Horse Shy (4 page)

“The horses should cool down a bit and relax while we set up the campsite. Then, when we’re all finished with that, I want to play some horse games. Is that okay with you all?” he asked.

He didn’t have to ask twice! Carole knew that horse games were some of the most fun of all.

“A
LL RIGHT
,” M
AX
told his riders a half hour later. “We’re going to play a game called Around the World. There are two teams, five each, and each member is assigned a number, one to five. We make a large circle in no particular order. I’ll call out a number and a pace, for example, ‘Number Ones, trot.’ Then, the two ‘Number One’ riders will trot around the circle to their right, and whoever gets back to their original position first wins a point for the team. If you break gait—either faster or slower—or go back to the wrong
spot, the other rider in your pair wins a point and a point is deducted from your team’s total.”

“Oh, boy, this is going to be fun. I hope we get the boys on our team,” Stevie said. “I certainly don’t want Veronica and her shadows!” She’d seen Veronica play games before and she knew she was an incredibly bad sport.

“I have the funny feeling it’s not going to work that way,” Carole warned her. Much to Stevie’s dismay, The Saddle Club was broken up. She and Carole were on one team, with Meg, Lorraine, and Red. Lisa was teamed up with Veronica, Joe, Betsy, and Adam Levine, one of Max’s newer students. Stevie saw Lisa grimace when Max announced the teams. But she could tell that Max was trying to match skill levels on the teams.

Soon the numbers were assigned and they all formed a circle. Max and his horse, Diablo, stood in the center of the ring as Max hollered out numbers and gaits. Stevie waited anxiously for her number—three—to be called. And then it was.

“Number Threes, canter!” Max cried.

Stevie was surprised to find herself competing with Lisa. The teams had kept their number assignments secret. Lisa was such a new rider that Stevie was sure she would beat her. But Lisa pulled Pepper out of the circle and turned him to the right very quickly. He broke into a canter, and before Stevie had circled the ring, Lisa and Pepper were breathlessly pulling back into their spot.

Stevie laughed and waved at Lisa. She’d been so cocksure of herself that she hadn’t even tried too hard. Lisa had won, fair and square, and she’d deserved to win.
This
time.

When the first game ended, Stevie’s team, the Blues, had won, in spite of her own carelessness. In the second game, it seemed that the Reds had learned their lesson and tried much harder. The final score was close—three to two—but the Reds were victors.

“Final match!” Max announced. “Losers will collect kindling for the fire!”

It was just like Max to assign jobs by horsemanship. Usually Stevie wouldn’t mind doing something like collecting kindling, but she certainly didn’t want to do it if it meant that somebody had beat her at something! She glanced around at her teammates. As usual, Carole’s calm, assured face revealed nothing. But Carole was matched against Adam Levine and she was eight times the rider he was. She had beat him twice. Everybody knew she’d beat him a third time.

Stevie saw the looks of determination on the faces of Meg, Lorraine, and Red. She was pretty sure they’d win.

“Number Fours, trot!” Max called to start off the final game. Lorraine and Betsy took off. It wasn’t even close. Lorraine’s horse didn’t want to trot at all. Betsy won easily. The Reds were ahead, one to nothing.

“Number Fives, walk!” Max announced.

Red and Joe took off at a stately walk. Joe was an okay rider, but Red was better. He knew how to urge
his horse, Harry, into an extended walk. Harry and Red won easily.

When Carole and Adam had to trot, it was the same story. Carole knew how to get Delilah to lengthen her strides so that, with each beat, she covered more ground. Adam got Tecumseh to a nice collected trot, but it wasn’t enough and Carole won easily.

