Trail Ride (15 page)

I guess Paula has been making the rounds this morning. I hope she didn’t show the picture to the whole ranch.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Devine. It’s over now.”

“You must be starving,” she said, wiping her eyes on her apron. “I saved you some breakfast. Ham and eggs and cottage fries.” She pulled a heaping plate out of the oven and presented it to Lisa.

“Wow. Thanks, Mrs. Devine,” Lisa said gratefully. Her mouth watered as she picked up her fork. “It looks wonderful.”

Mrs. Devine smiled happily. “I baked you a fresh batch of biscuits, too. No cowboy leaves home without biscuits in her belly.”

Lisa smiled. She remembered Kate’s thoughts on biscuits, but it didn’t stop her from slathering them with fresh honey and filling herself until she thought she would burst. She would have stopped sooner, but the more she ate the happier Mrs. Devine seemed to look.

While she was eating, Lisa wondered what would happen next. The events of the night before all seemed sort of unreal now, but what was undeniable was the fact that both her friends were confined to bed
for the rest of their stay. What was she going to do on her own? She could hang out with Paula, but the woman wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. Certainly not when compared to Carole, Kate, or Stevie.

Mrs. Devine interrupted her thoughts. “Lisa, there’s someone here to see you.”

“Really?” she asked, surprised. “Who?”

Her question was answered when Professor Jackson poked his head through the kitchen door. “May I come in?”

Lisa almost knocked her glass of milk over in her rush to rise to her feet. “Of course, Professor.”

Professor Jackson crossed the room and took hold of her hand. “Lisa, I can’t thank you enough for what you did last night.”

“Did they catch the thieves?” In her concern for Carole she had almost forgotten about the attempt to loot the dig site.

“They did,” Professor Jackson assured her.

“How much did they get away with?” The idea that those horrible people would be selling the professor’s hard-earned fossils really made her mad. Especially after they had practically killed her to get them.

“Not much at all,” he told her. “Several of the crooks were very happy to turn on their employer in
exchange for more lenient sentences. As a result we recovered almost everything they took.”

Lisa was gratified. “I’m glad. How did they get there without the guards being alerted, anyhow?”

The professor looked chagrined. “Apparently I was outbid. They bribed the guards to look the other way.”

Lisa shook her head in disbelief.

“Lisa,” the professor continued softly. “You do realize that you saved hundreds of irreplaceable artifacts, worth millions of dollars, from disappearing into the black market, don’t you?”

Lisa didn’t want to disappoint him, but she felt she had to be honest. “I was only trying to save Carole,” she confessed. “I sort of stumbled on the other stuff.”

The professor reached out, held her chin in his hand, and looked her in the eyes. “My dear girl. I’ve heard what you did, and I saw where you went. You’re amazing. Really amazing.”

What did Paula do? Publish the picture in the newspaper?

“How can I possibly thank you?” he asked.

Lisa broke into a smile as an idea came to her head. For the rest of her vacation, Kate and Carole would be out of commission. Maybe she could use the time to learn something new. “Professor,” she said slowly, “I’m
really fascinated by your dinosaurs. Is there anything I could do to help?”

Professor Jackson smiled broadly, his eyes sparkling. “Oh, my dear … funny you should ask. We made a most remarkable discovery only yesterday, and we certainly could use some extra help excavating it.

“You could?”

“Absolutely. Do you know anything about Triceratops?”

F
INALLY
, after what seemed like a very long time, The Saddle Club was back together again.

“It’s so nice not to look like a plague victim anymore,” Carole said, examining herself in her bedroom mirror. “I finished all my medication today.”

“It’s too bad, though, that Stevie will never get to see the pond,” Lisa said wistfully. “That was an amazing day.”

“And this is an amazing souvenir,” Stevie told her, looking at a dinosaur tooth that Professor Jackson had given to Lisa. “I can’t believe he let you keep it.”

“By the end of our stay, the professor told me he would be pleased to work with me any time,” she said
proudly. “He even told me how to go about applying for an assignment with him when I get to college.”

“That’s a long way off yet,” Stevie reminded her.

Carole clucked her tongue. “It’s never too soon to begin planning for your future. But I have to admit, I thought you wanted to do something with horses, Lisa.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“What?” Stevie cried with consternation.

Lisa laughed. “Take it easy. You know I love horses, and I can’t imagine not being involved with them somehow for the rest of my life.” She hesitated. “I’m just not sure that they’re going to be my career. That dinosaur dig was really fascinating!”

“Sounds like the two of you had the greatest summer of your lives,” Stevie moped. “I always miss out on the good stuff.”

“Stevie!” Lisa cried. “There’s nothing good about having Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and there’s nothing fun about riding down a cliff in the dark, wondering if your friend will still be alive when, and if, you manage to return!”

“By the way, the picture of that cliff sent chills down my spine,” Stevie told her. “I can hardly believe you could get a horse to go down that thing.”

“Stewball is an exceptional horse,” Lisa said quietly. “You were right about him all along.”

Stevie leaned back in a chair and propped her feet up on the bed. “Yeah, I’ve got good instincts when it comes to horses,” she admitted. She grew serious. “He wasn’t hurt or anything, right?”

