Riding Camp (2 page)

“I don’t think anything would keep Max from starting class on time,” Lisa remarked.

“Oh, maybe a tornado,” Stevie said.

“Not unless it leveled the barn,” Carole added.

Lisa giggled. She was glad that Max was so serious about riding instruction. She hoped her teacher at camp would be as good.

“I’m a little nervous,” she confessed to her friends. “I mean, you guys have been riding for years. You’re used to other horses and other instructors. Pine Hollow is practically the only place I’ve ever ridden. Is it going to be okay?”

“You bet it is,” Carole assured her. “Not only is it going to be okay, it’s going to be great. It’s important to have different experiences. And besides, you
have
ridden other places. Remember the Devines’ dude ranch? And New York? Now those were
really
different. Moose Hill’s going to be much more like Pine Hollow than those were.”

“Not exactly,” Stevie said. “Did you read the brochure carefully? I mean, did you read the part about one stablehand for every five riders? That’s not quite like Pine Hollow, where there are only two stablehands for the whole stable and all the work is done by
the poor overworked riders, who have to muck out the stalls and clean the tack and groom the horses while the stablehands hardly ever lift a finger. Right, Red?”

Red snorted in response. It was true that the riders did a lot of work around Pine Hollow. It was one way the stable kept expenses down and made riding something more people could do. However, horses were a lot of work, and no matter how much the riders pitched in, there was plenty for Red and his co-workers to do. The girls knew that as well as he did.

“Go on,” Red said. “Have yourselves a real vacation at this camp, but don’t come back to us too good to groom your own horses, okay? One of those is enough at the stable, thank you very much.”

Red didn’t have to name names. He was talking about Veronica diAngelo, the stable’s spoiled little rich girl.

“Don’t worry, Red,” Lisa assured him. “Nothing, short of about ten million dollars, would make us as obnoxious as she is.”

“Twenty,” he said, and then turned all his attention to his driving. Lisa wasn’t certain if Red had meant it would take twenty million dollars to make
her
obnoxious or if he thought twenty million was what Veronica had. She watched the hilly Virginia countryside slide by and thought about what she’d do with twenty million dollars. She’d build a stable for herself and buy a
horse. Two horses. No, one for every member of The Saddle Club. She’d hire loads of stablehands and she’d ride with her friends all day, every day. They’d enter all kinds of competitions and they’d win them all, because when the three of them were teamed together, they couldn’t lose. She’d have a swimming pool—two actually: one indoor, one outdoor. She’d have a thick pile carpet in her room and her very own maid to pick up any of the expensive clothes she happened to drop on the floor. But, she told herself, she’d still take care of her own horse, and she’d never be as obnoxious as Veronica.

“Did you see her face?!” Stevie shrieked, abruptly bringing Lisa out of her daydream. Carole was laughing.

Lisa had no idea what they were talking about. “Who?” she asked.

“Veronica,” Carole said. “You know, when she sat on the moldy hay. Didn’t you see that?”

“Oh, yeah, I did. She kept swiping at the seat of her
designer
breeches. It was very funny and the harder she swiped, the angrier Max got.” Lisa smiled, remembering the scene.

“Well, Max had left the hay bale out so that the salesman could see what he’d delivered, and Veronica just assumed it was a new throne for the princess.”

“Got what she deserved,” Lisa said. “A moldy
throne. Well, better her breeches than a horse’s manger!”

“Absolutely!” Carole said seriously. “Horses have very delicate stomachs and moldy hay can cause colic, and that’s no joke. To a horse, colic can be fatal! So if all that happened with that bale was that Veronica’s pants had to go to the dry cleaner, well, we were just plain lucky.”

“It’s not so much luck as it is caution, you know,” Red said. “Moldy hay will happen. You just have to test for it with every shipment and every bale.”

“How do you do that?” Lisa asked.

“You feel it and see if there’s any moisture, then you sniff at it for a funny odor.”

“You can feel it for warmth, too,” Carole said.

