Riding Camp

by Bonnie Bryant

  “Hello to you, too!” Stevie said. The only response she got was the clatter of the girl’s boots going down the steps of the cabin.

  “Whew!” Carole remarked.

  “Don’t mind Debbie,” another voice spoke. A girl they hadn’t noticed before was sitting in a corner of the room, saddle-soaping her boots. “She just found out that Elsa, who won just about all the blue ribbons in the show last year, not only came back this year, but is in this cabin. My name’s Nora.”

  For a second, The Saddle Club girls were too stunned to speak, or to return the introduction. It would never have occurred to any of them to be upset about bunking with a blue-ribbon winner. In fact, Carole was really excited about the idea of being able to spend extra time with somebody who knew more than she did and could teach her.

  Then the girls composed themselves and made introductions. Nora showed them which beds were theirs and even helped Lisa figure out how to stuff all her things into the small cubby.

  “Where’s the blue-ribbon winner?” Carole asked Nora as the two of them put the sheets and blankets on her cot. Elsa’s cot was next to Carole’s and her duffel bags were there, but none of her gear was stowed and her bed wasn’t made.

  “Well, if I know Elsa,” Nora began, “she’s found a private area in the field, out of sight of the barn and the main house, and she’s working with her horse.”

  “You mean campers are allowed to ride without any supervision and no riding partner?” Carole asked, surprised. There was no way Max would let a young rider out alone. Even the best of them had to have a friend along, just in case.

  “Campers aren’t supposed to do that, but Elsa does it anyway,” Nora answered.

  “But it’s so much more fun to be with friends,” Stevie said.

  “There are two things wrong with that,” Nora said. “In the first place, nobody is Elsa’s friend, and secondly, she wouldn’t want to ride with somebody who might learn something from her. She’s made it crystal clear that she intends to take home all the blue ribbons again this year.”

  “Oh, yuck.” Stevie made a face.

  “You know, that reminds me of what Kate Devine said about all the really good riders she used to compete with,” Carole said. Kate was a junior championship rider who had quit competition because of people like Debbie and Elsa.

  “You know Kate Devine?” Nora asked, her jaw dropping.

  “Sure, she’s an old friend of ours,” Carole said. “Her dad and mine are Marine Corps buddies. In fact, just a while back, the three of us visited her on her parents’ dude ranch. She’s learned to ride Western and she loves it.” Carole tucked in the final sheet, smoothed the blanket with her hand, and dropped a quarter on the bed to see if it would bounce the way it was supposed to in the Marine Corps. It didn’t. She didn’t care. She pocketed the quarter. “Let’s go see the rest of the camp,” she said to her friends.

  “Want the grand tour?” Nora asked. “Listen, lunch starts in a half an hour. I can show you everything by then if you want.”

  That sounded pretty good to Carole. She’d only gotten a glimpse of the camp on the way in. “That’d be great,” Carole said, speaking for Stevie and Lisa too. “We’re almost done here—”

  “I have an errand up at the barn,” Nora said quickly. “Meet me up there, okay? You know where that is?”

  “Yeah, the big red building with all the hay and the horses?” Stevie asked innocently.

  “Don’t mind her,” Lisa said to Nora. “She jokes about everything. We’ll see you up at the barn in five minutes.”

  Nora nodded and left The Saddle Club alone in the cabin.

  “What a place,” Stevie remarked, stuffing her belongings into the tiny cubby by her cot. “It’s got all the ingredients to be the most wonderful place in the world—horses and kids who love horses—and we end up in a cabin with a riding whiz who keeps the secret of her success and a would-be whiz who won’t talk to anybody!” She crammed her toothbrush in the last available space and stood up, looking at her friends for sympathy.

  “I think the way to handle people like Debbie and Elsa is to ignore them. And since they seem willing to ignore us, it won’t be hard to do,” Lisa said.

  “Yeah, and Nora seems nice enough,” Carole reminded Stevie.

  “Just watch out that she doesn’t try to learn our riding secrets!” Stevie joked.

