Hide and Seek (5 page)

After an uneventful trip home on Easter Monday, Shelby was glad to be back at the stables again on Tuesday morning. She'd rung Erin as soon as she got home, but they hadn't found Diablo yet. Erin said that Mrs Edel was in a bad mood, but other than that it was business as usual.

From first light the agistment centre was busy with trucks and floats trundling up and down the driveway. The loading area was noisy with the clanging sounds of breeching doors and dividers locking into place, the thump of hooves clambering up tailgates and the hum of electric brakes. The owners commanded their animals in single syllables – 'up', 'yar', 'whoa'.

Riders turned up early in the morning to use the arena – from little kids with big helmets that made them look like lollipops, to elegant older ladies on leggy dressage mounts, to blokes in jeans practising spins and pivots on their lean stock horses.

Groups of kids fooled around while their ponies looked on patiently, or slept on their feet. Ladies joked to each other as they passed in the laneway with buckets, hoses or tack.

During school holidays the demand for trail rides always doubled and that meant early starts and busy days for the girls too. Erin had offered to help out. Hayley was helping as well. She had finished feeding her other two horses, a pony called Echo and a lovely bay hack called Scamp. Now she was waiting for her mother to take her over to Homebush – back to the Royal Easter Show.

'At least it's finally stopped raining!' said Hayley, taking the last bite of an apple before offering the core to Hiccup – the pony she was saddling.

There was a long line of trail riders looking eager, and a little anxious. Some girls had brought their own helmets. Shelby handed out waiver forms on clipboards for the parents to sign.

'Why are you humming?' Erin demanded.

Shelby looked up at her friend, surprised. 'I wasn't humming.'

'Yes, you were! You've been doing it all morning. What's happened? Did your mum say you could have another horse?'

'I wish.' Shelby smiled.

'What is it then?'

'Nothing!' It crossed Shelby's mind to tell Erin about Aunty Jenny's trip and what it could mean for her family, but she wanted to wait until her parents had made a firm decision. Nobody had mentioned it on the way home and Shelby knew better than to nag them. She also knew that they were quite proud and might see Aunty Jenny's offer as charity. That gave Shelby cause to hope that they might reject the offer.

Lindsey frowned as she allocated trail riders to horses. Shelby was glad she wasn't the one who had to match size, experience and temperament, and also determine who was lying when they ticked the box marked 'Ridden more than one hundred times' on their waiver forms.

Shelby boosted one of the regular trail riding girls onto Cracker's back and then reached up to tighten her helmet strap.

A tiny girl in baggy jodhpurs tugged at her mother's hand and pointed to Blue. 'I want that one,' she whispered.

Lindsey raised an eyebrow at Shelby.

'I could pony him off Scooter,' she suggested, meaning that she would lead Blue while she rode Scooter. Lindsey nodded.

'You have great taste!' Shelby said as she lifted the girl into the saddle by the underarms.

Erin was adjusting Blockhead's stirrups for a man who had come along with his son. 'Now I
know
some-thing is up,' she said, narrowing her eyes at Shelby. Shelby didn't usually let beginners ride Blue. She usually rode him herself.

'Not really. Just . . . Well, I did meet this guy on the beach when we were up at Aunty Jenny's place.'

'A
guy
?' asked Hayley.

'A beach guy!' added Erin.

'What's this about a guy?' asked Lindsey, tucking the last of the money into a bumbag around her waist.

'No, it wasn't like that!' Shelby protested. 'We just had some hot chips.'

'Ooh! Hot chippies!' Erin teased.

'She's gone red!' said Hayley.

'I have not!' Shelby said, blushing even more.

All the trail riders were mounted now. The begin-ners clung to their saddles and lurched awkwardly as the horses milled around in the yard. The four girls moved among the riders adjusting girths or stirrups, checking straps and explaining the squeeze-go and pull-stop concepts.

Hayley opened the gate and the trail riders headed out in single file, led by one of the regular riders.

Shelby strapped a halter over Blue's bridle and knotted his reins. 'Anyway, you two know him. He goes to your school.'

Erin jumped aboard her horse, Bandit, and Lindsey swung onto a beautiful but skittish young Arab mare called Lyrical.

'Who is it?' Hayley grinned.

'His name is Chad.'

'Not Chad Hammond?' Lindsey asked.

'I don't know his last name,' Shelby said, slipping her toe into Scooter's stirrup. 'Like I said, it was just about the chips.'

Lindsey and Hayley exchanged a glance.

'What?' Shelby asked.

'You know he's Aboriginal, don't you?' Lindsey replied.

'Is he Koori?' Shelby said. It made sense, though, she thought as she led Blue through the gate.

'And he rides trail bikes in the Gully,' added Hayley.

