Chocolate Horse Read online

  Stevie paused to open a gate, unhitching it with her riding crop, held it open while Phil came through, and then swung it closed with a flick of her ankle. It clicked securely.

  “This field’s smooth as can be,” Stevie said. “Want to canter?”

  “Of course,” he said. They both knew that they had to choose a place to canter very carefully, especially in the wintertime when the ground might be frozen. But that wasn’t the case today. The ground was soft, and Stevie knew that this farmer kept his field free of rocks that might hurt a horse’s hooves. They could canter freely all the way across it.

  “Race you,” Stevie said.

  “You’re on.”

  Topside heard the word before he felt her signal to him. He burst into a canter instantly, rocking gently as he propelled forward. Stevie loved this motion of the three-beat gait that Topside did so well, so smoothly and, most important, so quickly.

  Topside had a long, smooth stride, and within seconds he’d taken a commanding lead. Stevie glanced over her shoulder and saw the look of determination on Phil’s face. He wanted to win just as much as she did and wouldn’t think of complaining about the fact that Stevie had gotten a head start when Topside jumped the gun. In fact, winning in spite of that would be an even greater victory.

  All thoughts of anything except winning left their minds. The two of them concentrated totally on their goal, the fence at the far side of the field. Stevie leaned forward to reduce wind resistance, and because it gave her the opportunity to whisper important things to Topside.

  “We’re not going to let him win, are we? There’s an extra ration of oats in it for you. Sweet, delicious oats. And a carrot. And maybe an apple. Dipped in molasses.”

  The list seemed to inspire Topside. He moved faster. But so did Barq. Phil was a very good rider, and he knew how to get the best out of his horse. Stevie could hear them nearing her horse’s rear. She could also see that they were approaching the fence.

  “A sugar lump!” she whispered triumphantly. It was just enough to inspire a final spurt from Topside. They reached the fence a split second before Phil and Barq.

  “Nice race!” Phil said generously.

  Stevie shrugged. “Topside started a little early. I’m sure you would have won if he hadn’t cheated.”

  “Maybe,” Phil conceded.

  The two of them smiled at one another. They were both naturally competitive people, and competition had almost ruined their friendship more than once. They’d learned to be careful.

  Stevie opened the gate and then closed it as the two of them walked their horses into the woods. They knew where they were going. There was a path in the woods that led right up to the banks of Willow Creek. There were tree branches where they could secure the horses, and some nice rocks where they could sit and rest and talk. In the summertime riders could take off their boots and dangle their toes in the stream, but that was a few months off yet.

  Stevie and Phil dismounted. Phil took Topside’s reins as well as Barq’s and tied them onto low-hanging branches. Then he joined Stevie by the creek. She was testing the water with her fingers. That confirmed her suspicions that she’d be pushing the season if she took her boots off. The water was icy.

  “How’s Alex doing?” Phil asked, settling down beside her.

  “Fine,” Stevie said. “He’s missed two days of school now. I’d be doing fine if I’d missed two days of school, too. The only thing I’m worried about is getting his cold. At first I thought he was faking it, but he does seem sort of sick and I don’t want to miss the dance next week. But don’t worry. Nothing will keep me from it.”

  “I’m glad about that,” Phil said. He took her hand. “I wouldn’t want you to miss it, because I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. You know, Valentine’s Day and all.” He gave her hand a little squeeze. She squeezed back.

  “Yeah, Valentine’s Day,” she said.

  Phil looked deeply into her eyes. Stevie kept herself from sighing audibly, but Phil’s look made it tempting. Then he leaned toward her, pulling her gently to him.

  Gong! Gong! Gong!

  Phil sat up straight in surprise. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “A gong,” Stevie answered.

  “What gong?”

  “The Pine Hollow gong,” Stevie said, trying to get his attention back to where it had been only a few seconds earlier.

  “Why is there a Pine Hollow gong?”

  Gong! Gong! Gong!

