“Now keep your lower legs perpendicular to the ground!”
“Yes, Max,” she said. There was a part of her that wanted to growl at him. She didn’t think he was really being fair. After all, Anna McWhirter wasn’t riding nearly as well as she was, and Max wasn’t saying anything to Anna, but she decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to get into an argument with him. It might make her change her mind about having the mock wedding on Saturday if she got too angry with him, and she didn’t want anything to interfere with that.
“And eyes straight ahead!”
“Yes, Max,” she managed to say through clenched teeth.
As class drew to a close and the riders were walking their horses around the ring to cool them down, Max talked about the visitors they were going to have on Saturday.
That was when he told the rest of the students about the new stallion and what it would mean to Pine Hollow. The riders were all as excited as The Saddle Club was. They agreed that there was nothing nicer than the idea that there would be the patter of little hooves around Pine Hollow.
Max asked for some help after class setting up the paddock where the stallion, Geronimo, would spend most of his time. Some of the ground had become very uneven, and he wanted to smooth it out.
The Saddle Club had other chores to do from Max’s list, but he seemed to expect them to pitch in on this one as well. Stevie told Max she couldn’t stay. She had to get to a dentist appointment.
Lisa and Carole looked at one another. They knew that wasn’t true.
“I’ve got to get to the shopping center and pick up some things for Saturday,” Stevie whispered to Carole. And before Carole could point out that they all could go to the shopping center together after helping Max and after doing some more work in the attic, Stevie was gone.
“She’s so busy,” Lisa said.
“And so are we,” Carole commented. She took the shovel Max handed her and followed the wheelbarrow full of dirt to the paddock. Lisa carried a rake.
“Our goals are all the same,” Lisa reminded Carole. “We need to get all this work done and have a special treat for Max.”
“Why does it seem unfair that she does the fun stuff like shopping, and you and I end up spreading dirt around a lumpy paddock?”
Lisa thought about this for a minute. Much as she wanted to defend Stevie, Carole did have a point. On the other hand, there were things to be done at the shopping center, and the whole Saddle Club couldn’t duck out of the chore Max had given all the riders, or it would look suspicious. At Pine Hollow, everybody pitched in.
“Stevie’s really good at finding great stuff to buy at the shopping center,” Lisa said. “And remember the thrift shop that’s just opened up there? I bet there’s a ton of really wonderful things.”
Carole thought about it, too. “You’re right,” she said finally. “It took Stevie to think of mosquito netting as a bridal veil. She’ll see all kinds of possibilities there where you and I would only see junk.”
“Yeah,” Lisa said, hefting her rake with renewed vigor.
“I just wish we were there to see those possibilities with her,” Carole said.
“Yeah,” Lisa agreed.
Red O’Malley dumped the first load of earth into the paddock then, and the girls began the task of spreading it out evenly. It required some attention and some strength. They stopped thinking about Stevie for a while.
“ALL RIGHT NOW, smile for the photographer,” Stevie instructed Lisa and Carole.
Lisa groaned and Carole grimaced.
“That’s not right at all,” Stevie said. “Remember, the pictures that will be taken at the actual wedding are going to be a permanent reminder of this wonderful day. Geronimo and Delilah will be able to look at them for years—show them to their grandchildren!”
“This is supposed to be a rehearsal!” Lisa said, exasperated.
“For the real thing,” Stevie persisted. It was Wednesday afternoon, after school. The three girls had met at Pine Hollow as soon as they could excuse themselves from their classes—and that was pretty fast. Although there were a lot of chores listed on Lisa’s printout for today, Stevie had convinced the girls that the best way to prepare for some hard work was to have a relaxing trail ride. She’d then managed to turn it into a wedding rehearsal, and it wasn’t going very well, except in Stevie’s eyes.
Carole was riding Starlight and Lisa was riding Delilah. She’d always wanted to try the beautiful mare and found her to be as lovely a horse as she’d dreamed. She wasn’t surprised by how much Judge Gavin enjoyed riding her.
