“It holds the horse’s tail in place,” Lisa said. Then she groaned to herself, realizing what a dumb thing that was to say. A horse’s tail was not actually likely to move very far from the horse’s rear.
May didn’t think it had been a stupid thing to say. She thought Lisa was just being funny. She laughed.
Lisa’s mind was not on the task at hand. It was on the mare; it was on the Know-Down; it was every-place but on the pony and his harness. Lisa knew that she ought to be paying more attention to what May had learned and what she was doing, but May seemed to be doing just fine without any help from her. Besides, she had another five days before the next Horse Wise meeting and in that time Lisa would certainly be able to learn a thing or two about harnesses—enough to help May, as if she needed any help at all. May had learned everything in two days; Lisa could surely learn something in five.
“Wait a minute here,” May said. A frown had crossed her face. “I think this is supposed to go that way—” She held up a long piece of leather. “And that one”—she pointed to another piece of leather, drooping on the floor of the stable—“ought to go over here, because it’s got to reach to the—oh, no. I should have done this one first.”
With that, she began unbuckling and retrying. She flipped the straps across, tangling and untangling them. She couldn’t get it right. Finally, she turned to Lisa.
“I haven’t done this right at all, have I?” she asked.
Lisa wasn’t sure how to answer that. Clearly May had done a lot of it right, but then she’d gotten some of the longer leathers confused. The problem was that Lisa couldn’t help her straighten them out. “Looks like you need to do a little bit more studying,” she said finally.
“I guess so.” May was resigned. “I thought I could do it. I really did. Do you still want to work with me?”
“Of course,” said Lisa. “In fact, I’m impressed. You did the whole front of the harness correctly. It has to be correct. Look how well everything fits, but something is definitely wrong back here.” She pointed to the rear of the horse where the straps and buckles were still all in a confused mess.
“I’d better go study some more,” said May. “Can I try again tomorrow? Then if I don’t do it right, you can show me how, but I’d like to be able to do it on my own.”
“You will, I’m sure,” Lisa said. And she meant it. May was so determined that she probably would have everything figured out by tomorrow.
Lisa helped May remove the rig from Nickel and then took the pony back to his stall while May hung the harness back up in the tack room.
While Lisa was walking the pony through the stable, she began to have a twinge of a feeling that she should have been the one to hang up the harness—she might have learned something about it. But when Lisa passed the mare’s stall on the way back from depositing Nickel in his stall, all thoughts of the Big Sister project fled her mind. The mare was acting fidgety again.
Lisa reached up to pat the horse, trying to calm her. She held the mare’s halter and stroked her cheek. The mare seemed to like that.
“It’s okay, girl,” Lisa whispered into the horse’s silky ear. “You and I know what’s going on, even if nobody else does. I’ll be back here tomorrow and you can show off your newborn baby, okay?”
The mare seemed to relax a little. Her ears perked up, her tail flicked gently. Lisa was glad she’d been able to help. She gave the mare a final pat and returned to the tack room to find May.
CAROLE ALWAYS ENJOYED her quiet moments in the stable with Starlight. He was a wonderful horse, beautiful, gentle, loyal. Best of all, he was hers.
When she’d finished working in his stall, grooming, feeding, and watering him, she gave him a final hug. She could have sworn he hugged her back. She laughed to herself at the soft tickle of his chin on her neck. Finally she slid his stall door closed behind her and latched it.
“See you later,” she said, bidding Starlight farewell. He snorted in return. She then headed for the tack room where she was pretty sure she’d find Stevie and Lisa waiting for her. The three of them had made plans on the phone the night before to meet at Pine Hollow to do some more drill work for the Know-Down.
Stevie was in the tack room, but Lisa wasn’t. May Grover was also there. The little girl appeared to be completely wrapped in the long leathers of the cart harness. Stevie was trying to untangle her from them, but it wasn’t working very well.
“That’s not the martingale, that’s the loin strap,” May was saying. “The martingale is this one and if you untie the knot it’s in, I think I can do the rest myself.”
