Horse Trouble

by Bonnie Bryant

“Santa’s elves?” Carole asked. “It’s not exactly the season, you know.”

  “No, more like the Jolly Green Giants—four of them in fact,” Stevie said.

  That could only mean one thing. “The basketball players?” she asked.

  “You won’t believe how high they could reach without even using a ladder!” Lisa said.

  “You are amazing, Stevie. How did you talk those clowns into helping you?”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Stevie said. “It was all you. When they saw how much work you were doing around here, they said that any place that inspired such devotion certainly deserved to have their help. They spent more than an hour doing all the hardest parts of the painting. Without them we’d be here until midnight. We have you to thank for their help.”

  “Me?” Carole asked. “I don’t understand. They spent the whole day laughing at my silly mistakes.”

  “No,” Lisa said. “They spent the whole day admiring what you were trying to do. They liked it so much, they want to sign up the whole rest of the basketball team for lessons. Max is going wild trying to figure out when he’s going to fit them into the schedule, but Red is trying to talk him into buying some taller horses!”

  Carole shook her head in disbelief. It was hard to imagine how so much good could come from one really dumb mistake. She was simply too tired to take it all in. It would have to wait for another day.

  “ALL RIGHT, THEN, that’s it,” Stevie said—much more positively than she felt. “We all have our assignments, let’s begin the day.”

  Carole snapped a salute at her and clicked her heels.

  “Am I that bad?” Stevie asked sheepishly.

  Lisa nodded.

  Stevie was finding that when three girls were trying to equal one woman, it wasn’t easy in more ways than one. It wasn’t easy because it was hard to do the job, and it particularly wasn’t easy because it was a strain on their friendship. Each of them was nervous that she was going to mess up and it would be her fault. There was so much to do and it was so important.

  This morning, for example, Stevie had to figure out how to order food for the horses. She’d made the job sound light when she took it on, but the truth was, she wasn’t at all sure about what to do, and she didn’t want to goof.

  Lisa’s job could be even trickier. She’d volunteered to skip jump class to take the French ambassador out on a trail ride. The U.S. had pretty good relationships with France, and it seemed unlikely that anything Lisa would do, or not do, was going to change that. Still, it was a big responsibility.

  Although Carole’s job wouldn’t affect international relations, or cost Pine Hollow a lot of money if she made a mistake, it was in its way even trickier than her friends’ jobs. Carole had taken on the task of assigning horses to riders. She had already unfolded a giant chart she’d made last night to keep track of the names of riders and horses and class hours. She spread the chart out on Mrs. Reg’s desk and looked pointedly at Stevie, who relinquished the chair. Carole instantly began scribbling on her chart. Lisa hurried to a quiet spot in the locker area and pulled out her French phrase book. Stevie headed for the feed shed.

  She knew that feed for horses consisted primarily of hay and grain, both of which could be a fire hazard. She didn’t exactly understand what caused spontaneous combustion in bales of hay, but she’d seen the result in a barn fire once and never wanted to see it again. Grain was a fire hazard because it was dusty and the dust particles could almost hang in the air. In the case of a fire—or even a spark that might start one—the dust particles themselves would burn, and that burning would be explosive. For those reasons most stables, including Pine Hollow, stored their feed in a separate shed. No matter how careful people were, accidents happened. Keeping the potential accident a distance from the horses made the stable itself safer for the animals.

  Stevie opened the door to the feed shed and turned on the light. Bags, barrels, and bales were piled neatly everywhere. The place was pretty full, so it seemed odd that Mrs. Reg wanted to order more for Friday, but who was Stevie to disagree with something on Mrs. Reg’s list?

  And who was Stevie to figure out what Mrs. Reg wanted to order? And how on earth was she going to do it?

  She sat down on a bale of hay and began chewing on a fingernail. It didn’t taste very good, and it didn’t help her thinking. She stopped chewing on the nail and looked around, hoping to pull an answer out of thin air. And she did.

