Pony Tails 03- Corey's Pony Is Missing Read online

  The man wasn’t describing a pony, he was describing a newborn horse—a foal. The much bigger horse was the foal’s mother. Corey could have explained that to the man, but she didn’t bother. A lot of people thought ponies were just baby horses. Still, she thanked the man for calling.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “Just trying to help.”

  Corey told her friends about the calls. “And two more people who have a pony they want to sell have called me!” she said.

  “People can be dumb,” May remarked.

  “It seems like they want to take advantage of you when you’re sad,” Jasmine remarked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Corey. “Mostly they just sound like they want to find a good home for a nice pony.”

  The girls kept looking, making calls to nearby animal shelters, farm associations, horse farms, and student groups. Nobody had seen Samurai. Nobody knew where he might be.

  On Thursday the local newspaper came out. Corey’s father had put an ad in it but so far no one had answered.

  “Maybe people will call about the ad over the weekend,” Jasmine said as the three girls sat in the hayloft after their trail ride.

  “I’ll be at Dad’s after Horse Wise on Saturday,” Corey said.

  “We can check for messages,” May offered.

  “Thanks, but Mom will be home,” Corey told her. “She’ll call me. You can do something much more important.”

  “Whatever it is, we’ll do it,” said Jasmine. “No matter how hard.”

  “I know,” said Corey. “But this isn’t hard. What you can do for me is to be with me. Will you come to my father’s with me for a sleepover?”

  “At your dad’s apartment?” May asked.

  “On Shelley Lane?” said Jasmine.

  Corey nodded.

  “Of course,” May told her.

  “Sure,” added Jasmine.

  “Good,” said Corey. “Because my dad wants to meet my two best friends.”

  The phone in the stable rang once. That was Mrs. Grover’s signal that dinner was almost ready. It was time for the girls to go home.

  May waved good-bye to her friends and went to the house. She was thinking about Corey’s father’s apartment. She wondered what it would look like. She thought it would be odd to have a sleepover at a friend’s house that wasn’t her friend’s house. Still, she’d be with her friends and she’d be helping Corey. That was what was important.

  12 Reunion

  Corey sat down on her bed and looked around her room. She was packing to go to her father’s after Horse Wise. He’d pick her up there and take her and her friends to his apartment.

  So much had changed in nine days. One of the things that had changed was that there was a new picture on her bedroom wall. It was a painting of a horse-drawn cab that her mother had brought Corey from New Orleans. It made Corey smile because the horse was wearing a straw hat with his ears sticking through it. It was a nice present. But having a painting of a horse wasn’t the same as having Samurai.

  Corey took a deep breath and sighed. She’d ridden every inch of the woods. She’d looked in every corner of the fields near her home. She’d talked to a lot of strange people. And she’d cried. None of that had done any good at all.

  Now she had another Horse Wise meeting, and it was a mounted meeting again so that they could practice their drills. Today Cross County, a nearby Pony Club, was going to have a joint meeting with them at Pine Hollow.

  Corey could ride Penny. Penny was a nice pony. It wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t Samurai.

  “Stop it,” Corey told herself. Being glum wouldn’t change anything. She decided to make the best of the situation. That reminded her that Jasmine and May could use her help to get their ponies into the van—especially Outlaw. He could be so naughty sometimes.

  She finished dressing and packing and went downstairs. She gave her mother an extra hug and then went out the back door of her house, heading for May’s.

  She could hear the ruckus even before she got there.

  “Come on, Macaroni. It’s time to get in the trailer,” May was saying.

  Macaroni whinnied.

  “I think he’s learned a few things from Outlaw,” Jasmine said. “Outlaw is the one who’s supposed to be fussy!”

  “What’s the problem?” Corey asked as she put her suitcase on the backseat of Mr. Grover’s car. “Why is Macaroni fussing?”

  “Beats me,” said May. “Here, take a carrot, Corey. See if you can get him to do what he’s supposed to do.”

  Corey took the carrot and began backing into the trailer, the way she and her friends usually did to trick Outlaw into getting in.

