Stable Manners (5 page)

May looked puzzled. “I thought we were just supposed to know how to put it on, not how it works.”

“Well, that, too,” Lisa said quickly. “Do you know how to put it on?”

May studied the mass of leather that hung on the wall of the tack room. “I did read a lot about it,” she said. Her fingers sorted through the leather straps as she considered the situation. “The book made it sound pretty easy. I don’t think it’s all that easy, but I might be able to do it if you help me.” She reached to remove the harness from its hook.

“Sure I’ll help,” said Lisa.

“Not too much, though,” May insisted. “I’d like to be able to do it by myself.”

“I promise,” Lisa said. “Not too much.” She was
genuinely relieved. “Tell you what. I’ll start by getting Nickel out of his stall.”

“Okay,” May agreed.

Lisa hurried to Nickel’s stall. She had absolutely no idea what to do with any of the parts of the pony’s harness. Not only did she not know what they were called, but she didn’t know where they went or even how they went. She hoped May remembered what she’d learned from the book.

A few minutes later, she found that May had learned a lot and remembered it well.

“First comes the collar,” May said, approaching Nickel confidently. She slid the circle of leather over the pony’s head. May lived on a farm outside of Willow Creek and had been around horses since she was born. She was confident and knowledgeable and she had obviously studied hard.

“You have to be careful of these things, though—traces, I think. That’s what they are called, aren’t they?”

“Hmm?”

“These long things—they are the traces?” May repeated. She was pointing to a set of long straps that extended from the collar.

“Those are reins, aren’t they?” Lisa asked.

“Very clever!” said May, completely missing the
fact that Lisa had no idea what she was talking about. “But you can’t fool me with that. Nope, these are the traces, definitely. The reins have to extend from the bit, not the collar. I bet Max tried that very same question on you and you got it right, too, didn’t you?”

“Uh, sure,” Lisa said.

May continued working on the harness and Lisa was pleased to see that the little girl really did know what she was doing. She’d read hard, studied hard, and learned. Max’s idea of a Big Sis/Little Sis project was working, though perhaps not exactly the way Max had had in mind. Still, since the main purpose was for the Little Sis to learn how to do something, it
was
working. There were times when just the presence of an older and wiser person was enough inspiration for a younger student. This appeared to be one of them. Lisa’s job, then, became to hold the pony still while May did the work. Lisa was mesmerized by the tangle of leather and buckles and rings and watched in fascination while May methodically untangled them and put them where they belonged, talking all the while, and explaining what she was doing.

“And then here comes the saddle pad—isn’t it funny that it’s called that even though it really isn’t a saddle at all, just this beltlike thing?”

“Uh-huh,” Lisa mumbled. She’d been patting Nickel and not paying too much attention.

“Anyway, we don’t fasten the saddle pad until after we’ve got the tail through this thing—I don’t remember what it’s called. What is it?”

Lisa looked up. There was a leather strap with a loop at the end that apparently reached from the saddle pad to the horse’s tail. She had no idea what it was called and wasn’t sure how to answer May. Then she had a thought.

“Don’t worry about names,” she assured May. “It’s much more important to know what it does than to know what it’s called.”

“So what does it do?” May asked.

“It holds the horse’s tail in place,” Lisa said. Then she groaned to herself, realizing what a dumb thing that was to say. A horse’s tail was not actually likely to move very far from the horse’s rear.

May didn’t think it had been a stupid thing to say. She thought Lisa was just being funny. She laughed.

Lisa’s mind was not on the task at hand. It was on the mare; it was on the Know-Down; it was every-place but on the pony and his harness. Lisa knew that she ought to be paying more attention to what May had learned and what she was doing, but May seemed to be doing just fine without any help from her. Besides,
she had another five days before the next Horse Wise meeting and in that time Lisa would certainly be able to learn a thing or two about harnesses—enough to help May, as if she needed any help at all. May had learned everything in two days; Lisa could surely learn something in five.

