Pony Jumpers 1- First Fence

by Kate Lattey

  I took a deep breath and stepped out into the misty rain. After taking a few steps towards the barn, I realised with relief that it was Deb, not Katy. They were the same height with the same length hair, and the misty rain had obscured any other differences.

  “AJ!” She looked surprised but happy to see me, and I made myself smile back at her. None of this was her fault.

  “Hi. I’m sorry to bother you, but I think I left Squib’s cover here, and he’s going to need it today.”

  “Of course.” She teased up another length of Lucas’ mane, wrapped the small metal comb around it and tugged it out. Lucas stood quietly, his lower lip drooping contentedly. “Do you know where it is?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I’ll get it. Thanks.”

  The cover was exactly where I’d left it, and I lifted it off the hook and folded it over my arm.

  “Thank you,” I called to Deb as I prepared to step back out into the rain, but she stepped off the box next to Lucas and came over to me.

  “Wait up a moment, hon.” Her eyes were kind as she looked at me, seeming concerned. “I don’t know what happened with you and Katy, and she swears she doesn’t know either. But if she’s done something to upset you, you can tell me. God knows she does enough to annoy me, so it’ll hardly make my head spin.”

  I bit my lip. “It’s nothing. I just…” But I couldn’t come up with a reasonable excuse, so I just shrugged.

  Deb seemed to realise that I didn’t want to talk about it. “How’s Squib?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “He’s good. His schooling’s going heaps better, although he still gets really strong in the canter and tries to run away from me sometimes. But the copper roller is definitely helping.” I felt guilty then as I remembered that it still belonged to her. “If you need it back though, let me know,” I said quickly, hoping she wouldn’t. I’d tried to take it off him a couple of days ago and go back to the snaffle, but he’d reverted right back to crazy uncontrollable Squib and I knew that without it, I’d be back at square one in no time.

  Deb shook her head. “You hang onto it for as long as you like,” she insisted. “Honestly, there’s no rush.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for all your help with him. I really appreciate it.”

  “I know,” she said with a smile. “We’ve loved helping you, and we’re always here if you need any advice. Just call, or stop by. Anytime.”

  It was getting harder and harder to leave. I’d thought that I missed being here before, but now that I was standing in their yard, smelling the comforting smells of hay and ponies and the leather and sweat and saddle grease, it was ten times worse.

  I looked across the yard at Anders, sitting so patiently in his car. I needed to go. I couldn’t make my feet move.

  “She wanted to buy Squib. She only made friends with me because she wanted my pony.”

  The words came out before I could stop them, but I felt better once they were said. Deb’s eyebrows shot skyward, and she stared at me for a moment, her brain whirring over the words.

  “Katy said that?”

  I nodded. “To Hayley, at Feilding.”

  “Oh, AJ. I’m sure she didn’t mean it.” I didn’t believe her, and Deb could tell, but she kept trying to convince me. “If it makes you feel any better, I would never have agreed to buy him out from under you. Not unless you wanted to sell him, and I’m sure you don’t.”

  I shook my head, and Deb reached out and gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. “I’ll talk to Katy about it,” she said. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”

  “Don’t do that,” I said quickly. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it does. You’re the best friend she’s had in years, and I hate to see you two fall out over such a silly thing…”

  I opened my mouth to tell her that it wasn’t silly to me when Lucas whinnied, and we both turned to see Katy riding up the driveway on Molly. She looked surprised to see me, and I seized my chance to escape. Clasping the cover tight to my chest, I pulled away from Deb and ran to Anders’ car. He started the engine and Katy moved Molly out of the way as he turned the car around and drove us away.

  “Where are you, Squib?”

  I trudged through the persistent rain, looking for my pony. The cover in my arms was getting heavier by the minute, and my old sneakers soaked up the rain on the ground, making my feet wet. I was right back where I’d started, I realised, going in endless circles without any hope of moving forward.

