Starlight Christmas (10 page)

“T
HERE ARE THE
feet,” Mr. Michaels said.

“It’s the hind feet, too, just like we thought,” Judy said. “This old mare needs some help and she needs it now.”

She carefully and firmly took hold of the two little legs that were beginning to protrude and pulled downward, trying to hold on and help.

When foals are born hind-end-first, they often cut off the oxygen supply from their mothers before their noses are able to supply it to them on their own. Every second counts.

Carole watched in rapt fascination. There wasn’t anything she could do most of the time, although occasionally Judy asked her to hand her something. Most of the time she just watched and learned.

The little foal and its mother were working very hard
to bring it into the world safely. Judy and Mr. Michaels were working just as hard. This baby was another foal of the old stallion they’d checked the other day. The foal would be a brother or sister to Pretty Boy, the beautiful bay that Mr. Michaels was selling.

Pretty Boy’s stall was across from the foaling box. He watched everything that happened, too.

“Remember this?” Carole teased him. He didn’t exactly answer, but he did nuzzle her neck. Carole located the carrot supply and gave him one.

“One more, girl, one more,” Judy said calmly, urging the mare. The mare seemed to want to oblige. This wasn’t her first birth. She’d done it lots of times. It had just never been as hard before.

“One more time!”

Judy wrapped rags around the foal’s legs to get a better grip on them and she resumed her tugging. The mare was lying down, trying to help. Judy put constant pulling pressure on the foal, tugging downward, toward the mare’s ankles.

“It’s coming!” Mr. Michaels said excitedly.

Judy nodded, but concentrated on her work. It was hard, physical labor. Even in the cool stable, a sweat broke out on Judy’s forehead. Carole suspected it was from both physical exertion and worry. This was Christmas Eve. It was supposed to be a time for joy, singing, happiness, even merriness. There was a part of Carole that didn’t believe that anything terrible could happen to
anybody she cared about, horse or human, on Christmas Eve. But there was a part of her that also knew that wasn’t necessarily the case. She hoped the first part would be right.

“It’s coming now, it’s really coming!” Judy announced. Then, while Carole watched, the entire foal emerged. Judy almost collapsed onto the straw after it came out. She recovered quickly, however. Her work wasn’t done. She needed to be sure the newborn was able to breathe.

Quickly, she cleared the foal’s nasal passageways and began rubbing the baby vigorously to stimulate its breathing. There was silence. The foal wasn’t breathing!

“Come on, baby, you can do it!” Judy said, once again checking that the nose wasn’t clogged. She rubbed again. Then, with a start and a snort, the little baby took in one great big, deep, lifesaving breath of fresh air.

To Carole’s surprise, she felt a tear run down her cheek. She hadn’t even known she was crying.

“Nice work, Doc,” Mr. Michaels said. “You got me a healthy foal!”

Judy finished rubbing the moisture off the foal. “I hope you wanted a girl, because this old lady’s just delivered you a filly.”

Then she stepped back and let the mare sniff her own baby. It was time for them to get acquainted.

Judy leaned against the wall of the foaling box, relaxing for the first time in more than an hour. She looked proudly at the newborn and her mother.

“It never changes,” Judy said. “It’s wonderful every time.” She signed contentedly. Then, as if on cue, the beeper on her belt began whining. She glanced down at the display.

“The call’s from Pine Hollow,” she said, recognizing the number. “It’s the phone in the stable.” Judy looked at Mr. Michaels. “Can I use your phone here to see what this is about?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said.

Judy reached for the phone and punched in the number.

Carole could hear the shrieking at the other end of the phone from where she stood. She couldn’t imagine what was going on.

“Well, what does Max say?” Judy asked. “Oh, of course, he’s out checking the trail. Is Mrs. Reg with him?… All right, all right. What about fever, pulse, respiration, those things, Veronica?… How can you not—? All right. Look, I can’t come right now, but I’ll send my assistant, okay? I’ll be there as soon as I can myself, but I’m on an emergency here.… Doesn’t sound like it to me, Veronica. I saw Garnet earlier today and she was fine.… I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Judy hung up the phone. There was a puzzled look on her face. “I guess you heard,” she said. “There’s something wrong with Garnet. Veronica’s too irrational for me to make much sense out of it, but since she seems to have forgotten how to check a horse’s vital signs—oh,
listen to me. I don’t want to complain. It’s Christmas Eve and it’s not Garnet’s fault that Mr. diAngelo selected her for Veronica. Carole, can you go check out the situation and call me back here if there is a real emergency? I can’t leave the mare and foal just yet. There’s still some watching to do.”

