Stable Witch

  IS STEVIE GUILTY AS CHARGED?

  Carole edged Starlight closer to the scene and looked over Max’s shoulder. Max shook his head as he held up the torn ends of the leather. Now everyone could see the terrible truth. The leather hadn’t just ripped. It had been deliberately severed.

  Carole let out an audible gasp. Someone had tried to sabotage Veronica!

  “Of all the dirty tricks to pull!” Max exclaimed, looking stunned at first, and then very angry. When he uttered his next words, his voice was hard and icy. “I would like to know who, in my stable, could have done a thing like this.”

  At that instant, all the members of Horse Wise looked right at one person: Stevie Lake.…

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  STABLE WITCH

  A Bantam Skylark Book / February 1995

  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 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.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1995 by Bonnie Bryant Hiller.

  Cover art copyright © 1995 by Garin Baker.

  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: 978-0-307-82525-4

  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

  I would like to express my special thanks

  to Caitlin C. Macy

  for her help in the writing of this book.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Skylark Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  “SHH!” A GIGGLING Stevie Lake put her finger to her lips.

  “But—” Her twin brother Alex started to protest.

  Stevie motioned wildly to silence him. Alex had caught her tiptoeing downstairs in her nightgown. Of course he had immediately known that something was up. Usually Stevie leapt from her bed and galloped downstairs like a Thoroughbred in the Kentucky Derby. Today she was as quiet as a mouse. And for good reason.

  Stevie’s two best friends, Carole Hanson and Lisa Atwood, were sleeping over at her house. So far she had managed to get out of bed and sneak past them without waking them up. Now, all she had to do was make it downstairs and prepare “breakfast”—or at least what they would think was breakfast—to put the final twist on a perfect practical joke.

  “What’s going on?” Alex whispered.

  Stevie shook her head and beckoned for Alex to follow her.

  “All right, what are you plotting?” Alex demanded as soon as they were out of earshot in the safety of the kitchen.

  Stevie smiled smugly. “Oh, just a little Saddle Club joking around,” she replied. She turned her back and began to rummage in the cupboards, getting out plates, forks, knives, and napkins.

  “With all the joking around you do, I’m surprised you’re still a member of The Saddle Club,” Alex muttered.

  “Fortunately, being serious all the time is not a requirement for joining,” Stevie retorted.

  If it had been, Stevie thought, she would have long ago been kicked out of the club that she, Lisa, and Carole had started. She was constantly getting into trouble with all the jokes she played, and she was just as constantly devising clever ways of getting right back out of trouble.

  There were two things that members of The Saddle Club did have to be serious about: being horse-crazy and being willing to help each other out in any kind of situation. Other than those two rules, the individual members could be—and were—very different from one another. Clattering around in the kitchen, Stevie mused about just how different.

  Take Carole and Lisa, for instance, asleep upstairs. Carole was probably dreaming about riding her horse, Starlight, in the Olympics. Totally dedicated to riding and all aspects of horse care, Carole wanted to grow up to be a trainer, vet, professional rider, or any one of a dozen things that meant spending one’s life in a stable. Thinking about horses took up almost her every waking moment. And maybe, Stevie ventured to guess, her every sleeping moment, too.

  Lisa, on the other hand, was probably not dreaming at all. She was so practical and sensible that, if anyone had asked, she would probably have said that it was silly to waste time dreaming when you could be getting a good night’s rest. She swore by her early bed-time and kept to a tidy schedule of riding, homework, and chores. Sometimes she could be too strict with herself. Being in The Saddle Club had helped her to become more flexible, and she was more than willing to rearrange her plans for an adventure.

  And as for herself, Stevie thought, she had hardly been able to sleep at all, she had been so busy planning the joke she was going to play.

  “So, what’s the big deal?” Alex asked, startling Stevie back to attention. “It looks like you’re setting the table.”

  Stevie gave him a withering glance. “I am setting the table, brother dear. And besides that, I’ve already made breakfast for everyone.” With that, she whisked two cloth napkins off the centerpiece. Piled high on a serving platter were mounds of pancakes just begging to be eaten.

  “Boy, you really outdid yourself, Stevie. These look good enough to eat …,” Alex began.

  Stevie nodded graciously at her brother’s praise.

  “It’s too bad they’re not edible,” he finished, flashing her a wicked look of triumph.

  Stevie knew defeat when she heard it, especially from one of her own brothers. “How did you know?” she asked.

  “Simple. We’re doing the same project in my art class,” Alex explained. “It’s amazing how real plaster of paris can look.” Eagerly he started telling her about all the things he and his friends had been making with plaster of paris during the past week, too.

  “One guy did fake money—stacks of hundred-dollar bills. They looked completely real And then there was this disgusting mass of blood and guts.”

