Hobbyhorse (5 page)

Max smiled. “I’m going to give you a horse named Patch. You’ll like him. He’s a nice guy.”

Lisa and Carole both nodded. Patch was old, gentle, and comfortable. He was the best choice for a young beginner, particularly one Max had never seen ride. Patch would take good care of Amelia.

Amelia pushed her lower lip out the slightest bit. “But I’d rather ride Prancer,” she said. “Can I, please? I already met her, and I could tell she really loved me. Please, Max, please?”

Max bent down so that his face was even with Amelia’s. He spoke very kindly. “I’m sure you liked Prancer. She’s a pretty horse, and she really seems to love kids, I know. But sometimes she acts silly when she’s being ridden. I don’t think she’s a good choice for you. Patch will be much better.”

Amelia’s beautiful eyes filled with tears. “Please?” she whispered.

Max gave Amelia a little squeeze on the chin.

“Oh, gross,” Lisa whispered. “Can’t he see what she’s doing? She just wants to get her own way.”

“You can’t ride Prancer today,” Max said. “You can ride Patch.”

“What about tomorrow? Can I ride Prancer tomorrow? Please, Max!”

“You know,” Max said, “I don’t think you realize what a super horse Patch is. You’re really going to like him.”

“Does he jump?” Amelia asked.

Max nodded. “Yes, he does.”

Stevie snickered, and Carole elbowed her. Lisa grinned. They knew they were all thinking the same thing. Patch would jump any fence willingly and safely, but not at all elegantly. “Jumps like an elephant would,” Stevie muttered.

“Is he well bred?” Amelia asked.

Lisa sighed. She wished Amelia would get over her obsession with pedigrees and social standing. A horse’s breeding was not nearly as important as its personality and talent.

Max paused. “Er … yes. Yes, he’s very well bred.”

Carole knew Max wasn’t really lying—so long as he interpreted “well bred” to mean mannerly and kind. Patch was descended from a plow horse and a part draft horse, neither of them pedigreed.

“Okay,” Amelia said reluctantly. “If Patch is really good, I’ll ride him today. But I want to ride Prancer tomorrow.”

“Come on, Amelia,” Lisa said.

Max looked up at The Saddle Club. “Carole, why don’t you take Amelia and show her where the halters are? After all, you are my assistant instructor.”

Carole smiled. “Sure!” She took Amelia by the hand and led her down the stable aisle. As she went, Lisa and Stevie could hear her saying, “Now, there are a lot of important things to know about halters …”

“Phew!” Lisa said, when they were on their way out of the
stable. “Just getting to spend one moment away from Amelia makes me feel better!”

“What I’m glad about is that Carole’s going to enjoy being an assistant instructor,” Stevie said. “And it gives her something to think about besides Starlight’s foot. When I got here this morning she was in his stall, crying. She tried to pretend that she wasn’t when she saw me.”

“She was crying?” Lisa asked. “I knew she was upset, but I guess I didn’t know she was that upset. Do you know anything about navicular disease?”

“Not really,” Stevie said. “We’ll have to ask Carole about it.”

“It must be pretty serious if she was crying. We’ll talk to her as soon as we can,” Lisa said, and they hurried on to the pasture.

C
AROLE TOOK
A
MELIA
into the tack room and showed her the row of halters hanging on the wall. “This one belongs to Patch,” Carole said. She pulled it off the high hook, attached a lead rope to it, and handed it to Amelia. Amelia slung it expertly onto her shoulder. Carole smiled. Whatever her shortcomings might be, the girl really did seem to care about horses.

“Why do the hats spell
brat
?” Amelia asked. Carole groaned. A bunch of extra riding helmets hung on a peg-board on the tack room wall, and it was one of Stevie’s
favorite pastimes to arrange them so they spelled a word. When had Stevie had time to make them say brat? Carole couldn’t remember Stevie being out of her sight once all morning.

