“He’s been acting up, very frisky,” she told Nigel with a little frown.
“Isn’t that good?” Carole asked.
I was wondering the same thing. I’d always thought it was good to have a lively, fresh horse just before a performance.
“Not necessarily,” Nigel said. “And not in this horse. Elementary is a very staid and steady performer. What’s significant here is that his behavior is different.”
That made sense. We watched while Nigel and Camilla checked over the horse carefully. They couldn’t find any problems, so they decided it was probably nothing—though Camilla still looked kind of worried as she took the horse out of his stall for a warm-up walk.
After saying hello to Nigel’s horse, Majesty, we left the riders to their preparations and returned to our seats. Before long, the show began. The whole evening was fun, but the later it got, the more I was looking forward to the final event of the evening, the Gambler’s Choice.
Finally it came. After all the jumps were set up, the riders came out to walk the course.
As we watched, Max told us about the rules. “Unlike most jump courses, this one doesn’t have a specified order that the riders have to follow,” he explained.
“Instead, each jump has a point value, and the riders can choose whatever jumps they like. They can go over any jump up to two times during the first fifty seconds. Then, when the buzzer rings, they have fifteen seconds in which to decide whether they want to try The Joker.”
Mrs. Reg nodded. “If they try and miss, they lose. If they make it, they get seventy points.”
“If they don’t attempt The Joker, they aren’t penalized,” Max continued. “But they aren’t likely to have enough points to win, either.”
“Look, there’s Nigel!” I said a moment later, pointing. Nigel had spotted us, too. He came over to say hello and tell us that he would ride seventeenth.
A couple of minutes later, just as the riders were leaving the ring, Dorothy came to join us at our seats and tell us the same thing. “He’ll be the first member of his team to go,” she added. “They all drew high numbers.”
Soon the event began. It took a few of the riders going through the course for me and my friends to get used to how it worked. We’d all seen plenty of jumping before, but never that daring and never that fast. And never that good, either.
They had to be good. Each rider was pressed for time, trying to make as many high-valued jumps as possible in the first fifty seconds. In most jumping events, if a horse knocks down a rail on a fence, there are penalty deductions. In the Gambler’s Choice event, it just means that the rider and horse don’t receive any points for the fence, and that’s bad enough. Most of the riders concentrated on the twenty-five- and thirty-point jumps, since a lot of them seemed to have trouble with the one forty-pointer. There was also one ten-point jump that was right on the way to a thirty-pointer, so most of the riders went over that one, too.
Each time the buzzer announced the end of the first fifty seconds, there was a breathless silence in the arena as we all waited to see whether the rider would try The Joker. It loomed far higher than any of the other jumps—over six feet tall. Because the riders didn’t stand a chance if they didn’t try it, most did. But not more than half who tried made it over.
Finally it was Nigel’s turn. I don’t think Dorothy took a breath the entire time he was in the ring. Nigel chose a daring course, taking all the hardest jumps. His horse, Majesty, seemed to fly over every obstacle. He was wonderful. He was even more wonderful as he soared over The Joker without so much as nicking the top rail!
We all stood and applauded when he had finished. Nigel had scored very well and was certainly in the running for a ribbon.
After another couple of riders had gone, it was Camilla Wentworth’s turn. She entered the ring on Elementary, still looking a bit worried as he pranced and tossed his head friskily. Most of the audience probably had no idea that there was anything wrong with the horse. He looked perfectly fine—no more lively than many of the other horses. But there was something wrong, and it soon became obvious. Elementary fought Camilla at one jump and stopped dead in his tracks, refusing the next. Camilla turned the horse around and retreated about fifteen feet before trying again. This time, instead of just stopping, Elementary bucked and then reared. He yanked his head to one side.
Camilla did everything she could to stay in the saddle, and in the end she managed to do that. But the violent yanking of the horse’s head had pulled very hard at her left arm. Her right hand kept a firm grip on the reins, but the left one dropped limply to her side and hung there.