  “Yeah, people in my class did all that, too, but I thought fake breakfast was pretty original,” Stevie put in. She explained how she had chosen to make pancakes a
nd had paid attention to every detail—coloring the plaster a creamy white, pouring out the cakes, trimming them with a single razor blade when they were dry, and then painting the results a toasty brown.

  “That’s the problem with them. They look too good to eat. When Mom makes them, they’re always all different sizes and sort of plain brown,” Alex pointed out.

  Stevie shrugged off the criticism. She was pretty sure Carole and Lisa would fall for it. After all, they went to the local public school—and not to Fenton Hall, the private school which Stevie and Alex attended. There was a chance their art teacher had never even heard of plaster of paris.

  Before he could get away, Stevie enlisted Alex in helping her finish setting the table and getting everything all ready for Carole and Lisa, who would be coming down any minute.

  The girls had planned to get up early so they could go to their Pony Club meeting together. Carole, Lisa, and Stevie all rode in Horse Wise Pony Club, which had most of its meetings at Pine Hollow Stables. It was very convenient for The Saddle Club because Pine Hollow was where they normally rode and where Stevie and Carole boarded their horses. Having Pony Club at Pine Hollow was like having a security blanket along for the ride. They knew the barn and all of the horses from top to bottom. They also knew the head instructor of both Horse Wise and Pine Hollow, Max Regnery. Max not only gave lessons there but also owned the entire farm. It had been in his family for generations.

  Sure enough, Carole and Lisa appeared in the kitchen in a matter of minutes, rubbing their eyes and yawning. Alex barely looked up from shoveling cereal into his mouth when they entered. In response to Lisa and Carole’s greeting, he nodded briefly.

  “Boy, am I starved,” Carole commented, with an appreciative glance at the breakfast table.

  “Me, too,” Lisa added. “I always love a good breakfast before riding.”

  “Good. I’m glad you guys are hungry because this should be a great meal,” Stevie predicted. “Now here you go, Lisa, sit right here, and you’re over here, Carole,” she instructed them in her best motherly voice. First she poured some orange juice for each of them. Then she took the plate of pancakes and began to serve them.

  “Wow, you made pancakes—yum!” Carole exclaimed.

  “Yes, I do aim to please,” Stevie said. She took a furtive glance at Lisa, who was eyeing her plate suspiciously. “Here, they need butter,” Stevie said, smearing some all over Lisa’s plate for her.

  “Uh, thanks,” Lisa said, taken aback at Stevie’s zealous hostessing.

  “And, ah, don’t forget to sweeten them up,” Stevie said. She reached for the jug of syrup and began drowning Lisa’s pancakes in the gooey liquid.

  Lisa picked up her fork. She paused. She looked at Carole, who was now pouring syrup over her plate. She looked at Stevie, who was now chowing down a bowl of cereal. She put her fork down.

  “Yikes!” Carole, who had been struggling to cut her pancakes, let out a shriek of horror as her knife bent in two.

  Lisa folded her arms across her chest. “All right, Stevie, where’d you get the plaster of paris?” she asked grimly.

  Stevie smiled wanly. “I—well—I—” Abruptly she snapped her mouth shut and glanced at Alex for help.

  “Oh, no. No way are you going to drag me into this one, Stevie,” Alex declared.

  “Very funny, Stevie,” Carole commented wryly. “Fake pancakes—ha, ha, ha.”

  “Yeah—hysterical,” Lisa added sarcastically.

  But Stevie was grinning from ear to ear. “That was so f-funny!” She managed between peals of laughter. “You guys r-r-really thought I made p-pan-pancakes!”

  Lisa and Carole exchanged glances, sighing audibly. They were used to Stevie’s finding her own jokes infinitely more funny than they did. They knew the best thing to do was to sit calmly and wait until Stevie had gotten control over herself once again.

  Still snorting with laughter, Stevie remembered her hostessing duties, this time for real. She got up and took out bowls and a box of cereal from the pantry. “I wanted to do fake cereal and put it in the real boxes, but I figured it would take too long to color the individual flakes and raisins.”

  “Boy, it’s really a shame that you didn’t have time,” Lisa remarked flatly.

  After pouring them bowls of cereal, Stevie excused herself to go hunt for her breeches in the laundry room. At the Lakes’ house Stevie and her brothers shared the chores. In the past, that had made for some interestingly colored wash loads. So now Stevie always washed her riding clothes herself. It was a pretty good system, except for the fact that she never remembered her dirty breeches until the morning of Pony Club.

  Today, even the thought of having to do a last-minute spot cleaning didn’t seem to bother her, though. Lisa and Carole could hear her guffawing all the way down the hall. As soon as she was out of earshot, they started giggling, too. They couldn’t decide which was funnier—Stevie’s dumb joke or Stevie’s reaction to her dumb joke.

