Gold Medal Rider

by Bonnie Bryant

  Kate came through the door. “Look at me!” she cried. She was wearing white breeches, a yellow vest, and a black shadbelly coat with long tails—formal dressage gear. “Isn’t this great?” Kate said. She spun on her heel and the tails of her coat spun around her. “Karen has two—she’s letting me use this one—and I’ve got a body protector and a jersey for cross-country, and a stock tie, and a coat for show jumping. It’s perfect!” She shook David’s hand. “You’ve got a very nice wife and I’m pleased to meet you,” she said. “Very pleased. Now I have to go take this off before I get dirt on it.”

  “Put it in the truck!” Nigel called after her.

  “I will!” They could hear Kate’s quick footsteps hurrying down the aisle.

  “That’s the attitude you want,” David said approvingly.

  “Kate’s always had a great attitude,” Lisa said warmly. “She really loves horses.”

  “Nigel?” Carole asked. “Where are the Olympics after Atlanta?”

  “Sydney, Australia.”

  Stevie smiled. “What a nice place to visit!”

  KATE USED DOROTHY’S bathroom to change into her normal clothes. Back in the living room, she laid her borrowed finery across the sofa. Black coat, yellow vest, string gloves. Kate touched the protective vest with her finger. She had one of her own; she had all of these clothes. She had a dressage saddle, a cross-country saddle, a show-jumping saddle. Somewhere in the hot attic of the Bar None ranch house was a tack trunk, painted with her initials, with all the remnants of her former life inside. Her mother had a scrapbook filled with interviews and photographs of Kate from magazines.

  This will be different, she promised herself. Once she had dreamed about becoming an Olympic rider. Kate never minded the hard work, but she had learned that her own attitude turned the dream into something more like a nightmare.

  Once, at a preliminary event, the horse that was favored to win had lost a shoe on the cross-country course and pulled up limping. Kate had been glad. Glad because of another horse’s misfortune! Glad because with that horse out she had a better chance to win.

  At a different event, right before the show-jumping phase, a rider named Amy had asked her a question about the course, and Kate had deliberately given her an incorrect answer. She had lied. Amy went off course and was eliminated, and Kate won. Until that day, Amy had been one of Kate’s best friends. Since then Amy hadn’t spoken to her. No dream, not even an Olympic one, was worth destroying a friendship the way Kate had.

  But this was only one event. Southwood was not her horse. She did not have to win. This would be different, she promised herself. But as she packed Karen’s clothing into garment bags, she began to wonder just what would make this event different.

  WHILE DOROTHY AND Nigel made a last check of their lists, Drew began to load the horses onto the trailer. Drew had put in Campfire, a bright blood bay, and was just coming around the corner of the trailer when Lisa came out of the stable leading Southwood. Drew jumped, surprised, and walked straight into the corner of the trailer door.

  “Oww!” he yelled, falling back. He covered his forehead with his hand. Blood dripped between his fingers.

  “Are you okay?” Lisa rushed forward to help him. She tied Southwood to the door of the van and knelt beside Drew. “All I’ve got are some tissues.” She handed him a tissue from the pocket of her sweatshirt.

  “Thanks.” Drew mopped the cut with it. “How bad does it look?”

  Lisa inspected his forehead. “It’s bleeding a lot, but it’s just a little cut.”

  “I’ll heal, then. Let’s take care of Southwood.” Together they settled the horse inside the trailer and closed the doors.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lisa apologized. “I must have startled you. Wait here, I’ll get you a Band-Aid.” She hurried into the tack room, where she remembered seeing a first aid kit.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Drew said when she returned. “It was just an accident.” He took the Band-Aid from her and smiled, a slightly lopsided smile that matched his lopsided eyebrows. “It’s kind of nice getting this chance to talk with you—I’m not very comfortable around people I don’t know. I’ve liked having you girls here today, though. You’re my little brother’s age—I bet you’d like him a lot. Especially you, Lisa. He’d like you. But he’s shy with girls, like me. Not like our older brother!”

  “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” Lisa sat down on the bumper of the trailer and listened to Drew describe his large family and his hometown in Maine. He was nice, she decided. A little weird, but nice.

