Horse Capades (2 page)

“Looks like Miss Wardrobe didn’t bother to break in her latest purchase before wearing,” Carole said, as if reading Lisa’s thoughts. Veronica was forever turning up at the stable in the latest—and most expensive—riding
togs. As in most things, the purchase price always meant more to her than anything else.

Lisa grinned. “It also looks like she might have gotten the wrong size,” she said. “She doesn’t look too comfortable.” She turned to see if Stevie was enjoying the scene as much as she and Carole were.

But Stevie hardly seemed to have noticed. “Isn’t she ever going to mount?” she muttered.

Lisa glanced at Carole and shrugged. Carole shrugged back. Sometimes their friend was hard to figure out.

“Come on,” Veronica barked at Red, hobbling over to the mounting block near the ring. Ordinarily she didn’t need the block to mount Danny, but The Saddle Club guessed that today her tight boots wouldn’t allow her to mount any other way.

Red patiently led Danny to the block and held him while Veronica mounted. Once she was in the saddle, Veronica picked up the reins and rode away without a word of thanks. Red watched her go, looking irritated. But as Veronica turned Danny to ride toward the ring, the groom started to smile. Then he started to laugh. Veronica didn’t notice, but Stevie did. She started to grin.

“What’s going on?” Carole asked, looking confused.

A moment later, she knew. Veronica rode into the ring and the entire class got a good look at Danny. As the handsome Thoroughbred warmed up by trotting across the ring, there were titters, then chuckles, then guffaws from the other members of the class. Finally even Veronica started to notice that the other students were laughing at her.

“What?” she demanded, yanking Danny to a halt in the middle of the ring. “What are you all laughing at?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Stevie, and her hand darted around to her own back. Stevie grinned, knowing that Veronica was remembering the time The Saddle Club had attached a
POINT AND LAUGH
sign to the back of her jacket.

When her hand came up empty, Veronica looked more suspicious than ever. She rode over to where Stevie was sitting on her horse, Belle, laughing helplessly.

“All right, that’s enough, Stevie Lake,” Veronica said crossly. “You’d better tell me what’s going on right now, or I’ll tell Max you’re flunking history.”

“Oh yeah?” Stevie shot back. “Then maybe I’ll have to tell Max you called Red to tack up Danny for you—
again
.” She knew that Max had given Veronica a stern talking-to about doing her own chores just last
week. She also knew very well that Red hadn’t been the one to tack up Danny today. Stevie knew that because she had volunteered for the job herself. “If you’d done your own work for a change and groomed Danny this morning, you would know what everybody’s laughing at.”

Veronica glared at her, then swung her right leg over Danny’s back and slid down his left side, flinching a little when her tight boots hit the ground. Then she looked the horse over from stem to stern.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “He looks fine.”

At that, the watching crowd laughed harder than ever.

Doing her best to ignore them, Veronica walked around Danny’s head and glanced at his other side. She spotted the problem almost immediately. Someone had written a message onto the right side of Danny’s glossy dappled-gray hindquarters in what looked like red poster paint. It said
SNOB ON BOARD
.

At that moment Max came out of the stable and approached the ring. “Everybody ready to start?” he asked briskly.

He looked a little surprised when the entire class—minus one very angry member—just laughed in reply.

* * *

“W
ASN
’
T THAT GREAT
?” Stevie said for the fifteenth time. The Horse Wise meeting was over, and the Saddle Club girls were walking their horses around the stable yard to cool them down after a vigorous hour of jumping. “I thought that bright-red paint was a touch of genius, if I do say so myself. I even called Judy to find out what kind would be safe to use on Danny’s skin.” Judy Barker was the local equine vet.

“Great, Stevie,” Lisa said, hoping she sounded more patient than she felt. Stevie had been gloating nonstop since the class had ended ten minutes earlier. Neither of the other girls had been able to get a word in edgewise—let alone change the topic of conversation to something more interesting.

“And did you see Veronica’s face when she took off those fancy black gloves of hers and saw that her hands were red?” Stevie prompted.

