Saddle Sore Read Online Free

them on the beds. Emily’s wheelchair was folded and stored beneath a bunk. “Let’s leave it there,” Emily said, pushing it farther under.“I’m not using the stupid thing once this week.”
    “You won’t have to,” Stevie said. “You’ll be riding everywhere we go.”
    Lisa yawned. “I hate to say I’m tired, but …” She yawned again.
    Stevie yawned in response, and then Emily did. Carole shook her head. She opened her mouth to say something but yawned instead. “It’s contagious,” Kate said. She yawned, too. “I don’t know why I should be tired.” She yawned once more. “But I guess I am.”
    “The sooner we go to sleep, the sooner we can get up and ride,” Lisa suggested. The others thought this was a perfect example of Lisa’s best logic. Before long they were all in their pajamas, crawling into the bunks.
    “I keep thinking about Monica,” Kate confessed, as she passed around a box of cookies her mother had given her. “I’m really excited about seeing her, but I’m sort of dreading it, too. I want her to have a fun time here. I don’t want it to be different from the way it used to be. What I really want is for her accident not to have happened. She was so lively—I think one day werode for eight hours straight. And once we hung a rope from the barn rafter and took turns swinging into this big pile of hay. And we used to laugh together all the time.”
    Lisa tried to comfort Kate. “She’ll still laugh. She’ll be the same person—she lost a leg, that’s all. She didn’t lose her personality.”
    “I don’t know about that,” Stevie said. “I mean, of course she’ll still have a personality; I’m just not sure she’ll be exactly the same. Like the people you read about in books, the dark heroes whose lives have been overshadowed by tragedy. It colors the soul.”
    “Like Heathcliff,” Kate said. “Maybe.”
    “No, Heathcliff’s a cat,” Stevie said. “I’m talking real tragedy.”
    “Heathcliff’s not a cat,” Kate said indignantly. “Honestly, Stevie!”
    “He’s a guy in an old movie,” Carole explained. “I saw it one night with my dad. He was played by somebody famous, I think, but it was in black and white.”
    “He’s a person!” Kate said. “I mean, a character. In a book I read,
Wuthering Heights
. His life was overcome with sorrow.”
    “So he wasn’t as nice, then?” Lisa asked.
    “He wasn’t all that nice to begin with,” Kate admitted. “What do you think, Emily?”
    Emily propped herself up on her elbow. “I don’t have any idea how Monica will be,” she said. “I’ve never met her. But if the accident just happened recently, I’m sure she’ll still be upset about it. I would be. I think anyone would be.”
    “I am, and it didn’t even happen to me,” Kate said. “I guess the only thing we can do about it is make sure she has as nice a time as possible.”
    “We’re all going to have a great time,” Carole said. “I love it out here, Kate.”
    Emily flopped back against her pillow. “A whole week with nothing to do but ride!” she said. “I never imagined anything so wonderful!”

T HE NEXT MORNING , after breakfast, the girls followed Kate out to the paddock beside the barn, where a dozen or so of the ranch riding horses had spent the night. John Brightstar was already there, haltering a gorgeous chestnut gelding.
    Lisa went up to greet him. “Tex looks marvelous!” she said. “He’s really added some muscle since we saw him last.”
    John smiled proudly. “He needs it now. You should see what he can do.” Tex was John’s horse, and John had been training him to doreining, the most precise and elegant form of Western riding. Reining was similar to dressage in English riding.
    “Come with us,” Lisa said. “We’re going to warm up in the side paddock for a few minutes, and then we’re taking Emily on her first Western trail ride.”
    John smiled wryly. “Why do you think I’m out here?” he asked.