Horse Play (10 page)

“But we’ve caused you more problems than we’ve solved, huh?” Carole asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Max said. “You have caused me some trouble, but it’s always good for a place to have new students. If only I had enough assistants to help me instruct them all—say, I’ve got an idea!”

“Uh-oh,” Stevie said. “I don’t like it when he gets that look in his face. It always means more work for us.”

“It sure does,” Max agreed. “I’d like you to assist me with the classes for some of the new students.”

“You mean like help you teach?” Carole asked eagerly. To her, that sounded like a dream come true. It didn’t sound like work at all.

“Yes,” Max said. “Especially with those little Scouts!”

Carole reconsidered. That
would
be work.

“Max, we’re going to be awfully busy working on the show,” she said quickly.

“Of course you are,” he said. “Then right after that, you can begin helping me with the little girls. The first thing they have to learn is
not
to call me Maxie!”

“I think we can handle that!” Stevie said. Then they all laughed together.

As the girls left Max’s office, Carole had a great feeling of relief. She hadn’t liked keeping a secret from Max.

“Boy, I blew that, didn’t I?” Stevie asked. She sounded disgusted with herself.

“Don’t worry,” Carole consoled her. “It’s all going to work out okay. We’ll do our show. We’ll get to meet Dorothy DeSoto. The stable’s not going to belong to Mr. diAngelo—”

“And we’ll get to help Max teach the little monsters,” Lisa finished for her.

“Hmmm,” Stevie said. “I wonder.”

“What?” Carole asked.

“Well, I think I’m getting an idea,” she said thoughtfully.

“No,” Lisa told her. “No more ideas!”

“Ever?” Stevie asked. She sounded just a little bit hurt.

“Well, at least for a week,” Lisa relented.

“It’s a deal,” Stevie agreed. “Now let’s go practice our routine.”

They returned to the stalls.

“I think I’m going to die,” Carole said as she carried the tack to her waiting horse. She put the saddle on Diablo and adjusted the girth. “Imagine—Dorothy DeSoto here! And she’ll see us ride, too!”

Carole wasn’t certain whether she was more scared or more excited. She was certainly both, and so were Lisa and Stevie.

“We can do it, you know!” Carole said, throwing her arms around her friends’ shoulders. “We’ll be great!”

She just wished she felt as sure as she sounded.

W
HEN
C
AROLE GOT
to Diablo’s stall before The Saddle Club’s next drill practice, she could tell that something was wrong. Diablo looked so tired. She slid the door open to get a better look at him. He stood listlessly in his stall, the white foamy sweat collecting on his shoulders and breast. He had the look of a horse who had been ridden hard. He was even still breathing fast.

“What’s going on here?” Carole demanded. Nobody answered her.

Then Red O’Malley came along to Diablo’s stall carrying a bucket with some fresh water for the horse.

“Who’s been riding Diablo?” she asked. Red just gave
her a disgusted look. That could only mean one thing: Veronica had been riding him. She was the only girl at the stable who would expect Red to do her work for her, untacking her horse and bringing him fresh water. She was also one of the few riders who would have bad enough judgment to put him in his stall when he was still hot and breathing hard.

“
I
was supposed to ride Diablo this afternoon,” she said.

Red shrugged. “Tell it to the judge,” he said. “Or better still, the banker’s daughter.”

Carole nodded in resignation. “Okay, okay. I’ll ride Barq. But I’ve got to have Diablo on Friday, okay?”

“Check with Mrs. Reg,” Red suggested. “She can manage it, I’m pretty sure.”

“All right,” Carole agreed. She was about to go get Barq’s tack when she stopped and turned back. “Does Veronica always put her horse away without cooling him down?” she asked.

“Veronica always does exactly what Veronica wants to do,” Red answered.

Carole nodded in understanding. Veronica would never think of her horse before herself. “I’ll walk him a bit,” she offered. Diablo really needed to walk around the ring a few times before he got to drink and rest in his stall. Carole knew that if a horse didn’t have a chance to walk and cool down, his muscles could stiffen up and he’d be in real trouble the next time somebody tried to ride him. Veronica knew that, too. She just didn’t care.

“Don’t worry,” Red assured her. “I know Stevie and Lisa are going to be waiting for you, so go ahead and take Barq out. I’ll walk Diablo, but thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Carole said. She returned to the tack room to pick up Barq’s tack. As she went, she realized again how relieved she was to know that the trouble Max was in didn’t have anything to do with Veronica or her father. That girl was enough of a pain as it was. But that
did
leave Carole wondering why Veronica had taken Diablo out for a ride. She
knew
Carole was signed up for Diablo. Could she have ridden him just to make Carole angry? Was that Veronica’s idea of a joke? For that matter, could it be that Veronica’s idea of a joke included things like switching boots, putting oats in them, and mixing up tack? Carole decided to think about it after drill practice.

S
TEVIE SNUGGLED UP
to Comanche before she put on his bridle. She scratched him under his chin. As before, his mouth opened and closed as if he were chewing with his mouth open—or as if he were talking.

“How about it, big boy?” she asked the horse. “Ready for the stage?”

She then dropped her voice, began his jaw working, and spoke for him. “The one going west?” he asked.

“Cute,” she said. “I just love a joker.”

She began to tack-up the horse, thinking all the while about what a silly idea it was that horses could talk, and
whether she could use the idea. It had very real possibilities. She just needed to have a word with Max.

