Hoof Beat (10 page)

Since Mrs. Reg’s stories were usually lessons in disguise, Lisa’s next step was to figure out just what the lesson was. Obviously, she had to learn something about journalism from the very beginning. She was a long way from being ready for a job as an investigative reporter. But first, what did the lead rope and the lunge line and the carrots have to do with journalism?

Then she understood. Just as the championship rider had to apologize to the horses she’d hurt before she could begin again, she, Lisa, had to apologize to the people she’d hurt before she could learn anything
about writing. She had hurt a lot of people, she knew, but the one she’d hurt most had been Trudy. That was the place to start.

It was too late for her to join the class now, and besides, Lisa didn’t want to face any of her classmates just yet. The most important thing was to find Trudy and talk to her.

Lisa shoved her things into her cubby and headed for the outdoor ring where the class was taking place. Trudy liked to sit on the fence and observe, but Lisa could see from inside the stable that Trudy wasn’t there. She checked Samson and Delilah’s paddock. No sign of her. She looked in the feed room, Max’s office, the stalls, and the tack room. Trudy was nowhere to be found.

“Trudy?” Red said when Lisa asked. “I think she’s having a private lesson. She asked me to show her how to tack up Topside.”

“Trudy?” one of the painters said when Lisa stopped him. “The one with the colored hair? I saw her riding by herself out toward the trails.”

By herself? Trudy didn’t have anywhere near enough experience to ride by herself. What could she have been thinking of? Lisa wondered.

Then Lisa knew: Trudy was running away, the only way she could think of—on horseback.

Lisa guessed that Trudy had waited until the class was in progress before taking Topside out of the stable. Everybody would be too busy then to notice.

Lisa knew that Trudy could be in real danger out there by herself. An inexperienced rider had no business on the trails alone. Even on a gentle horse Trudy could be in real trouble. Topside wasn’t a gentle horse. He was a champion show horse—spirited and determined. Trudy Sanders was no match for him.

Lisa knew that she could ask Max for help, or Mrs. Reg or Red or any other rider. She also knew that she was the reason Trudy was gone, and she would be the reason Trudy would come back.

L
ISA HAD NEVER
saddled her horse faster than she did that day. Pepper seemed to understand that this was no day to play games. He stood completely still and even lowered his head so she could put the bridle on. She patted him in thanks, remembering Mrs. Reg’s story.

Lisa led her horse to the stable exit out of sight of the outdoor ring and mounted him. She didn’t want her classmates or Max to see that she was going out by herself. Obviously Trudy must have done the same thing. That meant that she had at least started out on one of the trails that began at the back of the stable. Lisa began to consider the options before she realized she had forgotten something very important. She had forgotten the good-luck horseshoe.

She turned Pepper back toward the stable, walked
him up to the doorway, and brushed the horseshoe with her hand. Then she was ready to begin her quest.

But which trail? Sitting tall on Pepper’s back, she surveyed the possibilities. All of the Pine Hollow students knew the trails because they’d ridden them time and time again. There were four starting at the back of the stable that Trudy might have taken. First was Lisa’s favorite, the mountain trail, which led into the woods and up the mountain. Then, the forest trail. It headed straight for the mountain and wound through the woods. The creek trail started out on a hill and followed the creek that gave Willow Creek its name. Finally, there was the field trail. It snaked through nearby fields, running into the woods parallel to the river that Willow Creek became. Beyond it was the highway. Until it got into the woods, it wasn’t a very pretty trail—certainly Lisa’s least favorite.

Lisa decided on the mountain trail and signaled Pepper to head to the left when something occurred to her. Trudy was a city girl. She
liked
concrete, especially the kind that could be found on the highway. If she was actually running away, she’d know that the highway could lead her home.

There were two problems with that. The first was that the river was deep, wide, and dangerous at the point where the trail reached it. The other was that it was right next to the highway where trucks honked, cars backfired, and sirens sometimes wailed. Topside
was a champion, but he was also skittish. Highway noises could frighten Topside and Trudy wasn’t experienced enough to control him. Lisa realized she didn’t have a minute to spare.