  A flash of bright pink caught my eye, and I had to smile as I walked towards the ponies. Carrie’s latest acquisition for Oscar was a bright pink cover, and as silly as it looked on him, it certainly made the ponies easy to spot. Squib was in the middle of the huddle, standing under the trees at the bottom of the gully, and he looked up when I called to him.

  I slid down the hill and squelched across the grass towards him, and he watched me come, no longer trying to run away when I approached. He was damp, but the trees had kept the worst of the rain off so far, much to my relief. I threw his cover over him and fastened the straps, then slung my arms around his neck and hugged him. But Squib didn’t much like being hugged, and he raised his head and went into reverse. I let him go, then compromised with a quick kiss on his damp muzzle.

  “You’re the best pony. I’m so lucky to have you,” I told him sincerely.

  At the top of the hill, I looked back at my pony who was now grazing contentedly. At least he was happy. I turned back towards the gate and started walking, then stopped in my tracks and stared in disbelief as Katy came jogging across the paddock towards me.

  I had nowhere to go, so I just stood there and watched her approach, wondering what was going to happen now.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you. We have to talk.”

  “I don’t really want to talk to you.”

  “AJ, come on. I’m sorry. Mum told me what you said, about why you were upset, and you have to know that I didn’t mean it.”

  “You said it,” I reminded her.

  “Yeah, but only because I was talking to Hayley. If I’d told her that I wasn’t interested in Squib, or that I wanted you to train him yourself, then she’d have made fun of me and said stuff about how it was a waste of a good pony. She’s so competitive, she can’t stand it when people don’t go all out to win, all of the time. And after the way she’d been raving on about Tess failing at riding Misty, I didn’t want to go down that route with her. I was just trying to shut her up. I didn’t know you were listening, and I shouldn’t have said it anyway but it just came out. I’m sorry.”

  I considered her words carefully. “So you don’t want to buy Squib?”

  Katy was honest. “If you wanted to sell him to me, I’d snap him up in a heartbeat. He’s amazing. But I’d never try to talk you into selling him if you didn’t want to. In fact, if you said you were selling him tomorrow I’d bust a gut to change your mind. You two are so perfect for each other.”

  She brushed the wet hair out of her eyes, and I realised that the rain was getting heavier.

  “I’ve been training ponies for years,” she continued. “But I’ve never trained another rider before and it’s been so much fun working with you and seeing you improve. Even when you do dumb things like leave the ring before your jump off,” she added with a tentative grin.

  I pretended to glare at her, but I was having trouble staying mad. I’d missed her so much, and the constant teasing was a part of that.

  “Shut up. I only did it once.”

  “I know, and you won’t do it again. You’re a fast learner and a hard worker. That’s why I like you. And it’s been so boring at home without you. I forgot how lonely I got before you started hanging around.”

  “I’ve been pretty bored too,” I admitted.

  Katy looked hopeful. “So you’ll come back and ride with me again?”

  I pretended to consider it for a moment. “Yeah, I guess,” I replied with feigned reluctance,
although inwardly I was doing a joyful dance.

  Katy didn’t hold her emotions back, fist-pumping the air triumphantly. “Yes! And you’ll bring Squib with you, and keep him at ours, and ride with me every day like we planned?”

  “If you’ll still have us,” I said, grinning back at her.

  Katy laughed. “Dude. Just try and leave again. I’m going to train you and Squib up to be one of the best show jumping combinations in the country. Just you wait,” she promised as we started walking back to the gate, linking her arm through mine and squeezing it tight. “Stick with me, and you two are going to be jumping Grand Prix in no time at all!”

  THE END

  PONY JUMPERS

  Follow AJ, Katy and their friends

  as they negotiate the ups and downs of

  life, love and show jumping.

  #1 First Fence

  Coming Soon:

  #2 Double Clear

  #3 Triple Bar

  #4 Four Faults

  Keep reading for a sneak preview of the next book in the series, DOUBLE CLEAR.

