Free Buckskin Bandit by Dandi Daley Mackall Page B

toupee onto his bald head, straightened his Tweety Bird tie, and picked up his horse’s reins. “Shall we go?”
    We joined the others and finished our ride without incident.

    Back at Happy Trails, we piled into the limo. I waited until we reached the end of the drive before tapping on the chauffeur window. Mr. Coolidge stopped the car and rolled down the window.
    â€œMr. Coolidge, would you mind if Kaylee and I walked back?” I asked.
    â€œThat’s exactly what I was thinking!” Kaylee said.
    â€œAre you crazy?” Sal asked. “It’s two miles to your house.”
    â€œWinnie, won’t your dad be waiting for you?” Hawk asked.
    Hawk was right. But I’d deal with that when I got home. For now, Bandit was my main worry.
    As soon as the limo drove off, Kaylee and I sneaked back to the barn. The sky was a deep smoky gray, throwing jagged shadows on the ground. Leonard already had the horses unsaddled. He hadn’t even bothered to cool them down or groom them. It was all I could do not to barge in there and take care of the horses myself.
    But I had Bandit to think about.
    We lurked outside the barn until Leonard finished stabling the other horses. When they were all stashed in stalls, he barged into Bandit’s stall. I hated the way he manhandled Bandit, jerking the buckskin through the back of the barn.
    Kaylee and I ducked from tree to tree, following, as Leonard dragged Bandit through pasture after pasture. We stayed back as far as we could without losing them. Finally he stopped at a scrappy pasture surrounded by hedge-apple trees and filled with thorny bushes. Then he shoved Bandit through the gate and smacked him on the rump. Bandit took off at a dead gallop.
    We waited until we were sure Leonard was gone. Then we walked up to the splintered fence topped with rusty barbed wire.
    â€œHere, Bandit!” Kaylee called.
    Bandit raced around the pasture three times and stopped as far away from us as he could get. Kaylee picked grass and held it over the fence. We both tried calling him, but he wouldn’t budge. All the fight had gone out of him, but so had the life. He twitched in the middle of the pasture, his tail between his legs.
    â€œIsn’t there anything we can do?” Kaylee asked.
    I tried to think like Mom. She would have wanted Bandit to get a vision for the kind of world, the kind of herd he could be part of if he chose to join up. I thought of Mom’s buckskin and tried to think of everything she’d done to win over that horse.
    Then I remembered. “Sing,” I murmured.
    â€œDid you say, ‘sing’?” Kaylee stared at me like I had a nose worthy of honking.
    I nodded. “We have to make Bandit want to join us, to become part of our herd. Bandit has to see how happy we are, Kaylee. Then he’ll want a piece of that happiness.”
    I wished Mom could be here to explain it better. I wanted Kaylee to understand. “See, when something bad happens to a horse, it’s always right there with him. Like no matter what human he looks at, there’s that bad thing somebody did to him. We have to change the way Bandit sees the world.”
    Kaylee smiled over at me. Then she started singing, “‘Camptown ladies sing this song. Doo-da, doo-da!’” She whispered, as if afraid Bandit would overhear, “I can’t think of any other horse songs.”
    I joined her, faking the words when I couldn’t remember them. “‘Camptown racetrack’s two miles long. Oh, doo-da day!’” We sang a dozen choruses, as woodpeckers pecked, robins chirped, and the pasture scent of clover and bittersweet mixed with the smell of sweat and horse.
    Later, as we walked back across the fields in moonlight, we had to admit that Bandit hadn’t shown any signs of appreciating our singing. But at least now we had a place to see him and a plan to draw him into our world.

When I finally got home