Some of the agisters at the stables kept their own feed in their tack rooms, while others paid extra to have their horses fed by the staff.
The feed buckets for these clients had the horses' names on them. It was simply a matter of filling it with the ingredients listed on the board next to the horse's name and then placing the bucket in the trolley ready to take out to the stables.
All around were the sounds of horses – snorting into their bins, cantering in the arena, clip-clopping down the laneway. Shelby could hear the puff-squeak of electric brakes from a truck backing in. She could hear the crackly thumping and scraping of someone moving bags of feed around in their tack room. In the arena Miss Anita's voice was calling out military-style, 'Left, right, left, right.' Somewhere in the next stable block a group of girls laughed.
Shelby was starting to feel silly for the way she had behaved with her friends. Lindsey should have waited, but Shelby doubted that she herself would have, if she'd been the one to arrive first. Was it a big enough deal to go off in a huff and miss out on a whole afternoon of playing with the new pony?
'No,' she muttered out loud, wishing she'd let it go, like Erin had.
Picking up the next bucket, Shelby glanced up at the blackboard and thrust the dipper into the bin of pony pellets.
Lindsey was right too. She had paid for the horse, and they probably would have decided that she should ride first. Now Shelby would have to make up with her, and there would be that little while afterwards that was strained and awkward.
Shelby sighed. 'I'm a duffer.'
The best way to make amends would be to give Lindsey the fifty dollars. Then they would be square. It was just a matter of finding it.
Shelby didn't get pocket money from her parents. She had asked to have it weeks in advance so many times that her parents had lost count and given up. Now they had agreed on the things they would buy for her – like money for the canteen at school, Blue's food and worming paste, getting his feet trimmed, and her pony club fees. For anything above that she had to do extra chores around the house.
What could she tell them she was buying? It seemed as though her parents were paying attention to what she said these days, so she would have to be careful.
With all the feeds made up, Shelby hefted a bale of hay onto the front of the trolley and dragged it out of the shed. She stopped at the first stable, tipped the feed into the bin and dropped a biscuit of hay into the bag hooked on the wall.
For safety, they always put the feeds in the stables before bringing the horses in from the day-paddocks one at a time, and then once they were eating calmly, the two girls put the horses' rugs on. All the horses knew the routine, and that made their behaviour more predictable.
One by one Shelby emptied the buckets into the waiting bins, until she reached the last stable in the row. A woman named Tammy rented this one. She had a stock horse gelding called Ajax that Shelby didn't like very much.
Shelby loved most horses, but she was wary around Ajax. He was kept in a day-paddock on his own because when he was left with other horses he would herd them into the corner and kick them. He also smelt funny – more like a dog than a horse. You could see the whites of his eyes, even when he was resting, and his rump was short and sloping – not round, like an apple – so he always looked tucked up at the back.
Shelby wasn't such a big fan of Tammy either. If she had been a Disney cartoon she would have been drawn all angles and dark shadows.
Tammy only came to the stables once a fortnight. She didn't always ride. She often brought friends with her and she always had some complaint to make. She wanted extra rice hulls for her stable floor. She didn't think the girls were cleaning it properly. She wanted to know exactly what time Ajax's rugs came off in the mornings, and insisted that they took his off last when the weather was cooler.
One time Tammy had written a letter of complaint about Lindsey and Shelby because she overheard them laughing in the feed shed. She had said that the whole place would run more efficiently if the two girls were made to work separately.
'What a witch!' Lindsey had said. 'You know she pulled me up the other day for not hanging her rugs straight? She said they were getting damaged from being scrunched!'
'She's a witch who pays two months in advance,' Mrs Edel had remarked. 'She's not asking for anything we can't do with a little bit of effort.'
'She's only got a horse so she can say that she has one,' Lindsey added under her breath.
Shelby opened the gate and walked though Ajax's yard into the stable, wrinkling her nose. She could smell his faintly doggy aroma. The tack room door at the back of the stable was open a fraction. Shelby moved to close it.
Lying on the tack room floor, in the gloom, crumpled like an autumn leaf, was a fifty-dollar note.
Shelby looked over her shoulder. There was no one around. She stared at the note for a second and then slipped it into her pocket.
I will give it to Mrs Edel, she told herself.
Shelby tipped Ajax's feed into the bin and then, while she pushed the trolley around the corner to the next row, she thought about Tammy's nasty letter. As long as everything was done safely, did it really matter if they laughed while they worked?
She also remembered seeing Ajax kick an appaloosa filly half his size while the filly squealed with fear and pain. It had been awful.
