Horse Tale

“Quiet, you rock-candy-eatin’ varmint, you,” Sam said to Stevie. He grabbed her by the shoulder. Stevie could see Kate and Chuck nearby. They were almost to the part of the show where Chuck and Sam mounted their horses and began their escape. “Okay, now, I’m tellin’ you that if you make one false move, you’re dead,” Sam growled to Stevie. “So if I was you, I’d let out one mighty powerful scream just about now.”

Obediently, Stevie opened her mouth and let out her most bloodcurdling shriek. Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Stewball again. And this time the horse wasn’t just watching. He whinnied and reared, snapping the lead holding him to the hitching post. He reared again, and then, apparently realizing he was free, he galloped straight toward her!

S
TEVIE
L
AKE WAS
in a bad mood. She wiped her sweating brow and rested her elbows on the saddle that was sitting on the saddle rack in front of her. “I hate cleaning tack,” she muttered. She glanced at her two best friends, Carole Hanson and Lisa Atwood. They didn’t respond. “I said, I
hate
cleaning tack!” Stevie repeated more vehemently.

Carole and Lisa finally glanced at her, but they didn’t look very sympathetic. That was because they were both busy at the same chore Stevie was complaining about, and they weren’t any happier about it than she was—mainly because the temperature inside the tack room had to be at least one hundred degrees.

“Come on, Stevie,” Lisa said, trying not to sound as annoyed as she felt. She was annoyed because this was at least the twentieth time in as many minutes that Stevie had
stopped working to complain. “If we keep at it, we’ll be finished soon.”

“That’s right,” said Carole. “And then I’m sure Max will want us to scrub all the floors, mix the feed for the next six months …”

“And maybe put a fresh coat of paint on the walls while we’re at it,” Lisa offered, only half joking. “Actually, I forgot to tell you, Max asked me if we would muck out stalls after we’re finished here.” Max Regnery was the owner of Pine Hollow Stables, where the three girls took riding lessons. To keep the costs down, Max insisted that all his riders pitch in and help out with the stable chores—and there were plenty of those.

Stevie groaned and started scrubbing halfheartedly at a spot on the saddle. “It’s not that I normally mind being Max’s slave,” she said. “But it does seem especially awful to be working so hard when it’s so hot. Especially in this tiny little room. Is he trying to give us heat stroke or something?”

Lisa and Carole glanced at each other and laughed.

“Stevie, don’t I recall you complaining just a few months ago that Max always seems to make you work the hardest when it’s
cold
out?” Carole inquired slyly.

Stevie shrugged, but she couldn’t hold back a smile, because she knew Carole was right. And then she remembered something that made her frown again. “Just think,” she said, “we could be having a great time at Moose Hill right this minute, instead of hanging around here.” She was referring to the summer riding camp the girls had previously attended.
It held especially fond memories for Stevie because it was where she had met her boyfriend, Phil Marsten.

“We could be if it were open,” Lisa corrected her. “Which it would be, if they hadn’t had that wiring problem and had to close down for the rest of the month.” She shrugged. “Just our luck. We had to pick the one session that got canceled.”

“Don’t remind me,” Carole said. Stevie hadn’t been the only one looking forward to riding camp this year. “As much as I love this place, I was really looking forward to getting away.”

“Me, too,” Lisa agreed. “Just think, we could be riding through some nice cool woods right now.…”

“Or swimming in the pond …” Carole continued.

“Or camping under the stars, in the great outdoors …” Lisa said wistfully.

Suddenly Stevie jumped to her feet. “Lisa, you’re a genius!” she exclaimed.

“Thanks, Stevie,” Lisa said with a laugh. “But why do you mention it now?”

“Because you just gave me a great idea,” Stevie replied. She gestured at the tack room. “There’s really no reason we should be stuck in this stuffy little room, even if we are cleaning tack. Let’s move this whole operation out into the great outdoors!”

Lisa stared at Carole. Carole stared back. Then they both shrugged and smiled. “Why not?” they said in a single voice.

Within a matter of minutes the girls had dragged the tack
that still had to be cleaned and the equipment they needed to clean it out to a shady hillside near the paddock.