  “It’s for emergencies,” Stevie explained. She tugged at his hand, but he stood up.

  “Like what?” He was clearly concerned. Stevie didn’t think he ought to be.

  “Like if there’s an electrical storm coming or something like that. It means that all the riders, wherever they are, have to get back to the stable as fast as safely possible.”

  “Like us?”

  “Oh,” Stevie said, realizing that the gong did mean their ride was going to be cut short. “This is annoying,” she said. “I hope it doesn’t mean that Veronica’s mother is trying to reach her to let her know that the chauffeur has to pick her up early.”

  “But we have to go,” Phil said.

  Stevie finally relented, knowing he was right. “Yes, we do. If Max rings the gong, everybody’s supposed to respond. Even though it isn’t about us, he’ll be furious if we don’t get back. Maybe it’s not so bad, though. Once we get back to Pine Hollow, we can take some time to work on the jump course in the ring, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, retrieving the horses. “Though, to tell you the truth, I’d rather sit by the creek with you.”

  “Me too,” Stevie told him, knowing she’d have to wait until the Valentine’s Day dance to recapture the moment that had been interrupted by the gong. But she would recapture it.

  They returned to Pine Hollow as quickly as possible. In less than ten minutes the stable was in sight.

  That was when Stevie started getting worried, for she could see Carole and Lisa in the field at the back of the stable, perched on the fences. As soon as they spotted Stevie and Phil, they began waving. It wasn’t a greeting, it was a hurry-up wave. Stevie nudged Topside and got him to quicken his gait. She felt a little knot tighten in her stomach. Something was wrong, and the closer she got to Pine Hollow, the surer she was something was really wrong and it had to do with her.

  “It’s Alex!” Lisa called out when she knew Stevie was close enough to hear her.

  “What?”

  “Alex. He’s in the hospital. Your mom said to get over there,” Lisa said.

  “Mrs. Reg said she’d drive you,” Carole told her.

  “Here, I’ll take Topside,” said Lisa.

  Alex? What could have happened to him? Stevie wondered, her mind racing. He couldn’t have hurt himself in gym or anything, because he was home with a cold. Could he have gotten a burn from the stove? He’d be dumb enough to do that. Or maybe tripped on something? No, he was too surefooted for tripping. Maybe he hurt his finger pushing the remote control for the TV? But the look on her friends’ faces told her that this wasn’t just a twisted ankle or a sprained finger. This was more serious.

  “Your mother said it was his fever,” Lisa explained. “He really got sick this afternoon. She even called an ambulance.”

  “Alex?” She couldn’t conceive of it. He’d been okay this morning. He’d had his cold and a headache, but he was okay. In fact, up until last night, when he’d gone to bed without even touching his dinner, Stevie had been sure that he was faking it. Now he’d gone to the hospital in an ambulance? Alex was her brother—her twin brother. He could be a nuisance, he could be a tattle, he could be an idiot, but he was her twin, and she couldn’t imagine his being in an ambulance.

  “There you are, Stevie,” said Mrs. Reg. “Come on, let’s go. I’ve got the car running.”

  “I’ll take care of Topside,” said Phil.

  Stevie dismounted, handing Phil her reins. She followed Mrs. Reg, barely aware of where she was going or why. All
she could see was the image of her brother, her twin, Alex, in the back of an ambulance going to the hospital.

  STEVIE SETTLED INTO the seat next to Mrs. Reg. The hospital was a ten-minute drive. That gave her a lot of time to think. Maybe Alex really wasn’t so sick. Maybe he’d done that thing with the thermometer that Stevie had tried, holding it up to the lightbulb so it would show a nice high fever. The problem was that lightbulbs could get really hot. Once she’d gotten the mercury all the way to the top of the thing in about six seconds. Maybe that’s what it was. Alex wasn’t really sick. Just sort of.

  “I knew a pair of foals once,” Mrs. Reg said. “Not the same mare, just the same age, living at the same stable—a colt and a filly.”