“I used to ride her before she foaled,” Carole said. “I would have been glad to ride her again, except that Dad gave me Starlight.”
“Enough talk about horses,” Stevie interrupted. “Let’s get back to the wedding. All right, now, Lisa and Carole, you two will ride down the aisle.…”
Stevie was being just about impossible, as only Stevie could be. Most of the time her “impossible” side was offset by her own wonderful mischievousness, and it was fun. Sometimes, however, her “impossible” side was merely bossy. That’s what it was now. Stevie was obsessed with this wedding, and though Carole and Lisa suspected the whole thing would, in fact, end up being fun, for now it was very hard work. The hardest part was keeping from yelling at Stevie.
“No, no,” Stevie spoke sharply. “You’ve got to have the horses walk together.”
“They are together,” Lisa said.
“No, I mean they have to step at the same time!”
“Stevie!” Carole said. “That’s a very difficult technique!”
“Well, that’s why we’re practicing.”
Stevie had everything figured out. The two “bridesmaids” would enter the “chapel,” with Lisa on Delilah and Carole on Starlight. Since Geronimo was a stallion and not really suitable as a saddle horse for a young rider, the “chapel” would be situated right next to his paddock. He’d be curious about all the goings-on, Stevie assured her friends, and he’d come right up to the corner of the paddock, where he’d be in the perfect position to be “wed” to Delilah.
“It’s going to be a beautiful wedding,” Stevie said, practically sighing in anticipation. “There won’t be a dry eye in the house!” She paused, and then she got another idea. “Hesitation step. Can you do a hesitation step?”
That was a form of walking in a processional where the walker paused before bringing the back leg forward. It was a little tricky when a person was walking and was considered an advanced feat in dressage riding. There was no way either Carole or Lisa could do that. They said as much to Stevie.
“Well, try anyway, won’t you? I mean, wouldn’t it be wonderful?”
“Stevie!” Lisa said, finally reduced to yelling at her friend.
“Is something wrong?” Stevie asked. She was apparently totally unaware of the fact that she was being more than a little annoying.
“We’ll try,” Carole said, sighing.
The two girls returned to the imaginary entrance to the imaginary chapel and tried again.
This time, though, they could not in any way make their horses walk with a hesitation step, they did, by chance, have them walking and stepping at the same time. They expected Stevie to appreciate that.
“Smile,” Stevie said. “Really big smiles!”
“I’m going to throttle her,” Lisa muttered under her breath.
“You’re going to have to beat me to it,” said Carole. “I said smile! Look happy!”
“I’m out of here,” Lisa said, turning Delilah sharply to the right. Carole followed.
“What are you doing? You’re supposed to be coming down the aisle! I think the aisle ought to be straight, but maybe it would be interesting if it wound around a little bit, but not too much.…”
Stevie went on thinking out loud, barely noticing what her two friends were doing. She was definitely missing the point. She had a rebellion on her hands, and the mutineers intended to make it clear that they were tired of being
told exactly what to do all the time, especially when it didn’t make any sense.
Carole and Lisa trotted their horses away from Stevie’s fantasy chapel. They weren’t really angry with Stevie, they just had to make their point that they didn’t want to be bossed around. The best way to do that seemed to be to stop doing what she told them.
It was a nice day, fresh and warm for the end of March—more like summer than spring. The horses paused in the middle of a clump of spring wildflowers. Delilah took a bite of fresh green grass, including a few yellow blossoms.
“She’s always loved flowers,” Carole observed. “They must taste good.”
“She reminds me of Ferdinand, the bull who liked to smell the flowers.”
“That gives me an idea,” Carole said. “I think I know how we can make our point to Stevie.” With that she dismounted, walked Starlight over to a nearby fence, where she secured his reins, and then returned to Lisa and the flower patch. “Let’s be Ferdinand ourselves.”