“Number Twos, canter!” Veronica and Meg were off in an instant, but not before Stevie saw the bratty look on Veronica’s face. Veronica had never been particularly competitive, but Stevie suspected she’d rather do almost anything than collect twigs. And she did. While Veronica was behind Max’s back, she urged Cobalt from a canter to a gallop, which was a much faster gait. Veronica would win easily. Stevie saw Meg glance across the circle. The open-mouthed look on Meg’s face revealed that she’d seen Veronica break her gait. But then Meg’s mouth closed into a thin line of determination. Stevie knew that if Meg tattled on Veronica, she’d be banned from Veronica’s circle of friends forever. That was not a price Meg would be willing to pay.

For her own part, Stevie wasn’t interested in tattling. If Max hadn’t seen the gallop, well, Stevie and the Blues would take their chances. The score was tied.

Before Max called the final pair, Stevie had a moment to wonder who else had seen what Veronica had done. Maybe someone would say something after the game.

“Number Threes, trot!” Stevie and Lisa turned their horses out of the circle. Stevie nudged Comanche with her heels and he broke into a good extended trot. But when Stevie glanced across the circle it was clear that Pepper, still inspired by the great outdoors, was trotting very quickly and was beating Comanche. Stevie wanted to win—
really
wanted to win. She urged Comanche ahead and he responded with a longer stride, but Stevie wasn’t at all sure it would be enough.

Every competitor knows that it’s usually an awful mistake to look at your competition in a race, but Stevie kept watching Lisa. She was doing really well and Stevie couldn’t help being a little proud of her. After all, who had helped her since she’d started riding!

While Stevie stole peeks at Lisa and Pepper, she saw, to her astonishment, that Lisa was pulling in on Pepper’s reins. It wasn’t easy to see, but she definitely moved them toward her hips. In an instant, Pepper drew to a walk. He broke his gait! That automatically meant victory for the Blues! Stevie completed her circle, pulled Comanche back into her place in the circle, and waited for Lisa to finish her round.

As Stevie watched, she expected to see embarrassment on Lisa’s face. After all, breaking from a trot to a walk was really baby stuff. Lisa was better than that. But when Stevie looked at Lisa’s face, what she saw instead was a sly smile, and then she understood.

Lisa had seen Veronica’s stunt. If she’d tattled, it might have ruined the whole camp-out. So she’d done
the only thing that would guarantee the right outcome of the game. She’d thrown it. She had intentionally pulled Pepper into a walk. Everybody would believe it was just a mistake since that was the kind of thing that happened to new riders.

Stevie was proud of the way Lisa had handled the situation. She wondered if she’d have had the guts to do the same thing.

“How could you
do
that?” Veronica wailed at Lisa.

“I dunno,” Lisa said dumbly.

“Well, you’re not going to be on
my
team again! Ever!” Veronica declared.

“
Fine
by me,” Lisa said.

Stevie grinned over at Carole.

“C
AROLE
,
SOMETIMES
I wonder what I’d do without you,” Max said.

Carole beamed. Max wasn’t the kind of man who complimented people easily. In fact, he hadn’t said anything nice about her riding until the third class she’d taken with him!

“I like to help,” she said, straightening Patch’s blanket and retying the strings at his neck. It was always cool in the mountains at night and the horses would be glad for the covers. “Besides, if I’m ever actually going to own a horse farm, I’ll have to get used to the work.”

“And it’s a
lot
of work,” Max assured her.

“It’s a lot more work than it ought to be if you’ve got somebody like Veronica boarding her horse with
you,” Red said, as Max walked away to check Diablo’s blanket. The disgust in his voice was clear. “She didn’t even bother with grain for Cobalt’s dinner—”

“I’ll take care of that,” Carole said eagerly.

“I did it already,” Red said. “I thought you did your part at lunch.”

Carole wasn’t surprised that Red had also noticed Veronica’s carelessness at lunchtime.

“These are really barn horses,” Max told Carole when he returned. “They need extra special care when they are on the trail.”

That reminded Carole of something she’d been meaning to ask him. “Gosh, Max, speaking of that, Delilah’s been acting strangely. Could she be sick, do you think?”

“What do you mean?” Max snapped, instantly concerned.