  Stevie was a little startled. She’d been thinking so hard about Alex and the lightbulb that she’d almost forgotten Mrs. Reg was there. Mrs. Reg was well known for her stories about horses, and they usually began just the way this one did—with no introduction—and they frequently ended with no conclusion. They were also usually worth listening to. Stevie turned her attention to Mrs. Reg’s tale.

  “This pair, when they weren’t with their mares, were always together. They’d been born just hours apart in adjoining stalls. They took their first walks outside together, they were halter trained the same day. They were taught to be on leads at the same time. First the trainer would take one, then the other. They were just always together, and they were quick learners. It seemed like when one of them learned something, both of them learned it—like they could teach each other. Then, when they were about two, the trainer separated them and sold them. The colt went to a riding school; the filly to a private owner.

  “The colt did pretty well. The trainer there worked with him and found him to be a good learner. By the time he was three, the trainer was riding him. By the time he was five, the students were on him. He was spirited but okay, at least for the really good students, giving them just enough trouble that they learned while they rode him. He was a useful horse except for the fact that he always refused to jump.”

  Mrs. Reg smiled as if remembering. That made Stevie think that the riding school was probably Pine Hollow. Max didn’t often have the time to train a school horse from the start, but he always said the best way to be sure a horse was well trained was to do it yourself.

  “What was the colt’s name?” Stevie asked, hoping she knew the horse.

  “Name? I don’t know,” said Mrs. Reg. Stevie suspected she did know. She just thought that would be a distraction to the rest of her story. “He was a grade horse, mind you. Nothing special in his bloodlines, but there was a lot special in his heart. Just sometimes it was hard to tell because he was so ornery and wouldn’t jump.”

  “What about the filly?”

  Mrs. Reg gave her a look. She didn’t like to have questions during her stories. She liked to tell them at her own pace.

  “The filly went to a private barn belonging to a family of riders. They took very good care of her and worked with her every single day. Their daughter wanted to be a professional rider and thought the filly would be a test of her training skills.”

  Mrs. Reg paused, looking out across the boulevard to see if she could make a left turn. When the traffic cleared, she pulled out, turned left, and resumed her story.

  “Where was I?”

  “The filly being a test of the girl’s training skills. Was she?”

  “Oh, yes, she was,” Mrs. Reg said. “The girl had all the patience in the world. She worked for a couple of hours every day, but the horse never got the idea. She was always an upstart. She wouldn’t stand still to have her bridle put on. She’d nip and kick and buck. It was two years before the girl thought she’d try to get into the saddle, and another two years before she wanted to try it a second time. That filly was simply a handful. By that time the girl was ready to give up. Her father bought her another horse to work with, and they sold the filly—now a full-grown, apparently untrainable mare.”

  “A breeder?”

  “Yes, a breeder bought her. She was a beauty, no doubt about that, but she was no good as a saddle horse, and though, like the colt, she was a grade horse, she’d still do for breeding—that is, if the stallion had a willing disposition, since she certainly didn’t.”

  Stevie knew that breeders tried to match up horses with complementary strong qualities so that the offspring could inherit the good qualities of their parents. A mare with a sweet disposition but not much speed might be bred with a stallion who could move fast but had a rotten disposition, in the hopes that the offspring would be a speedy, good-natured horse. Of course that sometimes resulted in a grumpy slowpoke, but breeders hoped for the best.

  “It turned out she wasn’t much of a mother, either. She had a few foals and they were all right, but they weren’t anything very special, so the breeder decided to sell her. He was somewhat less than totally honest. He sold the mare, along with a few other horses, to a riding school, without saying anything about how unsuitable the mare was for riding at all, much less for young riders.”

  “Was this the same riding school?” Stevie asked curiously.

  Mrs. Reg ignored the question.

  “Well, the owner of the riding school put one rider on the mare, saw how impossible she was, and decided to sell her the next day.”

  It wasn’t the same riding school, Stevie concluded.

  “It was the same riding school that the colt had been sold to,” said Mrs. Reg.

