Dream Horse (16 page)

Phil tugged at the little branches, but they wouldn’t budge. He shook his head to clear his mind. Someway, somehow. There had to be a way. “The knife, dummy,” he said to himself. He patted his pocket and sighed with relief when he felt the bulk of the Swiss Army knife in his hip pocket. He flipped the large blade open, smiled to see the freshly honed blade glint in the sun, and started hacking off the small branches. With the right tool, it took only a second. The rope got a little frayed, but it held.

He nodded at Carole. “Slow, slow,” Phil warned her.

Blondie stepped forward again. The rope moved over the branch. Uncle Michael moved down another foot. And then another, and another.

There was a groan. Phil, Carole, and Lisa all looked at Uncle Michael, but the groan hadn’t come from him. It came from above him. It came from the glider.

It was the worst possible news. The glider, once securely tucked in the fork of the tree, was shifting its position because of the change in balance now that Uncle Michael was no longer in it. It loomed above them, perched precariously.

“I think we’d better move a little faster now,” said Phil.

“Roger!” Carole agreed. She and Blondie began a steady pace, approaching the tree while Uncle Michael descended much faster than before.

“So, we just had to try this horse out again,” said Lisa. “You know, part of it was curiosity about whether the horse trader would tell us …”

Another groan came from above. A branch snapped. Blondie sniffed. Her ears twitched anxiously.

“It’s okay, girl,” Carole assured her. They moved forward.

“We’re almost there now, Uncle Michael,” said Phil. He signaled Carole to bring Blondie right under the tree and Uncle Michael’s feet.

Phil hopped off the last low branch of the tree. He and Carole adjusted the rope and the horse until Uncle Michael was lowered right into Blondie’s saddle.

“You brought me up this mountain in your favorite form of transportation, Uncle Michael,” Phil said. “Now, I get to take you down in mine!” He cut the rope.

Lisa jumped down from the lowest branch, glad to be on the ground, but not glad to be under the tree with the glider looming above. Another groan came from the plane.

“Let’s move. Fast,” she suggested. She didn’t have to say it twice. Carole tugged at Blondie’s reins, and Phil gave her a gentle, encouraging pat on her flanks.

They’d taken no more than three steps before the glider began tumbling down. Nobody looked back. They knew they were in danger. There was no way to predict what downward path the glider would take through the thick growth of the dense forest.

“Come on, Blondie!” Carole urged. The tired horse broke into a trot. Uncle Michael clutched the saddle horn. Carole, Lisa, and Phil ran alongside.

And then there was a final thunderous crash. The earth trembled under their feet. Dirt flew up around them. The air was filled with splinters, leaves, dust, and pine needles. Then there was silence.

All four of them stopped and turned around. The glider had slammed into the earth. The fuselage was cracked and smashed. It was hard for Phil to believe that only half an hour ago it had been sitting securely in the tree. What if it wasn’t the jostling it got when they lifted Uncle Michael out that made it fall? What if it had fallen while Uncle Michael was still in it? The same thought flitted through Carole’s and Lisa’s minds.

“Don’t think about that,” said Uncle Michael, reading their minds. “We’re all safe, and thanks to this wonderful horse you brought with you, I’m going to ride
down the mountain in style. Now, what did you say this fellow’s name is?” he asked Carole.

“Blondie,” Carole told him.

“What a coincidence,” said Uncle Michael. “Isn’t that the same name as the horse you were telling me about, the blind one?”

“Not just the same name,” Lisa said. “It’s the same horse.”

“Are you telling me this horse is blind?” he asked, astonished.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you the whole time you were coming down the tree. And you thought I had just made up a good story to distract you, didn’t you?”

Uncle Michael swallowed hard. “Uh, Phil, I think you must have given me too big a dose of that pain medicine this morning. I think I’m hearing things and seeing things that can’t be real.”

“Don’t worry, Uncle Michael,” Phil assured him. “It’s all very real. You just have a thing or two to learn about The Saddle Club. See, there’s this bunch of riders who seem to think that any problem in the world can be solved with a horse—”

“Is that true?” Uncle Michael asked them.

“Of course it’s true,” Carole said. “And haven’t we just proved it?”

An odd sound interrupted Carole’s explanation. Carole
and Phil looked at Lisa because it was coming from her pocket.

“Oh, the phone!” she said. She pulled it out of her pocket, flipped it open, and pressed
SND
. “Saddle Club Rescue Squad,” she said, answering the phone.

A
S FAR AS
Lisa and Carole were concerned, the trip back down the mountain was a lot more pleasant than the one going up. They were no longer worried about Phil and his uncle. Deborah had promised she’d meet them in the valley, where an ambulance crew could take care of Uncle Michael’s ankle.

The trip down was easier, too, because they didn’t have to cross Rock Ridge. They took the long way down the other side of the mountain, knowing that the narrow steps that had been so hard to climb would be impossible for the blind horse to descend.

They couldn’t wait to get Blondie to her paddock,
where she could have a long drink of water, a pile of fresh hay, and a well-deserved rest.

It was a long trip, it was hot, and it was difficult, yet Blondie never failed to do exactly what was asked of her.

“You girls are really something,” said Uncle Michael.

“Well, we never could have done it without Stevie,” said Lisa.

“What’s she got to do with it?” Uncle Michael asked. “Hasn’t she been laid up with a concussion?”

It wasn’t an unreasonable question, but then, Uncle Michael didn’t know Stevie.

“Boy, I want to see you explain this,” said Phil, laughing at the situation.

“Here’s the thing,” Lisa began. “Stevie has a sort of special way of looking at things.”

“Like nobody else,” Carole added. “It’s weird, but after a while, it starts rubbing off on you.”

“Like, when you begin to think that maybe the best horse for the job is blind—now that’s something only Stevie would think of,” Lisa said.

