Phantom Horse by Bonnie Bryant Read Free Book Online Page B

of days.”
    “But you can’t ride him?” Stevie said. “What a pain in the neck. Get it? A pain in the neck?”
    “Ha ha,” Carole said. “Actually, Max said it would probably be okay to ride Starlight today. But I don’t want to take any chances, and Max offered to let me ride Barq. I’d better go get his tack now.”
    “Oh. Okay,” Stevie said. As she watched her friend walk down the aisle toward the tack room, her eyes narrowed curiously. Carole hadn’t seemed very disappointed about missing a ride on Starlight. That wasn’t like her at all. Usually she could hardly bear to be parted from her horse, even to eat, sleep, or go to school. Now she was switching to Barq with hardly a blink of the eye. After a moment Stevieshrugged and turned back to Belle. It was probably nothing. If something was wrong, Carole would tell her.
    A FEW MINUTES later Carole, Stevie, and Lisa met up near the outdoor ring. Stevie was riding Belle, and Lisa was mounted on Prancer. Carole was aboard Barq, a lively Arabian with a white blaze down his nose, a favorite of many of the young riders at Pine Hollow. He was also the horse Carole had ridden regularly before she owned Starlight.
    “Where should we go today?” Stevie asked as the threesome rode out of the stable yard and into the field beyond. The land around Pine Hollow was threaded with dozens of riding trails, and at one time or another The Saddle Club had explored nearly every one.
    “Do you think it’s too cold for our favorite spot?” Lisa asked. The other two knew immediately where she meant—a shady clearing in the woods overlooking the lazy little stream that had given the town of Willow Creek its name. On warm spring and summer days, the girls loved to sit on the banks of the creek and cool their feet in the clear water. It was one of their favorite places to hold Saddle Club meetings.
    “It’s never too cold,” Stevie declared. “Even if we can’t wade, that doesn’t mean we can’t just sit and watch the water go by.”
    “Good point,” Lisa agreed. “Let’s go.”
    Once they were under way, Carole decided it was time tobring up the topic that was foremost in her mind. She cleared her throat. “I wanted to talk to you guys about something,” she began. “I had this really weird dream last night.”
    “What kind of a dream?” Lisa asked.
    “You didn’t dream who the Pine Hollow Pilferer is, did you?” Stevie asked. “That’s what I’ve decided to call our thief. What do you think?”
    Lisa laughed. “I have to admit, that’s pretty good,” she said. “It sounds like the title of one of Ernestine Collier’s novels:
The Mystery of the Pine Hollow Pilferer.
”
    “As I was saying,” Carole said meaningfully, then paused.
    “Oh, sorry, Carole. Go ahead,” Lisa said contritely. “What was your dream about?”
    “Well, I dreamed I was here at Pine Hollow,” Carole began. As the threesome rode slowly across the fields, she described the entire nightmare, trying not to leave out any important details. “… and then I woke up,” she finished.
    “Wow. That’s pretty spooky,” Lisa said. “It reminds me of that story Troy told the other night at the party.”
    “Me too,” Carole admitted. “Pretty silly, huh?”
    “What’s silly is to think you’d ever jump a course without walking it first,” Stevie said. “As if an obstacle would ever catch
you
by surprise!”
    Lisa laughed. “That’s a good point,” she said. “And how about this: Since when would Pine Hollow ever be deserted in the middle of the afternoon? It had to be a dream, Carole.If it was real Max would have turned up, reminding you to clean your tack after you were finished.”
    “Or reminding you to keep your heels down and your elbows in,” Stevie offered, sitting up a little straighter in her saddle to demonstrate.
    “Or asking you to muck out some stalls when you had a free second,” Lisa said. “Now
that’s
what I call a nightmare!”
    “Really?”