Stable Farewell

by Bonnie Bryant

  GOOD-BYE, GARNET

  Faster than The Saddle Club could believe, Veronica had Garnet tacked up and in the indoor ring. It was clear that the mare was as fresh and flighty as the day before. She danced at the end of the reins before Veronica quieted her long enough to get on, then shied and broke into a trot at once.

  Standing with the Kingsleys at the edge of the ring, Carole said, “Boy, Garnet’s behaving well today. She’s usually much worse.”

  Henrietta sneered. “It’s nothing a good crop and spurs won’t fix,” she said.

  “Quite right, darling! Discipline is the key! You’ll have her behaving in no time,” Mrs. Kingsley bellowed.

  RL5, 009–012

  STABLE FAREWELL

  A Bantam Skylark Book / December 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 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 © 1995 by Bonnie Bryant Hiller.

  Cover art copyright © 1995 by Paul Casale.

  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: 978-0-307-82546-9

  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 Macy

  for her help in the writing of this book.

  Contents

  Cover

  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

  About the Author

  CAROLE HANSON PAUSED in the driveway of Pine Hollow Stables. Her eyes swept over the picture-perfect scene—the neat barns and indoor ring, the fenced paddocks, and the rolling pastures beyond. Even in the middle of winter, with the bare trees and frozen puddles, it was probably her favorite place in the world. She breathed deeply to inhale the horsey smells and then ran for the barn.

  One of the first things she noticed, once inside, was a large sign on the bulletin board outside Max Regnery’s office. It said simply Horse for Sale—Ask Max. Carole stared at it in confusion. Max, the owner of Pine Hollow and its chief riding instructor, often let people post notices on the bulletin board about horses for sale, but usually they described the horses. Without knowing anything about a horse’s size, breeding, and experience, you couldn’t tell if it would be suitable. But Carole was too excited to wonder about the mysterious sign for long.

  “We thought you’d never get here!” Stevie Lake exclaimed as she burst into the warm tack room.

  “How long have you been here?” Carole asked, surprised.

  “Oh, forever,” Stevie said, her hazel eyes twinkling.

  “In other words, about five minutes,” Lisa Atwood commented dryly as she walked in behind Stevie.

  Carole chuckled and gave her two best friends a spontaneous hug of greeting. They’d gotten back a few days earlier from a trip out West to the Bar None Ranch and had only managed one quick ride at Pine Hollow since then. Over the Christmas holidays, a snowstorm had stranded the girls at the Bar None. They always loved visiting Kate Devine at her parents’ ranch, but none of them had planned to be away from home for Christmas, so they were still basking in the warm feeling of being back.

  “Something must have happened to me out West,” Stevie said solemnly. “I was actually glad to see my brothers again—even Chad!”

  The girls laughed. Stevie’s feuds with her three brothers, and especially Chad, were notorious.

  “I was happy to go home, too, but somehow I didn’t really feel I was home until I got to Pine Hollow,” Carole said, looking around appreciatively at the rows of shining bridles and saddles.

  Stevie and Lisa nodded knowingly. Of the three of them, Carole was probably the most horse-crazy. She thought about horses twenty-four hours a day and wanted to be a professional rider, a trainer, or maybe an equine veterinarian when she grew up.

  “I agree: Pine Hollow is where The Saddle Club belongs,” Lisa said. She was referring to the group that the three of them had started. The only requirements for membership were, one, being wild about horses and, two, being willing to help one another out in any situation. At Pine Hollow the girls took lessons, participated in Pony Club, helped with the chores, and held many spontaneous Saddle Club meetings. Stevie and Carole also boarded their horses, Belle and Starlight, at Pine Hollow. Lisa usually rode one of the school horses, a former racehorse named Prancer.

  “So, Stevie,” Carole queried, “if you’ve been here so long, I guess you’ve already said hi to Belle today, huh? You probably don’t want to bother seeing her now, do you?”

  Stevie grinned. Since she was constantly teasing people and playing practical jokes, she was used to getting a taste of her own medicine every so often. “Actually, Lisa and I were just on our way out when you came in.” She linked arms with the other two and led them out the door.

  All three of them had to stop themselves from sprinting to greet their horses. They knew they couldn’t run inside the barn, though, so they walked as fast as they could down the aisle where the horses were stabled. On their way, they passed Max’s bulletin board and Carole pointed out the strange sign. Lisa and Stevie agreed that it did seem short for an advertisement, but they soon forgot about it as they joined their horses.

  When Carole had given Starlight a huge hug and fed him a couple of carrots, she took off his blanket and led the bay gelding out for a grooming. Stevie and Lisa followed suit with Belle and Prancer. They cross tied the horses close to one another so that the girls could talk. “I knew Max and Red would feed them, and turn them out, and clean their stalls but still …,” Carole began, pausing to tap her currycomb against her boot. Red O’Malley was Max’s head stable hand and right-hand man around Pine Hollow.