“Wait a minute here,” May said. A frown had crossed her face. “I think this is supposed to go that way—” She held up a long piece of leather. “And that one”—she pointed to another piece of leather, drooping on the floor of the stable—“ought to go over here, because it’s got to reach to the—oh, no. I should have done this one first.”

With that, she began unbuckling and retrying. She flipped the straps across, tangling and untangling them. She couldn’t get it right. Finally, she turned to Lisa.

“I haven’t done this right at all, have I?” she asked.

Lisa wasn’t sure how to answer that. Clearly May had done a lot of it right, but then she’d gotten some of the longer leathers confused. The problem was that Lisa couldn’t help her straighten them out. “Looks like you need to do a little bit more studying,” she said finally.

“I guess so.” May was resigned. “I thought I could do it. I really did. Do you still want to work with me?”

“Of course,” said Lisa. “In fact, I’m impressed. You did the whole front of the harness correctly. It has to be correct. Look how well everything fits, but something is definitely wrong back here.” She pointed to the rear of the horse where the straps and buckles were still all in a confused mess.

“I’d better go study some more,” said May. “Can I try again tomorrow? Then if I don’t do it right, you can show me how, but I’d like to be able to do it on my own.”

“You will, I’m sure,” Lisa said. And she meant it. May was so determined that she probably would have everything figured out by tomorrow.

Lisa helped May remove the rig from Nickel and then took the pony back to his stall while May hung the harness back up in the tack room.

While Lisa was walking the pony through the stable, she began to have a twinge of a feeling that she should have been the one to hang up the harness—she might have learned something about it. But when Lisa passed the mare’s stall on the way back from depositing Nickel in his stall, all thoughts of the Big Sister project fled her mind. The mare was acting fidgety again.

Lisa reached up to pat the horse, trying to calm her.
She held the mare’s halter and stroked her cheek. The mare seemed to like that.

“It’s okay, girl,” Lisa whispered into the horse’s silky ear. “You and I know what’s going on, even if nobody else does. I’ll be back here tomorrow and you can show off your newborn baby, okay?”

The mare seemed to relax a little. Her ears perked up, her tail flicked gently. Lisa was glad she’d been able to help. She gave the mare a final pat and returned to the tack room to find May.

C
AROLE ALWAYS ENJOYED
her quiet moments in the stable with Starlight. He was a wonderful horse, beautiful, gentle, loyal. Best of all, he was hers.

When she’d finished working in his stall, grooming, feeding, and watering him, she gave him a final hug. She could have sworn he hugged her back. She laughed to herself at the soft tickle of his chin on her neck. Finally she slid his stall door closed behind her and latched it.

“See you later,” she said, bidding Starlight farewell. He snorted in return. She then headed for the tack room where she was pretty sure she’d find Stevie and Lisa waiting for her. The three of them had made
plans on the phone the night before to meet at Pine Hollow to do some more drill work for the Know-Down.

Stevie was in the tack room, but Lisa wasn’t. May Grover was also there. The little girl appeared to be completely wrapped in the long leathers of the cart harness. Stevie was trying to untangle her from them, but it wasn’t working very well.

“That’s not the martingale, that’s the loin strap,” May was saying. “The martingale is this one and if you untie the knot it’s in, I think I can do the rest myself.”

Stevie tugged at the leather as she’d been told. In a minute, May emerged, holding the harness neatly.

“There,” she said, victoriously.

“Nice work,” Stevie said.

“You helped me.”

“I didn’t mean that. Anybody could have untangled them. The nice part was knowing the difference between the martingale and the loin strap. You’ve been working with Lisa on that stuff, haven’t you?”

“I sure have and she’s a great teacher,” said May. “She knows exactly how to get me to work hard and learn a lot. Yesterday I couldn’t finish hitching up Nickel and instead of just doing it for me, she made me learn to do it by myself. Today I’m sure I’m going
to do it. I spent a lot of time reading about it last night. Now, can you hold the door open so I can carry this thing over to Nickel’s stall?”

