Horse Power (13 page)

“That’s just like Chad,” Stevie said philosophically. Lisa was pleased to see that Stevie seemed resigned to letting Chad be Chad. After all, even though he wasn’t the boy of her dreams, he
had
cared enough to compete as well as he could, even though he wasn’t very good. There was something to be said for that.

When Max finished his explanation of the handicap system for the Clubs, the girls removed the stirrups from their ponies’ saddles. Lisa winked at Stevie as she did so, remembering, now without any anger, her first day at Pine Hollow, when Stevie had saddled her horse without stirrups as a joke. Lisa hadn’t thought it was very funny then. Today, with a pony, it was going to be a little funny—she hoped. With some difficulty, she mounted Penny.

All sixteen of the riders got in a circle around the chairs in the ring and the music began.

The ponies trotted to the music. At the second it stopped, each rider dismounted quickly and ran for a chair. The game was exactly the same as the old birthday-party standby, except that they were on ponyback as they circled.

All of the Clubs got chairs for the first four rounds. In fact, they discovered that Max’s handicap for them
on this race was no handicap at all. They just slid out of their saddles—even more quickly than their opponents. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Veronica had grabbed a chair and pulled it away from Lisa before she could sit on it, they’d have won. Since nobody called a foul on Veronica, and the Clubs were in no mood to make a fuss about anything, they let the Diamonds take first place, and satisfied themselves with second.

The second race was called charades. Each rider rode to the far end of the ring, dismounted, then pulled a piece of paper with a movie title on it out of a hat. She then had to do a charade of the title. As soon as her teammates guessed the title, the rider remounted and returned to the starting line and the second rider began.

It was wild. The Clubs had no trouble with
Star Wars
and
The Karate Kid
—Lisa pretended to shoot at stars, and Stevie did two karate kicks—but Kate had a terrible time getting them to say
National Velvet
, until she began patting the soft black velvet of her riding hat. Carole got them to come up with
High Noon
quickly by pointing to her watch and then to the sky, so they ended up in second place. The good news was that the Diamonds got totally stuck on
Black Beauty
and came in third, so the Clubs were now tied for the day with their serious competition.

The third race was a balloon-popping race, and in this one, being an extra ten feet behind the start/finish line really was a handicap. Each rider got a stick with a
tack on the end of it. They were to ride to the far end of the ring and pop one balloon each on a target board. Each of the Clubs did it perfectly, but so did a lot of the other riders, and the fact that the Clubs had to ride farther made them come in third. They would have been last except that one of the Spades’ ponies got spooked by the long stick and wouldn’t behave. That was something for the Clubs to be grateful for.

When the final race began, the score stood at Hearts, six; Spades, seven; Clubs, eight; and Diamonds, nine. That meant that it was actually possible for any team but the Hearts to win. The last race was the egg race and it was the toughest race of all—especially for the Clubs.

Stevie recalled all the smashed hard-boiled eggs their practices had cost them. It was small consolation that the team member who had been the worst at it was Chad. None of them was very good. She’d just had fun ragging Chad about his mistakes. Also, this was a race in which their ten-foot handicap was really going to matter, since it meant they’d have to balance a raw egg on a spoon for ten more feet than any of the other riders.

Mrs. Reg released her bandanna. At the instant it hit the ground, Lisa was off! She nudged Penny into a gallop and dashed to the far end of the arena. Holding Penny still with her legs, she balanced a raw egg on a tablespoon, which she held in her right hand. As soon as she was sure she had it securely, she nudged Penny
gently. It wouldn’t do at all to have Penny spurt as she turned, because that would unbalance the egg. Penny took her signal instantly. And spurted.
Splat
. The egg landed on the turf, a slimy yellow-and-white mess. Lisa returned to the egg bucket to get a replacement. Once it was in the spoon, she barely touched Penny’s belly, and the pony began walking. Much better. A trot would be no good at all—unless she could teach the egg to post! By using alternate leg aids, which meant touching her calves to alternating sides of Penny’s stomach as the pony walked, Lisa got her to extend her walk and therefore cover more ground in less time. It took a long time, but it took a lot less time than returning for a third egg.

Happily, she handed the spoon over to Stevie. Her job was to return the egg to the bucket and then hand over the empty spoon to Carole. The final leg of the race would have Kate returning the last egg to the bucket.

Lisa was feeling proud of herself when she gave the egg to Stevie. She’d made it with only one broken egg.
Not bad
, she thought, until she saw that two of the other teams were well on their way to finishing their second legs in the time it had taken her to complete one!

At least Stevie did her job smoothly. It would have been more than she could have stood to do badly on the race she’d given her brother such a hard time about. The only trouble she had was that when she put
the egg back into the bucket, it broke, smearing gooey white and yolk over the other eggs there. At first, Stevie thought this was bad news, but then she realized it might, just might, make the other eggs a little sticky. And if the other eggs were a little sticky, they might stay on the spoons a little better.

She reversed Nickel’s direction and raced him back to their finish line, practically slamming the spoon into Carole’s hand. Breathing hard from excitement and hard riding, she looked around. The Hearts’ third rider had left at about the same time Carole had. The Diamonds were a split second behind—and they didn’t have to ride as far as Carole and Kate did, but Carole and Kate were the best riders in the ring. Would it make the difference? Would the slimy eggs help or hurt?

The second question was the first one answered. The eggs were so gooey that Carole could hardly hold one in her fingers, much less get it onto the spoon! After three tries, she finally succeeded. Carole turned Quarter around, holding the spoon firmly in her hand. She got him into a walk, the pace all the riders had discovered was by far the safest, and then, answering Stevie’s question about whether being a good rider would make a difference, Carole brought Quarter into a trot. She leaned forward in what was called jump position, letting her knees flex with the pony’s movement. As a result, her upper body was almost motionless—and so was the egg!