  “But still,” Stevie continued, “nothing compares to the love we three lavish on them, does it?”

  “My, aren’t we sounding proud of ourselves today,” a man’s voice said. Stevie turned in alarm to see who had overheard her. She smiled when she saw that it was Max and that he was kidding.

  Carole and Lisa looked up from their grooming to greet their instructor. “Hey! You weren’t here to welcome us back the other day. Didn’t you miss us, Max?” Stevie said, trying her best to look innocent but failing entirely. Although The Saddle Club pitched in a lot around Pine Hollow, they—and especially Stevie—were also known for stirring up trouble.

  Max tactfully avoided answering the question. But he did seem as glad to see the girls as t
hey were to see him. He asked all about their trip West and assured them that Starlight and Belle had spent lots of time outdoors in the paddock to make up for the exercise they had lost through not being ridden. “And Lisa, I only let a couple of the more advanced students ride Prancer, so none of your good work with her has been undone,” he said.

  They all thanked Max profusely until he cut them off with a wave of his hands. “Enough! I’ve got a lesson to teach, so consider yourselves welcomed back, all right?” The girls nodded eagerly.

  When Max had gone, they went back to their grooming in earnest.

  “You know, when we took our first ride after we got back from the Bar None, I was so excited to be with Starlight that I hardly noticed how clean he looked,” Carole mused. “But now that I think about it, he looked as good as he always does.”

  “That’s funny, because, come to think of it, Belle was really clean, too,” said Stevie. She stepped back to look at the bay mare.

  “Maybe it’s because of their blankets,” Lisa suggested. All three horses wore blankets in the winter when the temperature dropped below a certain point. Willow Creek, Virginia, where they lived, never got extremely cold, but for thin-coated Thoroughbreds like Prancer and Starlight and a half-Saddlebred–half-Arabian like Belle, the extra layer was an important source of warmth.

  “The blankets help, but they don’t keep their coats in such good condition,” Carole said. “The only thing that does that is grooming. Regular grooming. And we’ve only groomed them once since we got back.”

  “Do you think Max groomed them while we were away?” Stevie asked.

  Carole shook her head. “He wouldn’t have had the time. I don’t think he even grooms the horses he owns. That’s all left to the riders.”

  “The riders and one other person,” Lisa put in. “Red.”

  “Of course!” Stevie exclaimed. “How could we forget?” Not only did Red O’Malley always finish his assigned tasks, but he also constantly found ways to be even more helpful to Max and the Pine Hollow riders.

  Leaving Lisa to keep an eye on their horses for a minute, Carole and Stevie went to track down the stable hand. They found him in Delilah’s stall, teaching two of Max’s beginning students how to braid a mane. As usual, he brushed off the girls’ thanks. “It’s easy to keep bays clean, anyway,” he said.

  “But Red, seriously, Starlight and Belle are glowing,” Carole insisted.

  “Yeah. They look every inch as good as they do when we’re at home,” Stevie said.

  Red smiled. “It was my pleasure. You’ve helped me so many times in the past that I was glad of a chance to pay you back a little. Besides, I know how well you look after your horses. You really set an example around here that everyone should follow.” With that, he turned back to Delilah and the braiding lesson.

  Red’s emphasis on the word “everyone” was not lost on Carole and Stevie. He hadn’t come right out and said it, but they guessed that he was contrasting them—quite favorably—with Veronica diAngelo. Veronica was a vain, spoiled girl who often ignored her Arabian mare, Garnet. She always expected Red to do her work for her. The situation was even more frustrating because grooming privately owned horses was not part of Red’s job.

  Lisa bristled when they repeated Red’s comments to her. “Veronica is about as much help to Red as an early frost is to a farmer,” she said. “But it’s too early in the New Year to let her bother us. Let’s just go for a long trail ride and forget all about it.”

  “Great idea,” Stevie replied. “I’ll bet Belle can’t wait to get outside and stretch her legs. What do you say, Carole?”

  “Um. Actually, I have other plans,” said Carole, a blush spreading up her cheeks.

  “Other plans? What other plans?” Stevie demanded.

  Carole explained that when she had arrived home from the Bar None, there had been several phone messages from Cam Nelson. Cam was a boy she had met at last year’s Briarwood Horse Show and whom she had seen every so often since then. The two of them shared a true, deep, and very serious commitment to horses, and even though Carole hadn’t spent that much time with Cam, she certainly found him interesting. He was the closest thing to a boyfriend she had ever had.

  “So what did he say?” prompted Stevie, who wasn’t known for holding back when she wanted to find out something about someone’s life.

  “He called the first time a few days before Christmas to see if we could do something together over break. And then he called again when he expected me to be home, but we were stranded out West. He sent me a Christmas card, too,” Carole added.

  “Wow. You’ve sure been on his mind,” Lisa said appreciatively.