I guess Camilla was lucky she wasn’t hurt more seriously. But I was sure she was disappointed as she left the arena, unable to complete her round.
“Is she going to be okay?” Stevie asked worriedly.
“I’m sure she is,” Dorothy replied reassuringly. “Looks like she dislocated her arm. It hurts like crazy when that happens, but she’ll be as good as new and back in the saddle in a couple of weeks or a …”
Her voice trailed off and a look of alarm crossed her face.
“Oh no!” she exclaimed. “I’ve got to go see Nigel!” Without another word, she stood and raced away.
The rest of us looked at each other in confusion.
“I guess that’s what it’s like when you’re engaged,” Stevie said philosophically. “When you’ve got to see the man you love, there’s just no stopping you.”
We returned our attention to the ring as the next rider entered. In the end, Nigel took third place. That meant he’d won a nice cash prize that we figured would help to pay for his upcoming honeymoon.
We were a little disappointed that we didn’t get to see Nigel and Dorothy again before we left. “You’ll see them tomorrow,” Max reminded us. “When they bring Geronimo to his new home.”
We didn’t get much sleep that night. Stevie kept us up late—or maybe I should say early, since it was the wee hours of the morning before she let us go to bed. When she woke me up at six the next morning, I wasn’t sure I’d actually been to sleep at all.
Stevie put us to work as soon as we arrived at Pine Hollow at six-thirty. We worked on the flowers first, turning the grape arbor near the stallion’s paddock into a beautiful floral bower. I had to admit, it looked fantastic when we got it done.
Meanwhile, we were still sneaking around to keep anyone from guessing what we were really up to. We kept a close watch for Mrs. Reg, who arrived at seven-thirty—with Dorothy.
“She’s probably here to sign the papers to sell Geronimo,” Carole whispered, peeking into the office from the tack room, where we were still working on our flower chains.
That seemed logical, until we heard the distinct sound of crying coming from the office. We doubted that Dorothy was crying because she was going to miss Geronimo, but we couldn’t think of any other possible reason. So we cocked our ears and strained to hear what was going on.
That wasn’t good enough for Stevie, though. After a few minutes she ran out of patience and marched into the office. “What happened?” she asked. Carole and I followed her into the office a bit more tentatively. I was afraid that Dorothy might not want us barging in, but she hardly seemed to notice.
“It’s Camilla,” she began before bursting into fresh tears.
“I thought she was going to be all right,” I said. “It’s just a dislocated shoulder, isn’t it?”
“Did something happen to Elementary?” Carole added.
It took a while, but Dorothy finally collected herself enough to explain the situation. “They’re both okay. Elementary is just fine, and Camilla will be fine in six weeks. The problem is that Camilla won’t be able to ride and the team is competing in some very important shows during those weeks. They just can’t be a person short. That means they have to use the alternates, but there are only two qualified alternates at the moment, and one of them is eight months pregnant and can’t ride at all.”
“So, what abo
ut the other one?” I asked.
Dorothy’s eyes started to tear up again. “The other one was to replace Nigel while we got married and went on our h-h-honeymoon.”
Finally we understood. Because Camilla could no longer ride, Nigel had to. That also meant he would have to fly off to Italy in a few days—and the wedding wasn’t scheduled until the following weekend.
Carole spoke up tentatively. “Why can’t you get married before next weekend?”
Dorothy blew her nose. “We can, of course, but it was going to be such a beautiful wedding. It wasn’t going to be big, but it was going to be at my stable, and it was going to be so nice. I think that’s what bothers me the most. We can reschedule our honeymoon.”
“It’s the wedding part,” Stevie said sympathetically. “I know how it is. A girl dreams about her wedding for years. She plans it from earliest girlhood—the most important day of her life—and you can’t stand the idea that all your dreams of a perfect wedding have been dashed against the rocks of misfortune.”
