Horse Sense by Bonnie Bryant Page B

smaller, but maintaining a uniform distance from one another. At the end, you should have your horses practically head-to-tail, at the same speed, in a very small circle at the center of the ring. Think you can do it?”
    At that moment, Stevie thought they could do anything. The three girls brought their horses to a nice collected trot, as close to the pace of the horse in front as they could. Then Max had them begin the exercise.
    It turned out to be much trickier than Stevie expected. If horses follow one another, they always seem to want to catch up to the horse in front. Horses are naturally competitive, and one of the ways they prove that is by racing—even when they’re not supposed to, like in a drill exercise. No matter how hard Stevie tried, it seemed almost impossible to control Comanche’s trot. And as soon as Comanche quickened his pace to catch up with Diablo, Pepper wanted to get into the act. Pretty soon, all three horses were trotting contentedly on one side of the ring. The girls tried it four times and each time the same thing happened.
    “I think there’s some work to be done here, girls,” Max said. “You should have better control of your horses, you know. Perhaps we should try again next time.”
    “Can’t we try again now?” Stevie asked.
    “Not now, Stevie. I’ve got a private lesson to give on the trail and it’s time for you all to go home now.”
    “One more time?” Lisa asked.
    “As I said, I have to go. If you all want to work on it by yourselves, of course, you may, but only for a few minutes. The horses need a rest, too. Good night,” he said. Then, as only Max could, he bowed to his students and left the ring.
    “We can do better,” Stevie said.
    “You bet we can,” Lisa agreed. “I mean, I know that clover thing was harder than this, but it seems almost impossible to keep Pepper from running up to Diablo.”
    “Music,” Carole said suddenly. “I think that’s the answer.”
    “Hey, great idea!” Stevie said.
    “The horses can follow the beat of the music?” Lisa said in wonderment.
    “I doubt it,” Carole told her, “but
we
can. See, then we can maintain an even beat with our posting. If we’re all going up-down at the same beat, we can use that to guide our horses to the pace we want.”
    “Well, we’ll work this out together, won’t we?” Stevie asked. The grins on her friends’ faces answered the question.
    “I’ll go see what tapes Mrs. Reg has that she can put on the P.A. system for us, okay? Here, hold Diablo for me, will you?”
    Stevie took the reins from Carole and watched while she dashed off to Mrs. Reg’s office.
    C AROLE WAS NEARLY breathless with excitement. She loved the drill work as much as her friends did and she was thrilled to have come up with a possible solution to a big problem.
    Mrs. Reg wasn’t in her office, though, and Carole suddenly remembered that she had scheduled a trip to the saddle shop for supplies for the horse show. The office was completely locked up, so although the music idea was a good one, they couldn’t try it today.
    Disappointed, Carole headed back to the outdoor ring. The stable was quiet. Max was on the trail with his private student; Mrs. Reg was at the shop; and except for the three of them, the camp class had all gone for the day. Even Red O’Malley was away. He’d gone along with Mrs. Reg.
    Carole glanced at the horses’ stalls as she passed, clucking gently, patting noses here and there, feeling very much in charge, and liking it.
    She detoured around to say hello to Delilah, isolated in her foaling stall. Usually Delilah had her head out over the top of the sliding door, but there was no sign of her today.
    Curious, Carole clucked, but there was no response, no familiar nodding head with its platinum forelock.She clucked again. This time she heard a mild whinny. Carole hastened to the door of the special stall. When she looked in, what she saw made her heart jump.
    Delilah was in a far corner of