Photo Finish

by Bonnie Bryant

  “Go, Monk! Go!” Carole screamed. She was vaguely aware of Stevie and the others shouting around her, but all her attention was focused on the track.

  As Monkeyshines and Garamond thundered down the homestretch toward the finish line, Lisa could hardly tear her eyes away to get her camera ready. But she knew that the finish of this race was one shot she didn’t want to miss. She focused carefully, then held her breath. The pounding of approaching hooves was so loud now that it all but drowned out the roar coming from the stands behind her.

  Seconds later the horses swept by. Lisa snapped her picture, capturing Monkeyshines crossing the finish line—ahead by a nose!

  STEVIE AND CAROLE found Lisa standing by the winner’s circle. An exhausted but still spirited Monkeyshines was inside, posing proudly with a blanket of black-eyed Susans, the traditional prize of the Preakness, draped over his shoulders. Stephen was grinning at the camera as Mr. McLeod accepted a large trophy and tried to answer all the questions that television reporters were asking him.

  “Wasn’t that a great race?” Lisa asked her friends when they reached her. She was still a little breathless from the experience of seeing the racers pass so close in front of her.

  “It sure was! Monk was wonderful,” Carole said. “Although Garamond gave him a run for his money.”

  “They’re both wonderful,” Stevie declared. Now that her horse had won, she could afford to be generous. “Did you get your picture?”

  “Yup,” Lisa said. “And I’m about to get another one. Hey, Max!”

  Max, who was standing nearby, heard her and came over. Lisa handed him her camera.

  “Could you get a picture of the three of us?” she said.

  Max looked surprised. “You want me to take your picture?” he asked. “With your fancy new camera?”

  Lisa nodded and put her arms around her friends’ shoulders. “Being a photographer is fun, but I want at least one picture of the three of us.”

  “Fair enough,” Max said, raising the camera and quickly adjusting the focus. “Say ‘winner’s circle’!”

  “Winner’s circle!” The Saddle Club chorused, and Max snapped a picture of them standing in front of the winner’s circle containing Monkeyshines, the winner of the Preakness.

  THREE SATURDAYS LATER The Saddle Club was gathered in front of the television set at Carole’s house. The Belmont Stakes, the third race in the Triple Crown, was due to start in a few minutes, and the girls were watching the live TV coverage from Belmont Park in New York.

  “I still think we could have talked our parents into taking us to New York if we’d tried a little harder,” Stevie commented, stuffing a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

  Carole laughed. “I don’t know about that, Stevie. I think we were pretty lucky to make it to the Preakness—and that was a lot closer to home.”

  “That was really a fun day, wasn’t it?” Lisa said, her eyes on the TV as the camera panned across the excited crowd in the grandstand.

  “You can say that again,” Stevie said.

  “Although I can still hardly believe that Kent Calhoun was willing to poison Monk just to pay off his gambling debt,” Carole said.

  Stevie nodded. “I guess he must really have owed a lot of money,” she said. She knew how that felt—she usually owed one or another of her three brothers at least a month’s allowance. But she also knew that even if she owed them each a million dollars, she would never do anything as awful as what Kent Calhoun had done. “It’s horrible to think that anyone would ask him to do that—or to think that he actually would try.”

  “Definitely,” Lisa said. “It’s horrible to think people like that even exist.”

  “But it makes me glad we were able to figure out that Kent was the one who did it,” Carole said. “At least we know he won’t ever have the chance to try something like that again. And the punishment fits the crime. People like him shouldn’t even be allowed near a horse, or any other animal for that matter.” A few days after the Preakness, Mr. McLeod had called the girls to tell them that Kent Calhoun had been barred from the track for life—he couldn’t set foot on Pimlico or any other racetrack in the country ever again. Mr. McLeod had decided not to press criminal charges against the reporter. He figured that Kent’s being barred was punishment enough. Mr. McLeod had also insisted on giving Lisa a cash reward for solving the mystery of the moldy hay. Naturally, she split it three ways, since the whole Saddle Club had really done the solving. The girls had celebrated by spending part of the money on the three hugest sundaes they could stomach at TD’s, the local ice cream shop. Then they had allowed their parents to put the rest of the money in the bank for them—for a rainy day, as Mrs. Lake had put it.

  “One other good thing did come out of the whole incident, you know,” Lisa pointed out. “Deborah got the scoop of the year by being there for Kent’s capture—in addition to the great story she wrote on the race itself.”

  “True.” Carole nodded. “Max said that gained her a lot of respect among the other race journalists.” She grinned. “As it turned out, none of them like Kent much either.”

  “Big surprise,” Stevie said. “I’m sure nobody will miss Kent Calhoun at the track. He was a creep even when he wasn’t doing anything illegal.”

  “That’s for sure,” Lisa agreed. “Still, even though we met one or two bad people at the track, we met an awful lot of nice people too.”

