Stagecoach (2 page)

I
N A MATTER
of minutes the Pony Clubbers had passed inspection more or less successfully and were mounted and walking on a loose rein. Except for the fact that Lisa was riding Prancer, it was the usual group. Veronica was on her Arabian, Garnet; Polly Giacomin was riding her new brown gelding, Romeo; Betsy Cavanaugh sat astride Pine Hollow’s Comanche.

Stevie took the opportunity of Max’s turned back to catch up to Carole and whisper a question. “Do you think she’s serious about this?” she asked as Topside drew along Starlight.

Carole didn’t have to ask who “she” or “this” was. At the other end of the ring, Lisa was singing again. This time she had launched into “It’s a Hard-Knock Life” and
had already repeated the chorus twice. The other students in the class, as well as Max, were starting to give her funny looks.

“Yes, I do think she’s serious about it. She’s probably trying to practice singing while she warms up to save time,” Carole pointed out. “I heard her telling Max about the schedule on the way in. He didn’t seem thrilled.”

“I just hope she doesn’t take things too far,” Stevie said.

“I think singing at Pony Club might be a little too far already,” Carole said.

Stevie followed Carole’s glance to the end of the ring. Max, too, was staring intently at Lisa and didn’t looked pleased. He had his arms folded across his chest and was shaking his head. He started to say something and then seemed to think better of it. Instead he burst into song. “Today-ay, today-ay, we’re riding today, Lisa Atwood, you’re miles away!”

Nobody in the class had ever heard Max sing before. They burst into laughter when they heard him making fun of Lisa in his gravelly baritone.

At the sound of her name Lisa snapped back to reality. She turned toward Max, grinning sheepishly. “Sorry, Max, I guess I was kind of distracted.”

Max half smiled. “Just try to forget about ‘Tomorrow’ while it’s today, all right? Class will run a lot more
smoothly if we all do one thing at a time,” he said. More quietly he added, “Don’t make me wish I had taken you off Prancer, Lisa.”

Lisa reprimanded herself inwardly. She knew she had been lucky to escape with only a ribbing from Max. Next time tuning out during Pony Club would mean a lecture after class or some harsh, embarrassing words. Max was a stickler for paying full attention. And he was right to warn her about Prancer—the Thoroughbred was no mount for a beginner or for anyone who was going to get distracted. Max had liked the idea of Lisa’s being back on Prancer. She didn’t want him to regret it. She vowed to work especially hard in the lesson. And she would start by tuning in to the announcement Max had just begun.

“… so you may think you’re in for a relaxing lesson. Well, think again. Just because we’re not going to jump today doesn’t mean you can take it easy. Get ready for some intense dressage schooling. All right, back out to the rail. Lisa, you lead off. Everyone follow, leaving two horse lengths behind the horse in front of you.”

As she took her place at the front of the line, Lisa glanced back quickly at Carole and Stevie. The two of them rolled their eyes. When it came to dressage, Max could be even more demanding than usual. Basically, The Saddle Club knew, dressage meant schooling on the flat and not over fences. But to Max it meant more. Like
a good dressage judge, he expected to see horse and rider working together calmly and fluidly, with no sign of struggle.

For the next forty-five minutes he drilled the six riders nonstop. He began by keeping them at a sitting trot for ten minutes, barking out a stream of commands. “Stevie, elbows close to your sides, and stop playing the piano with your hands. Lisa, it’s no wonder Prancer just broke into a canter—your inside leg is stiff and it’s banging against her. Betsy, shorten up your reins—Comanche’s all strung out. Relax your shoulders, Carole, and bring them back. Polly, you’re riding too close to Starlight—Romeo looks miserable. If that’s a sitting trot, Veronica, I’d like to see what posting looks like. Okay, on the count of three, halt. One, two, three.”

Max paused and looked down the line of riders carefully. Every rider sat still and prayed that her horse wouldn’t fidget. “That’s on the count of
three
, Betsy, not seventeen!” he snapped. “And I only see two people who are square in front—Lisa and Stevie. Everyone else gets about a three for this part of the test.”