Carole couldn’t help grinning at that. “Don’t you mean Luscious, Lustrous Red?” she said. That was the name of a shade of temporary hair dye. The Saddle Club had once used it to dye a skewbald horse to look like a chestnut. The hair dye had also worked quite well as a temporary hand dye inside Veronica’s gloves. It had been the crowning touch on Stevie’s practical joke.

“You’re just lucky her gloves are black so the dye
didn’t ruin them,” Lisa said, pausing by the water trough to let her horse, a long-legged Thoroughbred mare named Prancer, take a few sips. “I doubt you could afford to replace them. She probably had them tailor-made in Paris or something.”

“Lucky, my foot,” Stevie replied. “It was all part of my plan. Why do you think I substituted the mittens for
those
gloves and not any of the four other pairs she had in her cubby?”

She looked so proud that Carole and Lisa gave in and laughed. Even though Stevie had been going a little crazy with the practical jokes lately, they had to admit that this one had been funny.

“It’s too bad Max wasn’t amused, though,” Carole said as the three girls continued walking their horses around the yard.

“Don’t be so sure,” Stevie said. “I admit, he chewed me out pretty well after class. But I would swear there was a twinkle in his eye while he was doing it. I mean, he had to know why I was able to volunteer to tack up Danny, and why Veronica didn’t notice. Only she would just mount on her horse’s near side without even glancing at the rest of him. Oh, yes, I think Max might have been more amused than he let on.”

“Maybe,” Lisa said dubiously. “But didn’t you say
the same thing after he yelled at you for the grain shed prank?”

“
And
after he scolded you for painting a smiley face on the tack room door?” Carole said.

Lisa nodded. “What about the time she dyed all the grain green for St. Patrick’s Day? You thought he looked pretty amused then, too, but I for one didn’t see it.” She patted Prancer on the neck as the mare snuffled at her hair.

“Don’t forget the time she hid in Delilah’s stall and started telling Simon Atherton in a horsey voice to stop jabbing her in the ribs when he rode,” Carole added. “He went screaming down the aisle and scared all the horses.”

“That was pretty good, wasn’t it?” Stevie mused. “I mean, I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known he would react that way, but it
was
funny. And the horses all calmed down eventually.” She smiled proudly. “I thought I was the master of practical jokes before. But I’m even better than I thought! Did I tell you about my moving image class project for school?”

It was an abrupt change of subject, even for Stevie. More importantly, it was a strange change of subject. Stevie rarely, if ever, talked about school.

“You mean the movie you were supposed to make?”
Lisa asked. She vaguely remembered Stevie complaining about the project a couple of weeks before. “What about it?”

Stevie was taking an elective class this term about film and television. The teacher’s latest assignment was for each student to make a ten- to fifteen-minute film adaptation of a classic fairy tale. Students whose families didn’t own camcorders were allowed to borrow the school’s equipment. But the Lakes had bought a state-of-the-art video camera the Christmas before, and Stevie had already used it to complete several assignments for the class.

“I created a masterpiece,” Stevie said. Belle snorted and nodded as if in agreement, and Stevie scratched her horse’s neck fondly.

“What fairy tale did you do?” Carole asked. “And when did you do it? You’ve been at Pine Hollow with us practically every second for the past few weeks.”

“I know,” Stevie said. “That’s the best part. The movie was a snap to make. All I did was set up the camera in Alex’s bedroom and film him while he was asleep. I hid the camera behind the model planes on his dresser, and he never suspected a thing. It’s great. I have fifteen minutes of him in his old Batman pajamas, grunting, drooling, and murmuring some girl’s
name.” Alex was Stevie’s twin brother. Stevie also had a younger brother named Michael and an older brother named Chad.

Carole looked confused. “How are you planning to pass that off as a classic fairy tale?”

Stevie grinned. “That’s easy. I’m calling it
Sleeping Beauty
.”

Carole laughed, but Lisa looked worried. Of the three girls, she took school the most seriously, and she always worked hard on her assignments. “I don’t know, Stevie,” she said. “It’s pretty funny, but do you think your teacher will like it? And don’t you think Alex will be awfully mad when he finds out?”