“Well, if it’s warm, you’re in real trouble,” Red said. “That means that there’s so much decay going on inside that it’s heating up to burn. You want to get it far away from the barn as soon as possible. Those things can just about explode.”

“You know one of the things I love about horses?” Lisa asked, thinking out loud. “I love the fact that there’s so much to find out about them that you can learn about them no matter where you are or what you’re doing, like in a car driving over the hills of Virginia. You can learn just as much out of the saddle as you can in it.”

“It’s just that it’s more fun if you’re in it,” Stevie said, and the girls agreed.

“I have the feeling we’ll be there any minute now,” Carole said.

“Yep,” Red agreed, turning the car and its trailer off the main road where the sign pointed to Moose Hill.

The road was narrow and shaded by tall maples, which made it suddenly cool in the hot August afternoon. Gradually the surrounding forest became pine and the road turned into a dirt trail. Red slowed down so the van wouldn’t bounce in the ruts. After a half-mile, they saw a horse gate. Stevie jumped out of the car to open and close it for them. She clasped the latch carefully behind the trailer and rejoined her friends. Red drove them up a long hill on the winding road and then, as if it grew from the forest, there stood before them the stately red barn of Moose Hill Riding Camp.

“I
THINK HE
said our cabin was this one—the second one on the right.” Lisa pointed to a small wooden bunkhouse. “Yeah, here it is, Number Three.” She paused to readjust the weight of the three heavy bags she was carrying. Carole did the same.

“I hope Stevie knows what a wonderful thing we’re doing for her, lugging her stuff while she checks Topside into his suite at the Hilton on the Hill.” Lisa and Carole had agreed to carry Stevie’s things for her while she got Topside settled in. They were both beginning to think Stevie had gotten the best of the deal. When they heard Stevie shout gaily from behind them, they were sure of it.

“Here I come!” Stevie announced her arrival. “And, hey, thanks for all the help. Boy, you won’t believe the
barn! It’s really wild. It’s a big old farmer’s barn with a few stalls—most of the time the horses are in the paddock—and this gigantic hayloft. It’ll be a blast to mess around in.”

“If we can move at all after carrying all this weight,” Carole said pointedly.

Stevie got the hint. She took her bags from Carole and Lisa and followed them into the cabin.

The screen door slammed behind them. The girls found themselves standing inside a very plain rectangular room with a bathroom off to the side. There were six cots in the room, each with a cubby area with shelves for clothes and personal belongings. Lisa looked dubiously at her two large duffel bags while her eyes adjusted to the dim light cast by the single overhead bulb. She was sure she’d never fit all her belongings into the modest cubby.

“That one’s my bed,” an unfamiliar voice said to her. There was nothing friendly or warm about the greeting.

“Oh,” Lisa said, startled. She turned to see a girl about her own age emerging from the bathroom. “I wasn’t going to take your bed. I was just looking at how small the cubbies are. I was thinking about …” She was going to explain about how her mother always packed too much for her when she realized that the girl who had spoken wasn’t listening. She’d picked up her riding hat and was striding out of the cabin.

“Hello to you, too!” Stevie said. The only response she got was the clatter of the girl’s boots going down the steps of the cabin.

“Whew!” Carole remarked.

“Don’t mind Debbie,” another voice spoke. A girl they hadn’t noticed before was sitting in a corner of the room, saddle-soaping her boots. “She just found out that Elsa, who won just about all the blue ribbons in the show last year, not only came back this year, but is in this cabin. My name’s Nora.”

For a second, The Saddle Club girls were too stunned to speak, or to return the introduction. It would never have occurred to any of them to be upset about bunking with a blue-ribbon winner. In fact, Carole was really excited about the idea of being able to spend extra time with somebody who knew more than she did and could teach her.

Then the girls composed themselves and made introductions. Nora showed them which beds were theirs and even helped Lisa figure out how to stuff all her things into the small cubby.

