Pony Rebellion (15 page)

Drummer was distraught.

“Do you know that Bambi's leaving?” he stared at me in disbelief.

I nodded glumly, thinking how different everything suddenly was. Before our activity ride, if someone had told me that Cat and Bambi were going, I'd have been relieved to learn that I only had to wait until next summer until I could look forward to a Cat-free yard, when she would no longer have the opportunity to mock me and make things unpleasant. But since the ride, well, things had changed. And, of course, Drummer and Bambi were such an item now, and I could only imagine how he must be feeling. It had taken him such a long time to win her around, and now he faced losing her.

“Does Bambi know?” I asked him.

“She told me. She's really upset. She says she used to live with this Pam woman before and didn't like it. She has a stable in her back yard, and a pasture, and there's only room for one pony, so she didn't have any company. She was really lonely, and next summer—next summer—she's going to have to go back there. Alone. Bambi doesn't want to go back. She likes it here with us, with me!”

Sticking his head over his stable door, Drummer stared unseeing across the yard to where Dolly and Tiffany were chatting over their half-doors. “She can't go,” he murmured. “We're a team. We all get along and besides…” He gulped, unable to go on.

I leaned against his shoulder and felt Drum's rough mane against my cheek. “Bambi belongs to Cat's aunt. Being with Cat was only a temporary arrangement,” I explained.

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“I didn't know. It's the big secret no one would tell me, remember?”

Drummer turned his head. “Oh, that. It's just as well we didn't know sooner—I'd have had more time to be miserable.”

I let myself out of the door and walked over to the tack room feeling really down. I hadn't seen Cat since the evening of the extravaganza and tonight was Christmas Eve.
What a Christmas present
, I thought, knowing she only had a matter of months with Bambi. I knew she'd be at the yard soon to make Bambi comfortable for the night. Dusk was falling, and the air all around was cold and still. James was in the tack room, rummaging around in Moth's tack box.

“How's Drummer?” he asked.

I sighed. “There's nothing I can say to console him. How can Cat bear it? I can't imagine how I would feel if Drummer was going to be whisked away from me. It's just awful.”

“You two have never gotten along,” James reminded me.

“So what?” I said. “This is something I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy, and besides, Drum loves Bambi, and I can't bear to see him so upset. If only there was something we could do!” I couldn't believe how different things were now. I was with Cat on this one—it was a total turnaround.

Katy walked in with Bluey's tack and heaved it onto her saddle rack. “What are you two looking so sad about?” she asked.

“Bambi,” we chorused.

“Oh,” Katy said, frowning.

“There has to be something we can do!” I repeated.

“Like what?” Katy asked, throwing her hat into her tack box and shaking her red hair loose from a band. Silence filled the tack room. The air was thick with lack of inspiration. I had to do something for Drummer's sake. I couldn't, I wouldn't, let him down. I felt my hands clenching into fists by my sides and my heart pounding in my chest. “We can't just do nothing,” I said. “We can't just sit back and watch Bambi go. We have to make sure Cat keeps her.”

“How can we?” said Katy.

“I don't know,” I replied, “but I know we have to try. Will you help me?”

“Yes, count me in!” James said firmly.

“Definitely!” Katy said, nodding frantically. “And you know Bean and Dee will help too.”

“OK then,” I said determinedly. “The Keep Bambi Campaign starts right here. We're not going to let her go!”

I lay in the sunshine and racked my brains. At last we had time to think. But then, just as we found some time to give the problem our full attention, yet another diversion arrived. Only today, relaxing in the field, we didn't know just how big a diversion it was going to be.

“Uh-oh, look out, two more lost souls,” remarked Katy, twirling a blade of grass around her mouth and squinting against the sunlight. Lazily, I turned and followed her gaze, frowning as my eyes found their target. It was a man and a woman, standing in the ponies' field, looking around and pointing.

“Go and tell them to clear off,” murmured James rudely. “Honestly, some hikers think they can just walk anywhere—including our ponies' field. And they're ruining my concentration,” he added.

“They don't look much like hikers,” mused Katy. “They're both wearing suits. Who hikes in a suit?”

“Who cares?” mumbled Bean. “Is there any more candy, Pia?”

“Nope, all gone,” I told her, putting the last piece in my mouth and chewing. I refused to be distracted.
How awful we are at inspiration
, I thought, still planless. Total, complete, garbage. Time was ticking away, and we still had nothing. Nada. Zilch. Big, fat zero. Frankly, my head hurt.

“They must be hikers,” sighed James, shielding his eyes against the sun as he looked across the field, “because they're looking at a map.”

“They're freaking Tiffany out,” Bean said huffily.

I looked over to where Tiffany had been grazing with Katy's blue roan gelding Bluey and James's chestnut mare Moth. Bean's palomino mare was doing her best giraffe impersonation, head high, eyes out on stalks, staring at the two strangers in dismay. You'd think they were a couple of yeti, not just an ordinary man and a woman. The trouble with Tiffany is that she's unnerved by anything out of the ordinary. And, I have to say, quite a lot of things in the ordinary too.

“Everything scares Tiffany,” James snorted.

“She's really brave!” Bean protested indignantly.

“What?” asked Katy, bewildered.

“Explain!” I demanded.

“OK, so she is scared of everything, but she still goes past things for me, things your ponies aren't scared of,” Bean said. “It's easy for your ponies, but Tiffany has to face her fears every day. That makes her extra brave.”

