Horse Talk

by Bonnie Bryant

  REVENGE IS SWEET!

  What bothered Carole most was that here they were, willing and ready to teach people about horses, and no one wanted to learn. Carole knew that she would listen to a radio show about horses. “Maybe we just need more publicity for Horse Talk, so that legitimate callers phone in.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of posting Chad’s naked baby pictures all over Fenton Hall,” Stevie said. “Or maybe we could come up with some good reason for blackmail.”

  “Why don’t we try talking to Chad?” Lisa suggested. “Maybe if we appeal to his better side—tell him how important this is to us—he’ll knock it off.”

  He doesn’t have a better side,” Stevie growled.

  “Yeah,” Carole said. “I mean, he might have a better side, but from what we’ve seen of Chad before, telling him how important Horse Talk is to us will just inspire him to bother us more. Maybe if we leave him alone, he’ll leave us alone, too.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” Stevie said. “Revenge is the best option. But, like you said, we’ve got all week.”

  Other Skylark Books you will enjoy

  Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed

  THE WINNING STROKE (American Gold Swimmers #1) by Sharon Dennis Wyeth

  COMPETITION FEVER (American Gold Gymnasts #1) by Gabrielle Charbonnet

  THE GREAT DAD DISASTER by Betsy Haynes

  THE GREAT MOM SWAP by Betsy Haynes

  BREAKING THE ICE (Silver Blades #1) by Melissa Lowell

  SAVE THE UNICORNS (Unicorn Club #1) by Francine Pascal

  RL 5, 009–012

  HORSE TALK

  A Bantam Skylark Book / November 1997

  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 registered 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.

  “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.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1997 by Bonnie Bryant Hiller.

  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: 978-0-307-82571-1

  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 Kimberly Brubaker Bradley for her help

  in the writing of this book.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Bantam Skylark Books You Will Enjoy

  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

  About the Author

  “OKAY, RIDERS, THAT’S enough. Class is dismissed. Good work, everybody.” Max Regnery, owner of Pine Hollow Stables, spoke quietly, but the half dozen riders in the ring responded immediately and gladly, sitting back and bringing their sweating horses to a walk. Stevie Lake blew out her breath and let her shoulders sag. That had been tough! For the past few minutes, Max had made them all canter with their feet out of the stirrups and one hand held straight up over their heads. He said it would improve their seats in the saddle. Riding without stirrups was fun, but it was hard work, and even though the November breeze was cool, Stevie, like her horse, Belle, was starting to sweat. She put her feet back into her stirrups and let her leg muscles relax.

  Stevie patted Belle on the neck and turned her toward the gate. One of Stevie’s best friends, Lisa Atwood, rode up to her on a mare named Prancer. “Wasn’t that fun!” Lisa said. Her face was glowing from excitement and exercise. “We rode almost the whole lesson without stirrups! I’ve never done that before.”

  Stevie grinned back. “It was fun—but hard. I had a long day at school, too, and I’m tired.”

  “I know,” Lisa said. “We missed talking to you before the lesson.” On Tuesdays after school, the girls and their other best friend, Carole Hanson, had riding lessons. Stevie had come in late that day and had barely had time to saddle Belle before the lesson started.

  “Let’s walk out on the trails for a few minutes,” Stevie suggested. “Carole!” She waved to their friend, who was sitting on her horse, Starlight, in the center of the ring and talking earnestly to Max. “Look at her,” Stevie said. “You can tell by the way she’s waving her hands that she’s explaining some complicated riding theory to Max.”

  “Maybe,” Lisa said. Carole was a fantastic rider, the best of the three of them (she planned to be a professional horse something—vet, rider, trainer—someday), and Starlight was a great horse, but they hadn’t had one of their better lessons. Lisa could tell by watching them jump that they had never been quite in harmony the entire hour. She hoped Carole wasn’t upset.

  “Yeah,” Stevie said sympathetically, catching Lisa’s meaning. “Well, a nice little trail ride will cheer her up, too. Carole! Come on! We’re going to take a loop through the woods.”

  Carole said one last thing to Max and turned toward them. She was smiling; she didn’t look, Lisa thought, too upset about the lesson. “Great idea,” Carole said as she rode up to her friends. “These horses are going to take a while to cool down anyway, and that way we can relax without Mrs. Reg finding eight hundred things for us to do.”

  Lisa laughed. Mrs. Reg, Max’s mother, ran the stables, and she was notorious for setting idle hands to work.

  The horses were all sweating under their thick winter coats, and the girls had to make sure they were absolutely dry before they put them back into their stalls; otherwise the horses could get sick. Riding them at a walk was actually a pretty good way to cool them. “We’ll make sure they’re really, really cool,” Lisa said. “We’ll probably have to take a very long ride.”

  Stevie told Max where they were going. “Be back before it gets dark,” he warned them, then waved them off with a smile.

