Horse Sense (5 page)

“Sorry, Lisa,” Betsy called over her shoulder. “I’m just having a terrible time with Barq today—or else it’s me. I don’t know.”

Lisa knew. It had clearly been Betsy’s fault, but since Max had lavished her with praise, she didn’t want to be mean to Betsy. “No problem, Betsy,” Lisa said magnanimously. “Horses have bad days, too, just like people.”

“Nice work,” Max said to the entire class at the end of the lesson. “If you all enjoyed that, we can do more of it. Who thought it was fun?”

Lisa glanced around at her classmates. Most of them looked sort of frustrated and tired. It was true that it had been a tough lesson. Max had shouted a lot—and not just at Betsy. Still, it had been fun for Lisa, and
very
satisfying when she’d succeeded. Lisa put her hand up.

To her surprise, only two other hands went up—Stevie’s and Carole’s. For a second, Lisa thought Max was trying to hide a smile. Then he spoke. “Okay, if you three enjoyed it, then I think it would be a good idea for you to work on drills. We’ll have additional classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at three. Now, pair up, walk your horses around the circle until they’ve cooled down, then break for lunch. At two o’clock this afternoon, we’re going to work on grooming, so put your horses in their stalls for now, untack them, and give them fresh water and hay.
Dis-missed
!!”

“Wasn’t that just great?” Stevie asked Carole as the two of them led their horses to their stalls. “I mean, it’s like almost a perfect combination of the things I enjoy about riding—equitation and dressage. The only thing missing is jumping and, I guess, cross-country, and racing, and uh, well, check that. What I enjoy about riding is
everything
! Drill work included.”

“It’s neat,” Carole agreed. “Since I lived on Marine Corps bases for ten years, I’ve seen an awful lot of drill work—mostly on foot, you know, like parades. This is
really the first time I’ve gotten to do it, unless you count the time my Girl Scout troop marched in the Marine Corps Birthday Parade a couple of years ago.”

“I don’t think that’s exactly the same thing,” Stevie said, laughing.

“Me neither.” Carole grinned. “It’s much more fun on horseback. And I just knew when Max asked who had liked it that it would be the three of us.”

“Yeah, I’m glad about that,” Stevie agreed. “After all, we are The Saddle Club.”

“You going to have lunch now?” Carole asked.

“No, I forgot my sandwich. It doesn’t matter, though. I’ve got something I have to work on as soon as I untack Comanche.”

“If you’re in such a rush, I’ll untack him for you,” Carole offered.

“Would you?”

“Sure I would,” Carole told her, reaching for the reins. Gladly, Stevie relinquished them.

“See you later,” she said, dashing off to the tack room.

Carole really didn’t mind at all. She’d rather spend time with horses than doing almost anything. Besides, it would make the time pass faster until Judy came to check Delilah for the day.

L
ATER
, L
ISA FOUND
Carole sitting on a knoll by the paddock where Delilah was being kept until she foaled. It was next to her foaling stall, in sight of the office so she could be watched all the time. Carole was
eating her sandwich and drinking her soda, but one hundred percent of her attention was on Delilah.

“How’s she doing?” Lisa asked as she sat down beside her friend.

“Judy says she’s doing just fine. You always have to be concerned about a mare with her first foal, but Judy says Delilah seems to be a good mother. She eats her special mash and she’s resting a lot. Judy says it should be just fine.”

“She seems to be kind of listless,” Lisa said, observing how slowly Delilah walked.

“That’s just because she’s gotten so big now that it’s almost hard for her to walk. But Judy says she’ll be back in good shape within a few weeks after the birth. She’ll be running in the paddock with her foal and that’ll slim her right down again. She’ll be her old self in no time. Isn’t that amazing?”

For a second, Lisa wondered if she was really talking to Carole—or to Judy. Then she remembered why she particularly wanted to see Carole.

“I have your set of rules,” Lisa told her. She had spent hours over the weekend working on her mother’s computer, inputting everything in a Word document. Her mother had helped her, and when they’d finally printed it all out, it was beautiful—as pretty as a term paper, Lisa thought.

