Riding Camp (6 page)

By the third day of working with cavalettis, Lisa found that the most important thing she had to do was to control Major’s strides and to learn how long his strides were at various gaits.

“I can’t believe how much fun I’m having beginning my jumping work,” Lisa told her friends while they cleaned tack in between classes.

“Just wait until you really jump over something,” Carole said. “There’s nothing like it. When you do it, it will mean that you have a whole new kind of control over your horse and a whole new skill in your riding. Don’t you agree, Stevie?”

“Oh, yes,” Stevie said. “Phil and I both
love
jumping!”

Lisa and Carole exchanged glances. They were getting used to Stevie referring to herself as “Phil and I.” It seemed that now that Stevie had a boyfriend, she was no longer one person, but part of a pair. It was always “Phil and I” or “Phil said” or some variation on the theme. Carole and Lisa both liked Phil, but Stevie was really carrying the “we” bit a little too far.

“Are you and Phil finished soaping the saddle?” Carole asked innocently.

The joke was lost on Stevie. “Phil? Is he here?” She turned, looking around for him.

“No, he’s not actually here,” Lisa said. “But you talk about him so much that he could be.”

“Oh,” Stevie said, blushing. Lisa would have thought that Stevie would be the last person in the world to blush, but she was doing an incredible amount of it these days.

“Do you think this is incurable?” Lisa asked Carole after Stevie had left to put Topside’s clean tack away. Since they’d spotted Phil headed in the general direction of the tack room, the girls didn’t think they’d see either of them until lunchtime, when they’d be flooded with new sentences beginning with “Phil and I” and “Stevie and I.” It was strange to see an independent girl like Stevie become so immersed in another person.

“I don’t know,” Carole answered. “But it’s hard to
imagine good old Stevie going through the rest of her life in a haze.”

“That makes sense,” Lisa said as she buffed the last square inch of Major’s saddle. “Good old Stevie is still there, under all those “Phil and I’s” and blushes. She’ll reemerge soon enough. Then maybe we’ll be wishing for the dreamy Stevie again.”

“Not me,” Carole declared. “Barry had to call Stevie’s turn three times this morning in class. She was too busy helping Phil untangle his reins!”

Lisa laughed. “Enough! I’m putting my saddle away and then I’m going to check on Major. He had a stone in his shoe today and I want to make sure it’s not still tender. See you at lunch.” She walked over to the tack room.

Somebody had put a saddle where Major’s belonged. Lisa didn’t know whose saddle it was, but she had a good idea whose mistake it was, and his name was Fred. There were several empty saddle racks. Lisa moved the saddle to one of them and put Major’s in its proper place. She looked around. A lot of the saddles were carelessly balanced on their racks. Lisa shifted them so they all sat straight and, frowning at Fred’s carelessness, left the tack room.

Major was in his own stall in the lower section of the barn. She wanted to keep an eye on him until she was sure his foot was all right. Most of the time, when a
horse had a stone stuck in his shoe any tenderness disappeared as soon as the stone was removed. Lisa was just being cautious, because every once in a while a stone could cause trouble that continued after it was removed.

Lisa clipped a lead to Major’s halter and led him out into the open area. She walked him the length of the barn. He seemed fine, just as she’d expected. She returned him to the stall and closed the gate.

Basil, Carole’s horse, had the stall next to Major’s. Lisa checked on him as well. He was fine. But there was something wrong with the horse next to Basil. It was Alamo, Nora’s horse. Lisa knew that Nora had finished class over an hour earlier, but the horse still had his saddle and bridle on. Nora wouldn’t be riding him for at least another hour, so there was no need for him to be tacked up while he was supposed to be resting in the stall.

Fred again.

Lisa considered the possibility that Alamo was going out again so soon that leaving the tack on was intentional. However, the last time she’d seen Nora, the girl was dismounting and handing the reins to Fred, and Lisa remembered distinctly that Nora had said she was going to take a swim before lunch. No, there was nothing intentional about this—it was just laziness. Lisa did what had to be done. She brought Alamo out
of the stall, removed his saddle and bridle, put him back in, and took the tack up to the tack room.

