Max nodded. “Well, your friend Carole has been helpful to me today, too, so I’m glad to get a chance to thank her.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Judge Gavin was crazy about Delilah. He’s a fussy man, and I haven’t been able to please him at all. You managed nicely. He says he wants to ride her again, and he kept telling me what a bright and talented young woman you are. You really impressed him in a way I haven’t. I don’t usually think it’s a good idea to coddle my riders, but Judge Gavin is an important man in town, and I was pleased when he said he wanted to ride here. He’ll probably bring me other new riders. That’s good for all of us, so, thanks, Carole. Thanks very much.”
“You’re welcome, Max. I think I was just lucky, though.”
“ ‘Tactful’ is probably the word. The man’s convinced that it’s his riding skill that’s tamed that spirited palomino.”
Lisa and Stevie thought it was pretty funny when they heard the details, but they were glad that Carole had done something good for Max.
“Listen,” he said. “One of the events that Nigel is going to be competing in is called the Gambler’s Choice. It’s really exciting. Mom and I are planning to go with Dorothy, although there’s so much work to be done around here that I’m not sure we’ll be able to take the time off. Anyway, if I could get some extra tickets, would you three like to come along?”
Would they! The looks on their faces answered Max’s question.
“Well, I’m not sure,” he said. “There is a lot to be done. I know I’d need some help from you all—I mean like major chores, not just the routine stuff.”
“We’ll help,” Carole said.
“Promise,” Stevie added.
“Whatever it is,” promised Lisa.
“And, of course, there are Pony Club jobs that need to be up-to-date.”
“My notebook is almost up-to-date,” Lisa said.
“Mine is,” said Carole.
“Mine will be,” said Stevie.
“And I’m not actually certain that I’ll have time to call about the tickets,” said Max. “I do have to sort and catalog all the specialized riding habits in the attic. Mom has told me it has to be done this week.…”
“We can do it,” Lisa said. “I’m good at cataloging stuff.”
“And I’m good at organizing closets and storage places,” Carole said.
“And I’m good with messy rooms,” Stevie said. Everybody looked at her and laughed. Even Stevie.
“Whatever it is, we’ll do it,” Carole said. “Promise.”
“I’ll try, then,” Max said. “I know you girls would enjoy going to the show. The Gambler’s Choice is on Friday. That’s the thirty-first. Mother has a complete list of chores.”
“Just give it to us,” Carole said. “We’ll see to it that it gets done.”
“Sounds like a good deal to me,” said Max. “And as I said, I’ll see about tickets. If I have time. I’ve got to get going now. And you’re about done with Topside’s tack, aren’t you?”
“Almost,” Carole said, surveying the now shiny-clean leather in front of them.
“You know, one of the problems with one really clean saddle is that it makes all the other ones around it look dirty. Well, see you!” With that, he left.
Stevie hoisted Topside’s saddle onto its rack and hung the clean bridle above it. She stood back and looked at the row of saddles. Max was right. The other five in the same row looked grungy compared to Topside’s.
“Well, shall we?” she asked. Her friends shrugged in submission.
“Why not?” Carole asked.
“It only makes sense,” agreed Lisa. “Remember, every little chore that we do will make it easier for Max to get us tickets for the horse show. Toss me a sponge.”
They began their work in earnest.
LISA CLICKED HER mouse a few times, frowned, and then shook her head. That wasn’t right at all, and it was getting worse. She was trying to make a chart that would list all the jobs they needed to finish by Friday, what day they should be done, and who should do them. The problem wasn’t with the list, though. Clicking the computer’s mouse had made a jumble of everything, and now she had to figure out how to unjumble it.
She moved the cursor to the top of the page and typed in a new first entry. It read:
Make this computer do what I want it to. Saturday. Lisa.
Well, at least that was being organized, and being organized was Lisa’s strongest characteristic.
