Riding Camp Read online

  Read all the Saddle Club books!

  Horse Crazy

  Horse Shy

  Horse Sense

  Horse Power

  Trail Mates

  Dude Ranch

  Horse Play

  Horse Show

  Hoof Beat

  Riding Camp

  Horse Wise

  Rodeo Rider

  Copyright © 1990 by Bonnie Bryant Hiller

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  “The Saddle Club” is a registered trademark of Bonnie Bryant Hiller.

  “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.

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  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82487-5

  Originally published by Bantam Skylark in 1990

  First Delacorte eBook Edition 2012

  v3.1

  I would like to express my special thanks to Don DeMarzio for his help to me. —B.B.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  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

  “WATCH HOW SHE does this,” Carole Hanson said to Lisa Atwood. The two girls were standing in the passageway outside a stall at Pine Hollow Stables. Stevie Lake was inside the stall preparing Topside for a trip.

  Carole, Lisa, and Stevie were best friends. They’d gotten to know each other at Pine Hollow and had formed a group called The Saddle Club. The club had only two rules, and they were easy ones: All the members had to be horse crazy, and they had to be willing to help one another. So far the three girls were the only active members of the club, although there were a few out-of-state friends who were honorary members.

  Stevie finished fastening the final protective leg wrap on the big bay gelding horse, patted Topside reassuringly, and stood up. She clipped a lead rope onto Topside’s halter and looked him square in the eye.

  “Pine Hollow’s Flight One to Moose Hill Riding Camp is now ready for boarding,” she announced. “All passengers holding first-class tickets may proceed to the gate. And that means you.”

  Outside the stable, a horse van was waiting to take Topside to Moose Hill, the riding camp Stevie would be attending for the next two weeks. Stevie had been lucky. A friend of hers had won the camp session in a raffle, but since she didn’t like riding very much, she’d offered it to Stevie. Horse-crazy Stevie didn’t understand her friend at all, but under the circumstances, she decided it was just fine that her friend didn’t like riding.

  “I’m almost too excited to watch,” Lisa told Carole. “I can’t believe it. Two solid weeks of horses, horses, and horses. Nothing but horses!”

  Carole nodded, her eyes wide with excitement.

  “I can’t believe how lucky we all are!” Stevie said.

  “I still don’t understand how you managed to convince Max to pay our way. How did you get him to sponsor us?”

  There was a sparkle in Stevie’s eye. Convincing people, especially Max Regnery, the owner of Pine Hollow Stables, to do things they might not actually want to do was one of her specialties. “It was easy,” she said airily, dismissing Carole’s admiration. “A mere sleight of hand.”

  “More like sleight of mouth, if I know you,” Carole added.

  “Yeah, more like that,” Stevie agreed, returning to her normal self. “Now let’s see if I can do a sleight of hoof and get Topside onto the van.”

  She turned her attention to the horse. Topside was an experienced traveler. He was a championship show horse and had performed all over the world. Max had recently bought him when the horse’s owner, Dorothy DeSoto, had been forced to give up competitive riding because of an accident. Now Topside was going to riding camp with The Saddle Club to get a new kind of show experience. The two-week session at Moose Hill would end with a horse show for the campers. It would be completely different from what Topside had known before, and Max had felt it would be good for both Stevie and Topside to try it together.

  Carole and Lisa would be riding horses assigned to them from the camp’s own stable. They loved the horses they usually rode at Pine Hollow, but Max couldn’t spare two more horses for the session. Both girls also knew that it would be a good opportunity for them to try training on different horses.

  “Come on, boy,” Stevie said. She clucked her tongue and led Topside toward the stall door. Carole slid the door back to let them out. Stevie held the lead rope with one hand and a pail containing Topside’s grooming gear with the other. She looked over her shoulder at the horse. He seemed to sense that something was up and twitched his tail excitedly. Stevie grinned over her shoulder at him, still leading him straight out of the stall.

  “Stevie, watch your head!” Carole warned. It was too late, though. With a thunk, Stevie’s head connected with the fire extinguisher on the wall of the stable opposite Topside’s stall.

  Stevie made a face and rubbed her head where she’d hit it. Then she crossed her eyes. Lisa giggled. Stevie had the ability to make almost anything funny. It was one of the things Lisa liked the best—and that sometimes annoyed her the most—about Stevie.

  “Are you okay?” Lisa asked.

  “Never mind her—what about the fire extinguisher?” Carole said, adjusting the big red metal canister. Stevie glared at Carole briefly.

  Lisa laughed. She knew Carole was concerned about Stevie’s bump, but it was just like her to be equally concerned with the safety of the horses. Just as Stevie could always see the funny side of a situation, Carole could always see the serious side—when it came to horses. It was Lisa’s feeling that Stevie and Carole balanced each other. Sometimes that was a problem, since it meant Lisa was right smack in the middle. But most of the time it was a lot of fun.

  “Come on, you guys,” Lisa said. “The sooner we get Topside on the van the sooner we can leave for camp.”

  Carole began clucking at Topside, encouraging him to follow Stevie toward the van.

