Rocking Horse (3 page)

“And I’m sure Meg and Betsy will have time to clean Danny’s stall,” Stevie said.

“Oh well,” Lisa said. “We’ll have to do our best, like Carole always says. And we’d better get the horses ready. Max will be back soon.”

They shoved the heavy trunks out to the aisle and went to their horses’ stalls. The three had already groomed Belle, Prancer, and Starlight, and each horse wore a neat stable sheet to keep it clean on the trip. Lisa went into Prancer’s stall with a set of shipping wraps and began to bandage Prancer’s legs. Prancer stamped her feet impatiently and let out a high whinny.

“You know something’s up, don’t you, darling?”
Lisa said. She ran her hand down the mare’s shoulder to soothe her. “It’s a rally. I think you’ll like it. Belle and Starlight will be there.” Horses became accustomed to each other’s company, and Lisa knew Prancer would be happy to be with her friends.

“Can we put Prancer in between Belle and Starlight?” Lisa called to Carole and Stevie. “I think that will help keep her relaxed.”

“Sure,” Stevie replied from Belle’s stall, “if they let us decide which horse goes where.”

Carole laughed. “I think they’ll let us decide
everything
.” She was rerolling one of her bandages to make it easier to put on Starlight’s leg. As she walked past Danny’s stall, she couldn’t help looking inside. Carole was shocked. Danny wasn’t wrapped and he wasn’t wearing a sheet. From the flecks of hay across his withers, it didn’t look as if he’d even been brushed that afternoon. And Veronica was standing in his stall, idly running a comb through his tangle-free mane.

“Better hurry,” Carole told her. “Max will be here in fifteen minutes.” If Veronica really got a move on, she might manage to have Danny ready in time.

Veronica gave her a stiff smile. “We’re fine,” she said.

Carole shrugged and walked on. Danny wasn’t her job.

Bandaging a horse’s legs took time, and Carole
was just finishing when she heard Max pull the big trailer into the yard. She pulled Starlight’s leather show halter over his head and tied him to the post in his stall. “Be right back,” she promised him.

In the aisle, Lisa was arranging their personal gear: three duffel bags, three sleeping bags, two pillows (Stevie never used one), three garment bags with their riding coats inside, and one very large plastic cooler. They would eat their meals with all the other competitors, but The Saddle Club had been to enough rallies to know they needed plenty of snacks.

Carole hefted one end of the cooler and helped Lisa carry it out to Max’s truck. Max and Red began to load the heavier tack trunks. Meg, Betsy, and Stevie started loading gear, too. “Where’s Veronica?” Max asked.

“Back with Danny,” Meg told him.

Max seemed pleased until they started loading the horses. “Why aren’t you ready?” he asked Veronica. Danny was still not brushed, blanketed, or wrapped.

“Sorry!” Meg said. “We didn’t—” Max raised his hand to let Veronica speak.

Veronica looked apologetic. “I don’t mean to hold everyone up,” she said. “I just wasn’t sure how to put Danny’s shipping wraps on, and I knew I could hurt his legs if I did it wrong. I asked Carole, but she wouldn’t help me.”

“I beg your pardon!” Carole said. “You never—”
“Let’s just get him ready,” Max said firmly. Meg and Betsy hurried to help Veronica while Carole stood, astounded, outside the stall. Max gave Carole a quick squeeze on the shoulder and an encouraging look, and Carole felt much better. Max knew Veronica; he wouldn’t believe her complaints.

When they got to the show grounds, they found that all the teams would be stabled in temporary stalls under a big tent. Each team was assigned four stalls: three for their horses and one as a combined tack room and living area for the riders. They would all camp out there overnight. Unfortunately, The Saddle Club girls found themselves in stalls right across an aisle from Veronica and her group.

“We’ll make our tack room the outside stall,” Veronica declared with a sniff. “That way we’ll have at least some chance of fresh air. I can’t believe they’re making us sleep out in the stables. My mother was willing to put us up in a hotel, you know.” She stood back as her family’s chauffeur carried in a portable cot and air mattress.

“I can’t stand it,” Stevie muttered to Carole and Lisa. “My idea of fresh air is to be as far from Veronica as possible.”