  Preview of

  Pony Jumpers #2

  DOUBLE CLEAR

  CHAPTER ONE

  The rain was coming down in sheets, turning the ponies into misty outlines as they grazed in their paddocks, hindquarters to the wind. I pushed the dripping hair out of my eyes and dragged a heavy cover down from its rack in the tack room, then walked back out to where Molly was standing in her stable, finishing her feed.

  She looked up at me as I opened her door, her delicately-curved ears swivelling in my direction. Lifted her bran-coated muzzle from the feed bucket, and watched me approach with the warm rug over my arm.

  “All done?” I asked her, peering into her bucket. “Come on, eat up.”

  A layer of bran still covered the bottom of the bucket, and clumps of pony nuts were pushed into the corners. Molly swished her tail at me and lowered her nose back into the feed, lipping delicately at it. She’d always been a picky eater, but she got worse the more work she was in. By the end of the competition season, I had to leave her with a feed for a couple of hours before she’d finish it up. But it was only October, and the fussiness didn’t usually start this early.

  “Get with the program Mollypop,” I grumbled at her as I threw the heavy cover over her back. She was still growing out her clip and needed a bit of help to stay warm. And I couldn’t afford to let her get cold, especially if she wasn’t going to eat properly.

  Molly lifted her head out of the bucket again and snorted, spraying bits of bran mash onto my face.

  “That’s great, thanks,” I told her as I buckled the front straps and tugged her neck rug into place. “Who needs an oatmeal scrub when I have a pony as disgusting as you?”

  The porch light came on – Mum’s signal to me that dinner was ready and it was time to come inside. I dropped a kiss onto Molly’s nose, and she dribbled more bran onto my neck.

  “You’re my best girl,” I told her. “Finish up your dinner and I’ll let you out once I’ve had mine.”

  Yanking my hoodie up over my head, I turned and ran across the yard, dodging puddles on the way to the house. Critter yapped at me as I kicked the front door open and went inside.

  “There you are,” Mum said, glancing up from the couch. “I thought you’d drowned out there or something.”

  “Funny.” I peeled my wet hoodie off and sat down at the table to unzip my chaps. “Moll’s not eating again.”

  Mum groaned. “That pony, honestly. I knew she was called Double Trouble for a reason.”

  “Hey, be nice. We’re lucky to have her.” That was the understatement of the century, as far as I was concerned, and Mum didn’t argue. I pulled my paddock boots off and threw them into the corner by the door, followed by my soggy chaps. My socks squelched slightly as I crossed the kitchen floor and filled a glass of water from the tap.

  “Dinner’s in the microwave,” Mum told me. “Butter chicken.”

  “I’m not really hungry.” I sat down at the kitchen table and looked at my schoolbag, overflowing with assignments and essays and exemplars. Usually by this time of the year I had all of that under control, needing only a handful of credits to pass my subjects, but I’d been so busy over winter riding the schoolers and breakers that Mum had kept bringing in that I’d fallen behind. Now I was in danger of actually failing a couple of subjects. Not that Mum knew that. Not yet, anyway.

  “You’re as bad as that pony,” Mum grumbled. “Go on, I’ll heat your food while you shower.”

  I peeled my wet socks off and left them under the table. “I’ll shower before bed. I need to get started on this.” I opened my bag and looked critically at the pile of paperwork.

  “Dinner first, Katy.”

  Mum’s voice was insistent, and I knew she wouldn’t shut up until I did as I was told, so I got reluctantly to my feet and went to the microwave. 8:25. When did it get so late? I pressed the buttons to reheat my meal, then looked across the yard towards the stables. The light was still on in Molly’s box, but she was standing at the door, looking plaintively out into the night.

  “Moll’s not going to eat. I’ll go turn her out,” I said, but Mum stood up.

  “I’ll do it. You eat your dinner. Do you have homework to do?”

  And how. “Yeah, a bit.”

  “Get on with it then.” Mum pulled on her gumboots and shouldered herself into her large, smelly oilskin before heading back out into the rain. The microwave beeped as she left, but I already had my schoolwork laid out in front of me, so I ignored it.

