Horse Capades by Bonnie Bryant Page A

holding her prop bag in one hand and the camcorder in the other. “I got here a little early, so I tacked up all your horses for you. They’re waiting in the indoor ring. So come on, let’s get started.”
    Stevie’s friends exchanged glances as they followed her. Had she heard them talking about her? They hoped not. She had seemed a little edgy lately, and they didn’t want to make her angry. But if she had heard anything, she didn’t show it. In fact, she was whistling gaily as she walked toward the entrance to the indoor ring.
    “Here we are,” she said, stepping back to let her friends enter first.
    The moment Carole, Lisa, and Phil stepped through the doorway, they heard a man’s voice shout, “It’s about time! Do you think we have all day? We’ve got a movie to make here! Now hustle!”
    Lisa jumped, startled. Prancer, Starlight, Belle, and Diablo were tied up on one side of the entrance, but she hardly noticed the horses. That was because there was a much stranger sight in the center of the ring. A tall man was striding impatiently back and forth, tappinga riding crop on his thigh. There was a director’s chair behind him, with a bullhorn sitting on it. The man had a large, carefully waxed mustache, and he was dressed improbably in riding breeches, high boots, a blue silk shirt, and a beret. A bright red scarf was knotted around his neck. Strangest of all, he was wearing sunglasses, even though there was no hint of sunlight coming through the high windows from the gloomy day outside.
    “Wha—” Carole began, but the man cut her off.
    “Step lively, boys and girls!” he barked, slapping the riding crop on his gloved hand. “Mount up, and hurry up about it. There’s a lot to do. We’re running through the dressage ball scene first; then we’re going to practice the bowing entrance and the wedding parade. Move it, people!”
    Carole, Lisa, and Phil automatically started hurrying toward the horses. Carole got there first and swung up into Starlight’s saddle. Phil followed suit with Diablo.
    Lisa had one foot in the stirrup and was about to swing herself onto Prancer when she paused. What exactly was going on here, anyway?
    “Hey, wait a minute,” she said. She turned to look at Stevie, who was still standing in the entryway, grinningher head off as she filmed the whole strange scene with the camcorder.
    Carole, who was in the process of leaning over to unhook Starlight’s lead rope, looked down at Lisa. She frowned. For the first time, she stopped to think. Who was the man shouting at them from the center of the ring?
    Phil figured it out at the same time as the two girls. All three of them turned. And all three of them cried out the same name at the same time.
    “Stevie!”
    Stevie responded by starting to laugh. Soon she was laughing so hard that she could hardly hold the camcorder straight. A second later, the man in the sunglasses started laughing, too.
    Lisa took her foot back out of the stirrup. She looked at the man. There was something familiar about him, but she didn’t recognize him until he removed the sunglasses—
and
the mustache.
    Carole gasped. “It’s Mr. French,” she exclaimed. Michael French was one of Max’s adult riders. He worked for the State Department in nearby Washington, D.C., and boarded his horse, Memphis, at Pine Hollow.
    “You caught me,” Mr. French said good-naturedlyin his normal voice, a pleasant southern drawl. He tucked his riding crop under his arm and began to untie the scarf from around his neck. “I guess I’d never be mistaken for a real Hollywood director, would I?”
    “Don’t be so sure,” said Carole ruefully. “You had us fooled for a few seconds, anyway.”
    By this time Stevie had come forward to join her friends. Lisa turned to her.
    “So was this what the big joke was all along, Stevie?” she asked.
    Stevie shook her head. “Nope,” she replied. “The big joke was, there
is
no joke. But since you guys didn’t believe me, I