Puzzle: The Runaway Pony (4 page)

Chapter Five

IT was the pony’s appearance that made him look wild, rather than anything he was doing. That and the fact that Pixie was staring at him as if he was some kind of demon from the dark side. He was covered in a thick layer of caked-on mud, his mane and tail matted with it, and his cobby face was pinched. His eyes had a look of desperation in their dark depths, asking for help almost as clearly as if he’d spoken to the girls. His fluffy ears were out sideways and he was wearing a muddied blue headcollar with clogged-up holes, which looked like it had been there for a while.

As the pony looked over at the girls he didn’t panic and run away, but stepped closer to Pixie, uncertainly. Pixie shrank away from him, looking
paler than before. The pony reached his nose out to her, but Pixie squealed and moved quickly out of the way.

Rosie looked from the pony to Pixie. “I don’t believe it! Is that Phantom?” she asked, disappointed that their case might be solved before they’d even had a chance to look for a single clue.

“No!” Pixie squealed. “I’ve never seen this pony before!”

“Are you sure?” Alice asked, as she stepped past Pixie and took hold of the pony’s headcollar. “It’s hard to tell what he looks like under all this mud.”

“I’m sure,” Pixie insisted.

“How weird’s that, then,” Charlie said, confused. “Phantom goes missing one day, and a pony turns up out of nowhere the next.”

“I don’t recognise him. Do any of you?” Alice said.

The others shook their heads.

“What are we going to do with him?” Mia
asked as Alice blew into his large nostrils gently before running her hand down his neck. The pony turned and rubbed his head on her, almost knocking her over.

“We’ll have to see if we can find out who he belongs to,” Charlie said.

“I know – why don’t we ask Daisy,” Rosie suggested. “If she’s helping out at Fran Hope’s rescue centre she might have information about missing ponies, that kind of thing.”

“Good idea,” Alice agreed. “I’ll call her.” As Alice pulled out her phone the runaway pony frisked her pocket for treats, his little eyebrows raised. Suddenly a large rumbling echoed in him.

“But first,” Rosie added, “we’d better get him something to eat.”

“And we can’t just leave him out here and hope he finds his way back home,” Mia said, unable to stop herself from smiling, “so we’ll have to get the spare stable sorted!”

“What, you’re just going to put him in one of
your stables?” Pixie asked incredulously. “I mean, won’t you get into trouble for doing that? Don’t you have to ask someone?”

“This isn’t Compton Manor,” Rosie joked. “I doubt Mum will even notice – she’s normally in a world of her own, but she’d approve anyway. She’d never want to see an animal without a home in this weather.”

Pixie’s face suddenly fell.

“Don’t worry, though,” Mia said, as Rosie went pink, realising what she’d said. “It won’t get in the way of us trying to find Phantom, too.”

Pixie wiped her light brown hair off her face, nodding.

“Although it’s obvious you’re going to be pretty busy now, so, you know, don’t worry too much. Anyway, I’d better get going,” she said, dodging past the pony hastily. She grabbed her bike from where it had been leaning against a nearby bush, jumped on and began to pedal down the lane.

“Don’t forget the photo tomorrow!” Charlie called out while Alice led the pony into the yard.

“If she comes back at all,” Rosie said under her breath, wondering whether they’d seen the last of Pixie, who didn’t really seem to want to be there in the first place.

Mia found a spare lead rope and clipped it to the runaway pony’s headcollar.

“I wonder where he’s come from?” Alice asked.

“Well, wherever it is, he wasn’t looked after very well there,” Mia concluded disapprovingly as she patted his neck.

“Hmm, maybe, but look.” Charlie bent down and picked up one of his front hooves, wiping it with her hand. “His feet aren’t overgrown and his shoes don’t look that old, so he can’t have been left alone for too long, thankfully.”

He stood and looked round at the other ponies as they pressed against the front doors of their stables, curious about the newcomer. Then he watched the girls’ every move, his eyebrows
still up, as they rushed round sorting out his bedding, hay and water. Alice called Daisy and explained what had happened.

