Before They Rode Horses

by Bonnie Bryant

  MEET

  THE SADDLE CLUB

  Horse lover CAROLE …

  Practical joker STEVIE …

  Straight-A LISA …

  #1 HORSE CRAZY

  #2 HORSE SHY

  #3 HORSE SENSE

  #4 HORSE POWER

  #5 TRAIL MATES

  #6 DUDE RANCH

  #7 HORSE PLAY

  #8 HORSE SHOW

  #9 HOOF BEAT

  #10 RIDING CAMP

  #11 HORSE WISE

  #12 RODEO RIDER

  #13 STARLIGHT CHRISTMAS

  #14 SEA HORSE

  #15 TEAM PLAY

  #16 HORSE GAMES

  #17 HORSENAPPED

  #18 PACK TRIP

  #19 STAR RIDER

  #20 SNOW RIDE

  #21 RACEHORSE

  #22 FOX HUNT

  #23 HORSE TROUBLE

  #24 GHOST RIDER

  #25 SHOW HORSE

  #26 BEACH RIDE

  #27 BRIDLE PATH

  #28 STABLE MANNERS

  #29 RANCH HANDS

  #30 AUTUMN TRAIL

  #31 HAYRIDE

  #32 CHOCOLATE HORSE

  #33 HIGH HORSE

  #34 HAY FEVER

  #35 HORSE TALE

  #36 RIDING LESSON

  #37 STAGE COACH

  #38 HORSE TRADE

  #39 PUREBRED

  #40 GIFT HORSE

  #41 STABLE WITCH

  #42 SADDLEBAGS

  #43 PHOTO FINISH

  #44 HORSESHOE

  #45 STABLE GROOM

  #46 FLYING HORSE

  #47 HORSE MAGIC

  #48 MYSTERY RIDE

  #49 STABLE FAREWELL

  #50 YANKEE SWAP

  #51 PLEASURE HORSE

  #52 RIDING CLASS

  #53 HORSE-SITTERS

  #54 GOLD MEDAL RIDER

  #55 GOLD MEDAL HORSE

  #56 CUTTING HORSE

  #57 TIGHT REIN

  LIFE WITHOUT HORSES?

  “What were we talking about before my contraction started?” Deborah asked.

  “Not we—you,” Carole said. “You were talking about the time before we rode horses.”

  “That’s it, then,” said Deborah. “I don’t want you to beat me at Scrabble with horse words. I don’t want you to read to me from your horse books. I want each of you to tell me a real-life story that really happened to you.”

  “Great,” said Stevie. “There was the time Belle and I—”

  “No. I want to hear stories that don’t have anything to do with horses.”

  “What for?” Carole asked.

  “Well, my baby is going to be surrounded by horses and horse talk all of his life. Horses are fun, but they aren’t everything. I’d like to know that somehow, something other than horses was ever important to the three of you. I’ve got to admit that I find the idea that I’m about to be a mother even scarier than the idea that I’m about to have a baby. So, I need some help. I know I can always get help from you about horses. Give me some help about mothering.”

  The girls looked at one another.

  “No horses?” Carole asked.

  “Not a one,” Deborah said.

  There was a long silence.

  RL 5, 009–012

  BEFORE THEY RODE HORSES

  A Bantam Skylark Book/May 1997

  Skylark Books is a registered trademark of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and elsewhere.

  “The Saddle Club” is a registered trademark of Bonnie Bryant Hiller. The Saddle Club design/logo, which consists of a riding crop and a riding hat, is a trademark of Bantam Books.

  “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.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1997 by Bonnie Bryant Hiller.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82561-2

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  In memory of my parents—

  Metzer and Emmons Bryant—

  who knew me

  before I rode horses

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books in This Series

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Saddle Sore

  “DON’T WORRY, MAX, we’ll take care of everything,” Stevie Lake said. She was talking to Max Regnery, the owner of Pine Hollow Stables and her riding instructor. “The whole place is in the hands of The Saddle Club!”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Max said. There was a twinkle in his eye, though. “If I leave you girls in charge, I never know what I’ll find when I get back!”

  Pine Hollow was the place Stevie and her two best friends, Carole Hanson and Lisa Atwood, loved best in the world because it was all about one thing: horses.

  Stevie (short for Stephanie), Carole, and Lisa were three very different girls who had one very big thing in common. They loved horses. The girls loved horses so much that they’d formed The Saddle Club. The club had only two rules. Members had to be horse-crazy—that was the easy part—and they had to be willing to help whenever help was needed, even if the person getting help didn’t know that they needed help.

  In this case, the person they were helping knew he needed help. Max and his mother, called Mrs. Reg by all the riders, were going to a full-day Pony Club instructor’s meeting and had to be away from Pine Hollow until late that night. The regular stable hand, Red O’Malley, was away at his girlfriend’s college graduation. That left Max’s wife, Deborah, in charge of the house and the stables.

