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cola,” she said. “I hate the smell of root beer.”
    “I’m sure it will wash off,” Lisa said, wiping her eyes.
    “Yeah, right. Are you really so thirsty that hot root beer sounded good?” Lisa nodded. “Then here.” Chloe bent forward and offered Lisa the tube of her ridiculous water-filled backpack. Lisa drank gratefully. The water tasted sweet and almost cool.
    “Thanks.”
    “Why didn’t you say you were thirsty? I’ve had this all along.”
    “I don’t know,” Lisa said. Suddenly she felt a little more comfortable around Chloe. The other girl wasn’t actually trying to show off, Lisa realized. She just
did
know a lot about endurance riding, and she was the sort of person who liked to talk. Even if she was driving them all crazy, she really was trying to be nice. “Sorry about the soda. I know root beer explodes when you shake it. I just didn’t realize how much I’d been shaking it.”
    “That’s okay,” Chloe said. “I’m just glad you didn’t hit my horse. Whitey might have thought it was a waterfall.” She grinned. Lisa smiled back and went to take care of Prancer. She felt happier somehow.
    Lisa soaked Prancer’s legs and used a damp towel to clean the soda off her saddle. She watched Carole take Starlight through the vet check. Carole paused at the end to speak with the officials, and when she came back her face was dark with concern.
    “Starlight’s fine,” she said in response to Lisa’s unspoken question. “I just happened to see the checklist of riders, and Stevie, Phil, and Mr. Baker haven’t come through the check yet.”
    “They must have,” Lisa said. “Otherwise we would have seen them on the trail. They were really far ahead of us, remember?”
    “I know. I asked the organizers, and they said Stevie definitely hadn’t been through. They must be lost.”
    Lisa handed Prancer’s reins back to May. “Let’s tell Max,” she said.
    Max took Carole’s news very seriously. He immediately went to some of the ride officials. Lisa could see them gathering equipment, getting ready to go back down the trail in search of the missing trio.
    “How could we have missed them?” she whispered to Carole.
    “I don’t know,” Carole said. “I hope Stevie’s okay.”
    Just then Lisa saw a familiar bay mare coming out of the woods. “Carole, it’s Belle! They’re okay!”
    T EDDY WAS ALREADY starting to improve, thanks to the salts he’d been given on the trail. Phil hovered over him, mixing more salts into a five-gallon bucket of drinking water. Mr. Baker and Stevie took their horses through the check, but Phil didn’t even try. “I’m out,” he said to Stevie. “Absolutely out. You win. I’m done. I wasn’t ready.” For once, Phil didn’t seem upset about losing. He was much more concerned about his horse.
    Mr. Baker looked concerned. “I really should pull out, too, and stay with Phil,” he said.
    “No problem,” Stevie said cheerfully. “I’ll just go back with Max and The Saddle Club.” Max, Carole, Lisa, and Chloe had all stayed in the check much longer than they needed to, because they wanted to make sure Teddy was okay.
    “We’ll wait a little longer so that Belle gets a good rest,” Max said.
    “We aren’t in any hurry,” Chloe added, looking at her watch. “It’s one-thirty now, and we’ve only got thirteen miles to go.”
    “That’s right,” Stevie said, looking up at Chloe, “you’re not in any hurry, so long as we finish. Right?”
    “Right,” Chloe said with a grin. Stevie rolled her eyes. Lisa sighed.
    “We’ll be just about last,” Max said. “But we’ll finish in good shape, and that’s all that counts.”
    As they got ready to go, Phil came over to say good-bye. He promised to wait at the end and see Stevie finish. “I’m sorry I was such a jerk this morning,” he added.
    “That’s okay,” Stevie said magnanimously. “You weren’t really a jerk, you just didn’t know what you were talking about. Teddy’s