'So?' Shelby asked.

Hayley shut the gate behind them. 'I have to go back to the show now.' She rolled her eyes.

'See you later, Hales! Have a snow cone for me,' Lindsey called out over her shoulder as she trotted to the front of the group.

'Good luck!' Erin smiled at her friend.

Erin and Shelby rode side by side, with Blue and his tiny rider a few paces behind.

'So what happened with this guy then?' Erin asked.

'Nothing. Really! I was at the chip shop, and Chad was there too and we talked while we ate hot chips. No biggie.'

Erin grinned, and then they rode for a while in silence. The young girl on Blue stroked his neck care-fully, and Blue gave Shelby an indulgent look that made her smile.

At the end of the laneway Lindsey opened the gate to the back paddock and the trail riders rode through, waiting in a loose group on the other side. Several of the horses reefed the reins from their riders' hands and grazed. Shelby shook her head. Such bad manners!

They set off again, riding along the fence line. Erin looked at Shelby over her shoulder. 'I have been meaning to ask you something, Shelby.'

'What's that, Erin?'

Erin frowned towards the horizon. 'If mouses are called mice, and louses are called lice, how come houses aren't called hice?'

Shelby shook her head. 'I don't know, Erin. It's a mystery.'

Soon they were busy as Lindsey took the more experienced group for a canter and Erin rode at the head of the beginner group. Shelby stayed at the back looking after the stragglers.

Many of the younger girls had questions, which Shelby was happy to answer, but she was a little dis-tracted. She wondered what that traded glance between her two friends was about. Thinking back, Lindsey had said '
You know he's Aboriginal
,' more like an accusation than an observation, and then Hayley added trail bike riding as though they were ticking off a list of faults.

Later in the afternoon while Erin had her lesson with Miss Anita and Lindsey took new clients on a tour around the property, Shelby saddled Blue and took him out into the Gully alone.

They headed down the hill and across the causeway. On the other side they stopped. Shelby had the choice of the left trail that led to the Pony Club, or the right, which brought her up to the streets behind her house, or she could head straight across to the far side of the Gully.

'Which way do you think?' she asked the pony. Blue turned his head around and sniffed at her boot. She reached forward and patted his neck just behind his ears. He was starting to get his fluffy winter coat.

Blue pricked his ears forward and a moment later Shelby thought she heard a buzzing sound. She wondered if it was a trail bike. It might be Chad. Or it could be someone using a chainsaw to cut up all those branches that had come down in the storm.

'Come on, woolly bear,' she said, steering him straight ahead towards the sound.

Shelby pushed him into an easy, ground-covering canter. Blue was much rougher to ride than other horses, but she trusted him, and so she sat back, pushing her weight into her heels, and relaxed into the cadence of his hoof beats.

Every now and then she would hear the blurting, buzzing sound of the engine, but when she reached the steeper, zigzagging trail on the far side of the Gully the sound stopped, and Shelby started to wonder if she had imagined it.

Looming above she could see the grey, cone-shaped water tower. Chad had said the horse circus was near here. According to his description it should be just beyond these bends. She came to the corner with the old lounge suite, faded and disintegrating now, and littered with old beer bottles, but arranged in an L-shape, as it would be if it was in a house.

There was a new fence along the left-hand side of the straight, just the way Chad had described. On the other side of the fence, parked haphazardly in the dirt paddock ribboned with tyre tracks, were six mighty semitrailers, splashed in bright colours, and each sign-written in scrolled font –
Equus Caballus.

'The circus!' Shelby whispered. She stopped Blue in the trees and hopped off, peeking through the branches to get a closer look.

Next to the trucks there was a wooden round yard with a sand base. The man standing in the middle wore dirty black jodhpurs, top boots and a blue singlet top. He had long black hair tied in a ponytail and fierce dark eyebrows. He held a bright red lunge whip in one hand.

Inside the round yard, three grey ponies trotted around in a circle in single file, and then, when the man held up his lunge whip, the first horse peeled away across the middle and rejoined the others at the back. Shelby was astounded to see that they were completely without any sort of harness. Nothing. Not even a halter. She had read about liberty work before, but she had never seen it in real life.

One after the other the ponies slipped around, taking it in turns to be at the front. The man stepped forward and raised his whip slightly, and all at once the three ponies turned around and trotted in the opposite direction.

Behind the round yard a temporary paddock had been constructed with an electric fence. About half a dozen horses of different sizes stood in the middle of the yard picking from a round bale of hay. One was a Clydesdale. As she watched, a miniature pony – pied like Blue – wandered, head-down and oblivious, straight under the Clydie's belly on its way to the water trough. Shelby covered her mouth to stifle a giggle.

