Lucky Horse by Bonnie Bryant Read Free Book Online Page A

moment, then smiled. “Oh, I get it. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Cool, Dad. Now I’ll never forget again.”
    “Okay, come have a look at this.”
    Carole looked through the eyepiece again. This time, instead of a yellow planet with silver rings, she saw a huge golden striped ball with a pink swirl on one side. “Wow! Is that Jupiter?”
    “None other.”
    “It’s so big!” she cried. “It practically fills the whole lens.”
    “It’s the biggest planet in the solar system,” her father explained. “In fact, the gravitational pull of Jupiter helps keep Earth in her orbit. How’s that for a big ecosystem?”
    “Unbelievable,” breathed Carole.
    They looked at the stars for the rest of the evening, finding Mars and Venus and some nebulae that could be seen only with a telescope. Carole could have stargazed forever, but when Colonel Hanson checked his watch and saw that it was eleven o’clock, he suggested they turn in.
    “I think we’d better go back to our camp now, honey,” he said. “It’s been a long day, and it’s time for us to hit the hay.”
    “I thought we were hitting the solar-powered down, Dad,” Carole teased.
    “Hay, down, whatever,” her father replied.
    Though she hadn’t realized it till then, Carole actually was pretty tired. “I guess you’re right, although stargazing really makes the time fly by.” She smiled at her father. “This was one of the best nights I’ve spent in my entire life!”
    “Me too, honey.” Colonel Hanson smiled. “And we’ll have several more. Right now, however, it’s time to turn in. If you’ll light the way down the trail, I’llcarry the telescope. Get my solar flashlight over there.”
    Carole ran to where her father pointed and picked up his solar flashlight. She turned it on, expecting a bright beam, but all she got was a dim flicker, then darkness.
    “Guess what, Dad?” she said with a laugh. “Looks like your solar power set with the sun.” She clicked on her own flashlight, into which she’d just put fresh D batteries. “But my old battery-operated one works just fine!”
    “Guess you can’t improve on everything,” her father said with a laugh as she lit their way down the mountain.

C RAAAAACK !
    Stevie and Lisa bolted upright in their sleeping bags at the same time, each blinking at the other in the dim hayloft.
    Craaaack—splat. Craaack, craaack, craaack! Splat, splat, splat!
Then—the high yip of a horse in pain.
    “Stevie!” Lisa cried. “What’s going on?”
    “I don’t know.” Stevie hurriedly unzipped her sleeping bag. “But that was Belle. I’d know her voice anywhere.”
    Stevie leaped up from the hay and crawled down the ladder. Lisa followed close behind. They switched on the light in Belle’s stall and peeked over the door. The pretty bay mare was standing there with several CD cases scattered around her left foreleg.
    “What on earth?” Stevie blinked as she hurried into the stall. She rubbed Belle’s nose and felt her legs, making sure the startled horse had not been injured.
    “Is she okay?” Lisa asked.
    “I think so,” Stevie replied. “But she’s as mystified as I am. She doesn’t find CDs in her stall every day.”
    Lisa gathered the cases up while Stevie calmed Belle. They were all Stevie’s—mostly the heavy metal music she’d brought with her—but how had they gotten into Belle’s stall? Frowning, Lisa looked up at the ceiling. There, exactly where Stevie’s feet would have been in the hayloft, was a hole big enough for the CDs to fit through.
    “I know what happened,” Lisa said, pointing to the ceiling. “You must have kicked them through that hole in your sleep.”
    Stevie peered up at the hayloft. “Well, I was having a dream about dancing sandwiches.”
    “Dancing sandwiches?” Lisa blinked.
    “Yeah. The turkey and cheeses were waltzing with the chocolate coconut surprises.” Stevie shrugged. “Maybe I overdid it a