A SPOOKY SIGHT …
A cloud swept across the sky, obscuring the big, round orange moon. Suddenly there was only darkness. All motion among the horses stopped as abruptly as it had started. After a moment of stillness, there was movement in the center of the herd of wild horses, where a silvery stallion ran in circles and whinnied loudly. There was something about him, something odd. Lisa squinted.
“Did you see that?” She couldn’t believe what her eyes were telling her, but there appeared to be a white-clad figure on the stallion’s back.
“It was a rider,” Kate said breathlessly, sitting forward in her saddle for a clearer view of the now almost invisible herd.
“Don’t be silly—” Carole said, dismissing the claim.
“Pure silvery white, just like the horse,” Lisa said.…
Read all the Saddle Club books!
Horse Crazy
Horse Shy
Horse Sense
Horse Power
Trail Mates
Dude Ranch
Horse Play
Horse Show
Hoof Beat
Riding Camp
Horse Wise
Rodeo Rider
Starlight Christmas
Sea Horse
Team Play
Horse Games
Horsenapped
Pack Trip
Star Rider
Snow Ride
Racehorse
Fox Hunt
Horse Trouble
Ghost Rider
Copyright © 1992 by Bonnie Bryant Hiller
Cover art copyright © 1992 by Garin Baker
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
“The Saddle Club” is a registered trademark of Bonnie Bryant Hiller.
“USPC” and “Pony Club” are registered trademarks of the United States Pony Clubs, Inc., at The Kentucky Horse Park, 4071 Iron Works Pike, Lexington, KY 40511-8462.
Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-82505-6
Originally published by Bantam Skylark in October 1992
First Delacorte Ebook Edition 2012
v3.1_r1
With special thanks for inspiration to the Usual Suspects: Nicole and Marilyn
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
About the Author
MUSIC SWELLED TO a crescendo, overwhelming the persistent flow of water. There was a flicker of light, barely perceptible through the cheap shower curtain. The bathroom door opened. And closed.
Swish! The shower curtain was thrust aside and in its stead appeared the long carving knife, which struck its target again and again. Dull, dark blood flowed mercilessly down the drain.
“IT’S ONLY CHOCOLATE syrup, Dad!” Carole Hanson reminded her father as she sat down in the chair next to his.
“That may be, but it’s scary chocolate syrup,” Colonel Hanson said to her. He hefted a handful of popcorn from the bowl and munched happily, his eyes glued to the television.
Carole and her father were deeply involved in one of their favorite activities: watching an old movie together. This time, since it was almost Halloween, their choice was the Alfred Hitchcock classic thriller, Psycho. Carole had read all about how the “murder” in the old black-and-white movie had been staged by dripping chocolate syrup, instead of blood, into the shower. But, knowing that didn’t take away from the tension, even for Carole, who closed her eyes. Her father was right: It was scary chocolate syrup.
The phone rang.
Carole was so startled by the interruption that she jumped. Then she laughed and so did her father.
“It’s got to be a wrong number,” he said. “Nobody who knows us would consider calling when Psycho is on television.”
The ringing continued. “I’ll get it,” Carole volunteered. “I can’t see this part anyway. My eyes are shut too tightly.”
Colonel Hanson barely seemed to notice Carole’s departure. She picked up the phone in the kitchen and said, “Hello.”
“Carole, we need your help!” a familiar voice greeted her over the phone. It took Carole a few seconds to recognize the voice of her friend, Kate Devine. Kate and her family ran a dude ranch in the Southwest, two thousand miles from the suburb of Washington, D.C., where Carole and her father lived. It was hard to imagine what help Carole could be expected to give from such a distance.
“Sure,” Carole agreed. “What can I do?”
“Well, it mostly has to do with my mother,” Kate began. She was talking very fast because she was very excited. And because Carole was being flooded with information, it took her a few minutes to get the drift of it all, but when she did, she was so excited that she began speaking very fast, too.
“You mean you want us to come out there?” she asked. “To help your mother give a party? Of course, it’s for a good cause.…”
It turned out that Kate’s mother, Phyllis, had volunteered to be in charge of a Halloween Fair for all the children of Two Mile Creek—the town where The Bar None Dude Ranch was located—and the money the party made was going to be used to help create an after-school program for the Native American children who went to the local reservation school.
“There was a great activity center there,” Kate explained, “but it burned down over the summer. The kids don’t have any place to go. They’ve had to cancel the whole program. The trouble is that Mom doesn’t know the first thing about running something like that. Then when I told her how The Saddle Club had helped Stevie run her school fair, well, she just about insisted.…”
Carole smiled, remembering. The Saddle Club was made up of Carole and her best friends—Stevie Lake and Lisa Atwood—but it also had some out-of-town members. Kate and her friend Christine Lonetree were two of them. The club had two requirements: The members had to be horse crazy, and they had to be willing to help one another whenever they needed it. Sometimes the help had to do with horses and horseback riding. Sometimes it had to do with schoolwork. Sometimes it even had to do with running school fairs. Now it appeared it was going to have to do with Halloween.