“And when you figure out how to rig a lasso, intended for capturing dogies, to make it into an elevator—that’s something Stevie would think of,” said Phil.

“And when Carole figured out that the only way Moe would let us take Blondie out of the paddock was if
Deborah got him to teach her how to muck out a stall—that’s pure Stevie,” Lisa said.

“I think I’m beginning to get the idea,” said Uncle Michael. “If it’s absolutely wild and impossible, but it works, that’s Stevie’s way of doing it.”

Phil and the girls laughed. “You are getting the idea,” he told his uncle.

“Hey, look,” said Lisa. “Is that a flashing light I see through the trees?”

Carole shaded her eyes and squinted. “Definitely,” she said. “Red and white. It must be the ambulance.”

“Then we’re home free,” said Phil.

“Phil, Carole, Lisa, I don’t know how to thank you enough,” said Uncle Michael. “You saved my life—and Stevie, too, I guess.”

“Don’t forget Blondie,” Carole said.

“Never,” Uncle Michael said, patting the old mare on her neck.

“Helloooo. Carole! Lisa! Is that you?” It was Deborah. They
were
safe, at last.

Blondie’s ears perked up, and she picked up her pace. She practically trotted the last hundred yards through the now level forest to the open meadow in the valley.

It wasn’t just an ambulance and Deborah that waited to greet them. There was a whole crowd. Max was there,
along with a number of people from the Dunstable airfield. There were emergency personnel from the Rock Ridge fire department and emergency rescue service. The rescue service had started the treacherous climb up one side of the mountain and had been only too happy to abandon the dangerous trek when they got the word that the pilot and passenger had been rescued. The pilot from the rescue plane was there, and four reporters from local papers had come to get the story. Both of Lisa’s parents had come, bringing Max with them, and so had Colonel Hanson. Phil’s parents and his sisters were there, along with Uncle Michael’s wife and their two children.

As soon as the group of rescuers emerged from the woods, the crowd began a round of applause that didn’t stop until, it seemed to Lisa, everybody had hugged everybody else. It was a moment of triumph that they all enjoyed.

Then one more car pulled up next to the ambulance. Out of it came Mickey Denver. He stormed over to where Deborah was standing with Max and put his hands on his hips.

“What’s this all about?” he demanded. “Moe told me that little girl of yours just rode out of the paddock without any permission from anyone. Now, what’s it going to be? Are you going to buy Blondie or not?”

Deborah was stunned. So were Lisa and Carole and just about everybody else standing there. The only person who knew what to say was Phil.

“Of course we’re going to buy her,” he said.

And it was the right thing to say.

I
T TOOK ABOUT
an hour after that for everything to get sorted out. Carole and Lisa took Blondie back to her paddock and gave her a grooming, a big bucket of cool water, and a fresh flake of hay. Uncle Michael rode in the ambulance to the hospital with Phil’s mother. Phil’s father stayed behind to arrange for the purchase of Blondie—at a very favorable price. The rescue team made plans to climb back to the crash site so they could remove the remains of the glider in daylight and good weather.

Finally it was time to go. Carole, Lisa, and Phil all wanted to visit Stevie. Max and Deborah offered to drive them there since it was so close to Pine Hollow. Deborah said she was in a hurry to get home and start writing her article. Her undercover investigation had taken some very unexpected twists, and she could hardly wait to get to her computer.

The three young riders climbed into the backseat of Max’s car. There was a lot to talk about. Number one, however, was Stevie.

“How did she know all those things?” Lisa asked, posing the question that had been on all of their minds. “It’s amazing how she’s been able to predict exactly what was going to happen or what had already happened and that she had no other way of knowing.”

Phil shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” he said.

“I bet you have,” said Lisa. “You were there when she told you not to go in the glider. Remember when she said that an engine would be the problem?”

“Of course I remember, and the more I think about it, the less I believe it. Stevie hasn’t been well. When people have head injuries, they can have pretty wild dreams. It’s like the doctor said—her brain got rattled. That’s all it is. It’s the only possible explanation. Most of the time she doesn’t even seem to remember what she dreamed about.”

“And what about the sign for Veronica?” Carole asked. “She absolutely dreamed that.”

“But that wasn’t predicting the future,” Phil said. “That was telling you what to do. And remember how I first thought she had a vision about what happened to me and Teddy? Well, I was being silly. Like you said, it was almost exactly the same thing that had happened to her. She was reliving her own nightmare.”

“Okay,” Lisa conceded. “Some things really aren’t at all significant. But a few were pretty eerie. I mean, remember that she knew Blondie was blind even before we told her?”

“You both knew it, though, and you may have told her in some way you didn’t even know. I mean, like body language.”

“Possibly,” Carole said. “But how about the way she knew you were in a tree?”

“It’s not hard to understand that one,” said Phil. “At first, Stevie was upset I was going gliding because it was going to interfere with our jump competition. So when she couldn’t go ahead with the jump competition, she got more upset and became worried that something would happen to me. She knew we’d be flying over woods. The fact that her nightmare included Uncle Michael’s glider being in a tree was pure coincidence.”

Max joined the conversation as he drove. “See, girls, there’s a logical explanation for everything. It all starts because you’re concerned about Stevie. That’s natural enough. But there is no such thing as being able to read other people’s minds or being able to tell the future.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Deborah.

“What do you mean?” Max asked.

“Well, remember when Stevie called me Mom?”

“I do,” said Lisa. “I promise you, neither Carole nor I had had a chance to tell her about how much fun it was to call you Mom, but she seemed to know it anyway.”

“Right. We hadn’t even mentioned it, so there’s no way she could have known,” Carole said.

“Oh, that wasn’t exactly what I meant,” said Deborah. “Maybe that’s what it was, though.”