She turned Pepper toward the field trail. “Come on, boy,” she said. “We’ve got a job to do!”

Pepper seemed to understand her. His ears perked up alertly. He tensed, ready for her next instruction. She nudged him in the belly and shifted her weight forward in the saddle. Pepper broke into a fast walk, and when he was warmed up, Lisa got him to trot and then canter. It was the best chance for Lisa to catch up with Trudy before she got into trouble. Unless Topside got out of control, Trudy was too inexperienced to do more than walk him.

The grass in the fields had been cut for the harvest so Lisa could see clearly around her. She kept a sharp eye for anything suspicious in the grass and was relieved when there was nothing to see.

If she’d been able to travel straight to the creek, it would have been only about a mile, about a ten-minute ride. But the hilly fields made it impossible to go straight and she had to follow the trail. It took her more than forty-five minutes to reach the final hillock. When she crested it, she found Trudy.

Her first instinct was to laugh at the sight, a hundred yards away down the hill on the edge of the river. There stood the city girl, sopping wet and hopping mad. Her usually stand-up hairdo hung limply on her
neck. The pinkish dye she’d sprayed on that morning had seeped onto her yellow shirt. But the funny part of the scene was the fact that Trudy was standing almost toe-to-toe with Topside, hands on her hips, and her chin jutted out in the most determinedly stubborn look Lisa had ever seen as she concentrated on her battle of wits with the horse. Topside wasn’t budging. He returned her glare with a bored stare. As Lisa watched, Trudy made what looked like an attempt at delivering the last word and walked around to the horse’s left side, picking up the reins. She was ready to mount. She was following all the instructions Carole and Stevie had apparently given her because she was making a good start. But as soon as she lifted her left foot to put it in the stirrup, Topside took two steps to the right, leaving Trudy unbalanced with her foot in the air. She fell down.

Lisa giggled. Then she realized it wasn’t really a funny scene, certainly not to Trudy, who had experienced enough unhappiness for one day. Trudy must have attempted to cross the river and Topside had thrown her. The horse understood that the minute Trudy got back on him, she was going to try again. He didn’t want to cross the river. The easiest way for him was to not let her mount.

There was no telling how long the standoff could have gone on. Lisa noticed that the whole time, Topside’s ears were twitching alertly, aware of the noises of the highway. One honk and he’d take off. The risks were too great that he’d hurt Trudy when he did it.

Lisa gave Pepper a signal to continue. The hill was steep and he had to go slowly, step by step. The delay worried Lisa. She had the feeling that Trudy needed her help a lot more than Trudy realized.

As Lisa watched with concern, Trudy once more took the reins. This time, however, instead of moving slowly toward the championship horse, she dashed up to the horse’s left side and sprang upward, clinging to his saddle for all she was worth. Topside took off at a trot. Trudy held on, somehow managing to get into the saddle. She even got one foot into his stirrups.

“Hold on!” Lisa cried, now close enough to be heard. “You’re doing great!”

Trudy glanced at her. Her surprise was apparent, but her fear—and anger—was even more obvious.

“Leave me alone!” Trudy yelled back at her. “You’ve done enough harm already! Go away!”

In her agitation, Trudy yanked at Topside’s reins. The motion was sudden and firm and gave a clear message to the horse. Topside halted immediately.

Lisa sighed with relief.

A passing eighteen-wheel truck blasted its horn and Topside took off at full speed.

Trudy was jostled so badly that the one foot that was in a stirrup slipped through it. Now she had lost any chance to use her feet for balance, and Lisa knew that she was at a very definite risk of being thrown by Topside. If that happened when her foot was sticking all
the way through the stirrup, she could be dragged along by the horse.

There wasn’t a second to lose! Once again, Pepper understood her urgency.