  There were two problems with that. The first was that Deborah didn’t know much about horses. She was learning as fast as she could (with some help from The Saddle Club), but the amount she didn’t know was much larger than the amount she did know.

  The second problem was that Deborah was going to have a baby. The baby was due in another month. Although she’d had an uneventful pregnancy, she was very big and she didn’t move easily. She’d definitely need help to look after the stable for a day. The Saddle Club had volunteered. They were trying to convince Max that he didn’t have a thing to worry about.

  “Look, have we ever let you down?” Lisa asked.

  Stevie nudged her sharply. “Bad question,” she whispered.

  “Well … there was the time …” Max’s voice trailed off.

  “We fixed that before you got back,” Stevie said hastily.

  “… and then I remember a certain bucket of paint …”

  “It came out!” Lisa reminded him.

  “… and that time with the saddles …”

  “Nobody was using those anyway!” Carole protested.

  Max looked at his mother. “Maybe we’d better cancel,” he said. He sounded serious,
but the girls knew he was joking. Not only were they horse-crazy, but they were also horse wise, and Max knew he could trust them. He and his mother hugged Deborah and wished her good luck “in the hands of The Saddle Club.” They waved as their car pulled out of the driveway.

  They were almost to the road when Max put the car in reverse and backed up.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind,” Stevie said into the open window.

  “No, I just remembered that I forgot to tell you that Judy is stopping by later on. I want her to take a look at Patch. He seems to be favoring his left hind foot,” Max said.

  “We’ll keep an eye out for her,” Carole promised.

  Judy Barker was the vet who looked after all of Pine Hollow’s horses. She had taught the girls everything they knew about equine health. She was a regular visitor to their Pony Club meetings and a great teacher.

  Finally, the car pulled out of the driveway, turned onto the road, and kept going.

  “Alone,” said Deborah.

  “At last!” said Lisa.

  “I thought they’d never go,” said Stevie.

  “We’ve got some work to do,” said Carole.

  “So do I,” said Deborah. “I’ve got an article to finish.”

  Deborah was an investigative reporter for a newspaper in nearby Washington, D.C. She sometimes went to her office, but more often these days, she worked from home, sending her articles into the paper straight from her computer.

  The girls told Deborah they’d check on her when they were done with their chores. Deborah was more than happy to let them do the stable work while she took care of her own.

  “There are four stalls that need mucking out,” Lisa said. “We should do that first because it’s the most unpleasant chore. Then we can give water and hay to all the horses. Then, Mrs. Reg left a note about some saddles that need soaping, and after that—”

  “After that, we’ll need a break,” said Stevie. By “break,” she meant a trail ride in the woods behind the stables. The girls liked everything about horses and riding, but they liked trail rides the best.

  “Unless Patch needs some help from us,” said Carole. They agreed to check on Patch before they went out on the trail.

  In minutes, the three of them were all mucking out stalls. The girls were devoted to horses and didn’t mind doing even the most unpleasant job, as long as it was for a horse. They agreed that riding was a privilege granted by the horse in exchange for caretaking. To them, mucking out a stall, wrapping a sore leg, or hauling a bale of hay was a very small price to pay for all the fun of riding.

  It was typical of the three of them that Lisa had organized the work schedule, that Stevie had figured out when they’d start to have fun, and that Carole would remind her friends that their fun would begin only when they were sure they had done everything the horses could possibly have needed from them.

  Lisa was the most organized of the three girls. Stevie sometimes teased her, saying that she probably dreamed in alphabetical order. Lisa told her she’d tried that once, but when she got to h for horse, she’d lost track of the alphabet. She was always neatly dressed, never made a mess and never seemed to get her clothes wrinkled. Her report card was very dull, according to Stevie, because it had nothing but As on it (Stevie’s was often dangerously colorful, by comparison). Lisa was the oldest of the three friends, but she’d been riding for the shortest time. However, she was such an apt pupil at riding, as with everything else, that she was nearly as good as her two friends. Lisa’s mother was of the opinion that a properly raised young lady had many skills, and as a result Lisa had taken lessons in dance, painting, music, and even knitting. It seemed that no matter how many activities her mother loaded on her, Lisa always managed to do each of them well. But she liked riding the best and always found a way to make time for doing it with her two best friends.

  While Lisa was an expert in everything she did, Carole focused all of her efforts on horses. Of the three girls, she was the horse-craziest. She’d known from the first time she’d been on a horse that all she ever wanted to do in her life was to be with horses. When she grew up, she’d work with them. Sometimes she thought she’d be a trainer. Then the next day, she’d decide to be a vet. Or maybe she’d be a show rider, or perhaps a breeder, or a trader, or maybe— She simply couldn’t pick one. For now, she’d decided to be all of them.

  While Carole never forgot a detail having to do with horses and their riding and care and stable management, she often forget details about the rest of her life. If she went on a trip, she always packed her riding clothes, but she might leave her toothbrush, nightgown, or shoes behind. When she left the house in the morning, she might leave her book bag on the kitchen table, but the backpack that held her riding gear never left her side!