  Stevie was confused but decided not to ask any more questions. Mrs. Reg was clearly going to tell her story the way she wanted to tell it.

  “Well, the riding instructor took that mare to a trainer nearby, a trainer he often bought horses from and sold them to as well. This stable owner thought the trainer might use the ornery mare for breeding—though of course he didn’t know that the mare wasn’t much better at that than she was at being a school horse. The nearby trainer was the same man from whom the instructor had bought the colt. He’d sold him back that colt, too, because although he was a pretty good horse, he was never gentle enough for the children and new riders who rode at the stable, and the more experienced riders always expected to jump.

  “People who saw the mare arrive still tell the story, you know.”

  “What story?”

  “About the mare arriving,” said Mrs. Reg.

  “Arriving?”

  “Back at the trainer’s farm. Where she’d started from.” There was a slight tone of annoyance in Mrs. Reg’s voice, as if Stevie should have figured this all out by now.

  “The minute they opened the rear of the trailer,” Mrs. Reg went on, “the mare became totally docile—unlike anything anyone had ever seen from her. She looked around and there was the colt, now a full-gown gelded horse, standing in a paddock. He spotted her at the same time. The mare, who’d been feisty as all get-out getting on the van, simply walked off the thing. It was a funny deal, because a whole bunch of people were standing around with extra leads, blindfolds, carrots, what-have-you, and she did it all by herself. Then, without so much as a thank you, she trotted right over to the fence of the paddock where the gelding was watching. He took one look at her and did the one thing he’d never done before. He jumped. He just plain backed up to give himself space, galloped to the fence, and jumped, clearing it with six inches to spare. Nobody had ever been able to get him to jump at all before.

  “The trainer and all his helpers, the stable hands, the driver, were all standing trying to clip lead ropes onto the gelding or tug at the mare’s lead, but it was the trainer who realized what was going on.

  “ ‘Stand back,’ he said. And everybody did. There wasn’t any need to do anything else anyway. See, the two horses stood face-to-face and sniffed at one another, nodding their heads up in the air, just like they were saying ‘Yes!’ Then they nuzzled one another and rubbed their cheeks against each other.”

  “True love,” Stevie said.

  “Maybe,” said Mrs. Reg. “But whatever it was,
it worked. Right there in front of a whole crowd of people, two horses completely changed their personalities. The gelding who had been difficult suddenly became cooperative and became a great jumper. The mare who had been impossible turned docile. They each seemed to remember everything everybody had ever tried to teach them, and they really didn’t need any training. Within a few weeks the trainer sent the pair back to the stable, where they were both wonderful riding horses for generations of students.”

  Stevie thought about that for a few minutes. Mrs. Reg’s stories usually required some thinking. Sometimes they seemed to be one thing but were really another. Usually they were actually two things at once. Stevie thought there might be something missing from this one.

  “What happened if they ever got separated again?” Stevie asked. “Like one horse going on a trail ride and the other working in class or on the jump course.”

  “I told you,” Mrs. Reg said. “They were good horses. No problems.”

  Clearly, that was all that Mrs. Reg was going to say. Stevie would have to do the figuring on her own.

  “Here we are,” said Mrs. Reg, turning into the hospital. She pulled round to the emergency-room entrance. It occurred to Stevie then that perhaps Mrs. Reg had just rustled this story up out of her store of tales to keep Stevie’s mind off the fact that something might be really wrong. It had worked, but all the good the tale had done vanished the second Stevie saw her mother standing by the emergency-room door, waiting for her. Her mother’s face was pale and drawn. Something was very wrong.

  CAROLE AND LISA looked around the food-storage barn. Carole had her hands on her hips. Lisa chewed thoughtfully on her tongue. It was a way she had of thinking logically. It wasn’t easy to think logically right then, because both she and Carole were concerned about Stevie’s brother. Worry wasn’t going to do them any good, though, so they were trying to think about the dance and how they might decorate for it.