“Add carrots to the hunt,” Snips suggested. “I’ll bring Señor Carrots.”
From near the front of Lucky’s house, she heard Señor Carrots bray with a loud hee-haw.
After lunch they played Prancing Ponies and had a horseshoe toss. Through it all, Oliver stuck to Snips. In the Ponies game, when Lilly ran between the boys, trying to break their arm link apart, Oliver held tightly, until Lilly gave up and crawled under.
“Cheater,” Snips said.
“Nu-uh,” Lilly told him. “This is how we play in the city.”
“The city is wrong, then,” Snips challenged. “Miradero is the best.” He turned to Oliver. “What are the Prancing Pony rules where you’re from?”
Oliver didn’t reply, so Snips told Lilly, “Oliver agrees. You have to break through our grips or you’re out.” He let go of Oliver’s hand and dramatically shouted. “Out!”
Just then, one of the twins barreled through the gap in the boys’ hands and cheered when she reached the other side safely. “Gotcha!”
“I’ve been Bianca’ed,” Snips moaned. “She’s a tricky one.”
Lucky thought she saw Oliver laugh at the silliness, but wasn’t positive.
When Julian arrived to walk Oliver back to Cora’s, he asked, “How was camp, big guy?”
Oliver leaned in and whispered something to Julian, who said loudly, “Are you sure?”
Oliver nodded. Julian whispered something back, then Oliver whispered something else to Julian.
Lucky was almost sure he said, “Fun,” but then in a voice Lucky, Pru, and Abigail could all hear, Oliver told Julian, “It was boring.”
It was the first and only thing Oliver said that Lucky had heard.
Right after that announcement, Oliver walked away with Julian. Julian replied loudly, clearly intending for his voice to carry. “There wasn’t any adventure at adventure camp? How disappointing that must have been for you, Oliver. I’m sorry old RF let you down.”
Lucky wondered whether other kids agreed. As parents came to get them, Lucky could hear funny stories about extra pie and cheating at games, but Oliver might’ve been right: the easy scavenger hunt, the pie prize for everyone, the games… It’d all been part of the plan, but maybe there really wasn’t enough adventure in adventure camp. If she wanted to break through to Oliver, without having to pay him herself, something had to change.
At sunset, the PALs went for a ride to talk about the camp schedule for the next day. They galloped to a large, open field where they could see for miles in every direction, and they stopped to rest. The sunset cast a golden hue over the summer sky.
“I think Julian is right,” Lucky said, surprised that she agreed with him. “We need more excitement at camp.”
“Tomorrow’s scavenger hunt list has a pinecone on it,” Pru said. “That shouldn’t be easy to find in the summertime, and after lunch we can make the pinecones into bird feeders.”
“Fun,” Abigail agreed. “I made a bird feeder last summer. A cute little bluebird came. Then Snips scared it away.” She sighed. “No birds ever came after that. None were brave enough to face off with Snips.”
“Sounds… not very adventurous,” Lucky said. But then she had an idea. It came to her after seeing the way that Oliver looked at Spirit. “Instead of horse games, can we change to having a real horse adventure camp tomorrow?” she asked Pru and Abigail. She added, “Actually, not just for tomorrow. Can we change the whole camp?”
Pru considered the idea. “Scavenger hunts around the barn?”
“That wasn’t what I was thinking,” Lucky said. “Instead of a scavenger hunt, maybe we can have a treasure hunt on horseback. We could learn rope tricks and animal tracking.” Pru loved tracking and was really good at it.
“I’m in,” Pru said. “Horses! Adventure!”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Abigail agreed.
“The PALs Summer Adventure Horse Camp starts tomorrow!” Lucky announced, and the girls cheered before mounting up and racing back home.
Diary Entry
There’s no better place for me to think than sitting on Spirit’s back.
We went for a walk—slowly, so I could talk and write in my diary as we went along. Spirit doesn’t talk much, but he sure is a good listener.
Here’s the problem:
Oliver is a pain! He won’t do anything. It is so aggravating. I mean, seriously, he just sits and stares out toward the horizon all day. I’m not saying he ruined the day, but… he sort of did.
All our campers were so excited about going to the barn, except Oliver.
And Stella. She announced that horses were dirty and smelly, but then seeing that everyone else was having fun, she quietly asked if she could ride a small spotted mare named Sadie. After Pru showed her how to mount the horse and walk slowly in a circle, we couldn’t get Stella out of the saddle so Mary Pat could ride! I’ll bet that Stella’s at Maricela’s house right now, writing a letter to her parents asking for a horse of her very own.
Oliver, however, is a problem. I have no idea what I should do with him! For a kid who loves adventure, he sure doesn’t want to have one. He’s still not talking, except to Julian, and even then the only word I ever overhear is boring.
Pru suggested we ignore “Mr. Boring Pants” and let him sit by a tree, which is where he’d planted himself. She said we had other campers who wanted to have fun, so why should we bother with the one who refused to even try? She pointed out that even Stella was having fun.
When I asked Abigail what to do, she thought we should get Julian to come help us. It was obvious that he hadn’t found a job, or wasn’t trying very hard to get one, because we could see him in the distance, climbing rocks. All that stuff about how he didn’t like adventure seemed like a wild tale,
