Horse Dreams by Dandi Daley Mackall

Author:Dandi Daley Mackall
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: JUVENILE FICTION / Religious / Christian
ISBN: 9781414339160
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2011-09-01T10:00:00+00:00

9

Journey

Mom stands side by side with me and the pinto as Mr. Yanke storms off to his empty horse trailer.

Behind us, I hear clapping. Wild applause bursts out across the school yard.

I look around to see what everybody’s clapping about.

“Take a bow, Ellie!” Colt shouts.

“Me?” They’re clapping for me? I see our mailman, Mr. Blackburn. And my first-grade teacher, Miss Tomlin. And two high school girls, cheerleaders for the Hamilton Hornets. They’re all clapping for me.

The pinto starts dancing around. She doesn’t like the noise. With only the rope around her neck, I don’t think I could hold her if she took off on me.

Somebody tosses me a halter. I reach out and catch it.

“It’s an extra I had in the truck!” Mr. Harper says.

“Thanks, Mr. Harper!” I call back. Sometimes people turn out to be even nicer than I thought they were.

From somewhere in the thinning crowd, Larissa’s whine comes through. “Big deal. So she caught an ugly backyard horse.”

And sometimes people aren’t nicer than I thought.

I slip on the halter and buckle it. It’s a little big, but it should do the trick. Then I fasten the rope.

“I’ll lead her to the cat farm,” I tell Mom.

“Honey, it must be two miles to that barn.” She glances at Mr. Yanke’s trailer. “Maybe we could—”

“No way, Mom! It’s safer if I walk her. Okay?”

Mom sighs. “All right. I’ll call your father and let him know we’ll be late.”

We set out at a slow pace, taking the back roads. The sun’s dropped out of sight, but I can see all right. Once I let the pinto graze along the roadside. But she takes only one bite of clover. Then she jerks her head up and snorts, like she expects somebody to take it away from her. No wonder she’s so skinny. Who owned her before she ended up here? I’d like to know what they did to make her so skittish.

I sing to her for most of the journey. Whenever I stop, she prances sideways and begins trembling again. So I run through every song I can think of. Colt would be rolling in the ditch laughing if he were here. He says Ethan is lucky because he can’t hear me sing.

It takes us an hour to get to the cat farm. The whole time Mom follows me in her car. I didn’t know cars could go that slow. But I’m thankful for the headlights because by the time I get to the barn, it’s pitch dark. I’m not sure who’s more tired—the pinto, Mom, or me.

“There’s a tank of water in the corner stall,” Mom says. She goes into the barn first and pulls a string that turns on an overhead light. Shadows streak the barn floor.

We shoo cats out of the stall. The pinto walks straight in and starts drinking. I watch her long, skinny neck stretch to the water tank and gulp, gulp, gulp.

“You’re really thirsty, aren’t you, girl?” I stroke the soft underside of her neck and feel the water swoosh down.

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