  Carole looked a little sheepish. “I guess I should admit that he’s been on my mind, too. I sent him a postcard from the Bar None.”

  “You were thinking about Cam and Gary?” Stevie teased. Gary was a country-and-western singer Carole had met on their trip to the Bar None. She’d had a big crush on him until she realized that he was in love with someone else—himself.

  “Let’s just say I sent the card to Cam on the last day of our trip,” Carole said, smiling. She had been thrilled when she got home and found Cam’s card. It meant that he had been thinking about her when she had been thinking about him.

  Lisa told Stevie to be quiet so that they could hear the rest, and Carole continued. “The end of the story is that when I called him back, we talked for nearly an hour, and today he’s bringing Duffy to Pine Hollow to join me and Starlight on a trail ride.” After a pause, she added, “I hope you don’t mind going without me, but …” Instead of finishing her sentence, she ended up grinning from ear to ear. For the first time, she had begun to think of Cam as a possible real boyfriend, and she couldn’t hide how excited she felt.

  “Mind going without you? Are you kidding? We’re happy to go without you if it’s because you’re going with Cam,” Stevie said.

  Lisa gave Carole’s arm a squeeze. “I hope you guys have a great ride,” she said.

  In a semidaze, Carole went back to Starlight to finish grooming him. She still had some time before Cam was due and she wanted to make her horse shine.

  While Carole fussed over Starlight, Stevie and Lisa tacked up and cheerfully headed out together. They weren’t the least bit offended that Carole wanted to ride with Cam alone. They even decided to change their normal route a little so that Cam and Carole could have a nice, private ride.

  THE RIDE, CAROLE thought, was almost magical. From the moment she mounted Starlight and walked up beside Cam and Duffy, she felt as if she were in a dream. She found herself completely relaxed around Cam, and they immediately began to talk about horses. As they had before, the two of them shared training techniques and bounced ideas off each other. Just when Carole was thinking how well Cam had Duffy going. Cam said he thought Carole and Starlight made a great pair.

  “He’s a little fresh today. He’s only been ridden once since I got back,” Carole said modestly. She had told Cam about the adventure at the Bar None that had kept her away.

  “Maybe he just needs a good canter,” Cam suggested.

  That was all the invitation Carole needed. She urged Starlight into the faster gait. In a minute Cam did the same and the two horses, the bay and the chestnut, cantered along beside each other. “Hey! I think they like each other!” Cam called, pointing to the two sets of pricked ears.

  Carole nodded, smiling back at him. She noted, not for the first time, what an excellent horseman Cam was. He sat tall and straight in the saddle, and he easily kept Duffy collected. What was even more impressive was that Cam had trained Duffy largely by himself in the years he had owned the gelding.

  When they got to the woods, they slowed to a walk and went single file with Carole leading. Walking was as much fun as cantering for Carole because she and Cam could resume their conversation. Eventually they moved from talking about horses to other subjects, and Carole was excited to find out that the two of them had other things in common. Some
of them were silly, unimportant things—they both liked peanut butter cookies better than chocolate chip, and they both had gone to Disney World when they were eight—but they made Carole feel closer to Cam anyway. Every little fact that she learned about him made her like him more.

  The woods were gray and brown, drab winter colors, but to Carole everything looked beautiful. When they finally turned for home, she found herself wondering when she would see Cam again. She wished the ride could continue forever, but all too soon they reached the Pine Hollow driveway. Cam dropped neatly to the ground, giving Duffy a good pat. Carole jumped off Starlight, too.

  “I thought I’d give Duffy a drink before heading home,” said Cam.

  “Sounds good,” Carole replied. After the two of them had rolled up their horses’ stirrups and loosened their girths, she showed Cam to the outside watering trough, which Max kept heated in the winter.

  “Boy, we were out a long time—nearly an hour and a half,” Cam said, glancing at his watch.

  “Really? It didn’t seem long at all,” Carole said.

  “It sure didn’t. I guess because we talked the whole way,” Cam said.

  “Yeah.” For some reason, Carole felt suddenly shy. She couldn’t think of what to say next. She started fiddling with her reins and patting Starlight. Then she noticed that Cam looked kind of awkward, too. He was tapping his crop against his boot.

  “Well, I—”

  “We could—”

  The two of them looked at each other and laughed: Both of them had tried to break the silence at the same time.

  “You go first,” Carole said.

  “Oh, no—ladies first,” Cam insisted, smiling.

  “Well, I was just going to say that I had a really good time,” Carole said.

  “Me too,” said Cam. “And if it’s okay with you, I’d like to call you again. Maybe we could do something else together soon.”

  Carole nodded, her eyes shining. “That would be great,” she said.

  Now that the air had been cleared, both of them relaxed and started talking again. They chatted easily while Cam walked Duffy back to the driveway and remounted. After a couple of minutes, Duffy began to fuss, tired of standing still with his rider on his back.