Tammy received special treatment all the time. Shelby didn't know if she paid extra. She doubted it, but even if she did, Shelby and Lindsey were the ones who actually had to do the extra work, and they didn't get anything more for it.
Besides that, who leaves fifty dollars lying around? Tammy must be pretty rich not to have noticed that it was missing.
Maybe I should consider it payment? she thought. A one-off tax – a 'levy', as they'd learned in Commerce at school.
Shelby prised another biscuit from the bale. No, she couldn't do that, but she could borrow it for a while, just until she had figured out another way of getting the money.
She was pretty sure she could remember seeing Tammy at the stables on the weekend just past, so she had two weeks to put it back. Two weeks was ages!
8 Sensible
'How's Lindsey's new horse?' Shelby's mother asked as she climbed into the car. Shelby had finished work for the day. Lindsey and Erin hadn't returned from the back paddock before it was time for Shelby to go. Shelby was glad, because she wasn't sure how they would behave.
'It's OK.'
'Did you have a ride?'
'No.' Shelby wound down the window and rested her feet on the dashboard.
At the bottom of the driveway her mother waited for a break in the traffic. She steered the car onto the road. 'Are you going off horses?'
'No way! I'm still going to be riding horses when I'm eighty.'
'It's just that normally I wouldn't be able to shut you up about a new horse. You went on for a week about that riding pony.'
It was true. The previous month Miss Anita had schooled a beautiful black show pony for a few weeks. While he was there Shelby tried to get through her work quickly so that she could sit on the fence at the edge of the arena and watch Miss Anita work. Afterwards she would offer to hose him off in the wash bay and take him back to his yard. He loved a bath and would poke his nose into the stream of water with his eyes closed.
Shelby had decided that pony was her second favourite horse in the world, after Blue, of course, but now the black pony had shuffled down to third place.
Shelby shrugged. 'There's just nothing to say.'
'Did something happen at the sales that you haven't talked about?'
'What makes you say that?'
'We were so sure that you were going to be upset, and since then you've been quiet. I want you to tell me if you're upset about something. It's bad for you to keep things locked up inside.'
'I'm not upset,' Shelby reassured her.
Her mother glanced at her. There was a long silence while she waited.
Shelby shrugged a
gain. 'You can't tell where they've come from. You have no idea if they've come from a bad home and are going to a good one, or the other way around,' she explained. 'Besides that, it's a completely unnatural place, so of course they're going to be a bit frightened. Also, you only see them for about half an hour. You don't know anything about them. Some of them had cuts and scratches, but you don't know how they got them. They could be mean, like Ajax, and just picked the wrong horse to bully.' Shelby paused, frowning while she thought about it. 'I'm sure I could get upset if I had more information.'
'That's a sensible way to think about it. It's wise to delay distress until you know all the facts.' Her mother smiled.
They stopped at the supermarket on the way home. Shelby helped her mother select the week's groceries. She persuaded her mum to buy tacos. The whole family loved them, although Shelby's brothers generally wore more than they ate.
They played a game where Shelby had to add up each item as they went around, and if she got the total right at the end she was allowed to have a Chupa Chups. She was out by four dollars, but her mum let her have the lollipop anyway.
As she helped her mother load the bags into the boot she noticed that her mother was smiling.
'What?' Shelby asked.
'I was a bit worried when Brenda first offered you the job at the stables. I didn't think you were mature enough. There have been times in the past when you've been impulsive and not thought your actions through, but you seem to have settled down and started making sensible decisions recently. I was wrong. This job has been really good for you.'
'Mm, yeah,' Shelby replied. 'I'm looking forward to those tacos!'
9 Gwen's Pony
The next day at school before the lessons began, Erin ran towards Shelby in the quadrangle, her bag bouncing on her back. Even from a distance Shelby could see her grinning. It seemed as though Shelby's tantrum had been forgotten.
'We're going to give CC to Gwen Stefani,' Erin puffed when she reached her friend.
'What?' Shelby scooted along the bench to give Erin some room.
'If Lindsey's mum sees this horse that doesn't belong to anyone, then we're in all sorts of trouble, so we've decided that we are going to give her to Gwen Stefani. Lindsey came up with the idea. The girl's a genius.'
'What are you talking about?'
Erin sighed, as though she was explaining something obvious to a small child. 'If Lindsey's mum sees CC, she'll want to know who owns it. We can't just say it's yours or mine, because Mrs Edel needs to charge someone for the agistment. When the money is due she'll ring our parents. But if Lindsey goes into the computer files and makes up an account then Mrs Edel can bill any expenses to it. We can pay it off between ourselves. Lindsey can say that the client gave the cash to her, and Mrs Edel won't know the difference.'
