Pleasure Horse (2 page)

Stevie perked up. “I almost forgot about the long weekend. I don’t know how on earth, but I did. Actually,
that reminds me. We’re going to visit my relatives in New Jersey. There’s going to be a big party for my cousin Angie’s sixteenth birthday. It should be fun.”

“What’s your cousin like?” Carole asked. “Doesn’t she ride?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty good. I haven’t seen her for a few years, but we’ve always gotten along well—probably because she’s horsey, too. She has her own horse and goes to lots of shows. I’ll probably be able to ride while we’re up there because my aunt and uncle have horses, too. I guess the only bad part will be that I’ll miss a couple of days working with Samson.”

“We’ll give you a full update when you get back,” Carole promised.

By the time they had circled the ring twice, Samson seemed quieter. He pranced when the wind outside picked up and shook the rafters, but otherwise he was calm. Stevie got the saddle from the jump where it was resting and she and Lisa placed it carefully on Samson’s back.

“Make sure the stirrups don’t hit him,” Carole said.

“Don’t worry—they’re still rolled up. He can’t feel a thing,” Lisa assured her. She waited while Stevie gently tightened the girth.

“All right, we’ll unroll them now. Okay, Carole?” Stevie asked.

Carole nodded. So far the lesson was going perfectly.

Moving quietly, Lisa and Stevie each unrolled one of the stirrups so that the irons hung down below the saddle flaps. Carole was about to ask Samson to walk forward when the colt seemed to realize that something was swinging from the saddle. He shied to the side in surprise.

“Easy, boy, don’t get all worked up. It’s only a pair of stirrups,” Carole said, trying to soothe him. She placed one hand on his neck. Instead of listening to her, Samson threw his head up and danced away.

“Do you think he’s frightened by them?” Lisa asked anxiously.

“I—I don’t know,” Carole admitted. She couldn’t say much more because it was taking all her concentration to steady Samson.

“Or maybe it’s the wind again. It
is
loud,” Lisa suggested. It wasn’t like Samson to be so high-strung.

“I don’t think he’s scared,” Stevie observed. “Look at his face. It’s more playful than frightened. I’ll bet he thinks this whole thing is a big game.”

The girls looked. Samson did seem to be playing. By now he was virtually ignoring Carole, pulling and prancing and tossing his head around for emphasis.

“You know, I think you’re right. He’s like a kitten with a new ball of yarn,” Carole remarked, thinking of
her cat, Snowball. She had to raise her voice so that the others could hear her, because Samson had pulled her with him as he pranced his way down to the end of the ring.

“Yeah, or a brother trying to beat you in an argument,” Stevie muttered, thinking of her three easily incensed siblings.

Speaking firmly and with a couple of snaps on the lead line, Carole managed to get Samson back to the middle of the ring. But once there, he refused to stand still. Stevie and Lisa tried to help, but they weren’t sure what to do. When they approached Samson, he shied away; when they stayed back, he started to drag Carole around. Carole kept talking to him quietly and patting him and telling him everything was okay, but Samson didn’t seem to be listening. Finally Lisa suggested that they call it quits for the day, even though they’d only been out about ten minutes. “We don’t want him to get too excited,” she said. “And let’s face it: This is becoming a battle that we’re losing. He’s really out of control.”

“I agree. And if he gets any sweatier, it’s going to take hours to walk him,” Stevie said, noting the wet shine that had quickly appeared on Samson’s dark coat. “What do you think, Carole?”

Carole didn’t say anything at first, but then she nodded reluctantly. She hated to give up when the lesson
had started so well, but she knew that her friends were right. A good horsewoman never continued when a horse got too worked up, especially a young horse. In one very bad session, a trainer could undo a lot of good work.

Together, the three girls could barely get the saddle off. Samson kept lunging away, and it still wasn’t clear if he was spooked or just being silly. Exhausted, Carole relinquished the lead line to Stevie so Stevie could walk Samson to cool him off. “I don’t understand what I was doing wrong,” Carole commented, watching the colt slowly quiet down again.

