Horse Spy (2 page)

“All the horses at Pine Hollow get VIP treatment,” Lisa commented.

“Well, VIP-
er,
” said Stevie.

“How could that be?” Lisa asked, applying her usual logic.

“I think what Stevie means is that we’ll be responsible for some of the care they get, and what could be better than that?” Carole said.

“Well, do you suppose if we take the VIP-
est
care of them, Max will let us watch the training? It would be really good for all of us—and just plain fun,” Stevie said with a grin.

“He might let us cool them down after a training session,” Lisa said, imagining herself holding the lead of one of Pine Hollow’s valuable visitors.

Carole was shuffling through the magazines again. “You know, I think I saw an article about young champions somewhere in here. I wonder if the writer mentions anything about these horses or their riders. What are their names?”

“Polaris and Jennie’s Blue,” Lisa said.

“I know the horses’ names,” Carole said. “I meant the riders’.”

Stevie laughed. “Come on, Lisa, you know that Carole could forget where she left her own head, but she’d never forget a horse’s name!”

“Silly me,” Lisa teased, reaching once again for a magazine from the stack.

For a while there was only the sound of pages flipping.

“Not here,” said Stevie.

“Nothing in here,” Lisa said. “Except for a pretty interesting article about some president’s daughter …”

“Oh, right. I started to read that one,” Carole said. “Then I figured it couldn’t be real.”

“Sure it is,” Lisa said. She held up the magazine and showed her friends the smiling picture of a girl their own age. “Karya Nazeem,” she said. “Pretty name. Anyway, it says her
father’s just been elected president of this little country in the Middle East. It’s called the ADR, the Arab Democratic Republic.”

“I’ve heard about that place,” Carole said. “Dad was talking about it. He said her father’s a really good guy and he’s trying to do all sorts of progressive things—”

“Not to hear Karya talk about it,” said Lisa. She ran her finger along the column of type as she scanned the story. “She’s complaining here about how nobody ever lets her do anything for herself anymore now that her father’s the president. She says that being the president’s daughter is mostly fine, but … Here it is: ‘Sometimes I just wish they’d let me muck out my own horse’s stall!’ ”

Stevie hooted with laughter. “I guess I should have picked my parents more carefully!” she said. “They, and everybody else, will always let me muck out anything!”

“Just the places that get really messy, like Belle’s stall and your closet!” Lisa teased.

Stevie laughed, too. “Well,” she started to protest, and then thought better of it. Her friends had seen her closet.

“Imagine never having to do any of the dirty work that has to do with horses,” Stevie said.

“It would mean being just like Veronica!” said Lisa. Veronica diAngelo was a snooty rich girl who rode at Pine Hollow and always seemed to manage to get out of any kind of dirty work. In fact, she seemed to think that her only responsibility with regard to her horse was to ride him—when she felt like it.

That wasn’t the Pine Hollow way—at all. Max believed that riding a horse was just one of the things that was important
about horsemanship, and he insisted that all his riders look after the horses they rode as much as they could. The Saddle Club might have complained about mucking out stalls and cleaning tack from time to time, but they all agreed that these were important parts of horse care. Not only did they learn more about horses from the care they gave them, but their pitching in also meant that Pine Hollow could keep its costs down and make riding accessible to more people—including The Saddle Club.

“Well, we could invite the girl—what’s her name?”

“Karya,” Lisa said.

“Karya, right, and her horse is a chestnut Arabian with three white socks and a blaze on his face, right?” Carole asked.

Lisa laughed. “You’re right, Stevie. Carole remembered every single detail about the horse, but not his owner’s name!”

“Well, at least I know what’s important!” Carole huffed, pretending to be annoyed. “Anyway, we should invite her to come ride at Pine Hollow. I’m sure Max will find a few stalls for her to muck out, and Mrs. Reg will no doubt have a saddle or two that she wants to be able to see her face in.”