Stevie tugged at the leather as she’d been told. In a minute, May emerged, holding the harness neatly.
“There,” she said, victoriously.
“Nice work,” Stevie said.
“You helped me.”
“I didn’t mean that. Anybody could have untangled them. The nice part was knowing the difference between the martingale and the loin strap. You’ve been working with Lisa on that stuff, haven’t you?”
“I sure have and she’s a great teacher,” said May. “She knows exactly how to get me to work hard and learn a lot. Yesterday I couldn’t finish hitching up Nickel and instead of just doing it for me, she made me learn to do it by myself. Today I’m sure I’m going to do it. I spent a lot of time reading about it last night. Now, can you hold the door open so I can carry this thing over to Nickel’s stall?”
“Certainly.” Stevie obliged. May had nearly wrapped herself in the harness to keep it from tangling any more. She walked out of the tack room like a queen with a royal train made of leather. Stevie and Carole loved watching her. She reminded them of themselves when they were younger—so eager to learn everything there was to know about horses.
Just as May was leaving the tack room, Lisa arrived. Lisa offered to carry one end of the harness, but May assured her she could do it by herself.
“I want to try to do this all alone,” May said. “Please?”
“Okay,” Lisa agreed, rather too quickly as far as Carole was concerned. Carole knew enough about harnessing a horse to know it was a two-person job, but she didn’t want to interfere with the Big Sis/Little Sis project. So far, it appeared to be working all right if she could judge by how much May seemed to have learned. Lisa seemed to know what she was doing as a teacher, judging by what May had already learned. She no doubt had her reasons now. Carole kept her concerns to herself.
“Where were you?” Stevie asked Lisa.
“I was checking on the mare. She still hasn’t foaled.”
“I know,” Carole said. “Judy says she’s got a couple of weeks to go.”
Lisa shrugged.
Stevie thought Lisa looked annoyed, but there were too many other things happening to ask her what was going on.
“We’ve got to work on the study sheets some more,” Stevie said. “Where can we go?”
“I’ve got an idea,” Carole said. “Prancer’s box stall is empty while she’s at the trainer’s this week. We can sit in there in the fresh straw. There’s a class going on, so we should have some privacy.”
“Good idea,” Stevie agreed. “I want to keep our study techniques to ourselves. We don’t want to give anything to the enemy, do we?”
Lisa grinned. “Come on, Stevie. The other students are hardly ‘the enemy.’ But I wouldn’t mind beating them.”
Carole always liked being in box stalls. It was so horsey. It made her feel even closer to horses than usual. As they settled into the straw in Prancer’s stall she decided her friends might think her odd if she told them exactly how she felt, so she didn’t. It would be her secret.
Carole pulled a folded bundle of papers from her rear pocket. “Okay, where were we?” She scanned the sheets. “I’ve got it. What is a cob?”
“Something you eat corn off of?” Stevie offered. Her friends knew she was teasing. She knew the answer to that question as well as Lisa did, but Lisa gave it.
“It’s sort of a mix betwee
n a horse and a pony,” she said. “It’s no taller than fifteen point one hands. Its head and neck look like a pony’s, but its body and limbs look like those of a horse.”
“Two points,” Carole said. “What are the four basic kinds of jumps?”
Stevie took that one. “Staircase or ascending oxer, pyramid, upright, and square oxer.”
Carole awarded her four points.
“Here’s another hard one. Name the parts of the mouth and the head on which the bit and bridle act.”
There was silence. Neither Lisa nor Stevie could answer that one. Carole told them. “There are seven parts, and they are: the lips and corners of the mouth, the bars of the mouth, the tongue, the roof of the mouth, the poll, the chin groove, and, last but not least, the nose.”
A head appeared over the wall of the neighboring stall. The stall belonged to Garnet. The head was Veronica diAngelo’s. The three girls groaned inwardly, but were too polite to do it out loud.
