Horse Magic

by Bonnie Bryant

  “What a great idea!” Stevie exclaimed. “And Dinah, there’s another really special horse you have to meet besides Belle.”

  “I know,” Dinah said, smiling at Carole. “Starlight, right? I’ve heard rave reviews of him.”

  “Well, him, too, of course,” Stevie said. “But that’s not who I was talking about. I meant Max’s brand-new horse.”

  Carole furrowed her brow. As far as she knew, Max hadn’t bought any horses lately. What was Stevie talking about? Before she could open her mouth to ask, she noticed Stevie winking wildly at her. Carole kept quiet. This new horse Stevie was talking about must have something to do with the prank Stevie wanted to play on Dinah.

  “What brand-new horse?” Dinah asked.

  Stevie let out an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, she’s gorgeous!” she exclaimed dramatically. “She’s probably the most beautiful horse I’ve ever seen in my life. She’s a jet-black mare named Black Magic, and she’s just the daintiest and prettiest thing you’ll ever see.”

  Carole glanced over at Lisa with a tiny shrug. Lisa shrugged back, still looking glum.

  “She’s really athletic, too,” Stevie continued. “She’s great at dressage, plus she can jump higher fences than any of the other horses. Max is sure she could easily escape from any field he put her in if she wanted to, but luckily she’s got a really sweet and friendly temperament, so she never tries.”

  “She sounds wonderful,” Dinah said, looking excited. “I can’t wait to meet her—and all the other new horses, too. And of course I can’t wait to see all my old pals like Patch and Delilah.” She frowned. “Didn’t you tell me that Pepper died, Stevie?”

  Stevie nodded, glancing at Lisa. Pepper had been Lisa’s regular mount until his retirement. He had died the previous fall, and even though Lisa loved riding the sweet Thoroughbred mare Prancer, Stevie and Carole knew she still missed Pepper. They all did.

  “That’s too bad,” Dinah said sadly. “I always kind of thought of Pepper as my horse.”

  Lisa gasped. “No he wasn’t,” she said before she could stop herself.

  Dinah frowned. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” Lisa said quickly. “I was just saying that a lot of people thought of Pepper that way, not just you.”

  Dinah’s frown deepened a little. “Well, that doesn’t mean I can’t be sad that he’s gone,” she said.

  “We’d better get going before it’s too late,” Carole interrupted, her voice just a little too loud.

  “Right,” Stevie said eagerly, not noticing either Carole’s anxious look or the other girls’ angry ones. “After all, we don’t want to keep Black Magic waiting—or any of the others, either.”

  The girls went downstairs just in time to greet Mrs. Lake and Stevie’s brothers as they came in the front door. “Dinah!” Mrs. Lake exclaimed, putting down her briefcase and stepping forward to give the visitor a hug. “It’s so good to see you again! How’s your family?”

  “She can tell you all about it later,” Stevie said, tugging on her mother’s sleeve. “We’re going for a quick visit to Pine Hollow before dinner, okay?”

  “Well, I suppose it’s all right,” Mrs. Lake said, taking off her coat. “Just don’t be too long.” She sniffed at the delicious scents that were beginning to waft out of the kitchen. “It smells like your dad is making his famous Lake lasagna. You don’t want to miss that.”

  While Dinah was trading playful insults with Stevie’s brothers, Chad, Alex, and Michael, Carole pulled Stevie aside. “So what’s the story with this imaginary Black Magic, Stevie?” she whispered. “What gives?”

  Stevie grinned, with a sidelong glance at Dinah. “Just play along,” she whispered back.

  “OH, IT’S SO great to see all these familiar faces again!” Dinah exclaimed, rubbing Delilah’s soft nose. The palomino snorted, as if agreeing, and all four girls laughed.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Carole noticed that Lisa was looking a little more relaxed, and she smiled. Her friends might sometimes tease her about her belief that horses could solve almost any problem, but this time it seemed true.

  “How about one more familiar face?” came a voice from behind them.

  “Max!” Dinah exclaimed, rushing forward to give him a hug.

