Stable Manners

by Bonnie Bryant

  CAN THE SADDLE CLUB GIRLS BEAT

  THEIR BOYFRIENDS?

  As the members of The Saddle Club took their seats on the floor of Max’s office, the director of Pine Hollow Stables began his explanation of the upcoming event. “A ‘know-down’ is a little like a spelling bee,” he began. “You’ll get to test your knowledge of horses by answering your questions—from one to four points.”

  Max went on to explain that if they wanted to win the Know-Down, they were going to have to learn a lot of information. “Study hard,” he said. “Two weeks from today at our next unmounted meeting, we’ll have the Know-Down.”

  Carole and Stevie exchanged glances. Two weeks from now was when their boyfriends, Cam and Phil, were coming to their Pony Club meeting!

  “Egad,” Stevie whispered. “What are we going to do?”

  Carole leaned over and whispered quietly into Stevie’s ear. “Win,” she said.

  STABLE MANNERS

  A Bantam Skylark Book / June 1993

  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 © 1993 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: 978-0-307-82509-4

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  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

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  “DID YOU DO it?” Stevie asked.

  “Hm-hmmm. Did you?” Carole replied.

  “Yup,” said Stevie.

  “Is he coming?” Stevie asked.

  “Hm-hmmm,” Carole replied. “And what about Phil?”

  “Yup,” said Stevie.

  “Oh, how great!” Lisa said, her eyes sparkling with excitement for her friends.

  The threesome, Stevie Lake, Carole Hanson, and Lisa Atwood, were all walking together toward their favorite place in the world, Pine Hollow. That was the riding stable where they all took lessons and belonged to a Pony Club called Horse Wise together. Now, it seemed, there was going to be something extra special going on.

  At the last Horse Wise meeting, the director, a man named Max Regnery who was also the girls’ riding instructor and the owner of Pine Hollow, had reminded the Pony Club members that they could invite friends to any unmounted meeting. An unmounted meeting was one in which the members would not be on horseback. They had unmounted meetings every other week. When Max had said that, Carole had told Stevie she should invite Phil Marsten. Phil was Stevie’s boyfriend and he belonged to the Cross County Pony Club. Stevie had immediately replied that she’d invite Phil if Carole would invite Cam.

  Cam Nelson was a boy Carole had met when they competed against one another in a horse show. Actually, Carole had sort of met Cam before then because they both belonged to the same computer bulletin board and they’d been sending notes to one another. The funny thing was, Carole had assumed that Cam was a girl before seeing him in person at the horse show. It turned out that he was a really nice guy and they liked one another a lot. Inviting Cam to the Horse Wise meeting seemed like the perfect way to see him again, but she was nervous about it. Carole tended to be a little bit shy where boys were concerned and she didn’t want to appear too eager.

  “Cam was really nice about it,” Carole said. “He said yes right away. Then he asked his mother and father. The first thing he said, though, was yes.”

  Stevie clapped Carole on the back gently. “My dear,” she said. “You have so much to learn.”

  “I do?” Carole asked. She thought she’d been learning a lot.

  “Number one rule is that when a boy calls you three times a week, he’s going to say yes when you invite him to something.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” Carole said. But she was still thinking about it—and liking what she was thinking—when they walked up the gravel driveway to Pine Hollow.

  “Let’s check on the mare before Horse Wise starts,” Lisa suggested. That seemed like a good idea, so the three of them hurried into the locker area, put their sandwiches into their cubbies, and headed for the foaling box.

  Max had recently acquired a stallion named Geronimo for Pine Hollow so he could do some breeding. It meant that mares would sometimes now come to the stable to have their foals so they could be bred soon after they’d given birth. The girls thought that was very exciting and hoped they’d have lots of chances to see births and newborn foals.

  Although Stevie, Lisa, and Carole were very different from one another, they shared something so important that it transcended all their differences. They loved horses. They loved them so much that they had formed their very own group called The Saddle Club. There were only two requirements for membership. First of all, members had to be horse crazy. The second was that they had to be willing to help one another out, no matter what the problem. Both of those were easy requirements for the girls. They’d gotten one another out of all kinds of trouble. That had included jams having to do with horses and riding and it had included other things, too—schoolwork, boyfriends, family trouble. Their most recent adventure had even led straight down the aisle—to a wedding! They sometimes got the feeling there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do when they worked together.

  The girls greeted the mare with gentle pats. She seemed sort of edgy, not as friendly as she had been the day before.

  “Do you think that means something?” Lisa asked.

  “It probably means she’s in a bad mood,” Stevie reasoned.

  “Isn’t that the sign that the foal is coming? Like really soon?” Lisa asked. This time she looked at Carole, who was bound to give a more detailed answer.