  Macaroni sniffed toward the carrot. Corey backed up. Macaroni stood still.

  “He’s seen us do this to Outlaw. He doesn’t want us to fool him!” said May. “Let me try something else.”

  The something else was a trick her father had shown her. She walked Macaroni away from the van. She walked him in circles three times around the van, totally ignoring the ramp. Then, the fourth time, she took a quick turn and led him up the ramp. He was in his stall before he knew what had happened. Corey clipped the stall door shut. May came out smiling.

  “No trouble at all,” she said.

  “Keep the carrot handy. Here comes Outlaw,” said Jasmine.

  Outlaw walked right up the ramp without a second of protest.

  “I’m beginning to think there’s no way of ever knowing what goes on in a pony’s mind,” Jasmine declared.

  May clunked the trailer door shut and locked it. “I guess one thing we can count on with ponies is that they’re never predictable,” she said. She brushed her hands off and went back to her house to pick up her overnight bag.

  Corey and Jasmine went to open the back doors of the station wagon. Behind it the trailer rocked ever so slightly. It was unusual for the ponies to fuss once they were inside. But these two ponies were clearly fussing.

  “I think they’re trying to tell us something,” said Jasmine.

  “They’re trying to tell us it’s time to get to Horse Wise,” Corey said.

  Inside the van one of the ponies whinnied.

  Outside the van there was a whinnying answer.

  May glanced toward her family’s stable as she came back with her bag. “Double-O-Seven must have been chatting with Macaroni,” she said. “Maybe they just want to finish their conversation.”

  Then another whinny came from the van, followed by another answer. But this time it didn’t sound as if it was coming from the Grovers’ stable.

  The Pony Tails looked at one another. Could it be? They didn’t even utter the words. They just ran.

  Corey didn’t dare hope, but she couldn’t stop herself. The whinnying came again. Then Corey knew. She knew the whinny. She knew the voice. And she knew it was true.

  Samurai was home!

  There he was. He was standing impatiently outside his yard, stomping on the ground. He almost looked as if he were knocking on the door to get in. The minute he spotted Corey, he began nodding. She thought she could hear what he was thinking. Yes, all right. Now you know it’s me. It’s about time you opened this gate and let me in. Do you think I’m going to wait all day?

  Corey ran faster than she could ever remember running.

  “Samurai!” she cried as she reached him. She flung her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly, rubbing her face in his soft, warm coat.

  Can’t you tell when a fellow needs a good dose of sweet feed?

  Doc Tock came out the back door of her house. “What’s all the—Samurai! You’ve come home!” she said.

  May, Jasmine, and Doc Tock joined Corey in patting Samurai and welcoming him back.

  “Is he okay, Mom? Is he?” Corey asked, stepping back to look at her pony.

  Doc Tock took a look. “Seems to be,” she said. “But let’s be sure.”

  She ran her hands along his back and his legs, checking for problems. Then she looked at his eyes
and his ears. She used her stethoscope to check his heart and lungs while Corey looked at his hooves.

  “He’s fine,” Doc Tock announced. “I think he could use a good grooming and a square meal, but wherever he’s been, it doesn’t seem to have done him any harm.”

  Corey clipped a lead rope onto Samurai’s halter and brought him back inside his stable. May and Jasmine closed the gate behind him and then shut the door to his yard.

  “I guess you’re going to want to keep him securely cooped up for a long time now, aren’t you?” May asked.

  “No way,” said Corey. “The thing I most want to do right now is to take him to Horse Wise. Can I, Mom?”

  Doc Tock shrugged. “Don’t know why not,” she said. “But I think you’d better groom him and feed him and give him some water first. Do you think you know anyone who could help you with that?”

  Corey didn’t have to ask for help. Her two best friends volunteered instantly.

  May and Jasmine were finishing up the last bit of work with a currycomb when they heard the honk of the Grovers’ car. Mr. Grover didn’t honk anymore when he saw what was keeping them.