“What rules?” Carole asked.

“The Saddle Club rules,” Lisa said, containing her impatience. “Remember, I told you about them Friday when I called? I know you were busy, but I’m sure I
told you about all this work I’d done so we could have a
real
club. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” Carole said vaguely, taking the papers from Lisa’s hand. “I’ll read them later, okay?”

“Okay,” Lisa agreed. “And we’ll have a meeting on Thursday afternoon after class, at TD’s, to make any changes you guys want. Then we can ratify them. That means make them official.”

“Thursday,” Carole echoed. “Okay. Look at the way she’s eating now.” Lisa realized Carole was talking about Delilah again. “It’s like she’s hungry all the time. And Judy says that’s good. She needs fresh hay and fresh water constantly. I’m going to muck out her stall before Judy gets here. Oh, how I love doing things for that horse!”

Lisa liked to do things for horses too, but mucking out stalls wasn’t high on her list. “I’ve got to find Stevie. Know where she is?”

“She was in an awful hurry right after class, but I don’t know where she went. Try the indoor ring. She was headed in that direction.”

“See you,” Lisa said, but she really didn’t think her friend heard her at all. Carole was already headed for Delilah’s stall. Lisa made her way down the knoll and into the stable. It seemed terribly dark inside, in comparison to the bright summer sunshine. They were spending almost all of their riding time outdoors, mostly in the ring, and sometimes on the trails. It was nice to be out in the fresh air. The class only used the
cramped indoor ring on rainy days. It seemed a long time since Lisa had taken her first lesson in that ring.

Lisa passed the tack room and peered into the indoor ring. There was Stevie. She’d borrowed a pony. Lisa knew that any horse less than four feet ten inches tall at the withers was called a pony. A lot of mounted games took place on ponies because the ponies were what the little kids could ride. Stevie, it seemed, was trying to determine whether a pony could do one of the games she was planning.

While Lisa watched, Stevie climbed onto Nickel, a pretty silver-colored pony. She held a Hula-Hoop in her right hand. She put the hoop around her right arm and began trying to get it to swing around her arm. It did just fine when it was
up
, but as soon as it came
down
, it smacked into the soft dirt and bounced off her arm. It wasn’t working at all. The pony was just too short. She tried swinging it over her head, but right away, it got tangled in her hard hat. Angrily, Stevie threw the thing across the ring.

Next, Lisa watched her take a spoon with a marshmallow on it, climb on Nickel, and begin galloping across the ring. The marshmallow fell off right away. Stevie dismounted, picked it up, and climbed up again. This time the marshmallow fell off before she even got back in the saddle. She picked it up a third time, mashed it into the spoon so it was more of a glob than a marshmallow, climbed into the saddle, and was off. The only problem was that when she got to the end of the ring, where there was a bucket, she couldn’t
get the gooey marshmallow out of the spoon and into the bucket. After the third try at shaking it loose, she threw
that
across the ring as well, so it landed near the abandoned Hula-Hoop.

Something told Lisa this was no time to try to talk to Stevie. As quietly as she had come, she left, going into the tack room. There, she quickly spotted Stevie’s shoes. She rolled up a copy of the rules and stuck it into one of Stevie’s shoes, leaving a note about the Thursday meeting at TD’s.

Stevie would find the note there and they could talk about the new rules on Thursday at TD’s. She was sure Stevie would be in a better mood by then. Well, pretty sure.

Lisa fetched her own sandwich and soda from the refrigerator and looked for a place to eat. Just as she stepped into the stall area, she saw Estelle Duval, the new French girl, eating alone.

“Can I sit down?” Lisa asked.

“
Mais, oui
,” Estelle said. “Of course.”

Lisa just loved the sound of her accent.

O
N
T
HURSDAY AFTERNOON
, Lisa couldn’t find Stevie and Carole after camp was over. It was time for The Saddle Club meeting at TD’s—their favorite ice cream store, in the nearby shopping center—and it was an important meeting, too. It was the meeting Lisa had called so they could discuss and approve all the rules she’d written.

