Horse Race

by Bonnie Bryant

  Garvey just stared at the horse coming toward him. He seemed to be pretending not to have heard Lisa’s question, even though there was no way he could have missed it.

  Deborah cleared her throat. “I was wondering the same thing, Garvey,” she said loudly. “How long is tomorrow’s race?”

  “Six furlongs,” Garvey replied shortly.

  The Saddle Club exchanged glances. They had heard the term furlong before while at the track, and they knew that it was a way of measuring distance, but even Carole wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. Somehow none of them felt like asking Garvey to explain.

  “Do you think she’s well prepped for the race?” Deborah asked Garvey, her pen poised over the small notepad she was holding.

  “If she wasn’t prepared, she wouldn’t be running,” Garvey replied with a frown.

  Deborah didn’t seem taken aback by the rude answer. The Saddle Club guessed that she was used to interviewing difficult subjects. “Of course,” she said smoothly. “Can you tell me a little about her training, then?”

  Garvey sighed heavily. “Not unless you have all day. Training a racehorse is a complicated business, in case you didn’t realize it.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Deborah said. She smiled. “Even more complicated than boxing, right?”

  Garvey frowned and gave Deborah a sharp look. “If you’re here to ask me about my past, you can forget it,” he said brusquely. “Your boss said you were coming to talk about horse racing, and that’s all I’m interested in talking about.”

  “All right, then, we’ll stick to horse racing,” Deborah said. By now she was starting to look a tiny bit annoyed, though someone who didn’t know her well might not have noticed it. The Saddle Club noticed, though, and they didn’t blame her one bit. “It would be helpful to have a little background information on you for the story. But we’ll stay away from boxing if you prefer.” She glanced down at her notepad. “So how about an easy one: Where are you from originally, Garvey?”

  This time the large man didn’t hesitate. In fact, he looked almost relieved at the question. “I was born and raised in Dry River, Virginia.”

  “I guess that was an easy one,” Stevie said under her breath, and Carole and Lisa tried not to laugh.

  Just then Cookie Cutter pulled up in front of them. “Did she feel all right, Toby?” Garvey called to the rider, turning his back on Deborah before she could ask any more questions.

  “Sure thing,” the little man replied. Stevie noticed he had a slightly worried expression on his face. “Are you sure about the distance, though? I could take her another couple of furlongs. The boss seemed to think—”

  Garvey cut him off angrily. “I’m the boss while we’re here, okay?” he growled. “You’re just the jockey. That means you follow my orders. And don’t you forget it.”

  Toby gave in immediately. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Sorry—I wasn’t trying to second-guess you.” He reached down and gave the filly’s neck a pat. “I just want good old C.C. here to win tomorrow, that’s all.”

  “We all do,” Garvey said, sounding calmer. “And she will if our luck holds.” He smiled slightly. “If I were a betting man, I’d have money on her tomorrow. And that’s a genuine tip.” Noticing that the girls were hanging on his every word, he added, “For anyone here who’s old enough to gamble, that is.”

  “Don’t you bet on your horses?” Carole asked. She knew Mr. McLeod and others from Maskee Farms often bet money on their own horses if they thought they would win.

  Garvey shook his head. “I don’t bet on anyone’s horses,” he said. “I may be the only one around this place who doesn’t, but that’s the way I was raised.” He shrugged. “Besides, just keeping these critters healthy and trying to get them ready to run is enough of a gamble for me.”

  Deborah made a note on her pad. Meanwhile, Lisa was looking toward the break in the rail where the horses entered the track. “Hey, look,” she said. “Isn’t that Josh?”

  Carole looked up just as Josh spotted her. He was too far away to call to her, but he waved wildly, grinning from ear to ear. He was so enthusiastic that several other people turned to see who had his attention. Even the horse he was leading, a tall gray filly, swiveled her head around to look in the girls’ direction. Stevie and Lisa waved back, and Carole lifted her hand shyly.

  “I wonder if that’s the horse he was talking about before,” Stevie said. “What was her name?”

