Read Online Horse Play by Bonnie Bryant - Free Book Online

couldn’t see anything wrong with the horse. After a while, as the horse kind of broke down, the woman who owned her was so upset that she hardly ever came to the stable. Then the horse started to get better.”
    Lisa furrowed her brows trying to figure this one out. There was, she had learned, always a reason for the storiesthat Mrs. Reg told. She waited patiently as the tale unfolded.
    “So, when the horse became healthy again and her owner returned to ride her, Max watched over them very carefully. It turned out to be very simple. The problem was that the woman was crazy about her horse and always tried to do everything for her. She always showed up with an apple or a lump of sugar or carrots or some leftover from her own table. As you know, it’s not a good idea to give horses too many treats, because they come to expect them and can be ill-mannered if they don’t get them. But even worse, this woman was giving Camille so many treats that she was losing her appetite for foods that were really good for her. The poor horse was suffering from an overload of love!” Mrs. Reg soaped the cheek strap carefully, keeping Lisa thinking.
    “Too much of a good thing?” Lisa suggested.
    “What?” Mrs. Reg said, as if she hadn’t heard Lisa because she’d been concentrating too much on the cheek strap.
    “What happened?” Lisa asked.
    “The horse was fine,” Mrs. Reg answered. “Had a foal the next year. Max bred her to one of our stallions.”
    “No, I mean, what happened to the owner?” she asked.
    “Oh, she was just fine, too,” Mrs. Reg said. “As soon as the foal was born, she
really
had her hands full.”
    Mrs. Reg finished soaping the bridle. Lisa couldn’t believehow fast she could clean a bridle. “There,” Mrs. Reg said, satisfied with her work. She hung the bridle back up on the bracket and retreated to her office.
    Lisa was almost done with the saddle. She finished cleaning the last expanse of leather and looked at the gentle sheen of the dark brown saddle. She thought about Mrs. Reg’s story about the horse, Camille. What was Mrs. Reg trying to tell her.
    Foal? Camille had a
foal
? Lisa’s heart jumped into her mouth.
    “Oh, no!” she said out loud to nobody.

C AROLE PUSHED THE “start” button on the stereo and mounted Diablo. Her friends were waiting on the other side of the riding ring for the music to begin.
    “One-two-three, and … she said as the marching band began blasting out “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” On the second count of four, the horses began moving where their riders wanted them to go. The girls were working on an exercise that had proved very difficult in the past. Starting from the edge of the ring at equal distance from the others, each rider was to make her horse trot in spirals, like the groove of a record, so that the three would meet in the center. It took a lot of precisionbecause if the girls didn’t watch out, the horses got all bunched up together while they were still supposed to be apart.
    The music helped the girls to establish an even pace, but it didn’t solve everything.
    “Slow down, Stevie!” Carole warned.
    “
I
slowed down already,” Stevie shot back. “It’s Comanche who keeps trying to catch up to Pepper!”
    “Very funny,” Carole returned. “Try using a little pressure from your outside hand to slow him down.”
    “Maybe you guys should just go faster,” Stevie suggested. But just then Comanche responded to Stevie’s signal and shortened his stride.
    “Good!” Carole said excitedly, for she could see that if all three of them maintained their pace exactly as it was, they’d succeed, meeting precisely in the middle of the ring.
    “Very good!” Max’s voice boomed over the music. He had paused on his way across the ring to watch a few minutes of their practice.
    A small part of Carole wanted to smile. A larger part made her face a picture of determination and concentration. She didn’t want compliments from Max to