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today. Class dismissed.”
    Stevie untacked and groomed her horse, Topside, as quickly as possible. She checked to make sure his stall was clean and everything was in order. No matter how rushed Stevie might be, or how careless she was about some things, she knew how important it was to make sure her horse was properly taken care of. But that didn’t necessarily mean that she always had to spend a
lot
of time on it—especially when she had such important things to discuss with her friends!
    Finally, she finished and hurried to Starlight’s stall. Lisa had already joined Carole there. “Did you guys hear that?” Stevie asked breathlessly. She joined Lisa in leaning over the bottom half of Starlight’s stall door so she could talk to Carole, who was inside grooming him.
    Lisa nodded. “He had to be talking about his visit to Lillian. Isn’t it romantic?”
    “Totally,” Carole agreed. “The problem is, it doesn’t sound as if Max is going to be able to visit her after all. It’ll be practically impossible for him to find someone to help out on such short notice, especially over a holiday weekend.”
    “You’re right,” Stevie said, her eyes sparkling. “That’s why Max is so lucky he has us to help him!”
    Carole shrugged as she ran a soft brush down Starlight’s neck. “You know we’ll do whatever we can to help him, but I can’t think of a single person to ask.”
    “Well, I can’t either, not right now,” Stevie admitted. “But we have to think of someone. We just have to.” She bit her lip anxiously, hoping she’d be able to come up with a solution to Max’s problem before she left for her aunt’s house the following afternoon.
    “You know, I never thought much about it before, but Max really has a twenty-four-hours-per-day, seven-days-a-week job, doesn’t he?” Lisa mused.
    “He really does,” Carole agreed. “Owning a stable is a big responsibility. All the horses here depend on him. I guess it’s pretty hard to get time off.”
    “And all Max wants is a few days off to go visit his beloved girlfriend,” Stevie said with a sigh. “It doesn’t seem like much to ask.” She thought about what it would be like if she didn’t ever have time to see her own boyfriend, Phil Marsten, and decided she definitely wouldn’t like it. Stevie and Phil had met at riding camp, and even though he lived in a town about twenty minutes’ drive from Willow Creek, they managed to see each other at least once or twice a month.
    “Well, even if we don’t have any ideas right now, I think we should try to help Max somehow,” Lisa said.
    The others nodded in agreement.
    Before they left the stable, Lisa told her friends that she wanted to go check on Pepper. She was still worried about his strange behavior the other day, and she wanted to see if staying inside had helped him return to normal.
    “I’ll meet you out front in a few minutes,” Stevie said. “I’m going to talk to some of the others from class about Max’s problem. Maybe someone has more of an idea than we do.”
    “I’ll come with you,” Carole offered. She and Stevie headed for the locker area of the stable, where the riders stowed their belongings.
    Lisa walked off toward Pepper’s stall. Even before she arrived, she knew something was amiss. Usually, as soon as anyone turned into the long passageway that formed one side of the U-shaped row of stalls, the old horse was at the front of his stall, looking for attention. But now, even though Barq and Garnet and several other horses were watching Lisa’s approach, Pepper’s gentle gray face was nowhere to be seen. When Lisa reached his stall, she could see why. Pepper was standing with his head hanging low, facing the back corner of the stall. He barely seemed to know that Lisa was there. The only sign that he noticed her at all was that one ear flicked slowly back as she approached.
    “How does he look?”
    Lisa was concentrating so hard on Pepper that she didn’t notice that