  “Leprechaun,” Carole supplied. “She’s running against Cookie Cutter tomorrow.”

  Toby heard her and looked over at the gray. “That’s Leprechaun, all right,” he confirmed. Stevie was pleased to notice that, unlike Garvey, the jockey talked to them like people, not like little kids. “She looks to be the only real competition for C.C. tomorrow. I’ve been watching her work, and if anyone gives us a run for the money, she’ll be the one. Especially if the racing luck is on her side instead of ours.”

  Garvey frowned at the comment. “Don’t just let that horse stand there in her own sweat,” he said sharply. “She’s got to be cooled down. Toby, show these girls what to do, and don’t be long about it. I need you to breeze the bay colt sometime this century.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Toby said, his face expressionless. He turned and rode Cookie Cutter toward the gap in the fence, gesturing for the girls to meet him there.

  The Saddle Club said good-bye to Deborah and walked to meet the horse and jockey. “Boy, Deborah really has her work cut out for her, doesn’t she?” Lisa commented quietly. “Garvey doesn’t seem too thrilled about being interviewed.”

  Stevie nodded. “Just about the only question he answered without scowling was the one about where he was from. And that was an easy one, like Deborah said.”

  “Not necessarily,” Carole put in with a smile. “For me, that question would be almost as complicated as the one about Cookie Cutter’s training.”

  Her friends laughed. Carole’s father was a colonel in the Marine Corps, and her family had moved around from base to base before settling for good in Willow Creek.

  Toby and Cookie Cutter were waiting for them by the gap. “Sorry about Garvey’s temper,” the jockey said. He had dismounted, and once they were standing beside him the girls could see that he wasn’t much taller than they were. “He’s always kind of tense, and he’s been worse than ever since he got to Bluegrass. And if your friend mentioned his boxing career it probably didn’t help. He’s kind of sensitive about that topic.” He smiled. “He also seems to have forgotten whatever manners his mama might have taught him. Who are you three, anyway? I know the woman with you is a newspaper reporter, but …”

  The Saddle Club laughed. Then, as all of them walked back toward the shed row with Cookie Cutter in tow, Carole quickly introduced the three of them and explained why they were there.

  “I see,” Toby said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Your riding instructor wanted to get you out of his hair, so he sent you out here to get in ours.”

  Stevie shot him a quick glance, but one look at his face assured her that he was kidding. “That’s right,” she retorted. “And we’re going to prove it by asking you a million questions about racing.”

  “I’m game,” Toby said. “Ask away.”

  “Okay,” Stevie said. “Why’s Garvey so sensitive about his boxing career?”

  Toby raised one eyebrow and glanced at her. “I don’t know him real well, but I hear he wasn’t too successful as a boxer, so he doesn’t like to be reminded of that part of his life.” He smiled. “Is that what you call a racing question?”

  “I’ve got one. A real racing question, I mean,” Lisa spoke up. “What on earth is a furlong?”

  Toby looked surprised for a second, then burst out laughing. “I guess that’s a fair question,” he said, pausing for a moment to let Cookie Cutter sniff at some low-hanging tree branches near the path. “We all get so used to hearing that term around here that it’s easy to forget people don’t use it all the time.”
<
br />   “It’s a unit of measurement, right?” Carole asked.

  Toby nodded. “Exactly right,” he said. “One furlong is equal to one-eighth of a mile, or two hundred and twenty yards.” He waved a hand behind him to indicate the track. “For instance, Bluegrass Park’s racetrack is a mile and a quarter around. But it would be the same thing to say it’s ten furlongs.”

  “So a six-furlong race is really … um … three-quarters of a mile,” Lisa said, calculating quickly in her head.

  “That’s right,” Toby replied. “That’s how far C.C. is running tomorrow.”

  “C.C. is a cute nickname,” Stevie said. “Have you been riding her long?”

  “Not that long,” Toby said. By this time they had reached the rows of stables and were walking toward their own. They paused again to allow the curious filly to watch a stable cat wander by. “She hasn’t raced yet, as you probably know. Garvey had an exercise boy riding her in the mornings until this week. But he wanted me to get used to her before race day, so here I am.”

