Crazy Horse Read Online Free PDF Page B

reported after a long silence. “That’s who they took. Matt’s two horses, Cadillac and Crazy Horse.”

4
    “Why would anyone in their right mind steal Crazy Horse?” Lisa demanded.
    She stood with Kirstie outside the main school entrance as kids streamed in for the start of morning classes. Yellow buses dropped them off in droves, and they trekked across a yard whitened by a light covering of overnight snow. Several jostled by with curious glances, wondering why the two girls stood on the step deep in conversation.
    “Please, Lisa, don’t start on that again!” Kirstie’s shoulders dropped, her eyes prickled from lack of sleep. She’d ridden in on the bus hoping for sympathy from the person she considered to be her best friend. Yet all Lisa could do was point out one more time how lacking poor Crazy Horse was in the equine beauty stakes.
    “No, I’m serious!” Lisa opened her eyes wide and spread both hands palms upward. “Why Crazy Horse?”
    Kirstie turned to follow the latest arrivals into school. “Maybe they have a problem judging what makes a good horse,” she said sarcastically. “You don’t have to be an expert on how a horse should look to steal one!”
    “No!” Lisa ran up the steps after her. “I really mean it, Kirstie. I’m being logical here. Crazy Horse doesn’t have any kind of pedigree, does he?”
    Slowly, Kirstie faced her. “Oh, yeah. His mother was a purebred Arab, his sire was Independence Day, a Kentucky Thoroughbred from one of the best studs in the country! Didn’t I tell you?”
    Ignoring her scathing remark, Lisa rushed on. “So, no pedigree. Nothing special to pick him out from any other horse in the remuda?”
    “You got it.” Giving up any hope of a sympathetic response, Kirstie headed down the corridor to her classroom.
    “But you haven’t!” Lisa was still close on her heels. “Got my point, that is. Which is: it could’ve been Yukon or Jitterbug. But it wasn’t. It was Crazy Horse.”
    “Wrong place, wrong time, I guess.” Poor Crazy Horse just happened to be the nearest victim. The rope had snaked out across the meadow and his had been the head that the noose had fallen over.
    “But isn’t it too much of a coincidence? Doesn’t Crazy Horse stick by Cadillac, come hell or high water?” Lisa slipped in through the classroom doorway and put her arm across it to block Kirstie’s way. “They’re the same as Lucky and Rodeo Rocky; you can’t pry them apart. So what if the real plan was just to steal Cadillac? Wouldn’t that make more sense?”
    “Maybe.” Kirstie was forced to think the theory through. “Cadillac’s worth twice as much money as any other horse we have. But when the rustlers roped him and began to drag him out of the field, you reckon Crazy Horse must have objected?”
    Lisa nodded. “He’d see he was losing his best friend. It’s the middle of the night and these strange guys break in and take Cadillac prisoner. He’d go crazy, wouldn’t he?”
    Kirstie nodded. “He’d put up a big fight to stay with Cadillac, that’s for sure.”
    “So the only way the rustlers would make it was if they took Crazy Horse along, too.” Lisa saw that her argument had finally sunk in. “He played the hero and gave up his own freedom for Cadillac!”
    “Right.” Kirstie closed her eyes and thought hard. A scary question shaped itself out of the turmoil of the previous night’s events. “But if the rustlers don’t really want Crazy Horse, and they only used him to get Cadillac out of the meadow…” she paused to look Lisa straight in the eye, “…then what’s gonna happen to the poor guy now?”
    “Kirstie, I’m real sorry.” Lisa sought Kirstie out during lunch break. She found her outside in the empty yard, sitting on a low wall and huddled inside her fleece jacket.
    “Yeah, I know.” A loud sigh escaped from deep in her chest. Kirstie had been hoping that her gloomy mood would ease during the morning. But it hadn’t. If