Carole and I turned to stare at Stevie. When she started talking that way, it usually meant she was up to something. I saw Carole glance at the flowers she still held in her hand, and all of a sudden I had the funniest feeling that she and I had both just guessed what was in Stevie’s mind.
Meanwhile, Stevie was still talking. “Some girls want to have big church weddings with thousands of guests,” she said. “Others like the idea of a small chapel, maybe outdoors, with a few close friends. Others, like you, want to be surrounded by the people and the creatures they love best …”
Dorothy was nodding. “Yes, I really wanted to get married at my stable.”
“How about Max’s instead?” Stevie asked.
“Here?”
“And now,” Stevie said.
“Now?” Dorothy looked confused. So did Mrs. Reg.
Stevie glanced at her watch. “Well, maybe around ten o’clock when the chairs will be set up and the food will have arrived. You do like apple slices and sugar lumps, don’t you?”
“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Reg asked.
I grinned, liking Stevie’s new idea a lot. A whole lot. “Can’t you tell?” I told Mrs. Reg, doing my best to keep from bursting into excited laughter. “We’re planning a wedding!”
It took some explaining, but once Mrs. Reg remembered that it was April Fools’ Day, she suddenly seemed a lot more willing to believe us. Dorothy was another matter. She didn’t seem to understand that we were serious about having her wedding right then and there. When Nigel arrived, we had to explain the whole thing again to him.
And when Judge Gavin arrived, suddenly the whole thing fell into place. You see, the one thing missing from Stevie’s new scheme was someone to perform the ceremony. But the judge was perfectly qualified—and perfectly willing to preside at an impromptu wedding.
Finally, Dorothy and Nigel were convinced that it could actually work. And that’s how we ended up having a real, honest-to-goodness, no-April-fooling wedding at Pine Hollow yesterday!
It was wonderful. Stevie, Carole, and I got to be the last-minute bridesmaids. Max was the spur-of-the-moment best man. And best of all, we were all on horseback. Nigel rode Comanche. Dorothy was aboard Pepper, who came out of retirement for the occasion. Even Judge Gavin was in the saddle, on Delilah. One of the best things of all was that Geronimo, the new stallion, came to the corner of his paddock to see what was going on. So it was almost as if he and Delilah were also getting married!
And in the end, thanks to Stevie’s attention to detail, we all threw oats at the happy couple—instead of the more traditional rice. It was the perfect ending to a perfect wedding.
I guess Dorothy and Nigel thought it was pretty perfect, too. Because they left a note for us with Max. He gave it to us when we went over there this morning for a quick trail ride. I begged my friends to let me keep it and paste it in here, and they agreed. Here it is …
Dear brilliant and creative Saddle Club girls,
Thank you, thank you, a million times thank you for our marvelous wedding! It wasn’t exactly the way we expected to tie the knot, but that made it even more magical. Just when we were sure that all hope was lost, you three came along and solved all our problems. And you made it all so much fun! I don’t know how we’ll ever manage to thank you properly, but you’ve really made a difference in our new life together. We’ll never forget our magical wedding day—or the quick-thinking girls who made it all possible!
Lots of love,
Nigel and Dorothy (Mr. and Mrs.)
LOCAL JUDGE PRESIDES AT HORSEBACK WEDDING
by E. J. Smith, special to The Willow Creek Gazette
Some people dream of a wedding on a tropical island, others of tying the knot on a mountain-top or in a field of wildflowers or … on horseback? That last option is just what a visiting couple got at Pine Hollow Stables, a local riding establishment.
It seems that Dorothy DeSoto, a well-known trainer, and Nigel Hawthorne, a member of the British Equestrian Team, were in the area participating in the Washington Horse Show. The couple had planned their nuptials for next week at Ms. DeSoto’s New York stable, but professional obligations required them to reschedule in a hurry. That’s when several local girls, students at Pine Hollow, stepped in to help.
