Nightmare (6 page)

Delilah took in a deep breath and sighed. Carole interpreted that as a sign that she’d understood every word and was now awaiting some pretty exotic food. It made Carole laugh. She gave Delilah a final pat and left her
for the evening. Delilah would need good, nutritious food, but she’d also need plenty of rest so that she could deliver a strong, healthy foal early next fall.

All the same, it was a little odd that Delilah didn’t want any carrots. Carole thought it might be a good idea to check with someone to be sure she was right about dozens of people already giving Delilah carrots that day.

Max would know. Carole made sure that Delilah’s stall was properly locked and then went looking for him. It wasn’t hard to find him. It was just almost impossible to talk to him. He was still working with Betty Johnson, who was making a lot of progress in this lesson. When Max was giving a lesson, a herd of wild buffalo could stampede by, and if it didn’t happen in the ring where he was working with his student, he’d never notice. Carole waved to Mrs. Johnson, who waved back (no student ever concentrated as well as Max), and then Carole went in search of someone else for information.

Her next choice was Red O’Malley. Red was Pine Hollow’s stable hand, generally responsible for seeing to the care and feeding of the horses. He’d want to know if somebody had been giving too many snacks to any horse, especially a horse that might be in a delicate condition.

Red was also easy to find. He was being mobbed by three very young, very eager new riders.

“Let me go first!”

“I want to ride the brown pony! Please, please, puh-leeeeeze!”

“You didn’t want to ride the brown pony until I said I wanted to ride the brown pony!”

Red was holding three saddles and three bridles and was surrounded by utter confusion. He could have used some help, for sure, but Carole knew that if he spotted her, she’d be hooked into helping the little girls, and sorting out which one got to ride “the brown pony” was low on her priority list at the moment. She felt like a skunk, but it was getting late and she’d be due back at the Atwoods’ for dinner long before this tiny threesome was ready to call it quits.

Carole ducked behind one of the many poles in the stable and slunk away in search of Mrs. Reg.

“We are very proud of how well we look after our boarders, Mr. Terban. If you decide to board Columbia here, I’m sure you’ll be pleased with her care.”

That meant Mrs. Reg was giving the grand tour of the stable to a prospective customer. Since Pine Hollow relied on the income from boarding horses, this was important. Carole
could
interrupt, especially if she was showing the kind of concern Pine Hollow gave to all its horses, but she’d have to pick her moment carefully.

Mr. Terban was not going to be easy to convince. “Mrs. Regnery,” he said, “I’d like to see where the horses are turned out. The other stable I visited had a large area
where the horses were allowed to run free for at least half an hour every day if they weren’t being ridden.”

“We don’t have one exercise area as you describe, Mr. Terban. We have a series of them, plus the larger fields beyond our own rings and paddocks. Come this way and I’ll show you.”

This was definitely not the right time to interrupt. Mrs. Reg led the potential client toward the schooling ring and explained one of Pine Hollow’s traditions as they went.

“We call this the good-luck horseshoe,” she said. “Every rider who leaves the stable is asked to touch this before beginning his or her ride. And that will include you, too, if you decide to ride here. Among the things we’re proud of is our safety record. No rider here has ever been seriously hurt.”

Carole smiled. She was as willing as anybody to believe in the magic of a U-shaped chunk of iron, but she also knew that touching the horseshoe on the way out was a simple reminder to every rider that horses were big animals and safety was important—for both the horse and the rider. She watched as Mr. Terban reached up and touched the horseshoe. He smiled at Mrs. Reg.

Carole nodded. That was it. He’d bring Columbia here—partly because of the horseshoe, partly because the exercise area was so much larger than the other stable he’d visited, and mostly because Pine Hollow was a wonderful stable and only a fool wouldn’t recognize that.

Well, that was good news for Pine Hollow, but it left Carole without anybody to ask about Delilah and carrots. She wasn’t really in a hurry (except for not wanting to get embroiled in the “brown pony” melee with Red). She could sit in Mrs. Reg’s office for a few minutes and see if either Max or Mrs. Reg came by and had a few minutes for her.