  “Hi, Dinah,” Max said, a little breathless from her enthusiasm. “Welcome back to Pine Hollow. I suppose you’ll be here twenty-four hours a day for your whole visit, if your friends have anything to say about it.”

  “You’d better hope we’re here practically that much,” Stevie reminded him tartly. “If you’re counting on us to make Saturday a success, that is.”

  “Touché,” Max admitted with a smile. “Well, enjoy yourselves. And Dinah, don’t forget to stop and say hello to my mother.” Max’s mother, known to all the young riders as Mrs. Reg, helped him run the stable. She was a kindhearted woman who was a favorite with everyone who knew her. “I think she’s still around here somewhere.” With a wave, Max hurried away.

  “Come on, let’s stop by Black Magic’s stall, and then we’ll go see Prancer,” Stevie suggested. “That’s the horse Lisa usually rides. After that we’ll stop by Mrs. Reg’s office.”

  “Great,” Dinah said. “I was wondering when I was going to get to meet this perfect horse.”

  Carole and Lisa had been wondering the same thing. Now they followed as Stevie led Dinah down the aisle past Delilah, stopping in front of an empty stall.

  “Oh, no,” Stevie wailed. If Carole and Lisa hadn’t known better, they would have thought their friend was experiencing the bitterest of disappointments. “She’s not here!”

  Dinah peered into the clean-swept stall. “A horse lives here?” she asked in disbelief.

  Stevie shrugged. “Oh, you know Red,” she said. “He’s such a clean freak. I guess Black Magic must be out on the trail, and he’s in the middle of giving her stall a good cleaning.” Red O’Malley was Pine Hollow’s head stable hand.

  “Isn’t it a little late for her to be out on the trail?” Dinah asked, looking worried. “It’s getting pretty dark out there.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’ll be back soon,” Stevie said. “Probably one of Max’s adult riders wanted to take a moonlit ride through the fields or something.” She moved briskly down the aisle. “Come on, you can meet Prancer instead. She’s almost as pretty.”

  The gentle bay mare stretched out her head to greet the girls as they approached her stall. Lisa reached forward to give her an affectionate pat. “Here she is,” she told Dinah. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”

  “Definitely,” Dinah agreed sincerely. “She’s a Thoroughbred, right?”

  Lisa nodded. “She used to be a racehorse,” she said. “That means she’s a genuine blue blood. It’s really exciting to have the chance to ride such a terrific horse.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Dinah said, a little coldly. “I guess it’s probably some kind of special honor Max only grants to his favorites.”

  Before Lisa could reply, Stevie jumped in. She was still thinking about her practical joke. “Nobody’s bloodlines are as good as Black Magic’s, though,” she said. “She’s really one of a kind. You don’t need to look at her registration papers to tell how aristocratic she is.”

  Carole rolled her eyes. Stevie was really laying it on thick about this mystery horse. What was she trying to do? Whatever it was, Carole could tell it was distracting her so much that she still hadn’t noticed the iciness between Lisa and Dinah.

  “Come on,” Carole said. “We’d better go see Mrs. Reg before she leaves for dinner or something.”

  The girls headed for Mrs. Reg’s office, off the tack room. The woman recognized Dinah immediately and greeted her warmly. While the two of them chatted about Dinah’s new home in Vermont, The Saddle Club wandered into the tack room and sat down to wait.

  “Stevie, are you ever going to tell us what this Black Magic business is about?” Carole asked.

  “It’s my practical joke on Dinah,” Stevie said with a
grin. “I’m going to string her along, building up this incredible horse until she’s simply dying to meet her.”

  “Then what?” Lisa asked.

  Stevie smirked. “You’ll see.”

  At that moment Mrs. Reg and Dinah walked into the tack room, still talking. “I really miss this place, you know,” Dinah said, running her hand over a gleaming saddle. “But I’m glad to see that everything is just the way I left it.” She peered into the bucket in a corner of the room where the saddle soap was kept. “Make that almost everything,” she added.

  “What do you mean?” Stevie asked.

  Dinah grinned. “Well, either you’ve found a new place to keep the saddle soap, or Max and Mrs. Reg aren’t keeping the place up to their usual standards. This bucket is empty.”

