Free A Summer Without Horses by Bonnie Bryant Page B

definitely asleep because I was having this wonderful dream about riding on a movie set in New York with Skye Ransom. My dream was much more interesting than anything the little kids were saying.
    Anyway, the first thing I really remember is nothing. That’s an odd way to put it, but that was what I thought of when I opened my eyes. There was nothing. No sounds at all.
    A stable is usually a pretty noisy place. The horses stomp, snort, whinny, and neigh. And the riders make all sorts of sounds, especially little kids who are prone to shrieks. No sounds means no riders and no horses andwhen I realized that, I knew for sure that something was wrong.
    I sat up and looked at my watch. It was 12:30. That meant that the kids should have been having a quiet time after lunch, but not
that
quiet. The silence meant there were no horses and no ponies in the stable at all.
    Mrs. Reg was running errands; Max was on a picnic with the older riders; Red was at the dentist. That meant I was in charge, but where were my charges and where were their ponies? That was the question I had to answer right away.

W HEN THINGS ARE going wrong, my mind can race pretty fast. So can I. I slid down that ladder so fast I picked up three splinters and I never even noticed them until the next day!
    “Hey, kids! Where are you?”
    Dumb question. If nobody’s there, nobody can answer.
    It didn’t get any better with the next question.
    “Ponies? Are you around? Hello????”
    See what I mean. Like I said, though, I’m being honest here so you might as well know
all
the dumb things I did.
    I thought maybe they might have let the ponies out into one of the exercise rings. Nope. One of the paddocks? Nope. The indoor ring? Nope. The field? I climbed up on one of the fences to see as far as I could. There was no sign of them.
    About this time, it occurred to me that if the kids had gone someplace on horseback, they’d need to have their ponies tacked up so I checked the tack room. That’s when it really hit me. All of the ponies’ tack was gone. That meant, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the kids were riding the ponies and since I couldn’t see where they were, they had to be far away and if they were far away, I was in big trouble. Even worse, they could be, too.
    I love trail rides of all kinds, but you’ve got to know what you’re doing to take a horse beyond the limits of a riding ring and these kids were just beginners. Not only that, they were just beginners who couldn’t possibly be strong enough to tighten their ponies’ girths enough to ride safely. The first thought that entered my mind was an image of Leslie falling off her pony. It wasn’t a pretty sight and it scared me more than anything else that had happened in the previous five minutes since I’d awakened in the hayloft.
    If the riders weren’t in the paddocks and the fields around Pine Hollow, they had to be in the woods somewhere. That’s when I remembered Max asking Red about the coyote near the quarry. The image that came into my mind then was even worse than Leslie’s just being thrown.
    I knew there was a possibility that absolutely nothing was going wrong and the kids were just having fun in the woods. I also knew that there were too many possibledangers for me to think of counting on that. I had to get to them.
    But how?
    It was while I was pondering that question that I went into the locker area and saw the note they’d left. It was even worse than I’d thought.
    Stevie—We’ve gone to find Merlin for you. You need his magic so you can ride horses again!
    See you later! On horseback!
    I promise that’s the last tall tale I’m ever telling in my whole life!
    The woods are on the far side of the fields. It’s about a half-mile ride to the edge of the woods and then there are miles and miles of trails. Lisa, Carole, and I never think much about the distances because we only ever do it on horseback. At a trot, a horse reaches the woods in a few minutes. On foot,