Except for Lisa and Stevie, who grinned to themselves, the class grimaced as a whole. Max was grading them by the system dressage judges used to evaluate different sections of dressage tests. Every dressage test was divided into sections of different prescribed movements, and these movements were marked on a scale of one to
ten. No matter what the level of test, beginner or grand prix, one movement was always the same: The rider was required to halt at the beginning and end of the test to salute the judge. A good halt was very important—it started the ride off on the right foot, and it left a positive, final impression. And one of the most important aspects of a good halt was that the horse’s feet be square, or even, at least in front if not all around. Obviously, Max was disappointed to see that only two people had halted correctly.

“Lisa and Stevie,” he said, after he had asked everyone to pick up a trot again, “would you mind explaining how you achieved your halting success?”

“I tried to look good and figured Topside would do the rest,” Stevie said honestly. Everyone laughed. It was well-known that Topside was one of the most perfectly schooled horses at Pine Hollow. He had been a top-level show horse for years. His owner, championship rider Dorothy DeSoto Hawthorne, had donated him to the farm after a bad fall left her grounded.

Because of his training, riding Topside was a treat. He not only behaved beautifully and had wonderful gaits, he also seemed to understand what Max was saying half the time. Often Stevie would be about to ask him to trot or canter, only to find he’d already picked up the new gait himself, having understood Max’s command.

When the laughter had died down, Max asked Lisa to
answer his question. “We all know stopping isn’t the first thing they teach at the track,” he added, referring to Prancer’s previous life as a racehorse.

Lisa thought hard. She wasn’t sure what to say, and she could hardly believe Prancer was listening to her so well. “I think I just thought ‘Please halt, Prancer,’ and then she did,” Lisa said. It sounded strange to admit, but she hadn’t been conscious of asking the mare to do anything special.

Max nodded approvingly. “Exactly what I was hoping someone would say. A lot of the time we get nervous about halting, and we start fiddling with the reins and leaning way back and doing all kinds of unnecessary things. What we should do is
relax
into a halt—think ‘halt,’ as Lisa said, and let our bodies do the rest unconsciously.”

“But, Max,” Stevie joked, “I thought this lesson wasn’t supposed to be relaxing.”

Max gave her a withering look and continued the lesson.

W
HEN THEY DISMOUNTED
half an hour later, a buzz went through the group about the day’s lesson. The Saddle Club members, for their part, were sure something was up. Max had been so full of instructions for each rider that it was obvious he cared a lot about how well the group was doing. Normally he was fussy, but today he
seemed to be testing them to see how fast they could respond to his criticisms.

As they stood rolling up their stirrups and loosening their girths, Max came over and asked Lisa to hold off for a minute. Without a word he took Prancer’s reins, lengthened the stirrups to his own level, and sprang up into the saddle. “If you’ll all stay at the end of the ring and watch, this will only take a few minutes.”

Horse Wise didn’t need to be asked twice. They loved watching Max ride but hardly ever got to. He did his own schooling at dawn or earlier and taught the rest of the day.

Max had halted Prancer in the middle of the ring. He removed his hat and crisply saluted an imaginary judge. Horse Wise watched spellbound as horse and rider went through the rest of the dressage test. Max hardly moved as he asked Prancer to lengthen her trot, canter in small circles, and leg-yield down the diagonals. The mare’s ears turned forward and back, listening to his imperceptible signals. Finally they turned down the center line a second time. Once again Max halted and saluted. This time Stevie seized the moment. She led Topside away from the group and smartly saluted Max back. The minute Max smiled and relaxed the reins, the whole class burst into applause.

“Lunch on the knoll by the back pasture in twenty minutes,” Max said, trying unsuccessfully to cut short
the clapping. He dismounted, led Prancer back over to Lisa, and turned over the reins. “You’ve really got her going nicely, Lisa,” he said. Lisa didn’t wait for him to leave before high-fiving her friends.