Carole went into the office and picked a book from the reading shelf. It was
A Horse Around the House
by Patricia Jacobson and Marcia Hayes, and it was the most useful general reference book about horses and horse care that Carole knew. She flipped it open randomly and began reading. It didn’t matter what section she’d opened to; she’d learn something useful. This time she found herself learning something she hadn’t known about braiding.

She was reminding herself how to sew mane braids to keep them tidy when the phone rang, startling her. It didn’t surprise her that she’d gotten so deeply into what she was reading that she’d lost all track of where she was, to the point that the phone made her jump. After all, she’d been reading about horses!

She ignored the phone for two rings. Pine Hollow had strict rules about who was supposed to answer the phone. Number one was Mrs. Reg. It was her phone and her job to answer it. But it wasn’t ringing in the field or the paddock where Carole knew Mrs. Reg was with Mr. Terban.

Number two was Max. Max was in the schooling ring with Mrs. Johnson. He would have no idea that the phone was ringing at all, nor would he consider leaving a student, even a good one like Mrs. Johnson, for a minute to do something as mundane as answer the telephone.

That left Red—now probably totally tangled in the reins of three sets of tack, trying to get the ponies ready before three little girls killed one another.

And then there was Carole. She was in the office, she wasn’t busy, and she knew she could be responsible. She picked up the phone on its fourth ring.

“Pine Hollow Stables, this is Carole Hanson speaking,” she said, trying to sound adult and professional.

“Uh, this is Elaine Thomas from Hedgerow,” the woman began. She seemed a little upset.

“Oh, I was just visiting Delilah,” Carole said, glad of the opportunity to thank Mrs. Thomas for taking good care of the horse during her stay. “She seems just great. She got back here safe and sound. I can’t wait until we learn if she’s carrying a foal. I’m just sure—”

“No, hold on. That’s not what I’m calling about.”

“I’m sorry,” Carole said. She picked up a pencil and a clean pad of paper so that she could take a message. She promised herself to write neatly. She wanted to be sure the message was complete and legible.

“It’s about King Perry,” said Mrs. Thomas. Carole wrote
King Perry
on the pad.

“Isn’t that the stallion that Delilah was mated to?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Thomas. “But … But—”

“He’s okay, isn’t he?” Carole asked.

“No,” said Mrs. Thomas. “He’s dead.”

“Dead?” Carole wrote the word on the pad as she spoke, but it looked odd to her. How could the stallion that had so recently been mated with Delilah be dead? “Was there an accident or something?” she asked, though she thought it was a dumb question. Of course there had been. How awful it must have been!

“No,” said Mrs. Thomas. “He was sick. The vet was just here. She says it was swamp fever. Tell Mrs. Reg to call me, will you?”

“Sure,” Carole said. The phone went dead in her hand. She hung up, made a note on the pad that Mrs. Reg should call Mrs. Thomas, and then scratched her head as she often did when she was trying to remember something.

Swamp fever.
It didn’t sound good, but there were so many fevers and infections horses could get that she couldn’t always remember which was which. She turned to the book she’d been reading, checked the index, and opened to the section on infectious diseases.

There it was—
swamp fever.
Her eyes scanned the page, and then she gasped.
Swamp fever
was the common name of a disease called equine infectious anemia, or EIA. It was incurable, it was fatal, and, worst of all,
it was infectious. If King Perry had it, what about Delilah?

Carole picked up the phone to call Judy Barker and tell her to get there right away. It wasn’t necessary, though. Before she could even dial the number, a familiar truck pulled into the Pine Hollow driveway. Judy knew this was an emergency. She had come already.

I
T
SEEMED
AS
IF
everything happened at once then. Judy arrived, Max finished his lesson with Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Reg returned to her office with Mr. Terban, and Red sent a gleeful trio of little girls back to their parents, all promising they would never fight over a pony again.