  “He’s so nice to us,” Lisa said appreciatively. Unlike her friends, she didn’t have her own horse. Prancer, the mare she was riding, belonged to Max. Lisa loved Prancer very much, and Max usually let her take her out for trail rides and other fun things, as well as ride her in lessons.

  “You sure had a great lesson, Lisa,” Carole told her as they rode down the short path that led into the woods.

  “Thanks,” Lisa said with a grin. She knew it was true. Today they’d jumped fences without stirrups and without holding on to their reins; to Lisa, who’d never done anything like it before, it had felt wonderfully free, like flying. She loved to learn; she was a straight-A student in school, and she studied lots of other things like dance, piano, and acting. Horses were her favorite subject, but she hadn’t been riding as long as her two friends, and when she had started she had be
en somewhat surprised at how much there was to learn. Horses couldn’t be figured out by reading a book. They had minds of their own.

  “You were the star of The Saddle Club,” Stevie complimented her. “Belle and I weren’t quite as together as you and Prancer.”

  Long ago, the three of them had decided that they loved horses enough to form The Saddle Club. Its only two rules were that members had to be horse-crazy, and they had to help each other out.

  “You looked great except for that bounce combination,” Lisa replied. A bounce combination was two fences set so close together that the horse jumped one, landed, and immediately jumped the other without taking another stride. Belle had insisted on taking a stride between the fences, and Stevie, riding without reins or stirrups, had come awfully close to falling off.

  Stevie shook her head. “I don’t know what got into Belle,” she said. “She’s done bounces dozens of times.” She shrugged. “Oh well. We got it right in the end.”

  Lisa and Carole smiled at her. Stevie was a good rider, too, particularly at a kind of elegant flat work called dressage. Belle was good at both dressage and jumping, and she loved to be taken out on trail rides; she seemed to enjoy having a good time as much as Stevie did. But while Stevie never cared how well she did in school (except, of course, when her low grades meant her parents wouldn’t let her ride), she was very competitive in the saddle. Sometimes she lost patience with herself, or with Belle, when things didn’t go right.

  “Don’t look so proud of me,” she said to her friends. “It’s not like our riding lesson was any big deal.”

  “It’s not like Phil was there,” Lisa teased. Phil Marsten was Stevie’s boyfriend, and he rode, too.

  “I could tell Belle just wasn’t getting it,” Stevie explained. “She wasn’t understanding what we wanted her to do. It wasn’t like she was trying to be bad.”

  “Exactly,” Carole said with a nod. “I felt the same way about Starlight. We— Hey!” She exclaimed as Starlight jumped sideways in alarm. They had ridden out of the woods for a moment and were about to cross a small hay field. An old tractor was parked in the corner of the field, and Starlight reacted as if it were a monster. Every muscle in his sleek body tensed.

  “Come on, boy, nothing to be afraid of,” Carole said soothingly. “It’s just a tractor. It’s not going to hurt you.” They had to walk past the tractor to get back onto the trail.

  Starlight refused to walk forward. He bunched his hindquarters beneath him, and when Carole gently pushed him forward with her legs, he tossed his head and tried to turn in circles. “No,” Carole said firmly but calmly. “Walk on.”

  “We’ll give you a lead,” Stevie offered. She rode Belle past the tractor and turned her to face Starlight. Starlight rolled his eyes and tossed his head again. Carole continued to urge him forward, and he continued to resist her urgings. Prancer, worried that Starlight might have something to be afraid of, refused to join Belle on the far side of the tractor, but she didn’t fight Lisa the way Starlight was fighting Carole.

  “Come on. Come on,” Carole said persistently. She pushed Starlight forward with her legs and seat. Starlight took one hesitant step, then another.

  “You’ve got him,” Stevie said encouragingly.

  Starlight took one more step, then whirled, bucked, and bolted for safety. Carole landed on the grass on her backside. Before Stevie or Lisa could dismount to help her, she was standing up and laughing.

  “Are you okay?” Stevie asked with concern. They all fell off sometimes—all riders did—and it was never a particularly pleasant experience.

  “I’m fine,” Carole assured them. “Look. The grass is so thick it’s like carpet.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Lisa said. “You’re having a tough day.”

  “Well,” Carole said, laughing again, “at least it’s consistent. Yet another case of not listening to my horse!”

  The others laughed as well. In the middle of the lesson, when Carole had been struggling to anticipate Starlight’s jumps, Max had finally cried in exasperation, “Carole, you’ve got to listen to your horse!”

  “But Max,” Stevie had piped up sweetly from across the ring, “you always say horses don’t understand English, and I don’t think Carole speaks anything else.”

  Everyone had laughed. “I can count to ten in Spanish,” Carole had offered. “Should I try that?”

  Max had grinned and replied, “No, I think you should all learn to speak horse.”

