Gold Medal Horse (11 page)

“That’s right,” Nigel said heartily, “nothing’s certain. It never is. If Southwood and I do make the team,” he added, suddenly serious, “we’ll owe it to three young girls we know who call themselves The Saddle Club.”

Stevie, Carole, and Lisa blushed with pleasure. “Oh, no,” Carole protested, “you’ll owe it to Southwood, maybe, and yourself, but not us. We didn’t do anything. We wanted to, but we didn’t know how.”

“Okay,” Nigel said agreeably. “I owe it to Southwood, and he owes it to The Saddle Club. You three found Prospero, and seeing Prospero is what convinced me to give Southwood a chance. And you were right, all of you.” Nigel looked around the room, but especially at Dorothy. “He could do it. He was ready. A true gold medal horse.”

“Then you owe it to Prospero, not us,” Lisa said. “I mean, it’s not like we went out looking for him. We would have helped any horse that ran across our path.”

“For which I am deeply grateful,” Drew cut in. His smile rivaled Nigel’s. “You can’t know how much having him back means to me.”

Their food arrived and they all began to eat. “I bet you
remember Prospero when he was at his best, Eddy,” Lisa said brightly, around a mouthful of steak. “What was he like then?”

Eddy shrugged. “You’ve heard Drew talk about him,” he said.

Lisa sighed. No matter how many times she tried—and she’d tried a lot this evening—Eddy didn’t seem interested in talking to her or to the rest of The Saddle Club. She couldn’t blame him. The Dready Eddy Game had been amusing, but it had cost them a chance to get to know someone nice.

T
HE
S
ADDLE
C
LUB
stood at the edge of the crowd, wiggling with excitement. “Here he comes!” They watched as Nigel led Southwood down the pavement at a brisk trot. It was early Sunday morning, the final horse inspection. Southwood stepped out proudly, as though the rigors of the day before had not bothered him at all.

Carole paid particular attention to the way Southwood’s feet hit the pavement—even and rhythmic, without a hitch or bobble that might indicate some kind of lameness. If Southwood had injured himself even slightly on cross-country, it would show up when he trotted on a hard surface. Southwood was fine.

He looked fine, too. Nigel and Drew had been up very early, walking Southwood and making sure his muscles hadn’t stiffened overnight. They’d groomed him and braided his mane and tail, then polished his dark hooves so that they shone like glass. Nigel was wearing a sport coat and tie, nice trousers, and flashy sunglasses that made Carole giggle. He looked more like a movie star than a champion rider.

Southwood stood for a quick going-over by the show veterinarian, and then Nigel took him back to the stables to prepare for show jumping. Dorothy and Drew went with him. The Saddle Club didn’t know where Eddy was—which didn’t surprise them, when they thought about it.

“Even after show jumping starts, we’ll have to wait a long time to see Southwood,” Lisa said, consulting the time sheet they’d gotten at the gate that morning. “The horses jump in reverse order of standings, so Southwood will be one of the last to go.”

“Meaning,” Stevie said, “that he’s near the top!” They all grinned. They knew it didn’t really matter what place Southwood ended up getting. As long as he did well, he would have a very good chance of making the British Olympic team.

“What should we do?” Carole asked. “Stevie, do you want another candied apple?”

Stevie put her hand to her stomach and groaned. “After the two I ate yesterday?” she asked. “No thank you! Besides, it’s still morning. We just had breakfast.”

“Let’s have a Saddle Club meeting,” Lisa suggested.

They found a spot on a hill overlooking the show-jumping arena. Competition had already started for one of the other divisions, and the girls watched a bay horse bring rails down like rain. They thought of Southwood.

“Never a rail down in competition,” Carole murmured, “not one!” They all smiled.

“What was it Nigel called him last night?” Stevie asked. “ ‘A true gold medal horse’? That sounds right. Our Southwood. You’re so lucky, Carole. You got to ride him once.”

“A long time ago. I’ll never forget.” Carole’s eyes were shining.

“And to think that we might have helped him get to the Olympics,” Lisa said. “This trip has been like a dream.”

“And to think that tomorrow we’ll all be back in Willow Creek, getting ready for school,” Stevie added. “That’s like a nightmare. This has been the shortest spring break of my life.”

“It’s been the best one of my life,” Lisa said. She paused and bit her lip as she watched a little chestnut horse attack the jumping course with enthusiasm. She let her
breath out when the horse went clear. “I’m glad we got to come here, whether we really helped Nigel or not. Just think, we got to see a great horse at the start of his international career. We got to see Nigel accomplish a really spectacular piece of riding over that cross-country course. We got to spend a whole week around some of the best riders and horses in the whole country. Think of all we’ve learned!”

Stevie laughed. “It’s just like you to think in terms of learning, Miss Straight-A Student,” she joked.

Lisa threw a clump of grass at her friend. “You know I’m right.”

“Oh, I know you are,” Stevie said, ducking the grass. “After watching so many horses in the dressage ring, I feel like I really learned how to tell a good dressage test from a bad one. I learned what a great test looks like. That alone made it a great week.”

Carole and Lisa grinned. Neither of them shared Stevie’s passion for dressage. They’d enjoyed the dressage tests, but they hadn’t watched them with Stevie’s rapturous intensity.

“I’m a little bit sorry that we didn’t give Dready Eddy more of a chance—,” Stevie continued.

“More of a chance!” Lisa cut in indignantly. “We didn’t give him any chance at all! And now he won’t
speak to us!” Lisa felt remorseful every time she thought of Eddy’s wonderful deep blue eyes.