“We get notices and pictures about missing ponies sent in all the time,” Daisy told Alice, sounding excited. “I’ll come over now. I might recognise him!”

Alice put her phone away, then suddenly noticed some blood coming through the mud on the pony’s near hind leg. He looked round to watch while Mia quickly checked it.

“I don’t think it’s too bad,” she announced, standing up. “We just need to wash his leg so we can get a better look.”

She tied the pony up in the yard outside the spare stable, and while Rosie hosed his leg, Mia offered him a drink. He dipped his muzzle into the water, sloshed it around, then drank deeply before Mia took the bucket away. She didn’t want him to have too much all at once in case it gave him colic. Once the bucket was gone, he instantly
turned his attention to the bulging haynet that Charlie and Alice had hung for him. The pony tore great mouthfuls from it, gulping it hungrily as if he hadn’t eaten properly for ages. Finally, his little eyebrows relaxed and his eyes softened, the desperation starting to leave them.

The girls set about grooming him, tackling the dry mud and leaving the wet stuff, trying to comb through the mud matting his mane and tail. The pony stood quietly resting his back leg. He looked around with his dark eyes as he munched his hay, huge trails of it hanging from his lips as his teeth ground rhythmically. By the time Daisy arrived a blue roan pony with white patches had emerged from under the mud. He had feathers, and cobby legs and hooves, and a large, honest head with a white face.

Daisy rushed into the yard, beaming.

“Isn’t he adorable!” she breathed. He turned to look at her, leaving his hay for a second so that he could frisk her pocket for treats. When he
realised she hadn’t got any, he turned his attention back to the haynet. Then she saw his back leg, which Rosie had hosed clean. She bent down next to it to inspect the wound. The pony flinched slightly.

“It’s only a surface scrape luckily – nothing serious,” Daisy announced. “It needs an antiseptic rinse, then some purple spray, I’d say.”

The others exchanged surprised glances. Daisy looked and sounded so confident. Mia ran to the tack room to fetch the first-aid kit and handed it to Daisy. Daisy sorted through the kit, then rinsed the cut out with some antiseptic. She dried the leg gently and put some purple antiseptic spray on it.

Charlie untied the patient and led him into his freshly laid stable. Daisy took off his headcollar and checked underneath. There were a couple of raw spots where it had rubbed, so she put some wound powder on them.

“What about a feed?” Rosie asked, bringing
over some more hay to refill his net. “He obviously needs one.”

“Just hay for the moment,” Daisy recommended as the pony pulled at Rosie’s armful while she tried to shove it in his haynet.

Daisy stood for a moment, patting the pony. She bit her lip. “I don’t recognise him from the posters up at Hope Farm,” she finally said, “but I’ll ring Fran when I get back, in case an owner turns up between now and when I go there next Saturday. I’ll let you know what she says. Anyway, I’d better get home to see to Rolo. Is it okay if I pop back, though, to check on the pony?”

“Of course!”Alice smiled. “And thanks for your help, Daisy.”

Daisy smiled. “No probs!” Then she hurried across the yard, grabbing her bike on the way out.

Mia turned to a new page in her notebook and wrote down ‘Runaway Pony’ with a big question mark. She jotted down his colour (patchy blue roan), his height (about 14.2 hands high)
and that he was a gelding. Charlie aged him roughly and Mia wrote that down too (around sixteen years).

“We don’t really have a clue about him,” she sighed. “We’ve no idea if anyone’s looking for him, or if his gate was left open by mistake – nothing.”

“He could even have been stolen, then dumped,” Rosie suggested.

“Or maybe he escaped his field because there wasn’t much grass,” Charlie suggested, “or water. That might be why he’s so hungry, and it could explain the cut on his leg.”

“Good point,” Mia said, a making note of all the possibilities.

“But if Daisy doesn’t find any information at Hope Farm,” Rosie said, “where will we start?”

“Right now,” Mia said, “I don’t really know.”