Lisa got the idea. She took Delilah over to where Starlight was, and then she joined Carole. The two of them sat in the middle of the flower patch. Lisa plucked a yellow flower and then a white one. She twined their stems together and then picked another yellow. She added that to the chain.
“How’d you do that?” Carole asked. Lisa showed her.
“It’s called a daisy chain,” Lisa said. “But, of course, you can do it with any flower at all.”
Carole picked a couple of flowers and, after a couple of attempts, figured out how to do it herself. It was kind of fun.
When Lisa’s chain was about a foot long, she drew the ends together to make a circle and then put it on top of her riding hat.
Carole smiled and hurried to finish her own. The rebellion was turning out to be kind of fun. She found that she didn’t mind if they never got back to Stevie’s wedding rehearsal. They’d just sit there and weave flowers all day long.
“Nice!” said Stevie. “I like it! I thought you two were giving up on me, but look at you! You’ve figured out how to get flowers into our wedding. Great!”
Lisa and Carole looked at one another. They couldn’t help laughing. Stevie was so deeply embroiled in planning the wedding that she couldn’t even tell when they were rebelling! If that was the case, there was clearly no point in doing it. Stevie was being Stevie, and after all, she was their best friend, even if she was sometimes just a tiny little bit annoying.
“Yes,” Carole said finally. “We just knew there was something else we’d have to do to make this wedding perfect. Besides—we don’t have enough to do to keep us busy for the next few days, so we decided to weave flowers together. Like it?”
“I love it!” Stevie said. “If we pick the flowers this afternoon right before we go back to Pine Hollow, then we can keep them fresh in the old refrigerator off the rec room at my house where we keep sodas cold. Then, maybe on Friday night after the horse show, or Saturday morning, we can do the weaving. Is it hard to learn to do? I hope not, because it looks just wonderful. You know, if we get enough flowers, we could make a whole bower. Do you think we could cover that grape arbor? If we could, then we could have the whole wedding right there. It’s so pretty, and it’s next to Geronimo’s paddock. Imagine how nice it would look covered with flowers.…”
Lisa and Carole shook their heads, then remounted and worked on their wedding processional again and again until she was satisfied. After that the girls picked all the flowers they could carry and returned to Pine Hollow, where there were just a few little tasks for them to do.
Lisa checked the list. According to her schedule, this was the day they were supposed to give Geronimo’s new stall a thorough cleaning and prepare it for him. They were also supposed to clean three more saddles; sort through a collection of bits and arrange them by size; sort through the riding hats that Max kept for riders who didn’t have one of their own and hang them by size; and spend some more time in the attic with the boxes of clothes.
And that didn’t even count any of the things that Stevie might still want them to do for the “wedding.”
The girls hurried back to the stable, though it wasn’t easy to ride quickly with armfuls of flowers, especially when they didn’t want Max or Mrs. Reg or anybody, really, to see all the blossoms. Then, while Lisa and Carole untacked all three horses and groomed them, Stevie ran the flowers over to her house to put them in the refrigerator there, promising she’d be back to help as quickly as possible.
When Carole and Lisa finished with their own horses and met in Topside’s stall to take care of Stevie’s horse, it occurred to them that, once again, they seemed to be doing something that was really Stevie’s responsibility. They didn’t think about that for long, however, because just as they were putting away Stevie’s grooming bucket, she reappeared, ready, willing, and able to clean out Geronimo’s stall, polish saddles, sort through bits, and return to the attic. Of course, before she did all that, she had to make a few phone calls to be sure everybody knew what they were supposed to bring on Saturday.
Lisa and Carole picked up pitchforks. Stevie picked up the phone.
BY THE TIME Friday arrived, the girls thought they would never finish everything Max had asked them to do. They’d spent more time than they probably had to working on the clothes in the attic, because it was so much fun. They’d also spent less time than they probably ought to cleaning tack, because it wasn’t any fun at all. But many of the jobs they were doing for Max were close enough to complete for them to hope Max would let them go to the horse show.