When Lisa finally finished the chart, she ran three copies on her printer and put two in envelopes for Stevie and Carole. The third she taped onto the mirror above the dresser in her room. That way she could look at it every morning and every night. Now everything was clear as could be. And what was clearest of all was that there was a lot of work to be done. She taped a string attached to a pencil next to the list. That way she could check off everything as it got done. She hoped she’d be able to check it all off by Friday. She sighed.
AT THE SAME time, Stevie was thinking about all the work that had to be done that week, too. Only in Stevie’s mind, the major task was putting the days behind her so she could get to Friday night and go to the horse show.
She’d been to national-level horse shows before. She and her friends had watched Dorothy DeSoto compete in New York. But this was going to be even better. This time Dorothy would be sitting with them, and the man Dorothy was going to marry would be competing in one of the most exciting events there was. This wasn’t just going to be wonderful, it was also going to be romantic!
There was a rustle under Stevie’s bed. She rolled over onto her stomach and hung her top half over the edge of the bed. She lifted up the flounce. It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the dark and then a full minute for them to adjust to the sea of dust bunnies. Then the light caught something—two things, in fact. It was her cat, Madonna, furiously attacking something that looked like a gray ball. First, Madonna held it in her front paws and scratched at it with her hind paws. Then, when it rolled out of her grasp, she batted at it. A very dusty, very dirty sock came skittering out from under the bed. That was followed by a blue one, no cleaner than the gray one that had probably once been white. Stevie reached out for both of them and batted them back under the bed. Madonna slithered out from under the flounce then, cast an irritated glance at Stevie, and walked out of the room.
The appearance of the two socks made Stevie think about clothes in general, and since she’d also been thinking about the horse show, she began to think about what clothes she would wear to the horse show. She wouldn’t wear riding clothes, of course. That was like somebody wearing a baseball uniform to watch a baseball game. Those people always made her laugh. Stevie did, however, want to wear something a little horsey. She dismissed the idea of jeans and boots, because they seemed too casual to wear to a fancy show like this one. She considered her gray skirt and the white shirt with a white tie that she wore when she was in a show herself. No, that was too close to the baseball-uniform idea. She had a shirt with horses printed on it. That might go with her blue slacks.
She stood up and went to her closet so she could consider all the possibilities. Within a very few minutes, Stevie had almost everything she owned (except the awful dress her mother had bought for her to wear to her cousin’s wedding) on the bed, and began pulling blouses and sweaters out of her drawers. Nothing seemed right. But then, there were dirty clothes to consider. Maybe she’d get some inspiration from that, and anything that was dirty now could be washed by Friday night. She pulled her laundry bag out of her closet and emptied it onto the floor. The blue turtle-neck might go nicely with the blue-and-white sweater, and then her blue slacks would be nicer with it than jeans, though the top looked better with jeans. But if she wore the slacks, then she shouldn’t wear boots.
She returned to her closet. She was pretty sure she had a pair of flats that would look good with the slacks. They weren’t in plain sight. Maybe they were underneath the model of the plan
ets. That came out. There were six shoes there—two pairs and two odds, both left, but no sign of the flats. Then she remembered that she’d lent the flats to someone, and she couldn’t remember who it was. She looked at the shoes. One of the left odds would do. If only she could find the right one. She removed the stack of papers she’d stuck into the far corner of the closet and tossed them onto the floor by her bedside table. There it was. The right shoe that matched the left that would go with the slacks that matched the turtleneck and sweater. She had a complete outfit now. She imagined herself in it. It might be too casual for the horse show.
Stevie lay back down on her bed to consider the matter. She was actually lying on a stack of sweaters. That was more comfortable than the skirts next to her, and if she didn’t move, she wouldn’t wrinkle the blouses on her other side. She gazed blankly at the wall and thought about what she would really wear on Friday. Something on the wall caught her attention. It was the calendar her mother had made with all the Saturdays marked with an X, meaning her room would have to be clean by then.
No problem, she thought, looking around at the disaster area she’d created in a matter of minutes. She had six days to put it all back. That was 144 hours. Plenty of time.
