Horse Power Read online

  Kate Devine. Katharine Devine. Carole repeated the name to herself. She could barely believe that she was actually going to come to her house, maybe even be her friend. Kate might even ride at Pine Hollow!

  ON MONDAY MORNING, Lisa was in the locker area of the stables when Stevie stormed in, mumbling to herself.

  “What’s up?” Lisa asked innocently, though she was sure she already knew what Stevie was steaming about.

  “In about three minutes, Max is going to call me over the P.A. and ask me to help Chad get acquainted with the stable. I’m going to have to show my stupid brother how to tack up a horse.”

  “Take it easy, Stevie,” Lisa said, trying to calm her. Sometimes she could joke Stevie out of being angry, but this wasn’t one of them. Stevie was in no mood to see the humor of the situation. Only time could cure this. “Look, if it’ll help, I’ll come along too. Then I can help you help him.” Lisa grinned at her mixed-up-sounding sentence, but Stevie didn’t seem to notice.

  Stevie reached for her jodhpur boots and pulled them on. “Where’s Carole?” she asked.

  “She’s in the paddock with Delilah and Samson,” Lisa explained. Samson was a two-week-old colt, Delilah’s son. The Saddle Club had been alone at the stable with Delilah when Samson had been born, and now the three girls watched over the black colt like doting aunts. Carole, especially, liked to spend time with the spindle-legged colt. “I was in the paddock, too, before you got here. Delilah was swishing at flies with her tail, and Samson was cuddled up next to her.”

  That made Stevie grin. “He’s so cute,” she said.

  “Who, me?” a voice asked from the door to the locker area.

  Lisa turned to see Chad, standing next to Max. Stevie glared at Chad. “No, not you, Chad. You’re definitely not cute. We were talking about a colt.”

  Max seemed unaware of the icy exchange, but Lisa suspected he was actually just ignoring it. He cleared his throat. The students looked at him. “Stevie, I’d like you to show Chad around the stable and then I’d like you to show him how to put the tack on Patch. His class begins in half an hour. Until then, you’re excused from chores. See you in class, Chad.”

  Max left the locker area, leaving Chad to the mercies of Lisa and Stevie. Chad didn’t seem in the least upset. Stevie did. Lisa decided to try to break the ice a bit.

  “I knew you were wrong about Max,” she said to Stevie.

  Stevie stared at her in surprise.

  “Well”—Lisa shrugged—“you said he’d call you over the P.A. He actually came here in person.”

  Stevie gave her the tiniest bit of a grin.

  Lisa tried to finish her chores quickly so she could join Stevie and Chad. She had the feeling war would be declared between the two of them if they were left alone for long. It had surprised her a little that Max had asked Stevie to show Chad around. Usually Max showed better judgment than that. He must have known that Stevie wouldn’t like it—unless, of course, Chad had asked Max to get Stevie to give him the tour. But why would he have done that?

  Lisa brought the last bucket of fresh water to the ponies, latched it onto the hook on the wall, and went in search of the Lakes. It wasn’t hard to find them. All she had to do was to follow the sound of the sarcastic voice.

  “Okay, Chad,” Stevie said through gritted teeth. “This is Patch.” She held the horse, a gentle pinto that Max usually used for beginners, by his halter. Lisa walked over to Patch’s stall and stood on her tiptoes to see over the door. She greeted Stevie and Chad. Stevie was preoccupied and barely acknowledged her, but Chad greeted her with a warm smile.

  “Do you know the first thing about tacking up?” Stevie asked.

  “Sure!” Chad said. “You got to put the pedal to the metal,” he replied.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, like ‘tach it up’—like with a car?” He seemed surprised by Stevie’s and Lisa’s blank looks. “The tachometer—it measures the RPM of the crankshaft. You do know what that is, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t,” Stevie said. “And I don’t think Patch has one, anyway.”

  Chad looked to Lisa for support, but she was as confused as Stevie. Chad shrugged.