Shelby nodded. It was an ingenious plan.
The bell rang for first class and the two girls followed the jostling crowd into the corridors. Shelby had to raise her voice to be heard.
'Won't her mum be suspicious? She knows all the horses.'
'Remember when Lindsey broke her collarbone? She and her mum swapped jobs and Lindsey did all the paperwork for the business. Lindsey said that at the beginning she made heaps of mistakes and it got a bit messy until she figured out how to work the computer program properly. If she backdates the entry to somewhere around then, her mum will think it slipped through in all the confusion.'
'That's a great idea!'
They reached the science lab and filed in behind a group of boys. Shelby picked a desk in the middle of the room and perched on the wooden stool. She took out her books and pencil case from her bag. 'But why Gwen Stefani? Shouldn't we use a plain name?'
Erin giggled. She placed her pens in a row on the desk, selected a bright pink one, and drew a neat margin on the next blank page in her exercise book. 'You know how hopeless I am! If we pick an ordinary name and Mrs Edel asks me about it, I'm sure to forget, and I'll say, "Who's that? I've never heard of them!" and then a few seconds later I'll go, "Oh! I remember," and we'll be busted like custard. But if she says, "Gwen Stefani's horse," we'll all know straight away who she's talking about.'
Mrs Singh hurried into the room with a pile of folders under her arm. All the students hushed.
'That's a good idea.' Shelby whispered. She kept her eyes to the front of the room and murmured to Erin from the side of her mouth. 'Are you sure Mrs Edel doesn't know who Gwen Stefani is?'
'No chance! I had to explain who she was to Lindsey!'
Shelby turned to a new page, creasing it in place with the heel of her hand. 'That sounds about right!'
She remembered the ride home in the truck, and Lindsey singing 'la, la', because she didn't know the words. She could imagine Erin singing Gwen Stefani songs to her and Lindsey shaking her head, mystified. Then Erin probably said, 'You know, super hot female?' and finally Lindsey would have understood.
Erin and Lindsey were so different. If they didn't have horses in common they would never be friends. Thanks heavens for horses! Shelby thought, smiling.
10 Talking Too Much
In the afternoon Erin and Shelby met Lindsey in the feed shed at the stables. 'My mum's got a hair appointment in a little while,' Lindsey told them. 'We can work Bess in the arena.'
Lindsey and Shelby made up the evening meals while they waited for Mrs Edel to leave. Erin sat on an upturned feed bucket. One of the feed-shed cats – a cinnamon-coloured Burmese – sprawled across her lap, belly-up, with its tongue poking out. She stroked its tummy and it purred so loudly Shelby could hear it from the other side of the shed.
'Did you make the file?' Erin asked.
Lindsey nodded. 'This morning when Mum was riding Diablo.'
Mrs Edel had a warmblood stallion. Shelby had been scared of him at first because he was so grand and powerful, but she was getting used to handling him now. She changed his rugs when she worked in the mornings. He was so tall that she had to stand on a crate.
Mrs Edel had asked her to hold Diablo the last time Clint trimmed his feet. Being a barefoot specialist, Clint always took a long time with his measuring tools making sure the angles and proportions were right. Diablo was restless and Shelby had been worried that he might charge straight over the top of her, but Clint taught her how to shake the lead rope to get the big stallion's attention. After that she felt much more confident.
She still didn't know how Lindsey's mum had the courage to actually ride him.
'I was so worried that she would come in and see, but it's all done now. I made up a fake address. Mum usually sends me to the post box with the monthly invoices, so I can always fish out the bills that are for Gwen. And if I miss one then it will be returned to sender anyway. I also put in Erin's mobile number. Her voice mail is an automatic one.'
'Good thinking,' said Shelby. She put her hand in her pocket and felt a small piece of paper there. She drew it out to see what it was. The fifty-dollar note – she had forgotten about it.
Lindsey had seen it, so Shelby handed it across as though that was what she had meant to do all along. 'This is for you.'
'I'll bring mine tomorrow,' Erin promised.
When they combined their efforts they made the feeds up much more quickly – even when they were laughing – and before long they were tipping the buckets into the bins in the stables.
Mrs Edel emerged from her office and crossed the driveway to where the girls were working. 'Going now, love. Here's the phone.'
Lindsey put the cordless phone in the pocket of her sleeveless riding vest.
Hot Potato Page 4