Her mind also filled with recollections of all the riding she’d done, mostly with Stevie and Carole. The recollections were wonderful ones, filled with joy and excitement, peace and contentment. The thoughts carried her into sleep.
Lisa could feel the smooth, supple movement of Prancer beneath her. The mare’s coat gleamed in the bright sunshine. As Prancer shook her head, her inky mane caught the light, and then lay smooth and shiny once again. Her saddle had a rich luster—one that came only from the best and most thorough cleaning.
“Lisa Atwood on Prancer,” the public-address system blared. That was it. It was her signal. She was ready. But for what? Lisa looked about her quickly. The ring was filled with obstacles, about three feet high. This was the jump competition, and she had no idea what the path was! She was filled with terror and panic. Then, without a signal from her, Prancer entered the ring. The horse looked around the ring, nodded as if to tell Lisa she knew what she was doing and there was nothing for Lisa to worry about. Lisa knew, as certainly as she’d ever known anything in her life, that she was going to be fine. She gave Prancer a little nudge with her legs, and they were off.
Without hesitation Prancer broke into a smooth canter, aimed herself toward the first jump at an even gait, and began the work she’d been born to do so well. Three feet from the first jump, Lisa leaned forward, rose up ever so slightly, gave Prancer the rein she needed to do her job. The pair flew over the jump, landing so smoothly Lisa barely realized they were on the ground. There was scattered applause from the audience. Prancer’s whole body curved to turn gracefully toward the next jump. She changed her lead naturally and approached the next jump with the same confidence she’d used on the first. Lisa prepared for the jump, and again the two of them went over easily. Lisa was aware that Prancer’s tail rose with the jump so that it flowed after them, like the tail of a comet. When they landed this time, there was more applause.
The course had ten jumps in it, and every one was as easy as the first. Prancer navigated the complicated trail as if she’d jumped it a thousand times before. Lisa stayed in the saddle, focusing on her own form, head up, eyes forward, legs in, heels down, hands firm but not tight, lower arms parallel to the ground, lower legs at right angles to the ground.… The list was endless, and she’d heard it a thousand times. Sometimes it seemed as if she heard it a thousand times each class. For once, however, she didn’t hear it from Max or her friends. She heard it from herself, and she was just checking that she was doing it all right. She was. It was the easiest, most natural feeling she’d ever had. She was riding, and she was riding well. Prancer was making it right for her.
The tenth jump was up ahead. Again they soared. Again the audience clapped. This time very loudly.
The course was done. Prancer drew to a halt in front of the judges’ stand and stood motionless while the judges tallied their scores. The judge in the center stood up.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “There is no point in continuing this competition. This rider, Miss Lisa Atwood, is simply the finest rider any of us has ever seen. And her horse, Prancer, defies all description. This may be just a local horse show, but you have been treated here to a performance that could take the blue even at the American Horse Show. We don’t need to see any other riders, we have our winner right here!”
The audience applauded loudly.
“Miss Atwood, Prancer, please come forward,” the judge said.
Lisa could barely believe what was happening, but she knew, as she’d never known anything before, that she deserved it. She and Prancer had been the best—the very best—that the judges had ever seen. She signaled Prancer to step forward to where a small red carpet had been rolled out.
The three judges approached her. The main judge held the blue ribbon for the Jumping class.
She reached up and clipped it onto Prancer’s bridle. The gesture seemed somehow familiar. Then Lisa recalled that this wasn’t the first time she’d received a blue ribbon that day. She and Prancer had already taken blues in all her other classes, too!
There was just one prize left. Would it be hers? She just had to know.
She leaned forward in her saddle to speak to the judge. The judge looked back up at her, filled with awe.
Lisa drew on her courage.
“Does this mean that I’m …?”
The judge smiled and spoke the word Lisa had been unable to utter. “Champion,” she said. “Yes, you are the champion!”
It was all so much, so fast, and so wonderful! She could barely believe it, and it was hard to think about, too, because the whole audience was standing and applauding and shouting. Waves of noise, loud sounds, filled Lisa’s ears and her whole head. They didn’t stop. They persisted and persisted. The applause and the shouts merged into an overwhelming…
Buzzzzzzz.
It was Lisa’s alarm clock.
She awoke with a start, brought back to reality with the unpleasant noise that still couldn’t erase the wonderful feeling she had just thinking back on her dream.
Lisa found that she was still clutching five pieces of white paper in her hand. Her dream had been wonderful and exciting, but it had been something more, too. It had told her what her personal goal was for Briarwood.
She picked up the pencil that was still on her bed and wrote the same word five times: “Blue.”
She put the papers in an envelope, licked it, and sealed it. She stood up and headed for the bathroom, uttering the word from her dream that was still with her: “Champion.”
She liked the sound of that.
CAROLE WAS SURROUNDED by her friends. Lisa was working on Prancer in the stall on one side of her. Stevie and Topside were on the other side. They were all grooming their horses in the temporary stalls that Briarwood had erected for the competitors. All the Juniors were in the same area. Fortunately for The Saddle Club, Veronica and Garnet had been assigned a stall two aisles away.