When she couldn’t find her friends, Lisa decided they must have left for TD’s, thinking
she’d
already gone. She changed into her jeans and street shoes and set out for the shopping center, a little annoyed to have been left behind.

As soon as she crossed the roadway, Lisa spotted Estelle walking in the same direction she was headed. She and Estelle had eaten lunch together two days in a
row and Lisa was really getting to like her. She was so chic, so sophisticated, so nice!

It surprised Lisa that Estelle seemed to want to be her friend. After all, Estelle had told her she had been riding since she was a toddler, and most of the friends she talked about were really fancy people, like princes and counts and children of diplomats. She’d been to school in several different countries and spoke four languages. Lisa only spoke English, a few words of French, and pig latin!

“Hey, Estelle! Wait up!” Lisa called, and jogged up to the French girl. “Which way are you going?” she asked.

“I’m going to the little shopping center,” Estelle told her. “I wanted to see if there is a jewelry store there. I have a necklace that needs to have a new gold chain.”

“Well, I’m going that way, too, though I don’t have to buy any jewelry today,” Lisa joked. Then she explained she was meeting friends at TD’s. “You were having some trouble today on Nero, weren’t you?” she asked after a moment as they continued on their way.

“Oh?” Estelle said. She seemed to be surprised that Lisa had noticed, but the fact was that everybody had noticed. Nero had ended up doing almost exactly what he’d wanted to do all through the class. That was really bad. Lisa had been taught from her very first lesson that a rider had to be the one in control, and the horse needed to know it.

“Nero was in such a bad mood!” Estelle explained. “You see, I am much more used to my own horse,
Napoleon. He would never behave that way.”

“Your own horse!” Lisa exclaimed. “And you had to leave him in France, I guess. You must miss him a lot.”

“I certainly do. He’s a white horse, a beautiful stallion. He was a gift to me from a friend of my father’s—the ambassador,” she explained. “But I have had him since my seventh birthday. I rode him for hours that day, and every day since, when I am at home. He never acted so naughty like Nero was today.”

“I thought you lived in the city of Paris. Do you keep him in the city?” Lisa asked, recalling her earlier conversations with Estelle.

“Oh—uh, no, but he is kept at our country home in Normandy, northwest of Paris. We go there on weekends and for vacations. That’s when I ride him. At other times, the stable manager exercises him for me, you see?”

Lisa
did
see. Her mind’s eye built a spacious country estate with a large barn and rolling hills where horses frolicked gracefully through the spring flowers in the pastures. Liveried staff tended to the home while the Duvals were in Paris, and catered to their every whim when they returned to the country. It seemed so incredibly elegant that Lisa could hardly believe it was true.

“You know, Estelle, I haven’t been riding very long,” Lisa explained. “I just started a few months ago. I really love it, though, and every time I hear about somebody like you, who has been riding since she was really little, well, it makes me wish I’d started it a long
time ago, too. I hate to think of all the wonderful rides I missed!”

“But Lisa, all the rides are
not
wonderful,” Estelle corrected her.

“You mean like all the trouble you had with Nero today?”

“Well, that too, but let me tell you about the pony I had
before
Napoleon. That one was a mare. Her name was Étoile—French for ‘star’ because of the perfect five-pointed star on her forehead. But it was the only perfect thing about her. One day I was riding her. I was just a little girl then, of course. By mistake, I happened to tug at her mane when I was standing up in the saddle, trying to get my balance. It must have hurt her terribly, for right away, she began trying to kick at me with her hind foot. I pulled the reins to make her stop. Then I climbed down from her saddle right there in the middle of the field, and I told Maman I was never going to ride the beast again!”

Estelle laughed so hard at the story that Lisa began laughing, too. She could just see the stubborn child informing her mother she was through. But she couldn’t see herself trying the same thing with Max! Max certainly wouldn’t force people to ride if they didn’t enjoy it. But there was no way he would let somebody quit just because one bad thing happened—even a nasty fall. Lisa decided it was a good thing for Estelle that Max wasn’t her mother.