  “I guess that means my job is to bring the tack, huh?” Lisa asked.

  “Thanks.” Stevie grinned.

  Lisa walked toward the stable’s tack room. It was one of her favorite places in Pine Hollow. At first glance, it was a mess. The room was covered with snaking leather straps hanging every which way and an endless row of saddles that required constant soaping and cleaning. That was the way it had first looked to Lisa when she’d started riding at Pine Hollow. After a few days, however, she’d learned that there was a strict order to everything. Each saddle was in a place that corresponded to its horse’s stall. A matching bridle hung above each saddle. Spare leathers, carefully sorted by size, hung along another wall. There were buckets for metal parts, bits, chains, buckles, hooks, and rings, which were all meticulously grouped.

  In fact, the whole room was organized very carefully. It just didn’t look that way. Lisa wondered, as she looked at it now, how she could ever have thought it was messy. She quickly located Topside’s tack and picked it up to carry it to the van.

  It was exciting, and a little frightening, to think that she was ab
out to become familiar with a new stable, a new horse, and new riders. Lisa, unlike Carole and Stevie, had begun riding just a few months ago. She didn’t have as much experience as her friends did. She was sure she would enjoy Moose Hill, but she still felt a little uneasy. There was only one thing to do about that. Lisa hefted the saddle, adjusting its weight, and left the tack room.

  There was nobody inside the stable. Everyone was watching Stevie load Topside. There was one last thing Lisa wanted to do before she left. Pine Hollow Stables had been around for a long time and had developed a lot of traditions. One of those was its good-luck horseshoe. By tradition, every rider at Pine Hollow touched it before going for a ride. Nobody was sure when the tradition had begun, or why, but everybody knew that no rider at Pine Hollow had ever been seriously hurt in a riding accident. Lisa glanced around. She felt a little silly, but she still wanted to do it. The horseshoe was nailed up by the door to the indoor ring. When she reached the doorway to the ring, she set Topside’s tack on the ledge of an empty stall, stood on tiptoe, and reached up high, brushing the horseshoe with her fingers. The feeling of the smooth, worn iron comforted her.

  She picked up the tack again and carried it through the stable to where the van and the station wagon and her friends were waiting for her.

  Stevie had loaded Topside into the trailer by the time Lisa joined her friends and the crowd gathered in the driveway. Red O’Malley, Pine Hollow’s most trusted stablehand, was driving Topside to Moose Hill. It seemed to Lisa that she and her friends were just being allowed to hitch a ride with the horse!

  “Have we got all our stuff in the back of the car?” Carole asked, peering through the station wagon’s dusty windows.

  “I think we’ve got it all,” Red said dryly. “Including the kitchen sink.”

  Carole was famous for forgetting important things, like clothes, when she went on trips, but the gigantic pile of luggage in the car indicated that she hadn’t forgotten anything this time, since everything in the world was probably already crammed in the bags.

  Finally it was time to go. The girls climbed into the station wagon and rolled down their windows so they could wave to their parents, their fellow students, Max, and his mother, Mrs. Reg. Before they were out of the driveway, Max was shooing the other riders back inside. It was almost time for class to begin, and as far as Max was concerned, there were no good excuses for class to begin late.

  “I don’t think anything would keep Max from starting class on time,” Lisa remarked.

  “Oh, maybe a tornado,” Stevie said.

  “Not unless it leveled the barn,” Carole added.

  Lisa giggled. She was glad that Max was so serious about riding instruction. She hoped her teacher at camp would be as good.

  “I’m a little nervous,” she confessed to her friends. “I mean, you guys have been riding for years. You’re used to other horses and other instructors. Pine Hollow is practically the only place I’ve ever ridden. Is it going to be okay?”

  “You bet it is,” Carole assured her. “Not only is it going to be okay, it’s going to be great. It’s important to have different experiences. And besides, you have ridden other places. Remember the Devines’ dude ranch? And New York? Now those were really different. Moose Hill’s going to be much more like Pine Hollow than those were.”

  “Not exactly,” Stevie said. “Did you read the brochure carefully? I mean, did you read the part about one stablehand for every five riders? That’s not quite like Pine Hollow, where there are only two stablehands for the whole stable and all the work is done by the poor overworked riders, who have to muck out the stalls and clean the tack and groom the horses while the stablehands hardly ever lift a finger. Right, Red?”

  Red snorted in response. It was true that the riders did a lot of work around Pine Hollow. It was one way the stable kept expenses down and made riding something more people could do. However, horses were a lot of work, and no matter how much the riders pitched in, there was plenty for Red and his co-workers to do. The girls knew that as well as he did.

  “Go on,” Red said. “Have yourselves a real vacation at this camp, but don’t come back to us too good to groom your own horses, okay? One of those is enough at the stable, thank you very much.”

  Red didn’t have to name names. He was talking about Veronica diAngelo, the stable’s spoiled little rich girl.

  “Don’t worry, Red,” Lisa assured him. “Nothing, short of about ten million dollars, would make us as obnoxious as she is.”