The only other problem, then, was Stevie. She wasn’t going to let them get away so easily. At Stevie’s insistence, they met at Pine Hollow at seven-thirty on Friday morning, before school.
“What are we doing here?” Lisa asked.
“We are having a rehearsal,” Stevie said.
“We already had a rehearsal,” Carole reminded her.
“We haven’t had a rehearsal at the actual chapel,” Stevie said.
“This is a chapel?” asked Lisa. She looked around the paddock, still misty in the cool of the early spring morning. Behind her stood the grape arbor that would serve as a bower for the bridal couple.
“It will be,” Stevie assured her friends. “If you guys finish all the work with the flowers.”
That was a pointed reminder that there was a lot left to be done, even after they’d finished the rehearsal.
“Now everything has to be just perfect,” Stevie said. Her voice assumed the tone of a bridal consultant, gushing so that the bride’s mother wouldn’t dare to object to how much money was being spent on the perfection. In this case, however, money wasn’t really the issue. Work was.
“It’s going to be really nice,” Carole said, mustering a bit of enthusiasm.
“In my experience,” Stevie went on in her consultant’s voice, “it’s the little touches that make the wedding a success. So the first thing you two have to do is tack up the horses and be sure that you do fit together under the arbor. The processional is very important, and I want you to be able to ride side by side.”
“Okay,” Lisa agreed. It was just easier to go along.
While Lisa and Carole were tacking up their horses, Stevie checked her list to see what things they would have to do that night after the horse show. They were having a sleepover at her house.
There was still a lot of work to do on the hors d’oeuvres for the party. For a people wedding, you could have just people food, but for this one, she’d had to make some concessions. She’d added carrots and apples to the menu. This wasn’t the first time she’d done that, either. When she’d produced a retirement party for Pepper, another horse at Pine Hollow, the food had included goodies for all the guests, especially the guest of honor. This time she wanted to be sure there were some sugar lumps. She thought her mother had some in the house. Then she decided they’d look really wonderful if they could add just a touch of food coloring—colors that would match the color scheme of the wedding its
elf. Since the crepe paper was going to be blue, the sugar lumps could also be blue. What a great idea, she thought, jotting that down on her list of “To Do’s” right next to slicing apples. They’d have a very busy night, indeed, and then, tomorrow, they’d have a wonderful party.
“Okay, here we are,” Carole announced.
It didn’t take very long then. Stevie had the two of them ride under the grape arbor, side by side. It was just a little bit low for them, but as long as they ducked, ever so slightly, there was no problem. They fit.
“It’s going to look lovely,” Stevie said.
“She’s gushing again,” Lisa remarked.
“Just like a mother of the bride,” Carole said.
Stevie knew it was true. The fact was that she did feel like the mother of the bride. She was taking a very personal attitude toward this party. She’d done some work on the other chores her friends had completed this week, but most of her attention, and all of her heart, was invested in the success of this, her ultimate April Fools’ joke. She didn’t want to admit it to her friends, but one of the reasons this was true was that she had decided not to play any other April Fools’ jokes on anybody this year. Not even her brothers. That had been a very difficult decision for Stevie, who considered her brothers to be perfect targets of April Fools’ jokes. The fact was that she wanted to play jokes on them all year round, but the only time she stood a chance of getting away with it was on April Fools’ Day. That meant that this “wedding” was a big sacrifice for her. She wanted it to count. She was sure it would.
Stevie looked at her watch. It was almost eight o’clock, and that meant it was time for them to un-tack the horses and hurry to school. Fortunately, their schools were all within easy walking distance of Pine Hollow, so they’d probably be on time. There were four other things Stevie had wanted to get done, but they were out of the question. At her school, tardiness meant detention, and this was no day for detention. There was too much to do.
“Hurry up!” she chided Carole and Lisa, who gave her very dirty looks.
Bridle Path Page 5
