Horse Capades (6 page)

“It’s really a shame,” Phil said, glancing over at Prancer. The pretty mare was nipping at a small patch of grass growing below the fence. “I can’t believe Max let Veronica get away with something like that. Someone could have been badly hurt. Lisa almost was.”

“I can’t believe it, either,” Carole said. “But Veronica keeps insisting the whole thing was just an accident. It’s her word against Stevie’s suspicions.”

“And mine,” Lisa added.

Carole nodded. “Mine too,” she said. “And probably Max’s. At least he told her never to bring that alarm thing to Pine Hollow again. I guess he can’t punish her for something nobody can prove she did.”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” Phil said. He propped one elbow on the fence beside Lisa. “I guess that applies even to rats like her.”

“I know,” Lisa said sadly. “But it doesn’t help me figure out what to do about Prancer.”

Carole reached up and patted her friend comfortingly on the knee. “Don’t worry, Lisa,” she said. “You’re a good rider, and Prancer is a smart horse. We’ll figure out a way to help her get over her fear of jumping.”

At that moment Stevie emerged from the stable carrying a large red rug and several other items. Seeing that her cast was talking instead of reading their scripts, she let out a cry of dismay. “What’s the big idea?” she said, letting herself into the ring and dropping her pile of props on the hard-packed ground. “You’re supposed to be reading!”

“Sorry, Stevie,” Lisa said, feeling a little guilty. Even if this whole movie was part of some elaborate Stevie scheme, as she and Carole strongly suspected, she figured they should at least play along until they figured it out. Besides, she figured they were pretty safe today—Stevie didn’t even have the camcorder with her. “But I have an idea. Why don’t we do a read-through?”

“What’s that?” Phil asked.

Lisa hopped down off the fence. “It’s what we did at the first rehearsal the time I was in
Annie
,” she explained. “The whole cast just sat around in chairs and read their parts in the script out loud. That way everyone got familiar with the whole play right away instead of just concentrating on their own parts.” She sat down cross-legged on the ground, a safe distance from where the horses were tied.

“Sounds good to me,” Carole said, plopping down beside her and turning to the first page of her script. “Let’s get started.”

As Phil sat down beside Carole, Stevie gazed at them with her hands on her hips. She wasn’t sure whether to get angry or be grateful. She was annoyed that her friends weren’t taking her production seriously and that they weren’t obeying her instructions. After all, she was the director, as well as the scriptwriter. But she had to admit that Lisa’s suggestion was a good one. And if it was the way professional theater people did things, all the better.

Finally she gave in and sat down, completing the circle on the ground. “Okay, good idea, Lisa,” she said. Directors could afford to be gracious, she decided. “Let’s do it.” She opened to the first page and began:
“ ‘Oh, dear me, what shall I do? My terrible stepsisters have left me to clean out the stable all by myself. Oh, poor me—poor Cinderella …’ ”

A
FTER THEY HAD READ
through the entire script, Stevie decided to return to her original plan and practice the dressage ball scene. She spread the red rug on the ground near the gate and asked the actors to mount. Then she sent Carole and Lisa out of the ring and made Phil and Diablo stand in the center. The idea, as she explained, was that in this scene, the “dancers” would enter, march down the red carpet, and “curtsy” to the prince.

“These horses can’t curtsy,” Carole pointed out bluntly. “Maybe if we were riding circus horses—or Lipizzaners from the Spanish Riding School—we could do it, but I don’t think you can turn Starlight and Prancer into haute école stars in the next two weeks.”

“Of course not,” Stevie said. “They’re not really going to curtsy. I’m going to do it with special effects. Just like in the real movies.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a large, juicy carrot. “Watch this.” She stood about five feet in front of Starlight and Prancer and raised a carrot above her head so they could see it.

Prancer took one look at the delicious-looking snack and stepped forward with an eager snort. Starlight, not wanting to be left behind, moved forward a couple of steps as well.

