Free Flying Horse by Bonnie Bryant Page A

upper thigh, grimacing, and blinking back tears. Without a word, Denise gently pried Stevie’s hands away from her leg. She pushed Stevie’s long khaki shorts up a few inches. Blood oozed from a few scratches surrounding a reddened, hoof-shaped welt.
    “I’ll be okay,” Stevie gasped. “It hurts less already.”
    “Are you sure?” Carole asked anxiously. She had sprained her ankle once and had tried to pretend it wasn’t hurt. She didn’t want Stevie doing the same thing.
    “I’m sure,” Stevie said. “Her hoof must have beenpretty rough to scrape my skin like that, but at least she wasn’t wearing shoes.” They all nodded. They knew that a horse wearing steel shoes could do a lot more damage with its hooves than one that wasn’t. “So I’ll get a little bruise,” said Stevie, trying to laugh. “It won’t be the first time.”
    Denise shook her head. “Stevie, I am so sorry. This was all my fault. And me an A-rated Pony Clubber! I should have known better than to bring you so close to the wild ponies. I knew they were wild—I wasn’t mistaking them for house pets. I’m really sorry.”
    Stevie shook her head. “You shouldn’t be,” she said. “I should have known better, too. I knew they were wild just as much as you did.” She looked around at her friends. “Besides,” she admitted, “I think we all wanted to touch a wild pony. I think I would have tried to ride one if I thought I could get away with it.”
    Her friends nodded. “It was really stupid of us,” Lisa said. “I’m just glad you weren’t seriously hurt.”
    Denise smiled ruefully. “That’s what comes from being horse crazy, I guess. I’m just as bad as the three of you, even if I am older. Sometimes horse crazy turns out to be just plain crazy.”
    “Do you think you can walk back to the car?” Lisa asked. “Otherwise, we can go ask the park rangers for help.”
    “I can definitely walk,” Stevie assured her. “Andplease, don’t anybody tell Mrs. Reg or Dorothy or Nigel about this. I don’t want them to know how stupid I was.”
    Limping back along the woodland trail, Stevie reflected that she had indeed been pretty stupid. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that the accident had been entirely her own fault—after all, the pony hadn’t kicked Denise. Stevie remembered how Denise had backed off whenever she did anything to make the pony uneasy, whereas Stevie had simply barged ahead and tried to force the pony do what she wanted.
    She knew that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the way she had asked the pony to pick up its foot. And there was nothing wrong with the way she had hung on to its foot, either—nothing wrong, that is, if the pony had been trained to understand what Stevie was doing. As it was, the pony hadn’t understood, and it had reacted with fear. Kicking, Stevie knew, was one of the pony’s ways of defending itself.
    The worst part, thought Stevie, was that she had
known
that the wild pony didn’t understand what she was doing, but she hadn’t changed her own behavior to help the pony understand. “I should have known better,” she muttered.
    Lisa turned. “What? Is your leg hurting?”
    Stevie managed a small smile. “No. It’s my brain that hurts—you see, I’m thinking, for a change.”
    T HE NEXT DAY it rained, a steady, cold, soaking rain. Sailboats bobbed in the bay with their sails furled, and the tourist traffic on the island was noticeably thinner. All morning The Saddle Club repainted the parlor a delicate shade of shell pink. Lisa and Carole worked with rollers on the walls, and Stevie painted the trim with a small brush. First, however, Stevie outlined a life-size pink horse on one of the bare walls.
    “Stevie!” Lisa said, turning just as Stevie was painting in a wind-tossed mane.
    “You’re going to paint this wall with the same paint anyway,” Stevie said quickly. “I don’t think the horse will show.”
    “But I didn’t