  “Hang on just a second,” Carole said now. She wiped some wisps of dried grass off her breeches, then walked slowly to the corner of the field where Starlight stood waiting. In another moment she was mounted.

  This time, Stevie and Lisa walked their horses quietly past the tractor and then waited on the other side. Carole let Starlight take a long look at the frightening object, then asked him to walk forward as she had before. Starlight did. “Good boy,” Carole said, patting him.

  “You’re really in a good mood,” Stevie told her. “I mean, you don’t seem upset about falling off or about that lesson. I know you weren’t riding horribly, but you weren’t riding your best, either.”

  “I’m just not worried about it,” Carole answered. “I mean, I can’t have a great lesson every week. And in a way it was kind of interesting—I don’t even know why I felt so out of rhythm. Until I know, there’s not much point in being upset.”

  Carole really meant what she said. Every single thing about horses fascinated her, and Max had told her once that you could learn just as much from a bad lesson as a good one, if you tried.

  “And that fall was just silly,” she continued. “I should have been ready for Starlight to whirl like that, and I probably should have let him take a really good look at the tractor before I tried to make him go past it. I could tell by how rigid his muscles were that he was upset.” She laughed. “Maybe that’s what Max meant by learning to speak horse. Maybe he meant learning to listen to their body cues.”

  Stevie thought about this. “I assumed he was joking, but you could be right,” she said. “Belle pricks her ears forward when she sees me, and I always take that to mean hello.”

  “And we tell them what to do with our hands and legs,” Lisa added. “It’s kind of cool when you think about it. It’s horse talk—a whole other kind of communication.”

  “Our school’s on a huge communication theme right now,” Carole told Stevie. She and Lisa went to the same public school, while Stevie attended a private school, Fenton Hall.

  “That’s right,” Lisa cut in. “We didn’t have time to tell you our news before the lesson, Stevie.”

  “Everybody’s studying television, newspapers, the Internet, and things like African drum signals, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese characters, sign language, and Braille,” Carole said. “Best of all—”

  “We’re going to have a radio show!” said Lisa.

  “Wow!” Stevie was impressed. “Just the two of you?”

  Carole and Lisa looked at each other. “We haven’t had a chance to discuss that yet,” Lisa admitted. “Maybe, but I kind of doubt we’ll be allowed to. It would be fun, though.”

  “I think so, too,” Carole agreed. She checked her watch and signaled to them that it was time to turn for home. Lisa ran her hand down Prancer’s shoulder. The mare was cool and dry.

  “See,” Carole explained, “the local radio station offered to do an educational cooperative with us. Every day for the entire month, our school gets an hour of radio time. The station is loaning us equipment and is going to teach us how to use it. We have to come up with programs to fill all the airtime. Some students are going to be DJs, and others will do technical stuff, maybe even advertising—I don’t really know yet. They announced it this morning, and tomorrow after school they’re having a meeting for everyone who wants to take part. The airtime will be from four to five P.M., so it’s an extracurricular activity. It’s not a requirement.”

  “It really sounds fun,” Stevie said enviously
. “We don’t do anything like that at Fenton. The last time we were on the radio was when Herbie Brewster set the chemistry lab on fire and we had to evacuate the building. Are you two going to do it?”

  Carole and Lisa grinned at each other. “I think so, yes,” Lisa said, “if it’s okay that we’re in different grades. What do you say?”

  “I say yes,” Carole replied. “I think we should try for one of the DJ positions. They’ll be the most interesting. I know we’ll make a great team.”

  “We already make a great team.” Lisa let the reins slide through her fingers so that Prancer could stretch her neck. “That’s what The Saddle Club is all about.”

  “So what kind of show will you have?” Stevie asked. “You’ll have to have a theme.”

  “I don’t know,” Lisa said. “But I sure don’t want to do another hour of the same old rock music. Every kid in my homeroom class wanted to do that.”

  “Mine too,” Carole agreed. “We’ll do something unique.”

  LISA TWISTED HER hair nervously around her finger. “I didn’t think there’d be so many kids here,” she whispered to Carole.

  “Me either,” Carole whispered back. They were waiting in the hallway outside the room that Mrs. Klemme, the radio program moderator, had set up as a studio. Three or four pairs of kids waited in front of them, and more had already gone inside. All the DJs were going to have to work in pairs, and each DJ pair had to present its idea for a show to Mrs. Klemme, one at a time.

  “Well,” Lisa said, brightening a little, “I think we’re well prepared to present our idea. I’ve got the playlist right here.” She patted her notebook confidently.

  They had decided to do a music show after all, and the night before they’d pooled all their most recent tapes and come up with a list of their favorite songs. A music show would be easy, and it would also be a lot of fun—not only would they get to talk on the air, but they’d also be listening to what they wanted to hear!