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  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 © 1989 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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  eISBN: 978-0-307-82482-0

  Originally published by Bantam Skylark in 1989

  First Delacorte eBook Edition 2012

  v3.1

  For my trail mates, Neil, Emmons, & Andrew

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  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

  CAROLE HANSON STEAMED up the walkway and through the door into Pine Hollow Stables. Her wavy black hair bounced against her shoulders with each step. She hated being late to anything, especially to riding classes. She stomped into the locker room and tossed her knapsack angrily on the floor.

  “What’s gotten into you?” asked Stevie Lake, one of her two best friends.

  Carole grimaced. She really didn’t feel like giving a long explanation about how her father’s friend Lynne Blessing had insisted on driving her to the stables—and on making her late. “Somebody gave me a lift,” she said. “And I would have been better off on the bus.”

  “Oh,” Stevie said, pulling on her boots. “Well, if you’re already in a good mood, you’ll be glad to know that we’re going to be working on changing gaits in class today.”

  “Groan,” Carole remarked.

  “What’s the matter with working on changing gaits?” Lisa Atwood asked. Along with Stevie and Carole, Lisa made up the trio that called themselves The Saddle Club. The girls were devoted to horses—and to each other. Although Lisa was the oldest of the three, she had the least experience as a rider, having begun only a few months earlier. Max Regnery, their riding teacher and the owner of Pine Hollow Stables, felt that Lisa had a lot of promise, but she also had a lot to learn.

  “There’s nothing wrong with changing gaits,” Carole explained. “Changing gaits is very important. But it’s something I can do pretty well already. I was hoping we’d work on something a little more challenging in class this morning. At least then I would have rushed for a reason!” She smiled ever so slightly. Her anger at Lynne was wearing off. It was always hard for Carole to remain angry for long, especially when she was within a few feet of a horse.

  “Maybe there will be a challenge this morning,” Stevie said temptingly. She stood up and selected one of the velvet-covered hard hats from a hook on the wall where they were stored. Standing in front of the mirror, she slipped it on her head and snapped the chin strap tightly. Lisa and Carole took hats as well. Carole didn’t bother to look at herself in the mirror while she snapped the strap. She knew that the hats looked weird and that adjusting them in the mirror wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. But they were required for safety, and even the newest rider knew it was a good idea to protect herself against a possible fall.

  “Okay, I give up,” Carole said after a moment. “What makes you think there might be a challenge today?”

  Stevie’s eyes twinkled. She was a teaser and a practical joker. She loved it that she’d piqued Carole’s curiosity. “It may be nothing,” she began, “but Max was here a while ago. He was looking for you—”

  “Me?” Carole interrupted.

  “—and me,” Stevie added. “Said he’d talk to us together when you got here. Ready?” she asked.

  In spite of herself, Carole glanced at the mirror. Satisfied with what she saw, she nodded at Stevie. “Come on, Lisa,” she said. “Maybe it’ll be a challenge for you, too.”

  “Changing gaits is a challenge for me,” Lisa reminded her friends, but she fell in line behind the other girls. They headed toward the stable area, where the other students were already doing their chores.

  As the girls entered the long hallway by the box stalls, they spotted Max standing next to the largest stall at the end of the row. It housed Delilah, a palomino mare, and her young colt, Samson. Max appeared to be watching Samson, but Carole knew that he was actually overseeing all the chores his students were doing.

  “Polly!” he called out to one of the girls. “You must not yank the straps when you’re tightening the girth. All you’ll get for your troubles is a kick!” Polly looked up guiltily from the left side of her horse. She hadn’t known Max was watching.

  “Just wait until he breathes out, then you can tighten it easily,” Max advised.

  “He’s holding his breath, Max,” Polly complained.

  “But he can’t hold it forever,” Max reminded her.

  Carole stifled a smile. She knew that there was an awful lot to learn about taking care of horses, but much of it was just plain common sense. Polly would learn these things in time.

  “Well, good morning, Carole,” Max greeted her. “Glad you could join us today.”

  “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help being late,” Carole began the explanation of her exasperating morning. “This friend of my dad’s wanted to give me a ride, but she kept talking to Dad; I knew we’d be late, but she wouldn’t stop, so—” Carole stopped talking. She could see that Max didn’t really care why she was late. He just wanted her to know that he had noticed. Max could be very relaxed about some things, but not when it came to the stable and riding horses. He was very strict about training discipline, and that included promptness.

  “I wanted to ask you or Stevie to help me out with something.”

  One of the traditions at Pine Hollow, which was located in Willow Creek, Virginia, not far from Washington, D.C., was that all of the students helped with the routine chores. Not only did that help keep their costs down, but it gave the students chances to learn more about horse care. Since Carole’s ambition was to spend the rest of her life with horses—riding, raising, or training them—she was always interested in new opportunities.