Ms. Stephanie Lake, who attends Fenton Hall, was by all accounts the mastermind of the last-minute wedding plans. She was ably assisted by her friends Lisa Atwood and Carole Hanson, both students at Willow Creek Middle School. The trio provided flowers, music, food, and even guests for the wedding. They also provided horses on which both bride and groom trotted down the aisle (with permission from stable owner Maximillian Regnery III). The only thing the enterprising friends were missing was someone to perform the ceremony, and that’s when well-known local judge Martin Gavin, who enjoys riding at Pine Hollow, stepped in and graciously volunteered to do the honors. Once the judge was on board, the entire wedding went off without a hitch … but with a hitching post for the equine attendees.
This reporter was unable to determine exactly how three young girls were able to make such extensive arrangements in such a short time. When asked, all Ms. Lake would say is “Love makes anything possible.”
I’m sure we can all raise a wedding toast to that—and to the newly married couple.
Thornbury Hall
London, England
Dear Lisa,
I’m so glad you liked my character sketches! I was kind of nervous about what you’d say, since obviously they’re based on you and your friends. I really wasn’t sure whether I had captured the characters completely, if they sounded like real people your age. But your letter made me feel much better about that!
It sounds like you’ve been keeping busy lately, what with all that excitement during your winter break. I never realized you had such a busy life! It seems like all I did when I was your age was go to school and play a little baseball.
Luckily, my life is much more exciting these days. Actually, I have some pretty big news to share. I got a job!
I know, I know. You thought I already had a job. Well, I did. But the closer it came, the less I was looking forward to it. As I told you before, I really wasn’t sure it was what I wanted to do with my life, even temporarily.
That’s why I was so thrilled when this new opportunity came along. One of my professors liked the work I’ve done in his course, and he offered me a sort of work-study internship with a project he’s planning during his sabbatical in Africa. The project has to do with sociology and family structures, and it will start just after the end of the school year and run for at least a year. He wants me to be his research assistant and also help him write articles for scholarly journals as the research progresses.
The last thing I expected to be doing this summer was flying off to another continent. I’m a little nervous about it, but mostly I’m just excited. It will be a lot of work—a lot more work than that real-estate job would have been—but it will mean tha
t I’m using my brain and doing something important rather than just making a living. It will be a better, more interesting and useful way of earning a paycheck (even though that paycheck will be a whole lot smaller—don’t think I’m not dreading telling Mom and Dad that part!). Plus I’m sure I’ll still have enough free time to work on my screenplay on the side.
Speaking of which, I just finished mapping out the basic plot-line. I hope to start the actual writing soon—I’ll send you a scene or two as soon as I have something decent finished.
Love,
Peter
Dear Diary,
Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?
Okay, I know that may be an exaggeration. But sometimes it seems that way, and right now is one of those times. Carole and Stevie are both asleep right now—we’re having a sleepover at Carole’s house. But I’m not sleepy yet. To be honest, I’m still kind of annoyed about something that happened today.
This morning when my friends and I got to the stable before Horse Wise, we decided to stop by and check on that mare that’s due to foal soon. She seemed kind of edgy, not friendly and sweet like she usually is, and I couldn’t help wondering if that meant something.
“It probably just means she’s in a bad mood,” Stevie said.
I wasn’t sure that was all there was to it. “Couldn’t it be a sign that the foal is coming soon?” I asked.
Carole shrugged. “Stevie could be right. Or the mare might be a little colicky. That’s common in mares who are near term. She could also be about to foal. The vet will be here later. We can mention it to her.”
“We should mention it to her, you mean,” I said. I thought they were being awfully quick to dismiss my idea that the foal could be coming.
“Yes, right, we should,” Carole agreed, which made me feel a little better—right then, at least. But I’ll get back to that in a minute. First I want to write about what happened in our Horse Wise meeting.
It was time for it to start, so we hurried to Max’s office and took our seats on the floor along with all the other members. There was a big stack of papers on Max’s desk. As soon as the meeting began, he picked them up and began handing them out. At the top of the first page, it said “Know-Down.”
Lisa Page 15