Horse Trouble (5 page)

It didn’t make Carole feel any better. By lunchtime
she found herself actually looking forward to painting the stable. At least she could be on a ladder so high above everybody else that she couldn’t see them laugh.

W
HEN THREE O
’
CLOCK
came around, The Saddle Club groomed their horses and put them back into their stalls for the day. Class was done, it was time for the real work to begin.

Stevie had a list. It read: paint, brushes, ladders. Lisa also had a list. It read: paint (red and white), pans, brushes, ladder, turpentine, hats, drop cloths, tape.

Carole looked at both lists. It confirmed her suspicion that Lisa was a better list maker than Stevie.

“I’m sure all this stuff is in the utility shed,” Carole said. The three girls went there and found that Carole was right.

Carole found the cans of paint and stacked them for ease of carrying. Lisa found the pans, brushes, turpentine, tape, hats, and drop cloths—

“What do we need drop cloths for?” Stevie asked. “We’re painting outside, not inside. Do we really have to protect the ground?”

“You never know,” Lisa said, sounding very much as if she did, in fact, know. Then, to prove it, she spread one of the drop cloths out, put all the equipment onto it, and then folded up the corners of the drop cloth so
she could use it as a carrying bag. Stevie thought that sometimes Lisa was almost
too
organized for her own good.

Stevie spotted the folding ladder and picked it up. It was long and awkward, but it wasn’t awfully heavy, and she found that as long as she held it in the middle, she could manage it. The three girls walked together back toward the stable.

As they walked, it occurred to Stevie that it was just about perfect painting weather. The sun was bright; the sky was cloudless. It wasn’t too hot and it wasn’t humid. There was something about the lovely summer day that made Stevie feel good. She wasn’t alone either. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Pepper, an old retired horse, positively frolicking in his pasture.

“Oh, look at that!” she said, turning to watch.

Her sudden movement accomplished several things. It gave Stevie a better view of Pepper, but it also made the ladder turn with her, knocking both of her friends off their feet.

“Oomph!”

“Watch—”

“Oh, sorry,” Stevie said when she saw what she had done. She turned back, much more carefully than she’d turned around in the first place.

“That’s quite a weapon,” Lisa remarked, looking warily at the ladder.

“In the right hands,” Carole said pointedly.

“You guys okay?” Stevie asked. She really hadn’t meant to hurt her friends, and she felt bad about it.

“We will be as long as we don’t walk next to you again!” Lisa said. She wasn’t hurt, but she was more than a little annoyed that Stevie’s mistake had made her drop everything she was carrying, and now three painter’s hats were blowing across the pasture toward Pepper.

“I’ll get them!” Stevie offered, once again swinging around so she could see where they were going. Lisa and Carole dived for cover—this time managing to get out of the way of the swirling ladder.

“
I’ll
get the hats,” Lisa said. “And Stevie, you walk ahead—
way
ahead.”

Sheepishly Stevie agreed.

“L
OOK
,
ALL WE
have to do is put some white paint on the white parts and some red paint on the red parts. What’s so hard about that?”

Stevie’s own words echoed in her head. It had all seemed so easy when she said it, but now she appeared to be very busy putting the white parts on the red parts and vice versa, and the overall effect was definitely more
pink
than anything else.

“Grrrrr!” she commented.

Lisa and Carole were beneath her at ground level. Stevie had claimed the ladder, thinking it would be fun to be up high. What it really was, was harder. Every time she needed something, she had to step
down, and the ladder wobbled in a very unpleasant way.

“Trouble up there?” Lisa asked, looking at Stevie’s scrowl.

“I’d like to be able to say that I’m seeing red,” Stevie said sardonically. “However, it seems to be more like pink.…”

Lisa stepped back and looked up. Stevie had a point. The stable was definitely taking on a pink hue, and that wasn’t what was supposed to happen.

“I did the white and then I did the red, but the white got mixed in with the red and the red with the white, and I think I’d better not make any long-term plans to be a house painter.”

Lisa squinted to see what was causing the problem. She was such a logical person that she didn’t always understand when other people weren’t as logical as she was. Stevie was a special problem in that regard! Then she figured it out.