“I’d be glad to, Judy. One problem, though. How am I going to get there?”

Judy started laughing. “You’re so grown-up sometimes that I forget you aren’t an adult. I was going to offer you the truck.”

“I can’t leave here, either,” Mr. Michaels said. “But I’ve got an idea. If you can’t drive, why don’t you ride?”

“A horse?” Carole asked.

“Either that or a bicycle,” he said, smiling. “But I think the bike would be awfully bumpy over the fields this time of year. Sure, a horse. I’ve heard about you, Carole Hanson. Everybody around here has. You’re the girl who’s going to be a champion one day. You can certainly ride a horse across a couple of fields over to Pine Hollow, can’t you?”

Carole nodded. “Sure I can,” she said. Then she thought about the most exciting part. “But which horse should I take?” she asked, holding her breath while she waited for the answer.

“Seems to me that one there, Pretty Boy, has taken a shine to you. Want to try him?”

“You bet I do!” Carole said. “I’ll take good care of him,
too. I know you’re about to sell him. I’ll make sure that the new owner has nothing to complain about.”

“I know you will,” Mr. Michaels said warmly. “Here, I’ll show you the tack to take. It’s an old saddle, but it’s the one I’ve been using for training. He’s familiar with it.”

It took a few minutes for Mr. Michaels and Carole to tack up the horse. Mr. Michaels explained that Pretty Boy wasn’t fully trained and he might give her some trouble. “I’m sure you’re a good enough rider to handle it, though. Most of the time, if he acts up a bit, it’s because he’s the one who’s scared. Just show him he doesn’t need to be.”

“He’ll never need to be scared with me,” Carole said. Soon she had mounted the big bay with the lopsided star and was ready to leave. Judy loaned her a stethoscope and checked to be sure she knew the way. That was no problem. The fields were familiar to Carole. She wasn’t at all concerned about that. She was more concerned about Garnet.

“I’ll call you when I get there,” Carole said. “After I check Garnet.”

Mr. Michaels jotted his phone number down on a piece of paper, handed it to her, and opened the rear door of the stable to let her out into the starry, cold night.

The last thing she heard from Mr. Michaels’s stable was loud warm laughter. She thought that probably
meant that the little foal was trying to stand up and get something to drink.

I
T WAS SEVEN
o’clock and all was well, Stevie felt. In fact, things were going just perfectly. Veronica was hysterical, Elaine and Diana’s horses were in the field, Phil and A.J. were saddling up. It was time for Lisa and her to do the same. She collected Topside’s tack from the tack room and proceeded to Bluegrass’s stall, where Topside was temporarily residing.

She had slipped the bit into his mouth and was just buckling Topside’s bridle when Elaine came by, carrying Bluegrass’s tack.

“What are you doing?” Elaine asked.

“Tacking up my horse,” Stevie said sweetly.

“This is
my
horse!” Elaine protested. “Go tack up your own horse—if you can find him!”

“Oh, but this
is
my horse. This is Topside. He’s the horse I always ride.”

The look on Elaine’s face was definitely confused. “But then where’s …?”

Stevie loved every single second of it.

C
AROLE LOVED RIDING
Pretty Boy. He was very tall and strong. A horse’s height usually didn’t say much about the kind of horse he was, but Carole liked the feeling of being high off the ground. She also liked his strength. She could sense it in his movement and in his response to
her signals. As soon as she put any leg on him, he spurted forward, responding immediately.

“Whoa, there, Pretty Boy,” she said. “We’re just walking out here tonight. Maybe a fast walk, but a walk. The ground’s too hard and unpredictable for us to do anything else. Just a walk.”

With every word she spoke, the horse’s ears flicked around attentively. To Carole, that was always a good sign. It meant the horse was alert and receptive.

It was fully dark out now. It was cold and the snow, which had been falling since early afternoon, tapered off, leaving a blanket of white on the Virginia countryside. The velvet black sky was studded with stars, and on the horizon the moon was beginning to rise. Carole had been looking forward to Pine Hollow’s Starlight Ride for a long time. Now, she was finding that she was on her very own Starlight Ride and maybe even liked it better.