Then she looked at the calendar again. Next Friday was the thirty-first of March. That meant that next Saturday was April Fools’ Day. That was usually Stevie’s favorite day because it gave her a perfect excuse to play tricks, which she liked to do every day of the year but didn’t always have an excuse for. On April Fools’ Day, she had an excuse. It didn’t take much work to figure out who she wanted to play jokes on: her brothers. Those three rats who had such fun listening at her door and teasing her and her friends; those pests who answered her phone calls, and when it was her boyfriend, Phil, were likely to say things like, “Stevie! It’s for you! It’s a boy! Come quick and talk to him before he hangs up like the other ones did!” Thank goodness Phil had two sisters and understood what life was really like!
Yes, her brothers, Stevie decided. She scooched along her bed until her head was comfortably on her pillow. That knocked a couple of skirts onto the floor, but that was better than lying on them, wasn’t it?
“WE’RE GOING TO have a stallion, Dad. Isn’t that wonderful?” Carole almost sighed with happiness as she told her father Max’s great news. “I mean, I know ‘we’ isn’t exactly the right word, but I’ll be there to help with the foaling, and it’ll be almost as good as if it were my stallion, my mare, and my foal, right?”
Carole’s father smiled warmly at his daughter. “Sure thing, honey,” he said. “And it’ll be a lot cheaper for me to have Max own all those horses than for me to own them!”
“It’s not funny, Dad,” said Carole. “One day I’m going to own a stallion and breed horses.”
“I thought you wanted to be a trainer like Dorothy DeSoto,” he reminded her.
“I do. I also want to breed. And I want to ride. And I want to be a vet. And I think I should be a farrier, too. Horse shoes are very important to a horse’s performance, you know.”
“Don’t forget stable hand,” her father suggested. “I mean, just in case you need another career!”
“I promise you that one day I will choose,” Carole said. “Until then, I get to dream about doing them all, don’t I?”
“Sure thing,” her father said. “Enjoy it, too. Dreams are free. Now tell me again about this horse show.”
Carole was glad to oblige him. Her father volunteered at Horse Wise, so he knew that Dorothy and Nigel were coming to Pine Hollow. However, he told Carole, he didn’t know anything about tickets to the horse show and about the event that Nigel was participating in.
“It’s called Gambler’s Choice,” Carole explained. “Each rider has a certain amount of time, maybe ninety seconds, to run the course. There are a lot of different jumps out there, and they can choose to go over any of them. The easy ones are worth like ten or twenty points. Harder ones are worth forty or fifty points. If they want, they can just go over the easy jumps again and again, but if they want to win, they have to take chances—gamble, see!”
Her father nodded. She went on, “So then there’s the monster jump. I think they call it The Joker. It’s worth a lot of points. But if you try it and knock it down, that many points are deducted from your score. High score wins. It’s a very exciting event. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve always wanted to. I’ve read about it. I really hope we can go.”
“Why wouldn’t you be able to go?” Colonel Hanson asked.
“Well, Max said he’s got so much work to do, he doesn’t even know if he’ll have time to get us tickets. See, Dad, running a stable isn’t easy. There are always horses to take care of and riders to please. And then, if one horse gets sick, you have to worry about that. Then there’s the equipment that has to be taken care of and classes that are scheduled and special events that come up. And repairs. There are constant repairs. If it’s not the stable, it’s the fencing, and if it’s not the fencing, it’s the feed shed. And all the tack that has to be kept in good shape, cleaned, and polished. It’s a lot of work.”
“Are you sure you want to do this for a living?” the colonel asked.
“Oh, yes,” Carole said. “And a lot more, too! No question about it. I love every minute of it.”
“I guess I know that. Sometimes I have the feeling that if it weren’t for the fact that occasionally you need to eat a meal—other than a sundae—and change your clothes, you’d be happy to live at Pine Hollow.”
“Only if you were there, too,” Carole assured him.