  Kate came out of the house with her gear and the rest of The Saddle Club’s gear all neatly stowed in their duffel bags. “Is there room for these in the trailer?” she asked Drew.

  Drew shook his head. “Sorry. You’ll have to stuff them in the truck.”

  Kate smiled. “Lisa, it’s going to be a long drive to the horse trials with you sitting on my lap.”

  KATE WAS RIGHT. Even though Drew was staying behind to take care of the other horses, Nigel’s four-wheel drive was packed. Dorothy had explained that they were going to spend two nights in a hotel to be near the event. The girls had left their sleeping bags behind, but Dorothy’s and Nigel’s suitcases took their place. They were crammed like pickles in a jar.

  The Saddle Club didn’t care. Stevie couldn’t remember when she’d been more excited about going to a show that she wasn’t actually riding in. This could be the rebirth of Kate’s great riding career.

  Kate began to talk about other events. “I remember riding endurance day in the rain,” she said. “My horse hated rain. We went out to trot the roads and tracks, which is like an official warm-up in a three-day event, and I could hardly see the course markers, and the whole way through my horse kept his tail hunched and his ears flat. He hated it.”

  “You didn’t jump cross-country in the rain, did you?” Lisa asked.

  “Sure! It was impossible to see. The ground was good, though, and they spread sawdust near the jumps, and the horses wore big cleats on their shoes. Even though my horse hated rain, he loved cross-country, so he did okay. It was the first part I was afraid we weren’t going to finish. I thought I’d be the only rider in the history of the world eliminated on road and tracks.” Kate laughed. There was a sparkle in her eye that her friends had not seen before.

  “Have you ever wanted to go to Australia, Kate?” Lisa asked.

  “Sure,” Kate said. “Why not?” She looked puzzled when her friends laughed.

  IT WAS LATE afternoon by the time they pulled into the show grounds for the horse trials. Nigel parked the trailer near the temporary stalls, which were set up under a giant tent. Dorothy went to register the horses, and Nigel spoke to an official to learn which stalls belonged to Southwood and Campfire.

  “Can I help unload the horses?” Stevie asked, opening the latch at the back of the trailer.

  “Not quite yet,” Nigel said. “We have to get the stalls ready first. Let’s have a look.”

  They followed him down the dirt aisle to two center stalls. “Kate, you and Stevie check over this stall, and Carole and Lisa can do the other. Look for any nails or splinters that could cut the horses.” Nigel went back to the trailer and returned with buckets, feed tubs, and hay nets, which they fastened to the walls of each stall.

  Dorothy came back with the numbers Kate and Nigel would wear during competition. She admired the job they’d done preparing the stalls. “You girls work hard,” she said. “This goes a lot faster with you here.”

  Dorothy unloaded the horses. Campfire looked around his stall nervously and whinnied a few times. “He’s always like that,” Dorothy told Carole. Southwood seemed relaxed. He lipped some hay out of his net and sniffed at his water.

  They carried all the tack trunks into the aisle near the horses’ stalls. The girls helped Dorothy and Nigel unload.

  Finally all their gear was sorted and the horses were comfortable. Nigel found a parking space for his trailer and unhitc
hed it from his truck.

  “Whew!” Stevie said, collapsing across the hay bales she’d help stack in the aisle. “I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse trailer! But I’d hate to have to do that—when’s dinner?”

  Nigel smiled. “You can go get something now, if you like,” he said. “Kate and I need to go walk the cross-country course while it’s still light enough to see the fences.”

  Stevie hopped up. “That sounds cool. I guess dinner can wait.”

  They all went out to walk the fences. The courses were each several miles long, and the fences were huge. “I thought I’d seen a lot of events,” Carole said, standing in a ditch and looking up at a fence that towered over her head. “I’ve never seen fences this big.”

  “You’ve never seen an advanced course,” Nigel reminded her.

  “This fence isn’t big,” Lisa said, walking over to a small set of barrels. “I could jump this on Prancer.”

  “That’s not an advanced fence,” Nigel said. “Cross-country fences are permanent, you know, so they tend to build several courses on the same piece of land. I’ll be riding at preliminary level tomorrow, and Kate at advanced, and our courses will cover most of the same ground even though we jump different fences.”