  “Lesson number one,” Stevie said to Chad. “This is the front end.” She pointed to Patch’s nose. “And this isn’t.” She pointed toward his tail.

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic,” Chad said.

  “Max told me I had to show you around and help you tack up. He didn’t say I had to be nice to you, did he?”

  “No, I guess not,” Chad agreed. “But it’ll go better for both of us if you are.”

  She gave him a withering look and then sighed. “Okay. First, the saddle.” She showed him how to smooth the saddle pad on the horse’s back and how to put the saddle on over it, gently, so as not to startle the mount.

  As she finished fastening the girth, showing Chad how to test it for tightness and how to pull at the buckle gently instead of yanking it, Lisa came into the stall to help tighten the girth.

  “You know Lisa, right?” Stevie asked by way of introduction.

  “Yeah, uh—sure, I do,” Chad said. “We’ve met a lot of times, Lisa, haven’t we?” He seemed almost eager to make the point.

  “Hi, Chad,” Lisa responded. “You’re going to get a lot of information today. Good luck.”

  “Oh, thanks,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to it, too. You’re a pretty new rider, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Lisa told him. “I’ve just been riding since last spring—”

  “Are you in the beginner class, too?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Lisa said. “Max put me in with the older kids. He’ll probably graduate you at the end of the summer. Most of the riders in the beginner class are, well, pretty young.”

  “Really? I thought Stevie just said that to discourage me. But as long as I’ll move up quickly.”

  “About a month,” Lisa told him.

  “If it’s all right with you two, I’ll show Chad how to put on a bridle,” Stevie interrupted.

  “I bet I’ll really bridle at that,” Chad joked.

  “Huh?” Stevie grunted. Lisa giggled.

  “Bridle at that,” Chad repeated. “You know, bridle, like resent something? It’s a joke,” he explained to Stevie.

  “Not a very good one,” Stevie said, but Lisa didn’t think he’d heard his sister. Chad was just looking at her and grinning. It embarrassed Lisa. She could feel herself flush red. She hoped neither Stevie nor Chad would notice. If they did, they didn’t say anything.

  “And you slide the crownpiece over the horse’s ears, smoothing down the mane. Be sure his forelock isn’t stuck in the browband. Then you fasten the throatlatch and—Chad, what are you doing?” Stevie stopped abruptly, realizing she still didn’t have his attention.

  “There’s a cat in here!” he said.

  “There are cats all over here,” Stevie told him. “All stables are full of cats. They keep the mouse population down. Now, here’s how you fasten—”

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” he said.

  “Grrr,” Stevie said.

  “Is there a dog around here, too?” Chad asked.

  “This is going to get rough,” Stevie warned, gritting her teeth.

  “I thought I heard a dog.”

  “I give up,” Stevie said. She slid under the horse’s neck and walked over to the door. “Lisa, can you take over for me? I know he’s hopeless, but he may be less hopeless with you than he is with me. I wouldn’t usually do this to a friend. In fact, if my worst enemy were handy …”

  “Don’t worry, Stevie,” Lisa assured her. “I’ll cope. It’s fifteen minutes to our trail class. I’ll get Chad to the ring. Can you bring Pepper’s tack to his stall for me?”

  “Gladly,” Stevie said, escaping from Patch’s enclosure. Lisa and Chad could hear her sighing with relief as she headed for the tack room.

  Chad listened intently while Lisa explained th
e rest of the tacking procedure. However, when he asked which was the bridle and which was the halter, Lisa got the distinct impression that he wasn’t taking in much of the information. What is he up to? she asked herself.

  Within a few minutes, Patch was ready for class, though Lisa wasn’t sure about Chad. She showed him how to lead the horse to the ring.

  “Don’t look at him,” she said. “Just look straight ahead and walk forward, tugging gently on the reins. See, if you stare at him, he’ll stare back at you, and the two of you will just be standing there, staring at each other.”

  Chad looked over his shoulder into the horse’s eyes. The horse stared back at him. Finally, he turned and faced forward, and began walking. “I see what you mean,” he said sheepishly.