Stevie, Lisa, and Carole had visited the Devines’ dude ranch several times. Kate’s father, Frank, had been in the Marine Corps with Carole’s father, and he was a pilot who occasionally flew a private plane. Whenever he came through Washington, he liked to combine the trip with a visit for his daughter and her friends. This time, Kate explained, her mom was planning to send him to pick up the girls.
“Wow. She really needs help, doesn’t she?” Carole asked, now laughing at the thought that somebody as capable as Phyllis needed The Saddle Club to come to her aid. “You can count on us, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” Kate said. She paused, then added, “There’s something else.…”
“What?” Carole asked, immediately feeling curious.
But Kate wasn’t about to reveal anything. “I’ll tell you about it when you get here,” she replied.
Now Carole was even more curious, but she could tell that Kate was going to make her wait. She just had to find out what was going on, and that meant she wa
s just going to have to convince her father, as well as Stevie’s and Lisa’s parents, to let them all go. They would have to miss three days of school; that would take some real convincing. Carole’s mind raced. She’d found that spending time with Stevie meant she was learning to be a little bit devious, just as Stevie was. She had an idea.
“Hmm, school,” Carole said. “I think your mother will be more convincing than I will be. Why don’t we put her on the phone with my dad and let her do the work?”
“Great idea,” Kate said. “I’ll get her now.”
“Hold it,” said Carole. “On second thought, we’d better wait until after Dad finishes watching the movie that’s on. I’ll have him call back, okay?”
Kate understood. “I saw that Psycho is on television tonight. But it’s not on until later here. If I’d known …”
Carole laughed. Her father was famous for his passion for old movies. “Don’t worry. We’ll call.”
Carole finished her conversation with Kate and returned to the living room, where her father was gripping the arms of his chair as tightly as he had been when she’d left. She smiled to herself, even more certain that she’d done the right thing by not interrupting the movie. Idly Colonel Hanson passed the popcorn to his daughter, and they finished watching Psycho together.
As soon as it was over, however, she explained the situation.
“Three days of school?” her father said when she finished. “You’d need to miss three whole days?”
“But, Dad, it’s for a good cause,” Carole reminded him. She liked the sound of the phrase. It was true, and she felt it would be persuasive. “And remember, I have to do a certain number of hours of community service for school anyway. And, besides, one of those days is a teacher convention, so it’s only two days that I would miss. Also, as you know, I’ve already finished my term project, due at the end of that week, and the class is bound to be spending a lot of time on that, so school would just be a waste of time for me anyway.” She paused to take a breath. “But if you are still worried about my missing the days, remember that we’re studying immigration in the U.S. this year and the effect it’s had on the land. You can’t deny that what’s happened to the Native Americans is related to that, so I’ll have the chance to study the whole time I’m at The Bar None.”
Colonel Hanson started laughing. “Very good,” he said. “And when did you complete your study of persuasive rhetoric?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, you’re doing a good job of presenting a solid argument with interesting facts to support your position. I’m impressed.”
“Da-ad …”
As far as Carole was concerned, her father was the most terrific man in the world. They had always been close but had become even more so since the death of Carole’s mother a few years before. They often joked and teased one another, and though Carole usually enjoyed it, she didn’t think it was funny when something as important as three days off from school and a trip to The Bar None were at stake.
“I’ll talk with Phyllis,” Colonel Hanson said, sensing that this was what Carole really needed him to do.
It was all she could ask.
A few hours later it was all set, and Carole could barely believe her good luck. Neither could Stevie and Lisa. Somehow Phyllis Devine’s call for help from The Saddle Club had struck a chord in everyone’s parents, and they all had agreed. Each parent insisted on clearing it with the schools, but the girls were confident that if they kept repeating the sentence, “It’s for a good cause,” the schools would see the wisdom of letting the girls go.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Stevie squeaked into the phone.
“Fabulous!” Lisa agreed.
“Exciting,” Carole added.
Stevie’s family had signed up for a special telephone service that would let somebody talk to two people at once. The girls all agreed that it seemed custom-designed for telephone meetings of The Saddle Club. Her parents were beginning to think that the service had been custom-designed to make their telephone bill go through the ceiling, but as long as Stevie pitched in to pay for the phone bill, they didn’t seem to mind.
“I’ve got zillions of ideas for a great Halloween party,” Stevie said. “I mean, of course, we’ll have a horror house, and then there should be a contest of some kind—like how about one where you guess the number of candy corns in a jar—and then there can be a pumpkin-carving table.…”
“Can we have kids decorate cupcakes?” Lisa asked. She was quite artistic and always enjoyed making things.
“And we should definitely offer pony rides,” Carole said. Although all three of the girls were horse crazy, Carole was the horse craziest. She had a way of bringing horses into everything she did. Her friends liked that about her.