  “As far as I’m concerned, she can have all my riding secrets,” Carole said. “The only real secret to riding is that it’s fun. I have a feeling that there are a few people around here who haven’t learned that yet.”

  There were many ways in which the three members of The Saddle Club were very different, but that was one thing they agreed on completely. Lisa smiled to herself, thinking about all the fun riding she had ahead of her.

  “I hate to change the subject from horses, guys,” Carole continued, “but did the two of you happen to notice what I noticed down the hill?”

  “More cabins?” Lisa asked. She’d seen a second cluster of cabins like the one they were in.

  “Not just more cabins,” Carole said. “Boys’ cabins. The camp’s coed, remember?”

  “Yeah, right, big deal,” Stevie said, sitting on her freshly made bed. “Pine Hollow’s coed, too. The trouble is that if nine out of ten guys are cute, the tenth one rides at Pine Hollow. I have absolutely no interest in any boy who rides horses. I’ve never met one who wasn’t a complete creep.”

  Lisa was a little surprised by the conviction in Stevie’s voice. It was true that the guys who rode at Pine Hollow weren’t exactly cute, but there was always a chance you’d find the right one, wasn’t there? “Oh, come on, Stevie,” she said. “Maybe Moose Hill is different.”

  “Fat chance,” Stevie said. “You should have seen the guy who came in when I was putting Topside in the barn. He ordered everybody around like he was a male version of Veronica diAngelo!”

  “So, maybe he’s rich?” Lisa suggested. “I could learn to love a rich man.”

  Stevie gave her a withering look. “Not this one,” she said. “Unless you really go for short, fat, and ugly as well. In that case, we’ve found Mr. Right for you.”

  “Well, what about the tall guy who held Topside’s saddle for you?” Carole asked.

  “That drip?” Stevie scoffed. “Oh, I admit that when I first saw him I thought he was kind of cute, but I asked him what his name was and he couldn’t seem to remember. I’m telling you, the boys here are no better than the girls. Stick to the horses!” She grinned and stood up. All three girls had finished with their unpacking and were ready to meet Nora at the barn.

  “Did you at least have a chance to meet some of the horses?” Lisa asked. “After all, I guess that’s what we’re here for.”

  “The horses are something else,” Stevie said, leading the way out of the cabin. “There’s a chestnut gelding who’s a real beauty. He’s got this incredible arch to his neck—I think there’s some Arabian there—and he holds his tail high, like he’s so proud of himself. He came over to me first thing and sort of hugged me. But then this paint mare got jealous and started prancing around the paddock so I’d notice her. Meanwhile two bays were pawing at the ground, like they’d seen the mare’s act before and they were bored with it. And all this time Topside is watching, taking it all in.”

  All the way to the top of the hill, Stevie continued telling her friends about the horses. Lisa was so excited to be at Moose Hill she could barely contain herself. She decided Stevie was right. The girls didn’t seem very nice and the boys were probably losers. It was a good thing the horses were so terrific!

  WHEN NORA GAVE the girls their grand tour of the grounds, they found that the camp was basically laid out in an oval. The massive barn stood at one end of the grounds. The barn had paddocks on two sides, one at the upper level, one below. The lower one was connected to a stable area. There was a drive-in entrance on the third side of the barn, and an outdoor riding ring on the fourth. Beyond the riding ring was a huge
grassy area about the size of a football field, where the riders could play mounted games like shadow tag. The mess hall stood on one side of the field; the rec hall was directly across from it. A regular sports field next to the rec hall provided space for unmounted games like softball or Frisbee.

  The cabins were down the hill from the barn. The boys’ and girls’ cabins lay on opposite shores of the swimming pond, separated from it by a small sandy beach. A short dirt road led from the barn to the cabin area. Other foot trails led through the woods directly to the pond and the mess hall.

  The main area of the camp was an open space, with just a few trees around the edges of the paddocks and riding arenas. There was a shaded area behind the mess hall with picnic tables, where most meals were served in good weather. The cabins were in the woods, cooled by tall trees.

  “The camp has about thirty riders at a time,” Nora explained. “Usually, there are about twenty girls and ten boys. I think that’s how many Barry said there were now.”