  For there, fastened to a clipboard that was hanging from a hook by the door to the shed, was a piece of pink paper. On a hunch, Stevie walked over to look at it. It was an invoice, dated just a month earlier. At the top of the piece of paper, it gave the name of the place that had delivered the feed: Connor Hay & Grain. Then there was an address and a phone number. Better still, it said at the top: Standing Order. That meant that this was probably just about exactly what Mrs. Reg ordered every time she called.

  “Bingo!” Stevie announced. She took the clipboard down off the hook and dashed back to Mrs. Reg’s office, remembering to turn off the light and lock the door behind her. Maybe it wasn’t so hard to be Mrs. Reg after all.

  “BONJOUR,” LISA SAID, practicing her welcome to the French ambassador. “Je m’appelle Lisa Atwood.” Introducing herself wouldn’t be so hard. The hard part was going to be chatting about horseback riding, or international affairs—whatever the man wanted. She’d spent more than two hours the night before boning up on her horseback-riding vocabulary. She’d made herself a list, but she’d worked so hard on memorizing it that she hoped she wouldn’t have to refer to it too much. Saddle, for instance, was selle. Sidesaddle was selle d’amazone. She didn’t actually think she was going to need to talk about sidesaddles because she’d never even ridden one, but she was interested to learn that the name in French was connected with the women warriors, the Amazons. Perhaps she could work it into a conversation, although she didn’t know the word for “warrior,” and that would make it hard to talk about.

  Lisa found that she did get mixed up between horses and hairs. In French the word for horse was cheval and more than one horse was chevaux. Hair, on the other hand, was cheveux. She certainly hoped she didn’t goof and ask the poor ambassador if he wanted to ride any hairs!

  A car pulled up to the stable. It was ten-fifteen. All the riders, plus Max and Red, were in the jump class. This could only be the French ambassador. When a distinguished-looking, middle-aged man stepped out of the car, Lisa knew she was right. She took a deep breath and went to work.

  “Bonjour,” she began. “Je m’appelle Lisa Atwood.”

  There was no question about it, the look on the man’s face was complete surprise. Then he smiled. Lisa was terribly proud of herself.

  “Bonjour, Lisa,” he said, offering his hand for a shake.

  They had definitely gotten off on the right foot—or pied, as the French would say. Lisa began her carefully memorized words of welcome and explanation. She took the ambassador to the locker area and told him she would be putting une selle on his cheval and would meet him by the porte d’ecurie en dix minutes. That would give him ten minutes to get to the stable door. He said merci beaucoup, so Lisa figured that would be fine.

  Quickly she tacked up Barq for herself and Delilah for the ambassador. Delilah was a beautiful palomino mare, and she was sure the man would be pleased to be able to ride her. Delilah was also very gentle, so no matter whether the ambassador was a good rider or not, Delilah would be a good horse for him.

  The man was ready and waiting for Lisa when she appeared with his horse. Then came a tricky part. Pine Hollow’s riders sometimes joked that the place was built on traditions, because it had an awful lot of them. One of the most important, however, was the good-luck horseshoe. Every rider was supposed to touch the horseshoe nailed up by the door before going out on a ride. No rider at Pine Hollow had ever been badly hurt, and tradition held that it was because of the horseshoe.

  Lisa couldn’t manage a long explanation,
but she could demonstrate. She mounted Barq, touched the shoe, and looked at the ambassador. “Fer à cheval pour bonne chance,” she said. He smiled at her and touched it as well. He’d understood! She was very pleased with herself. She felt as though she were riding on a new high as she led the way out the door and off to the trail through the field. She waved gaily at her jump classmates when they passed by.

  “Au revoir,” Stevie called. Lisa and the ambassador both shouted “Au revoir” back at her. That was French for good-bye, and it really meant “until we see one another again.” That sounded so much nicer than “good-bye.” Lisa found herself beginning to love the French language. That feeling made it much easier to speak in it, too. And as she spoke, she found that she lost some of her self-consciousness. Pretty soon she and her charge were chatting easily about various things that Lisa hadn’t even known she knew how to say. She was, in fact, having fun, and so was the man who was riding with her.

