Horse Talk by Bonnie Bryant Read Free Book Online Page A

at last. “Don’t cut it again.” She looked at Lisa, who opened her eyes wider as if to say, “Don’t ask me.” “I think you’ll find the ability to jitterbug an advantage in dressage,” Carole added. “Any horse that can use its back end that well—”
    “Thank you, caller!” Lisa said, and hung up the phone. Carole gave her a look of pure relief. Lisa looked at the clock, but all that silliness had hardly taken a minute of their time. The phone rang again.
    “This is Julie,” Stevie said, in a much more hurried voice than usual. “I want to learn to jump, but I’m worried about falling off. Do you have any advice?”
    “Well, certainly,” Lisa said, while Carole flipped through her papers to find the answer. “First of all, fear is something we all have to cope with …”
    The question didn’t last long enough. The very second that Lisa hung up the phone, it rang again. “This is Stonewall Pepperpot Maxwell the Second,” another deep voice said. “I’m a friend of Roosevelt Franklin Godfreys the Third. You were so helpful with his question that I hoped you might answer mine.”
    “Sure,” Lisa said. No matter what, it couldn’t be more ridiculous than Rosie’s question.
    “My friends claim that when I’m riding my horse, it does all the work,” the caller said. “But since I get hotand sweaty and, I might add, extremely stinky whenever I ride, I’m pretty sure that I must be doing some work, too.”
    “Well, of course,” Carole responded quickly. “Riding is excellent exercise—”
    “What I’d like to know is this,” the caller cut in. “Is there any way I can get the horse to do all the work? Because really, the stinkiness is gagging my whole family. It’s so gross, you wouldn’t believe. The way my riding boots smell—”
    Lisa and Carole stared at each other. Lisa leaned closer to the microphone. “Buy some Odor-Eaters,” she said.
    “Next caller!” said Carole, hanging up the phone.
    It rang again immediately. “
Horse Talk
!” Lisa said, hoping fervently that it was Stevie.
    “Odor-Eaters might work for the boots, I admit. But what about those smelly riding breeches? And then there’s all that manure. No matter what, I come home smelling like manure.…”
    Lisa stared at the phone. They were trapped inside their own talk show with nine minutes of airtime left. Where was Stevie when they needed her?
    T HEY ANSWERED THREE more long-winded, hopelessly ridiculous questions before Carole cued the exit music and Lisa signed off. “Was that the same person over and over?” Lisa asked quietly.
    “I couldn’t tell,” Carole said. “I think whoever it was thought they were pretty humorous.”
    “Well, I didn’t!” Lisa felt ready to burst. “We’re doing a lot of hard work here, and I don’t like being made fun of! Manure!”
    “I know,” Carole said soberly. “At least we’ve only got to do this two more times. I wonder why Stevie quit calling? Look, here she comes.”
    Stevie stormed down the stable aisle. Her eyes glittered with rage. “I’ll kill him!” she said. “I’m really going to do it this time. Didn’t you guys recognize that cretin on the phone?”
    Lisa and Carole shook their heads.
    Stevie’s face was crimson. “That was Chad!”

“H E ADMITS IT ,” Stevie said indignantly into the phone. She had called both Carole and Lisa (the Lakes had three-way calling) to tell them the news. “I accused him of calling our show and pretending to be five different people, and all he did was shrug and say he had a whole bunch of horsey questions that he needed to have answered. He was smiling, the creep! You could tell he thought he was just hilarious. And worse yet, he said he still had a few questions left!”
    “Oh no!” Lisa groaned. “The ones he asked were hideous. Imagine what he might come up with for next week!”
    “We’ve got to stop him,” said Carole.
    “I know,” Stevie said with venom in her voice. “I’vebeen thinking