Stevie jumped back, keeping the carrot out of the horses’ reach. “Hey, you guys, you have to keep them under control,” she told her friends. “Don’t let them move forward.”

Carole and Lisa shared a glance. Then, without a word, they signaled for their horses to step backward onto the end of the red carpet. Starlight obeyed immediately. Prancer, who was less experienced with this particular command, hesitated for a moment, then did as Lisa asked.

“Okay,” Stevie said, when they were back in position. “Let’s try this again.” She held the carrot above her head.

This time, Carole and Lisa firmly ordered their horses to stay put, despite the tempting carrot. The horses obeyed. But when Stevie suddenly dropped the hand holding the carrot, the horses’ heads followed. To an observer, the horses seemed to be bobbing their heads, almost as if they were—well—curtsying.

Stevie laughed out loud. She had been pretty sure the trick would work, but not entirely sure. Now she knew it would look perfect on camera.

“That was great!” she called. “Let’s try it one more time, then I’ll let them have their carrots as a reward.”

She raised her hand over her head again, but this time, before she could lower it, she felt a tug on the carrot. She looked up, startled, and saw Diablo’s big teeth nibbling at the top of the carrot. As the horse plucked it out of her fingers, Stevie whirled around to see Phil’s grinning face.

“I guess the prince’s horse didn’t like the curtsies,” Phil said.

Stevie stuck out her tongue at him in reply. Behind her, she could hear the wicked stepsisters laughing hysterically. With a sigh, Stevie pulled two more carrots out of her pocket and walked over to give them to the curtsiers. She was learning that it wasn’t easy being a director—not to mention a special effects specialist.

“L
EFT
! L
EFT
!” S
TEVIE
called frantically. Lisa heard her and quickly adjusted Prancer’s stride so the mare was moving to the left. Unfortunately, Phil heard her, too, and thought the direction was intended for him. He turned Diablo to the left, too, almost running him into Prancer.

“Oops,” Carole said with a giggle. She was sitting
astride Starlight nearby, watching the other two practice what Stevie called their ballroom dressage.

“Cut!” Stevie yelled, even though there was no camera in sight. She let out a noisy sigh of frustration. The dressage ball scene wasn’t going very well. She had carefully worked out the choreography the night before, and she knew it would look perfect when the actors got it right. Or, rather,
if
they got it right. Right now it wasn’t looking good.

“Sorry, Stevie,” Phil said. “It wasn’t Lisa’s fault. It was mine.”

“At least Prancer is obeying me whenever I ask her to do something,” Lisa said, trying to look on the bright side. “Maybe that means she’ll be ready to jump the next time I ask her to do that.”

“Maybe,” Carole agreed hopefully.

Stevie just grumbled under her breath. Normally she would have agreed that it was a good sign. But right now she wasn’t feeling particularly concerned about Prancer’s jumping. The only thing she was feeling concerned about was her movie. They had been rehearsing for almost two hours, and aside from the “curtsying” scene, nothing had gone right. On many past occasions, Stevie had seen her friends follow difficult jump courses and complete complex dressage tests
without missing a beat. But today they couldn’t seem to follow the simplest directions. And the horses were getting tired. They would have to stop soon.

“Should we try it again?” Phil asked contritely, noticing the thunderous look on Stevie’s face.

She nodded curtly. “Take it from the top,” she said. “Remember, Lisa, you move left while Phil moves right. Then you both start turning clockwise. One, two, three—go!”

Lisa urged Prancer into motion. The tall mare moved to the left. Diablo followed Phil’s instructions, moving evenly to the right. Then Diablo swung into a clockwise movement—just in time to narrowly avoid another collision with Prancer, who was moving counterclockwise.

“Oops,” said Lisa, pulling her horse to a stop.

Stevie just sighed. It was tough being director, scriptwriter, and special effects specialist, all right. But being a choreographer was no picnic, either.

“W
HAT TIME CAN
you be here on Saturday?” Stevie asked Phil.