  Carole shrugged. “Stevie could be right. Or she 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,” Lisa said. She was becoming more and more convinced that she had spotted something that meant the mare was about to have her foal and she wanted her friends to agree.

  “Yes, right, we should,” Carole said.

  “We should also be getting into Max’s office now,” Stevie said pointedly. “It’s almost time for the meeting to begin.”

  The girls gave the mare a final pat—or tried to. Instead she backed awa
y from their affectionate touches. They left her in peace and headed for Horse Wise.

  Most unmounted meetings began in Max’s office where he would explain what the rest of the meeting was going to be about. The girls quickly spotted a large stack of papers on his desk. That meant there was going to be some kind of a handout. Stevie’s eyes were good and, being the kind of girl she was, she was an expert at reading upside down.

  “What did it say?” Carole asked, taking a seat cross-legged on the floor among the rest of the Horse Wise members.

  “Something about bowing down,” Stevie said, crinkling her forehead because it didn’t make sense even to her.

  “Bowing down?”

  “Bow-down, how-down—something like that.”

  Carole and Lisa shrugged. For once, it appeared that Stevie was wrong and they were just going to have to wait to find out.

  As it happened, Stevie wasn’t all that wrong at all. As soon as the meeting began, Max picked up the pile of papers and began handing them out to everyone. At the top of the first page, it said “Know-Down.”

  “See?” Stevie said proudly.

  “Shhhhhh,” Max said. “No talking, as you know, Ms. Lake.”

  She took her papers and glanced at them quickly.

  “I don’t want you looking at these now,” Max said. “You have two weeks to look at them. So, for now, just fold them and put them aside.”

  “But what are they for?” Stevie asked.

  “And while you’re folding them and putting them aside, I’ll tell you what they’re for,” Max said. He glared a little at Stevie. As she well knew, he didn’t like to be interrupted. He liked to tell things in his own time. Stevie got the hint. She and her friends folded their sheets of paper and held them on their laps.

  Then Max began his explanation. “A ‘know-down’ is a little bit like a spelling bee,” he began. “You’ll get the chance to test your knowledge of horses by answering questions. And each of you will be able to choose the difficulty of your questions—from one to four points. A four-point question might have four parts to the answer, like, for instance, ‘Name the parts of a horse’s back between the shoulder and the dock.’ ”

  “Withers, back, loins, croup!” Stevie called out excitedly.

  “And with that answer, you’d get four points,” Max said. “Except that unless you raise your hand, I’m not going to give you any credit.”

  Stevie grimaced.

  “And besides, the Know-Down hasn’t started, so you’ve just provided the answer to the first four-point question to everyone else,” he said.

  Stevie raised her hand. Max called on her.

  “Sorry,” she said. He smiled and accepted her apology. Stevie seemed to have ways of getting out of hot water that were as smooth as the ways she slipped into it.

  Max went on to explain that they would be able to choose easier questions worth fewer points, but if they wanted to win the Know-Down, they were going to have to learn a lot of information.

  “It’s all there,” he said. “Study hard. Two weeks from today at our next unmounted meeting, we’ll have the Know-Down.”

  Carole and Stevie exchanged glances. Two weeks from now was when Phil and Cam were coming to the meeting! Carole could feel a little knot tying itself in the center of her stomach. She’d been eager to have Cam come to the meeting when she thought it was just going to be a regular meeting, but this wasn’t going to be regular. It was almost like a test. She wouldn’t mind if Cam did a little bit better than she did and she didn’t think Cam would mind if she did a little bit better than he did, but what if she blew it and made a fool of herself? Would Cam ever want to talk to her again? Cam loved horses as much as she did. What would he think of her if she did badly?

  Maybe she could call Cam and cancel. She could say that the meeting had been postponed or was going to be a mounted meeting, or she’d gotten the date wrong, or she was going to have to be away that weekend, or anything at all. Then, as Carole thought about that for a minute, trying to decide which excuse she’d use, she realized she wasn’t being fair. Cam would probably love participating in a Know-Down. It was totally out of the question to uninvite him, no matter what reason she came up with or how good it sounded or how nervous she might be. And since he would be there, there was only one thing to do: study. She clutched the folded sheets tightly.

  “Egad,” Stevie whispered. “What are we going to do?”

  Carole leaned over and whispered quietly into her ear. “Win,” she said.

