Dream Horse (13 page)

“I hope not,” Lisa told her honestly. “I don’t think I’d like to know what’s going to happen—unless it’s all good news.”

“Me neither,” Carole agreed, turning Starlight around.

It only took them fifteen minutes to get back to Pine Hollow, even walking their horses for the last quarter mile. Mrs. Reg was there, but she didn’t have any news for them.

“Who’s going to call you at this hour of the morning?” she asked.

Carole and Lisa explained about Phil and his uncle.

“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Reg. She scratched her head thoughtfully. “You know, there was a horse we had here once—used to run away all the time. At first my Max—the one you girls call Max the Second”—that was Max’s father—“he’d ride all over the place just looking for that fellow. Then he stopped.”

Carole and Lisa waited a second until they realized
that Mrs. Reg was done with her story. She often told stories, and they often ended abruptly. They didn’t usually end this abruptly, though.

“So what happened?” Lisa asked.

“Did he just disappear?” asked Carole.

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Reg. “He was a valuable horse. But I can’t stand here telling you girls stories all day long. I’ve got to get to work, and from the looks of your horses, you’ve got some work to do, too. Do you think Starlight and Prancer want to wait all morning for their breakfast?” With that, she turned and walked into her office.

Carole and Lisa looked at one another, shrugged, and dismounted. Sometimes it took a few minutes to figure out what Mrs. Reg’s stories were about. Sometimes they never figured them out.

This time it took exactly as long as it took Lisa to remove Prancer’s tack.

“Got it!” she announced over the stable wall.

“Me too,” Carole said. “Max stopped riding all over the place to find the horse because the horse always came back on his own, whether they looked for him or not.”

“That’s what I think, too,” Lisa agreed. She hoped that meant that Phil and his uncle would find their way to safety, with or without the help of The Saddle Club.

She hefted Prancer’s saddle and bridle with her linked arms and carried them to the tack room. The door was partly closed. Lisa opened it wider by shoving it gently with her hip.

“Oomph!” came a distraught voice on the other side.

“I’m sorry,” Lisa said, edging into the room. But she wished she could take back her words as soon as she saw to whom she had apologized. It was Veronica diAngelo, who was examining her horse’s tack.

“Well, you should be,” Veronica said. Lisa thought that was a pretty rude way to accept an apology, but she considered the source and decided not to make any more of it. “I mean, nothing seems to go right around here. First Red has done a careless job with my tack, and now you barge in here like you own the place.”

Lisa swallowed what she really wanted to say. She’d learned long ago that it didn’t make any difference what one said to Veronica.

“Gee, Veronica, we sure missed you yesterday.”

“Did you?” Veronica asked, arching her eyebrows in a way Lisa hoped she’d never do herself. “Well, I had something else I had to do.”

“What was that?” Lisa asked. She was immediately sorry. Asking Veronica a question like that always led up to a long boring story about how wonderful Veronica was. This time was no exception.

“Well, I had another photo session for that contest that will take me to Rome.”

“Oh, you mean you didn’t think the photographs of Stevie’s accident were dramatic enough?” Lisa asked.

“Not really,” Veronica said, completely missing Lisa’s sarcasm. “But these are. I know I’ve got a winner. In fact, last evening, I made Mother take me to the mall to buy an Italian phrase book. I have to be able to say, ‘How much is that in dollars?’ and ‘Do you take credit cards?’ I had my photographs developed right away. Would you like to see them?”

Lisa didn’t want to let Veronica trap her in one of her “admire me” conversations, but she couldn’t resist. She loved photography and was always curious to see other people’s work. She also wanted to know what Veronica thought was a prizewinning photograph.

“Sure, Veronica, why not?” she said. She put Prancer’s saddle on its rack and followed Veronica to the locker area. Carole was there, taking off her boots. She seemed surprised when she saw Lisa and Veronica together, but she understood when Lisa explained that it had to do with photographs. She was curious about Veronica’s certain victory in the photo contest, too. She pulled on her sneakers and joined Lisa by Veronica’s cubby.

