The Long Ride Read online

  Carole had been a rider at the stable for about seven years—before she owned her own horse, before her mother had died, long before her father had retired from the Marines. From the first time she’d ridden a horse, when she was four years old, she’d thought the finest job in the world would be getting paid to work with horses. Now, finally, she was doing that.

  School was out for the summer, and until she went back as a junior in high school in September, she’d spend at least half of every day at Pine Hollow.

  In the past, filling in for the stable manager at Pine Hollow had been a fairly routine task. Max Regnery owned the stable, as his father and grandfather had before him. His mother had been stable manager for years, and she had run the place smoothly, almost invisibly. That had all changed the past spring, however, when Mrs. Reg, as she was universally known, had decided to retire. She’d moved to Florida, leaving the stable in her son’s hands, and he was relying on his students to do the work his mother used to do.

  Everyone was stunned at how much work Mrs. Reg had magically accomplished. Carole and Denise McCaskill—the girl who was the afternoon manager that summer—were trying to do everything they could to take the huge load off Max’s shoulders, but they were finding themselves as overwhelmed as he was.

  Two little girls stormed into Carole’s office. More accurately, one girl stormed in, chased by another.

  “Carole, I want to ride the pinto today,” whined Alexandra. “Justine rode him last week, so it’s my turn now! You can’t give me Nickel again. I had him last week and he misbehaved the whole time!”

  “Don’t even bother,” Justine said to her classmate. “Carole gave me Patch, so I’m going to ride him and that’s it. You shouldn’t even ask.”

  “Carole?”

  “You had trouble with Nickel last week because you weren’t controlling him properly,” Carole said calmly to Alexandra. “You won’t have trouble with him this week because you will control him properly, but you will have trouble with Max if you don’t get to class on time.”

  Alexandra glared. Justine smirked. Carole ignored them both. She flipped the switch on the PA system.

  “Two minutes!” she said sharply. The girls fled from her office.

  Carole wondered idly if she’d ever been as annoying as those two. She decided she hadn’t been. Then she decided she hoped she hadn’t been. She knew she’d liked some horses better than others, but as far as she could recall, there had never been a horse she hadn’t liked. And there had never been a horse she hadn’t been happy to ride.

  No, she decided, in spite of the occasional irritating rider, she’d found the perfect job.

  Ben, one of the stable hands, came halfway into the office, pausing nearer the door than the desk. Ben was like that. It was as if he didn’t really want to commit to a conversation, but there was something he had to say.

  “The stall is ready for that new horse,” he told Carole. “Almost, I mean.”

  “Oh, right,” Carole said. She opened her drawer and took out the bronze nameplate that had come from the engraver that morning. FEZ, it read. She walked over to give it to Ben. With anybody else, Carole would have thought it was rude to wait to be handed something. With Ben, though, it was different. He was shy and never seemed to feel as if he belonged. He was as reluctant to go into Carole’s office as he was to go into Max’s.

  The only place Ben seemed comfortable, in fact, was standing next to or sitting on a horse. Carole had never known anyone with as sure a touch as Ben had. He never hesitated with horses the way he did with humans. He could look horses straight in the eye and they’d do what he wanted them to do. People were another story.

  Even if Carole had trouble understanding Ben as a person, she had no trouble understanding him as a horse handler. She could watch him work with horses for hours on end. She did, in fact. From her desk, she could see him while he did his chores around the stable, grooming, tending, training, healing, and caring for the horses that lived there. He might stammer trying to utter a complete sentence to a person, but he seemed able to convey a whole world to a horse.

  Carole had watched him soothe a frightened horse through an entire vet visit the week before. Anyone else would have had to twitch the horse, squeezing its nose and upper lip with a chain loop that irritated and distracted it so much that it wouldn’t notice what the vet was doing. Ben didn’t use the twitch, though. He stood by the horse’s head, holding it on a short lead. Ben patted its cheek and whispered into its ear. The horse never budged—even when Judy Barker, the vet, took a blood sample. Ben was amazing.