  “I have a group of tourists who want to take a trail ride. There are about ten riders. Red O’Malley can lead the group, but I don’t know how well trained any of them are. I’d like to know there’s another experienced rider with them. Would either of you be willing to cut class to go out with Red and this group?”

  Riding with a group of tourists was not exactly
Carole’s idea of a challenge. She looked at Stevie. Stevie’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling. It was clear that she wasn’t too enthusiastic about it either. On the other hand, Carole thought to herself, it might be good experience. After all, if she was going to be an instructor someday, she’d be working with lots of new riders.

  She shrugged. “Sure, Max, I’ll do it,” she volunteered.

  “Thanks, Carole. Go find Red. You and he can choose the horses for the group. I told Red to take the hill trail and then come back through Brown’s farm. The tourists will love the pasture. Don’t let them stop by the creek, though. They’ll have the horses drinking no matter what, and then …”

  Carole listened carefully as Max gave his instructions. She realized that she had been right to agree to this assignment. There was a lot to learn. When Max finally finished, she saluted him smartly, just the way she had seen her father, a Marine Corps colonel, do. Then she clicked her heels together for good measure and marched off to find Red.

  “See you in class, Max,” Stevie said, turning to go back to the tack room.

  “Not so fast,” Max said, halting her. “There are still fifteen minutes before your class,” he reminded her. “Don’t you have a chore to do?”

  From Max, those could be very significant words. Stevie knew that if she didn’t come up with something quickly, she was likely to find herself pitchforking straw. She’d rather go on a trail ride with fifty tourists than that. Lisa came to her rescue.

  “We were right in the middle of soaping the dressage saddles, Max,” she said.

  “Right in the middle?” he asked suspiciously.

  Stevie and Lisa nodded in unison.

  “Then I guess you’d better finish before class,” he said, smiling at them. “I’ll get somebody else to keep an eye on Samson when we let him out in the paddock by himself.”

  “Oh, no,” Lisa groaned, giving herself away.

  “But I know how eager you must be to finish the dressage saddles, so off with you. And if you want to cut class to finish the job …”

  His voice trailed off. Stevie and Lisa definitely did not want to take him up on that suggestion!

  Lisa and Stevie returned to the tack room. Each removed a dressage saddle from storage and placed it on a rack for cleaning. They talked as they worked, Stevie trying to give Lisa pointers on changing gaits.

  “… So, when you want to slow down, say from trot to walk, you really kind of sit into the saddle, leaning back a little.”

  “And pull on the reins?” Lisa asked.

  “Sure, a bit, but you do more of the work with your seat than with your hands. And you never yank on the reins.”

  “I know that,” Lisa said. “Everybody knows that.”

  “Not everybody,” Stevie said significantly. She tilted her head over toward the locker area of the tack room. There, primping in front of the dingy mirror, was Veronica diAngelo.

  Veronica was the only daughter of a very wealthy and influential family and she never let anybody forget it. She always dressed perfectly in the most expensive clothes. Her mother drove a Mercedes. So did her father. They had even bought Veronica an extremely valuable Thoroughbred stallion named Cobalt. But money couldn’t buy everything, and one of the things it hadn’t bought Veronica was responsibility. Because of Veronica’s ignorance and carelessness, Cobalt had had a fatal accident.

  Now, while Stevie and Lisa watched, Veronica combed her hair so that every inch of it shone. She carefully applied lip gloss and pinched her cheeks to make them pink. She straightened her collar and smoothed her riding jacket, checking to be sure the pocket flaps lay flat along the perfectly matched pattern of the expensive fabric.

  “Are you going to a movie set or a riding ring?” Stevie asked. Stevie was not very good at keeping her opinions to herself. Lisa stifled a laugh. Veronica arched her eyebrows.

  “It may interest you to know that I’ll probably be doing some of both today, in a manner of speaking.”

  “In a manner of speaking?” Stevie echoed. Nobody talked that way.

  “In case you didn’t know, there is a photographer here at the stable today. She’s a local woman, but she’s trying to make it into the high-fashion photography world. She’s looking for promising young riders to model for her. She’s currently doing work for a catalog. Naturally, she’ll want the best-dressed and best-looking girls to use for the catalog. Although it’s not much of a start, it is a start. I think I’ll enjoy it. And then, of course, there’s the money …”

  Finally satisfied with her own reflection, Veronica nodded farewell to Stevie and Lisa and drifted out of the tack room. She was carrying her hard hat. She always put it on at the last possible moment so it wouldn’t ruin her hairdo.

  “Grrr,” Stevie remarked when Veronica had left the tack room. “That girl is the most annoying, obnoxious, yucky person I have ever known.”