  He came and pitched in, too. He carried Samurai’s tack to the van and then helped lead Samurai up the ramp. He closed and locked the door.

  “Let’s go!” he said.

  The girls piled into the backseat. Later Corey couldn’t remember anything that had happened or been said during the whole trip to Pine Hollow that day. All she could remember was that she’d never felt happier or more relieved in her whole life.

  13 Corey’s Other Home

  “You can have the lights on for another half hour and then it’s definitely lights out,” said Mr. Takamura.

  “Okay,” said May agreeably. She liked Mr. Takamura a lot, so she wanted to sound agreeable. What she wasn’t saying, though, was that the Pony Tails had long ago discovered that they could talk after lights were out.

  May was surprised by how much she liked Mr. Takamura. Before they’d met him and been to his apartment, she and Jasmine hadn’t been able to imagine what Corey’s “other” life was like. Now they knew. Mr. Takamura had a pleasant apartment with a big kitchen, two bedrooms, and a nice living room. Corey’s room had twin beds. Mr. Takamura had brought in a folding cot so that each of the girls had a bed to sleep on.

  “Your dad’s apartment is a great place,” said May.

  “It’s not just my dad’s apartment,” Corey said patiently. “It’s my apartment, too. Just like my mother’s house is my house, too.”

  May hadn’t thought of it that way. But it made sense. Corey’s parents each had one home, but Corey had two homes.

  “Speaking of my mother, I think I’ll call her again, just to be sure Samurai’s all right.”

  May and Jasmine looked at each other and smiled when Corey went into the living room to make the call. This was the third time Corey had called her mother. Samurai had been just fine the two earlier times. They were pretty sure he would be fine this time, too.

  Corey returned a few minutes later. “He’s okay,” she reported. “Mom’s got him in his stall with the door closed to the yard. She called a carpenter this afternoon and he’ll come next week to make the fence higher so Samurai can’t run away again. Until then, we’ll keep him inside.”

  Corey picked up her hairbrush and comb. She brushed her hair back and up, trying to make it into a ponytail like the ones her friends had. When she was done, she had a little tuft of hair in her hand.

  “Almost?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” May said.

  Corey sighed. She knew May was right. It was going to be a long time before she had a real ponytail. She could wait. It would be easier than waiting for Samurai to come home.

  “Pass me a graham cracker, will you?” Jasmine asked.

  May offered her the plate and took a cracker herself.

  “So, how do you think we did today at Horse Wise?” Jasmine asked.

  “Samurai and I had a wonderful time,” Corey said, abandoning her hairbrush. “I don’t know about you guys!”

  May and Jasmine laughed. For two hours, Max had all the riders from Horse Wise and Cross County working on a drill exercise. It was hard work and took a lot of concentration. Corey and Samurai hadn’t made one mistake.

  “I think Samurai was as happy to be back home with me as I was to have him home,” said Corey.

  “Definitely,” May agreed. “And you know what? I think Macaroni and Outlaw were glad to have him, too.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Jasmine. “Remember how funny they both were about getting in the van? I think they knew Sam was back home and that’s why they were acting strange.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Corey. “Ponies can’t talk.” She tossed a pillow at Jasmine as if to emphasize her point.

  “Then why was Macaroni being so fussy while Outlaw was so gentle?” Jasmine asked, catching the pillow. “They were trying to tell us something.”

  Corey thought for a moment, then finally nodded. “I think you guys might be right. I only wish Samurai would tell me where he went.”

  “Too bad, because he won’t,” said May.

  Her friends looked at her.

  “There are some things that ponies can tell us,” May went on, “like when they’re happy or lonely. But I think it’s right that horses and ponies have secrets. We’re not supposed to know everything they think and do. They need to have their own lives, just like we have a life away from them.”

  “But I want to be with Sam all the time,” Corey burst out. “I always want to be with our ponies.”

  “Well, would you really want to have three ponies in the room with us here, now?” May asked.

  Corey and Jasmine laughed out loud.