Veronica pulled an envelope out of her designer handbag and handed it to Lisa. “See for yourself,” she said. “Personally, I think there are five or six pictures there that would win any contest, anywhere, but I’m not sure which is the very best of them. Lisa, didn’t you take some sort of photography class sometime? You might be able to help me choose …”

Lisa closed her ears to Veronica’s prattle. She didn’t need a guided tour. The photographs had to speak for themselves. She pulled the prints out of the envelope.

“… so I had Daddy’s pilot take me up. You can’t imagine how hard it was to make him understand that these couldn’t be just any old photographs …”

The first photograph was simply blue. It took Lisa a moment to realize she was looking at a photograph of sky. She handed it to Carole.

“… so I told him in no uncertain terms exactly what he had to do. You know how these people are …”

The second photograph was of sky and clouds. It was pretty, but it didn’t seem very special until Lisa realized that it was taken very close to the clouds.

“… and you can’t imagine how awful it was to bounce around in that thing. If I ever have my own
plane—and I’m sure I will—it’s going to be larger so I’ll have a smoother ride …”

The next photograph was of a mountainside. Lisa looked at it twice before she recognized it.

“Rock Ridge,” she said, handing the photograph to Carole.

“Well, of course it’s Rock Ridge,” said Veronica. “It was right near the airport. We never did go far away, you know. That silly man …”

The next photograph had something else in it. At first all Lisa saw was the vague outline of a shadow against the cloud. The photograph was blurred.

“… well, we hit some sort of air pocket or something there. It was terribly bouncy the whole time. You can’t imagine …”

“Look, Carole, it’s a glider!” said Lisa. Carole looked over her shoulder. Lisa shifted that photograph to the back of the pile and looked at the next one. It was of the glider’s tail.

“Is that …?” Carole asked. The girls squinted to make out the marking on the tail of the glider. Lisa switched to the next picture.

“Number thirteen!”

“It’s Phil’s uncle’s glider!” Carole said.

Veronica preened. “Yes, it is,” she said. “Do you think Phil will be pleased?”

Lisa was so stunned she couldn’t answer the question. She looked at the next few photographs. She saw that the plane had gotten much closer to the glider, and then there was a picture where both of the people in the glider had their hands up.

“They’re waving at me!” Veronica announced proudly. “Of course, then that silly Hubert said we just had to go home. He spent a whole lot of time making a fancy turn. I think the man was just trying to make me sick to my stomach. I told Daddy all about it as soon as I got home and he said he’d give Hubert a piece of his mind. It’s no more than he deserves …”

Lisa examined that picture carefully. There was something very odd about the way they were waving. But it wasn’t until she looked at the next picture that she realized what it was.

In the next photograph, the glider was banking extremely sharply to the left and was aiming down!

“Carole!” Lisa said. “This is it! This is what happened!”

There were no more photographs.

“Well, which one of the pictures do you think is the winner?” Veronica demanded.

“We’ve got to do something,” said Carole.

“Right away,” Lisa agreed.

Lisa handed the whole stack of pictures to Veronica. There was no time to waste telling her what she’d done. There was never any point in trying to tell Veronica anything.

“W
AIT A MINUTE
! What are we going to do?” Carole called to Lisa as she trailed out of the locker area after her.

“We’ve got to get to a phone!” Lisa said. “We have to call the airport.” She darted into Mrs. Reg’s office, where there was a phone on the desk. But the phone was being used at the moment. Deborah was just hanging up.

“Oh, just who I was looking for,” she began, but she stopped when she saw the looks on Lisa’s and Carole’s faces. “What’s the matter?”

Lisa explained what had happened.

“You mean Phil and his uncle are missing?”

“Right, and Veronica had pictures—they must have crashed. We know right where they are! Or at least where they were last seen!” said Lisa.

“It’s next to Rock Ridge,” Carole said. “We saw it in the photographs. Somebody’s got to be told.”

