Rocking Horse by Bonnie Bryant Read Free Book Online Page B

feeling this calm before a competition.
    Betsy galloped across the finish line, which was next to the starting box. She pulled Coconut up and patted the horse’s neck briskly.
    “Hey,” Stevie called to her.
    “How’d it go?” another voice behind Stevie asked. Stevie turned to see Meg walking a sweating Barq in the grassy field behind the inspection area. Stevie hadn’t noticed them before.
    Betsy rode over to Meg and dismounted, and Meg helped her loosen the girth and run up the stirrups. Stevie checked her position. She still had a few riders to go, so she walked Belle over to Barq and Coconut.
    “It went pretty well,” Betsy said. She wiped the sweat from her face. “Coconut got a little more excited than I expected. Maybe I should have used a pelham bit, I don’t know. We had a refusal once because I just couldn’t slow us down enough to point Coconut at the jump—we went right around it.” She laughed. “We sure didn’t get any time penalties, though.”
    Meg nodded. “We had one refusal, too. That jump going into the woods. I don’t think Barq could see it properly—he just put the brakes on. But I’ve heard that most people are having trouble out there.”
    “Have you heard about Veronica?” Stevie asked.
    “What about Veronica?” said Meg, frowning.“She’s on course, isn’t she? She was gone when I came in.”
    “Yeah, she’s out there.” Stevie couldn’t quite keep a note of satisfaction out of her voice, even though, for Meg’s and Betsy’s sakes, she didn’t want to rub it in. Briefly she filled them in on Veronica’s disaster.
    Meg looked more agitated than horrified. “I told her three times to fill in that mud puddle,” she said. “I didn’t have time to do it—I spent my whole morning doing her work as well as my own.”
    “We should have checked that bridle rack,” Betsy said. “Hanging it was one of the few things Veronica did on her own.”
    “But who would think she couldn’t hang a bridle rack?” snorted Meg. “It’s not exactly rocket science.”
    “Sometimes she’s just not worth it,” Betsy added. “She pulls that princess act just a little too often. Sometimes I feel like we’re Cinderella or something, put on this earth to do her work while she goes off to the ball.”
    “Cinderella ends up being the princess,” Stevie said. “Remember?”
    “Whatever,” Meg said. “It doesn’t matter—it doesn’t change Veronica. You watch. When she comes in, she’ll expect Betsy and me to clean all her filthy tack. She’ll sit on her cot and moan about how the mud ruined her hair.”
    “There’s Carole,” Betsy said. “She looks happy.”
    Carole galloped in with a radiant glow on her face that Stevie had seen often. Stevie rode over to her friend’s side. “Another good round?” she asked.
    “He was so fantastic!” Carole dismounted and hugged Starlight. “Aren’t you going yet, Stevie?”
    “There’s been another hold on course,” Stevie reported.
    Carole frowned. “I hope it wasn’t Lisa.”
    “Nope,” said Stevie, looking toward the woods. “Here she comes.”
    When Lisa galloped over the finish line, her friends knew how well she’d done before she even pulled up. Her face was glowing. “We’ve never done that well,” Lisa gasped. “Never. She listened to me the entire time.” Stevie and Carole cheered, and they exchanged high fives.
    “Three cheers for The Saddle Club!” Stevie said, laughing. “Hope I can uphold our honor.”
    Lisa dismounted, and she and Carole began to care for their horses. “Are you still nervous?” Lisa asked sympathetically.
    “No,” Stevie said. “I know it sounds bizarre, but all my worries just seemed to go away the moment I saw dear Veronica with mud all over her Hermès saddle and custom-made boots. Apparently that was just the tonic I needed.”
    To Lisa this made some sense. She rememberedthe lesson they’d had Tuesday, when Belle had refused to jump. Veronica’s constant needling