  Carole noticed that he was frowning just a little as he spoke, and she suspected she knew why. She didn’t want to seem nosy, but the jockey seemed so down-to-earth that she couldn’t resist asking. “What was all that stuff about the distance of the workout? You didn’t seem very happy about it.”

  Toby smiled ruefully. “Perceptive, aren’t you?” he said. “But you’re right. I was worried because the boss—the head trainer, that is—had laid out a rough training schedule for C.C. leading up to the race, and Garvey has been doing his own thing all week. He’s changed some of the distances of the workouts and adjusted the schedule in other ways.”

  “Is that bad?” Lisa asked.

  “Well, there’s more than one way to get a horse ready to run. But the boss usually knows what he’s doing.” Toby shrugged and sighed. “Maybe Garvey does, too. I hope so.”

  They walked into the barn with the filly in tow, and the girls quickly helped Toby remove her tack. “Shouldn’t you be hurrying back to the track?” Carole asked, feeling a little worried on the jockey’s behalf. “Garvey seemed awfully eager for you to exercise that other horse.” And, she added silently to herself, Garvey seems like a bad person to make angry.

  Toby laughed. “That’s just Garvey being Garvey,” he said. “Naturally you wouldn’t recognize them, but there were two other Maskee horses on the track waiting their turn for Garvey’s attention when we left. I’ll be back with the bay colt in plenty of time.”

  “You mean you don’t ride all of Maskee’s horses?” Stevie asked, watching as the jockey pulled out a light blanket and snapped it onto the chestnut filly’s back.

  Toby shook his head. “Unless we’re preparing for an important race, I usually don’t ride for Maskee in the mornings at all,” he said. “Garvey hires exercise boys to do that.” He gave the girls a wink and handed Cookie Cutter’s lead line to Carole. “I grab any chance I can get to sleep in.”

  He said good-bye and strolled down the aisle, where one of the grooms was waiting with the bay colt the girls had seen earlier. Now the horse was tacked up and ready to go, and Toby led him away in the direction of the track.

  The girls started walking in a big circle around the shed row. Carole led Cookie Cutter, and Stevie and Lisa walked alongside to keep her company.

  “There’s so much interesting stuff going on here, isn’t there?” Carole mused.

  Stevie nodded. “Especially when it comes to Garvey,” she said. “I think there might be something mysterious about him.”

  “Huh?” Lisa and Carole said in one voice, looking at their friend in surprise.

  “Think about it,” Stevie said. “He doesn’t want to answer any of Deborah’s questions, especially questions about his past. He’s mean and surly to just about everyone. He’s been changing his boss’s training schedule. What does all that tell you?”

  “It tells me you’ve been watching too many TV detective shows,” Carole said with a laugh. “Although no selfrespecting TV detective would get involved in anything with those pathetic clues.”

  Lisa grinned. “Actually, maybe Stevie’s having a flashback to our last trip to the racetrack,” she told Carole. “She remembers that we solved a mystery then, and she thinks we’ll probably stumble over another one here.”

  “Maybe.” Carole tried to keep a straight face. “But what are the odds of that?”

  Stevie’s face was bright red by now. “Okay, enough. You two are pretty funny. But I have a hunch about this. Something’s weird about Garvey.”

  Lisa shrugged. “Nobody’s arguing with you there,” she said. “But there’s nothing particularly mysterious about being weird and antisocial.”

  Just then they noticed a wiry young man walking toward them leading two sweaty horses. “Are you the Maskee hot-walkers?” he called out.

  “I guess those are our next customers,” Lisa said. “Come on, Stevie. Let’s go untack them.”

  As her friends hurried off, Carole continued to walk with Cookie Cutter. She was just rounding the far corner of the shed row when she heard someone calling her name. She turned and saw Josh coming toward her, a big smile on his face.

  “Hi there,” he said. “I see you get to walk the star.” He jerked his thumb at Cookie Cutter. “Does that mean you’re the star hot-walker?”

