Rocking Horse Read Online Free Page A

happy, but her hooves, Stevie noticed, were wet. Since Belle’s stall was on the outside edge of the row, it had gotten pretty wet from rain blowing under the tent roof, and her bedding was soaked. Stevie knew that wet bedding wouldn’t hurt a horse for afew hours, but it wasn’t good for them as a regular thing. “I’m going to pick out this stall before breakfast,” she said when Lisa came in with Belle’s grain.
    “Ugh,” Lisa said, nodding agreement as her feet squished into the wet shavings. “Prancer’s and Starlight’s stalls are still dry.”
    “Good.” Stevie pointed to Team Veronica’s tack stall and grinned. “Do you think they got wet? I’d hate to have a little water disrupt Veronica’s beauty sleep.”
    Lisa pursed her lips in thought. “I’m sure if Veronica had gotten wet, we would have heard all about it, even in the middle of the night. She’s not the type to suffer in silence.”
    Stevie snorted. “You can say that again.”
    Lisa left. Stevie worked quickly, using a pitchfork to scoop the wet bedding into one of their muck buckets. Then she dragged the muck bucket through the diminishing rain to the place where they were supposed to pile used bedding. It took three trips before Belle’s stall was stripped. Then Stevie took the big bucket to the shavings pile and started filling it. When she returned to Belle’s stall, an inspector was looking over the door, pencil and clipboard in hand.
    When she saw Stevie she shook her head. “I’m going to have to give you some penalty points for that,” she said.
    Stevie’s jaw dropped. “But it rained all night, and I’m fixing it right now! I’m working as quickly as I can!”
    The woman shook her head and pointed to Belle’s tail with her pencil. “I mean that, not the stall.”
    Stevie looked. Belle’s tail, which only the night before had been a black, shining, tangle-free flow of hair, now hung in a stiff, dirty, matted clump. “Belle!” Stevie said in astonishment. She put her hand on Belle’s hip and gently picked up her tail. What had Belle done? Turned out to pasture, horses sometimes got burrs or weeds matted into their tails, but Belle had been safe inside all night. Stevie’s fingers pried the clump apart. The middle was mud—pure, filthy, dried mud. And Belle’s floor, although damp, had been covered with shavings. There wasn’t any mud in sight.
    Stevie looked over the door of Belle’s stall. Veronica was coming out of her tack room, makeup kit in hand. She hurried down the aisle without meeting Stevie’s eyes.
    Veronica! I might have
known! Stevie’s first thought was to see how Veronica liked getting mud in
her
hair. Her second thought was to tell the show officials, but she knew she had no proof. A mud ball was the sort of thing that could happen if Belle was turned out and not groomed regularly. The fact thatStevie would never allow it to happen was something else Stevie knew she couldn’t prove.
    Stevie called Lisa and Carole into the stall. “Look what just cost us some points,” she said grimly.
    “Stevie!” Lisa was appalled. “How could that happen?”
    “I think I know.” Stevie gestured to the stalls across the aisle.
    “Meg and Betsy would never—” Carole began.
    “No,” Stevie said. “They wouldn’t.”
    Lisa and Carole didn’t say anything. They all knew that Veronica would stoop to dirty tricks—even to cheating—to show up The Saddle Club.
    “With a horse like Danny, she still thinks she has to do something like this! Poor Belle!” Carole stroked the mare’s nose. “We can’t prove it, though, can we? I never saw Veronica—or anyone else—go into Belle’s stall.”
    “Me either,” Lisa said. “I guess it’s sort of a compliment: She thinks we’re going to be so hard to beat that she has to sabotage our chances.”
    “Yeah, right,” Stevie snorted. She fetched a comb from her grooming box and started to work the mud out of Belle’s tail. “I feel complimented,