  “Must be some special horse,” Ben said, looking at the small bronze plaque in his hand. Briefly Carole wondered what had instigated this rush of chatter from him, but then she realized it was the bronze plaque itself and Max’s insistence that the stall be completely prepared before the horse’s arrival.

  “Some kind of VIP?”

  “Uh, sort of,” Carole said.

  “Horse or owner?” Ben asked.

  Carole laughed. Ben wouldn’t be anywhere near as impressed with an owner’s pedigree as he would with a horse’s. In this case, however, both were impressive. Carole picked up the folder Max had filled with information about the horse and its rider.

  “The horse is an Arabian endurance specialist. He’s got a lot of medals and ribbons to his credit. He deserves all the work you’ve put into the stall, plus the brass nameplate.”

  “And the owner?”

  “Actually, she’s not the owner. She’s renting Fez for the summer, option to buy and all that. Her name is Callie Forester. She’s sixteen years old. She’s won a dozen ribbons of her own.”

  “Never heard of her,” Ben said dismissively.

  “Not here. She’s just moved here from somewhere on the West Coast.” Carole ran her finger down the sheet of paper, scanning the notes Max had taken from Callie’s parents when they’d made the arrangements. “Oh, I get it,” Carole said. “Her father is a congressman. I guess he just got elected last year and Callie was finishing out the school year back home. She’s here for the summer. Maybe longer, though it’s not clear how long they’ve leased Fez for.”

  “Okay,” said Ben. He backed out of her office, slinking into the shadows of the stable. That was just like him. He’d heard enough and wanted to flee to the safety of the horses that filled the stalls of Pine Hollow.

  Carole knew she was horse-crazy, and she knew it was a trait she’d have all her life. Ben was horse-crazy, too. She liked that about him. Odd as he could be, that single fact about him helped bring them together.

  Carole glanced at her watch. This was going to be a busy morning, and she didn’t have time to waste thinking about Ben Marlow. One of the things that was going to make it busy was that she had to find someone to cover for her the day after next. She and her best friends, Lisa Atwood and Stevie Lake, had a long-standing date to go for a trail ride.

  Stevie, Lisa, and Carole were so close that Carole couldn’t remember a time when the other two hadn’t been her friends—just the way she couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t horse-crazy. Several years earlier they’d formed a club, and it remained a bond between them. It wasn’t the formality of the club—not that The Saddle Club had ever been very formal—that kept them together; it was their common love of horses.

  The girls were very different from one another and always had been. Carole was acknowledged to be the most serious about horses but the least serious about anything else. Sometimes she thought the only thing that really mattered to her was horses. Sometimes that didn’t seem like a bad thing. Now, as she grew older, she was even more convinced that horses would be her life. Just two more years of high school and she could enter a university equine studies program. That was what she wanted more than anything.

  While Carole was serious about horses, Stevie sometimes seemed to have trouble being serious about anything. She had outgrown her passion for practical jokes, and her friends were more than a little relieved th
at she’d given up playing pranks on her brothers. Stevie had three of them: Chad, now in college; her twin brother Alex; and her younger brother, Michael. When the Lakes started playing jokes on each other, things often got out of hand. But everyone had calmed down, or perhaps just grown up, now. Still, Stevie had an irrepressible spirit that tended more toward trouble than practicality.

  One constant factor in Stevie’s life was her boyfriend, Phil Marsten. They had met at riding camp one summer when they were twelve and in junior high school. They’d fallen in love then and had only gotten closer since. Both Carole and Lisa liked Phil, and he liked them, too.

  In fact, the girls were such good friends that it would be difficult for anyone, even a boyfriend, to come between them, but that was put to the test when Stevie’s brother Alex and Lisa suddenly fell in love. Carole and Stevie had been there when it happened, and neither had seen it coming. Apparently, neither had Lisa and Alex. The girls had been at dinner at the Lakes’ house. In the midst of a raucous conversation about politics and the undesirable high jinks of certain politicians in nearby Washington, D.C., Lisa had asked Alex to hand her the water.