“Poor pony,” Alice sighed. “He could have been wandering about in all that rain for days.”

“We’ll have to think of a name for him,”
Charlie said. “We can’t just call him ‘poor pony’ all the time.”

“How about Puzzle?” Rosie cried out. “Because right now he is one!”

“Perfect!” Mia said, wishing she’d come up with it.

“Now we just have to solve the puzzle,” Charlie said. Suddenly the Pony Detectives had two new cases – the runaway pony and Phantom. Charlie patted Puzzle and smiled. From now on they’d be so busy that she wouldn’t have a second spare to worry about Pirate’s future.

Chapter Six

CHARLIE and Alice normally cycled together to Blackberry Farm before school, while Mia got dropped off by her dad. But on Monday morning Mia persuaded her dad to take a detour so that he could give them all a lift. They’d wanted to get there extra early so they could check on their new arrival after his first night. Rosie had texted them all evening with updates, but they couldn’t wait to see him for themselves.

Before they got into their usual, hurried,
pre-school
routine of feeding, watering and refilling haynets along with skipping out the worst of the droppings, they’d rushed to Puzzle’s stable. He stood looking over his stable door brightly and contentedly, loving all the fuss that followed.
After promising him they’d return as quickly as possible, and Mr Honeycott saying he’d keep a close eye on him while they were at school, they’d sprinted off, with hay on their coats and covered in horse hair, to catch the school bus.

They spent their lunch hour poring over a map of local bridleways.

“This is the first time we’ve ever had two cases to handle at the same time, and we need to decide which one’s our priority,” Mia said as she bit into her apple. “I think it ought to be Phantom. I know we need to try and find Puzzle’s owner, but at least he’s safe and warm at the moment. Phantom, on the other hand, may not be. He’s got a rug, I know, but he’s thin-blooded and he may not have food or water. So we have to try and find him first. Does everyone agree?”

The others nodded.

“Mum and Dad are going to call the local police too,” Rosie added, “to see if they’ve had any reports of stolen ponies who match Puzzle’s description.”

“Good,” Mia continued, drawing a big purple circle on the map. “So now we can concentrate on Phantom. What we need to do is look in the areas near Compton Manor. We should make a list of the stables around there and then divide the area so we visit a few each evening. He’s likely to have headed towards a yard, I’m guessing.”

“Like Puzzle,” Rosie agreed.

“Exactly, so that’s where we should start our search over the next few evenings, before it gets too dark after school,” Mia continued. “And for Puzzle, I think we should ride round this weekend to see if we can find any signs of a pony escaping from a field, or owners who are out looking for a lost pony.”

“And what happens if we do find a likely field?” Charlie asked, happy that the next few days were looking seriously busy. “There might be loads of possible matches. And the owner’s not going to be just hanging about there, are they?”

“Aha! I thought of that,” Mia said, starting to
write out a note in her best handwriting. “I’ll get Dad to photocopy this, then we can put up signs.”

“I can ask Mum to put one up in the local post office, too,” Rosie offered. “Hopefully someone will see it and recognise him.”

They all agreed to put Blackberry Farm’s phone number at the end of the note, then Mia slid it into a clear plastic folder, ready to photocopy and take with them on the rides when they went hunting for clues to Puzzle’s background.

Later that afternoon the Pony Detectives rushed out of the school gates as soon as the home
bell rang. After the school bus dropped them off they raced straight to the stables, bursting to see how their new pony was settling in since they’d left him that morning.

Puzzle bobbed his head out, ears pricked, as the girls ran into the yard. He stood happily as they fussed around him. He already looked ten times less sorry for himself than he did the day before – he wasn’t cold or miserable and frightened any more, but seemed relaxed and happy, and he fitted in so well that it felt as if he’d been there forever.

As they patted him they heard another set of footsteps hurrying across the yard. They thought at first that it might be Pixie, but it was Daisy, making a beeline for Puzzle’s stable.

“I’ve come to check on the patient,” she beamed, armed with a bagful of chopped-up carrots and apples.

