Holiday Horse (12 page)

The ring’s floor was mostly clear, and the girls ran across it toward the sound of the terrified horse, which they still couldn’t see.

Carole was in the lead. She rounded the corner formed by a jagged piece of wall that had been broken off above their heads, then skidded to a stop. The door of the stall had been knocked down by a chunk of falling plaster, so Carole could see the horse inside.

It was a big chestnut gelding—at least Carole guessed he was a chestnut. The horse was so covered with dust that it was hard to tell. He was lying on his side in the stall, twisting his neck around to let out his sharp, terrified calls. And Carole immediately saw why the horse was so frightened.

He was trapped under a section of the roof!

S
TEVIE AND
L
ISA
arrived a second later and took in the situation.

“Oh, my gosh,” Lisa breathed in horror.

The horse couldn’t quite see them from his position, but he could tell they were there. His cries grew louder and more insistent, and his eyes rolled wildly as he tossed his head. The girls could hear at least a couple of his hooves pounding on the underside of the wooden planking that was pinning his body to the ground.

Stevie was already examining the large piece of debris. “This is just plywood or something,” she reported to the others. “I don’t think it’s the actual roof. It looks like it broke off the hayloft.”

Carole had pushed her way past a fallen beam to enter the stall. She approached the horse’s head cautiously, murmuring soothing words to him. But she was afraid to get close enough to touch him. The horse was so agitated that she thought he might bite out of pure terror.

“Come on,” Stevie called. “Help me out here. I think we can move it.”

Carole backed out of the stall and went to help. Lisa, too, joined Stevie along the edge of the fallen wood.

Now they could all see what must have happened. When the roof had collapsed in that section of the stable, it had brought down part of the hayloft with it. Somehow, a large chunk of the loft floor had ended up on top of the pile of debris, while the actual roof had flown off in another direction, crushing the small office across the aisle. Unfortunately for the chestnut horse, the loft floor had crashed into his stall. Only the jagged section of the side wall, which was supporting one end of the wooden floor at a sharp angle, had prevented the horse from being crushed and killed.

The three girls lined up along the high end of the floor section. “Lift and pull!” Stevie cried.

“Are you sure?” Lisa asked anxiously. “What if we hurt him?”

Carole grabbed the rough edge of the wood, hardly feeling the splinters that pierced her palms through her wool gloves. “We’ve got to try,” she said. “If he keeps
thrashing around under there he’ll break his legs—or his back.”

Lisa nodded and took hold. “Let’s go,” she said.

“One, two, three—pull!” Stevie cried.

The three girls threw all their strength into the task. The wooden boards creaked but held together. Then the boards started to slide slowly over the jagged wall. The chestnut horse let out another terrified squeal.

“It’s coming!” Lisa shouted.

And it was. Within a couple of minutes, the girls had pulled the floor section completely clear of the stall. The far end slid off the stall’s side wall, and the whole thing crashed harmlessly to the floor outside, raising another cloud of dust.

Stevie waved her hand in front of her face, coughing. “Is he okay?” she asked.

Carole had already gone to see. When she looked through the stall door, she groaned. The horse was still trapped! The loft floor section hadn’t been the real culprit at all. It had merely been hiding the thick wooden support beam that was actually pinning the chestnut to the ground. When she looked more closely, Carole was pretty sure that the beam’s weight wasn’t actually resting on the horse. Like the floor section, it had gotten wedged on the way down—in this case, against the back corner of the stall. But it had obviously either knocked the horse off his feet or caught him resting in the straw. Either way, he was trapped now. The beam was only a fraction of an
inch above his side, making it impossible for him to stand up or even roll over. The only thing he could do, now that the floor section was gone, was kick. And he was doing so enthusiastically, thrashing about with all four legs. Carole could tell that reaching the beam from the stall door wasn’t going to be possible. Anyone who tried wouldn’t get three steps before the horse kicked the life out of her—all four deadly hooves were aimed that way.

“Guys, we still have a problem,” Carole called to her friends. In addition to his kicking, the horse was still neighing wildly, so she had to raise her voice to be heard.

Meanwhile, Lisa had just heard another voice over the racket the gelding was making. “Isn’t that Elaine calling us?” she asked as she hurried to join Carole. She gasped when she saw their new problem. “Oh no!”

“One of us had better go see what Elaine wants,” Stevie said. She was staring at the support beam.

“I’ll go,” Lisa offered.

As she started to clamber back over the rubble the way they had come, she noticed that there was a clearer path to the main entryway. One of the big double doors was hanging partway off its hinge. The opening was small, but so was Lisa. Within seconds, she was outside in the crisp winter air.

She raced around the side of the building, rounding the corner to find Elaine peering uncertainly into the back entry. This time the woman had both crutches. She still had Maxi with her in the carrier.

“Here I am,” Lisa announced.

Elaine jumped and whirled around, almost unbalancing herself on her crutches. “Oh! I thought you were inside,” she said.

“I was,” Lisa said. “I came out the front. How’s Maxi?”

Elaine glanced at the baby. “She’s fine,” she said. “She’s been helping keep me calm, actually. But I tried to leave her alone just now, and she wasn’t having any of it. She started bawling as soon as I headed for the door.” The woman grimaced, then smiled. “I decided I’d better bring her with me, but I didn’t want to take her into the building.” She looked Lisa up and down, taking in her dirty, ripped coat and the layer of dust coating her face, hair, and hard hat. “How’s it going?”

“Well, mostly great,” Lisa said hesitantly.