  Lisa brought him to the indoor ring and showed him the well-worn good-luck horseshoe. “You just have to touch it before you mount,” she explained. “It’s one of our traditions. See, as long as this has been here and the riders have been touching it before mounting, no rider has gotten badly hurt.”

  “What about the horses?” Chad joked, nevertheless giving the horseshoe a brief touch.

  “Horses do get hurt sometimes, mostly by careless riders. Maybe we ought to put out a riding boot the horses can paw at before letting anyone mount them,” she said, laughing.

  Lisa then took a few minutes to show Chad how to mount properly. When Chad was on Patch, she wished him good luck quickly, then hustled away to tack up Pepper for her own class.

  As she readied Pepper, she thought about Chad. She had met him several times before at Stevie’s house, and he had always seemed nice enough, but he’d never shown any interest at all in riding. What was behind this big change? Lisa wondered.

  Stevie always said the only thing Chad was interested in was girls. Well, there were certainly a lot of girls around Pine Hollow. Could it be—Lisa suddenly got a funny feeling. She remembered how Chad had grinned when he’d seen her, and how he’d been so eager to learn from her, as opposed to the way he’d teased Stevie. And she remembered a time she’d been to Stevie’s house when Stevie wasn’t there. Chad had tried to get her to stay and hang out, even though Stevie wasn’t around. Lisa’s funny feeling was turning into a hunch, and the hunch was that Chad had a crush—on her!

  If she was right, she could be in hot water with Stevie. But that wouldn’t be fair. She hadn’t done anything to encourage Chad. She hadn’t been flirting with him. And besides, even if he did have some kind of crush on her, it didn’t mean he had to ride horses! Suddenly things were looking very complicated.

  Lisa decided to think about this some more. She had gotten to the point of trying to figure out if she liked Chad or not when she was interrupted.

  “Did you deliver my brother to the ring on time?” Stevie asked.

  “As advertised,” Lisa said. “Once you’d gone, he paid more attention and stopped making so many jokes. You shouldn’t take it all so seriously, you know. He’s not all that bad.”

  “He’s not your brother,” Stevie said darkly. But Lisa thought maybe things would be simpler for her if he were her brother, instead of a boy with a crush on her. Maybe.

  Just then, Carole passed by, leading Diablo. “Red is ready to go now. Are you finished?” she asked Lisa. Red O’Malley was the instructor on their trail ride that morning.

  Lisa nodded and brought Pepper out of his stall to follow Diablo toward the door. One thing she was sure of about Chad was that if she kept her suspicions to herself, Stevie would figure out she was hiding something. They just had to talk. Carole would be a help, too.

  “Hey, guys?” Lisa said to her friends, speaking loudly to be heard over the clump of hooves on the wooden floor of the stable. “How about a Saddle Club meeting this afternoon at TD’s?” Tastee Delight was the ice cream store at the nearby shopping center, and their favorite meeting place.

  “Hungry already?” Carole joked.

  “Not yet,” Lisa said, suspecting she wouldn’t have much of an appetite when she had to tell Stevie about Chad. “But I probably will be by then.”

  “Great idea,” Stevie said. “Chad’s sure to want a long, hot bath as soon as he leaves the stable—he’s going to be sore today! It’ll be a chance for some privacy. But—oh, no,” she groaned as she felt her pockets.

  “What’s the matter?” Carole asked.

  “I’m out of money,” Stevie said. Carole and Lisa had to stifle giggles. The fact was that Stevie was always out of money.

  “My treat today,” Carole offered. “After all, we have to make plans for the weekend.” She brought her horse outside and mounted him smoothly. Stevie followed suit.

  Lisa was the third to mount. She held her reins and her riding whip in her left hand and slid her left foot into the stirrup. Red O’Malley gave her a boost. In a moment, she was in the saddle and her feet were in the stirrups. It was going to be a relief to concentrate on horses instead of boys for a while.