The others pulled on their riding clothes and their hi-vis jackets and jodhpur boots.
“We’re going to start our search for Pixie’s horse, Phantom, over by Compton Manor,” Charlie told her. “Are you okay to stay here with Puzzle so he doesn’t get upset when the ponies leave?”

“Definitely,” Daisy replied, looking enthusiastic about having a pony to look after again. “I’ll give him a groom and sort out his stable while you’re gone. Oh, and I called Hope Farm last night to see if anyone’s reported a pony like Puzzle missing, but nothing so far.”

While they were starting to get the other ponies ready and tacked up, Pixie wandered shyly into the yard. She went to a different school from the Pony Detectives and was still in her uniform, but she had a huge, floppy jumper on over it. Her hair was loose apart from two plaits at the front which were pulled back and tied behind her head. She smiled nervously as Alice told her they were heading out to start their search for Phantom.

“I’ve brought a picture,” she said, keeping her distance as Alice led Scout out of his stable.
Alice looked at the grainy, slightly out-of-focus photo. It had been taken at Compton Manor and showed a stunning black horse, with Pixie holding on to the end of his lead rope. The horse was turning away from the camera but he towered above Pixie and she looked anxious. Although the picture wasn’t great, it was clear that the horse was top quality.

“He’s gorgeous!” Alice said admiringly, tightening Scout’s girth and pulling down the stirrup irons with a leathery slap.

Pixie nodded. “I guess.”

“Must have been expensive!” Mia commented as she led Wish over to them and Alice handed her the picture. Pixie blushed slightly and said quietly that he was. Rosie whistled as the photo was passed to her. Mia took the photo back and studied it hard.

“Funny, he looks a bit like a horse at the yard I bought Wish from – Clover Hill Stables,” she said. “Did you get him from there?”

Pixie looked surprised. “Oh, I… I’m not sure. He was a present, so…”

She edged away from the ponies, looking scared as Pirate pulled at his bit, unable to stand still. She twiddled her hair.

“How’s the runaway pony by the way?”

“Puzzle?” Charlie replied. “Oh, he’s doing really well.”

“You can go and see him if you’d like,” Alice said, wondering what Pixie was so frightened of, considering that she had her own horse. “He’s in that end stable with the vet.”

Pixie opened her eyes wide.

“Not a real one,” Rosie added.

“Not yet, anyway,” Daisy said, leaning over the stable, smiling. “I could do with a hand checking this cut if you’ve got a mo.”

Pixie looked unsure.

“I can’t stay long,” she said.

“It won’t take long,” Daisy replied decisively, not taking no for an answer. Pixie reluctantly
agreed, dropping her bag outside the stable and opening the door slowly.

The other four walked their ponies out of the yard into the dampness, their hooves scrunching on the stony mud. They headed for the first area Mia had marked on the map, covering a big distance as they rode round to three yards which were all some way from each other.

But after trotting round for ages all they discovered was that no one had seen a black thoroughbred with a purple rug wandering loose. Mia gave each yard her number, just in case they did find him, and everyone they met promised to keep a lookout.

“Still, it’s only the start of our search,” Mia said, trying not to feel disheartened.

They couldn’t stay out too long because the dusky evening was turning darker by the minute. After hurrying back to Blackberry Farm they found Daisy still chattering away to Puzzle, who’d been thoroughly groomed. She said that Pixie had
gone not long after they’d set out on the ride.

“I wonder why she rushed off?” Alice asked.

“Or why she didn’t want to wait and see if we had any news of Phantom.” Charlie added.

“Maybe she’ll turn into a pumpkin if she stays out too late?” Rosie suggested. Pumpkin, the ginger yard cat, came running out of the tack room, hearing his name mentioned. She picked him up and hugged him. “I wasn’t talking about you, silly.”