“Certainly.” Stevie obliged. May had nearly wrapped herself in the harness to keep it from tangling any more. She walked out of the tack room like a queen with a royal train made of leather. Stevie and Carole loved watching her. She reminded them of themselves when they were younger—so eager to learn everything there was to know about horses.

Just as May was leaving the tack room, Lisa arrived. Lisa offered to carry one end of the harness, but May assured her she could do it by herself.

“I want to try to do this all alone,” May said. “Please?”

“Okay,” Lisa agreed, rather too quickly as far as Carole was concerned. Carole knew enough about harnessing a horse to know it was a two-person job, but she didn’t want to interfere with the Big Sis/Little Sis project. So far, it appeared to be working all right if she could judge by how much May seemed to have learned. Lisa seemed to know what she was doing as a teacher, judging by what May had already learned. She no doubt had her reasons now. Carole kept her concerns to herself.

“Where were you?” Stevie asked Lisa.

“I was checking on the mare. She still hasn’t foaled.”

“I know,” Carole said. “Judy says she’s got a couple of weeks to go.”

Lisa shrugged.

Stevie thought Lisa looked annoyed, but there were too many other things happening to ask her what was going on.

“We’ve got to work on the study sheets some more,” Stevie said. “Where can we go?”

“I’ve got an idea,” Carole said. “Prancer’s box stall is empty while she’s at the trainer’s this week. We can sit in there in the fresh straw. There’s a class going on, so we should have some privacy.”

“Good idea,” Stevie agreed. “I want to keep our study techniques to ourselves. We don’t want to give anything to the enemy, do we?”

Lisa grinned. “Come on, Stevie. The other students are hardly ‘the enemy.’ But I wouldn’t mind beating them.”

Carole always liked being in box stalls. It was so horsey. It made her feel even closer to horses than usual. As they settled into the straw in Prancer’s stall she decided her friends might think her odd if she told them exactly how she felt, so she didn’t. It would be her secret.

Carole pulled a folded bundle of papers from her rear pocket. “Okay, where were we?” She scanned the sheets. “I’ve got it. What is a cob?”

“Something you eat corn off of?” Stevie offered. Her friends knew she was teasing. She knew the answer to that question as well as Lisa did, but Lisa gave it.

“It’s sort of a mix between a horse and a pony,” she said. “It’s no taller than fifteen point one hands. Its head and neck look like a pony’s, but its body and limbs look like those of a horse.”

“Two points,” Carole said. “What are the four basic kinds of jumps?”

Stevie took that one. “Staircase or ascending oxer, pyramid, upright, and square oxer.”

Carole awarded her four points.

“Here’s another hard one. Name the parts of the mouth and the head on which the bit and bridle act.”

There was silence. Neither Lisa nor Stevie could answer that one. Carole told them. “There are seven parts, and they are: the lips and corners of the mouth, the bars of the mouth, the tongue, the roof of the mouth, the poll, the chin groove, and, last but not least, the nose.”

A head appeared over the wall of the neighboring stall. The stall belonged to Garnet. The head was Veronica
diAngelo’s. The three girls groaned inwardly, but were too polite to do it out loud.

“What are you up to?” Veronica asked.

“We’re studying,” Stevie said.

“What for?”

“The Know-Down, of course,” Stevie said. “Haven’t you been studying?” she asked. “Or is that one of those things you get your butler to do for you?”

Veronica gave her a dirty look.

“Certainly I’ve been studying,” she said. “Very hard, in fact. Go ahead, test me.”

For a minute Carole was tempted. This was a wonderful opportunity to make life difficult for Veronica. She could find the trickiest question of the bunch and use it on her. But Carole had a strong sense of right and wrong and she knew better than that. She just took the next question on the sheet.