Gift Horse by Dandi Daley Mackall Page B

clomping on the barn floor. “Been thinking ’bout you.”
    â€œI really messed up that final, didn’t I?” I asked, brushing hay off my pillow.
    â€œIt wasn’t one of your shining moments,” Pat admitted. She stomped snow off her cowboy boots. “Catman’s been keeping me up on Gracie’s news, though. He said you slept out here all night.” She was carrying a garbage bag, which she tossed to me in Nickers’ stall.
    I caught it, opened it, and saw a giant blanket.
    â€œDown comforter,” Pat explained. “Thought you could use it out here. Better than a heater. Call it a Christmas gift. It’s been stored away in the attic since my husband passed. Oh, and I put some baby bottles in that sack—the good kind, with the lambs’ nipples.”
    I couldn’t believe she was bringing me a gift after the way I’d been lately. “Pat, I don’t have any money to buy you anything, and I wanted to get you a great cowboy hat. And now I can’t even buy that terrarium for Lizzy, and I’ve stuck you with it. Plus, I’m so far behind in the horse e-mails—”
    â€œGracious, Winnie! You’re talking faster than Lizzy. I can’t keep up! I reckon I can’t think of a thing I need for Christmas any-who. And Lizzy’s terrarium will keep. As for horse e-mails, they’ll keep too. Barker and I have been checking them for emergencies. Not that many e-mails, what with Christmas and all.”
    I could feel my neck muscles unknot. “Thanks, Pat.” She was still my friend, even though I’d let her down on every count.
    â€œWell, don’t be so quick to thank me until after you get your semester grade. Hey, but you got next semester to bring your grade back up, right? Life science runs the whole year. You can’t get rid of me that easy!”
    I liked that, that Pat was one of the people I couldn’t get rid of—like Lizzy. Like my kind . “Pat, the other day Summer said something that kind of got to me.”
    Pat nodded for me to go on.
    â€œShe said our class was raising money for . . . for ‘you and your kind.’”
    Pat grinned and looked at me sideways. “Honey, don’t you listen to talk like that. There’s always going to be some pack of wolves—no offense to the wolves—ready to attack and hurt. That’s the kind you don’t want to be!”
    I set the comforter on the cot and went out in the stallway to hug her. She felt soft and smelled like lilacs.
    â€œYou go on now,” she said, her voice raspy. “Take care of that mare. We’re going to have us a merry Christmas, and that’s that!” She turned to go.
    â€œPat!” I called before she reached the barn door. “Do you think Gracie will have her foal all right?” I wanted her to say yes, to promise.
    â€œI sure hope so, Winnie.”
    â€œBut what if you hope and it doesn’t come true?” I had to swallow to keep tears down.
    Pat smiled at me. “Well, then you’ve at least hoped. And that’s never a bad thing.”
    It wasn’t good enough. Nobody could hope harder than I had. People hope for all kinds of things that never happen. And they hope for things not to happen, and they do anyway. “But it is a bad thing, Pat! I’m hoping like crazy Gracie and her foal will be all right. And if they’re not . . .” I couldn’t finish it.
    â€œThen God will help all of us get through it.” Pat fiddled with her boots, then smiled at me. “In the meantime, you go on and hope! ‘Hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts.’ You can take that verse to the bank!”

    Two days before Christmas, a blizzard hit. The wind whistled through the barn and house. Lizzy turned up the heat in the lizard lair Dad had invented for Larry and the other lizards in my