  Barry, they had learned, was the camp director. The girls had met him up at the stable, where he’d been overseeing the arrival of several horses. He’d been so busy telling the stablehands what to do that he’d barely acknowledged their presence. Carole had been very surprised that one of the stablehands needed so much supervision. His name was Fred and he didn’t seem to know much at all. Carole made a mental note not to let Fred near her horse.

  “Well, that’s about it,” Nora said to The Saddle Club girls. “Unless you want to tour the grain-storage area on the other side of the upper paddock, we’re done.”

  “Thanks a lot for showing us around,” Lisa said. “It seemed so confusing at first, but I think I can find my way around now.”

  “Oh, no problem,” Nora told them. “It was fun. Listen, I’m supposed to help set the tables today, so I’m going over to the mess hall. You should come too, when the bell rings, okay? I’ll see you there.”

  The girls agreed to meet Nora at the mess hall. Lisa and Carole wanted to wash up before lunch, but Stevie thought she ought to check on Topside one more time. They decided to regroup at lunchtime.

  Stevie wasn’t sure if the pond or the barn was her favorite part of the camp. There was something really wonderful about the barn. The thing about it was that it was a barn, not really a stable. The horses spent most of their time turned out into the paddocks or the field beyond them. The stabling area in the lower level was more like a resting place for sick or injured horses. It had a separate entrance for the horses from the lower paddock. The farrier—the blacksmith who put shoes on the horses—worked there as well, and horses in need of shoes were kept overnight in the stable area.

  The upper level of the building, like most barns, had a sort of drive-through, convenient for delivery and pickup of feed and equipment. Large storage rooms stood on both sides of the drive-through.

  Once Stevie had assured herself that Topside was doing just fine, she checked out the storage rooms. One, of course, was a tack room. Like Pine Hollow’s tack room, at first glance it looked like a disaster area. But Stevie was pretty sure that there was an underlying order there, just the same as there was at Pine Hollow.

  She looked to see where Topside’s tack had been stowed by the stablehand. She didn’t see it at first, but when she did finally find it, she wasn’t so sure about the room’s underlying order. Topside’s tack had been dumped in a corner of the room—on the floor! Stevie was furious. She picked up the saddle and put it on the nearest saddle rack. Then she untangled Topside’s bridle and laid it across the seat of the saddle, since the tack hook above the saddle rack was broken. She moved aside the stack of leathers that had been carelessly cast on the floor beneath the saddle rack and neatly stacked Topside’s personal grooming gear there.

  When she finished, Stevie grimly studied the rest of the tack room with a new skepticism. She now had the feeling that, unlike Pine Hollow’s tack room, this one not only looked like a mess, but was a mess. So much for the highly touted stablehands of Moose Hill. And so much for her vacation from grooming! She’d take care of her own horse and gear, and she’d tell her friends to do the same.

  When Stevie emerged from the tack room, she realized that there were no campers or staff members around. That could only mean one thing—and the grumbling in her stomach confirmed it. The lunch bell must have rung and she hadn’t heard it. She found a cold-water spigot at the back of the barn and quickly washed her hands, wiping them dry on her jeans.

  “Mess hall, mess hall,” Stevie said to herself. “It’s one of the buildings on either side of the riding field. But which one?” She guessed left. She was wrong. It took her almost ten minutes to figure out where the mess hall was. She felt totally stupid walking up to the picnic tables. Here she was, ready to start eating, and all the campers were working on their desserts.

  She felt even more stupid when she realized that there wasn’t a seat for her at the table where Carole, Lisa, and Nora were eating.

  “I’m sorry. We tried to save you a seat, but someone took it,” Carole said pointedly. She nodded toward Elsa, who was sitting next to Lisa and eating in sullen silence.

  “It happens.” Stevie shrugged. She almost felt sorry for her friends. She knew she wouldn’t like eating with such a sourpuss. She looked around for another seat.

