Bridle Path

Carole groaned. “April Fools’ Day again! I hate it.”

Stevie poured a bag of grain into the mixing bin. “Why, Carole. How could you say such a thing?”

“Easily,” Carole said. “If I recall correctly, one year you replaced Mrs. Reg’s reading glasses with another pair. And then there was the time you moved all the horses into different stalls. Was that the same year you put the rubber horse manure in Mrs. diAngelo’s Mercedes-Benz?”

Stevie stirred the grains together thoughtfully. “I think they were all the same year,” she said. “The year before was when I—”

“Stop! I can’t stand it,” Carole said. “Your April Fools’ pranks have been nothing but trouble. You just can’t get away with this stuff all the time, Stevie.”

“This year I’m only going to do nice things,” Stevie promised.

Carole thought that sounded like a good idea. April Fools’ Day and Stevie could be a pretty dangerous combination.…

C
AROLE
H
ANSON MOVED
a backpack from a chair to a footstool in Stevie Lake’s room so she could sit down. Lisa Atwood then moved it from the footstool to the top of a pile of magazines so she could sit down. Stevie sat on top of the backpack.

“Do you think Max will let us play mounted games today at Horse Wise?” she asked. “Last week he was so determined to have us learn everything there was about the difference between what it meant when a horse’s forefoot was resting, and what it meant when its hind foot was resting, that we never got to the fun part—riding.”

“Those are important things to know,” Carole said,
defending Max Regnery, the owner of Pine Hollow Stables, where the girls rode. “If a horse lifts his hind foot to rest it, it means he’s relaxed. If he lifts his forefoot, it means it hurts.”

Carole knew a lot about horses. In fact, all three girls knew a lot about horses, but Carole probably knew the most. They all loved horses so much that they had formed their own club—The Saddle Club—and whenever they could, they had meetings, even if it meant shoving aside a lot of junk in Stevie’s messy room so they could talk about their favorite subject: horses.

“I thought the chance to practice leg bandaging was useful last week,” Lisa said.

Lisa always wanted to do everything the very best way she could. When it came to horses, Carole was the same. Stevie tended to be a little more casual. She loved riding and always did everything she
had
to do in order to be able to ride, but she didn’t go overboard on things she considered boring. She only went overboard on things she considered fun. As a result, she was often in hot water and spent a lot of time explaining things to people like the headmistress of her school and to the director of their riding stable, Max Regnery.

Max was the owner of Pine Hollow, the stable
where the girls rode, took lessons, belonged to a Pony Club called Horse Wise, and, in Carole’s case, boarded her horse. She was the only one of the three who actually owned her own horse. He was a bay gelding named Starlight. Stevie usually rode a Thoroughbred bay gelding named Topside, who had belonged to a championship show rider named Dorothy DeSoto before an accident ended Dorothy’s riding career. The horse Lisa rode most these days was an Arabian named Barq.

“Well, I know we have to know things about lameness and bandaging,” Stevie acknowledged, “but I’d still rather ride. I bought a whole book about horseback games, too. It’s full of ideas—if I can just find it.”

Stevie stood up from the magazine/backpack pile and began rummaging through another pile of books and magazines trying to locate the book of games.

She didn’t find that right away, but she did find the research cards for a history paper that she’d handed in (without research cards) two months earlier. She also found her “favorite” pair of socks, though from the dust they had accumulated living underneath Stevie’s radiator, it wasn’t clear to Lisa and Carole what made them so special.

Neither Lisa nor Carole was as tidy as their parents
might wish, so they were reluctant to criticize their friend. But Lisa just couldn’t hold it in anymore. “How do you get away with this?” she said, looking around.

“Yeah, and how do you find things to wear? I mean, what about clean clothes?” Carole asked.

“Clean clothes are over there,” Stevie said, pointing to a muddled stack of unfolded items that might have been clean—or might not have been.

Lisa and Carole laughed. There really wasn’t much choice. Stevie was simply incorrigible, and although being something of a slob wasn’t what they loved about her, it was part of the Stevie who was their best friend, and they weren’t going to change it.