“It’s like she’s suddenly sort of ladylike, more gentle than usual. But, then, she tried to bite me when I was feeding her tonight. She just seems unpredictable.”

Max laughed. “Women,” he said. “It doesn’t sound to me like there’s anything to worry about.”

But Carole still wasn’t sure.

S
TEVIE LEANED AGAINST
a tree, scratching her tired back on its rough bark. The day had been great, and now she knew they were about to play one of the students’ favorite games. It was informally called Who Was Max the First?

Maxmillian Regnery III was the current owner and operator of Pine Hollow Stables. It had been founded by his grandfather early in the century. Some people around town remembered Max’s father, known as Max the Second. He was a stern, sour-faced man, known for strutting along the town’s sidewalks, slapping a riding crop into the palm of his hand. Max the First had died more than 50 years earlier and it had become a Pine Hollow tradition to sort through the wild stories about what kind of man would establish such a wonderful place as Pine Hollow.

“He was a Rough Rider, you know,” Stevie began.

“I always thought Max the First was a
good
rider,” Meg protested.

“No, I mean a Rough Rider, like pounding up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. Remember that stuff about the Spanish-American War?”

“Oh, yeah,” Meg said. “Roosevelt was the guy who said ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’?”

“That’s right!” Stevie said. “And that’s why Max the Second always carried his riding crop in town!”

Everybody laughed, except Joe Novick. He was waiting for a quiet moment. “I don’t think so,” he said. The crowd around the campfire turned to hear
his
theory. “I mean, well, maybe he did that
before
 …”

“Before
what
?” Betsy Cavanaugh asked eagerly.

“Well, the earthquake, of course,” Joe said matter-of-factly. “See, the way I figure it, he was in San Francisco in 1906. You know those old sand buckets in the
stables?” They all knew them. Fire was a constant threat in a stable and, in addition to the standard fire extinguishers, there were old leather sand buckets every few feet. “I think he was part of the horseback bucket brigade that saved the city of San Francisco—”

“Saved it?” Carole interrupted. “The whole place was burned down!”

“I just thought the buckets were mementos of the Great Fire,” Joe finished.

Maybe they were.

“Oh, no, no,” Lisa jumped in, entering into the spirit of the thing. “You’ve got this all wrong.” Everybody turned to her. Even Max seemed interested in what she had to say. “A name like Maxmillian Regnery has to be a cover,” she began. “I just learned in school that the Latin word for king is
rex
or
regis
, so the name
Regnery
was chosen because Max the First had royal blood, and I think it was Russian royal blood!”

The kids around the campfire burst into laughter. This was the strangest theory yet. While they listened, Lisa explained that Max the First was probably actually a son of the Russian czar Nicholas II. “He and Alexandra had so many kids, nobody could keep track of them. And when the revolution began, Max the First began spying for the revolutionaries. That’s how he escaped execution. But he was always afraid the royalists would find him. So he escaped to Virginia, changed his name, and opened Pine Hollow!”

There was a great round of applause for Lisa’s new, untested theory.

“Not bad,” Stevie told her, grinning with amusement. At school, Lisa was a straight-A student. Now Stevie could see some use for all the knowledge Lisa had to acquire to be so good.

Adam Levine took Lisa’s story about Russian history as a challenge.

“I think you’re on the completely wrong track,” he began, trying not to laugh. “You’re ignoring the well-known fact that Mrs. Reg always keeps that broom near her desk. It was, of course, the broom Max the First’s mother used to fly on Halloween. She wouldn’t let
him
fly it, so he started riding horses.”

Everybody burst into laughter.

“Come on, Max,” Meg urged. “What’s the real truth?”

The campers turned to him and waited. Max never commented on the silly stories about his grandfather, which, of course, just made the old man seem all the more mysterious. “Well, I’ll tell you this,” he said, and then paused. Stevie wondered if he might actually reveal something of the truth. A cricket chirped. When the last chirp had echoed in the darkness, Max continued. “I’ll tell you this,” he repeated. “I think you’re on the right track now.”