Lisa looked down at the magazine again. “We could, you know.”

“We could what?” Stevie asked.

“Invite her to Pine Hollow,” said Lisa.

“To muck out stalls?” Carole asked.

“Well, that, and I guess she could do some grooming, and I bet you could show her a few things about the fine art of picking hooves,” Lisa said to Stevie.

“Wouldn’t that be a dumb thing—to invite her here?” Carole asked.

“Not really,” said Lisa. “Says here that she’s looking forward to coming to Washington on a trip with her father. It doesn’t say when, but I think it’s pretty soon.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Stevie.

“No, I mean it. Look at this,” Lisa said, offering the magazine to Stevie.

“I’m sure you’ve read it right,” Stevie said. “I just think it’s silly to offer some president’s daughter the honor of picking out Prancer’s hooves.”

“Let me see that,” Carole said, reaching for the magazine.

Lisa handed it to her. “Carole, you’re not really considering inviting her to visit Pine Hollow, are you?”

“No way,” said Carole. But she put the magazine down, walked over to her desk, and began shuffling through a pile of papers. After a few seconds she sat down at the desk, a pen in one hand and a sheet of her best stationery in front of her.

“Looks like you’re writing a letter,” said Stevie.

“I am,” said Carole. “I’m writing to Karya Nazeem to invite her to come for a ride with us.”

“Carole!” Stevie said. “She’ll never do it.”

“I know she won’t. But she just might answer me. Or she might have one of her father’s secretaries answer me, and then I’ll have what I really want.”

“Huh?”

“If they answer the letter, I’ll get a stamp from the Arab Democratic Republic on the envelope, and that’ll be a great present for Dad. He has a stamp collection, you know, and he
was talking about this country and this girl’s father. He’d think that was cool.”

“Great idea!” said Lisa.

“Isn’t there someone else there you could write to?” Stevie asked.

“You think I should invite President Nazeem to pick Prancer’s hooves?” Carole teased.

“No, I guess it’s okay. You might just get an answer in time for your dad’s birthday. It’s what—four months?”

“Five,” Carole said. “I think there’s time.”

She signed her name, addressed the envelope to Karya Nazeem at the president’s residence, and pasted what seemed like plenty of postage on it. She’d mail it on her way to Pine Hollow in the morning. Five months would be plenty of time for an answer. She smiled, thinking how pleased her father would be with his new stamp.

S
TEVIE LEANED
the pitchfork against the wall of the stall and rubbed the small of her back with both hands.

“I wish stall muck weren’t so heavy,” she remarked to Lisa.

“That isn’t the only thing I wish about it,” Lisa said, lifting the handles of the wheelbarrow to deliver their load to the manure pile behind the stable. “I wish it could self-destruct.”

“Here are the fresh shavings for both stalls,” Carole said, arriving with her own wheelbarrow. She dumped half the load in the stall where Stevie stood and took the remainder to the second visitor’s stall. Stevie picked up the pitchfork with resignation and began spreading the sweet-smelling wood shavings around.

This wasn’t her favorite part of working with horses, but she knew it was important, and she took a certain satisfaction in realizing that not much earlier the stall had been quite dirty and now it was almost ready for its newest tenant.

Lisa returned and began spreading the chips around the
other stall. “Too bad Karya Nazeem isn’t here already,” she remarked.

“Right. Welcome, Ms. First Daughter. Won’t you have a pitchfork?” Stevie joked.

“No, thank you. I’d prefer a wheelbarrow full of horse manure,” Lisa said back.

“We could go for a ride,” Carole joined in.

“Not while there are saddles to soap and horses to groom!” said Lisa.

“Oh, she’d love this place!” said Stevie. “Too bad she’ll never see it.”

“No, I mean us,” said Carole. “We could go for a ride.”

“Oh, sure,” said Lisa. “But I don’t want to miss it when Polaris and Jennie’s Blue arrive.”

