Stable Witch (12 page)

Max paused to wait for the girls’ reaction, expecting gasps and wide-eyed surprise. Instead, they nodded calmly. He shrugged and continued: “Secondly, she said that Stevie did
not
cut her stirrup leather. We also discussed who had, but I’m keeping that information private,” Max added more quietly.

The Saddle Club waited to see if Max had anything else to say.

He stared at them, astonished. “Did you hear me?
She said Stevie was innocent of this whole mess!” Max cried, slapping his thigh for emphasis.

The girls smiled at their instructor. “Thanks for telling us the good news, Max,” Carole said kindly.

“Yeah—it’s nice to know that my name has been cleared—and by the victim herself,” said Stevie.

“Kind of makes you feel like everything works out for the best, doesn’t it?” Lisa added.

“Well, I guess we’ll see you in five minutes, right, Max?” Stevie said.

“Oh—ah—yes, right. See you in five,” Max repeated, once again shaking his head in bewilderment.

When they were all on and riding toward the ring, Stevie turned around in her saddle. “I have just one question, Lisa. I checked under the lockers, and there wasn’t anything there. What was it that you found that could have made Veronica nervous enough to drop out of the show and confess?”

Lisa just smiled. “All in good time,” she said.

“Y
OU GIRLS GOING
to stay up all night?” Colonel Hanson asked. He had just poked his head into Carole’s room where she, Stevie, and Lisa were stretched out on her bed, talking a mile a minute.

“No, Dad—only
most
of the night, okay?” Carole joked.

Colonel Hanson chuckled tolerantly. “All right. After today, you deserve it.” He said good night, then closed the door gently.

“That’s right, we
do
deserve it,” Stevie said. “Especially you, Carole. That was some performance.”

As modest as ever, Carole shrugged off the praise. “Anyone could have won on Starlight,” she said.

“Yeah, right,” Stevie said. “In a competition that judges only the rider’s position, the only thing that matters is the horse you ride. That makes perfect sense, huh, Lisa?”

In response, Carole shoved Stevie off the bed.

It was Saturday night after the schooling show. Naturally, The Saddle Club had wanted to adjourn to one of their houses for a sleep-over. When Colonel Hanson announced that he was cooking up a huge pot of spaghetti and meatballs for his blue-ribbon daughter, Stevie gave him her most innocent look. “A huge pot? For only two people—what a shame.” In a matter of minutes, she and Lisa had been invited to share the victory feast.

To no one’s surprise, Carole and Starlight had taken top honors in Junior Equitation Over Fences. Starlight had stayed slow and in control as Carole had hoped, and they had soared over every fence on the course, looking like the textbook pictures in Carole’s riding manuals. And yet, thinking back on the goals they had set for themselves, all three girls felt like winners. Max had agreed, awarding them all blue ribbons for meeting their personal goals.

Stevie recalled struggling to find a way to make her goal mean “beat Veronica” without coming right out and saying it. But in the end, what she had worked on
was what she had written down: improving her position over fences, pure and simple. Of course, it had been easier to concentrate with Veronica out of the picture. Still, she believed that the whole nightmarish incident
had
taught her something about competitiveness getting out of hand. When all you thought about was winning, you forgot about having fun. And for Stevie, fun was kind of like breathing: without it, it was hard to survive.

Lisa, meanwhile, had felt great at the end of her course. She had dropped her hands too early once or twice and looked down instead of up a few times, but her confidence had stayed up all the way around. And what was more, it seemed that Prancer really did like jumping and could be good at it. After their round, she had given a little buck for sheer joy, unseating Lisa, who had ended up on the mare’s neck—this time laughing about not being a perfect rider every second.

“I have to say, one of the best moments of the day, besides doing my course and watching Carole get the blue, was catching sight of Veronica in the stands. She looked madder than a cat in the rain,” Lisa said.

Max, who had read between the lines and figured out a number of things on his own, had demanded that Veronica be present at the show and write down a list of things she learned by watching each competitor.
That was after she had cleaned all of the Pine Hollow saddles and bridles so that she could learn how to keep leather from drying out and breaking. The Saddle Club thought it was only fair. After all, he
had
promised Mrs. diAngelo he would punish the perpetrator severely.