  Carole wasn’t sure how to answer that. She suspected it was the kind of question that didn’t require an answer, so she just shrugged. “Where’s Leprechaun?” she asked. “I saw her going onto the track. Don’t you have to walk her after her workout?”

  “Nope,” Josh replied, falling into step beside her as she continued around the path. “We have hot-walkers, too, you know. I just took her back to the barn and untacked her. She’ll be walking for at least half an hour, so I figured I’d come over here and see what you were doing.”

  “Well, now you see it,” Carole said with a weak smile.

  Josh laughed as if it were the funniest thing anyone had ever said. “You’re really clever, Carole,” he said, looking at her admiringly. “By the way, that’s a really pretty name.”

  For a second Carole thought he was talking about Cookie Cutter’s name. Then she realized he meant her name, and she blushed. Why had this boy suddenly decided to start mooning over her? She definitely didn’t get it, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

  Josh reached out to pat Cookie Cutter on the neck. “She looked good out there this morning,” he said. “She’s a nice filly. I’m almost sorry we’re going to beat her tomorrow.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that,” Carole returned with a smile, feeling slightly relieved at the change in topic. She felt on firmer ground talking about horses than she did talking about herself. “Cookie Cutter told me herself that she’s planning to win that race.”

  “Oh yeah?” Josh said with a laugh. “Well, I would never contradict such a lovely pair of ladies. So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Sometimes it all comes down to racing luck.”

  Carole blushed some more at the compliment. This was definitely weird. Still, she had a job to do, and nothing was going to stop her from doing it—not even a moony-eyed boy.

  Realizing that Josh had used the same term Toby had used earlier, she looked at the boy curiously. “You racetrack people seem to talk about racing luck a lot.”

  “I suppose we do,” Josh said, looking rather surprised at the thought. “But it’s only because it’s such an important factor. No matter what we do to get these beasts ready, just about anything can happen once we set them loose in a race. So it helps to have luck on your side.” He shrugged. “That’s why we have so many superstitions around here.” He tugged at his T-shirt and smiled a little sheepishly. “For instance, I always wear this on any day one of our horses is running. That means I’ll be wearing it again tomorrow, as you may notice if we see each other.” His sheepish grin faded into an adoring smile. “And I sure hope we do. See each other, I mean.”

  Carole smiled back a li
ttle uncertainly. She couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit flattered by Josh’s attention. Stevie had a boyfriend named Phil, and Lisa occasionally went on dates with boys from school. Carole had dated, but she had always been a lot more interested in horses and riding than boys. She wasn’t expecting that to change anytime soon, but maybe she should look on the positive side. Maybe this weekend at the track would be a chance to find out what all the fuss was about.

  THERE WAS A lull in the racetrack bustle at around ten-thirty. The Saddle Club had walked all of the Maskee horses after their workouts, then pitched in to help with the other stable chores. Finally everything was finished—for the moment.

  “You three might as well grab some lunch,” Garvey told them. “By the way,” he added gruffly, “you’re pretty good workers—for a bunch of girls, anyway.” He hurried away before The Saddle Club could answer.

  Carole looked surprised. “I’m not sure, but I think that might have been a compliment.”

  “I think you’re right,” Lisa said. “And I think we deserved it. I also think Garvey was right about lunch. It may be early, but I’m starved.”

  Deborah found them in the cafeteria a little while later. The girls had already gobbled down huge lunches and were now busy sipping at the remains of their sodas and talking about everything that had happened that morning.

  “There you are,” Deborah said. “I had a feeling I might find you here. How would you like to see something interesting?”

  The girls were all ears. “What is it?” Carole asked.

  “Cookie Cutter is about to be okayed out of the gate,” Deborah said. Seeing the girls’ confused expressions, she laughed. “Since she’s never raced before, the track starter has to watch her break from the starting gate so he knows she can do it properly during a race. Want to come see?”

  “Of course we do,” Stevie said, jumping to her feet.

  The girls followed Deborah back toward the track. “I can’t believe Garvey never told us this was happening,” Carole said. “He just sent us off for lunch and never mentioned it.”