It was the same pattern over the next few evenings, with the four Pony Detectives riding round in the dusky half-light searching for Phantom while Daisy looked after Puzzle. Although they hadn’t suggested it, and she didn’t bring any new information about Phantom with her, Pixie turned up every night, too. She crept in quietly, interested in how Puzzle was getting on. She never once asked how the search was going, but she stayed a little longer each time, helping Daisy and gradually doing more and more of the grooming and feeding. Then she’d disappear into
the damp dusk on her bike before the others got back.

By Friday the four girls were feeling decidedly less optimistic about finding the black horse when they hacked out after school. The weather was still fairly grim, but they kept going, spurred on by knowing how thin-coated Phantom was, rug or no rug. They only had a few stables to check in the final area of their search.

The first two yards weren’t far from Compton Manor, set on the edge of the trees not far off the lane. But for the last one, they had to head into the heart of the woods. Mia had purposely left it till the end, hoping that they’d have found Phantom before they reached it because it took them into the area near to the Old Forge. After the way Wish had reacted last time, Mia didn’t want to go anywhere near it.

The yard was tiny, with only a handful of stables filled with older, retired racehorses. To get to it they had to ride through the woodland along
the narrow paths that criss-crossed the one Charlie had led them down by mistake. They found a small dirt track that cut through the trees and followed it. The branches overhead creaked in the wind, making Alice tense. Scout started to spook at things hidden in the gloom that Alice couldn’t even see. That set off Pirate, who scooted into Wish. Mia, already on the lookout for scary goings-on, squeaked while Rosie and Dancer just goggled at everything and anything.

By the time the Pony Detectives stepped up to the yard gate, thinking that they’d never want to stable their ponies in such a remote spot, they were all frazzled. But there were no sightings to report from there either.

“The horses have been a bit more unsettled in the last week, though,” the yard owner said, “almost like they’re hearing things that I can’t – you know what horses are like, standing there with their ears pricked, looking into the dark. I’m sure they do it to scare me most of the time.”

The owner laughed, but her suggestion of an unseen presence near the Old Forge didn’t make the girls feel any less spooked. As they walked their ponies back onto the dirt track, Alice saw Scout’s ears suddenly flicker and he grew taller, snorting and backing into the others.

“Careful,” Rosie squeaked as Dancer was shoved and almost tripped.

A light appeared out of nowhere, bobbing along one of the narrow paths which cut across the one they were on.

“Someone’s up there,” Alice whispered urgently to the others, her hands shaking. They all stopped dead.

“Or some
thing
!” Rosie breathed. “Coming from the direction of the Old Forge! Quick… we need to go!”

She tried to turn Dancer, who stubbornly refused to budge, her eyes out on stalks watching the light.

“Hang on,” Charlie said, squinting into the
semi darkness through the overhanging branches, “I think it’s just a bike headlamp.”

The next second, Charlie was proved right as the bike hurtled towards them and Alice called out in surprise. “Pixie!”

Pixie looked up from under her huge, flapping hood and almost fell off her bike as she skidded to a rapid halt.

“You made me jump!” she cried.

“What are
you
doing here?” Rosie asked incredulously as Dancer took the opportunity to grab a mouthful of leaves from a nearby
low-hanging
branch.

Pixie opened her mouth for a second, then closed it.

“Well, it’s kind of obvious, Rosie,” Charlie said, looking at Rosie as if she was mad.

Pixie looked between them. “Er, it is..?”

“Looking for Phantom, same as us, right?” Charlie said.

“Right,” Pixie said, glancing down. “I wanted
to keep searching myself, too.”

“Well, we’ve checked all the yards around Compton Manor,” Mia told her, pulling out her map and list to show Pixie. Pixie looked as if she was holding her breath.

“But so far, nothing,” Alice sighed. Pixie breathed out.

“Have you got any other ideas where Phantom might have headed?” Mia asked.

“Not really,” Pixie said, frowning. “I mean, he could have galloped miles away by now. We’re probably wasting our time looking here. There’s nothing around.”

“Just the ghost-filled, spookified and haunted ruin of the Old Forge,” Rosie whispered. Charlie thwacked her with a stick, trying to smile but still feeling the shivers go up her neck.