“We don’t have to miss it,” said Carole. “Max said they’d be here sometime this morning. We can just stay in the ring. There are a lot of things we can work on there. Max laid out some cavalletti for yesterday’s class, and they’re still there. It’ll be good for all of our horses.”

“As soon as we finish the stalls,” Lisa said.

“Of course,” Carole agreed.

They were almost done. They brushed out the feed boxes, rinsed out the water buckets, then stepped back to admire their handiwork. The stalls looked cozy and welcoming—just the kind of guest room a visiting horse would be glad to see.

“Okay, last one in the ring is a rotten egg,” said Stevie.

It was a challenge her friends were happy to accept.

Ten minutes later, the girls had tacked up their own horses and met in the schooling ring for a practice session. At their
last class, Max had had them working on the evenness of their horses’ gaits, and now they used the poles laid out on the ground to help control the horses’ steps.

The idea was that the placement of the poles would prompt the horses to adjust their strides, making movement smoother for the rider as well as the horse. It was difficult, exacting work, because there was a temptation for both the rider and the horse to speed up or slow down at will. Each girl and her horse took turns sitting out a couple of rounds, so that one rider could watch and comment on the others.

Stevie was the best at it, and both Carole and Lisa were grateful when she could help them out.

“Lisa, tighten up on your reins a little bit so Prancer will be sure to notice who’s in charge.”

Lisa took up some of the slack in her reins. Prancer’s head perked up and her gait smoothed out.

“Carole, if you anticipate the turn too soon, Starlight’s going to sense it and begin turning before you want him to.”

Carole adjusted her posture, and Starlight immediately returned to a straightforward trot.

Both Lisa and Carole thought it was a bit ironic that the wild, scheming, joking Stevie was the one of the three of them who naturally understood the precision required in this kind of training. Carole was the best jumper of the three, Lisa the strongest pleasure rider, and Stevie always took prizes in dressage.

They were working on lengthening their horses’ strides when the van pulled into Pine Hollow’s driveway. There was no question about who was arriving. In the first place, it was a large luxury van, the kind that only wealthy people
could afford to rent. In the second, and more important place, it had
LONG ISLAND HORSE TRANSPORT
painted on the side. Dorothy DeSoto’s training farm was on Long Island, and that was where Polaris and Jennie’s Blue were coming from.

“Let’s give them a hand,” Carole said. “Max is teaching a class in the indoor ring and may not even know they’re here.”

She didn’t have to say it twice. The girls dismounted and secured their horses to the rail before heading toward the truck, from which two people were climbing down.

At first the girls assumed that the people getting out of the truck were grooms, but when they saw that both were middleaged women and both were well dressed, they began to consider other possibilities.

“It’s the mothers,” Lisa concluded.

“A little odd,” said Stevie.

“What’s odd about it?” Carole asked. “Maybe they love horses as much as their daughters?”

“Cool,” said Lisa, wishing her mother cared as much about her riding as these women must about their daughters’. She couldn’t imagine her mother riding in a horse van for ten minutes, much less six hours! The smell alone would drive her out.

Setting that thought aside, Lisa stepped up with her two friends to greet the newcomers.

“Welcome to Pine Hollow,” Carole said, offering her hand.

One of the mothers looked at her, smiled coolly, and nodded. The other was too busy waiting at the back of the van to even acknowledge the presence of the three girls.

The Saddle Club was not deterred. No doubt it had been a
long trip in the big van. The women were probably tired and eager to see to the horses.

“Where’s that Mr. Regnery?” asked the woman at the back of the van.

“He’s teaching a student right now,” Stevie said. “We’ll let him know you’re here, but in the meantime, my friends and I can help get the hors—”

“We told him what time we’d be here,” said the other woman sharply. “You think he’d have the courtesy to meet us so we can get this over with.”

“He’ll be right here,” said Lisa. She was the closest to the stable door and only too glad to flee the mothers she’d so recently admired. Max would know how to deal with them.