“What are you up to?” Veronica asked.
“We’re studying,” Stevie said.
“What for?”
“The Know-Down, of course,” Stevie said. “Haven’t you been studying?” she asked. “Or is that one of those things you get your butler to do for you?”
Veronica gave her a dirty look.
“Certainly I’ve been studying,” she said. “Very hard, in fact. Go ahead, test me.”
For a minute Carole was tempted. This was a wonderful opportunity to make life difficult for Veronica. She could find the trickiest question of the bunch and use it on her. But Carole had a strong sense of right and wrong and she knew better than that. She just took the next question on the sheet.
“What’s another word for forging?”
Veronica’s eyebrows crinkled together in thought. “Isn’t that when a horse just eats what it comes across in the wild?”
Carole stifled a snicker. Veronica was confusing foraging with forging, which was another word for over-reaching. This happened when the horse’s hind toe hit the front heel. It meant that the horse’s rear stride was too long and required special training to overcome. Carole read the answer from the sheet to Veronica.
“That’s in there?” Veronica asked, looking quizzically at the sheaf of papers in Carole’s hand.
“Uh-huh,” Stevie answered. “As your butler no doubt knows.”
This time Stevie couldn’t contain her laugh. It was easy to hate Veronica, but it wasn’t often that the girls found she actually didn’t know something about horses. She was a pretty good horsewoman, except when it came to work she considered dirty or beneath her.
Stevie was working on a couple of follow-up remarks for Veronica. She had in mind something about a remedial riding course, or maybe suggesting that Veronica write the answers to all the questions on the palm of her hand, if she could spell them. Stevie’s snide remarks were cut off before they began. There was a shriek from the far side of the stable and the voice was unmistakably May Grover’s. The younger girl was in trouble.
In an instant Stevie, Lisa, and Carole dropped everything they were doing, were on their feet and out of the stall, quickly pulling the door closed behind them.
What they found when they got there was May standing all alone by the open door of the stable with tears streaming down her face. There was no sign of Nickel. There was, however, a cart harness strewn all over the floor.
“He just ran away!” May wailed.
It took only a few seconds to see what had happened. May had opened the door for light and the pony had found the call of the wild just too tempting. When May had undipped his lead rope, he’d taken off, leaving her alone and miserable.
It wasn’t the first time a horse had gotten loose at Pine Hollow, nor would it be the last. The girls knew just what to do. Lisa told May to bring the lead rope and the four of them followed the pony out into the paddock. None of the paddocks that surrounded the stable at Pine Hollow was very large. They were intended for light exercise, not for living quarters. It wouldn’t be hard to corner the pony and clip the rope onto his halter as long as he was penned in the paddock.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t penned in the paddock. Somebody had left a gate open and Nickel had gone right through it. As they watched, he frolicked in the very large field beyond the paddock. Capturing him had suddenly changed from a two-minute project to a big deal. The girls thought they knew who was responsible for the open gate. There was only one person at Pine Hollow who thought she was too good to close gates behind her and that was Veronica diAngelo.
“I’ll go get Starlight,” Carole said. “And while I’m in there, I’m going to give Veronica a piece of my mind.”
She stormed back into the stable. Starlight’s stall was near Garnet’s, which was near the empty stall they’d been sitting in. Carole found Garnet alone in her stall. She also found the door to the empty stall open. There was no sign of Veronica. Carole decided she didn’t have time to track Veronica down and give her a piece of her mind. It had never worked before. She doubted if it would do any good this time. Also, she just wanted to get Nickel back where he belonged and for that she’d need Starlight’s help. She slid the empty stall door closed again and then turned to fetch Starlight.
Secretly Carole was a little happy at the opportunity that had arisen for her. Most of the time when she rode Starlight, it was in class or on a training course. This was the real thing—using a horse for work. And, since she was in such a hurry, she wasn’t going to use a saddle. She’d just hop on his bare back, no bridle, just his halter with a lead rope attached, and they’d ride the way she imagined people were intended to ride horses: horse and rider, nothing else.