“N
OW TO THE
right—and then curve at the … Lisa!” Carole called sharply. “You’ve got to make those corners sharper.”

Lisa sighed. It seemed to her like this was a day when she couldn’t do anything right. “How do I make them sharper?” she asked sarcastically. “Break the horse in half to make a ninety degree turn?”

Carole looked a little surprised, then seemed to realize that she wasn’t really being fair. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

Carole began walking Barq. At the corner, Barq began not so much to turn as to bend. His entire body made a crescent and then turned back into a straight line when he’d completed the turn.

“Oh,” Lisa said, almost involuntarily. “How’d you do
that
?”

“I’ll tell you my secret,” Carole said. Carole seemed to be most comfortable and happy when she was talking about horses and riding. Sometimes, Lisa thought, it got a little boring, but the fact was that Carole loved horses so much and she knew so much about them that she was usually right, and always worth listening to.

The girls worked together on turns for about fifteen minutes. Carole explained how the rider had to coordinate what each hand and leg did in order to tell the horse exactly what to do.

“Give me a break,” Lisa said. “The horse can’t possibly remember all those things!”

“That’s right,” Carole said. “He can’t remember it all. That’s why
you
have to remind him. Every time. Now try it.”

Lisa was less than certain it was going to work. At her first corner, Pepper was very happy to do exactly what he wanted to—cut the corner improperly.

“See?” Lisa said.

“Try again,” Carole told her.

Lisa regarded Carole dubiously, but she headed Pepper toward the next corner. This time, she tried to follow Carole’s instructions. She sat deep in the saddle, looked straight toward the turn, shifted her outside foot back of the horse’s girth and used her inside hand to indicate the turn to her horse. Like magic, Pepper’s entire body curved with the turn. Lisa could hardly believe it.

“See?” Carole asked.

Lisa nodded sheepishly. “Let me try it a couple more times,” she said.

Carole and Stevie watched and encouraged Lisa while she worked on the maneuver.

“You know one of the things I really love about riding?” Lisa asked. Her friends looked at her expectantly. “I love the fact that when you learn to do something right, you can really, actually control the horse. I mean, like it
works
.”

Carole and Stevie both nodded and smiled. They knew
exactly
how Lisa felt. They felt the same way.

• • •

T
HE STABLE WAS
quiet. Stevie was alone in the tack room, applying saddle soap to Comanche’s tack. Stevie didn’t usually go out of her way to spend time alone or to spend time cleaning tack, but her mother had left strict instructions with the housekeeper today that Stevie was to work on her book report the moment she got home from riding. If there was a surefire way to make a book dull, it was having to write a book report about it. Just sitting there, Stevie groaned at the thought. Anyway, as long as she was doing her chores at the stable, she
wasn’t
writing a book report and that was good.

The tack room was between the locker area and Mrs. Reg’s office. Mrs. Reg had gone to buy supplies. None of the students was around. Stevie’s only company was a gray tabby cat named Hambletonian. The cat wasn’t much company. He slept soundly in a beam of late afternoon sunlight which streamed through the dingy window. Every few minutes, his sunbeam would shift. Hambletonian would half open his eyes, notice where the warming beam had gone to, and shift his position. Stevie thought he must have eaten a very big mouse to be so lazy this afternoon.

Stevie soaped the skirt of the saddle. While she worked, she was going over the intricate movements of their drill exercise. She was concentrating so hard, and working so quietly while she did it, that she hardly noticed when somebody entered the locker area.

But the long shadows of the late afternoon played across the floor of the locker area and into the tack room. Stevie looked up, suddenly alert. Somebody was moving around the locker area and making no noise at all. There was something peculiar about that.

Staying quiet herself, Stevie looked through the door into the locker area. Somebody was crouched in front of Stevie’s cubby and that somebody didn’t belong there.

Silently, Stevie stood up and sneaked over to the door. She took cover behind a pillar where the shadows made a hiding place. She peered around the pillar and watched.

Veronica diAngelo was rummaging around in Stevie’s cubby, in Lisa’s, and in Carole’s. Veronica removed the boots that each girl stored in her cubby. She took a bottle of something out of her pocket, opened it, smeared the contents on the soles of the three pairs of boots, and lined the boots up on the floor. Veronica glanced around to be certain nobody was watching—Stevie ducked back into the shadows for a second—then she sealed the little bottle, tucked it into her pocket, and tiptoed back out of the locker area, heading for the stalls.

As soon as Stevie was sure Veronica was gone, she hurried over to their cubbies to see what Veronica had been up to. All she could see was that the three pairs of boots had been taken from the Saddle Club lockers and lined up neatly on the floor. Stevie reached to pick up her boots and suddenly everything was clear as a bell. Veronica had put glue on their boots. They’d be stuck to the wooden floor!

Stevie tugged at all three pairs. It took quite a bit of force, but since she’d gotten there so soon after Veronica had left, the glue wasn’t completely set. Very carefully, she laid each boot on its side. She sprinkled some wood chips on the part of the floor where some of the glue remained. The little bits of glue on the bottom of each boot would dry harmlessly and wear off quickly when the girls walked around in them.

That settled the matter of the boots and floor. But what about Veronica diAngelo?

Stevie returned to the tack room, quickly finished cleaning Comanche’s saddle, returned it to its rack, and headed home. She had some phone calls to make!