Horse Trouble by Bonnie Bryant

Author:Bonnie Bryant [Bryant, Bonnie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82504-9
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

CAROLE WAS VERY proud of her charts. It wasn’t easy to keep track of who was riding which horse when, but it was important. For one thing, it was a way of keeping track of what riders were out. For another, and really more important as far as Carole was concerned, it was a way of telling how long each horse was working. Horses couldn’t spend all day every day with riders on their backs. Just like people, they needed time to rest and recuperate. Mrs. Reg always tried to arrange it so that no horse spent more than four hours a day in class. Carole thought she could manage that, too.

Charts weren’t all of the job, though. The harder part was pleasing the riders. In Red’s beginner class, three of the girls had wanted to ride Delilah. Carole was almost relieved when she saw that Lisa had taken the mare for the French ambassador. That way the girls couldn’t fight over her. Instead they began fighting about which one of them was going to ride Patch. Carole solved that problem by talking louder than the squabbling young riders. She put them each on horses they hadn’t ridden before and told each—in a whisper—that they were getting the best horse. That at least worked.

Now in a quiet moment (because all the squabbling little girls were in class with Red), Carole turned to her other job for the day, which was to look for the pin some more, though she was becoming more and more certain they would not be able to find it. Carole decided it was time to make a careful examination of the stable area, particularly the wide aisle that ran between the stalls in the U-shaped stable. There was always a layer of straw on the floor there, and that was just the sort of camouflage a gold pin could use to hide out.

Carole picked up a pitchfork and began working on the straw methodically. She picked up a forkful and shook it, hoping to find a gold pin dropping out of the mass of straw. Then, when nothing gold fell out, she put down that forkful and picked up another. By the time she’d picked up eight forkfuls, she’d decided it was almost impossible that this would work. Still, she didn’t have a better idea. She picked up her ninth forkful. Then her tenth and her eleventh …

“Don’t look at me that way,” she said to Starlight, who was gazing at her curiously over the door to his stall. Starlight didn’t have anything to say to that. He pulled his head back in. Carole continued her work in silence.

Most of the horses were now out on trail rides or busy in classes. The stable was unusually quiet, and Carole was hopeful that it would make it easier for her to hear the very welcome thump of a solid gold pin hitting the wide boards of the stable floor. No matter how much she listened, though, there was no such thump.

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