  Carole lived with her father, a colonel in the Marine Corps. Almost all her life, she and her family had moved wherever the Marine Corps had sent them. It hadn’t been easy on Carole or her mother, but they’d learned to adjust to their new homes. Then, finally, her father had been stationed at Quantico, outside of Washington, and they’d known this would be where they would stay for a long time. They’d bought a house—the first time they’d ever owned a house off a base—and they’d settled in Willow Creek. That was when Carole had started riding at Pine Hollow. It was a wonderfully happy time until Carole’s mother had gotten ill with cancer. She had died of it soon after.

  During her mother’s illness and after her death, Carole had found that the only place she could be content was with horses. She somehow managed to put all her worry and sadness aside when she was in the saddle, concentrating completely on the one thing she could count on, the one thing that would never change in her life—her love of horses.

  While Lisa was serious about everything and Carole was serious about horses, it sometimes seemed to the two of them that Stevie was serious about only one thing: fun. Stevie was famous for her weird sense of humor and her passion for pranks and practical jokes. Not everybody agreed with Stevie’s idea of fun, and the result was that she spent a lot of time in hot water. That had merely honed her abilities to get out of it. Her teachers sometimes complained that she spent more time in the principal’s office than she did in class. She assured everyone that that was a wild exaggeration and, if the principal would just listen more attentively while Stevie explained things, it wouldn’t take nearly as much time.

  Stevie’s parents were both lawyers working in Washington. Stevie had three brothers: an older brother named Chad, a twin brother named Alex, and a younger brother named Michael. Being the only girl wasn’t always easy, and Stevie often relied on her resourceful imagination to figure out how to get back at them when they teased her or played jokes on her. It didn’t always make for peace at home, but—much to her parents’ consternation—there was never a dull moment at the Lake household.

  As Stevie had become expert at getting herself into trouble, she’d also gotten pretty good at taking her friends along with her. Carole and Lisa never knew what was going to happen when Stevie came up with one of her harebrained schemes. Stevie was fond of pointing out to them that, more often than not, her schemes worked. She had accomplished some pretty amazing things with her pranks and jokes. She’d also spent more time than she usually recalled being grounded for them.

  The one thing the girls always agreed on was that they loved horses. Stevie and Carole each had her own horse. Carole’s, a half-Thoroughbred bay gelding, was named Starlight for the nearly perfect six-pointed star on his forehead. Her father had given him to her for Christmas one year, and Carole was convinced he was the best Christmas present anyone could ever have.

  Stevie’s horse, Belle, was an Arabian-Saddlebred mix. She was sweet and spirited just like Stevie and even sometimes got into trouble. Belle had an allergy to certain weeds that seemed to taste good—at least to her—so whenever the girls rode, Stevie had to be sure Belle didn’t get anywhere near temptation. Stevie was happy to do whatever was necessary to pr
otect her beloved horse.

  Lisa didn’t own a horse. Part of her wanted badly to own one, but another part of her knew that she was still a relatively new rider, and it was good for her to have the experience of riding a lot of different horses. Most of the time, she rode a Thoroughbred mare named Prancer that belonged to the stable. Prancer had retired from the racetrack when she’d developed a weakness in her legs that had ended her racing career, but that didn’t impede her quality as a hackney at Pine Hollow. Lisa was sure, too, that Prancer would make a great show horse eventually, and she was bound and determined to be the rider who won Prancer’s first blue ribbon.

  “Done!” Stevie called out from Nero’s stall.

  “Me too, almost,” Lisa announced as she peered out the doorway of Prancer’s stall. “I just have to make the bedding more even.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” Stevie offered.

  With a few quick, smooth strokes, the job was done. The girls led Prancer back into her fresh clean stall and latched the door.

  “Why don’t you bring in a bale of hay and distribute it while I clean Penny’s stall?” Carole suggested.

  The girls divided their tasks naturally and helped one another easily as they finished up the chores. When the last stall was clean and every horse and pony in the stable had fresh hay and water, the three of them went to check on Patch.

  Patch was one of their favorite lesson horses. He was a black-and-white paint gelding that a lot of new riders started on at Pine Hollow. Carole clipped a lead line on his halter and patted his neck affectionately.

  “Come on, boy, let’s take a look at that foot of yours before Judy gets here.”

  Patch’s ears perked up curiously as she talked. He always responded to kindness. It was one of the things that made him a favorite.

  Carole tugged gently. Patch stepped gingerly out of the stall. Stevie watched his feet; Lisa watched his head and his ears; Carole listened.

  There was no mistake about it. Something was wrong with his foot or leg. Lisa saw his ears go back when he put weight on the sore foot. Stevie saw him pull the foot off the floor as soon as he could transfer weight to his other feet. Carole heard Patch’s uneven footsteps as he moved forward.