“—but,” Stevie continued, “you know, just because he’s good-looking doesn’t mean he’s nice or fun to be around. Boys are like horses. What you see isn’t always the whole story.”

Lisa laughed. “I don’t think he was impressed by my chicken-pox marks,” she said. “Maybe he doesn’t know that girls are like horses, too.”

“Oh, Lisa, you can hardly see those spots anymore.”

“Well,” said Lisa, “Eddy doesn’t seem to be giving me much of a chance.”

“On the other hand,” Carole observed, “he’s not running away from us.”

They all laughed. “It was pretty funny,” Lisa said. “Like a reverse scavenger hunt, sort of. If he weren’t quite so good-looking, I wouldn’t regret it at all!”

“I don’t think we spoiled his fun, either,” Stevie said. “Drew told me it was really great to spend so much time with his brother, and last night Eddy told Nigel how much he’d enjoyed learning about horses.”

“That’s good,” Carole said.

“If only his eyes weren’t quite so blue!” Lisa added. They all laughed again.

“I think we really did help Nigel,” Carole said. “He
said so, after all. I think seeing Prospero gave Nigel a sort of outside perspective on his riding—and you know how much that can help. And no matter what, I know we helped Prospero.” Carole dug her heels into the grass. “Reuniting him with Drew was one of the luckiest and most satisfying things The Saddle Club has ever done.”

“Let’s go watch Southwood jump,” Stevie said.

A
S THEY APPROACHED
the ring they saw Dorothy waving them over excitedly. “The British
chef d’équipe
—that’s like the coach of the Olympic team—just called from England,” she said. “He told Nigel that the team won’t be finalized until June, but that if Southwood places in the top ten here, he’ll definitely be on the short list.”

“Wow!” Carole said, her eyes gleaming. “Does that mean Southwood will be a finalist for the team?”

“Yep,” confirmed Dorothy. “There will be ten horses on the short list, and they’ll pick the six Olympic horses from those ten.”

“Southwood’s never had a show-jumping rail down in competition,” Lisa recalled. “Not one!”

Dorothy’s eyes glittered with excitement. “He could have one down now and still make it,” she said. “But only one.”

Southwood and Nigel entered the ring.

“I can hardly stand to watch,” Stevie whispered. Lisa
pinched her to make her be quiet. Nigel cued Southwood into a canter, and they approached the first fence. Calmly, carefully, Southwood jumped it.

“He makes it look easy,” Lisa marveled. Carole nodded. She felt too excited to speak. Southwood continued around the course, jumping in perfect form. As he landed cleanly after the final fence, Nigel’s face broke into the biggest grin any of them had ever seen. Dorothy screamed in delight and flung her arms around The Saddle Club, and Southwood galloped across the finish to the sound of their cheers.

“I know I’ve said this before,” Lisa said as they raced to congratulate Nigel, “but I really think this was the best Saddle Club project ever!”

B
ONNIE
B
RYANT
is the author of more than a hundred books about horses, including The Saddle Club series, Saddle Club Super Editions, the Pony Tails series, and Pine Hollow, which follows the Saddle Club girls into their teens. She has also written novels and movie novelizations under her married name, B. B. Hiller.

Ms. Bryant began writing The Saddle Club in 1986. Although she had done some riding before that, she intensified her studies then and found herself learning right along with her characters Stevie, Carole, and Lisa. She claims that they are all much better riders than she is.

Ms. Bryant was born and raised in New York City. She still lives there, in Greenwich Village, with her two sons.

Patrona

N
OT ALL HORSES
with gold medal spirits win gold medals. Patrona, a dark brown Thoroughbred mare, and her rider, Jil Walton, surprised riders all across America when they were named to the 1992 Olympic three-day event team. Patrona was young, inexperienced, and not well known. Jil was not well known, either. Some people thought it was a mistake to put them on the Olympic team. Some even thought they would not be able to make all the jumps on cross-country day.

But Patrona and Jil surprised everyone again. They jumped in fantastic form and finished first among the Americans. They ended up in seventeenth place—but to them that was as good as gold.

Jil Walton grew up in Walnut, California. Her family
raised horses. They got Patrona as a yearling, and Jil trained her. She did not think Patrona would end up an Olympian—in fact, for several years she tried to sell Patrona.

When Patrona was three, Jil sent her to a barn where hunters were for sale. No one wanted to buy her, so Jil took the mare back and began training her for lower-level events. Patrona did well, but she never seemed like a superstar horse, and Jil kept trying to sell her.

“She surprised me all along,” Jil said. “Every time I took her to a higher level of eventing, I’d think it was as high as she could go. When I first rode her at Preliminary, I thought,
This is it. This is where she’ll top out.
Then she won. So I took her to Intermediate, and I thought,
No
, this
is where she’ll top out.
”

At every level of eventing, the jumps get higher and more difficult. When Patrona started out, over little fences, she jumped just high enough to clear them. When she moved on to bigger fences, she jumped just high enough to clear those. No matter how big the fences got, Patrona could jump them. But Jil didn’t figure this out for a long time.

“I tried to sell her to everyone in the whole state of California,” Jil said. Patrona was still for sale when she turned seven, and Jil applied for permission to ride the mare at the advanced level in the spring of 1992. A horse
must be at least seven to ride at the advanced level or in the Olympics.

“The committee said, ‘Well, you can do a horse trials, but not a three-day event,’ ” Jil recalled. “Then we won the first advanced horse trials that we entered, and the committee said, ‘Okay, you can do a three-day.’ ”