He smiled at her. The two of them were very close. Carole was sure she had the most wonderful father in the whole world, most of the time. They had always been close to one another, but since the death of Carole’s mother a few years earlier, they’d become even closer.
The phone rang then. Colonel Hanson answered it.
“Oh, hi,” he said when he knew who the caller was. “Yes … sure. Sounds good to me. Or that, too. Either, I think. Well, you could, I guess. I can ask her. Sure, a jacket would go with that. I don’t remember the horse shirt. No, she’s wearing sneakers.”
Carole scrunched her forehead. She couldn’t imagine whom her father was talking to or what he was talking about. She looked down at her feet. She was wearing sneakers, but how could that be connected?
“Jeans are too casual, definitely. But nobody would recognize you if you wore a skirt.…”
Stevie? It had to be Stevie. Then the whole call made at least some sense. Stevie loved Carole’s father almost as much as Carole did. They had a lot in common, too. They shared the most awful old jokes—usually about elephants or grapes—and they loved music from the fifties. This wasn’t the first time Stevie had wanted Colonel Hanson’s opinion about clothes, either. Stevie had this idea that since Carole’s father was a single man about town, he knew what looked good on young women. The colonel was flattered by this. Carole thought that was the real reason Stevie asked him.
“Right, Stevie. The blue goes well with your eyes. Oh, yes, I’ve always liked you in blue. But have I ever seen you in anything but blue? Jeans, I mean?” The colonel was quiet for a while then, nodding as he listened. He said “hmmmmm” occasionally. Carole waited patiently.
Finally her father handed her the phone. “It’s Stevie, for you,” he said. “She can’t decide what to wear on Friday to the horse show.”
Carole let out a breath of air. How could Stevie be concerned with what she was going to wear? The horses would never notice, and nobody else mattered at all! She took the phone.
“Hi, Stevie,” she said. “Wear those blue slacks, the turtleneck shirt, and your blue skiing sweater. I have a pair of flats that will go with that. I think they’re yours anyway.…”
THE GIRLS MET in the locker area of Pine Hollow right after school on Monday. For once they were all on time. There was a lot of work to do and not much time to do it.
“Here’s the chart I made up,” Lisa said,
handing each of her friends a printout—the result of all her work over the weekend.
“As you’ll see, there are jobs that can be done in one day, or really in just a few minutes, like checking the bales of hay for mold, and others that we will need to spread out over the whole five days because they’re so big, like reorganizing the specialized riding clothes in the attic. We’ll do some of that each day, okay?”
Stevie gaped at the enormous list and the elaborate chart in her hand. “Does anyone ever get time off for good behavior?” she asked.
“Of course,” Carole sniffed. “That’s what’s going to happen Friday night. That’s what we’re working for here, and I don’t think you should be joking about it.”
“I’m not joking,” Stevie said. “There’s nothing funny about all the work Max expects us to do.”
“Are you complaining?” Lisa asked. She was suspicious because of Stevie’s recent history of getting her friends to help her do things she really should have done herself.
“Oh, no,” Stevie said. “Really I’m not. That’s not what I meant. What I meant was that there’s so much work here that Max asked us to do that I hate to think how much more work he must have to do himself.”
Neither Carole nor Lisa had thought about it that way. In fact, they had both been thinking more along the lines that they’d thought Stevie had been thinking—that Max seemed to expect an awful lot of them. They’d completely misjudged Stevie and found themselves a little embarrassed about it.
“Of course you’re right,” Carole said. “I guess I was only thinking about us—not about Max. Poor guy.”
“Yeah,” Lisa agreed. “But what are we going to do about it?”
Both Lisa and Carole looked to Stevie for an answer to that question. She had one.
“We’re going to do everything he asked us—plus something.”
“What something?”
“I don’t know yet,” Stevie said. “The idea, though, is that he needs our help and he’s going to thank us by taking us to the horse show. We need to find a way to thank him for that.”
Bridle Path Page 3