“That’s the point,” Stevie said. “I’m killing two birds with one stone. This is the perfect way to pay Alex back for the time last month when he released Michael’s entire cricket collection in my bedroom.” She grimaced. “All that chirping kept me up every night for a week. But this will get him back. My teacher says she’s going to show the best films to the entire school during weekly assembly. And I’m sure mine will be one of them. My teacher loves it when we’re clever. This kind of thing is right up her alley.”

Carole glanced at Starlight. She was ready for a change of subject, and her horse was ready for a good
grooming and some fresh hay. “I think these guys are ready to go in,” she said. “Shall we?”

“Sure,” Lisa agreed. “I’ll see you both in the tack room in a little while.”

It only took the girls a few minutes to make their horses comfortable. Then they all met in the tack room to clean their saddles and bridles. It was one of their favorite locations for Saddle Club meetings. Max and his mother, Mrs. Reg, who helped run the stable, liked to see their riders keeping busy. But they didn’t mind if they talked while they worked.

Lisa decided to head off the conversation before Stevie started talking about her pranks again. “Can you believe Max’s announcement today? What a great surprise—I can’t wait for the competition,” she said. “It should be fun.”

“Definitely,” Carole said, picking up the saddle soap. She had been dying to discuss this subject with her friends ever since the end of class. But Stevie’s rehashing of the Great Veronica Prank hadn’t allowed it until now. “We don’t have much time to prepare, though.”

That day during the Horse Wise meeting, Max had made a surprise announcement. There was a brand-new Pony Club in the next town, and the members were eager to see an established club in action. Max
had invited them to Pine Hollow to see Horse Wise give a riding demonstration. Best of all, he had decided that a fun and interesting demonstration for the new club would be a small-scale hunter competition, complete with ribbons. It would take place in two weeks. There hadn’t been any kind of show at Pine Hollow in quite a while, and all the riders were excited at the news.

“What are you going to put down as your goal?” Lisa asked Carole. Max always asked each of his young riders to write down a personal goal before each show they competed in. After the show, they were all supposed to think about whether they had met their goals, and why (or why not). Lisa had learned that there could be other goals besides winning a ribbon, and that a rider could learn a lot even if she didn’t win anything.

“I’m not sure,” Carole said thoughtfully, pausing to wipe a bit of soap off her chin. “I might put something about trying to keep Starlight focused before our round. He still reacts to an audience.” Starlight was relatively young. When he heard applause, he sometimes became distracted and forgot what he was supposed to be doing. Carole was almost always able to remind him, but she knew it would be better if he wasn’t distracted in the first place.

“That sounds good,” Lisa said. “I think I’ll make my goal trying to maintain an even pace through the course. That’s so important in hunter events, and it just so happens that Prancer and I have been working on it a lot lately.”

Carole nodded approvingly. “What about you, Stevie?”

“I don’t know,” Stevie said with a shrug. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.” The truth was, she had been so involved in her joke on Veronica that she had hardly paid attention to what Max was saying. But now that the news had had a chance to sink in, she was starting to get as excited as her friends. Stevie loved competing, and Belle was a good jumper. Lately Stevie had spent more time working with her on dressage, but there were two weeks before the competition—that would give Stevie and Belle plenty of time to work on their jumping form. In hunter competitions, horses and riders were expected to display smooth, even pacing and proper form, in addition to clearing all the fences. A horse that moved or jumped choppily was sure to finish out of the ribbons.

“Do you think Max will let us invite guests?” Stevie asked. “I bet Phil would love to come and see me win a blue ribbon.” Phil Marsten was Stevie’s boyfriend. They had met at riding camp. Phil lived in a town
about ten miles away, so he and Stevie didn’t see each other as much as they would have liked. But they attended one another’s shows and Pony Club events as often as they could.

“I don’t know,” Carole said. “It wouldn’t hurt to ask. But you might want to wait a few days to give Max a chance to forget about your latest little prank.”

Just then the door opened and the subject of that prank walked in, carrying Danny’s tack. Veronica frowned when she saw The Saddle Club. Her hands were still streaked with red dye.

“Oh, excuse me,” Veronica spat. “I didn’t realize there was a meeting of the Sad-
Dull
Club going on in here.” Then, after dumping her dirty saddle and bridle, she whirled and stomped out, slamming the door behind her.