  There was only one left, and just looking at it made Stevie’s face redden. The sole remaining seat in the entire picnic area was at a table that was filled with boys. If she hadn’t been starving, she might have skipped lunch altogether. But, she reminded herself, she’d spent her life eating with boys—even if they were only her brothers. Resigned, she walked over to the table.

  “This seat taken?” she asked.

  Seven boys looked up at her, apparently too surprised to answer. It annoyed Stevie to have to ask twice. “¿Esta el seato es libro?” she asked in totally fractured Spanish, responding to their rudeness with her own.

  Six boys stared at her as if she’d just sprouted another head. The seventh burst into laughter.

  “Muy libro,” he answered in equally bad Spanish. “Sit down.” Stevie did.

  It turned out that she was sitting across the table from the boy who had answered her question. She was inclined to like people who laughed when she was funny, so she took a minute to look at this one. Then it was her turn to be surprised. This guy, who had already proved that he was smart by laughing at her joke, was also unmistakably cute. He had short, light brown hair and intense green eyes. He was tall, with broad shoulders and a deep summer tan. What she noticed most, though, was his smile. It was welcoming and friendly. And best of all, it was directed at her.

  “Hi, I’m Phil Marston,” he said. He smiled again.

  “I’m Stevie Lake,” she said, stumbling over her own name. What was the matter with her?

  “You from around here?” Phil asked, and the conversation began. It turned out that he came from a town about ten miles from Willow Creek, where Stevie lived. She had heard of the stable where he rode. He was a year older than she was. He hadn’t been riding quite as long, but he had more show experience. It turned out that they had a lot in common. They both liked riding and jumping. They were both interested in dressage. They both hated math. Phil thought he had too many sisters. Stevie said she had too many brothers. They had each brought a horse to camp. But while Stevie’s belonged to Pine Hollow, Phil had his own horse, a bay gelding named Teddy, after Theodore Roosevelt because, Phil explained, when he had first gotten him, the horse was a rough rider.

  Stevie laughed at Phil’s jokes. Phil laughed at Stevie’s. Neither noticed when the other boys at the table finished their lunch and left. They didn’t even notice when Carole and Lisa arrived, until Carole announced their presence by clearing her throat several times.

  “Ahem!” Carole grunted, sitting down next to Stevie. Lisa sat next to Carole.

  “Oh, hi!” Stevie welcomed her friends. She introduced them to Phil. He smiled and nodded at them, but, Stevie notice
d, he smiled even more at her. She liked that. She smiled back.

  “I think we have a class to go to,” Carole said.

  “We do?” Stevie said. It seemed impossible that lunch could be over so fast. After all, she’d just sat down at the table a few minutes ago, hadn’t she? She looked at her watch. It had been almost forty-five minutes.

  “Do you have the same class we do now?” Stevie asked Phil, not even knowing what her class was.

  It turned out that Phil had a jump class. The girls were having a flat class, so they might not see each other again for a long time—at least not until dinner, which was five hours away.

  “Come on!” Carole commanded, tugging at Stevie’s sleeve. “We have to change into our riding clothes, go to the stable, tack up our horses, and who knows what all else, all in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Carole’s right,” Lisa said. “And Phil has to do the same thing for his class, too. We’ve all got to get rolling.”

  “Okay,” Phil agreed. He stood up. “I hope there’ll be a seato libro next to you at supper tonight,” he told Stevie. “And, uh, you too,” he added politely to Carole and Lisa. Then he waved and jogged off toward his cabin.

  Stevie had the strangest sensation. It was funny, but it was also very nice. Her stomach was fluttering and her knees felt soft. “I feel weak,” she said.

  Carole and Lisa exchanged glances.

  “Is this from the same girl who lectured us a couple hours ago about how all the boys who ride horses are drips and creeps?” Lisa teased.

  “I think it’s time to concentrate on horses,” Carole said sensibly. “After all, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

  “Speak for yourself,” Stevie said, sighing contentedly. It took Carole a second to realize that Stevie was joking.

  Lisa looked at her watch. “Twelve minutes,” she announced, and they still had to change their clothes. They didn’t jog casually to their cabin the way Phil had—they ran!