There was a knock at Stevie’s door, and then it opened a crack. The three girls looked over. A familiar arm reached in. It was Stevie’s mother’s arm, and there was a piece of paper in her hand.

“Come in,” Stevie said.

“I can’t,” said her mother. “(A) the door won’t open any farther because of a pile of something; and (B) I can’t stand to look. However, all that will change shortly.”

“It will?”

“Yes,” said the disembodied maternal voice from the other side. “It will all change before you go to
Horse Wise. Because the room must be cleaned up by then.”

“I don’t think I have time,” Stevie said, glancing around at the mess.

“No time, no Horse Wise,” said her mother. “The item in my hand is a calendar. You’ll note a big X marked on every Saturday. That X means that your room
must
be clean and tidy before you go to Horse Wise. Or you don’t go to Horse Wise. Period.”

Mrs. Lake’s fingers released the calendar, and then she withdrew her hand, closing the door after her. The paper fluttered down toward the floor of Stevie’s room. It came to rest on some rolled-up artwork that Stevie had brought home before Christmas vacation. Four months ago.

Stevie paled. “She means it,” she said plaintively. “There’s no way I can do it alone and make it to Horse Wise. You’ll just have to go without me. Explain to Max. Take notes, okay? I should be able to get it all done by Monday or Tuesday, working by myself … if I don’t stop for meals or to sleep.…”

“Enough, enough,” Lisa said. “We’ll help. Since Horse Wise is involved, it’s going to be a Saddle Club project. This time.”

Carole agreed. The Saddle Club had only two rules.
The first was that members had to be horse crazy, and the second was that they had to be willing to help one another out. Stevie’s room definitely fell into the second category.

“We’ll help you this time,” Carole said pointedly, “but from now on you should try to keep it clean by doing just a little bit of work every day.” Carole knew wishful thinking even when she was uttering it, but she thought she should try. She stood up and began picking at the nearest pile. She declared it to be a laundry pile and found that there was a lot to add to it. Lisa went to work on the papers. Stevie addressed the issue of clean clothes. She was surprised to find out she had so much drawer space.

The girls worked efficiently, even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted to be doing. They were a good team. They often worked together, especially at Pine Hollow, where riders were required to do chores. It was one of the ways that Max Regnery kept the costs down. Everybody pitched in.

They chatted as they worked, tossing laundry to Carole, papers to Lisa, and clean clothes to Stevie.

“You know, I’m not going to make my kids keep their rooms clean when I get married,” said Stevie.

“No, you shouldn’t,” said Lisa. “The thing you’re
going to have to do is get them to keep
your
room clean!”

“If you can find anybody who wants to marry somebody who keeps her room so messy,” said Carole.

“Maybe I’ll marry somebody rich enough so that we can have a maid,” Stevie suggested.

“Two maids,” Lisa said, looking at Carole. “And speaking of getting married and being able to afford two maids, I read in a magazine that Skye Ransom is getting married in his next movie.”

Skye was a young actor whom the girls had met by accident when they were in New York. In fact, the accident had been Skye’s when he fell off a horse and The Saddle Club helped him, and then made friends with him. They’d seen him again when he came to Virginia to make a movie. Lisa had even had a small part in it. The girls didn’t hear from Skye often, but he was such a popular actor that they could follow his career in magazines.

“And that’s just a make-believe wedding,” said Stevie. “There’s a real one coming up, too.”

“Right, Dorothy DeSoto is getting married in just a couple of weeks. Isn’t it cool that both of them are getting married at the same time?” Lisa mused dreamily, remembering that when the girls were in New
York, they’d stayed with Dorothy. They’d come to see her in the American Horse Show and had ended up seeing her in the hospital after she cracked a bone in her back, ending her show-riding career.

Stevie picked up a sweater and looked at it curiously.

“It’s mine,” Carole said, fetching it from Stevie’s hand. “I think I lent it to you last year.”

The work in Stevie’s room continued then, but so did the talk about weddings.

“Isn’t it romantic that Dorothy’s marrying a member of the British Equestrian Team?” Carole asked. “It’s sort of like a wedding that joins royal families.”