  CAROLE NEEDED TIME to talk to Stevie alone. She maneuvered the afternoon chores so she and Stevie left the stable before Lisa did. Carole told Lisa they’d meet her at TD’s. Lisa promised she’d be there about fifteen minutes later.

  When they first got to TD’s, Carole couldn’t get a word in edgewise. She and Stevie sat at a booth in the back of the shop and, from practically the moment they arrived, Stevie just talked about her brother.

  “Could you believe it?” Stevie asked. “At lunch, when he started doing that stupid cowboy imitation? What does he think this stable is? And then all the little kids were laughing—”

  “It was funny,” Carole reminded Stevie. “Even I laughed.”

  “Maybe. But why? What’s he trying to do to me?”

  “Stevie!” Carole said in exasperation. “What he’s doing doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “Of course it does,” Stevie protested. “Why else would he be making a fool of himself? He’s just trying to embarrass me. And the worst part is that he’s succeeding.”

  “Stevie, think,” Carole said.

  “I can’t think,” Stevie said. “Every time I try to think, all I can think of is doofus. So what are you talking about?”

  Carole took a spoonful of her sundae, hoping a pause in the conversation would help to calm Stevie a bit. When she’d finished swallowing, she spoke.

  “Your brother is just doing what you say Chad always does,” Carole said patiently and calmly. “He is trying to get a girl’s attention.”

  “Okay—but why does he have to do that around me?” Stevie demanded.

  “Because the girl in question is always around you,” Carole said.

  Stevie looked at Carole sideways. Carole could tell from the look on her face that Stevie was beginning to see the light. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Stevie asked after a pause.

  “If you think I’m saying that Chad has a crush on Lisa, you’re right. I don’t think he’s really into riding—he just wants to be where she is.”

  Stevie furrowed her brow and stared at her glass of water.

  “Does Lisa know this?” Stevie asked finally.

  “I’m not sure, but she’ll figure it out soon enough,” Carole said. “After all, Chad isn’t exactly being subtle.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that myself!” Stevie said. “Of course, you’re absolutely right. He’s been talking about her, but I didn’t think anything of it, since I talk about both of you all the time. Well, I’ll just tell him Lisa hasn’t got the slightest interest in the whole wide world in being his girlfriend and that’s that. He can just get lost.”

  “Hold it,” Carole said, raising her hand as if to stop traffic. “You can’t do that. If Lisa wants to stop Chad, she can tell him herself. And if she doesn’t want to stop him—well, then you shouldn’t butt in.”

  “You mean one of my best friends may actually want to be my brother’s girlfriend?” Stevie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Carole said. “But I do think that you should
let true love take its course,” she added with a grin.

  “Oh, groan,” Stevie said.

  “Don’t worry about it. Lisa’s pretty smart,” Carole reminded her. “She’ll know how to handle it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. But the hardest thing to remind myself is going to be that I shouldn’t just tell him to drop dead.”

  “Maybe Lisa will,” Carole suggested.

  “My brother? She’d say that to my brother?” Stevie asked, suddenly on the defensive.

  “Let’s change the subject, huh?” Carole suggested. “Here comes Lisa. And it looks like she’s got something on her mind.”

  Lisa walked toward the booth slowly. She slid in next to Carole, almost without seeing her. Lisa pushed up her sleeves and leaned forward on the table until she was looking Stevie straight in the eye.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” Lisa said. “I think I’ve figured out the reason Chad suddenly wants to learn to ride,” she began. She was about to continue when Stevie interrupted her.

  “I know,” she said lightly. “He’s got a crush on you.”

  Lisa stared at her. “How’d you know?”

  “It just sort of hit me,” Stevie said, glancing at Carole. “Like a ton of bricks. Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t really mean anything, you know—” Carole gave her a quick, dirty look. “I mean, it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “I feel pretty confused, you know.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Carole said. “But we’ll have all night on Friday to talk, and maybe figure out what to do. For now, let’s talk about something really important.”

  “What?” both Stevie and Lisa asked together.

  “Kate Devine!”