Horsenapped! (2 page)

Carole waved to Alicia, hoping she’d stop and Carole could find out what had happened, but Alicia didn’t wave back. All Carole saw was Alicia leaning into the
steering wheel intently, and when the driveway turned, she saw the rear of the trailer as it bounced along the rutted path.

It could be a hundred things, Carole realized, and it could be nothing at all, but it could be something …

Carole was confused. The vivid image of the bouncing trailer made her wince on Bodoni’s behalf. It must have been very uncomfortable for the horse. Then it occurred to her that it might have been intentional. It was well known that a horse with colic sometimes got relief by being driven around in his trailer. Maybe Bodoni was sick. That would explain why Alicia had dropped out of the event and left Bodoni’s tack at the stall.

Satisfied that she’d figured out the most likely explanation, Carole decided to go back to the stands to meet Lisa and Stevie. There were four more adult competitors, including the other likely ribbon winner, and she wanted to see them all. When the adult competition was finished, there would be a break before the junior dressage began.

She made her way past the tent and over to the ring. Before she got there, though, she ran into Lisa and Stevie.

“All done,” Stevie said. “You missed the last rider.”

“The last? What about Bill Feeney?”

“He scratched,” Stevie told her.

“Scratched?”

“She means he dropped out, withdrew,” Lisa explained.

“I know what it means. But why?” Carole asked. She was disappointed. He was the other rider most likely to take a ribbon. Like Alicia, Mr. Feeney rode a valuable Thoroughbred. His was a mare named Saturday’s Child, called Sat. She was descended from a Kentucky Derby winner. Carole loved to watch Sat move. Her long legs were so graceful that she seemed to fly. But she wasn’t going to see her today.

“They didn’t say why. They just said Mr. Feeney had withdrawn. That’s too bad for him, but it’s also bad for us because that means we’re on in exactly one half hour!” Stevie reminded Carole and Lisa.

A half hour wasn’t a lot of time and there was an awful lot to do. All thoughts of Bodoni and Sat left Carole’s mind. Every bit of her attention had to be turned to her own horse, Starlight.

The three girls reached the stable together and then split up. They were responsible for their own horses. Carole went straight to Starlight’s stall. He looked wonderful. She’d spent an hour and a half grooming him that morning. His coat was sleek and shiny. His tail was braided. She’d tried braiding his mane, but it was such a pretty deep black when it hung loose that it seemed a shame to braid it. Carole could have sworn that Starlight
was relieved when she unbraided the parts she’d braided. Somehow, it seemed too fussy for him.

She carried his tack from the tack room back to his stall and tacked him up. It was a job she did almost every day in almost exactly the same way. This day, however, it seemed different. Carole always cared that Starlight looked well-groomed and well-tended. Today, for the first time, somebody else—namely a judge—was going to care, too. She’d soaped and polished his saddle until it had a deep sheen. She examined it again as she put it on him and she couldn’t find a single blemish. There was no question about it. She was ready.

She patted Starlight and checked her watch. She still had ten minutes. Was there anything else?

She thought about her friends. For all three of them, this was their first real competition. Would it make any difference to them that they were competing
against
one another?

Carole didn’t think so. After all, they were best friends. Not one of them would think of sacrificing their friendship for a ribbon. Still, Carole wondered. She knew she was going to try her best, and so would her friends. Would their best be good enough? Time would tell.

When Carole was sure there was nothing else to be done, she took a deep breath and opened Starlight’s stall
door. She held his reins in one hand and led him toward the stable exit nearest the schooling ring, where the competition was taking place. When she got to the door, she waited.

“Ready?” Stevie asked. She came up behind, leading the horse she rode, Topside.

“I think so,” Carole said.

“Me, too,” Lisa said, joining her friends at the door. Pepper followed her willingly.

“Then what are we waiting for?” Stevie asked.

Carole shrugged. She looked at Lisa. What were they waiting for, her look asked.

“This,” Lisa said. She mounted Pepper and reached up by the edge of the door. The good-luck horseshoe was nailed to the wall there. Lisa touched it with her hand.

The horseshoe was one of Pine Hollow’s oldest traditions. All riders touched it before they went out for a ride. No rider who’d done that had ever been seriously hurt.

Carole lifted herself into Starlight’s saddle and touched the horseshoe as Lisa had. Stevie did the same.

“Now The Saddle Club is truly ready!” Stevie announced, leading the way to the warm-up ring where the horse would have a chance to loosen up and expend some energy.

 

“Y
OU
’
RE FIRST
, S
TEVIE.
Good luck!” Lisa said.

“You’ll show them!” Carole encouraged her.

“Boy, I feel like I’m going into battle,” Stevie said.

“Actually,” Carole began, “dressage training was originally developed for battle horses by the Greeks. The theory was that if the horse and rider were perfectly trained to work together, then the horse would be better behaved in battle. That made it a lot easier for the soldier to fight. See, there’s a reason for everything we do—”

Stevie began giggling. It was just like Carole to know some obscure fact, and to share it in detail—at just the most unlikely moment.

“I was just trying to help,” Carole said, embarrassed.

“You did. You took my mind off how nervous I am. That helps. Thanks.”

“Ready?” the starter asked Stevie. She nodded.