“Umm, I don’t think they’re meant to spell anything,” Carole said. “I think they just accidentally got put up like that.” She led Amelia out of the room. To get to the back pasture, they had to walk past the stalls with the Pony Tails’ ponies. Corey, Jasmine, and May were all tacking up. As Carole and Amelia walked by, the Pony Tails burst into fits of laughter. Amelia was chattering about halters and didn’t seem to notice, but Carole had to stifle a giggle. So that was who had rearranged the hats! The Pony Tails had found a way to get even without—quite—breaking their promise to Lisa.

O
UTSIDE
, M
AX RATTLED
a bucket of grain near the gate until the whole herd of horses stopped grazing and began to walk slowly toward him. “Okay,” he said, consulting his list, “Stevie, you get Nickel and give him to Joey. Lisa, find Barq for Betsy. Hi, Carole!” Max looked up and grinned. “Since you’re taking care of Amelia, you can get Patch.”

Amelia waited at the gate while The Saddle Club slipped into the pasture. “I’m riding Patch,” she announced importantly. “Max said he was a very good horse. One of the best.”

Jessica Adler, who was Amelia’s age and a friend of all the Pony Tails, spoke up. “He is a good horse, and he’s a very, very, very easy horse. I rode Patch in my first lesson, but when I got to be a good rider Max let me have someone else.”

Across the field, Stevie and Lisa watched the exchange.

“Look at Amelia. She’s getting all red and mad again,” Stevie said.

“I know,” Lisa said with a shake of her head. There was nothing she could do about it. Both Barq and Nickel had decided that they liked their freedom, and while they weren’t running from the girls, they had reversed direction and were walking to the far end of the field. Stevie and Lisa had to walk after them.

“Amelia,” Carole called from the edge of the pasture, “come over here by the fence. There are some things I need to tell you.”

Carole thought Amelia looked a little blotchy and grouchy again. She briefly wondered why, then quit worrying about it. Amelia’s natural expression wasn’t all that pleasant anyway. Probably nothing was wrong.

“See?” Carole said, “I’ve wrapped the lead rope around Patch’s neck, so I can hang on to him while I put his halter on.”

“That’s Patch?” Amelia sounded disgusted.

Carole patted the horse affectionately. “Yeah, silly boy,
he found some mud to roll in. He probably had an itch on his back. It’s going to take you a while to groom him.”

“But he’s ugly,” Amelia said. “He doesn’t look like Prancer at all. And Jessica said he was—”

Patch had big knees and a thick head and wasn’t built very well, but he had a wonderful heart. “He’s a good horse,” Carole interrupted, speaking firmly. “Now, listen, Amelia, because this is important. The one thing you have to know about Patch is that loud noises frighten him. You have to be careful—”

Max had hung his metal grain bucket on the fence post near Amelia. Before Carole could finish speaking, Amelia turned on her heel, grabbed the bucket, and threw it against the pasture’s metal watering trough.
Wham!
The crash was deafening. The Pony Clubbers jumped.

“Aiyh!”
shouted a startled Carole. Patch leaped sideways so fast that the lead rope tore from Carole’s hands. He squealed and reared; the other horses, also unnerved by the noise, milled in panic. Patch took off galloping for the safety of the field’s far side. The other horses began to run, too. Suddenly it was a stampede.

Lisa couldn’t believe her eyes. All the horses in the pasture were galloping out of control. She and Stevie ran for the pasture fence. Lisa looked back over her shoulder. “Oh no!” she screamed. “Max!”

Max had decided to come out and help Lisa and Stevie.
He was halfway across the field, in the center of the pasture, right in the path of the panicked horses.

“Max!” Carole’s cry echoed Lisa’s. Max turned just as the first horses were upon him. Carole covered her eyes.

Max was going to be trampled!

I
T WAS TOO LATE
for Max to try to escape. Carole uncovered her eyes and saw Max’s own eyes widen, but he kept his body perfectly still. Carole knew that the horses wouldn’t deliberately bump Max, but if one horse ran into another or didn’t pay attention, Max could be trampled.

The horses swerved around him. One of them knocked Max’s hat to the ground, but in a moment Max was safe. The horses galloped down to the far end of the field and whinnied and snorted and milled around. They were no longer running as a herd, and the danger was over.

Carole looked for Lisa and Stevie and was relieved to see
them on the outside of the fence. They slipped back through the rails and caught up to Max, and all three came back to the gate.