  Alex reached for the pitcher and picked it up. He turned to pour water into Lisa’s glass, but before he could do it, their eyes met, and it was as if they were seeing one another for the first time. Alex began pouring the water—right onto the table. That in and of itself didn’t mean much. What did tell Stevie and Carole that something important was happening was that Lisa didn’t notice … until she picked up her empty glass to drink out of it. And at that moment, Lisa’s life changed for the good, forever.

  Lisa had been having a rough time dealing with her parents’ divorce. There had been several years of squabbling and ugly silence in the Atwood home. Then, as Lisa began to think she was accustomed to it, everything got turned upside down again. Her parents told her one morning at breakfast that their marriage was over. Within a month, Mr. Atwood had moved to California. A year after that, when the divorce was final, he’d remarried. Not long after that, Lisa found that she had a baby sister named Lily in addition to a stepmother named Evelyn. She liked Evelyn. She even loved Lily. But so many changes in such a short time were confusing, and nobody knew that better than her best friends.

  Lisa, always the coolheaded clear thinker of the trio, had gone through a period when she was as capable of forgetting her coat as Carole or as likely to get into hot water at school as Stevie. All that ended the day she fell in love with Alex. It was as if he were the missing piece—or, as Lisa sometimes thought of him, the missing peace—in her life.

  At first Stevie had worried about her best friend’s dating her brother, afraid that she’d be forced to choose between them, but that hadn’t happened. And now, six months later, Lisa and Alex were still as much in love as before, and Lisa had managed to revert to her normal reliable, calm, logical self. Her friends were glad to have her back.

  Other things were also different than they had been when the three girls had been in junior high school. Back then, they seemed to be able to meet at Pine Hollow every day after school and spend all day on the weekends together, at Pony Club meetings, riding, studying, grooming, and just being around the horses. Now there were huge assignments at school, jobs after school, family obligations, and time spent with boyfriends and even with study groups. Nothing changed the way the girls felt about one another, but life had interfered with their schedule.

  Except for the day after next. They’d promised each other one trail ride, just for themselves—no boyfriends, no parents, no interruptions. It was the last chance they’d have to be together before Lisa left for the summer. She was going to California to be with her father, Lily, and Evelyn until September.

  Carole hated the fact that Lisa would be gone. Stevie didn’t like it any better. Alex was brokenhearted, and Lisa’s mother was furious.

  And that was the main reason nobody wanted to talk to Lisa about her decision. Her mother had been very badly hurt by the divorce. She had always been a fragile woman, devoted to trivial details, and now her world was shattered. A trivial world shatters easily, Carole had observed. The woman who once obsessed about Lisa’s proper upbringing, dancing lessons, painting lessons, piano instruction, and posture had now withdrawn from the whole process, leaving Lisa to her own devices.

  Lisa’s devices and resources were considerable. She looked after herself and was a straight-A student. She also took on the responsibility of looking after her mother, shopping and cooking for the two of them regularly. No wonder Lisa wanted to go to California for the summer. She needed a rest.

  Carole’s reverie about her friends was broken by the familiar sound of a pair of crutches thumping along the hallway toward her office.

  “Hi, Emily!” she called out.

  “Hello, Carole,” Emily Williams said. Then the girl peered around the corner into the office, smiling warmly. “Greetings! Anything going on?”

  “Lots,” Carole told her. “And before you ask, the answer is yes, you can help.”

  “That’s what I get for my generosity of spirit,” Emily said, slipping into the chair in front of Carole’s desk. She propped her crutches against the chair, crossed her arms in front of her, looked Carole straight in the eye, and said, “Shoot.”

  “Two things: First of all, can you cover for me in the office day after tomorrow?”

  “Of course,” Emily said. “As long as I don’t have to sort out which of the beginning riders gets Nickel and which gets Patch.”

  “I’ll make a list of horse assignments and leave it for you,” Carole said. “I really mostly need you on the phone.”

  “I’m good at the phone,” said Emily.