  She wanted to tell him about The Saddle Club. She had the feeling that this nice man would really understand. He was a good rider, and he was very friendly. Since those were the two basic requirements for membership, she wanted to explain it.

  “Moi et mes amies,” she began. “Nous avons un, uh, une, oh, drat, une …” She groped for something that would be like the word “club” in French, but nothing came to her. “I just can’t remember the word for ‘club’ in French,” she said, and then shrugged sheepishly to convey to him that she was at a loss.

  “I can’t remember it, either,” the man said. “But I suspect it’s something like club or associacion. Anyway, why don’t we try English for a while?”

  It took Lisa about eight very long seconds to register what she’d just heard and what it really sounded like. In those eight seconds, she realized that she’d heard English spoken, and it wasn’t accented English, unless you counted a pleasant southern Virginia drawl.

  “You’re not the French ambassador—you’re not even French!” she stammered.

  “Of course I am,” the man said. “I’m Michael French. I thought you knew.”

  Mrs. Reg’s list had said it was the French ambassador who was coming to ride. How could she have made a mistake like that? Then Lisa realized it wasn’t Mrs. Reg who had made the mistake. It was The Saddle Club. Mrs. Reg had written “Thursday, 11, Am. French.” She hadn’t meant Am. French. She’d meant eleven A.M., and she’d just written it a little oddly.

  Lisa wanted to disappear. Right then and there she wanted to find a way to be swallowed up by the earth. How could she have been so silly? There she’d been, speaking sort of pidgin French to this poor man, who really only wanted to ride a horse!

  “Oh, no,” she groaned. “I’m—” She couldn’t even think of the words in English! “I can’t—I mean, it’s so—”

  “Don’t worry!” the man said. He actually sounded cheerful, which struck Lisa as odd. “I’m really very flattered,” he went on. “See, I work for the government in the State Department. I would like nothing more than to be an ambassador. The fact that you thought I was one already—well, you can imagine, I’ve loved every minute of it. Besides, as you surely know, French is the language of diplomacy, and mine’s been getting a little rusty, stuck in an office in Washington as I am. You gave me a chance to speak in French. It was terrific. I only expected to learn something about horseback riding. I got twice the value for my money!”

  “You’re being awfully nice about this,” Lisa said, now not so eager to disappear into the earth. “In fact, I think you’re giving me a lesson in diplomacy.”

  “Oh, but I mean it,” Mr. French insisted. “And now that we’ve brushed up my languages, let’s see if you can do as well with the riding instruction, which I’m sure will be a little easier in our native tongue. Just exactly what was it you were trying to tell me about the Amazon River and women who ride horses?”

  Lisa tried to stifle her giggle, but she couldn’t contain it. “I guess I ride better than I speak French,” she said when she could talk. “That has to do with sidesaddles.”

  Much to Lisa’s surprise and pleasure, Mr. French seemed genuinely interested in learning about sidesaddles and everything else she could tell him about riding and horses. When they finally returned to Pine Hollow an hour and a half later, they’d had a great ride, and they’d both learned an awful lot. Mr. French had learned about horses. Lisa had learned about people.

  “CAN YOU GET the order here by Friday?” Stevie asked. The man at the other end of the phone wasn’t too happy with the question.

  “We just delivered there. You need more already?”

  “Look, I’m just filling in for Mrs. Reg,” Stevie said.

  Although she usually felt that being devious was the way to accomplish something, in this case she suspected that straightforward begging was going to be the most effective. “She was called to the bedside of a very sick friend who needed her to nurse her, wipe her brow, feed her gruel—” Stevie wondered briefly what gruel was, but it sounded like something somebody who was sick would eat. “Selflessly she left her family and her home to be with her friend and asked that we do a few meager chores in her absence. Her thoughts were with those who needed her the most: her friend and the horses. Can we let them go without, just because Mrs. Reg—”

  “All right, all right! Stop already!” the man practically hollered into the telephone. “You’ve got me crying, miss. We’ll deliver. The stuff will be there Friday morning just like you asked. You may or may not have a future as a stable manager, but I’m sure you could get a job on a soap opera.…”

  “Thanks for your help,” Stevie said. “I know Mrs. Reg will be pleased and grateful and …”

  “Yeah, and she’ll wipe my brow and give me gruel when I get sick, huh?”