“Masking tape,” she said. “You need masking tape.”

“I do?” Stevie asked.

“Definitely,” Lisa said. “See, first you paint all the red parts, more or less trying to avoid the white ones, but if you get some red on those, it’s okay. When the red is dry, you put tape around the edges of the white and you paint the white. So then, if you slosh a little
over the edges, all you’re painting is the tape, not the red. When the white is dry, you remove the tape and
bingo
, it’s perfect.”

“It is?” Stevie was not convinced.

“Try it,” Lisa said. She handed up a roll of tape.

Stevie looked at the parts that Lisa had already done, and she had to admit that they looked an awful lot better than what she was working on. She put down the brush with white paint and picked up the one with red paint. She began again, blotting out all the pink with red. It looked better immediately. Stevie painted with renewed enthusiasm.

“Well, if it isn’t the three blind mice again,” Veronica said icily. “Scurrying like crazy, trying to impress Max again, huh?”

“Watch it, Veronica,” Stevie said from above. “We’re armed.” She held her red paintbrush menacingly above Veronica’s head. The idea of red splatters on her designer breeches and jacket was more than Veronica could stand. She dashed off. The Saddle Club was not sorry to see her go. They resumed their work.

Lisa found that she had developed a rhythm to her strokes. Up down, up down, shift to the right, up down, up down, time to refill the brush. Up down, up down … It went quickly enough, and the results
were good. The trouble was that it was tiring for her arm. She shifted the paintbrush to her left hand and resumed her work. That was okay for a while. Then she spent more time taping around the white sections on parts of the red that were already dry. That was when a sound caught her ear. It was the playful whinny of a horse romping in a paddock. Then she remembered.

“Diablo,” she said. Carole and Stevie looked at her. “I left him in the paddock after class,” she explained. “He seemed to need more of a cool-down than I had time to give him, so I just set him loose in the paddock. I thought that would help.”

“He’s probably cooled down by now,” Carole said. “Why don’t you take a break and bring him into the stable.”

Those were the very words Lisa’s weary arm had been waiting to hear. That way she could take a break, but still be doing something useful. “Okay,” she agreed.

Diablo sniffed curiously as Lisa approached him with a lead rope. At first she thought he was sniffing at her, but then she realized that the smell of paint seemed to be alerting him. Lisa had often wondered what was on a horse’s mind, and she did so again. Horses often had early warning systems that told them
something dangerous was around, even when there wasn’t anything dangerous at all. Prancer’s fear of cats was like that. Diablo seemed to be nervous about the smell of paint. Lisa spoke to calm him.

“Don’t worry, boy, there’s nothing to fear. We’re just doing a little work for Mrs. Reg. It won’t be long, and then imagine how nice the stable is going to look—at least from the front. Your home is going to be so beautiful that you’ll be proud to invite your friends to come see it.”

She knew the horse couldn’t understand a word she was saying, but she also knew that he understood her tone of voice and that was all that mattered. Reassured, Diablo followed her to the stable. She kept chatting all the while.

“And when I put you in your stall, I’m going to give you some fresh hay and water, and that’ll be so delicious and smell so good, you won’t even notice the paint, will you?”

Lisa was totally occupied with her chattering. She was too occupied to notice what Stevie was doing on top of the ladder as she and Diablo approached. Stevie had peeled out a yard-long piece of masking tape. It was too long and immediately became an unruly tangle. As she tried to untangle it, it stuck onto the cloth she’d been using to wipe her hands and her
brushes. Then the tape attached to the brush with red paint.

“Oh, drat!” Stevie said, trying to loosen everything from the mass of tape.

Lisa didn’t see any of this. Diablo saw it all. Lisa tugged at his lead rope, bringing him right between the legs of the folding ladder where Stevie was perched at just the moment when Stevie shook the sticky tangled mess of tape, rag, and brush most vigorously. It was all Diablo could take. He didn’t exactly rear, though he came close to it. He shied and he bucked. It was just enough to jiggle the ladder seriously, and when that happened, something else happened, too. Two paint buckets, once carefully balanced on the ladder’s shelf, became unbalanced and toppled over.

