Rocking Horse (6 page)

“I’ll stay and watch you start off, too,” Stevie promised. “Belle is practically ready, and there are five riders between me and you.”

“Hey,” Lisa said, remembering, “who was that calling for help a few minutes ago? Sounded like someone put a nail through her foot.”

Stevie shook her head. “It was just a rat.”

Outside, Carole saw Stevie approach out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head a little so that she could wink at her friend. Even though the inspectors were being a little more thorough than Carole had anticipated, they weren’t making her nervous. She knew everything there was to know about Starlight’s care, and she was proud of how beautiful and well-groomed he looked. Even the competition wasn’t scaring her now that she was this close to it. Win or lose, it would be another learning experience for her and Starlight.

Carole thought she heard a muffled scream coming from the stabling tent. She hoped it wasn’t Lisa.

“All right,” one of the inspectors said. “You’re clear.” She smiled at Carole. Another scream, louder this time, came from the stabling tent. Both inspectors paused and looked up the hill with concern. “Um, well,” the first said again to Carole, “you’re finished, but you’ll have to wait a few minutes before you can ride. The starter’s backed up. Mount and be ready, and he’ll call your name.”

“Thank you,” Carole said, at the same time as someone yelled, “My saddle!
Ayyyyhi
!” The last word sounded like a wolf howling.

“Well,” the first inspector said to the second, “if it’s a saddle problem, it probably isn’t a broken bone
or a concussion. Who’s the next rider?” She picked up a microphone.

Carole moved Starlight to the side. Stevie gave her a leg up just as one of the inspectors called, “Veronica diAngelo,” over the loudspeaker. No one came out of the now silent stable tent. A full minute passed.

“Veronica diAngelo, please report to inspection,” the inspector called again, more firmly. “This is your second call.”

“Wow,” Carole whispered to Stevie. “Where do you think she is? Three calls and you’re out. She’ll be eliminated if she doesn’t get out here.”

“She was getting dressed,” Stevie whispered back. “Danny wasn’t tacked, but he was clean.” She looked back at the stable and then up at Carole and Starlight. “Don’t get distracted. Think about the course.”

Carole nodded toward the starting box. “I think I’ve got a little while to wait. Someone out there must be having a problem.” Usually the starters sent a new rider out every five minutes, but now two other riders, and Carole, were waiting their turns. If one of the riders on course had fallen off, or if a horse had gotten loose, the officials wouldn’t allow anyone else to start until the problem had been fixed.

The inspector was on the point of announcing Veronica’s
name for the third and final time when a rider walked out of the tent. The inspector smiled and put down her microphone. “That’s not Veronica,” Stevie said. “That’s Lisa!”

Lisa’s face was pale and her eyes held an expression of horror mixed with the faintest touch of amusement. “Veronica will be right out,” she said politely. “She’s coming—she’s just had a little disaster.”

When Veronica appeared with Danny, it became clear that the word
little
in no way described the disaster that had befallen her. The near side of Veronica’s gorgeous saddle looked at first as though it had been dipped in chocolate—and then Carole realized that the chocolate was actually mud. Mud coated Danny’s bridle and breastplate, too, and was in the process of getting all over his once spotless gray coat. As Carole watched, horrified, a big splotch of gooey mud slid off one of Danny’s stirrup leathers and caught Veronica right on the thigh. It was obvious to Carole that Veronica had tried to wipe her tack off, but the mud was too pervasive. Cleanup would take hours.

Veronica herself looked just as wrecked. Her clothes were so filthy it looked as if she’d worn them for weeks. Her hair was coming out of its net, and her helmet was askew. She was wearing only
one glove. “Why won’t anyone help me?” she screamed.

“I tried to help her,” Lisa whispered indignantly to Carole and Stevie. “She actually threatened me with her crop. She told me this was my fault—and I was in Prancer’s stall the whole time!”

“What happened?” Carole asked.