When she’d finished putting Alamo’s tack away, she found Betty in her office. Lisa didn’t like tattling, but the horses’ welfare was at stake here. It mattered.

She told Betty about the mess in the tack room and about Alamo’s tack being left on him. Betty didn’t say much besides “Hmmm,” but her lips set into a thin angry line and she glared.

“Thanks,” Betty said, dismissing Lisa.

Lisa didn’t know what that meant. Probably Betty didn’t like tattling any more than she did. It was a rotten thing to do, but at any stable, horses came first.

B
Y THE FOURTH
day of camp, the girls were so well settled in that they felt like they’d been there forever. Stevie and Carole were getting good at being bad, Lisa was getting better at being good, and they were all having a wonderful time. While Lisa and Carole’s favorite class was jumping and Stevie’s favorite was whichever one she had with Phil, they all agreed that they liked their early-morning trail rides the best. Anybody who wanted to could join in. Others were expected to use the time to work on specific skills in the ring. The trail ride came before breakfast, when the sun was just up and the fields were still dewy. It was an informal ride, one without constant reminders
about keeping heels down and toes in, shoulders back or chin up. It was just for fun, and it was
lots
of fun.

“Sitting trot and then canter!” Eleanor called from her lead position. At the sound of her words, the horses came to life, ready to do what their riders wanted, ready to follow Eleanor’s instruction.

Max always told his riders that horses couldn’t speak English, so they had to use their hands, legs, and seat to communicate. Lisa suspected that wasn’t entirely correct. Most horses she’d ridden seemed to know the words for the gaits. As soon as Eleanor called out the word “trot,” Major was trotting. It didn’t take much longer until he was cantering.

Cantering was wonderful. It was sort of a rocking gait, and Lisa slid forward and back slightly in the saddle with Major’s strides. Although it was much faster than the trot, it was smoother and Lisa felt more secure. Major seemed to feel her excitement and responded with both greater power and smoothness. Lisa couldn’t help herself. She grinned with the pleasure of the experience.

Eleanor’s hand went up and the riders slowed their horses to a trot and then, quickly, to a walk. Carole pulled up beside Lisa.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Carole asked.

Lisa nodded.

“It’s what riding is about, you know. I don’t mean
just cantering. A horse shouldn’t be asked to canter too much. What I mean is—”

“I know,” Lisa said. “Riding is about having fun, and this is as much fun as there is, right?”

Carole smiled at her friend. Sometimes she couldn’t believe how much Lisa had learned about riding in just a few short months. Lisa was good already, and she was going to get a lot better as time went on.

“That’s one of the things I was going to say, but there’s something else, too. The thing about riding is both learning enough to have fun, like we are right now, and then having enough fun to learn, like we do in class. The more you know, the better you ride, and the more fun it is.”

The trail was narrowing, so Lisa dropped back behind Carole in line. “You mean that one day I’ll enjoy this even more?” she asked.

“Absolutely!” Carole called over her shoulder.

Lisa sighed contentedly. There was a
lot
to look forward to!

A
T LUNCH THAT
day, Lisa found that there was even more to look forward to.

“Girls and boys, may I have your attention, please,” Barry said, standing up in front of the group as they began eating their tuna fish sandwiches.

“Oh, this is going to be our surprise event,” Phil
said, leaning toward Stevie and her friends to explain. “Barry does something special at the end of the first week of every session. Last year, we went to see Combined Training at a nearby stable. That would be great—”

“And this year, I have planned something entirely different,” Barry was saying. “Tomorrow morning after breakfast, we are leaving on an overnight camping trip. We will return the following afternoon. Please make sure that all your horses are in shape for the trip and that you have—”

Barry went on. He had a nearly endless list of things they had to do before they could go. The girls remembered their last overnight, right after Lisa had come to Pine Hollow and started riding. It had been fantastic, and they were sure this one would be, too.