Lisa had already passed under the ladder. Most of Diablo had not. Much to the horse’s dismay—to say nothing of the girls’—his rear half was drenched by the toppled red and white paint. It was all he could take. He bolted. Lisa was so astonished that she simply let go of the lead rope and watched helplessly while he fled right through the stable, out the other side, and into the paddock at the back of the stable. Normally that would be enough to contain him, but not in his frightened state. Diablo took one look at the paddock fence and flew right over it.

Stevie growled again. Lisa hollered “Stop him!” but there was nobody there to stop him, and even if there had been, he was too frightened to be stopped. When it came to horse trouble, Carole was the most logical thinker in the group. She put down her paintbrush.

“I’ll take Starlight out and catch Diablo,” she said. “He’ll stop running pretty soon, and I know he’s going to be easy to find.”

“Sure,” Lisa said, dismayed. “How many horses are there out in the field dressed as a clown?”

“He did look pretty funny, you know,” Stevie said, trying to emphasize the absurdity of it all. The humor was lost on Lisa. She gave Stevie a withering look. Stevie realized this might not be the best time to try to joke about what had happened. From the look on Lisa’s face, it seemed that sometime in the future—like fifty years into the future—would be a better time. She turned her paint buckets back upright, took her brush in her hand, and resumed painting. She reminded herself that as long as Carole was going to fetch Diablo, the best thing she could do was paint. Lisa didn’t say anything. She just picked up her paintbrush and got back to work, too.

Carole took off her painter’s hat and went to Starlight’s stall. She was always glad for an excuse to ride her horse, and this seemed an especially nice time,
since it gave her an opportunity to be away from a guilty Stevie and an angry Lisa. She hoped they’d both be in better moods by the time she got back.

She didn’t want to take the time to tack up Starlight. She decided to ride him bareback. She slipped a bridle on him, led him to the rear door of the stable—
away
from the painters—and hopped onto his back. Riding Starlight bareback was always a special joy. It made her feel closer to her horse and closer to the origins of riding. After all, the first riders had hardly had choices between English and Western saddles, pads and blankets. They just sat on their horses’ backs and rode. Now that was what Carole was doing, too. She felt the strong and supple horse beneath her, and with every step she pulled farther and farther away from everything that had gone wrong—the ponies and the basketball players, the dreadful drill class, the embarrassing jump class, the miserable painting job they were doing, the horrible paint spill on poor old Diablo.

Starlight seemed to sense Carole’s need for freedom and liberation from the less-than-perfect day. He took a deep breath and lengthened his stride, moving more quickly, more surely, as his rider directed him.

It didn’t take Carole long to spot Diablo. For one thing, he was the only red-and-white horse in the
field. For another, he was the only horse in the field at all. He seemed unaware of the new color he’d taken on, and he was munching quietly at the sweet grass. Starlight picked up a trot and approached him. Diablo lifted his head when he heard the other horse approaching. Apparently that was enough quiet munching for Diablo. Another possibility was that he recognized Carole as one of the people who had covered him with paint, and he didn’t want anything more to do with her. He moved away.

Carole drew in Starlight’s reins. He slowed to a walk while Carole thought about the situation. If Diablo didn’t want to be caught, she and Starlight had two choices. The first was to be patient and wait for Diablo to change his mind, approaching him slowly all the time. The other was to try to chase him down. Carole opted for patience. Starlight stopped about twenty feet from Diablo. Diablo seemed a little nervous at first, but once he became convinced he wasn’t being chased, he turned his attention to the grass at his feet. Carole had Starlight take another few steps. Diablo took a few steps, too. Carole stopped. She waited and then she tried again. This time she and Starlight closed the gap to fifteen feet. She waited and tried again. Starlight took three steps, Diablo took only two. It was slow, but it was working. Carole waited
some more and tried again. She found that if she watched Diablo’s ears very carefully, she could tell when he was relaxed enough for her to approach him just a little bit.