Mystery Ride (12 page)

“Her chin dropped,” Carole said.

“Her lower lip went out,” cried Lisa.

“She was going to call her father,” Stevie said. “She said that Max was being unfair.”

“Veronica nearly fainted when she found out that Phil had taken a hot shower,” Carole said.

“And shampooed!” Stevie said. They all laughed, remembering Veronica’s domed hair.

“She was so upset, she …” Lisa was laughing so hard she couldn’t go on.

“Sat in the onion dip,” Carole finished for her.

The girls were silent for a moment as they contemplated the magnificent memory of the expression on Veronica’s face when she stood up and felt the onion dip ooze down her breeches into her boots.

“I’ll always think of her that way,” Lisa said.

Then Stevie remembered finding her saddle. “I’ll never forget going into the barn and seeing all those saddles. It was creepy.”

After the ambulance took the thief away, the police, Max, Phil, and The Saddle Club had gone to inspect the ramshackle barn where the thief had kept his horse. There had been at least a dozen saddles, including May Grover’s and Stevie’s. All of them were new or almost new. And there had been half a dozen bridles. Max had said that altogether the stolen tack was worth thousands of dollars. The thief must have been haunting the roads and trails in the woods for weeks.

“What a way to make a living,” Stevie said.

“One more day and he and the saddles would have been gone forever,” Carole said.

Max had told the girls that a used-tack auction was scheduled for the next day in a neighboring county. The police were sure that the thief meant to sell the stolen saddles there. Once the saddles were sold, there would have been almost no way to recover them.

“It just goes to show,” Carole said. “Nameplates on a saddle are not enough.”

The girls knew that at the next Horse Wise meeting Max was going to help them permanently identify their tack. One saddle thief had been caught, but there were more around.

“I learned something important,” Lisa said.

“What’s that?” asked Stevie.

“Our horses did all kinds of maneuvers. Like a standing jump,” Lisa said. “I didn’t know Prancer could do that.”

“And backing up into bushes,” said Carole. “I wasn’t sure Starlight would do it.”

“And Belle narrowly missed jumping into a tree,” Stevie said. “I don’t know what you call that maneuver, but I definitely appreciated it.”

“It was the hardest riding I ever did,” Carole said. “Because there were no rules. We had to figure everything out for ourselves.”

“And convince Prancer, Starlight, and Belle that it was a good idea,” Stevie added. “A couple of times I could tell that Belle thought I was crazy.”

“But she went along with you because she trusts you,” Carole said. “I guess it’s what Max is always trying to teach us—a good rider can cope with the unexpected.”

Lisa nodded. “When I realized that Prancer had to go all out, I was terrified. But then I trusted her, and she trusted me, and everything was fine. Although,” she giggled, “I did have strange dreams last night. Race cars. Motorcycles.”

“A speed demon is born,” Stevie said.

Carole licked the last bit of vanilla ice cream off her spoon. “I’ve been thinking, too. You know the secret of The Saddle Club’s success?”

“Brilliance?” said Stevie.

“Not exactly,” said Carole with a grin.

“Bravery?” Lisa said.

“Not precisely,” said Carole. “When you think about it, the main ingredient of our success on the MW was dumb luck.”

“What?”
said Stevie indignantly.

“It’s true. If we hadn’t mixed up the real and fake mysteries, we would never have caught the real thief,” Carole said. “And if we hadn’t thought the barred hoofprints were
one of Max’s brilliant clues, we would never have followed them.”

“We could have missed out on all the glory,” Lisa said.

“Actually, there isn’t all that much glory,” Stevie said.

“We’re going to get our picture in
The Willow Creek Gazette
,” Lisa finally said.

“On the back page,” Carole said.

“My brother Chad told me The Saddle Club mishandled the whole thing. He said he could have caught the thief in half the time,” Stevie said with a snort.

“You know what’s truly great?” said Lisa.

“What’s that?” Carole said.

“The group picture Deborah took of the MW gang,” Lisa said.

“Yes,” Carole said dreamily. “That’s an excellent photograph.”

“No,” Stevie said, “it’s
the
greatest photograph in the history of mankind.”

At the end of the Mystery Weekend Deborah had taken the traditional photo of the participants, which was now hanging in the tack room next to those of previous MW groups. This one included the marvelous sight of Veronica diAngelo with broken fingernails, puffy, stiff hair filled
with seeds, spaghetti-sauce stains on her vest, and—best of all—onion dip oozing into her boots.

“The miserable expression on Veronica’s face will keep me going through the long winter ahead,” Stevie said.

“It’s something to live for,” Carole said.

“It was one crazy weekend,” Lisa said happily. “You know what the real mystery is? How we can ever top it!”

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 ail 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.