“I think when she took her saddle out of her trunk she tried to hang it on her bridle rack,” Lisa reported. “The rack collapsed, and the tack went everywhere—”

“Right into that big mud puddle,” Stevie finished. “I saw it,” she added in response to her friends’ questioning looks. “I even told Veronica she ought to fix it, and the bridle rack, too. It was an accident in progress, all right. But no, I didn’t cause any of it. I told you I’d wait until we got home.”

Carole and Lisa nodded, satisfied, then turned their attention back to the inspection area. The scene that was unfolding before them was awe-inspiring. Veronica had been so upset by the accident that she had gotten her girth twisted and put her breastplate on backward. When the inspectors pointed these major faults out to her, she flew into a rage.

“What do you mean, you’re going to have to penalize me?” she shouted in her haughtiest, most diAngelo
voice. “You can’t penalize a person because of a little mud!”

“Riding with a twisted girth is a hazard to both the rider and the horse,” the second inspector said clearly. “Your saddle would have come loose while you were galloping, and the twist would have given your horse a gall.”

“So?” Veronica said. “I’ll fix it before I ride—you can’t penalize me for something I’ve fixed!” She grabbed the checklist out of the first inspector’s hands and read what was written there. “You can’t penalize me for
dirt
!” she continued, her voice rising to decibel levels it had never reached in her thirteen years of throwing tantrums. “I wasn’t dirty five minutes ago! My groom cleaned this tack three times last week! This isn’t my fault! How dare you give me penalties! Don’t you know who I am?”

“They do now,” Lisa whispered to her friends. “And I’m sure they’ll never forget.”

“She’s going for the All-Time Horse Inspection Penalty Record,” Stevie whispered. “I bet she couldn’t get any more points if she threw up on the inspectors.”

Carole laughed despite herself. She put her hand over her mouth and tried to turn the laugh into a cough, but Veronica heard.

“You!” she said, pointing a dirty, ungloved finger up at Carole. “You and your two friends! You must
have planned this. That’s who did it,” she said to the inspectors. “The Saddle Club—they’re behind everything. It’s their fault, not mine!”

One of the inspectors put out a hand to restrain Veronica. Carole rode Starlight a little way away, and Lisa and Stevie followed her. “I’m sorry she thinks that,” Carole said. “I might want to do something like that to Veronica, but I would never do that to Danny. Think how uncomfortable he must be.”

“And even I’ve never come up with such an effective plan for revenge,” Stevie said. She looked over at Veronica and the two inspectors, who were now fully engaged in an argument. The head of the rally was running toward them, and Stevie thought she saw Max detach himself from the gathering crowd. “This is Super Revenge,” Stevie said. “I hate to admit it, but this would have been beyond me. Danny has finally met his match. He’s been beaten by Veronica herself.”

C
AROLE RODE WITH
her seat just out of the saddle, her weight sinking evenly into her heels. She kept her hands steady against Starlight’s neck. He was galloping smoothly, confidently, with his head high and his eyes alert, watching for the next jump but not fearing it. Carole felt her heart leap. They were halfway through the cross-country course and Starlight had yet to put a foot wrong. Better still, his attitude was telling her that he was enjoying this ride as much as she was. They were on the same wavelength; they understood the same things. To Carole, there was no greater joy. All the blue ribbons in the world couldn’t beat feeling one with your horse.

The course curved. Carole turned Starlight by shifting her weight slightly in the saddle. She gathered her reins and steadied him for the approaching jump. It was a coop, the kind of jump Stevie was so afraid of. Carole bit her lip as Starlight sailed over it. She hoped Stevie would do okay. Then she thought of Stevie as she last saw her, standing near a hysterical, filthy Veronica. She bit her lip harder. It wasn’t very nice to laugh at Veronica’s predicament—but it was hard not to.

They galloped around a corner and Starlight tossed his head. The next jump came up much more quickly than Carole remembered and she didn’t really have enough time to prepare her horse. She grabbed Starlight’s mane with both hands and urged him forward with her legs. He jumped the fence awkwardly, but he made it over, which was all the judges cared about. “Sorry, buddy,” Carole said, reaching down to pat his neck before resuming her galloping position. She had to keep her mind on the course.