“I was the one who was trashed,” said Lisa. “Outside of a skinned knee and a few little nicks and cuts around his ankles from the loose rocks, he was raring to go the next morning. You’d have thought he’d had the time of his life,” she laughed. “It was nice of Paula to ride out and take that photo for me.”

“That was some front-page headline that ran with it, too,” Carole chuckled.

“ ‘Girl Foils Thieves in Daring Midnight Ride,’ ” Stevie quoted. “Thanks for bringing me a copy, Carole.”

“No problem.”

“I can’t believe Paula actually submitted it to the newspaper,” Lisa grumbled.

“Sounds like she really warmed up to you two by the end of the visit,” Stevie said.

“I can’t blame her for not liking us at first, not after Kate built us up like that,” Carole said. “You know, Paula may not be the most sociable person in the world, but she sure does know about horses.”

“I, for one, have had about all the being social I can stand for one year,” Stevie declared.

“Tell us about the wedding,” Carole urged her. “Was the bride’s dress to die for?”

Lisa settled herself in Carole’s window seat. “Go on, Stevie. Give us all the details.”

“I have to admit, it was pretty cool. Robin’s parents pulled out all the stops. The place was filled with flowers, especially yellow roses, which were the bride’s favorite.”

“What about the dress?” Carole prodded.

“My dress was very nice, thanks. Kind of a summery floral patterned vest with a knee-length pleated skirt. My mom even loaned me her pearls.”

“Not
your
dress!” Carole yelled. “The bride’s dress!”

“All right, all right,” Stevie chuckled. “It was white.”

Lisa rolled her eyes. “Duh.”

“The top was lace with long sleeves that dipped below her wrists, and the back of it was cut really low, with four strands of pearls draped across.”

Carole raised her eyebrows. “Sounds very sophisticated.”

Stevie nodded. “The skirt was satin and kind of bell-shaped, but it had this huge train in the back.”

“I definitely want a long train and veil when I get married,” Lisa declared.

Stevie frowned. “That could be a problem.”

“Why?”

“Who’s going to want to marry you?” Stevie replied, struggling to keep a straight face.

“Oh, thanks a lot!” Lisa laughed.

“Maybe if you kept the veil over your face.”

Lisa threw a little stuffed pony at her.

“Hey, careful with that!” Mrs. Devine had sent it home for Stevie. It was like the ones she had made for Carole and Lisa.

“I almost left out the best part,” Stevie told them when they had all stopped giggling. “The bride and groom rode away in a horse-drawn carriage!”

“You’re kidding!” Carole squealed. “What a great idea!”

“Dava didn’t think so,” Stevie said gleefully. “She spent the rest of the party telling anyone who would listen how a white stretch limo would have been so much more chic. After a while her mother got fed up and told her to be quiet or she would have to leave the party.”

“How wonderful,” Carole said.

“It sounds to me like you had plenty of adventures
of your own while you were gone,” Lisa declared. “You attended the social event of the Massachusetts season, saved a horse’s life, and ruined an outfit you hated. So the visit wasn’t a complete washout.”

“How did your mom take it when she saw your clothes?” Carole asked Stevie.

“When she heard what had happened with Sugar, she was so proud that she didn’t care at all,” Stevie told her. “And the look on Dava’s face when she saw Will with me was worth the whole trip.”

Lisa sat up a little. “It turned out they knew each other?”

Stevie nodded with a satisfied grin. “Remember how I told you Dava had gone on a trail ride in order to impress a boy?”

Lisa and Carole nodded.

“Turns out that boy was Will!”

“You’re kidding!”

Stevie held up her hands for silence. “I’ve saved the best part for last,” she declared, pulling a folded piece of paper out of the pocket of her jeans. “This morning my dear cousin Dava sent me an e-mail.”

Lisa grimaced. “Uh-oh. What mean things did she say this time?”

“Lisa,” Stevie said in shocked tones, “you misjudge
Dava. She has nothing but nice things to say about me. According to this, she can’t wait for me to come back.”

“What?” Carole snatched the e-mail away. “What’s up with that?”

“I wouldn’t trust her for a minute,” Lisa declared, running across the room to read over Carole’s shoulder. “She must want something.”

“You’re absolutely right. Turns out she’s desperate to get Will to like her and—get this—she wants me to send him an e-mail saying nice things about her!”

The three girls grew teary-eyed with laughter at the very idea.

“Of course you’re not going to do it,” Carole said.

“Actually I am.”

Her two friends stopped laughing and stared at her.

“Why, Stevie?” Lisa demanded. “She was so mean to you!”

Stevie smiled slyly. “This way she’ll never be able to hold it over my head that I didn’t try to help. And I’m going to explain to Will why I’m saying such nice things.”

Carole nodded. “Pretty smart.”

“Thank you,” Stevie said with grave dignity. “There’s just one thing I need from the two of you.”

“What’s that?” Lisa asked.

“Some help composing my e-mail to Will. I have to
figure out something—anything—nice to say about my cousin.”

Carole looked surprised. “What makes you think we’d be any good at that?”

“Well, my dear friends,” said Stevie, “after all those whoppers you two wrote me while we were apart, I figure you’re practically professional fiction writers by now!”

B
ONNIE
B
RYANT
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.