Stray Horse by Bonnie Bryant Page A

stand one more second of those people?” Carole whispered. The last thing they needed was to get the Wainwrights angry at them.
    “More or less,” Lisa conceded.
    She had PJ on a lead rope and was walking him slowly around the ring, letting him sniff and explore. “One of these days I’m going to be able to ride him here,” she said. “I want him to be used to the place. That’s a good idea, isn’t it?” she asked Carole.
    “Seems like a good idea to me,” said Carole. “Most horses adjust to new surroundings fairly quickly, but there’s nothing wrong with helping them along.”
    PJ flinched at a stack of cavalletti.
    “He’s seen these three times before,” said Lisa.
    “Well, maybe the next time around will go more smoothly,” Carole suggested.
    Carole and Stevie perched on the top rail of the fence and watched their friend lead PJ slowly around the far end of the ring.
    “She hasn’t said another word about her parents’ divorce to me,” Stevie said. “Has she talked about it with you?”
    “No,” Carole said. “All she ever talks about is PJ.”
    “I suppose that means her volume is still off?” Stevie asked.
    “Yeah, and the receiver’s on the blink, too,” said Carole.
    “What do you mean?” Stevie asked.
    “Watch her with PJ,” said Carole. “He’s okay with her,but he still misbehaves with almost everybody else. She’s decided he’s the world’s most perfect horse. It’s possible that he might become the world’s most perfect horse, but right now he seems as tender and vulnerable as—well, I guess as vulnerable as Lisa.”
    “Think he’ll change?”
    “Only time will tell,” said Carole. “He must have had a pretty awful experience out in the wild. Maybe that changed him once and it’s just a matter of changing him back. Or maybe he’s always been like that. I don’t know, and neither does Lisa.”
    “So this is where you’ve come to get out of the line of fire!” The girls turned to see Mrs. Reg coming out of the stable toward them.
    “Do you need us?” Carole asked. She hoped the answer was no.
    “No,” she said. “I’m just glad to have a little breather myself. I don’t want to be there when Marion Wainwright figures out that the water is actually fifty-one degrees. I’d rather watch Lisa give that horse a walk.”
    Mrs. Reg leaned against the fence, relaxing, until Lisa joined them.
    “I think he’s more confident now,” Lisa said. “Maybe that’s enough walking for a while, anyway. His leg is still swollen, you know.”
    “I know,” said Mrs. Reg. “Judy says it’ll be healed in another couple of weeks. Maybe you’d better put him in his stall.”
    Lisa took the horse back inside. Carole and Stevie began to lower themselves from the fence and return to their chores, but Mrs. Reg began speaking.
    “You know,” Mrs. Reg said, “there was a pony once.”
    It was going to be one of Mrs. Reg’s stories. There never seemed to be any warning when she launched into one, and there was no more a way of telling how long it was going to be than there was of telling what it was about. The woman just loved to tell stories about horses, and the riders at Pine Hollow were expected to sit still and listen. Carole and Stevie got comfortable on the fence.
    “This old boy lived with a farmer who abused him. It wasn’t that he was mean; he just couldn’t take care of him. The owner was too old. Sometimes he’d sleep a whole day away without feeding the pony or giving him fresh water. Sometimes he’d forget. The animal rescue people spotted him, all bony and unbrushed, and took matters into their own hands. This was before the days of CARL, you know.”
    It was hard to imagine that there had been days before CARL. The place was always so busy that many, many animals must have suffered without its kind help.
    “Well, before CARL, the animal owners and lovers inthe area would just all pitch in in their own ways. The lawmen decided it was time for us to