As quickly as she could, she led him back to the door from which Nickel had escaped. Then, once out of the stable, Carole hiked herself up onto his warm silken back, and taking the lead rope from May’s hands, she and Starlight rode off after the runaway pony.
It took a while. Nickel seemed to like the idea of his freedom. He also sensed that the bareback rider carrying a lead rope didn’t like the idea of Nickel’s freedom. He took off.
Carole watched Nickel dodge to her left. With her right leg, she moved Starlight over the same way. He responded instantly, as if he understood the task and it was a good thing he did, too, because Nickel was prepared to make this as difficult as possible. Every time Nickel moved to one side, Starlight followed, only to find that Nickel had already changed his mind—and his direction. He was a very clever pony. Carole was a clever girl, though, and Starlight was Nickel’s match.
Carole and Starlight managed to herd Nickel toward a corner of the field. Stevie, Lisa, and May ran over to where they were. It took all four girls and one very clever horse to corner the pony. It also took almost an hour. Finally, and triumphantly, Carole clipped the lead rope onto the pony’s halter.
She handed the end of the rope to Lisa. She wasn’t sure how resentful the pony might be and didn’t think it safe for May to hold him. However, the pony was well-trained and the minute Lisa tugged on the lead rope, Nickel behaved just the way he was supposed to. He was docile and obedient. Lisa gave the lead rope to May. The pony followed and didn’t give her any trouble at all.
“Well, there goes an hour of study time,” Lisa said glumly.
“It’s okay,” Stevie said. “We had fun.”
“Sure, but we did lose the time and I’ve got to get home.”
“Me, too,” Carole agreed. “Dad’s picking me up at the shopping center because he’s going to the super-market.”
“Maybe we can walk over there together and test ourselves as we go,” Lisa suggested. As a straight-A student, she’d devised a lot of ways to find study time when there wasn’t any study time to be had.
“Okay by me,” Stevie agreed. “You’ve got the sheets, Carole?”
Carole patted her back pocket, expecting to find the familiar bulge of the papers there. But this time her pocket was empty.
“I must have left them in the empty stall,
” she said. She recalled jumping up to go to May’s rescue. She didn’t recall putting the pages back in her pocket. Nor did she recall seeing them when she went to get Starlight.
As soon as they reached the stable, Carole dismounted and walked Starlight back to his stall. She patted him as they walked, and told him how wonderful he’d been. He seemed to understand. At least he nodded.
As soon as she’d closed his stall door, she walked over to the empty stall. Oddly, the door was once again open. Carole peered in. There, on the floor, in a corner where she hadn’t been sitting, she saw the sheets for the Know-Down. She didn’t know how they’d gotten there—she must have thrown them there herself as she ran to help May. It didn’t matter, though. She had them.
She met her friends at the front door of Pine Hollow. “What’s the difference between a body clip and a trace clip?” Carole asked.
“I know, I know,” Lisa said eagerly.
They were back in the groove.
TWO STEPS OUTSIDE of Pine Hollow, the girls stopped. May was standing by the driveway, her head hanging down. She seemed very upset about something and oblivious to her surroundings.
“What’s up, May?” Stevie asked.
It took a while for the young girl to answer. She looked as though she was trying to get up the courage to answer what Stevie had thought was a pretty easy question.
“I’m just so ashamed,” May answered finally.
“Of what?” Lisa asked.
Carole didn’t need to ask, though. She understood.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “Really.”
“But he shouldn’t have run away!”
Then Lisa and Stevie understood, too. May thought that everything that had happened with Nickel was her own fault and that just wasn’t the case.
May looked at Lisa for a confirmation.
“It really wasn’t your fault,” Lisa said. “It happened because Veronica left the gate open. If there’s one lesson that Max teaches us again and again, it’s that we always have to close gates that we’ve opened. Veronica learned that the very first day she ever rode at Pine Hollow—”
Stable Manners Page 4