  “I didn’t know you liked her that much,” Lisa joked.

  “I don’t,” Stevie said, laughing at Lisa’s joke. “I was just being nice. But you know who I feel sorry for? I feel sorry for the poor photographer who ends up with her as a model. I bet she’ll be even worse to work with as a model than she is as a rider.”

  Lisa nodded. Anything that would inflate Veronica’s oversize ego would make her worse. Modeling would certainly do that.

  Just then, the P.A. scratched to life. “Flat class will begin in three minutes,” Max announced.

  “And we still have to tack up our horses!” Lisa yowled. “Let’s go!”

  THE TRAIL RIDERS were part of a group of tourists staying near Pine Hollow. None of them was an experienced rider.

  “Now put your left foot in the stirrup and lift yourself up,” Carole instructed one of the trail riders, Dr. Babcock. “Be careful you don’t jump and land too hard on the horse’s …”

  She stopped talking because the man wasn’t listening to her. He nearly flew into the air and plopped himself down in the saddle. His horse grunted. Carole patted the horse sympathetically and helped Dr. Babcock adjust his stirrups.

  He was the second-to-last rider she had to help mount before they could begin the trail ride. His son, Scott, was her final task. When Dr. Babcock began walking his horse over to the rest of the group, Carole turned her attention to Scott.

  “Did you see what your father did?” she asked. Scott nodded. “Don’t do it that way,” she said. Scott grinned.

  “Dad’s not very good at listening to directions,” he explained.

  “How about you?” Carole asked.

  “Try me,” he said.

  Carole carefully told him the steps to follow in mounting a horse. She explained that landing hard on the horse’s back was a strain on the animal’s spine.

  “I could tell the horse didn’t like it,” Scott said. “So I suppose all that stuff about the cowboy jumping down from the second-story window into his saddle to make a getaway is just Hollywood junk, right?”

  “Right,” Carole said with a grin. Then, when Scott was in the saddle, she helped him with his stirrups and showed him how to hold the reins. When she was satisfied, she mounted her own horse, Diablo, and they joined the others for the trail ride.

  It was a relaxed ride. The horses at Pine Hollow were usually used for classes, which could be quite strenuous for them. When Max had a group of inexperienced riders who wanted to ride on a trail, it meant that the horses would be walking slowly for an hour or more. Max would not let untested riders canter or even trot. Not only could the riders get into trouble, but the horses would be at risk, and Max would never let that happen.

  Carole rode Diablo at the rear of the group. The riders had been paired and her trail mate was Scott Babcock. She wasn’t paying too much attention to him, though. Carole’s job, as second rider, was to watch ahead and be sure that nobody was getting into any trouble. Most of the riders in this group seemed so unfamiliar with horses that they weren’t trying anything risky at all. She watched the riders keenly, but spared some of her atte
ntion for appreciating her surroundings.

  It was a muggy, hot summer day. Threatening clouds masked the sunshine, but there was no relief from the humidity. As the group entered a forest path that led up a hillside, Carole sighed, expecting some relief. There was none. The mosquitoes and gnats were out in full force. The horses’ tails swished, flicking at insects. Carole swatted a mosquito on her arm. Then, when another one landed on Diablo’s neck, she swatted that as well. Diablo nodded his head ever so slightly after her hand struck. He seemed grateful, but too hot himself to react much.

  “Doesn’t it bother him when you hit him like that?” Scott asked.

  “Not when I’m doing him a favor and he knows it,” Carole told him. “Horses are tough. You can hurt one, that’s for sure, but Diablo knows the difference between, say, a friendly swat like that and a punishing whack, which I might give him if he started to bite me or something.”

  “Have you been riding a long time?” Scott asked.

  “Since I could walk,” Carole said. “I was raised on Marine Corps bases, and there are usually stables on bases, so I got to spend a lot of time riding. I plan to own horses when I grow up. I may become a vet, too. I’m not sure about that yet.”

  “You seem to know an awful lot about horses already,” Scott said, obviously impressed.

  Carole thought about her friend Kate Devine, now living with her family on a dude ranch out west. Now Kate knew about horses and riding! Carole really missed the championship rider, and hoped to visit Kate soon. In fact, she’d already saved up a lot of the money she would need for airfare.

  Still thinking about Kate, Carole shrugged off Scott’s compliment. “This is just basic stuff,” she said. “In classes, I’m working on harder things, like jumping and dressage.”

  “Dressage? You mean like putting costumes on the horses?”

  Carole couldn’t help it. She burst into giggles. “No. Dressage is an important aspect of riding, especially in competition. It focuses on the horse’s training, but it’s the rider’s responsibility to see that the horse does what he’s supposed to do. It has to do with obedience and manners.”