“Give me a break!” somebody growled. It was Debbie.

“What’s the matter with an overnight trip?” Carole wanted to know.

Debbie made an unbelievably rude face. “Overnight? When we’ve got a show to train for? The next thing you know, he’ll have us doing—”

“Mounted games!” Barry announced. “Tomorrow after dinner when it’s still light, we’ll set up teams and have a sort of mini-gymkhana!”

Many campers clapped with delight. Debbie didn’t.
Neither did Elsa. The Saddle Club girls didn’t care what those two sourpusses thought. They’d been working hard on their skills and it would be fun to put them to the test with some games.

Lisa remembered what Carole had said to her on the morning trail ride. It seemed that her prediction was already coming true!

C
AROLE TIGHTENED
B
ASIL
’
S
girth and checked the stirrup length. In general, stirrups were the right length for a rider if they were about the length of the rider’s arm. Nobody but Carole should have used Basil’s saddle, but she could tell at a glance that somebody had fiddled with her stirrups.
Fred again
, she told herself, shortening the leather by two buckle holes.

Carole actually wasn’t sorry she had to fuss with saddle adjustments, because right on Basil’s other side, a drama was unfolding. As long as she had an excuse to be where she was, she could get an earful.

“I’m just not feeling very well, Barry,” Debbie whined. Carole, reaching under Basil to needlessly straighten the girth, saw a phony pained look on Debbie’s face.

“Well,
where
aren’t you feeling well?” Barry asked impatiently.

“Oh, sort of here,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward her entire body. Carole thought that was even more fake than her last statement.

“Have you seen the nurse?” Barry asked.

“No, but I’ve had this happen before,” Debbie said. “It’ll be all better in a day or so.”

Carole didn’t think there was anything Barry could do about Debbie’s mysterious stomachache and apparently he agreed. He told Debbie to take her gear back to the cabin. She could stay in the camp until they got back from the trip. Carole could see the pleased look on Debbie’s face as she returned to Cabin Three. She’d bet a stirrup to a saddle that Debbie’s vague ailment would be cleared up within the hour and she’d be on her horse, in the ring, practicing for the horse show all alone, all day.

Or would Debbie be all alone?

“Barry, can I talk to you?” It was Elsa. It turned out that she had a strange pain in her right ear. Elsa said she didn’t think it was serious, but she could remember one time when she’d had an ache very much like this one and within a few hours, she’d been horribly sick, so she thought maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to go on the camping trip, and didn’t Barry agree?

Barry didn’t agree. The tone of his voice made it
clear to Carole that he’d had about enough games from Elsa and Debbie. On the other hand, Carole suspected that Barry would decide to let Elsa stay in camp because she and Debbie deserved one another and the rest of the campers deserved a vacation from them.

As Carole figured, Barry told Elsa she could stay at camp. Like Debbie, Elsa was grinning victoriously as she returned to the cabin. Carole would have loved to see their faces when each discovered that the other had wangled her way out of the camping trip.

Finally satisfied with her stirrup length, Carole lowered the flap of her saddle, secured her pack, and mounted up. It was time to hit the trail.

She turned around in her saddle, looking for her friends. She couldn’t wait to share the wonderful news about Debbie and Elsa.

“M
ORE THAN TWENTY-FOUR
hours of trail riding—isn’t it fabulous!” Lisa said to Carole as they proceeded through a woody area.

“Especially without the Miss Uncongeniality Award winners,” Carole agreed.

“Only trouble is that I’m missing a jump class,” Lisa remarked.

Carole’s eyes lit up. That meant she had an idea. One of her favorite things to do was to share her riding
knowledge with her friends, and most of the time, they welcomed it. If this was going to be a way to learn jumping on a trail ride, Lisa was willing to listen.