The look on Judy’s face told Max, Mrs. Reg, and Red that this was not a casual visit. Carole handed Mrs. Reg the phone message from Mrs. Thomas.

“Oh, no,” she said. “King Perry just died of swamp fever.” While Max and Red took in the horrible news, Mrs. Reg turned to her newest customer. “Mr. Terban, I’m afraid I’ve wasted your time. We can’t take any new boarders now. We’re about to be quarantined.”

“Oh?” he said, perturbed. “Then I guess I should go back to Hedgerow Farms.”

“No, you’re going to have to go elsewhere,” Judy said. “They’ll be quarantined, too. Okay, let’s get to work,” she said to the others, dismissing Mr. Terban. Carole suspected that Mr. Terban would think they were being rude, but that wasn’t the case at all. It was simply that there wasn’t a minute to waste!

“My first job is to check on Delilah,” said Judy. “Carole, come with me. You can help with the checkup. Max, Red, here are some vials and needles. We need to draw a blood sample from every horse in the stable. Please label them carefully. Now, first of all, is there a place where we can isolate Delilah?”

“How about the extra stall in the feed shed?” Carole suggested. Max nodded in agreement.

“Let’s go,” said Judy. She left Mrs. Reg’s office so quickly that Carole found herself running to catch up. Without pause, Judy opened Delilah’s stall, clipped on a lead rope, and cast a practiced eye over the mare.

“No obvious symptoms,” Judy said. Carole found herself sighing with relief, though she recognized that it might not mean anything. Obvious symptoms would indicate an advanced stage of the disease. It couldn’t move that quickly, could it?

Carole took the lead rope from Judy and tugged gently to make Delilah follow her to the feed shed. Words kept tumbling through her mind.
Incurable, infectious
, and
fatal.
She knew what they all meant. What she didn’t know was how they applied in the case of this disease. Was it certain that Delilah had it? How would they know?

“This is a serious disease, Carole,” Judy said, as if she could read Carole’s mind. “It’s serious and it’s deadly—as we already know from King Perry’s death.”

“How do they get it?” Carole asked.

“Only by blood transfer,” said Judy. “There are two ways we know it goes from horse to horse. One is from the careless use of a needle. If a vet or caretaker uses a needle on one horse that has the disease and then doesn’t clean the needle properly before using it on the next patient, the disease can be carried that way. More likely and more common—since any sensible caretaker cleans needles thoroughly—is that the disease is carried by insects. Commonly it’s the tabanid in the deerfly family. The insect will bite one victim that already has the disease, and then one that doesn’t. If the virus is in the blood of the first horse, it won’t be cleaned from the biting part of the insect before it gets to the second horse, and that’s how the second one becomes infected.”

“Is it really common?” Carole asked.

“No, not really,” said Judy. “And the reason it isn’t is because we are so extremely careful about it. Any horse that moves from one stable to another is tested. Any horse that crosses a state line is tested. For example, Pine Hollow horses are tested yearly—more often if they’re
going to shows. As soon as there is any sign of the disease, the stable is quarantined. That means no horses can come or go or be anywhere with any other horse from other stables until the quarantine is lifted.”

“How long does that take? Until we get the results of the blood tests?” asked Carole.

“No, we’ll have the results of the first set of tests in a couple of days. But since the incubation period of the disease can be as long as forty-five days, Pine Hollow will be quarantined for the full forty-five days.”

Carole was horrified. Was she going to be separated from Starlight? “You mean nobody can be here for a month and a half?”

“No, that’s not what it means. You can come here and you can ride. You can take lessons, go on short trail rides, whatever you want, as long as you stay on Pine Hollow property. What you can’t do is take the horses off the property or have any other horses visit. The only protection quarantine gives is for horses outside the infected area. It’s intended to contain the disease within a single horse population—in this case all the horses and ponies at Pine Hollow and Hedgerow Farms. And the quarantine is really very conservative. Most horses that have been infected will test positive and begin to show symptoms within about two weeks.”