“I feel better already,” Carole declared, seating herself on the grass with her back against the trunk of a leafy oak tree. She ran a hand through her curly black hair, lifting it off her neck. “I think I actually just felt a breeze!”

“Well, it’s not Moose Hill, but it’s an improvement,” Stevie admitted.

Lisa nodded and picked up a snaffle bit. “Now I think it’s the perfect time for a real Saddle Club meeting,” she announced.

The three girls had started The Saddle Club soon after Lisa began riding at Pine Hollow. The club had only two rules: Members had to be horse crazy, and they had to be willing to help each other out. Both of those rules were easy for Stevie, Carole, and Lisa to follow. Since beginning The Saddle Club they had added a few more part-time members. One of them was Phil, Stevie’s boyfriend, who lived in a town about ten miles from the girls’ hometown of Willow Creek, Virginia.

Two other part-time members who lived much farther away were Kate Devine and Christine Lonetree. Kate’s father had been in the Marines with Carole’s father. But Frank Devine had retired a few years earlier and moved to a dude ranch out West called The Bar None Ranch. The Saddle Club had visited The Bar None several times and had become close friends with Kate as well as with Christine, whose family lived near the ranch. Since Kate had
once been a champion show rider and Christine had been riding since before she could walk, they loved to talk about horses just as much as Carole, Lisa, and Stevie did. All the members of The Saddle Club—local
and
out of town—had different strengths and weaknesses as riders, so that meant they could all learn from one another all the time. And that was a big part of what The Saddle Club was all about.

Right now Lisa had a question to ask Carole. “I saw you and Starlight in the ring earlier,” Lisa said. “You seemed to keep stopping him before every jump. Wasn’t he behaving?”

Carole smiled. “Quite the contrary. He was behaving perfectly.” Starlight was Carole’s horse, a big bay gelding. She loved explaining the steps of Starlight’s training to her friends almost as much as she loved working through them with the horse. Her friends liked to joke about the long-winded answers Carole gave to even the simplest questions, but usually they didn’t really mind. “What I was doing was making sure Starlight knows that he’s supposed to be taking his orders from me, not just doing his own thing on the course.”

Lisa nodded. She knew the importance of a rider always reminding her horse who was in charge. “I’m still not quite sure how
stopping
him from jumping accomplishes that, though,” she admitted.

“It’s to keep him from just jumping over anything that’s in front of him without waiting for the signal from me,” Carole told her. “Otherwise he might start anticipating my
signal and rushing the fences, which would throw off his whole performance.”

Stevie, who had been riding longer than Lisa had, knew all about this aspect of training, so only half of her attention was on Carole. The other half was on a rider in the outdoor ring, which was visible from the girls’ spot on the hillside. “Would you look at that,” she muttered.

Lisa and Carole looked. “Polly looks like she’s having fun,” Carole commented. “Romeo looks great. I think Polly made a good choice.” Polly Giacomin was in the same riding class as The Saddle Club. Her birthday had been a couple of weeks earlier, and her parents’ gift to her had been her very own horse. Romeo was a lively brown gelding with a friendly personality that had quickly made him a favorite with everyone at Pine Hollow.

“I can’t believe Polly has her own horse,” Stevie said grumpily. “She hasn’t even been riding as long as I have.”

Lisa glanced at Stevie in surprise. It wasn’t like her to be envious. “You didn’t seem that upset when my parents almost bought
me
a horse,” Lisa reminded her. “And I haven’t been riding as long as Polly has.”

Stevie shrugged. “It just seems like everyone has a horse but me these days. I mean, Carole has Starlight, obviously. Phil has Teddy. Phil’s friend A.J. has Crystal. Carole’s friend Cam has Duffy. Kate has Moon Glow. Christine has Arrow. Veronica diAngelo has Garnet.…”

“Okay, okay, we get the picture,” Carole said, laughing.

“I just think it’s time for me to have a horse of my own,
too,” Stevie continued. “It’s something I’ve always thought about, but lately I’ve been thinking about it a lot more, you know?”