  Nigel brought Carole back to the giant jump-and-ditch combination she had stood in earlier. “See these wooden flags sticking out from the fence, one on each side? You always keep the white flag on your left. You keep the red flag on your right, no matter what. And see the diamond under the red flag? That shape tells you that this jump is for the advanced course—other levels have other shapes. And the number in the diamond tells you what number fence it is—you jump them in order, one, two, three, four.”

  “So Kate can tell what fences to jump by reading the flags?” Lisa asked.

  “If I have to read the flags, I’m lost,” Kate said. “I’ll remember the course.” She sounded fierce, almost annoyed by Lisa’s comment. Of course, Lisa thought, with a flash of sympathetic understanding, Kate’s feeling nervous about jumping all these enormous fences.

  They went around the course from jump to jump. Nigel studied the preliminary fences while Dorothy and Kate looked at the advanced ones. At each fence, Kate and Dorothy studied the approach and decided where it was best for Southwood to take off. They talked about how fast he should be traveling when he jumped and how Kate should sit when he landed. They discussed the different ways Kate could ride through some of the complex fences.

  It was long and complicated, and it made The Saddle Club feel dizzy. This was too much for anyone to remember! There were more than twenty fences, and Southwood would not get to see them until Kate was asking him to jump them in the actual event. Suddenly The Saddle Club realized how big a move this was for Kate. “Nigel and Beatrice must think a lot of her riding,” Carole said as they sat on a fence and watched Kate solemnly pace the approach to it.

  “We think a lot of her riding, too,” Lisa reminded her.

  “Yes, but”—Carole grimaced—“look at this jump! It’s made out of giant logs! If Kate doesn’t ride it correctly, she could get hurt.”

  “Kate knows what she’s doing,” Stevie said. “Besides, you know as well as I do that people tend to get hurt on horses only when they’re in over their heads. Kate can do this. We’ve seen her do all sorts of stuff at the Bar None, and we saw her ride Giacomo this morning. She can do this.” She snapped a photo of Carole and Lisa sitting on the jump.

  “I know she can,” Carole said. “I know it, but I still worry a little.”

  “We all do,” Lisa replied. “But Kate will be fine.”

  “What do you think Kate’s Olympic course will look like?” Stevie asked.

  “Bigger,” Carole said promptly. “Scarier, neater, and more exciting!”

  “I saw a photograph of the Los Angeles Olympic course once,” Lisa said. “The jumps were covered with flowers.”

  Stevie giggled. “If Kate fell off, she’d have a nice fragrant landing.” The others glared at her. “Not that Kate will fall off,” Stevie amended hastily.

  “No,” Lisa said. Her voice took on a dreamy tone. “Can’t you just see her standing on the podium, the gold medal around her neck, the American flag waving, and our national anthem being played?”

  “I wonder if Kate knows the words,” Stevie said.

  WHEN THEY FINISHED walking the courses, it was dark. Nigel and Kate went to a competitors’ meeting, and the others fed Campfire and Southwood dinner. Nigel came back with the event schedule, which he taped to the outside of Southwood’s stall.

  “My dressage test is at 8:37 A.M., and I start cross-country at 10:50,” he said. “Kate goes later. Her dressage is at 9:52. She begins cross-country at 12:15.”

  Kate leaned against Southwood’s stall. She looked overwhelmed, Carole thought, but not unhappy. Carole went and stood beside her.

  “Why don’t I take The Saddle Club back to the hotel and check in?” Dorothy suggested. “Then we’ll scope out a place for dinner.”

  “What about Nigel and Kate?” Lisa asked.

  “We’ve got to braid the horses’ manes and tails,” Kate said quietly. “They have to look sharp for dressage tomorrow.”

  Lisa nodded. Dorothy had already told them that there was a horse inspection at 6:45 A.M. Campfire and Southwood would need to be ready by then.

  “We can help,” Carole suggested. “I’m not that good at braiding tails, but I can do manes, and Southwood’s looks easy.”

  “I can do Campfire’s mane,” Stevie volunteered. “Nigel, you and Kate can do their tails. That way we’ll get it done in half the time.”

