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dirt or mud patch because they’ll roll in it?”
    “Hmmm,” Stevie said thoughtfully. “Good question.”
    “Two answers,” Carole said, joining her friends. She was leading Starlight back to his stall from her morning adventure. “In the first place, they do it to scratch or cool off. In the second place, they do it so they get very dirty so they have to be groomed all the more.”
    “Now, there’s horse logic,” Lisa said.
    “And it makes complete sense,” Stevie said.
    “If you’re a horse!” Lisa concluded.
    “Excuse me! Excuse me, coming through!” It was Donald, pushing a wheelbarrow of fresh hay. The three girls and their horses were blocking the aisle. Donald would have to duck under their cross-ties to make it through the traffic jam. The girls didn’t have a chance to move before he began threading a path around the horses, and he was gone before they could clear a way for him.
    “What was that?” Lisa asked.
    “A whirling dervish!” Stevie observed.
    “Somebody who didn’t know what he was doing,” Carole added. “It was reckless to push that wheelbarrow rightbehind Topside. Donald hasn’t been here long enough to know if Topside is a kicker or not.”
    Lisa looked down the aisle at the quickly disappearing Donald. Carole was right and it was puzzling. Everybody knew that horses had individual personalities. Some could be quite dangerous if you weren’t careful. Donald hadn’t been careful. He’d been lucky. Topside was a great horse, almost unflappable. But if Donald had pushed the wheelbarrow that close to Starlight’s rear, he’d have stood a good chance of making an aerial exit from the stable!
    She shared the thought with Stevie and Carole.
    Stevie laughed. “Maybe that’s how he seems to fly around here all the time, doing seventeen chores at once!”
    “Then we’re in good shape,” Carole said. “All we have to do is two at a time.”
    “How’s that?” Lisa asked.
    “Well, first of all, we have to win blue ribbons; and second, we have to find some missing horses—three of them, to be exact!”
    Stevie’s eyes lit up with excitement. “Aha, the game’s afoot!” she declared, borrowing a phrase from Sherlock Holmes. “I think we ought to have a Saddle Club meeting.”
    “Definitely,” Carole agreed. “Let’s finish our grooming and then get to the hayloft so I can tell you about myadventures this morning. Something tells me we shouldn’t talk here.”
    “Aha,” Stevie said. She spoke conspiratorially. “The stalls have ears!”
    A FEW HOURS later, Lisa was ready for competition. At least she hoped she was. She’d spent the first part of the morning grooming Pepper, and the last part of it hearing about Carole’s early-morning ride. At a time when she should have been able to focus solely on the competition, her mind was a total jumble of horse-related confusion.
    The cross-country ride was a three-mile trail through fields and forest, up and down hills and over obstacles. The idea was to complete the course in a specified amount of time, negotiating all of the obstacles properly. It wasn’t a race. In fact, taking too little time cost points. The rider had to maintain an even pace. Max had given all of the entrants a map of the course the day before and they’d all been allowed to walk it if they wanted. The Saddle Club had been so busy worrying about Garnet that they had only walked the course once.
    Lisa was afraid that not covering the course a second time would hurt her chances, but a look at the map told her it probably wouldn’t make any difference. She and Carole and Stevie had spent many hours riding throughthe fields and woods and over the hills around Pine Hollow. She knew the land around there pretty well as it was.
    “Can everybody hear me?” Max asked. There were fifteen entrants in the junior cross-country. They stood around Max in a circle. “I’m going to go over the rules a final time and then we’ll have the draw for