“Then here you go!”

Stevie heard the signal. It meant she and Topside had sixty seconds to enter the dressage ring. She felt relaxed, but she sensed a tenseness in Topside. She signaled him to walk by squeezing with her legs and shifting her weight forward a little. She made a large circle next to the entrance. No matter how nervous she felt, she had to hide it and make Topside feel as confident as possible. She breathed deeply and sat comfortably in the saddle. Topside relaxed as he walked in the lazy circle. Stevie knew he was ready.

The last word she heard as she entered the circle was “Smile!”

Stevie had been working on the dressage routine for weeks. She knew it by heart. She knew every turn. She and Topside were prepared for every lead change and step. The only trouble was that right then, she couldn’t remember any of it.

Topside helped her out. He’d done the routine so many times before that it was almost automatic. He trotted to the center of the ring and stopped, facing the judges. Then Stevie remembered. The first thing she had to do was salute the judges. She’d practiced that enough, too. Dropping her right hand straight down, she nodded her head respectfully. The judges nodded back. That was done. Now what?

Once again, Topside helped her out. He walked toward the corner where her routine was to begin. The ring, a carefully measured twenty meters by forty meters, was marked, during practice, by one letter at each end and three letters on each side.

Each move Stevie was to make was described by the letters. She had entered the ring at A and trotted up the center to salute the judges at C. But now what?

Stevie took a deep breath. She was stalling for time, but it worked. When she breathed, she remembered that the routine started at M. She began trotting Topside toward the M corner and suddenly, it all came back to her, every move, every change, everything she and Topside had to do.

Topside was magnificent. Just as she had calmed him down before coming into the ring, he calmed her down as
they began. Stevie felt his strong, supple body and it gave her courage.

Her first exercise was circles. She was to do them at the trot and canter. She began. The circles went just fine, although she posted for a few beats of the trot when she was supposed to do a sitting trot, but she didn’t think anybody would notice. At least she hoped they wouldn’t.

She then began her lead-changing exercises, which were basically figure eights. She remembered to sit for two beats to change diagonals at the trot when she was exactly at the cross of the eight. Topside handled the lead changes at the canter perfectly, but, Stevie told herself, that was because she had signaled him perfectly to do it.

The routine finished with a complicated serpentine walk, going from C to M to E to F to A to K and back again. Everything went fine until it was almost over. Then, when Stevie stopped in front of the judges’ booth and turned to give her final salute, she realized she’d turned too far and she was facing away from them. That was a really awful thing to do. It was possible that a judge could miss the fact that she’d been posting when she ought to have been sitting, but there was no way the judges could miss the fact that Stevie was saluting somebody else! She had to do something. Fast.

Then it came to her. She’d been working with Topside on turns, and although it wasn’t part of her routine, she had the feeling she might just be able to pull it off. Using
her inside rein to tell Topside where to turn and her outside rein to tell him not to move forward, Stevie began. She put pressure on her inside leg, behind the girth. Her outside leg remained steady.

Without batting an eye, Topside performed a perfect turn on the forehand. His front legs remained where they were and his hind legs turned him a full 180 degrees. It was better than they’d ever practiced. Stevie grinned proudly. She saluted the judges. The judges smiled back and returned her salute. Stevie relaxed. It was over. All she had to do now was get out of the ring without falling off! She did.

“You were great!” Carole said. “I mean
great
!”

“I loved that turn. I didn’t know you could do that!” Lisa said. “It was fabulous, and the judges thought so, too. I could see.”

Stevie felt a little silly. After all, she hadn’t meant to have to do the fancy turn. “It was sort of a mistake,” she said.

“It certainly was!” somebody said coldly. The Saddle Club looked to see who was talking. It was Veronica diAngelo. She was a snobby rich girl who owned her own purebred Arabian mare and who seemed to care more about how the horse looked than how well she rode her. “Showing off like that doesn’t impress anybody. It’s just a feeble attempt on your part to make everybody else look bad.”

“That’s not why I did it, Veronica,” Stevie began, but then she saw that it was pointless to explain. Veronica saw everything exactly the way she wanted to see it. Since she’d decided Stevie had been showing off, trying to explain would only make it worse. “Well, maybe you’re right,” Stevie said. “I was showing off. But it wasn’t to make you look bad. You look bad enough without my help.” Stevie completed her remark with a smirk. She loved watching Veronica turn red with fury. It was very satisfying.

“Veronica, there’s your signal,” said the starter. “Ready?”

“You bet!” Veronica said. She yanked at Garnet’s reins to turn her toward the gate and then kicked her to get her moving. Garnet was startled by the sudden actions and bolted into the ring. It was an inauspicious start.

The Saddle Club watched Veronica’s whole performance, though it wasn’t a pretty sight. Veronica was an experienced rider. She knew how to do everything in the test, but she got off on the wrong foot with Garnet and things just went from bad to worse. Instead of working
with
her horse, she was working
against
her. She yanked and kicked her way through all the movements. That made it look like a battle of wills in the ring, which was definitely
not
what dressage was about.

“I hate to see her treat that beautiful horse like that,”
Carole said. “Next thing you know, she’ll be using her spurs on—oh, no! She did it!”