Carole glanced at Lisa. She was working very hard on Prancer’s grooming. The mare seemed to love the attention—as she always did—and the results were great. Prancer certainly was a beautiful horse, and her fine bloodlines showed to their best advantage with a good grooming.
On her other side, Stevie was also working hard. She chatted on and on with Topside as she groomed him. Carole tried not to listen, but it wasn’t easy.
“So the trick today, Topside, is going to be making it look as if I’m doing some of the work and not you. I know this stuff is all old hat—or should I say old bridle, since you’re a horse?—to you, but it’s new to me, and I’m pretty nervous. I can tell you are as cool as a cucumber. Well I’m not.…”
Carole decided that anything Topside could say to put Stevie at ease would be more comforting than anything Carole might say, especially since Carole herself was nervous. She wondered briefly if Topside might have any words of comfort for her. Then she realized it wasn’t words of comfort she needed, but her dandy brush, which she must have left in the van.
She gave Starlight a gentle pat on his rear to move him over and allow her out of the stall. He obliged. She slipped out, fastening the door behind her. She asked both Lisa and Stevie if they needed anything from the van. Both just shook their heads. They were concentrating very hard on grooming their horses. Yes, Carole thought. It is nice being surrounded by friends—even if they don’t know you’re there.
There were a lot of young riders. Carole saw quite a few that looked like beginners who wouldn’t be competing in her class, but she also saw more than ten others who probably were competitors. Then Carole remembered that one of them was Cam Nelson. But which one?
One girl was struggling to groom an ugly little pony. Carole knew that what a horse looked like really didn’t matter, but all the grooming in the world wasn’t going to make that ugly pony a winner. Still, she didn’t think the girl was Cam. The pony was a mare and Cam’s horse was a gelding. Then Carole noticed that the girl had put her horse’s name plaque on the door of the stall. “Grumpy,”
it said. Definitely not Cam.
Then Carole spotted another girl who might be Cam. She had long braids, and her horse was a gelding. No, it couldn’t be Cam. She was just too young to be Cam Nelson.
Carole decided this wasn’t really a good time to be looking for Cam. She’d meet her soon enough, and her real job here was collecting her dandy brush and finishing Starlight’s grooming.
She picked up her pace and headed for the lot where the van was parked. It took her only a minute to find the dandy brush. It was exactly where she thought she’d left it. At least something was going right. She hurried back to Starlight.
She got delayed, however, because there was a boy who was bringing his horse out of the stall for a stretch and a walk. The boy was about her age. He was tall with nice features. He had black hair, deep brown eyes, and light brown skin. The fact that he was a good-looking boy wasn’t what she noticed first about him, though. It was his horse that got her attention. The horse, a gleaming chestnut, was just beautiful! He was sleek and elegant and perfectly groomed.
“Nice horse!” she said to the boy in honest admiration. She also made a mental note to herself to be sure to do as good a job on Starlight’s grooming.
“Good old Duffy always looks great for a show. He just loves them,” the boy said.
“Duffy?” Carole said. That was Cam’s horse’s name! What a coincidence. “There’s a girl here with a horse by the same name!” she said.
“Really? How funny,” the boy said. “Who is it?”
“Her name is Cam Nelson,” Carole said.
The boy smiled. “That’s funny, too, because my name is Cam Nelson.”
“Cam?”
“Carole?”
She nodded automatically in response, but her mind was racing. A boy? How could that be, Carole wondered. She and a girl named Cam had been furiously writing notes back and forth, and now Carole had discovered that Cam wasn’t a girl at all. How could she have been so wrong?
Actually, she told herself, what difference did it make? The whole situation was pretty funny. She laughed aloud and offered him her hand.
“Glad to meet you, finally,” she said.
He shook it. “Me, too,” he told her.
“Uh, sorry about the girl thing,” she said. “I just thought Cam was, uh, a girl’s name.”
“It is, sometimes,” he said. “But not in my case. I’m really Cameron.”
“And I’m really Carole,” she countered.
They both smiled at her joke. Carole was going to say something else when the public-address system clicked on.
“The Intermediate Fitting and Showing class will commence in thirty minutes,” the voice announced. “All entrants must be in the East ring in twenty-five minutes.”
That meant that Carole had approximately twenty-three minutes to finish Starlight’s grooming and her own. There was work to be done.
“See you later!” she called.
“You can count on it!” Cam said after her.
Carole liked the sound of that.
LISA WAS SURE that everything was perfect. There was no doubt in her mind that Prancer was going to be the most beautiful and best groomed horse in the ring. She also knew that, thanks to her mother’s ministrations, her own grooming was just fine. Once her mother had decided that she should be in the horse show, she’d decided she was going to do it right. Her clothes had been specially fitted by a tailor, and she looked great. That was what this event was about. She even had new boots to replace the ones that had been pinching her toes.
Lisa and Prancer were standing in the East ring with all the other riders in the class, waiting to be told to go into the show ring. This wasn’t a riding class. The horses didn’t have their saddles on, just their bridles. This class was meant to show the judges that the riders knew how to prepare their horses for the classes to come and to demonstrate grooming and the fact that the horses were in good physical condition. One look at Prancer and anybody would know she was in great condition.