  Mrs. Reg frowned, and for a second the girls thought it was because of Dinah’s playful insult. But when she peered into the bucket, the frown deepened into a worried scowl. “That’s odd,” she muttered. “Very odd indeed.”

  “What is it, Mrs. Reg?” Carole asked.

  The woman looked up, as if just remembering that the girls were in the room. “Oh, nothing,” she said, a little too quickly.

  Stevie wasn’t buying that. “Come on, Mrs. Reg,” she urged. “What gives?”

  Mrs. Reg sighed wearily. “I refilled that bucket to the rim with fresh bars of saddle soap just this morning.”

  “Someone must have cleaned an awful lot of tack, then,” Lisa said, glancing down at the large, empty bucket.

  “I don’t think so. And that’s not the first weird thing that’s happened around here lately,” Mrs. Reg said, shaking her head slowly. She sat down on the edge of a trunk, looking thoughtful. “Did you girls ever hear of Nevermore Stables?”

  All four girls shook their heads.

  “It was in the next county, but it closed before any of you were born,” Mrs. Reg said. “It had to close.”

  “Why?” asked Dinah.

  “Well, some folks say it was because there weren’t enough students in the area to pay the bills,” Mrs. Reg replied. “But then again, some say it was something else. That the students were scared away.”

  “What do you mean, scared away?” Carole asked skeptically. “How do you scare someone away from a stable?”

  Mrs. Reg didn’t answer Carole’s question. Instead she asked one of her own, “Have you girls ever heard of poltergeists?”

  “Sure,” Lisa said promptly. “They’re a sort of mischievous, playful ghost.”

  “Not always so playful,” Mrs. Reg corrected. “They can be very destructive, if you believe the people who say they’ve been haunted by them. Like the people at Nevermore. After almost a year of mysterious, annoying, sometimes dangerous mishaps—misplaced tack, unlatched gates, odd tapping and banging noises, things like that—they had no choice but to close down. The students were convinced it was a poltergeist at work, and they quit in droves.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” Carole said. “Even the best-run stable has an occasional accident.”

  Mrs. Reg glanced down at the bucket, and the worried crease in her forehead deepened. “Occasional, yes,” she said softly. “But when the occasional becomes the everyday, well …”

  Stevie laughed. “Mrs. Reg, you’re not seriously suggesting that a poltergeist is haunting Pine Hollow, stealing all our saddle soap!”

  “Of course not,” Mrs. Reg snapped. Without another word, she got up and stalked back into her office, closing the door firmly behind her.

  The four girls traded bewildered glances. “What was that all about?” Dinah exclaimed. “I mean, I remember Mrs. Reg’s stories are always a little out there, but really. Soap-stealing ghosts? That’s a wild one, even for her!”

  “No kidding,” Carole said. “But as usual, I have no idea what she was actually trying to tell us. I doubt it was that Pine Hollow is haunted.” Mrs. Reg’s stories usually had a moral, but her listeners often had to work hard to figure out what it was.

  Carole glanced at her watch. “Oops!” she said. “I’d better go call my dad and tell him to pick me up here. It’s navy bean soup night at the base, and he hates to be late for that.”

  “Oh, rats,” Stevie said, looking disappointed. “I was going to invite you guys to have dinner at my house tonight in honor of Dinah’s first night. You heard my mom—it’s Lake lasagna tonight.”

  “Sorry,” Carole said regretfully. “But you know how my dad feels about navy bean soup.”

  “How about you, Lisa?” Stevie said. “You’ll come, won’t you?”

  Lisa stared at her fingernails, trying not to meet Stevie’s eye. “Um, I can’t,” she mumbled. “I promised my parents I’d eat at home tonight.”

  “Well, just call them,” Stevie suggested. “I’m sure they’ll let you come when you tell them why.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Lisa said.

  Stevie’s eyes narrowed, and she glanced from Lisa to Dinah and back again. It finally dawned on her that the two of them hadn’t been acting particularly friendly. In fact, they had barely spoken to each other at all. She bit her lip. How could she not have noticed before now? And more importantly, how could two of her best friends in the world not be friends themselves? She decided they just needed a little more time to get to know each other. Working together on the Halloween event was sure to do the trick.

