Free Riding Camp by Bonnie Bryant

put down the tools and looked up for the first time. Phil had cross-tied Teddy right across the barn from Topside. It was almost true that she hadn’t noticed Phil until he had spoken.
    She rummaged through her tool bucket, took out her own hoof pick, and walked over to the horse.
    Stevie could see right away that Teddy’s left front foot was bothering him. A horse at rest might lift a rear foot and casually shift his weight or just point thetoe, holding the heel of the rear foot off the ground. But, when a front foot was held that way for a long time, there was probably something wrong.
    Stevie approached Teddy. She patted him and spoke to him reassuringly. The last thing she wanted to do was to startle a horse with a sore foot.
    “He was okay when I was riding him. I’m sure I would have noticed. So he must have just picked up a stone on the way into the barn. Isn’t that strange?”
    Stevie just grunted. She spoke gently to the horse. “It’s okay, boy. I’m not going to hurt you. No trouble; here, boy. Just let me have a look.”
    She slid her hand down his leg, put her shoulder against his, and reached for the hoof. Teddy lifted it for her.
    “How do you
do
that?” Phil asked. Stevie didn’t bother to answer. After all, if Phil thought he was such a hotshot on horseback, why should he need any horse-care tips from her?
    Gently, she probed the tissue of the hoof, removing dirt with her pick. She didn’t see anything wrong right away, but as she tapped the shoe, she knew there was something in there, because Teddy flinched at the touch.
    She kept talking to him. It was the best way she knew to calm a horse, and this one needed calming. So did his owner, but Stevie didn’t speak to Phil.
    “You picked something up here, didn’t you, boy?” She felt under the shoe with the pick. “I feel something there. We’ll get it out.” Whatever it was, it wouldn’t budge with the pick. Stevie tried the next best thing—her finger. She probed until she could reach the stone and then, slowly and carefully, began moving it. Every time it moved, Teddy reacted. Although she didn’t like hurting him, it would hurt him a lot worse if she didn’t get it out.
    “It’s coming now, boy. It’ll just be a little bit longer. Hold on there, okay?”
    With a final tug, Stevie got the stone out. It clattered to the barn floor. Stevie picked it up to examine it.
    “That’s a nasty one, boy,” she told Teddy, looking at the sharply pointed stone that had been giving him so much trouble. “I don’t know how you stood it at all. Now let me have another look at that hoof.”
    There was a bucket of water nearby. Stevie took her water brush, dipped it in the bucket, and began washing the sole of the horse’s foot. When the area was clean, she could see some discoloration. “Looks like you’ve got a bruise here, boy,” she said to Teddy. “It may be nothing, but if I were you, I’d tell my owner that I should stay in the barn tonight and be checked by the farrier in the morning. Besides, you don’t want to go running all over the paddock competing withthose other horses when you’ve got a sore foot now, do you?”
    She put the horse’s hoof down and stood up. “That’s a good boy,” she said, patting him.
    “Thank you, Stevie,” Phil said. “You’re the best at that.”
    “I’m glad to know you think I’m the best at something!” Stevie retorted and, without another word, returned to grooming Topside.
    She thought Phil Marston had a lot of nerve trying to make her feel better by saying she was good at getting stones out. She
was
good at it, but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear him say.
    When she finished with Topside, she turned him out into the paddock with the other horses and she returned to the cabin. Lisa had said something about a swim before supper. That would be good—especially if there were no boys there.

L ISA WAS HAVING a wonderful dream. It was all about the camp-out—the trail ride, the