“I agree,” said Lisa. They put Belle in the outside stall, then Prancer, then Starlight. Their tack room was on the inside of the row, right next to some stalls assigned to a team from another Pony Club.

“The water’s at the end of the aisle, and somebody said extra shavings are at the other end of the tent,” Carole reported. They all bustled about getting their horses’ stalls ready. They hung water buckets and spread shavings. Carole broke open a bale of hay and split it among the three horses.

Max and Red had helped with the tack trunks again. Lisa saw them standing beside the truck, making jokes with one another. “Max, could you check to see if you think Prancer’s got enough shavings?” she called to him. “The floor of her stall isn’t very level. Does it matter?”

Max grinned at her and shook his head. “Can’t help you,” he said.

“Already?” Lisa asked. They’d just gotten there!

Max pointed to a pair of women walking through the tent with clipboards in their hands. Lisa gawked and rushed back to Stevie and Carole. “We’re being inspected right now!” she said. “We’re not set up!”

Carole calmly measured grain into Starlight’s feed bucket. “Half the teams aren’t set up. They must just be looking for things that people are doing wrong.”

Lisa wasn’t so sure. She anxiously finished Prancer’s stall, then took Prancer’s sheet off and hung it on their blanket rack in the tack room. Then she took it back down. What if Prancer needed it? The night was fairly warm, but it looked as if it
might rain. Lisa wished she could ask Max for advice. She decided to ask Stevie. “Sheet or no sheet?”

Stevie looked up from inspecting Belle’s hooves. “Sheet. It’s going to storm.”

From across the aisle they could hear Veronica’s voice rising to a peevish whine. “What do you mean, I don’t have my water bucket hung high enough? How high does a water bucket need to be?” Peeking out the doors of their horses’ stalls, they saw the pair of inspectors talking to Veronica. They all ducked back, laughing.

“If she’d read her Pony Club manual, she’d know the answer to that question,” Lisa said. “The water bucket has to be low enough that the horse can drink out of it but high enough that the horse can’t knock it over or get a foot caught in it.”

“And the bucket has to be tied to a post, not to a board in the stall,” Stevie added. “The weight of a full bucket might pull a board loose, but it wouldn’t hurt a post.”

“What do you mean, I’m getting penalized?” Veronica shouted. Stevie and Lisa giggled.

“Poor sportsmanship,” a voice chided them from the aisle. “Laughing at another team’s errors.”

They both looked out. “Phil!” Stevie cried. “I’ve been looking for you!”

Lisa saw A.J. and Bart standing behind Phil. “Hi, guys,” she said brightly, stepping out into the aisle.

“Hi, Lisa,” A.J. said. Bart just waved and smiled.

“We’re two aisles down,” Phil said, “on this same side. We’ve come to tell you to hurry. It’s time for dinner, and rumor has it they’re serving pizza.”

“And we love pizza,” A.J. said. “So we want to be sure to get first dibs. Right, Bart?”

“Right,” Bart said. He gave Lisa another shy smile. Lisa felt herself starting to blush. How could she be so silly?

“I’ll get Carole,” Stevie said. “I think we’re almost ready.” She scurried down the aisle. Lisa looked at the three boys and struggled for something witty and clever to say.

“So, do you think it’s going to rain?” she asked, just as a rumble of thunder sounded overhead. So much for witty and clever!

“Might,” Bart said.

“Yeah,” A.J. added, clapping Bart on the shoulder, “that’s our friend Bart. King of the one-word answers.”

Bart shrugged. He didn’t look uncomfortable. “I do better with horses than people,” he told Lisa.

“At least,” Phil added teasingly, “he does better with horses than
girls
.”

Bart blushed deep red, and Lisa felt herself blushing again, too. “Stevie!” she called out.

“Here we are!” Stevie said, coming out with Carole in tow. “Take us to your pizza!”

A crack of lightning lit the darkening sky, and rain began to pelt the roof of the tent. “Run!” Phil shouted. They took off across the field toward the mess hall, laughing. Lisa was immensely grateful not to have to look at Bart. She felt incredibly self-conscious. Did everyone notice her blush? And was that good or bad?

Lisa thought back to Bart’s blush. Was he always that embarrassed around girls? Or was it possible that he was—at least a little—interested in her?