She slowed Quarter down just enough to hand the spoon and egg to Kate and then joined Lisa and Stevie in their wild cheering. All of the teams were now on their final legs and all of them were close. The Diamonds had caught up with the Hearts, and Veronica was riding her very best. She’d seen Carole’s trick about using jump position and did it herself, as did Kate. Kate and Veronica were practically neck and neck.

Then, the Clubs heard what they thought might be the most wonderful sound in the world. It was the sound of a raw egg hitting turf and breaking, smashing, oozing, and gooing. It was the sound of Veronica diAngelo’s egg. That meant Veronica had to take an egg from the bucket and start all over again on her leg of the race.

Kate slid her egg into the bucket, turned Half Dollar around, and galloped to the finish line, grinning like she’d just won the Kentucky Derby!

The Clubs shouted and screamed with joy. They’d come in first in the final race, guaranteeing them the blue ribbon for the day, and the overall blue ribbon for the gymkhana, since they’d won two out of three days.

It wasn’t easy hugging one another while they were sitting on ponies, but they managed somehow. And somehow Chad managed to get in on the yelling and cheering, even though he couldn’t do much hugging with his arm in a sling.

Victory was sweet.

I
T WASN
’
T HARD
to talk Stevie’s parents into letting the team come over to her house for a celebration pool party for the first-place gymkhana team. The Lakes agreed to let them order pizza, and once they’d settled on all the things they wanted on it (everything but anchovies, one half with no mushrooms, the other half with no green peppers), they changed into bathing suits and sat on towels around the backyard pool. When they were relaxed, gratefully sipping ice-cold glasses of lemonade and iced tea, they began to talk about Subject Number One: horses.

“I think my favorite part was when I finally got that sticky, gooey egg onto my spoon,” Carole said, dangling her feet in the cool water.

“My favorite part was when I heard Veronica drop
her egg,” Stevie said, standing up. “It sounded like—
this
!” She performed a perfect cannonball into the water.

“As much as I dislike wishing other people bad luck at horse shows,” Kate admitted, wiping splashes of water off her sunglasses with her towel, “I kind of liked that, too.” She glanced over at Carole and giggled.

“
C’mon
, you guys!” Stevie said, jumping up and down in the water. “This feels great—especially after getting all hot and sweaty from riding.” She swam over to where Carole was sitting and tried to pull her in.

“I think I’ll stay here,” Carole said, using her feet to splash Stevie. Kate grinned at them both.

Lisa slipped gracefully into the water. “I liked it when I got you all to say
Star Wars
in the charade race.”

“That was a neat race,” Carole said. “I’m really glad you thought it up,” she told Lisa.

“That wasn’t my idea,” Lisa said. “It was yours.”

“It was?” Carole asked in surprise. “I don’t remember that.”

“When you’ve been working so closely together that you can’t distinguish one person’s ideas from another’s,” Kate said, “then you know you’ve
really
got a team.”

“Speaking of teams, where’s Chad?” Carole asked. “He should be here celebrating with us. It’s his victory, too. Max gave him a blue ribbon today along with ours.”

“He
should
be here—and it would be fun to have
him around—but it seems that he’s totally out of horseback riding,” Stevie said. She did a few handstands in the water, then climbed out of the pool and flopped on her towel.

“And he doesn’t even want pizza with us?” Lisa asked. She pulled herself out of the pool as well.

“Nope,” Stevie said. “See, while he was doing all those setups at the gymkhana, he spotted Betsy Cavanaugh’s older sister in the cheering section. I think he’s in love—
again
. Sorry, Lisa,” she added with a giggle. “I think he’s definitely off horses for good.”

“That’s good, but what’s he onto?” Carole asked with a grin.

“He doesn’t know it yet, but you all know Betsy’s sister April, right?”

Carole and Lisa nodded and then began giggling.

“What’s the joke?” Kate asked, turning over on her towel.

“The joke’s on Chad,” Carole explained. “April is really nice and very talented, but if Chad wants to take up what interests her the same way he took up horseback riding for Lisa, it’s going to be a big challenge to him.”

“How’s that?” Kate asked, still confused.

“April is a
ballet
dancer,” Stevie explained. “And Chad’s going to look silly in a leotard—especially with his arm in a sling!”

All four girls began laughing at the image of Chad trying to be a dancer!

Just then, Stevie’s brother Alex appeared at the poolside with the pizza, which had been delivered. They thanked him and quickly shooed him away. “It was some trick to figure out exactly which ingredients had to go on which side of this,” Carole said, admiring their work, and reaching for a piece from the non-green-pepper side.

“It’s a breeze when you’re good at teamwork,” Kate said, returning to a subject Carole wanted to talk about some more.

“Speaking of teamwork,” Carole said, leaning back on the towel and taking a bite of pizza. “Now that you’re riding again, we have a team we’d like you to join permanently. Would you like to join The Saddle Club?”

“Great idea!” said Lisa.

“Oh, yes!” Stevie agreed. “You’ll just love it when you ride more at Pine Hollow. And we have our meetings about once a week, but it’s all pretty informal. All you have to be is horse crazy, and we know you’re that.”

“There’s something I haven’t told you guys,” Kate said. “I’d love to join your club, but only if you’ve got out-of-town memberships.”

“Oh, no!” Carole said dejectedly.

“What?”
Stevie and Lisa said together. “I thought you’d decided to stay here,” Lisa added.

“It’s a transfer, isn’t it?” Carole continued. “Dad was wondering why your father was being so funny
about whether you would buy a house here. I guess that means that the Marine Corps has got some other bright ideas about where you all should live. And if I know the Corps, it’s not Hawaii!” Carole joked.