It only took Deborah a few seconds to get the number for the airport and to relay the information. Deborah listened carefully for a few minutes and then thanked the woman and hung up.

“She talked over the radio to the pilot of the rescue plane, and he’s going to go look for them in that area again now. I guess—well, we’ll see.”

“What?” Lisa asked. There was more. She knew it. There was something Deborah didn’t want to say.

“Phil’s our friend. Please tell us,” Lisa begged.

“Maybe it’s nothing. We shouldn’t worry unnecessarily, but—well—the woman said she knew the area. It’s very dense woods. It’s hard to see in there, and it’s even harder to rescue,” Deborah said.

“Those mountains didn’t look that difficult,” Carole said. “Remember we saw the place when we were at Mickey Denver’s ranch? I mean, we’ve been to the Rockies: That’s no place for a rescue. This ought to be easy.”

Deborah nodded. “It ought to be, but apparently it’s not. After the plane has located them, it’s going to be
extremely difficult to get rescue vehicles into the woods, because the only access to the mountains is by narrow trails.”

“Too narrow for trucks?” Lisa asked, realizing what that might mean.

“That’s what the woman said,” Deborah told the girls.

“But not too narrow for, say, a horse?” asked Carole.

“No, of course not, but the trails are treacherous. You’d have a devil of a time convincing a horse to climb up the rocky path the woman at the airport was describing.”

Lisa looked over at her friend. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?” she asked her friend.

“I think I am,” said Carole.

“What’s going on here?” Deborah asked.

“It’s Stevie,” Lisa explained.

“What’s Stevie got to do with this?”

“It’s not exactly
Stevie
,” said Carole. “It’s just what we’ve come to think of as
Stevian
thinking. When you hang around that girl long enough, you start to see the world the way she does.”

“And exactly how would she see this particular problem?” Deborah asked.

“She’d see it as a problem that can be solved by a blind horse,” Lisa said.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Deborah said. “How do you fig—”

“Come on, Deborah,” Carole cut in. “I don’t think there’s a second to waste. Let’s go. We’ll explain on the way.”

Deborah obediently grabbed her wallet and her keys and ran after the girls to her car. She turned the key in the ignition and shifted the car into gear. Suddenly she stopped and looked at her passengers.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To Mickey Denver’s, of course!” Lisa said. “We need a blind horse to go on a treacherous rescue mission.”

“Oh,” said Deborah. “I think I see now. But what if he’s already sold Blondie to another buyer?” Deborah asked.

“No way!” said Carole. “Who’s going to buy a blind horse?”

“Oh, right,” said Deborah. She pulled a cellular phone out of her glove compartment. Deborah hesitated for a second. “You know,” she said to Carole and Lisa, “I think I know a way to rescue two birds with one stone. You can ride Blondie to Rock Ridge,
and
I can still write my investigative story for the paper. Let’s see if this works.” She punched in the number for Mickey Denver.

Mr. Denver was away, but his stable manager was there and had been told that Mrs. Hale and her daughter
might be back for another look at Blondie. Sure, he’d have her saddled up for the girl to ride and they could come any time. Western Saddle? No problem. And a rope, too? What does your daughter want to do, practice rounding up cattle? Heh. Heh. Oh, well, of course, anything she wants, Mrs. Hale. Fifteen minutes? Blondie will be ready for your little girl then, Mrs. Hale. Why, in that time, I can have her coat gleaming—okay, fine, I’ll see you then.

“Remember,” Deborah said, snapping her phone closed. “He’ll never let you take the horse out of the paddock if he suspects any funny business.”

“Time for a star performance,” Lisa said. “That’ll be my job.”

“Then I’m going to specialize in rescue tactics,” said Carole.

Lisa wrestled briefly with her conscience, realizing that while her plan with Carole was a good one and an important one and might be the best way to reach Phil and his uncle, what they were proposing to do was an unauthorized “borrowing” of a horse. The words
false pretenses
floated through her mind more than once.