  “I’ll leave a note for her,” Stevie said.

  When they hung up, Stevie reflected on the conversation. Then she had a little laugh to herself, confident that in the office at Connor Hay & Grain there was a man who was doing exactly the same thing. The two of them had seen exactly eye to eye, and it had been fun.

  Stevie sighed contentedly. Being a stable manager had its rewards.

  CAROLE WAS VERY proud of her charts. It wasn’t easy to keep track of who was riding which horse when, but it was important. For one thing, it was a way of keeping track of what riders were out. For another, and really more important as far as Carole was concerned, it was a way of telling how long each horse was working. Horses couldn’t spend all day every day with riders on their backs. Just like people, they needed time to rest and recuperate. Mrs. Reg always tried to arrange it so that no horse spent more than four hours a day in class. Carole thought she could manage that, too.

  Charts weren’t all of the job, though. The harder part was pleasing the riders. In Red’s beginner class, three of the girls had wanted to ride Delilah. Carole was almost relieved when she saw that Lisa had taken the mare for the French ambassador. That way the girls couldn’t fight over her. Instead they began fighting about which one of them was going to ride Patch. Carole solved that problem by talking louder than the squabbling young riders. She put them each on horses they hadn’t ridden before and told each—in a whisper—that they were getting the best horse. That at least worked.

  Now in a quiet moment (because all the squabbling little girls were in class with Red), Carole turned to her other job for the day, which was to look for the pin some more, though she was becoming more and more certain they would not be able to find it. Carole decided it was time to make a careful examination of the stable area, particularly the wide aisle that ran between the stalls in the U-shaped stable. There was always a layer of straw on the floor there, and that was just the sort of camouflage a gold pin could use to hide out.

  Carole picked up a pitchfork and began working on the straw methodically. She picked up a forkful and shook it, hoping to find a gold pin dropping out of the mass of straw. Then, when nothing gold fell out, she put down that forkful and picked up another. By the
time she’d picked up eight forkfuls, she’d decided it was almost impossible that this would work. Still, she didn’t have a better idea. She picked up her ninth forkful. Then her tenth and her eleventh …

  “Don’t look at me that way,” she said to Starlight, who was gazing at her curiously over the door to his stall. Starlight didn’t have anything to say to that. He pulled his head back in. Carole continued her work in silence.

  Most of the horses were now out on trail rides or busy in classes. The stable was unusually quiet, and Carole was hopeful that it would make it easier for her to hear the very welcome thump of a solid gold pin hitting the wide boards of the stable floor. No matter how much she listened, though, there was no such thump.

  There was, however, another sound, and it was coming from the tack room. Carole stopped her work and listened. Then she was sure. There was definitely some sniffling going on. It didn’t sound like an allergy or a cold, either. It sounded very unhappy.

  Carole propped the pitchfork up against a beam and peered into the tack room. Somebody was in there crying and probably wanted to be alone. Carole didn’t intend to interrupt unless she seemed to be needed.

  One look and Carole knew she was needed. There sat May Grover, one of Pine Hollow’s young riders and a particular favorite of Carole’s. May was crying her eyes out.

  “Could you use a friend?” Carole asked.

  “I don’t have any,” May said, tears streaming down her face, but the look in her eyes said that, more than anything, she wanted Carole to come be with her.

  Carole came in and perched on the bench next to May. She reached into her jeans pocket and found a tissue. Silently she offered it to the young girl. While May blew her nose, Carole recalled a conversation she’d overheard earlier between May and her friend Jessica. Before class May had been telling the other young rider in no uncertain terms just exactly how to do something, and Jessica hadn’t reacted kindly. Carole thought she recalled, in fact, that Jessica had told May just exactly what to do with the rest of her life. It hadn’t been nice, but even best friends had arguments sometimes. Carole hadn’t taken it very seriously. May apparently had.