  “Well,” said Lisa, between bites, “this is about what you’d expect.”

  “What is?” Carole asked curiously.

  “This morning. It’s about what you’d expect for the typical beginning of a day with The Saddle Club.”

  At the sound of Stevie’s howls drifting through the house, Carole had to agree.

  THE REST OF the morning followed a typical Saddle Club routine as well. The girls got dressed in their medium-good riding clothes, walked over to Pine Hollow, groomed and tacked up their horses, and met in the indoor ring for a mounted meeting.

  Carole was riding her own horse, Starlight, a bay Thoroughbred gelding, named for the eye-catching white star in the middle of his forehead. The two made a pretty picture: Carole’s jet-black hair and dark eyes matched Starlight’s mane and tail.

  Stevie was aboard Belle. She could still hardly believe that the dark bay, half-Arabian, half-Saddlebred mare was hers to keep. Shortly after Stevie’s parents had bought the horse, they had discovered that Belle was stolen property. Eventually things had gotten straightened out with Belle’s legal owner, and now the mare truly belonged to Stevie. After weeks of deliberations about what to name her, Stevie had recently christened her Belle because of her American Saddlebred breeding and because she was feisty and independent, a lot like a famous Southern belle—Scarlett O’Hara. A lot of the riders at Pine Hollow thought Belle was a lot like Stevie, too—feisty and spirited. Stevie herself absolutely agreed—those traits were part of what she loved about the horse.

  By pure coincidence, Lisa’s mount was a bay, too. Lisa didn’t own the mare, but Max let her be Prancer’s usual rider. She loved learning together with Prancer and found the young, inexperienced horse both challenging and very rewarding to ride.

  Today as Lisa looked around at the rest of the Horse Wise riders, she realized that she was unusually nervous about keeping up in the lesson. So far, everything had gone fine. They had all warmed up and trotted over low fences to get ready to jump while Max had set up a course of eight jumps.

  Normally, Lisa didn’t worry about her ability. Even though she had started riding later than Carole and Stevie, she had learned fast and was constantly improving. But today’s class was going to focus on jumping, an area where Lisa felt less secure. She gulped a bit as she looked over the course. Unlike her old mount, Barq, who was a seasoned school horse, Prancer was relatively new to jumping. She tended to look twice at anything funny-looking, and she often overjumped by a couple of feet, jarring Lisa’s position in the saddle.

  “Boy, I hope Belle behaves herself,” Stevie, who had elected to ride first, murmured as she rode by Lisa. Lisa gave her an encouraging smile. It helped to hear that not everyone knew for sure that they would do the course perfectly. After all, Lisa told herself, Belle was still new to Pine Hollow. Stevie hadn’t jumped her much yet, and there was no telling how they’d do.

  Stevie was the first rider to take a turn. She picked up a rhythmic canter and started for the first fence. Belle cleared it easily
and, prepared by Stevie in midair, turned immediately for the second jump when they landed.

  Lisa’s heart sank as she saw how confident Stevie looked. A split second later, guilt washed over her. How could she have been hoping that Stevie would have problems with Belle?

  It’s just that I don’t want to be the only rider to need help from Max, Lisa told herself. Stevie and Carole could get a donkey over the course if they had to. Even if their mount wasn’t perfect, they were always in control. Lisa, on the other hand, relied more on her horse to carry her than on her own ability to make the horse behave well.

  Stevie finished the course and pulled up smartly. She turned to the onlookers and asked innocently, “I guess she’s a real jumper, huh?” Stevie was glowing with pleasure at Belle’s success. Except for Veronica diAngelo, the rest of Horse Wise looked almost as pleased as Stevie. The Pony Club often traveled to compete in regional rallies where the combined score of the team was what mattered. So it was always good news when a good jumper joined the team.

  “I guess she’s a real packer,” Veronica said, loud enough for Stevie to hear.

  Stevie didn’t even bother to retort. “Packer” was slang for a horse who “packed” his or her rider over every fence, without the rider’s having to do anything. Stevie knew that riding her skittish half-Arab was no easy task, and she wasn’t going to waste her breath debating Veronica—at least not right this second when Carole was starting her round.

  Starlight was truly in his element over fences. He had wonderful form and happily pricked up his ears at every fence. Carole’s only problem was keeping him slow and steady enough to make all of the turns. It took her a full circle after the course to get him to slow to a trot. Still, Max seemed pleased with their ride. Like everyone else, he liked watching the beautiful horse do what he did best—and Carole’s skill only enhanced the picture.

  Lisa felt a little better when she saw Veronica do the course on Garnet. Every time they went over a jump, the girl ducked down toward Garnet’s shoulder and shoved her hands way up around Garnet’s ears. Max had to speak to her a number of times.