A
T THE STARTING BOX
, Stevie waited her turn. She’d passed the inspection easily, checked her girth, and mounted. Now she walked Belle in circles to keep the horse calm. Stevie felt remarkably calm. In fact, she couldn’t remember feeling this calm before a competition.

Betsy galloped across the finish line, which was next to the starting box. She pulled Coconut up and patted the horse’s neck briskly.

“Hey,” Stevie called to her.

“How’d it go?” another voice behind Stevie asked. Stevie turned to see Meg walking a sweating Barq in the grassy field behind the inspection area. Stevie hadn’t noticed them before.

Betsy rode over to Meg and dismounted, and Meg helped her loosen the girth and run up the stirrups. Stevie checked her position. She still had a few riders to go, so she walked Belle over to Barq and Coconut.

“It went pretty well,” Betsy said. She wiped the sweat from her face. “Coconut got a little more excited than I expected. Maybe I should have used a pelham bit, I don’t know. We had a refusal once because I just couldn’t slow us down enough to point Coconut at the jump—we went right around it.” She laughed. “We sure didn’t get any time penalties, though.”

Meg nodded. “We had one refusal, too. That jump going into the woods. I don’t think Barq could see it properly—he just put the brakes on. But I’ve heard that most people are having trouble out there.”

“Have you heard about Veronica?” Stevie asked.

“What about Veronica?” said Meg, frowning.
“She’s on course, isn’t she? She was gone when I came in.”

“Yeah, she’s out there.” Stevie couldn’t quite keep a note of satisfaction out of her voice, even though, for Meg’s and Betsy’s sakes, she didn’t want to rub it in. Briefly she filled them in on Veronica’s disaster.

Meg looked more agitated than horrified. “I told her three times to fill in that mud puddle,” she said. “I didn’t have time to do it—I spent my whole morning doing her work as well as my own.”

“We should have checked that bridle rack,” Betsy said. “Hanging it was one of the few things Veronica did on her own.”

“But who would think she couldn’t hang a bridle rack?” snorted Meg. “It’s not exactly rocket science.”

“Sometimes she’s just not worth it,” Betsy added. “She pulls that princess act just a little too often. Sometimes I feel like we’re Cinderella or something, put on this earth to do her work while she goes off to the ball.”

“Cinderella ends up being the princess,” Stevie said. “Remember?”

“Whatever,” Meg said. “It doesn’t matter—it doesn’t change Veronica. You watch. When she comes in, she’ll expect Betsy and me to clean all her filthy tack. She’ll sit on her cot and moan about how the mud ruined her hair.”

“There’s Carole,” Betsy said. “She looks happy.”

Carole galloped in with a radiant glow on her face that Stevie had seen often. Stevie rode over to her friend’s side. “Another good round?” she asked.

“He was so fantastic!” Carole dismounted and hugged Starlight. “Aren’t you going yet, Stevie?”

“There’s been another hold on course,” Stevie reported.

Carole frowned. “I hope it wasn’t Lisa.”

“Nope,” said Stevie, looking toward the woods. “Here she comes.”

When Lisa galloped over the finish line, her friends knew how well she’d done before she even pulled up. Her face was glowing. “We’ve never done that well,” Lisa gasped. “Never. She listened to me the entire time.” Stevie and Carole cheered, and they exchanged high fives.

“Three cheers for The Saddle Club!” Stevie said, laughing. “Hope I can uphold our honor.”

Lisa dismounted, and she and Carole began to care for their horses. “Are you still nervous?” Lisa asked sympathetically.

“No,” Stevie said. “I know it sounds bizarre, but all my worries just seemed to go away the moment I saw dear Veronica with mud all over her Hermès saddle and custom-made boots. Apparently that was just the tonic I needed.”

To Lisa this made some sense. She remembered
the lesson they’d had Tuesday, when Belle had refused to jump. Veronica’s constant needling had been one of the things that set Stevie’s nerves on edge.

Belle fretted and danced. Stevie eyed the starter impatiently. Finally, after a long delay, he started sending riders off again. Stevie was almost ready to ride.