  Dorothy put her arm through Lisa’s. “We’ll get all our stuff into the hotel rooms and hang Kate’s and Nigel’s show coats up before they get too wrinkled.”

  “Great,” said Lisa. “Years of unpacking the trunks my mother packed for me have prepared me for this moment. I’m definitely the right person for the job.”

  IT WAS AFTER nine o’clock that night before Stevie finally slid into the orange plastic booth of a fast-food restaurant near their hotel. “Cheeseburgers!” she groaned. “Give me cheeseburgers!”

  “Right away,” Nigel said cheerfully, sliding a loaded tray onto the table. They all grabbed at the burgers and fries. “Eat up,” he said. “If you finish these I’ll buy more. If it hadn’t been for you girls, I would still be at the show grounds.” He munched a french fry and grinned at Dorothy. “Tell them, Doro,” he said.

  “Nigel hates braiding manes,” Dorothy said promptly. “You girls saved him.”

  “Dorothy makes me do it,” Nigel said, blowing the paper wrapper off his straw at his wife. “She won’t help.”

  “It’s good for your soul,” Dorothy said.

  “Cheeseburgers,” said Stevie, “are good for mine.”

  CAROLE CLOSED THE door of the girls’ hotel room. “Dorothy and Nigel say good-night,” she said. Stevie sat up in bed. “Where’s Kate?” she asked. “I thought you went to get her.”

  Carole took off her shoes. “She said she’ll be a little while yet. She’s going over the dressage test with Nigel. She’s got to have it memorized, you know.”

  “I forgot about that,” Stevie said. In dressage, every horse and rider rode a set combination of moves called a test. They received scores from judges based on how accurately, correctly, and beautifully they performed those moves. It was a little bit like the compulsory figures in gymnastics or ice-skating.

  “She says we should go to sleep,” Carole continued. “She’ll be in as soon as she can.”

  “Poor Kate,” Lisa murmured as she drifted off to sleep.

  BRRRNG! BRRRNG! THE hotel room phone rang in the darkness of night. Lisa fumbled with the receiver, her heart pounding. Who could be calling at this hour?

  “Hello?” she asked sleepily.

  “This is your requested wake-up call,” came the impersonal voice of the front-desk clerk.

  “It can’t be,” Lisa protested. “We just fell as
leep.” But the clerk had already hung up.

  Kate pushed back the covers of the other bed and flipped the bedside lamp on. She shook her head once, as if to clear it, and walked to the bathroom.

  “Kate!” Lisa said, watching her. “We don’t have to get up yet! It’s four in the morning!”

  Kate turned and grinned. “I told Nigel we’d all be ready by four-fifteen.”

  “What do we have to do?” Stevie grumbled. “I thought the whole point of braiding those horses last night was not to have to do it this morning.” She began to get dressed.

  “Well, Southwood and Campfire need to eat an early breakfast,” Carole said. “You know it’s not good for horses to work hard right after they’ve eaten.”

  “Sure, but …,” Stevie said. She held up a pair of blue jeans. “Are these yours, Carole, or mine?”

  Lisa grabbed them. “Mine, I think. See the hole in the pocket? Southwood’s going to have to be groomed, too. We don’t want him covered with hay for the horse inspection.”

  Kate came back. “Bathroom’s free,” she said. “You guys are right. We need to take care of Southwood early. Also, Nigel promised to walk the course with me again before he has to get ready.” Kate shuddered, and her friends were reminded of all the big fences that awaited her and Southwood. “I can’t decide on the best way to ride through the water complex,” Kate said.

  “Poor Kate,” Lisa said sympathetically. “Did you dream about the cross-country fences?”

  Kate laughed. “Dream? No! To dream I would have had to sleep. I just lay there and worried about them!”

  Carole looked up in amazement. “Are you really afraid?” she asked. “If you are, Kate, I don’t think you should do this. Nigel could ride Southwood. Beatrice would understand.”

  Kate smiled, but without humor. “I don’t think Beatrice would understand, Carole, but it doesn’t matter because I’m not afraid. I promise. I have a nice, healthy respect for those fences, but I know Southwood and I can manage them. I never could sleep before a competition. I always get this way.”