A cool breeze lifted a swirl of snow from the ground. Pretty Boy flinched and backed up. “Take it easy,” Carole said, putting some pressure on him to get him to go forward. “That’s just the wind. There’ll be more of it before we get where we’re going. Hold on there and go straight ahead now.” The horse stood still. Carole put more pressure on him and then tapped him with her crop. He got the message and was soon headed straight for Pine Hollow.

“W
HERE’S
C
HIPPEWA
?” D
IANA
whined. “What did you
do with him?” she demanded. She stood outside Chip’s stall with her hands on her hips, glaring at Lisa.

“Chippewa?” Lisa said in her most innocent tone. “Oh, I just thought he could do with a change of scenery for a few hours. Chip and Pepper swapped stalls. I’m sure you’ll find Chip right in Pepper’s stall, happy as a clam.”

Diana gave Lisa a hard stare. Then she spun around on her heel and shouted at the top of her voice, “
Veronicaaaaa!
”

Lisa almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

Stevie was glad that Bluegrass’s stall was so near Garnet’s. She and Phil were in there, tacking up Topside, when the plot unfolded to their complete satisfaction.

“Veronica diAngelo, look what you made happen!” Diana hollered as she and Elaine furiously cornered Veronica in Garnet’s stall. Veronica was waiting for Judy’s arrival to diagnose her horse’s mysterious lathering.

“What are you talking about?” Veronica asked, totally confused and very irritated. In Veronica’s book, tantrums were just fine, as long as she was the one having them.

“I’m talking about your lousy ideas! You made me and Elaine put our own horses out in the paddock!”

“
I
made you do something that dumb?” she asked. Her voice rose. “Do you really think I would want to have friends of mine make a mistake like
that?
” The scorn in Veronica’s voice was obvious. It was apparent to Elaine and Diana that Veronica considered this failure an indicator that they were not Equinus material.

“I don’t want to be in your stupid old club anyway!” Elaine cried. “You’re just plain mean, Veronica. You planned this whole thing to make us look bad!”

“Veronica’s mean, all right,” Stevie told Phil, “but she’s nowhere near clever enough to come up with a scheme like that! Elaine’s just flattering Veronica!”

Phil laughed.

“Well,” Veronica said, pulling herself to her fullest height. “It’s a good thing you don’t want to be in the club because I meant to tell you that the members had a meeting this afternoon and both of you were voted down for membership anyway. Too bad,” she said nastily, dismissing them both. There was clearly nothing left for the girls to say. They didn’t have horses to ride and they hadn’t gotten into Veronica’s club. There was no point in staying.

“Let’s call my mom and have her pick us up,” Diana said. Elaine agreed.

“I’d rather be home for Christmas Eve anyway.”

The two girls left.

Veronica, unaware that Stevie and Phil had been listening, began playing out her own drama. Her face became distorted with fury. She wasn’t mad at Elaine and Diana. She didn’t even seem particularly worried about Garnet and her mysterious disease. She was just angry that her plans hadn’t worked out. She began kicking at the straw.

“Oh, dear,” Stevie said, approaching her now, “I hope you don’t get that stunning new riding outfit dirty.”

“You like it?” Veronica stopped kicking, suddenly attentive. A compliment could always get her attention.

“Oh, sure,” Stevie said. “It makes you look just like your horse.”

That was the last straw. Veronica’s face turned a bright red. She was too enraged to speak. Without a word, Veronica marched straight out the stable door and slammed it loudly behind her. She was gone and Stevie would have bet everything under her Christmas tree that they wouldn’t see Veronica again that night.

“Nice going!” A.J. said, emerging from behind a pillar where he’d been hiding for the show. He shook Stevie’s hand. “I really liked your finishing touch there, Stevie. She looks like her horse! All
right
!”

Lisa, too, came out from the shadows, holding a fully tacked-up Pepper by his reins.

The P.A. crackled to life. “Inspection for the Starlight Ride will be in the indoor ring in five minutes. Prepare to ride!” Max’s voice said.

Lisa, Stevie, A.J., and Phil were ready. Their saddles were shined, their coats were warm. They each had a flashlight. Only one thing was missing: Carole.

Lisa and Stevie looked at each other. The same question was on both of their minds. Would she make it in time?