  “You mean like Mr. Kennemere, for instance?” Carole said. “I’m still embarrassed about suspecting him like we did. He turned out to be a great person.” Mr. Kennemere, along with a lot of others, had sought out The Saddle Club after the race to congratulate them once he’d heard about what had happened.

  “It still seems a little weird that he thanked us for saving the horse that beat his horse,” Stevie said. “Especially since it meant he’d have to pay up on that bet and play butler at Mr. McLeod’s victory party.” She couldn’t help grinning at the thought of portly Mr. Kennemere squeezed into a butler’s uniform, carrying a tray of drinks.

  “I don’t think so,” Carole replied. “You heard what he said. He was glad it was a fair race. That made perfect sense to me.” She shrugged. “You know, the first time I went to the racetrack, I was really surprised when I found out how concerned everybody seemed to be about making money. I wasn’t used to thinking of horses that way, and it made me a little uncomfortable. It even made me think the racetrack might not be such a great place, even though there were horses there.”

  Her friends nodded, waiting for her to continue.

  “But now I know that racing means more than just money to a lot of people,” Carole went on. “People like Mr. Kennemere.”

  “And Mr. McLeod,” Lisa added. “And Eddie, and Stephen. Like Max told us all along, racing is a way of life for a whole lot of people like them. It is how they make money, but it’s also what they love to do.”

  “It’s an interesting way of life too,” Carole said, still thinking about everything she had learned during her day at Pimlico. “It’s different from anything we’re used to, all right, but it does have to do with horses, and that automatically makes it interesting. And Max and Deborah weren’t kidding when they kept talking about all the history and everything. There’s a lot to learn about racing, even if you already know a lot about horses.”

  “Still, I wouldn’t trade places with any of them,” Stevie said loyally. “I like Pine Hollow the best.”

  Her friends laughed and agreed. They all watched the TV screen as the horses came out onto the track to begin the post parade.

  “The bottom line is, horses are great no matter what they do,” Carole said as she watched Monkeyshines prance proudly in front of the crowded grandstand. “And Monk is definitely one of the greatest I’ve ever known—aside from Starlight, of course.”

  “That’s for sure,” Lisa said. “Monk’s a real celebrity. I’m glad we got to meet him.” She gave her friends a sidelong glance and grinned. “And I’m glad I got pl
enty of pictures to help us remember it.”

  They all laughed at that, including Lisa. After she’d gotten all her film back from the developer, she had counted the pictures she’d taken on Preakness day. She had used up all seven rolls of film that she’d brought. She had exactly fourteen pictures of Blackie, more than thirty of Carole and Stevie standing beside various horses throughout the stable area, including Garamond and Hold Fast—and forty-seven of Monkeyshines. She had also gotten some very good pictures of the Preakness itself, and, as promised, she had had copies of those made for each of her friends. She also made them copies of the picture of Blackie with Kent in the background. He had torn up the print, but she still had the negative. And she knew that that was one photo they would all want to keep as a memento of their exciting day—along with the great picture of The Saddle Club posing in the winner’s circle.

  A few minutes later the horses were in the starting gate. The bell rang, the doors flew open, and the TV announcer cried, “And they’re off!”

  This time there were only seven horses running. Monkeyshines and Garamond were near the back of the field as the horses rounded the clubhouse turn. But by the middle of the long backstretch Garamond had taken the lead, and Monkeyshines was only a couple of lengths behind him. At the top of the stretch they were once again neck and neck, and their closest competitor was five lengths behind. As they pounded down the homestretch, they pulled farther and farther away from the other horses, until it was as if they were the only two horses in the race. The sleek, beautiful Thoroughbreds ran as they had never run before, their great muscles straining, but neither could seem to pull even half an inch ahead of the other. They swept across the finish line, still running so close together that the girls couldn’t tell which of the flying legs belonged to which horse.

  Stevie let out the breath she’d been holding. “Who won?” she asked. “I couldn’t tell.”

  “I couldn’t either,” Lisa said.

  Just then the TV flashed the words “photo finish.”

  “That means it was so close that the judges have to look at a photograph of the finish to decide the winner,” Carole said, remembering the fact from one of her books.

  The girls waited, fidgeting with suspense. Finally, endless moments later, the TV announcer said, “The winner of the Belmont Stakes is—Monkeyshines!”

  “Yay, Monk!” The Saddle Club cried in one voice.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BONNIE BRYANT is the author of more than a hundred books about horses, including The Saddle Club series, The Saddle Club Super Editions, the Pony Tails series, and Pine Hollow, which follows the Saddle Club girls into their teens. She has also written novels and movie novelizations under her married name, B. B. Hiller.

  Ms. Bryant began writing The Saddle Club in 1986. Although she had done some riding before that, she intensified her studies then and found herself learning right along with her characters Stevie, Carole, and Lisa. She claims that they are all much better riders than she is.

  Ms. Bryant was born and raised in New York City. She still lives there, in Greenwich Village, with her two sons.