There was a flat sandy space on which two ladies rode matching black horses, thick-haired and cresty – Shelby guessed they were Friesian. The ladies were riding side by side, going through a routine not dis-similar to the pairs workouts that Shelby had done with Erin at Pony Club. She admired the way the lady on the outside was able to lengthen her horse's stride around the corners, without looking like she was rushing. Then they performed a piaffe in time and Shelby whispered, 'Wow!' She had read in her horse encyclopaedia that the piaffe – jogging on the spot – was originally designed to keep horses warm in battle.

In the middle of it all there was a red-brick house with aluminium windows, a cement veranda at the front and a garage with a roller door. It was the most ordinary-looking house in the whole world and it seemed to Shelby to be the odd one out, like a kazoo in an orchestra. It was mundane and ridiculous, where everything else was mesmerising.

Two women sat on the front steps talking. Shelby could see the steam rising from the mugs they were drinking from.

Beyond the house there was another arena, but this one was fenced, and inside there were six forty-four-gallon drums with a rope between them, creating a narrow track.

A solid, bald-faced quarter horse, wearing what looked to Shelby like a western saddle, cantered around the track. A girl of about Shelby's age squatted over the saddle on her haunches, like a jockey. A slightly built, older man in a waistcoat sat on one of the drums on the opposite side, clapping in time with the horse's stride.

When the quarter horse came around the corner Shelby could see more clearly. The girl's feet were tucked into a strap that was looped over the front of the saddle. The horn was much longer than on an ordinary western saddle, and metal, rather than leather.

The girl rose up so that she was crouched, holding the horn on the front with one hand and the horse's mane in the other. Slowly she stood, letting go. Her arms pin-wheeled and then she squatted again. The horse skidded to a halt in the corner.

The man on the side with the waistcoat stopped clapping.

'Shut up! I can do it!' the girl shouted.

The man tipped back his head and laughed.

'You do it then!' the girl challenged, pulling her feet out of the strap and dropping to the side of the horse.

In a flash the older man was up. He sprinted across the circle and flicked himself up into the saddle. He tucked his feet into the strap and then, carefully, he stood up. He held both arms wide, palms up, grinning at the girl. She folded her arms and scowled back at him.

Shelby leaned forward, straining to hear what the girl would say.

'Der! As if I couldn't do it standing still,' the girl grumbled.

Shelby had never known about trick riding before, but from what she had seen today, she knew that this was what she wanted to do. She would have to train all day long, and then perform, and when she wasn't doing that there would be stables to muck out, and feeds to make up and tails to brush. Then at meal breaks, or relaxing time, they could talk about horses. She'd be busy every minute of the day and fall into bed each night exhausted. It sounded like heaven!

There was so much Shelby could learn from these people. She could study liberty work with ponies and train in classical dressage like those ladies on the black horses. She could do trick riding, just like the girl. They would be great friends, a dynamic duo – friendly rivals, pushing each other to achieve more and more daring tricks.

Shelby remembered how she'd slid out of the saddle a few days before on the trail. She already had a talent for it. And she could bring Blue as well. He was so quiet and easy. He was sure to be calm and reliable in front of a crowd. They might even pay her. It was perfect!

Her eyes drifted past the girl. On the other side of the arena there was a trail bike leaning on its stand and, sitting cross-legged in front of it, in his bike-riding leathers, was Chad. Her heart beat faster for a second and then she frowned.

Chad had asked her to go with him to see the circus. It was almost, but not quite, a date. He was supposed to ring her. She had been dreading that call. All night she'd waited. She'd frozen the few times that the phone rang, but then when it was someone else she was disappointed.

It seems he got over his shyness after all!
she thought, and then she felt guilty. After all, she hadn't waited for him to call before coming here either.

When Shelby looked again the girl was back on the quarter horse, crouching like a jockey. She urged the horse into a canter. This time she stood, turning her palms up and smiling just as the older man had.

Chad clapped and put his fingers in his mouth for an ear-piercing whistle. 'You're the best!' he called out.

Shelby reddened, angry at Chad for saying he would ring her when he didn't intend to. She also felt silly for telling everyone about the hot chips. Now if anyone talked about it she would be embarrassed.

She looked away from Chad to a row of four ramshackle stables that faced the house. They were old but sturdy, made of corrugated iron with timber half doors.

Three white faces poked out of the stable doors. Shelby wondered if they were Lipizzans – the original Spanish dancing horses. She'd only ever seen them on television and in pictures, but she knew they were elegant, athletic and took years to train.

While she watched, absorbed in her thoughts, a fourth horse head emerged from within the stable to watch what was happening outside. This one was a dark face. Shelby recognised it immediately.

It was Diablo.