Nearby, Carole was all business, rubbing Starlight’s coat one more time with a handkerchief that a boy with a chestnut horse had loaned to her. She finished the wipe and handed the handkerchief back to the boy with a nod of thanks. Stevie and Topside stood next to Carole. Both Stevie and her horse seemed very relaxed. Lisa remembered that Topside had spent many years at horse shows before he’d come to Pine Hollow. He simply exuded confidence. Confidence was important. Lisa knew that. But it wasn’t everything.
Then there was Veronica. As usual, Veronica and her horse looked great. Lisa was sure, however, that the judges wouldn’t be fooled by the fact that Garnet was simply not as fine a horse as Prancer.
Prancer shifted her weight and lifted her front feet nervously, first her right, then her left. She seemed uneasy and crowded by all the other horses. Lisa patted her neck to put her at ease. The horse nodded her head and then shook it, mussing her mane. Lisa smoothed it.
“This way, riders!” a woman announced, calling everybody in the ring to the gate that led to the show ring.
With those words everything in the world faded to gray for Lisa—everything, that was, except for herself, her horse, and the judges. She held Prancer’s reins firmly and followed the horse in front of her into the ring, to her fate, to her certain blue ribbon.
The horses and riders were asked to line up in front of the judges’ stand. Like an automaton, Lisa followed the directions. She and Prancer stood between the boy who had given his handkerchief to Carole and a girl she’d never seen before.
Lisa stood at attention, facing straight forward. She clutched Prancer’s reins, only vaguely aware that the mare kept tugging at them.
There was activity all around Lisa and Prancer, and Lisa saw almost none of it. Judges circled the horses, checking both grooming and conformation, making notes, asking questions.
“Uh-oh, here comes the judge!” the boy next to Lisa joked. She didn’t think it was funny. She stood at attention, eyes straight forward.
“Relax,” the boy said to her. “They’re looking at your horse’s conformation, not your posture.”
She really didn’t think that was funny at all. But then, though he had a nice chestnut horse, whom he called Duffy, the horse wasn’t anything special, and he didn’t have a chance at a ribbon. Maybe he was even trying to distract her so he could get a blue instead of her. No way, she thought, quickly returning her attention to her own quest for blue. Eyes forward, she gripped the reins. Her knuckles were white.
Lisa felt Prancer tug hard at the reins. She didn’t dare turn around. She was sure that the slightest movement on her part would be an error and cost her a ribbon.
“Hi there,” the judge said to Lisa.
Lisa’s eyes flicked toward the woman. “Hello, ma’am,” Lisa said in a military response.
“Your horse seems uneasy,” the judge commented.
“She’s fine,” Lisa assured the judge.
“I don’t know about that. She keeps shifting around. She’s as nervous as you are.”
“Oh, I’m not nervous,” Lisa said. It was true. She wasn’t nervous. She was doing everything exactly the way she thought she ought to. She was going to get a blue ribbon.
“Well, I’m going to check out the mare’s conformation. Hold her steady, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lisa said. She wrapped the reins around her hand more tightly, completely forgetting how dangerous that could be if the horse took off. She could hurt her arm badly that way.
Lisa didn’t dare watch while the judge examined Prancer, but then she didn’t need to, either. She was confident that Prancer was the best, most beautiful horse in the ring. If she watched the judge do the examination, it might suggest that she wasn’t confident. She continued to look straight ahead.
If Lisa was confident, Prancer didn’t seem to be. The horse almost jumped back from the judge. That was when Lisa remembered that Prancer really liked kids and didn’t seem to like adults much. The judge was definitely
an adult, and Prancer was trying to move away from her.
Lisa didn’t see what happened next. Later people told her about it, though.
The judge ran her hand along Prancer’s flank and then down the mare’s leg. It was more than the over-excited horse could take. She bucked. She simply lifted her hind quarters off the ground and kicked back. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the judge hadn’t been crouched there, checking out her hind legs at the time. Prancer wound up kicking the judge in the rib cage.
“Yeouch!” the woman howled.
Lisa looked around then and saw that half the people were looking at the judge in concern. The other half were scowling at Lisa! Lisa’s jaw dropped in astonishment.
Another of the judges came running over to help the woman off the ground.
“Move the horse!” he said sternly to Lisa. That was when Lisa realized what had happened. Her horse, her precious Prancer, had actually knocked the judge onto the ground. The other judge was afraid she was going to do it again, too!
“I’m sorry,” Lisa said.
The man looked at her. “You’re excused,” he said.
She was surprised he accepted her apology so easily. “Can I do something?” she offered.
“You can leave the ring,” he said.
Leave the ring? Suddenly Lisa realized that “You’re excused” didn’t mean he’d accepted her apology. It meant she was excused from the class. She’d flunked. She was out. Done. No blue. No ribbon at all. Just gone.
And if any doubt remained in her mind, what came over the public-address system cleared it up completely.
“Competitor number two seventy-three has been disqualified. Lisa Atwood, please remove your horse from the ring.”
Show Horse Page 6