“One hundred percent Bean logic,” Katy sighed, lying back down in the grass and gazing up at the sky.

“I wonder how Dee's doing,” I said. She had gone to a show with her pony, Dolly Daydream. I imagined them cantering around the ring looking fabulous, accepting a red rosette, posing for photographers from the horsey press. The type of show Dee entered would have those. Horsey press photographers didn't bother going to shows attended by the likes of Drummer and me.

“Mmmm, I wonder how poor old Mrs. Collins is doing,” said Katy, looking through her red candy wrapper at Bluey. “Oh, wow, Bluey looks fabulous as a strawberry roan. But then, he would,” she added, totally besotted by her pony.

“Yeah, poor Mrs. C.,” agreed Bean.

Mrs. Collins was our ponies' landlady and, as I've mentioned, she lived alone in her house on the yard. Except that she wasn't living there at the moment because only a week ago she'd been carted off to hospital in an ambulance after suffering a heart attack. Sophie, Dee-Dee's mom, was looking after Mrs. Collins's cats and greyhound, Swish, and we were all pitching in, glad to help. Old Mrs. C. was a bit crazy, but everyone was hoping she'd be back soon. I mean, she was OK really, and sometimes, almost sane.

“I think you should tell those two trespassers to go away, James,” said Katy bossily.

“Well, it's strange, but they don't look very lost,” James replied. “They look like they mean to be here. You go and tell them if you're that worried.”

“I'm too comfortable,” Katy snorted, “and you're being such a wimp! Here, Bean.” She waved the candy wrapper in Bean's direction. “See what Tiffany looks like pink.”

“No thanks. I like her all golden and gorgeous. I'll go and tell them,” Bean volunteered, getting to her feet and stretching. Nearby, Drummer and Bambi lifted their heads from grazing, still chewing as they watched Bean walk across the field toward the gate where the two strangers were standing.

I could imagine the conversation: Bean would politely ask them whether they were lost. They would nod their heads and ask where the footpath was. Bean would point to the next field. They would thank her and head for the right path, avoiding the pony poo and climbing through the fence, turning to give Bean a wave of thanks. It happened now and again. I'd given directions to people who had gotten lost on a walk before.

My gaze swung around to Drummer. He really is the most wonderful, fabulous bay pony. OK, he isn't the most polite pony in the world (sometimes he's downright rude), but he has a heart of gold, even if he does hide it successfully. And there was Bambi standing next to him, as close as she could get, her muzzle resting on Drummer's mahogany back. I heard myself sigh. If we didn't come up with some sort of plan soon…

“There must be a way!” Katy said, as though able to hear my thoughts. She said it at least once a day. She'd been saying it at least once a day since Santa's busiest night of the year.

“Yes, there must,” James agreed, exasperated, “but the trouble is, we don't know what it is!”

“Yet!” I said, determined to be positive.

“Let's go through it again…” began Katy. James groaned, and my heart sank too. We didn't need to spell it out again. We knew what we had to do. We just didn't know how to do it.

“There has to be a way!” Katy said again, scratching her head, determined that if she said it enough times, the answer would present itself to her. It hadn't yet. Her red hair was caught back in a band—purple of course. She never seemed to wear any other color. James had once asked her, in mock seriousness, whether she thought she would grow out of purple and graduate to, say, green or blue. Katy had just stared at him as though he was insane.

“Yes, there is a way, Katy,” James said. “We're just waiting for you to tell us what it is. So what is it?”

Katy screwed up her candy wrapper and threw it at James.

“Ahhhh!” screamed James dramatically, his hand flying upward and covering one side of his face. “My eye, my eye!”

For a second, Katy looked appalled, then realizing she'd been tricked, she gave James a shove. “Very funny!” she said. “
Not!
” she added.

Bean hurried back across the field. She looked a lot less relaxed than she had when she'd left us. Something wasn't right. I looked over to the gate. The man and the woman were still there, looking around them and writing something down in a notebook.

“What's up?” asked James, noticing Bean's expression. She flopped down beside us and tore at the grass, her eyebrows knotting together in a frown under her blond bangs. “Weren't they grateful to be shown the right path?”

“They're not hikers,” said Bean, chewing her lip.

“Then why were they looking at a map?” asked Katy.

“It wasn't a map,” gulped Bean.

“Who are they then?” I asked.

“The man said his name was Robert Collins. He said he was Mrs. Collins's son.”

“I didn't know she had any family,” said Katy, sitting up. “She never said.”

We stared at the strangers with renewed interest, fixating on the man, the Robert Collins one, the Mrs. Collins's son one.

“I've never seen him before,” added James.

“Well, that's what he said,” Bean said, shrugging her shoulders. Her voice was all wobbly.

“So what's he doing here? Now?” Katy asked her.

Bean sniffed. James edged closer and put his arm around her shoulders, sparking pangs of jealousy in my heart. I only hoped James would never find out about my unrequited feelings for him.

“What is it, Bean? Why are you so upset? What did they say to you?” he asked gently.

“They said…” began Bean. “Robert Collins said…” She stopped.

I felt my heart skip a beat for a different reason. Whatever had Mrs. Collins's son said to upset Bean so much?

Bean gulped. “He told me that he was selling Laurel Farm for development.” Bean started crying. “The paper was covered in plans for new houses in this very field, and he said that we would all have to find new homes for the ponies!”