Free Horse Sense by Bonnie Bryant Page A

her bed. She loved the regal horse head with his mane swept back by the wind. She’d be proud to wear her pin, symbol of both her friendship and her love of horses. She pickedup the first pin and stepped over to her mirror. Carefully, she unlocked the clasp and slid the pin through the fabric of her blouse. There was a little fingerprint on the horse’s head. She took a tissue and wiped the pin until it gleamed.
    “Lisa, phone for you,” her mother called up the stairs.
    Lisa opened her door. “Who is it?” she asked.
    “Stevie.”
    “Tell her I’m busy,” Lisa said, and when her mother looked a little bit shocked, she added, “Please.”
    “Sure, hon,” Mrs. Atwood agreed. “I’ll tell her.”
    A few minutes later, there was a call from Carole. Lisa didn’t speak to her either. She just wasn’t in the mood to hear their excuses.
    There was also a little corner of her that knew she wasn’t quite ready to tell her friends about the things that had gone on at the Club meetings they’d missed.
    They’d find out in time—and it would serve them right for not paying any attention to anything she was doing.
    S TEVIE HUNG UP the phone in a fury. Trying to talk the Zieglers into letting her borrow their Laser Tag had been a lousy idea. Absolutely nothing was working out. Well, that wasn’t quite true, she reminded herself. After all, right after Judy had arrived to examine Nickel, Stevie had found the missing chunk of rubber from the baton. It had landed in the peat and straw on the floor of his stall. It had never gotten anywhere nearhis stomach. Nickel got a clean bill of health from Judy, and Stevie got a well-deserved lecture about horse care from Max.
    What really made her angry, though, was that she’d spent more than a week trying to create new and interesting games and races for the gymkhana and she’d gotten nowhere at all. It certainly wasn’t her fault, though. She’d done everything she could and nothing had worked. Now Max was angry with her, Mrs. Reg was worried that they wouldn’t have any games for the young riders, Carole was too busy with Delilah to talk to her, and Lisa spent all her time with Estelle Duval. She wasn’t getting help from anybody. Even her very own twin brother, Alex, had refused to help her with the Laser Tag game.
    The crowning glory had come that evening at the dinner table when she’d told her family how much trouble she was having with the games. She was admitting nearly total defeat by announcing it at dinner.
    “I’ve got an idea for a neat relay race,” her father had said. “I’m pretty sure you can do it on horseback.”
    “What is it, Dad?” she’d asked excitedly.
    “Well, it’s kind of a spoon race, but, you know, carrying eggs?”
    Why in the world couldn’t anybody suggest something that didn’t have to do with eggs?
    C AROLE SLID WEARILY into the overstuffed chair in the living room, where her father sat polishing his shoes. Next in line was the brass.
    “Inspection tomorrow, huh?” Carole asked.
    “Yes, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that the colonel’s leather and brass have to be brighter and shinier than the troops’.”
    “Let me do the shoes, Dad. I get so much experience at the stable with saddles and bridles that I can always make leather shine. Besides, you’ll never get a shine unless it’s really clean. Don’t you have any saddle soap?”
    “At my age—and with eighteen years in the Marine Corps—I’m getting polishing lessons from a twelve-year-old?” He laughed. “You’re welcome to them.” He handed Carole his shoes and belt.
    Carole brought a tin of saddle soap into the living room from her room, took her father’s shoes, and began cleaning them thoroughly.
    “What’s got you so droopy these days, hon? I thought you were excited about that mare. Isn’t she going to foal any day now?”
    “That’s what Judy says. But it’s so much work, Dad. You know Delilah has to have a special bran