“Mostly?” Elaine prompted. She glanced toward the paddock. The horses had calmed down. A few were drowsing or grazing, while others wandered about aimlessly, still restless from the excitement. “It looks like we’re almost there.”

“We’ve got all but one of them out,” Lisa confirmed. Taking a deep breath, she explained the chestnut’s situation.

Elaine gasped at the news. “Oh no!” she said. “I forgot! I did tell Jimmy to move Magoo into that box stall tonight.”

“Magoo?” Lisa repeated.

Elaine nodded. “That’s his name,” she said, her voice worried. “You said he looks like he’s still in one piece?”

“We think so,” Lisa said. “The problem is getting him out. He’s trapped pretty good, and he’s really worked up, too.”

Elaine absentmindedly straightened Maxi’s hat, gazing at the barn worriedly. “I’m not surprised. He’s not exactly our easiest customer even under ordinary circumstances. He’s fussy and skittish and temperamental. Not vicious, you understand—he doesn’t bite. But he’s been known to kick when startled. And he’s a big, strong horse. I don’t know if you girls should risk getting too close.”

“Don’t worry,” Lisa said. “We’ve handled skittish horses before. If there’s a way to help Magoo, we’ll find it.”

Elaine shook her head slowly. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said, giving Lisa a serious look. “I think you’d better go tell your friends to leave him be. If the police arrive soon, maybe they can find a way to get him out.”

Lisa couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Leave a horse in danger and misery when they might be able to help him? Elaine had to be kidding! “And if they don’t?” Lisa asked defiantly.

Elaine shrugged. “Well, I placed a call to Judy Barker when I was inside,” she said. “She wasn’t in, but I asked her to come whenever she got the message. If that’s soon,
she might be able to give Magoo an injection to calm him down so that we can dig him out.”

Lisa nodded. That sounded like the most sensible plan to her. If the horse were tranquilized, freeing him would be no problem at all. They could just climb over him to get at the beam that had him trapped. “But it’s New Year’s Eve,” Lisa said. “If Judy’s out celebrating, she might not get the message for hours. What then?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any tranquilizers here at the moment.” Elaine was speaking more slowly and reluctantly than ever. “But I do have something else I could use to put him down. I’d sooner put him out of his misery than let him freeze to death or kill himself by twisting a gut trying to get free.”

Lisa gasped in horror. “No!” she exclaimed. The Saddle Club could still save Magoo. She had to make Elaine see that. Taking a deep breath, she got ready to argue.

Meanwhile, inside the building, Carole and Stevie were completely unaware that Magoo’s life hung in the balance in more ways than one.

“Well, the good news is that his legs seem to be all right,” Carole said wryly. The way the horse was kicking, it was obvious that all four limbs were in at least fair working order.

“Big help,” Stevie said. Despite the freezing-cold air pouring in through the huge hole in the roof, she was warm from exertion. She unbuttoned Max’s coat and
stood back for a moment, surveying their options. “It’s obvious we’re not going in the front way.”

Carole nodded. “Even if we could do it without getting kicked, I’m not sure we could reach the beam, anyway,” she pointed out. While the beam came within a couple of feet of the ground in the back of the stall, the other end was resting on the far wall, which had remained intact and ended high above the girls’ heads.

Stevie looked at the near wall, the one that had broken off in a jagged line about five feet up. “I wonder …,” she began.

At that moment Lisa reappeared, panting from running. “Bad news,” she said, looking near tears.

Carole and Stevie listened with growing horror as Lisa explained Elaine’s position.

“We can’t just give up on him!” Carole cried.

Lisa bent over and put her hands on her knees, still fighting to regain her breath. “That’s what I told her,” she said. “But she wants us to come out right now and wait for Judy or the police.”

Stevie was already shaking her head. “We can’t do it,” she said. “And she can’t make us.”

“That’s true,” Lisa said, perking up a little. “She won’t bring the baby in here because she’s afraid she’ll get hurt. And she can’t leave her inside—”

“Because Maxi won’t let her!” Stevie exclaimed. She smiled for what felt like the first time in years. “See? Max the Fourth is already helping horses in need.”

Carole wasn’t smiling. She was looking worriedly over her shoulder at Magoo, who was still thrashing. “We’d better get moving,” she said. “If we stay in here too long, Elaine might leave Maxi inside anyway and come in after us. It will take her a while on those crutches, but—”

“Enough said,” Stevie said briskly. All three of them could already hear Elaine beginning to call to them again from outside. “Let’s get to it.”

Stevie turned to reexamine the problem. It still looked practically hopeless. There just wasn’t enough room to squeeze by Magoo’s flashing hooves. And even if there had been, the beam was too high. They would have to stand on each other’s shoulders to reach it and push it aside.

That gave Stevie an idea. She turned again to examine the near wall. Even the remaining half was pretty high, and definitely solid. But maybe, just maybe …

“I’ve got it,” Stevie cried suddenly, her eyes lighting up. “Superbaby!”

I
T DIDN
’
T TAKE
Stevie long to explain her plan. She had noticed a couple of things. First, she had observed that the beam was much lower on the near side and therefore would be fairly easy to move from that end, assuming that it wasn’t too heavy to lift and that it wasn’t jammed tight. Second, she had realized that as long as Magoo was trapped where he was, he couldn’t roll over. That meant that the back corner of the stall, where the beam was lodged, was behind his back and thus safe from his hooves. Someone standing in that corner would be in no danger from the horse at all—as long as the beam was in place. The tricky parts were getting someone back there,
then getting her out before the newly freed horse could roll over and kick her.