The Pony Clubbers stood in shocked silence. They all realized how close Max had come to disaster. The only person making any noise at all was Amelia, who was sobbing violently. Carole hoped that Amelia had learned her lesson. If Max had been killed, it would have been her fault.

“What happened?” Lisa asked as she came hurrying up. She bent over her cousin. “Amelia?”

“Max!” Amelia launched herself, still sobbing, at him. She threw her arms around his legs, and when he bent down she cried against his shoulder. “Oh, Max! I was so scared! I thought you were going to die!” She sobbed harder, and the Pony Clubbers clustered around her while Max patted her shoulder. Lisa felt sorry for Amelia. Whatever had spooked Patch had obviously spooked Amelia, too.

“Patch is a scary horse!” Amelia sobbed.

Lisa remembered the “scary” guest room. Her back was still aching slightly from sleeping on the floor. Her sympathy toward Amelia began to fade.

“It’s okay,” Max soothed her. “I’m okay, Patch is okay, you’re okay. Nobody got hurt.”

With all her crying, Amelia had claimed everyone’s attention. Everyone looked concerned about her—everyone,
Stevie realized with a shock, except Carole. Carole stood alone by the water trough with a bucket in her hands, and she looked livid. Stevie blinked. She had never, ever, seen her friend so angry.

“Carole should have been more careful!” Amelia sobbed.

“More careful with what?” Max asked.

“She knocked that bucket over! She was telling me how Patch is scared of loud noises, and then she knocked the bucket off the fence, and Patch jumped and I was so-oo-o s-scar-ed!” Amelia broke into a torrent of fresh sobs. “I think she did it on purpose! She doesn’t like me!”

Lisa couldn’t believe her ears. Carole was never careless around horses, though even she sometimes had accidents. But Lisa knew for a fact that Carole hadn’t dropped the bucket on purpose. She looked around the group of riders. “You know that isn’t true,” Lisa said. “Carole wouldn’t do that to you, Amelia.”

“Did anyone actually see what happened?” Max asked quietly. No one had.

“Max,” Lisa said quickly, “you can’t possibly believe—”

“Max,” Stevie cut in urgently, “Carole would never, ever—”

“I was so scared!” Amelia wailed. “She did it on purpose. She doesn’t like me, and she wanted to scare me.”

“Carole, what happened?” Max asked.

Carole looked strangely pale. “I told her Patch spooked at
loud noises,” she said, in an oddly tight voice. “And then—”

“Patch spooked! He nearly ran you over, Max! He’s a bad, scary horse, and I don’t want to ride him, not ever!”

Max looked as though he couldn’t stand another second of hysteria. He stood up, patted Amelia absentmindedly, and looked around at his riders. “All right,” he said, “let’s put this behind us. Amelia, stop crying. Carole, I’d like to talk to you in my office in five minutes. Stevie, take that bucket from Carole and go get some more grain. We’re going to have to catch those horses if we ever want to ride.”

“Max—” Lisa said.

“Later, Lisa!”

“But Max—”

“Go get the grain, Stevie!”

When Max spoke like that, they knew better than to argue. Stevie gave Carole’s hand a quick squeeze as she took the bucket from her. Carole looked at them all and lifted her chin. She hung Patch’s lead rope and halter carefully on the fence, then walked slowly back into the stable. She didn’t look at, or speak to, anyone.

Lisa’s heart went out to her friend. Even though the stampede had been frightening, Amelia was blowing things way out of proportion. The little brat was just looking for an excuse not to ride Patch.

“Go get Barq, please, Lisa,” Max directed wearily. Lisa
wanted to go after Carole instead. But what had Max said? He’d talk to Carole in five minutes. Everything would be cleared up then.

Lisa turned back to the pasture. “Just keep me away from that brat,” Lisa whispered to Stevie, who had come back with more grain. “I might resort to violence.”

“She’s not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Stevie said in agreement. “She’s Dr. Jekyll and the whole Hyde family, Hyde, Hyde, and Hyde Junior.”

Lisa sighed. “How long is it until next Saturday?”

“Forever,” said Stevie. “Forever.”