“I don’t think you were doing anything wrong,” Lisa said sympathetically. “He was just acting strange. Remember, every horse, trainer, and rider has off days. None of us knew what to do.”

Carole nodded thoughtfully. Stevie had reached the end of the ring and turned Samson back toward them. Once again it hit Carole how striking the colt was and how well he would perform under saddle someday. The thought made her feel better. “You’re right, Lisa,” she said brightly. “I guess I just thought that since he’s taken every other step of his training so calmly, this one would be no different. We’ll just have to go more slowly with the stirrups if he doesn’t like them, that’s all.”

Overhearing, Stevie brought Samson up to the two of
them. “I agree completely. So far we’ve had it easy, but training Samson is going to be a challenge, like most things about horses. And since all of our horses are working well for the moment, the three of us could use a little challenge around here.”

“Don’t say that without knocking wood!” Lisa exclaimed.

“Say what, that we need a challenge?” Stevie asked.

“No! That all of our horses are working well!” Lisa cried.

“All right, now you’ve both said it. Go knock on those cavalletti while I hold Samson,” Carole instructed. Lisa and Stevie ran and rapped on the jumps.

“Satisfied?” Stevie asked.

“With you, yes,” Carole replied. She turned to Samson and added, under her breath, “And more determined than ever to keep working with you.”

S
TEVIE GRITTED HER TEETH
. By all accounts, she should have been in a great mood. Here it was, the Friday of Presidents’ Day weekend. She had three whole days off from school, and she was on the train to visit a cousin who loved horses as much as she did. Unfortunately, her three brothers—Chad, the oldest; her twin, Alex; and Michael—were on the same train. Even more unfortunately, Stevie was stuck in a four-seater with them, all the way from Virginia to Philadelphia, while her parents snoozed in a double seat several rows away. Sometimes Stevie thought that the universe might not be big
enough for her and her brothers. But she was absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent sure that one train seat was far too small.

For a while Stevie had been pretending to be asleep so that she could ignore them, but it wasn’t working all that well. With her eyes closed, she only heard every annoying thing they said more clearly. Michael had been humming off-key for the last hour while Chad and Alex discussed all the cute girls they were planning to charm at Angie’s sweet sixteen party on Sunday.

“What about Angie’s friend, the blond girl we met that time at Christmas?” Alex asked.

“Who? Oh, you mean the one who does ballet?” Chad asked.

“Yeah.”

“No problem. She liked me that time we visited them before.”

“I don’t know … I thought she liked me.”

“You guys? How does ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad’ go again?” Michael interrupted.

“Why would she like you?” Chad asked. “I’m older.”

“So? What does age have to do with it?”

“You guys! Will you tell me the tune?” Michael demanded. “I can’t remember it. I just know, ‘Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,’ and then I get all messed up.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Stevie sat up in her seat. She opened her eyes and glared until she had her brothers’ attention. “Did it ever occur to the three of you that I just might be trying to sleep?” she asked, her voice saccharine.

Chad, Alex, and Michael paused for a millisecond. “No,” Alex said. They all burst out laughing.

With a supreme effort, Stevie managed to restrain herself from attacking them with her train pillow. “Ha-ha, aren’t you funny, Alex,” she said. “I wish I could be that amusing.”

“Maybe you could be if you didn’t spend eight days a week up to your elbows in horse manure,” Alex retorted.

Pretending not to hear, Stevie clamped the pillow over her ears and pressed her head back against the seat. She glanced at her watch: two long hours to go. What could she do to distract herself for
two hours
?

I know
, Stevie thought suddenly,
I’ll think—really think—about what to do about Samson.
That could take days, it was such a challenging case. If she thought of anything, maybe she could call Carole and Lisa from her cousin’s. Or better yet, maybe Angie would even have a suggestion on how to solve the problem. For it had become a problem. Even though The Saddle Club had been working patiently, the colt was no closer to accepting the strange swinging objects than he had been
the first time. It was if something snapped in his brain whenever the stirrups came out of the tack room.