  “All right, then,” Stevie said to Dinah. “It’s just you and me, kid. And the rest of my family, of course. Speaking of which, we’d better get going, or my brothers will eat everything in the house before we get back.”

  The two of them hurried away. Carole knocked gingerly on Mrs. Reg’s door, but there was no answer. “I guess I’ll have to use the pay phone. Do you have a quarter?” she asked Lisa.

  Lisa dug a handful of coins out of the pocket of her jeans. “Here’s one,” she said.

  The two girls walked to the pay phone in the corridor. “My dad can drop you off if you want,” Carole offered. “Your house is right on the way to the base.”

  Lisa nodded. After Carole had finished her call, the girls headed outside to wait for Colonel Hanson. It was dark and chilly, and there was a hint of dampness in the air.

  Carole wrapped her arms around herself. “It sure feels like fall, doesn’t it?” she remarked.

  Instead of answering, Lisa said, “I don’t think Dinah likes me.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Carole said. “But I definitely got the impression that you don’t like her.”

  Lisa looked a little surprised. “I’m trying to like her,” she said. “I really am. After all, she’s one of Stevie’s best friends. There’s no reason I shouldn’t like her.”

  “But?” Carole prompted.

  “But I guess we don’t have much in common,” Lisa said, scuffing her feet through a pile of orange and yellow leaves. “We’re completely different from each other.”

  “Just like you’re completely different from Stevie, and Stevie’s completely different from me, and I’m completely different from you,” Carole reminded her. “That’s part of what makes The Saddle Club so great, remember? Not just what we have in common, but what we don’t.”

  “I know,” Lisa said. “You’re right.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what it is with Dinah. I was all ready to love her, especially after everything you guys said. But she just rubs me the wrong way or something.”

  “Well, if you can’t get over it, maybe you should just try to stay out of her way while she’s here,” Carole advised. “She’s only visiting for a few days, and we’re all going to be pretty busy.”

  “I guess so,” Lisa said. But she wasn’t completely satisfied with that solution. Even when Dinah was back in Vermont, she would still be Stevie’s friend, and Carole’s, too. And Lisa would still be the odd one out. Even if the others didn’t think of it that way, she knew in her own mind she always would. And what would that mean for The Saddle Club?

  WHEN STEVIE AND Dinah arrived at Pine Hollow after school the f
ollowing afternoon, they found Carole and Lisa already hard at work. There were no more riding lessons scheduled for that day, so they had taken over the room where the students’ lockers were, turning it into an impromptu arts-and-crafts room.

  “Look at this,” Carole exclaimed when Stevie and Dinah walked in. She held up a neatly lettered sign proclaiming COSTUMES. “Lisa did it—doesn’t it look nice? We’re going to put it on the costume box.”

  “It looks great,” Stevie agreed. “What are you working on now?” She peered over Lisa’s shoulder at the notebook she was busy writing in.

  “First we made up a schedule for the day,” Lisa said. “That way we knew how much time to allow for each activity.” She flipped back a page in the notebook and pointed at the chart she’d made. “Now we’re starting to plan what we’ll need for the treasure hunt.”

  “Aha!” Stevie exclaimed, grabbing a pen from the floor. “Pass the notebook. This is my specialty. Come on, Dinah, I’m sure we can come up with some fun stuff for the kids to find.”

  Lisa handed her the notebook. “I started a list on this page,” she explained. “I put down the name of the object, how many we’d need, and where we can get them.”

  “Uh-huh,” Stevie said, glancing at the list.

  “Let’s start our list on a new page,” Dinah suggested. “We’ll just list all the fun and crazy things we can think of, and worry about those other details later.”

  “Okay,” Stevie said agreeably, flipping to a clean page. “I’ve got one. Monster masks. My brothers have a million of them, and they’ll be perfect for Halloween. We can plant them all through the woods on branches and stuff.”

  Lisa bit her lip. She couldn’t believe Stevie and Dinah were just starting over, ignoring the careful system she and Carole had worked out. She glanced at Carole to see how she was taking it.