L
ISA SMACKED THE
Off switch of her portable alarm clock to stop its ringing. She sat up in her sleeping bag and rubbed her eyes. Above her head, rain drummed steadily against the roof of the stabling tent, and the air smelled damp and cold. “Geez,” she said, “did it rain all night?”

Carole stood up, shaking her sleeping bag loose, and leaned over the top of the tack room door. “Looks that way,” she answered. “I can see a lot of puddles, including one right here in the middle of our aisle.” They heard a thump from Starlight’s stall, and Carole giggled. “Starlight sees me. He just
butted his feed tub to tell me it’s time for his breakfast.”

They all got up, rolled their sleeping bags and stowed them neatly in a corner, and put on their socks and paddock boots. They had slept in sweatshirts and old breeches. They divided the chores, Lisa getting the grain, Stevie the hay, and Carole the water.

“I’ll be responsible for the water in more ways than one,” Carole said. “I’m going to fill that aisle puddle before we go to breakfast. You never know when an inspector might come around.” She grabbed a muck bucket and headed for the shavings pile.

Lisa toed the edge of the puddle. “Do you think the tent’s leaking? I didn’t feel a drop all night.”

“Probably the rain just blew in from the side and settled in that low spot,” Stevie guessed. “The whole aisle’s muddy. We’ll have to spread a lot of shavings.”

Stevie dropped a flake of hay into each horse’s stall. She paused to say good morning to Belle. “Hello, beautiful. Did you sleep well?” Belle looked fit and happy, but her hooves, Stevie noticed, were wet. Since Belle’s stall was on the outside edge of the row, it had gotten pretty wet from rain blowing under the tent roof, and her bedding was soaked. Stevie knew that wet bedding wouldn’t hurt a horse for a
few hours, but it wasn’t good for them as a regular thing. “I’m going to pick out this stall before breakfast,” she said when Lisa came in with Belle’s grain.

“Ugh,” Lisa said, nodding agreement as her feet squished into the wet shavings. “Prancer’s and Starlight’s stalls are still dry.”

“Good.” Stevie pointed to Team Veronica’s tack stall and grinned. “Do you think they got wet? I’d hate to have a little water disrupt Veronica’s beauty sleep.”

Lisa pursed her lips in thought. “I’m sure if Veronica had gotten wet, we would have heard all about it, even in the middle of the night. She’s not the type to suffer in silence.”

Stevie snorted. “You can say that again.”

Lisa left. Stevie worked quickly, using a pitchfork to scoop the wet bedding into one of their muck buckets. Then she dragged the muck bucket through the diminishing rain to the place where they were supposed to pile used bedding. It took three trips before Belle’s stall was stripped. Then Stevie took the big bucket to the shavings pile and started filling it. When she returned to Belle’s stall, an inspector was looking over the door, pencil and clipboard in hand.

When she saw Stevie she shook her head. “I’m going to have to give you some penalty points for that,” she said.

Stevie’s jaw dropped. “But it rained all night, and I’m fixing it right now! I’m working as quickly as I can!”

The woman shook her head and pointed to Belle’s tail with her pencil. “I mean that, not the stall.”

Stevie looked. Belle’s tail, which only the night before had been a black, shining, tangle-free flow of hair, now hung in a stiff, dirty, matted clump. “Belle!” Stevie said in astonishment. She put her hand on Belle’s hip and gently picked up her tail. What had Belle done? Turned out to pasture, horses sometimes got burrs or weeds matted into their tails, but Belle had been safe inside all night. Stevie’s fingers pried the clump apart. The middle was mud—pure, filthy, dried mud. And Belle’s floor, although damp, had been covered with shavings. There wasn’t any mud in sight.

Stevie looked over the door of Belle’s stall. Veronica was coming out of her tack room, makeup kit in hand. She hurried down the aisle without meeting Stevie’s eyes.

Veronica! I might have
known! Stevie’s first thought was to see how Veronica liked getting mud in
her
hair. Her second thought was to tell the show officials, but she knew she had no proof. A mud ball was the sort of thing that could happen if Belle was turned out and not groomed regularly. The fact that
Stevie would never allow it to happen was something else Stevie knew she couldn’t prove.