W
HEN THE HORSES
had been untacked, groomed, watered, and hayed, the riders gathered with their bag lunches on the knoll Max had mentioned. The warm sun shining down only increased their sense of well-being.

“There’s nothing better than a good, hard ride and then lunch, is there?” Carole asked.

With their mouths full of sandwiches, Stevie and Lisa could only nod. They found themselves eating faster than usual, partly out of hunger but partly out of excitement about Max’s performance and what it meant.

Lisa, meanwhile, was glad to have the excuse of eating so that she didn’t have to talk. She couldn’t totally join in the excitement, because she had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that whatever Max told them, it would make her perfect schedule a little less perfect.

“I’ll bet there’s a dressage rider coming to give a clinic,” Betsy Cavanaugh guessed.

“I’ll bet Veronica’s father is buying her an imported German dressage horse,” Stevie muttered. To The Saddle Club’s delight, Veronica’s chauffeur had appeared to whisk her away right after class. The rich, spoiled girl often left Horse Wise right after the riding was over.

“It’s better than either of those,” Max said. He had come up behind them and was listening to their talk with an amused expression. “At least I think so.”

The group fell silent immediately. Making his voice sound casual, Max asked, “Anybody want to go to a rally?”

There was a pause as everyone tried to make sense of Max’s question. What was the big news about going to rally? Horse Wise entered a team every year, and, anyway, it didn’t come until the summer. “Max, rally’s not until next year,” Carole pointed out. “And we were already planning on going, weren’t we?”

Max smiled. “That’s true, Carole—combined training rally isn’t until next June. But
dressage
rally is the first Saturday of next month—two weeks away!”

Before Max could fill in any details, everyone began talking at once. Horse Wise had never sent teams to the more specialized Pony Club regional competitions—dressage rally and show-jumping rally—partly because it was simply too hard to find the practice time. Also, a lot of riders, including The Saddle Club, were busy with riding events outside of Pony Club, like horse shows, trail riding, and fox hunting. Finally, and most important, both Max and his mother, Mrs. Reg, who helped run Pine Hollow, felt it was more important for students to ride as much as they could than to compete as much as they could. They thought too much competition
made riders lose track of the real purpose of their sport—learning to be good horsemen and horsewomen.

“Yes, it’s a change,” Max said, his voice rising over the excited chatter. “But I’ll tell you why I think it’s a good one. First of all, it will be great practice for the dressage part of combined training rally. Second, it will be a new challenge for you. And finally, I know you’ll all work like crazy for the next two weeks and prove my hunch that you deserve to go. You’ve got the potential,” Max finished, looking directly at The Saddle Club. “I want to see the results.”

After the talk had died down again, Max supplied the rest of the information. Since there were six qualified dressage riders at Horse Wise—Carole, Stevie, Lisa, Polly, Betsy, and Veronica—but only four riders to a team, Horse Wise would have to split up. Four riders would compete as one team, representing Horse Wise alone, while the other two would join two riders from another club.

“For instance,” Max went on, “if, say, Cross County Pony Club has a couple of extra riders, we could join with them.” Max grinned wickedly at The Saddle Club. Even he knew that Stevie’s boyfriend, Phil, was a member of Cross County.

As she listened, Lisa tried to look as happy about the news as everyone else. It was hard not to worry, though. Preparing for the rally meant there would be extra riding
practices, as well as meetings to get all the tack, equipment, and clothes ready for inspection. And in the final couple of days, there would be the usual flurry of bathing, mane pulling, and metal polishing. Each rider would also have to memorize the two dressage tests she would ride.

“This afternoon I would like you all to check with Mrs. Reg to see what level test you’ll be riding,” Max stated. “That depends on your rating. D-threes obviously don’t ride the same tests as C-threes. Then go and walk through your tests in the indoor ring—unmounted. It may sound silly, but it’ll give you a foundation and get you started thinking about the movements. Check the office before you go—I’m going to post a ‘Countdown to Dressage Rally’ schedule.”