Phil did a quick calculation in his head, then gave her a time.

“Good,” Stevie said. “That means we can start rehearsing right after Horse Wise.”

Carole and Lisa let out mock groans of protest, but Stevie just ignored them. After the disastrous rehearsal they’d just had, she was in no mood for kidding around. The worst part was that nobody else seemed aware of how much work they still had to do before
Cinderella
would be ready for filming. And Stevie’s friends didn’t seem to appreciate that her moving image grade—and, by extension, her whole riding career at Pine Hollow—was in jeopardy.

“Come on, let’s go in,” was all Stevie said. She led Belle out of the ring and toward the stable entrance.

At that moment, Veronica appeared in the doorway, leading Danny. She frowned when she spotted The Saddle Club. “I’m going to ride in the ring now,” she said imperiously. “I hope you’re finished fooling around out here. I have serious work to do—I have to make sure Danny’s ready to win next Saturday.” She gave a thin little smile. “Although there’s really no doubt he can beat anybody at
this
stable, hands down.”

Lisa scowled at her. Veronica’s bragging was always annoying, but today it bothered her more than ever. Veronica didn’t seem to care that she’d probably ruined Lisa and Prancer’s chances of doing well in the competition—or even that Prancer might decide she never wanted to jump again. Her prank might have been intended for Stevie, and that was bad enough,
but the fact that it had gotten Lisa instead and Veronica wasn’t sorry made it seem even worse somehow. It was just one more example of the snobby girl’s selfishness.

“Don’t worry, girl,” she whispered to Prancer as Veronica and Danny swept past them. “We’ll show her. We’ll have you jumping again before the competition—just you wait and see!”

“I’
M SURE HE
’
LL
be here soon,” Stevie said, glancing at her watch. “Maybe we should go ahead and start without him.”

It was Saturday. The unmounted Horse Wise meeting had ended a few minutes earlier, and The Saddle Club had just finished tacking up their horses for another movie rehearsal. They were waiting for Phil to arrive so they could get started. Stevie had left the camcorder at home again. She had the funniest feeling they weren’t quite ready for filming yet.

“I have a better idea,” Lisa said. “How about if you guys help me work with Prancer a little until Phil gets here? She’s really been agreeable for the past couple of
days about everything but jumping. Maybe today I can get her over some fences.”

“Sounds good to me,” Carole said.

Part of Stevie understood why Lisa and Carole were so eager to work with Prancer every chance they got. Normally she would consider this sort of problem a Saddle Club project and throw herself into it wholeheartedly. But she couldn’t help thinking that her film should be a Saddle Club project, too. And Carole and Lisa weren’t exactly going out of their way to help with that, were they? That was why the other part of Stevie was simply annoyed at the delay in her moviemaking.

“You two go ahead,” she said, sounding grumpier than she had meant to. “I’ve got some things to get ready.” She turned and headed back inside after tying Belle to the rail.

Carole and Lisa were a little surprised at Stevie’s attitude, but they quickly forgot about it. There was no time to lose if they were to have any chance of getting Prancer into shape by next weekend’s competition. If Stevie was upset about something, she’d tell them about it sooner or later.

Veronica had been practicing in the outdoor ring the previous evening, and she hadn’t bothered to remove
the small jump course she’d set up. For once Carole and Lisa were grateful for the other girl’s laziness.

“I think we should take the top rail off a couple of these,” Carole suggested. “We don’t want to make Prancer try anything too high.”

Lisa gazed at the jumps. They were higher than anything she and Prancer would try to jump even under favorable conditions. “I guess Veronica is pretty confident about Danny’s jumping if she had him practicing over these,” she said.

“She should be,” Carole said as the two girls clipped their horses’ lead lines to the gate and headed for the first obstacle. “Danny could handle these jumps and more without turning a hair. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll win next weekend. Hunter competitions aren’t just about getting over the jumps, remember? The rider has to do her part, too.”