“There should be a costume contest, too,” Lisa said. “And a parade.”
“Definitely a parade,” Stevie agreed. “And we can lead it.”
“What should we wear?” Lisa asked.
“You sound like Veronica diAngelo,” Stevie said. “That’s all she ever thinks about. Are you catching it from her?” Veronica was a snobbish rich girl who also rode at Pine Hollow. She was always more concerned about how she looked than how she rode. That was definitely not how Stevie, Lisa, and Carole thought about riding.
“I don’t mean that we should go out West dressed as fashion plates,” Lisa said. “I mean that if it’s a Halloween party, we’re going to need costumes. Frankly, I’m tired of being a ballerina every Halloween.”
“Is that what you were?” Stevie said. “You’re so lucky! The only costumes we ever have around this place are leftover pirate outfits from my brothers.”
“And it seems like I’m always going as a noncommissioned officer,” Carole lamented. Colonel Hanson seemed to have unlimited access to leftover Marine Corps uniforms.
“Come on, girls, we can do better than this,” Lisa said.
“Hmmmm,” Stevie said. It was a sign that her scheming mind was working. “Why don’t we use Veronica as an inspiration?”
“Ugh,” Carole said.
“And go as models? Dressed in designer clothes our parents can’t afford?”
“No, that’s not what I mean at all,” said Stevie. “You know how Veronica is always accusing us of being goody-goodies for Max?” Max was the owner of Pine Hollow. Stevie, Lisa, and Carole always wanted to please him because that meant they were learning more about horses, but only Veronica would have called them goody-goodies. “You know how she even calls us the three blind mice?”
There was a brief silence while Lisa and Carole figured out what was on Stevie’s mind.
“Great idea!” Lisa said. “All we’ll need are some gray sweats.”
“Hooded shirts that we can put ears on …,” Carole suggested.
“Whiskers!” Stevie added.
“Add sunglasses, a cane, and, voilà! There you have three blind mice.”
“Stevie, you’re brilliant,” Lisa said.
“It was nothing,” Stevie said. “Just the logical thing to do. Well, just the logical thing for a genius to do.…”
“And so modest,” Lisa teased.
“I have to be careful, though,” Stevie said. “I can’t use up all of my genius tonight.”
“Are you afraid you’re about to run out?” Lisa asked.
“Not really. It’s just that I’m going to need inspiration. See, my parents said I have to be the one to talk Miss Fenton into letting me out of school for three days next week.”
Lisa and Carole laughed. If there was ever anybody who was an expert at talking a grown-up into letting her do something the grown-up really didn’t think she ought to do, it was Stevie.
“I don’t think there’s any danger of your running out of genius for that,” Carole said.
“Just tell her it’s for a good cause,” Lisa suggested.
“… AND, MISS FENTON, it’s for a good cause,” Stevie found herself saying the next morning. She was standing in Miss Fenton�
�s office, trying to sound sincere. She was sincere. She meant everything she had said, even the part about making up missed work before returning to school on Monday. She just wanted to be sure she sounded as sincere as she felt.
Miss Fenton cleared her throat. Stevie didn’t think that was a good sign. “All right, now, Stephanie, let me see if I’ve got this straight.”
The fact that Miss Fenton was calling her by her full name also wasn’t a good sign. Nobody ever called her Stephanie unless there was trouble.
“You are promising to do all the work you miss and an extra report about the value of community service, so that you and your friends can take three days off from school to travel two thousand miles to give a party?”
“And it’s for a good cause,” Stevie added again.
Miss Fenton sighed. That was definitely not a good sign. “Well, the only thing I can say is that, considering what you’ve done at Fenton Hall in the name of good causes, I hope these poor people know what they’re in for!”
It took Stevie a second to realize that she’d actually been given permission to go. “Oh, they do, Miss Fenton, they do!”
Then Miss Fenton laughed and shook Stevie’s hand. “Good luck, Stevie,” she said. “It sounds to me as if you’ve got an opportunity to make a special contribution to a worthy cause. I wouldn’t think of standing in your way, and I can’t wait to read your report. Next Monday morning.”
The significance of the last sentence was not lost on Stevie. She smiled, nodded, and dashed out of Miss Fenton’s office. She didn’t want to wait around for Miss Fenton to have a change of heart!
WHENEVER THE GIRLS arrived at The Bar None, they got a warm greeting, but this one was particularly warm. The look on Phyllis Devine’s face when The Saddle Club came into view was total relief.
“I thought you’d never get here!” she exclaimed, hugging all three girls at once.
The girls laughed. “You can count on us,” Stevie promised. “Anytime. I mean anytime it’s going to get me out of school for three days! Now here’s what I’ve got planned.”
Ideas poured out of Stevie the way water flowed over Niagara Falls. The girls hadn’t even put their suitcases down before Stevie got to the horror house, which was going to be completely dark and very scary.
Ghost Rider Page 1