  “You’re good at everything,” Carole said. “Don’t think you can get off easy just because of those.” Carole pointed to the crutches.

  “I’ve tried, and it doesn’t work,” Emily said. Both girls laughed. There were a lot of things Emily had tried to do with the crutches she’d had all her life, but getting sympathy was not one of them. She’d been born with cerebral palsy and wore leg braces, besides walking with crutches. Sometimes if she got really tired, she used a wheelchair. None of that seemed to matter, though, because once Emily had made up her mind to do something, she always managed to do it. And she made up her mind to do just about everything.

  Emily had her own horse, a well-trained one she called PC. She rode him every bit as skillfully as the other riders at Pine Hollow rode their horses. She’d won as many ribbons as other fully abled riders, and nobody doubted for a second that she had earned those ribbons. Emily was as devoted to her horse and to riding as Carole and her other friends—more, perhaps. She referred to PC as her great equalizer. When she was in his saddle, there was no thump of crutches. There was no telltale awkwardness in her gait. She could move as quickly as her friends. She could turn, run, and jump just as well as they could. Best of all, they were as happy about it as she was.

  “And the other thing?” Emily asked.

  “Oh, right. Well, we’ve got a new boarder arriving this morning. Can you cover the desk while I help with the unloading? According to the notes, he’s supposed to be a little tough to handle.”

  “Sure,” said Emily. “But what about Ben?”

  “He’ll be there, too,” Carole said. “I just want to be sure we give this fellow a great Pine Hollow welcome.”

  “Some kind of VIP?” Emily asked.

  “I guess so,” said Carole. “The horse is named Fez. The owner is Callie Forester.”

  “The congressman’s daughter?” Emily asked.

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “I read all about her in one of my horse magazines. Didn’t you see the article? I guess not, huh—but anyway, sure, she’s won like a zillion ribbons for endurance riding. Fez is a champion in his own right. The junior endurance world has been waiting for these two to pair up. It was a long article, mostly about how difficult it is for her having to move now that her father’s been elected.�
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  “It can be tough,” said Carole. “Sort of like being an instant princess. Dad met these people at one of those black-tie dinners he goes to—”

  “Spare me Lifestyles of the Rich and Over-privileged,” said Emily.

  “I guess,” said Carole. “But it can’t be easy to be in the public eye the way a congressman’s daughter is. And think of all the boring political dinners and conventions and things like that. Must be hard to find time to ride.”

  “She finds time, trust me,” said Emily. “The article was all about how she spends hours a day conditioning herself and her horse. It also said she has a brother who is supposed to be this hotshot kid, president of his high-school debate team, most likely to succeed—like his father. The brother’s name is Scott, I think.

  “And the horse—well, she only rode him for a few minutes before she knew this was the horse she wanted. Her parents made arrangements to rent him for the summer, and they expect to buy him in September if he lives up to his promise. He’s spirited, all right. The woman who wrote the article spent most of her time talking about flared nostrils. In the photographs, his ears were back, flat against his head. I bet he’s going to be a handful.”

  “Well, we’ll do our best to make him welcome and comfortable,” Carole said.

  She thought she sounded like an innkeeper. She had every intention of doing whatever was necessary to make their famous guest and his equally famous rider very comfortable. Usually Carole didn’t notice much about riders and horses except how the horses were doing and how the riders rode. For some reason, Fez and Callie were making her nervous, even before she’d met them.

  Carole had met congressmen and their daughters before. Pine Hollow was in a suburb of Washington, and there were a lot of people from the government around. It was nothing new. She’d met championship horses before, too. She’d even ridden them. She’d never met a horse she didn’t like, and more important, she’d never met a horse she couldn’t make like and trust her. What was the big deal here? Maybe it was that, for the first time, she was truly, officially, working at Pine Hollow. She wasn’t just one of the riders at the stable, she was the stable. The opportunities for error seemed vast. She shook off the thought. Fez would be there shortly. There was no big deal about it. He was a horse, just like any other horse. He’d be fine—and so would she.