“Speaking of that stable witch,” said Stevie, “I think it’s high time you clued us in on what you were doing with the crop on Tuesday, Lisa. We can’t figure it out, and people are starting to say that you were planning to beat Veronica with it unless she confessed!”

With all the hype over the show, Lisa at first hadn’t time to explain herself to Carole and Stevie. Then she had decided it would be more fun to make them try to guess at her sleuthing.

“I might have been tempted to give her a whack or two,” Lisa admitted, “but actually, I was looking for something that Veronica had dropped in the room. Once we figured out that she had cut her own leather, I knew she had to have used a tool. That’s when I remembered the mysterious gray object.” Lisa recounted her previous locker room encounter with Veronica, when Veronica had kicked the object under the lockers to hide it.

“All of a sudden, I realized what it had to be. I went
back Sunday to fetch it. Sure enough, it was there,” Lisa said, her voice barely a whisper, “a small, gray, single-blade razor knife!”

Carole and Stevie recoiled at the name of the weapon. The image of Veronica procuring a knife, then sneaking in early to do the slashing was an ugly one. It still seemed unbelievable that someone from Pony Club could be capable of such villainy. But, then again, Veronica wasn’t your average Pony Clubber.

“Anyway,” Lisa continued, “I had to decide how to expose the slasher now that I had the evidence. And I knew that Veronica is obsessed with what other people think of her. That’s why I finally decided to threaten her in public instead of confronting her privately.”

“I always knew you were smart,” Carole said, “but this is downright sneaky.”

“Incredible, Lisa,” Stevie agreed admiringly.

Lisa grinned. “Incredible? No. In fact, I’d call it … elementary, my dear Watson,” she said. That was all the prompting Stevie and Carole needed to start whacking her with pillows.

When the fight ended a few minutes later, Stevie was lying on the floor, Carole was sitting on top of her
desk, and Lisa, the victor, had retained her claim on the bed.

“No matter what you guys say,” Stevie announced, sitting up, “I think the outcome of this episode proves my theory that Veronica was the stable witch. Who but a witch could almost knock two members of The Saddle Club out of competition? And for all we know, she had a curse ready for Carole, too.”

“I don’t know,” Lisa replied. “I don’t believe in black magic and spells, anymore. I wish I could blame Veronica for the trouble I had jumping, but what Carole said was true: I had convinced myself that I couldn’t do it. What was haunting me was my own insecurity. When you guys tricked me into regaining my confidence, I was fine.

“That’s when it occurred to me to get Veronica to figure out that she was jinxing herself as well.” She glanced over at Stevie. “I guess you are right then, Stevie: Veronica is a witch, but the person she cast the worst spell on was herself.”

Carole and Stevie nodded in agreement.

“Now that we’ve solved the mystery of the stable witch,” Stevie began, “and cracked the case of the slashing sabotage, do you think we might be able to rustle up anything for a really good sundae?”

Carole eyed her narrowly. “We might, and we
might not,” she said, knowing Stevie’s idea of a good sundae. “What did you have in mind?”

“We—ell … I hate to remind you two, but I didn’t get a chance to eat a perfectly good ice-cream treat last week at T.D.’s when you thought I was guilty of cutting Veronica’s stirrup leather. So, now you owe me a sundae,” Stevie said.

Carole and Lisa looked at one another. Neither of them would have described the melting glop at T.D.’s as a “perfectly good ice-cream treat.”

“Hmm … let’s see … I think we may have some coconut fudge ice cream in the freezer and some homemade mint sauce, and then, of course, peanut butter and walnuts in the cupboard. How does that sound?” Carole asked.

“Mouth-watering,” Stevie assured her.

“So will it take care of our debt?” Lisa inquired.

“Definitely,” Stevie replied.

They got up to go downstairs. “Actually—not quite,” Carole corrected her. “Don’t forget we still owe you breakfast. I was thinking we’d have pancakes.”

Bonnie Bryant
is the author of more than sixty books for young readers, including novelizations of movie hits such as
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
and
Honey
,
I Blew Up the Kid
, written under her married name, B. B. Hiller.

Bonnie 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.

Bonnie Bryant was born and raised in New York City. She lives in Greenwich Village with her two sons.