  Moments later, the phone rang. I tried to ignore that too, hoping it would go straight to voicemail, but when it rang again only seconds after it stopped, I gave in and picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Have you heard the news?” It was AJ, my best friend, and she sounded upset.

  “What news?”

  “Oh my God. About Samantha Marshall. You know her, right? Because of Molly?”

  “Right.” Sam’s family had bred and still owned Molly. She’d been ridden by Sam’s younger sister Steph from break-in through to the start of her competition career, but although she came from a long and distinguished line of Grand Prix ponies, she’d never jumped very well for Steph, so had been consigned to their broodmare paddock. When repeated attempts to get her in foal had failed, Mum had talked Steph’s mother Kat, an old friend of hers, into letting us lease her. We’d expected that Molly would give me some good mileage at the lower heights, but I’d never had a problem convincing her to jump well, and we’d taken on the Grand Prix circuit after only a few months together. She would never be a completely easy or consistent pony, but we’d won some big classes, and she’d taught me more than any other pony I’d had.

  “What’s happened to Sam?”

  “She fell off on the cross-country at Burghley.”

  “What?” Unlike her sister, who was a show jumper through and through, Sam was a keen three-day event rider. One of the most promising young riders New Zealand had ever seen, and only a few months ago, her top ten finish at Badminton had cemented her spot in the upcoming Olympic squad. “Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know,” AJ admitted. “They’re not saying, but it doesn’t look good. She’s not dead,” she quickly clarified as my blood turned to ice. “But it was a rotational fall. The horse flipped right over on top of her, and they think she’s broken her neck.”

  My heart was pounding. “How do you know this?”

  “It’s all over Facebook, and the news, and everywhere. How do you not?”

  Mum came back inside just then, and I told AJ I had to go, then swiftly broke the news to her.

  “Sam Marshall fell off at Burghley, and they think she’s broken her neck.”

  The words sounded unreal coming out of my mouth, and Mum turned white as I spoke. She grabbed the phone from me and dialled frantically. I knew she would be trying to get hold of Sam’s mum, but I doubted her chances.

  “They’ve p
robably taken the phone off the hook,” I told her, then caught a glimpse of a horse on the TV. We both hurried towards the screen, and I quickly turned the sound back on.

  “…riding an up-and-coming horse called Monkey Trouble for his British owners, and had jumped strongly around the course before the fall at fence eighteen. Earlier in the day, Marshall rode a clear round on her own horse Kingdom Come, one of only three riders to come home within the time allowed.”

  I watched in sick trepidation as the footage showed Sam riding confidently down to a huge solid oxer on a strong bay horse. They looked perfect, the horse cantering strongly, Sam expertly balanced in the saddle. And then the horse tripped, losing his footing at the base of the jump. The footage went into slow motion, and I gasped as Monkey Trouble lifted off and almost made it, until his forelegs hit the massive wooden log, catapulting his huge body through the air. His hind legs came up over his head and he flipped right over, cannoning into the turf. Sam was still in the saddle as several hundred kilos of horseflesh landed on her slender frame, slamming her into the ground beneath him.

  “Marshall is in critical condition in hospital, with suspected neck and spinal fractures. Whether she will make a full recovery is unknown, but experts reviewing the footage consider it to be unlikely. The horse suffered a broken shoulder, and was euthanized at the scene.”

  * * *

  “Have you heard anything?”

  I looked at AJ as she sat down next to me at school the next day, and shook my head. “Nothing. Mum’s been trying, but no luck so far.”

  “What a terrible thing to have happened.”

  “Tragic,” I agreed. “I still can’t believe it.”

  “What if she can’t ever walk again?” AJ said sadly.

  “What if she can’t ever ride?”

  AJ gave me a strange look, and I knew that it sounded weird to consider walking less important than riding, but I couldn’t think of Sam not being on horseback. There are people who look good on a horse, and then there are people who look as though they were born on a horse. People who, when you see them walking around on their own feet, look like just another ordinary person. But when you see them in the saddle, they become confident and self-possessed - like a different person altogether.