  Stevie grinned. This was something she could understand. From the very beginning of her friendship with Phil, they’d been in competition on the subject of horses and riding. It seemed that whenever they were together, one was trying to prove better than the other. For a while, Stevie had taken it very seriously. That had almost been the end of her friendship with Phil. Then she’d learned that, most of the time, the two of them could compete and have fun and in the end that was what was most important. Of course Stevie would certainly try to win. And so would Phil. That was a nice part about their friendship: It brought out the best in each of them. That was the way Stevie felt most of the time. Other times, however, she just couldn’t help herself and it seemed like being better than Phil was the most important thing in the world.

  “Definitely,” Stevie agreed.

  “Ahem, did you say something?” Max asked, glaring at Stevie.

  “No, it was me,” Lisa said, saving both of her whispering friends. “Sorry, but I should have raised my hand.” She raised her hand and Max called on her.

  “We checked the mare before we came in here and she seems edgy. Doesn’t that mean she’s about to foal?” Lisa asked.

  “Maybe,” Max said. “It could also mean nothing. Judy made her daily vet check yesterday and didn’t seem concerned. She’ll be back this afternoon and will check again.”

  “But I know that when a mare gets edgy, it’s a sign that she’s about to foal,” Lisa persisted.

  “It can be,” Max agreed. “There are other signs, too. Does anybody know what they are?”

  Hands started going up. Max got a lot of answers to the question and he told the pony clubbers that they were all right. Different mares apparently had a lot of different indicators that they were near term.

  “So, it seems that the only way to be sure that a mare is about to begin serious labor is when serious labor begins,” Max said. “It’s just not a simple question.”

  Lisa found herself a little annoyed, as she had been with her friends. She was used to being right. She was an excellent student who got straight A’s. She didn’t think Max or her friends were paying enough attention to this strong indicator that the mare was about to foal and she was confident that the mare would soon prove her right. That’ll show everyone I know what I’m talking about, she thought smugly.

  Soon the meeting broke for lunch, scheduled to reconvene in the feed room, where they’d get a lesson on blending feed grains.

  Lisa was heading for the door when she heard Max call her name. He also called another rider, a much younger girl named May Grover. Lisa thought he probably wanted to apologize to her for correcting her about the mare, but she found that he had something else on his mind.

  “I want you two to work together on something,” Max said. “I’m going to start a Big Sister/Little Sister learning program and you’re my test case.”

  For a moment Lisa forgot about the mare. This sounded interesting.

  “One of the things we rarely have time for here,” Max went on, “is working with hitching horses and ponies to carts and wagons. It’s just something we don’t do much and that’s too bad because it’s fun. Lisa, I want you to take this book”—he handed Lisa a small paperback—“and learn how to do it yourself and teach May to do it. Then in ten days, after the Tuesday class, I’d like the two of you to do a demonstration for the rest of Horse Wise. Will you have time to work on this together? You can use Nickel and hitch him to the cart we use for pony rides sometimes
. Then, if you’d like, you can take the Horse Wise members for rides.”

  Lisa looked at May. The young girl’s eyes were as big as saucers. Lisa herself wasn’t so excited. For one thing, preparing for the Know-Down was going to be a lot of work. For another thing, rides in pony carts seemed very tame compared to all the other wonderful things you could do with a horse. And then there was the mare. She was about to foal and Lisa seemed to be the only one who knew it. That was a big responsibility in itself.

  “Lisa?” Max asked. He seemed a little surprised by her hesitation.

  Lisa gulped. Even if she wanted to, how could she say no?

  “Sure,” she agreed finally, looking lamely at the book in her hand. She flipped through it. It wasn’t very long. She’d be able to get through it. What could possibly be involved in hitching a pony to a wagon? The pictures in the book showed a very little girl doing the work. May could probably do most of this all by herself. Lisa would just be there to help. “No problem,” Lisa said.

  “I WONDER WHAT Max wanted to talk to Lisa about,” Carole said to Stevie.

  “Me, too, but whatever it is, I’m glad he’s got her for a few minutes.”

  “Why?” Carole asked.

  “We have to talk,” Stevie said, pulling her sandwich out of her cubby. She signaled Carole to join her and the two of them found a clean empty stall where they could talk privately for a few minutes.

  “What’s up?” Carole was really curious. It wasn’t like Stevie to have something to talk about that didn’t include Lisa.

  “It has to do with the Know-Down,” said Stevie.

  “Oh, sure. We’re going to have to work like crazy and we’ll need Lisa’s help, won’t we?”

  “We will,” Stevie agreed. “But that’s not what I mean. The problem is that we each have a boyfriend coming to it and Lisa doesn’t. She’s kind of left out on that.”

  “She doesn’t seem to mind,” Carole said.

  “Of course she doesn’t seem to mind,” said Stevie. “We’re best friends. She’s not going to make us feel uncomfortable by letting us know that she minds, because we’re such good friends. But I’m sure she does mind. Even if it’s only a little.”