Horse Sense (4 page)

“Of course I’ll call you. And you can bet I’ll be there,” Carole told her. “As soon as Judy says Delilah’s getting ready to deliver, I’m moving into the stable. Dad already got me a cot from the base, and a sleeping bag and a bunch of camping stuff so I won’t have to leave Delilah’s side. I wouldn’t miss this for the world! And since I’ll be there, you’ll be there. Lisa, too. It’s a promise.”

Stevie knew she meant that. When it came to horses, Carole could be just as stubborn and determined as Stevie was—maybe even more so.

“Okay, then in the meantime, I’m going to be very busy with this gymkhana. I’ve never been in one. Have you?” Stevie asked.

“Oh, sure. We had one at the last base Dad was stationed at. It was fun. We had a rope race where you had to hold a rope with your partner and go around the poles. Then in another race, you had to hold an egg on a spoon.”

“Oh, those are the ordinary kinds of races Mrs. Reg told me about,” Stevie said. “I’m trying to do something a little different—I want this to be the
best
! That’s why I want to borrow the Laser Tag. And, you know what I found that I think will be perfect, but I’m just not exactly sure how? A Hula-Hoop! Say, your dad has all kinds of fifties stuff. Do you think he has a Hula-Hoop somewhere?”

“I’ll ask him,” Carole said without enthusiasm. “But I don’t remember seeing anything like that. Oh, he’s at the door now. Gotta go. I want to tell him about the foal.”

“Don’t forget to ask about the Hula-Hoop, huh?” Stevie reminded her.

“Uh, sure,” Carole said, but she didn’t sound sure, and that irritated Stevie. “Bye.”

Stevie stared at her phone for a while after she’d hung up. It had been a peculiarly unsatisfying phone call from her best friend. Well, one of her best friends. She picked up the phone to call Lisa.

A
FEW BLOCKS
away, Lisa was grinning with pride. She leaned back, lifting the front legs of her chair off the floor. She held a sheaf of papers filled with her tidy handwriting in front of her. The job was almost complete now. She only had to type the rules on her mother’s computer and she’d be able to make as many copies as she needed.

She had decided to make five rules for each section of the rule book. The rule book itself began with the statement of purpose. That had taken her the most time. It read: “The purpose of The Saddle Club is to increase the knowledge and enjoyment of horseback riding for its members.” For a while, she’d thought of just putting, “The purpose of The Saddle Club is threefold: horses, horses, and horses,” but that seemed silly. Anyway, once she knew what her purpose was, the rules were easy.

Regular meetings would be held once a week, on Thursdays from three to five o’clock. Members had to come to meetings, but if they couldn’t, they could miss up to one a month. If they missed any more, they’d have to pay fines of one dollar per missed meeting. If they missed three in a row, they could be voted out by other members. If they were late to meetings, they’d be fined twenty-five cents for each quarter hour they were late. Meetings would follow the standard
Rules of Order
.

Officers would be elected by the members. There would be a president, vice president, and secretary-treasurer.

Lisa figured Carole would be the president because she was the best rider. Stevie would be the vice president because she was the next-best rider and she was too disorganized to be the secretary-treasurer. Lisa herself would be the secretary-treasurer.

There were eight more pages of rules, including sections on projects, new members, and dues, all neatly detailing every aspect of The Saddle Club. Lisa had spent a lot of time on the section on projects, since one of the things members had to do was to help others in the Club. After all, the Club had been formed when she and Carole had pitched in to help Stevie with her math project for school.

She was very proud of what she’d done. She was sure Carole and Stevie would be, too. In fact, she was about to call one of them when the phone rang. It was Stevie calling her.

“Oh, I was just going to call you,” Lisa said.

“I wanted to tell you what Max said to me,” Stevie explained. “He wants
me
to plan a gymkhana for every afternoon of the three-day event next month. Can you believe it?”

“What’s a gymkhana?” Lisa asked. Stevie explained about the games and races she was working on.

“Oh, like relay races, huh? I know a neat race you can do carrying an egg in a spoon. I bet that would be fun on a horse.”

“That’s the oldest race in the book,” Stevie said. “I want to come up with some new things. This time it’s going to be more fun than ever. That’s why Max asked
me
to do it. See, he knows he can count on me to be outrageous.”

“I guess that’s true,” Lisa agreed, but she really didn’t see anything wrong with carrying an egg in a spoon. It certainly wouldn’t be easy on a horse. “Well, I’ve been busy, too,” Lisa said, trying to change the subject to one more to her liking. “I’ve been working on a Saddle Club project.”

“Is there one?” Stevie asked.

“Well, there’s our new set of rules and regulations,” Lisa said proudly. She waited for Stevie to be impressed, but she was soon disappointed.

“You mean like rules for the games I’m making up?” Stevie asked.

“No, rules for the Club,” Lisa went on. “You know how frustrated we always are when we have a meeting and then it’s over and we haven’t really accomplished
anything? Now we can accomplish things. Wait’ll you see—”

“Rules aren’t my strong point,” Stevie told Lisa.

“Well, you just don’t like the dumb rules they have at school and the strict ones Max makes up. These are
good
rules. They’re just absolutely going to
make
The Saddle Club. Now, finally, we’re going to be a
real
club.”

“We weren’t already a
real
club?” Stevie wondered.

“Not really. At least, not until now. Wait till you see,” Lisa said again.

“And wait’ll you see what wonderful and outrageous games I come up with!”

“See you Monday,” Lisa told her.

“Right,” Stevie said.

Lisa wasn’t awfully surprised that Stevie was lukewarm about her project. She’d see, though, Lisa was sure, how much better and more fun it would be to have a club that really was a club. It just wasn’t the sort of thing Stevie would be excited about right away. She didn’t think much of rules. But Carole, on the other hand, would be excited about it all.

