High Horse (12 page)

W
HEN
L
ISA AND
Carole got back to camp, Jackie and Amie were up and furious.

“Where were you?” Amie said to Carole. “We looked everywhere.”

“Everywhere twice,” Jackie said. “We asked Max. He didn’t know either.” They looked at Carole as if they might never forgive her.

“We went to see the hawks,” Carole said. “They’re early risers. Birds generally are early risers. They like to hunt at dawn.”

“No kidding,” Jackie said. “Don’t they get tired later? Do birds take naps?”

“Only when their mothers make them.”

Amie and Jackie giggled, and Carole beamed back.

“If I were a bird, my mother would never catch me,” Amie said. “I’d fly away to no-nap land.”

“In no-nap land everyone yawns all day,” Carole said. “It’s kind of a drag.”

“Oh,” Amie said, thinking about it.

“I’m going to help with breakfast,” Lisa said. “Today is the day of Max’s Morning Madness. I’ve got to help with the Maxerinos. You think Phil’s famous hot dogs were great, wait until you taste a Maxerino.”

“I can’t wait,” Jackie said.

“It looks to me like they’ll be ready in fifteen minutes,” Lisa said, leaving Carole with the girls.

“Let’s check on the horses,” Carole said. “They may be thinking about breakfast themselves.”

“So why don’t we give them Maxerinos?” Amie said. “They must be tired of grass and oats and hay.”

“Horses are health-food nuts,” Carole said. “They don’t like that stuff.”

“I love horses,” Amie said. “But in some ways they’re kind of strange.”

As they headed toward the paddock, Amie took Carole’s right hand and Jackie her left. “You know something, Carole?” Amie said. “It takes a horse four days to digest an oat.”

“You’re kidding me,” Carole said. “Where’d you ever learn an interesting fact like that?”

M
R
. H
AEGLE ASKED
Lisa to stay after class on Thursday. He waited until the last of the other students had drifted out of the room, and then he put his glasses on top of his head and said, “Ahem.”

Lisa could see that her journal was lying on his desk.

“Have a seat, Lisa.”

She sat in the chair next to his desk.

“I read your journal,” he said, tapping it with his forefinger. “It’s excellent. I’m impressed by your outstanding character development. Stevie and Carole really leap off the page. I feel as if I know them. And
you gave them real, believable human faults. Did you enjoy the assignment?”

Lisa sat there looking at Mr. Haegle. Had she enjoyed the assignment? At first … but not after Carole and Stevie had found the journal. “Yes and no,” she told the teacher finally. “Stevie and Carole found the journal and read it, and they both got … furious.”

Mr. Haegle smiled. “A writer’s life is full of suffering,” he said. “Whoever told you it would be easy?” He pushed the journal across the desk to her. “I hope you’ll continue to work on your character sketches.”

Lisa picked up the journal and thanked him. As she headed out of the classroom, she thought about what he’d said. If writing is supposed to be hard, she decided, then I’m on my way to a very promising career.

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON
The Saddle Club met at TD’s, the ice-cream parlor at the local shopping center. It was the first time they’d had a chance to get together since the MTO.

When the waitress came over, Stevie said, “I’ll have raspberry ice cream with butterscotch sauce and chocolate sprinkles and a couple of maraschino cherries on top.”

“That’s all?” said the waitress, who was used to Stevie’s strange orders. “You must be cutting back.”

“You know,” Stevie said, getting a dreamy look in her eyes, “I think you’re right. Top it off with a scoop of bubble-gum ice cream.”

“Why did I ask?” the waitress muttered as she wrote it down.

“I’ll have a hot-fudge sundae,” Carole said.

“Just vanilla ice cream for me,” Lisa said.

“So Phil and I are going to see a horse movie on Saturday,” Stevie said. “Guess what it’s called.”

“I’m afraid to,” Carole said.

“Night Mare on Elm Street.”

Carole and Lisa groaned.

“I found out Phil’s secret,” Stevie said. “The special thing he does to soothe horses.”

“What?” Carole said. Anything that had to do with horses was interesting to her.

“He talks to them,” Stevie said.

Carole shook her head. “What’s special about that? We all do that.”

“Not in pig latin,” Stevie said.

Carole and Lisa were so stunned they didn’t say anything.

“You sort of put the first letter of a word at the end
and add an ay,” Stevie said.
“At’sthay owhay itay orksway.”

“If only I’d known,” Carole said. “After all these years of using the reins.”

“Only one problem,” Lisa said.

Stevie gave her a questioning look.

“It’s not pig latin, it’s horse latin.”

“Excellent,” Stevie said. Then she looked at Lisa. “I still need to thank you for what you said about me in your journal.”

“Oh, sure,” Lisa said. “You’re eternally grateful.”

“I am,” Stevie said. “I was really making a fool of myself with Phil. You made me see what I was doing.”

“Me, too,” Carole agreed. “I met Amie and Jackie at the stable yesterday, and we had a great time. I only mentioned fifteen facts.”

“Instead of the usual fifteen hundred,” Stevie chimed in with a grin.

“It’s a relief,” Carole said. “I can stop trying so hard. You know, I was even getting on my own nerves.”

“Same with me,” Stevie said. “Next time I get angry at Phil, I’m going to talk to him about it instead of doing something stupid like dumping all the kindling on the fire or getting really competitive.”

Carole and Lisa looked at each other. Stevie’s
words sounded good, but it didn’t seem likely that self-control would ever be one of their friend’s major strengths.

“Phil’s secret with Teddy has helped me solve my problem with my brothers, too,” Stevie told her friends.

“How?” Carole asked.

“From now on, when Phil and I talk on the phone, we’ll talk in horse latin so those creeps can’t understand us.”

“Brilliant,” Lisa said.

The waitress brought over their ice cream, and the three of them ate it in silence. Lisa was thinking how great it was that The Saddle Club was back together again. They’d had problems before, but this was their worst problem yet, because it had driven them apart.

The waitress came over and looked at Stevie’s half-empty ice-cream dish. “You’re actually eating that stuff.”

“I may have a second serving,” Stevie said. “Possibly even a third.”

“I was trying to tell my family about this, but they didn’t believe me,” the waitress said.

“Actually, she’s matured,” Carole said. “She used to be much worse.”

Stevie gave her a nasty look, which turned into a grin.

At last they gathered up their books and got ready to leave.

“Summer’s coming,” Carole said. “Think of all those great rides coming up.”

“And adventures,” Lisa added.

“Lots of adventures,” Carole agreed.

On the sidewalk outside Stevie spotted something in the distance and turned to her friends.
“Illway ouyay ooklay atay atthay?”
she whispered. Then, in case they didn’t understand her horse latin, she nodded at a couple coming toward them on the sidewalk.

It was Betsy Cavanaugh holding hands with Joe Novick.

B
ONNIE
B
RYANT
is the author of more than a hundred books about horses, including The Saddle Club series, Saddle Club Super Editions, the Pony Tails series, and Pine Hollow, which follows the Saddle Club girls into their teens. She has also written novels and movie novelizations under her married name, B. B. Hiller.

Ms. Bryant began writing The Saddle Club in 1986. Although she had done some riding before that, she intensified her studies then and found herself learning right along with her characters Stevie, Carole, and Lisa. She claims that they are all much better riders than she is.

Ms. Bryant was born and raised in New York City. She still lives there, in Greenwich Village, with her two sons.