Every lesson had gone about the same. First they would walk Samson to relax him. Then they would put the saddle on, hoping for the best. But as soon as the colt was tacked up, whether they had walked him for five minutes beforehand or for almost an hour, he would start to act up. It had gotten to the point where he started dancing around the minute he saw the saddle. The worst thing, Stevie knew, was that she and Lisa and Carole weren’t sure how to react. It was hard to know how to discipline a horse from the ground. They were used to
riding
horses that played around, but that didn’t seem to be helping.

Still, Stevie hadn’t said anything to her friends, mainly because after a bad session with Samson, Carole always looked so dismayed that Stevie didn’t have the heart to rub it in. She knew how much it meant to Carole to be the one to train Cobalt’s son, and she didn’t want to be pessimistic. Besides, there was no doubt in her mind that the three of them
could
do the job. It just might take a little time.

Brooding about Samson, Stevie didn’t notice the miles rushing by. Before she knew it, her parents were on their feet telling her and the boys to collect their luggage and prepare to get off the train because it was pulling
into Union Station in Philadelphia. Stevie’s aunt and uncle lived just over the Pennsylvania border in New Jersey.

“Do we have time to run to the snack car one more time?” Alex asked.

“Absolutely not,” said Mrs. Lake. “You’ve eaten enough junk between D.C. and here to pollute a small swamp. Now, shake a leg—the train is fifteen minutes behind schedule, and Uncle Chester and Aunt Lila will be waiting.”

“Hold on! Wait for me—I can’t carry all my stuff!” Michael exclaimed.

“What on earth did you pack?” Mr. Lake demanded, grabbing his youngest son’s two huge suitcases.

“Just a few things to make me feel at home. My Nintendo Game Boys, my two soldier collections, my stuffed dog …”

Stevie smiled. Family vacations were so predictable that, once in a while, it was almost comforting.

The Lakes had barely set foot inside Union Station when they heard their names being called. Uncle Chester, Aunt Lila, and their daughter Angie descended upon them, arms outstretched. Uncle Chester and Stevie’s father were brothers. They looked a lot alike except for the fact that Uncle Chester was a little older and had a handlebar mustache. The two men clapped
each other on the back while the kids and the mothers greeted one another.

“Angie!”

“Stevie!” The two girls hugged enthusiastically. Then Angie turned to say hi to the boys. Suddenly Stevie noticed that her cousin looked different. Instead of the tomboy Stevie remembered, Angie was stylishly dressed in a short wool skirt and V-neck sweater. She was wearing lipstick, pearl earrings, and a gold headband to hold back her long blond hair.

“Stevie, great to have you here!” Stevie’s uncle enveloped her in a bear hug.

Talking a million miles an hour, the two families headed to the lot where the New Jersey Lakes’ van was parked. Angie and Stevie fell into step together.

“How’s Sparkles?” Stevie asked right away. Sparkles was the nickname of Angie’s horse, a well-built palomino whose show name was Spark of Genius. He was talented over fences, and Angie had done well with him in junior jumper classes.

“He’s fine—same as always,” Angie answered briefly. Then she smiled. “I’m so glad you could make it down for the weekend, Stevie. My party is going to be incredible. Did you know we’re having it catered? The food is going to be great—hors d’oeuvres, a buffet supper, and a super-fancy cake for dessert. And we’re getting the most
gorgeous flowers—not just plain bouquets but special arrangements. The best florist in Philadelphia is doing them.”

Stevie nodded absently. Of course the party would be fun, but she could hardly wait to get out to the barn and see the horses. She was planning on taking at least one ride a day with Angie. “So how many horses do you have now? Bones and Birdie are still around, right?” Stevie asked, referring to the Lakes’ two hunters. Bones was older and had been semiretired for a few years.