“O
H
, D
AD, YOU
can’t imagine how wonderful it was!” Carole cooed from the couch in the living room.

“I think I can, honey,” Colonel Hanson told his daughter. He peered around the corner at her from the kitchen. “Birth is probably the most exciting thing in the world.”

“I was right next to Judy the whole time, too,” Carole continued. “I watched her examine the mare and the filly. The little baby kept trying to nip at her hands. I think she was looking for more milk!”

Carole was practically exploding with excitment and wanted to share every detail with her father. Stevie certainly hadn’t been a satisfactory audience—too involved with her games. A gymkhana would be fun, to be sure, but it wasn’t in the same league as a newborn foal.

The phone rang. Carole dashed into the kitchen. Maybe it was about Delilah, she thought. She picked up the receiver from just beneath her father’s hand. He stepped back, amused.

“Oh, it’s you, Lisa,” Carole said, disappointment in her voice.

Of course Carole had been about to call Lisa and tell her about the foal, but before she could even get into it, Lisa began telling her about rules and The Saddle Club. Carole’s mind was so focused on the newborn foal that she really couldn’t make much sense of Lisa’s excitement. It seemed an awful lot like Stevie and the gymkhana. It was clear to Carole that this was no time to try to talk to Lisa about the foal. It would be better to tell her father the rest of the story.

“Gee, Lisa, that sounds great,” Carole said, mustering all the sincerity she could find for whatever Lisa was talking about. “But I’m kind of busy with my dad now. Mind if we talk about this on Monday?”

Quickly, the phone conversation ended. For a moment Carole paused to wonder what Lisa had been talking about. Rules? The Club didn’t have any rules. Right then, it didn’t really matter to Carole anyway. All she could think about was the foal.

T
HE THING ABOUT
being mad at Stevie and Carole was that Lisa couldn’t be mad at them while they were at class. They all had too much fun together when they were riding.

As soon as the three of them were on their horses on Monday morning, all the irritations from Friday were gone. It was a new week, a fresh start.

All twelve of the stable’s summer-camp students were in the class, which took place in the outdoor ring. The ring, at the back of the stable, was really a large rectangle, sixty by eighty meters. Max stood in the center and barked orders at his eager students.

“Today, we’re going to try something a little different,” Max began. “I’m thinking of starting a drill team. This isn’t exactly a tryout, but I want to see how
well each of you can follow the orders and control your horse. Both of those are extremely important for drill work.”

Lisa’s heart sank. She was sure she didn’t have the knowledge or experience to be able to do this at all. She’d seen drill teams doing their exercises. In fact, she’d seen an exhibition of it on television not long ago. It had looked just about impossible, considering the skill needed for such precision, but it also had looked wonderful. Lisa’s fear was so mixed up with her excitement that she wasn’t sure which she should be feeling. She looked over at Stevie and Carole, paired together on the other side of the ring. The looks on their faces answered the question for her: She should be excited.

“Listen up!” Max called. “I want a single line, evenly spaced. Get your horses trotting and maintain a trot throughout this exercise.”

Usually Max didn’t use a riding crop when he was teaching, but today he was strutting around, slapping the riding crop against his leg and the palm of his hand. He looked very stern. It made Lisa more nervous than usual.

“Up! Down! Up! Down! Pay attention, now, Lisa. You know how to post better than that!” Max yelled as they all started trotting.

So even when Max was looking like a movie director, he was still paying attention to every single mistake Lisa could make. Her heart sank. If she couldn’t
keep up with his instructions, she’d never make the drill team!

“Heels down!” Lisa pushed down on her heels as hard as possible. “Much better now, Betsy,” Max continued. “But you must
remember
to keep your heels down.” Lisa realized that she was getting so paranoid that she assumed Max was
always
criticizing her. “Look at Lisa, Betsy,” he said. “She’s got her heels way down. You want yours like that, too.” Lisa smiled to herself.

Quickly, however, she found that sitting properly on her horse, with her heels down, wasn’t going to be her only problem. The real trick of this exercise was to keep her horse at a dead-even pace—and aligned with all the other horses. If one horse speeded up, its rider had to slow it down, or everyone
else
had to speed up. The most important thing was unison.

“Now, down to a walk,” Max said. Lisa reined in on Pepper. He seemed only too happy to walk. She patted his neck, rewarding him for keeping up his trot so nicely. “We’ll try this once at a walk, and then we’ll be back trotting,” Max said. Then he described how they were to walk their horses in a figure eight across the center of the ring, alternating sides at the crossing point in the middle of the eight. If they messed up and let more than one horse pass at a time, the figure would be uneven.

Lisa was sure she’d be the one to mess it up. That made her all the more determined to do it right.

She was following Betsy Cavanaugh, who still wasn’t sitting properly on her horse, Barq. He could
tell it, too, and was giving her trouble, breaking gait and sort of sidling off course.

“Look straight ahead, Betsy,” Max said. Betsy turned her head and focused on her lane with determination. In response, her horse got back where she wanted him. But Lisa was still worried; if Betsy lost her concentration, it could make Lisa mess up as well.

And, of course, it happened. When Betsy got to the cross in the eight, she was so busy looking to her right to see if the other horse was coming that Barq, confused by her different signals, came to a sudden halt. Two horses went past him before she could get him back into gear and across the middle of the eight.

Lisa wasted no time in making up her mind. She urged Pepper in front of the next horse—Comanche, with Stevie on board—and hurried across after Betsy. Lisa’s maneuver left Stevie groaning at her, since she was all ready to go across the path, but it kept the figure eight in balance, with six horses on each half.

“Nice work, Lisa,” Max said. “When one person makes a mistake, everybody
else
has to correct it.”

Did she hear it right? Max was actually praising her!