of finishing the race, she jumped the rail to the infield. Her jockey had a hard time staying in the saddle and keeping her under control—he was lucky he wasn’t hurt. After that Calypso refused to stay on a track with more than one or two other horses. I guess she just didn’t want to take a chance of going through the same kind of thing again. For more than a year, her trainer
tried everything he could to cure her, but nothing helped. It was obvious she was useless as a racehorse.”

“That’s terrible,” Carole declared. “Poor Calypso. She must have been so scared.” She gave the horse, who looked anything but scared at the moment, a pat on the neck. “But if her bloodlines are as good as you say, wouldn’t she be valuable as a brood mare?”

Max shrugged. “Maybe, but remember, she was practically untested on the track. Her time in that first race was fast enough to win, obviously, but it wasn’t spectacular. Her jockey thought she could do a lot better, but people aren’t willing to risk the big money involved on what a jockey thinks.”

Carole knew that that was true. She had been surprised to discover what a big business Thoroughbred racing really was. “Still,” she began carefully, “wouldn’t the owner want to at least try? Before, I mean …” She tried to think of a way to phrase her question that wouldn’t seem to be an insult to Max. After all, Pine Hollow was doing fine financially, but as far as Carole knew, Max wasn’t exactly in a position to pay the tens of thousands of dollars that Calypso was probably worth whether she could race or not.

Suddenly Mrs. Reg started laughing. “Girls, Max isn’t telling you the whole story,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

“What do you mean?” Stevie asked, instantly sensing that something interesting was coming. She was even
more certain about that when she noticed that Max was beginning to look embarrassed.

But before he could open his mouth to protest, Mrs. Reg was explaining exactly what she meant. “You see, one of these owners Max keeps referring to is a woman he went to high school with. Her name is Lillian Shepardson. You might say that she and Max were quite an item at the time.”

“An old sweetheart?” Stevie exclaimed. “How romantic!”

“So we were partly right, after all,” Carole said. “Max was going to see his old flame, maybe rekindle their love …?”

“I don’t think so,” Mrs. Reg said drily. “This old flame has been married to someone else for many years and has five children. But she knows Max well enough to know he’ll give Calypso a good home. So when it became clear they weren’t going to get as much as they’d hoped for her anyway, she convinced the other owners to lower the price enough so that we could afford her—on the condition that they can breed her to one of their stallions someday and keep the foal.” She smiled. “It’s really a very generous deal from our point of view.
Very
generous.” She gave the girls a wink. They realized that she was teasing Max by making it sound as if Lillian Shepardson had lowered the price only because she was still in love with him. Even though that probably wasn’t true at all, The Saddle Club still thought it was awfully romantic
that Max’s high-school sweetheart had made it possible for him to buy such a beautiful horse.

“All right, girls,” Max said suddenly, turning Calypso and starting to lead her in the direction of the stable. “We can’t leave this fine Thoroughbred standing out in the cold all day, can we? Let’s go. Since Red isn’t back yet, you three will have to help get her settled in her new stall.”