  “Twenty,” he said, and then turned all his attention to his driving. Lisa wasn’t certain if Red had meant it would take twenty million dollars to make her obnoxious or if he thought twenty million was what Veronica had. She watched the hilly Virginia countryside slide by and thought about what she’d do with twenty million dollars. She’d build a stable for herself and buy a horse. Two horses. No, one for every member of The Saddle Club. She’d hire loads of stablehands and she’d ride with her friends all day, every day. They’d enter all kinds of competitions and they’d win them all, because when the three of them were teamed together, they couldn’t lose. She’d have a swimming pool—two actually: one indoor, one outdoor. She’d have a thick pile carpet in her room and her very own maid to pick up any of the expensive clothes she happened to drop on the floor. But, she told herself, she’d still take care of her own horse, and she’d never be as obnoxious as Veronica.

  “Did you see her face?!” Stevie shrieked, abruptly bringing Lisa out of her daydream. Carole was laughing.

  Lisa had no idea what they were talking about. “Who?” she asked.

  “Veronica,” Carole said. “You know, when she sat on the moldy hay. Didn’t you see that?”

  “Oh, yeah, I did. She kept swiping at the seat of her designer breeches. It was very funny and the harder she swiped, the angrier Max got.” Lisa smiled, remembering the scene.

  “Well, Max had left the hay bale out so that the salesman could see what he’d delivered, and Veronica just assumed it was a new throne for the princess.”

  “Got what she deserved,” Lisa said. “A moldy throne. Well, better her breeches than a horse’s manger!”

  “Absolutely!” Carole said seriously. “Horses have very delicate stomachs and moldy hay can cause colic, and that’s no joke. To a horse, colic can be fatal! So if all that happened with that bale was that Veronica’s pants had to go to the dry cleaner, well, we were just plain lucky.”

  “It’s not so much luck as it is caution, you know,” Red said. “Moldy hay will happen. You just have to test for it with every shipment and every bale.”

  “How do you do that?” Lisa asked.

  “You feel it and see if there’s any moisture, then you sniff at it for a funny odor.”

  “You can feel it for warmth, too,” Carole said.

  “Well, if it’s warm, you’re in real trouble,” Red said. “That means that there’s so much decay going on inside that it’s heating up to burn. You want to get it far away from the barn as soon as possible. Those things can just about explode.”

  “You know one of the things I love about horses?” Lisa asked, thinking out loud. “I love the fact that there’s so much to find out about them that you can learn about them no matter where you are or what you’re doing, like in a car driving over the hills of Virginia. You can learn just as much out of the saddle as you can in it.”

  “It’s just that it’s more fun if you’re in it,” Stevie said, and the girls agreed.

  “I have the feeling we’ll be there any minute now,” Carole said.

  “Yep,” Red agreed, turning the car and its trailer off the main road where the sign pointed to Moose Hill.

  The road was narrow and shaded by tall maples, which made it suddenly cool in the hot August afternoon. Gradually the surrounding forest became pine and the road turned into a dirt trail. Red slowed down so the van wouldn’t bounce in the ruts. After a half-mile, they saw a horse gate. Stevie jumped out of the car to open and close it f
or them. She clasped the latch carefully behind the trailer and rejoined her friends. Red drove them up a long hill on the winding road and then, as if it grew from the forest, there stood before them the stately red barn of Moose Hill Riding Camp.

  “I THINK HE said our cabin was this one—the second one on the right.” Lisa pointed to a small wooden bunkhouse. “Yeah, here it is, Number Three.” She paused to readjust the weight of the three heavy bags she was carrying. Carole did the same.

  “I hope Stevie knows what a wonderful thing we’re doing for her, lugging her stuff while she checks Topside into his suite at the Hilton on the Hill.” Lisa and Carole had agreed to carry Stevie’s things for her while she got Topside settled in. They were both beginning to think Stevie had gotten the best of the deal. When they heard Stevie shout gaily from behind them, they were sure of it.

  “Here I come!” Stevie announced her arrival. “And, hey, thanks for all the help. Boy, you won’t believe the barn! It’s really wild. It’s a big old farmer’s barn with a few stalls—most of the time the horses are in the paddock—and this gigantic hayloft. It’ll be a blast to mess around in.”

  “If we can move at all after carrying all this weight,” Carole said pointedly.

  Stevie got the hint. She took her bags from Carole and Lisa and followed them into the cabin.

  The screen door slammed behind them. The girls found themselves standing inside a very plain rectangular room with a bathroom off to the side. There were six cots in the room, each with a cubby area with shelves for clothes and personal belongings. Lisa looked dubiously at her two large duffel bags while her eyes adjusted to the dim light cast by the single overhead bulb. She was sure she’d never fit all her belongings into the modest cubby.

  “That one’s my bed,” an unfamiliar voice said to her. There was nothing friendly or warm about the greeting.

  “Oh,” Lisa said, startled. She turned to see a girl about her own age emerging from the bathroom. “I wasn’t going to take your bed. I was just looking at how small the cubbies are. I was thinking about …” She was going to explain about how her mother always packed too much for her when she realized that the girl who had spoken wasn’t listening. She’d picked up her riding hat and was striding out of the cabin.