Free Lisa by Bonnie Bryant Page B

sound was coming from, but the night was dark and the surrounding rocks threw too many echoes. Before long it seemed as if a whole pack of monster snakes surrounded her, and Miss Lake understandably began to panic. Shescreamed in terror, loud and long.
    Then another sound broke through the echoes of her screams. The sound of hoofbeats. Miss Lake felt a flicker of hope. Had her horse returned for her?
    But it wasn’t her faithful skewbald coming toward her. It was a stallion—a silvery white stallion with a nick in his ear. There was a rider on his back, cloaked in white. A long, strong arm reached toward her, and in one smooth motion she was drawn up behind the rider. They raced across the desert, away from the snake, away from all danger.
    Miss Lake clung to the rider with all her strength, not speaking a word. She was so grateful that she hardly knew how to thank her rescuer.
    He never gave her a chance. After depositing her safely at her destination, the horse and rider whirled before she could speak and disappeared into the night. It was a Halloween Miss Lake would never forget.
    Dear Diary
,
    Okay, I decided writing newspaper articles is harder than I thought. It was impossible to work in everything that happened that night and have it make sense in that “who, what, when, where, how” kind of way that reporters do. Because you see, so much of what happened didn’t make sense in that factual way. I can’t explain it. I can only write down whathappened and hope that someday, somehow, I’ll figure it out.
    First of all, before I even get to the fair, I should mention what happened the night before when I was trying to get a rock out of Chocolate’s foot. It was wedged in there pretty tightly, and I guess I looked like I was having trouble, because John came over to offer his help. I managed to get the stone out myself, but then we started talking. After a few lame comments about decorating for the fair, John reached over and took my hand. Yes, took my hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
    “I want to show you something,” he said. “Come with me.”
    I was feeling a little off balance, having my hand in his. John seemed to have that effect on me a lot. I sort of forgot about that, though, when I saw what he wanted to show me. It was the mare—the one he’d been with the night before. Standing at her side was a tiny, wobbly, adorable little foal!
    “Oh, when was it born?” I asked breathlessly. The foal stared at us curiously with liquid brown eyes that seemed almost too large for its head.
    “This afternoon,” John replied. “Isn’t she cute?”
    She definitely was that. We chatted about the filly and her mother for a couple of minutes. John said the mare hadn’t had any trouble delivering the foal, but he’d been there with her the whole time, just in case.
    “How did you learn so much about horses and foaling?” I asked.
    John hesitated for a minute. “My mother was a horse breeder,” he said at last. “She taught me everything I know. It’s part of the legacy she left me.”
    “Left you?” I repeated, not really understanding.
    “She’s dead,” he said bluntly. From the way he said it—and the way a sort of curtain seemed to fall over his dark eyes, making them impossible to read—I knew I shouldn’t ask any more questions about his mother. I felt a little hurt that he trusted me so little, but I didn’t want him to see that. I decided it was time to change the subject.
    “We saw the stallion again tonight,” I told him.
    “Still running free?” John asked.
    “As you very well know,” I replied with a bit of a smirk. After the incident with the coyotes, when Kate and Christine and I had been sure we’d seen a rider on the stallion, we’d talked it over and decided it had to have been John playing a trick on us. We already knew he had a sense of humor and liked to use it on us. And what other explanation was there?
    I guess I’d sort of hoped to one-up John