“Grab his mane, hold on!” Lisa cried, knowing that if she held the mane tight, Trudy had a chance of keeping her balance. Topside swerved to the right, Trudy lurched to the left, her left foot dangling treacherously through the stirrup.

Pepper galloped along the hillside, parallel to the runaway horse, but well above him. There was no way Pepper could gallop
down
the hill. It was an extremely dangerous thing for a horse to do. Lisa just had to stay as close as possible until the hill flattened out in another hundred yards.

“I can’t control him!” Trudy yelled.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be there as fast as I can. Just hold on!” Lisa yelled.

She tried to sound confident. She didn’t feel it at all. She just hoped that Trudy didn’t realize what a dangerous situation she was in. The last thing Trudy needed was to get more panicky than she was.

Lisa felt as if it were almost a dream, as if she were watching the action from very far away. She was aware of the horses, racing along the riverbank. She felt the power of the horse beneath her, she heard the thunderous clamor of hoofbeats, but the only thing she saw, really saw, was Trudy’s foot dangling through Topside’s
stirrup. It drove her as she had never known she could be driven. Slowly, achingly slowly, she got Pepper to move downhill, closer to Topside, closer to the dangling foot. “Hold on,” she whispered in her horse’s ear. “Hold on. Don’t let go of the mane. Don’t fall. I’ll get there. Please be okay …”

Pepper didn’t understand the words, but certainly he knew the urgency in Lisa’s commands. He lengthened his stride and moved farther down the hill, nearing the runaway champion.

Even as Lisa and Pepper caught up to the horse and pulled in front of it, even as Lisa reached for the reins, which flapped wildly around the horse’s neck, the only thing Lisa could see in her mind’s eye was Trudy’s foot dangling dangerously through the stirrup.

Lisa reached down and grabbed Topside’s reins with her right hand, holding her own in her left. As soon as Topside felt the first pressure from his reins, he slowed.

“Whoa there, boy,” Lisa said in a low voice. His ears flicked toward her. “Ho up, there now,” she told him. He came to an abrupt halt.

The stop was so abrupt that Trudy lost whatever semblance of balance she still had and nearly fell out of the saddle. Her grip on the horse’s mane saved her.

“Is it over?” she asked in a shaky voice.

“It’s over,” Lisa told her. She took a deep breath, trying to be matter-of-fact. “Now get your feet in the stirrups, hold on to the reins, and let’s get back to the stable.”

“Do I have to ride?” Trudy asked. “Can I walk?”

“Did you ever hear the one about getting right back on the horse?” Lisa responded.

“Sure, but I never fell off.” Trudy grinned impishly. “And besides that, I don’t have to prove anything to myself. I know already that riding’s not for me.”

Lisa smiled. “You did fine, Trudy, you really did. An awful lot of riders wouldn’t have handled that anywhere near as well as you did.”

“I did?”

“Yeah, you did. Now let’s go back. We can talk as we ride. I have some things to say to you.”

Trudy took the horse’s reins, adjusted her feet in the stirrups, and gave Topside a little nudge to get him going. He looked around at her, then obediently he followed her instructions.

“He’s a little ashamed of himself,” Lisa explained. “He knows he was naughty. He probably even knows he put you in danger. He’ll be good now. He’s trying to say he’s sorry.” She paused. “I wish I could do it as easily because I owe you as much of an apology as Topside does.”

Trudy didn’t say anything then and Lisa was glad. She had a lot to say, and although she wasn’t sure exactly how to proceed, she knew the words would come to her. She just hoped she’d be able to say what she wanted better than she’d been able to write it.

“I think I owe you at least two apologies. First of all, when you said all those things to me about neighbors
and friends, I didn’t understand what you were really saying. Now that I’ve hurt you by making my second mistake, I do understand it. Gossip isn’t news. Just because somebody
says
something doesn’t mean somebody should print it. I made a lot of people unhappy with those articles about the thefts. I really messed up, I know. I had no right to use my friends just to get a good angle for a newspaper story.”