  “May,” Jasmine groaned, “you have a funny way of making a point, but I guess I know what you mean.”

  “Me too,” Corey added. “Besides, the ponies on the wallpaper are the only horses my dad allows in here!”

  “You know,” Corey said a moment later, when the laughter died down, “it makes Samurai seem mysterious. It’s like he’s got a secret life and I’ll never know what it is.”

  “Just like the way May and I thought you had a secret life, here in your father’s apartment,” said Jasmine.

  “And like the secret life that Outlaw has,” May chimed in. “Remember when he threw you last week and ran off and we didn’t know why?”

  “Sure,” said Jasmine. “My bottom is still bruised from landing so hard.”

  “Well, we’re never going to know what it was that scared him,” May said. “We can love our ponies, feed them, take care of them, and ride them all we want. But there will always be things about them we can’t know.”

  Corey thought about what May had said. It was true. Ponies were wonderful, but they weren’t people and couldn’t talk. They did keep secrets from their owners. That fact didn’t make them any less wonderful. Even though she was a girl and Sam was a pony, they always had fun together.

  “I kind of like that,” said Corey. “But from now on, I want Sam’s secret life to take place in his stall!”

  “Lights out, girls!” Mr. Takamura said, peering around the edge of the door. “Time to go to sleep.”

  Obediently Corey turned out the light.

  May scooted down under the covers and put her head on her pillow. She was remembering the drill practice earlier in the day.

  “I think Max is up to something,” she whispered to Corey and Jasmine.

  “With all that drill stuff?” Jasmine asked.

  “Yeah. He wouldn’t have us working with Cross County without a reason,” said May.

  “I bet you’re right,” said Corey. “Maybe there’s going to be some kind of show.”

  “But why wouldn’t he just tell us?” Jasmine asked.

  “Maybe Max is just like Samurai,” said May. “He likes to keep secrets, too!”

  The Pony Tails giggled.

  “Girls!” Mr. Takam
ura said from the hall.

  “And if we want to have a secret life, we’re going to have to whisper much more quietly!” Corey said.

  And so they did.

  COREY’S TIPS ON KEEPING YOUR PONY SAFE

  When your pony runs away, you quickly realize the importance of pony safety. Right after my pony, Samurai, came back, I got down to business on that subject, I can tell you!

  I found out that there are two important parts of pony safety. The first has to do with keeping your pony from getting loose the way Samurai did. The second part has to do with making his home a safe place for him to stay.

  Ponies are smart, really smart. A lot of them can figure out how to undo latches. People who use slide bolts on their stables often find their ponies running free. A pony can easily grab a bolt and move it until it opens, even if he has to lift it first. Trust me. If you want to find him in his stall every morning, use a bolt with a clip on it. (May says I should use a combination lock on Samurai’s stall!)

  Next there’s fencing. Sam loves to be out in the fresh air, but I’m never going to give him a chance to jump the fence again! My mother had the carpenter add another foot of fencing all the way around the yard, so it’s now taller than I am. Max recommends adding an electrified wire to the top of that. I think it’s a good idea, but Sam really is just a pony. He’s a good jumper, but he can’t go over five feet. He’s safe in there now. Also, it’s high enough that he can’t get his head over it, and that means that he can’t push against it with his chest.

  Every time I’m standing by the fence, watching Sam or giving him a treat or just talking to him, I check the fence. If I ever notice that some of the slats or posts wiggle or move, we have it fixed. What starts as a slight wiggle can get to be a big wiggle quickly. A big wiggle can mean a quick exit for the pony if the fence falls down.

  Oh, and the latch on the gate of the fence has a clip on it, too, just like the latch on the stall.

  I’m always careful of the things in Sam’s stall so that he’s as safe there as he is secure. Nothing would be worse than to know that my own carelessness caused an injury to my pony. For that reason, I had the carpenter make sure the stall door goes all the way down to the floor. That way Sam can’t get a hoof or ankle stuck under it. There’s a bottom latch, too, so that he can’t push the lower half of the door and get a hoof stuck.