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description of the day, Stevie leaned back on the rock, resting her head on the saddlebags, which had held their picnic. Her feet were still dangling in the cool water. She kicked gently, stirring up the creek and sprinkling her friends with occasional drops of water. It was her way of thinking.
    “I think Lisa said the key word,” Stevie said after a few minutes of thought. “And the key word is ‘mother.’ ”
    “What are you driving at?” Carole asked.
    “It sounds an awful lot to me like Lynne is trying to be somebody’s mother, specificially
your
mother—make that your
step
mother.”
    “You think she wants to
marry
Dad?” Carole yelped.
    “Yes, I do,” Stevie said positively. “Especially from the part about the dinner dance and the cozy table for four.”
    Carole eyed her friends. They looked at her expectantly. “When you put it that way, the symptoms are clear, aren’t they?” Carole asked. Her friends nodded. “Just great,” she said with a sigh.
    “I thought you
wanted
your dad to go out on dates,” Lisa said.
    Carole looked thoughtfully at the water as it rolled slowly past her feet, constantly changing and swirling around her. “I did. I mean, I do. He should have fun,” she said sensibly. “I even thought it would be nice for him to have a
serious
girlfriend. The problem isn’t him having a girlfriend. The problem is the girlfriend being Lynne. She’s okay, in some ways, but I can’t see spending all of my teenage years trying to deal with her.”
    The girls were all silent for a while. The only sounds were the contented munching of the horses and the girls’ feet splashing idly in the creek.
    “Looks to me like we’ve got another problem,”Stevie announced. “And we’re going to have to solve it.”
    One of the things Carole liked about her friends was that when
she
had a problem, they always wanted to help her solve it. When you had friends like The Saddle Club, you were never alone.

“M Y TURN TO lead,” Stevie announced, mounting Comanche. The horses were rested, the picnic was finished, and it was time to return to Pine Hollow.
    “Okay, but wait a second,” Lisa said. “I’ve got to get my boots back on. It’s not easy in this heat!” Stevie favored cowboy boots for riding, and those were always easy to slip into. Carole usually wore low jodhpur boots. But Lisa’s boots had been selected by her fashion-conscious mother and they were high black riding boots. They were designed to be pulled on with special hooks.
    Carole stood behind Lisa and helped her tug until the boots finally came up over her calves. “Remind me to buy my own riding clothes next time,” Lisa said dully. “I’d much rather have low boots than these things.”
    “They really ought to have built-in hooks,” Carole remarked as she mounted Diablo. Then she and Stevie waited until Lisa was ready to go. Soon Lisa, too, was mounted. Before they left the picnic site, the girls carefully scanned the area to be sure they hadn’t left any garbage behind. It was an unbreakable Pine Hollow rule that no litter would ever be left behind. Since today’s picnic was a special privilege, they wanted to make especially certain that they were observing the rules. Satisfied that the area was the same as they had found it, they followed Stevie along the trail.
    Stevie, their fearless leader, chattered continuously as they walked their horses through the glen.
    “Okay, now the first thing you do with Lynne is to turn her off your dad. You can talk about all his other girlfriends.”
    “You don’t know Lynne,” Carole said. “I think that’s the sort of thing she’d take as a challenge. I mean, we’re talking about one determined woman. You should have seen her at the mall with me. As long as she thinks Dad’s interested in her in the slightest, she’ll hold onto him like a tick to a horse’s belly!”
    “What a disgusting thought!” Stevie said, turning around in the saddle to make a face at