“Where’s the blue-ribbon winner?” Carole asked Nora as the two of them put the sheets and blankets on her cot. Elsa’s cot was next to Carole’s and her duffel bags were there, but none of her gear was stowed and her bed wasn’t made.

“Well, if I know Elsa,” Nora began, “she’s found a
private area in the field, out of sight of the barn and the main house, and she’s working with her horse.”

“You mean campers are allowed to ride without any supervision and no riding partner?” Carole asked, surprised. There was no way Max would let a young rider out alone. Even the best of them had to have a friend along, just in case.

“Campers aren’t supposed to do that, but Elsa does it anyway,” Nora answered.

“But it’s so much more fun to be with friends,” Stevie said.

“There are two things wrong with that,” Nora said. “In the first place, nobody is Elsa’s friend, and secondly, she wouldn’t want to ride with somebody who might learn something from her. She’s made it crystal clear that she intends to take home all the blue ribbons again this year.”

“Oh, yuck.” Stevie made a face.

“You know, that reminds me of what Kate Devine said about all the really good riders she used to compete with,” Carole said. Kate was a junior championship rider who had quit competition because of people like Debbie and Elsa.

“You know Kate Devine?” Nora asked, her jaw dropping.

“Sure, she’s an old friend of ours,” Carole said. “Her dad and mine are Marine Corps buddies. In fact, just a
while back, the three of us visited her on her parents’ dude ranch. She’s learned to ride Western and she loves it.” Carole tucked in the final sheet, smoothed the blanket with her hand, and dropped a quarter on the bed to see if it would bounce the way it was supposed to in the Marine Corps. It didn’t. She didn’t care. She pocketed the quarter. “Let’s go see the rest of the camp,” she said to her friends.

“Want the grand tour?” Nora asked. “Listen, lunch starts in a half an hour. I can show you everything by then if you want.”

That sounded pretty good to Carole. She’d only gotten a glimpse of the camp on the way in. “That’d be great,” Carole said, speaking for Stevie and Lisa too. “We’re almost done here—”

“I have an errand up at the barn,” Nora said quickly. “Meet me up there, okay? You know where that is?”

“Yeah, the big red building with all the hay and the horses?” Stevie asked innocently.

“Don’t mind her,” Lisa said to Nora. “She jokes about everything. We’ll see you up at the barn in five minutes.”

Nora nodded and left The Saddle Club alone in the cabin.

“What a place,” Stevie remarked, stuffing her belongings into the tiny cubby by her cot. “It’s got all the ingredients to be the most wonderful place in the
world—horses and kids who love horses—and we end up in a cabin with a riding whiz who keeps the secret of her success and a would-be whiz who won’t talk to anybody!” She crammed her toothbrush in the last available space and stood up, looking at her friends for sympathy.

“I think the way to handle people like Debbie and Elsa is to ignore them. And since they seem willing to ignore us, it won’t be hard to do,” Lisa said.

“Yeah, and Nora seems nice enough,” Carole reminded Stevie.

“Just watch out that she doesn’t try to learn
our
riding secrets!” Stevie joked.

“As far as I’m concerned, she can have all my riding secrets,” Carole said. “The only real secret to riding is that it’s fun. I have a feeling that there are a few people around here who haven’t learned that yet.”

There were many ways in which the three members of The Saddle Club were very different, but that was one thing they agreed on completely. Lisa smiled to herself, thinking about all the fun riding she had ahead of her.

“I hate to change the subject from horses, guys,” Carole continued, “but did the two of you happen to notice what I noticed down the hill?”

“More cabins?” Lisa asked. She’d seen a second cluster of cabins like the one they were in.

“Not just
more
cabins,” Carole said. “
Boys’
cabins. The camp’s coed, remember?”

“Yeah, right, big deal,” Stevie said, sitting on her freshly made bed. “Pine Hollow’s coed, too. The trouble is that if nine out of ten guys are cute, the tenth one rides at Pine Hollow. I have absolutely no interest in any boy who rides horses. I’ve never met one who wasn’t a complete creep.”