Comet and the Champion's Cup

by Stacy Gregg

  Issie stood there for a moment longer but her aunt was firm. “I said goodnight, Isadora.”

  “G’night, Aunty Hess.”

  Upstairs in her room, Issie lay on her bed and stared at the painting of Avignon on her wall above the fireplace. Why was Mystic here? The grey horse wanted to help in some way, but how could he? Even Issie couldn’t help. What Blackthorn Farm really needed was money–and she didn’t have $25,000.

  Chapter 7

  At breakfast the next morning Hester dropped another bombshell.

  “I’ve just had a call from old Bill Stokes who lives down by Preacher’s Cove,” she told the girls. “There’s been an accident. There was a landslide in the cove and Bill has found six of my sheep trapped on a ledge with no way out. He said they’re very distressed, must have been stuck there all night. I told him I’d drive down there with Aidan this morning and winch them up to safety with the horse truck.”

  “This morning?” Issie squeaked. “But, Aunty Hess, it’s the first day of the riding school.”

  “I know it’s leaving you in the lurch,” Hester said, “but I’ve got no choice, Issie. Those poor animals are in a frightful state–it can’t wait.”

  Hester saw the worried looks on the girls’ faces. “You’ve got your lesson plan. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  Issie wasn’t so sure. “George, and Kelly-Anne will be the worst,” she muttered as they walked down the driveway to the stables. “They’re too busy picking fights with each other to listen to us. And Kelly-Anne thinks she knows everything.”

  “You have to treat them just like horses,” Stella insisted. “Don’t show any fear or they’ll pick up on it.”

  “You’re right,” Kate said. “You just have to take control of that lesson, Stella, and show them you’re in charge.”

  “Me?” Stella stared at Kate as if she was crazy. “Not me! I’m not teaching them. You are! You’re the head instructor, Kate–you’re the one with the most experience and everything. Those riders are bound to listen to you.”

  “You’re kidding!” said Kate.

  “Go on!” Stella grinned. “Issie and I will be there right behind you to back you up! Won’t we, Issie?”

  “Yep!” Issie grinned. They were right behind Kate too–hiding behind her and giggling as they made her go first through the stable doors to meet the riders.

  “Right!” Kate said, reluctantly taking command and addressing the eight pupils sitting on the hay bales. The riders were dressed in their jods and boots ready to get started. “Before we even begin to think about getting on our ponies, what do we need to do first?” Eight faces stared blankly back at her.

  “We have to catch them of course!” Kate smiled. “Follow me to the tack room.” She led the eight riders into the tack room. Hung neatly on the walls on named pegs were rows of halters and bridles. “Now who can tell me which one is a halter and which one is a bridle?” Kate asked.

  Trisha and Tina’s hands shot up. “The one with a bit and reins is the bridle. The halter doesn’t have a bit. You use the halter to catch them and tie them up while you’re grooming and stuff,” Trisha said.

  “Very good!” said Kate. “Now can you all please pick up the halter of the horse that you’ll be riding, grab a carrot each out of the feed bins and let’s go catch our ponies.” This proved to be easier said than done.

  “We didn’t have to catch our own ponies at our last riding school,” Lucy said. “They had them all ready for us to ride when we arrived.”

  “I can’t undo the strap!” Sophie groaned, struggling to pull the stiff leather through the buckle.

  Meanwhile, Stella was busy with George, who had managed to put a halter on Diablo, but had somehow got it upside down and couldn’t figure out what he had done wrong.

  “Is anyone else having problems?” Kate asked. She looked over at Kelly-Anne, who had managed to get her halter done up but had the lead rope wrapped tightly around her hand. “Always hold the lead rope at the shank and don’t wrap it around your hand like that!” Kate called out to her. “What you’re doing is dangerous. If Julian bolts on you and the rope tightens, you could end up getting dragged along by your pony or with a broken finger.”

  “I know what I’m doing!” Kelly-Anne snapped back. “Stop being so bossy.” Still, she unwrapped the rope that was twirled around her hand and held it correctly the way Kate had shown her.

  “Has everyone got their halters on?” Kate called out. “Right. Let’s lead them back to the loose boxes.”

  Once they were inside, the riders were all shown how to tie a slip knot to tether the ponies and then Kate led them to the tack room.

  “Your gear should be stacked next to the nameplate of your horse,” Kate explained. “You’ve each got a bucket with your own grooming kit. You should have a hoof pick, a curry comb, a sweat scraper, a sponge, a dandy brush, body brush and a mane comb each. Can you all check your kits?” The riders all dug about in their buckets and tried to identify the various bits of their grooming kit.

  “Your saddles and bridles always go in the same place in the tack room and your racks are name-tagged with your pony’s name,” Kate continued. “There will be a prize each week for the person who keeps their tack and kit the tidiest and cleanest…”

  There was a groan from Kelly-Anne at the idea of cleaning gear. “Are we actually going to do any riding today? You want us to clean the ponies and stuff? It’s like we’re doing your work for you!”

  “Grooming your horse is an important skill you need to learn,” Kate said. “Can anyone tell me why we bother to groom before we ride?”

  “To make our horses look pretty?” Lucy offered.

  “Yes, but what else?” There was silence. “Grooming a horse isn’t just about making them look nice,” Kate said. “It also gives you a chance to check for injuries, to see if your horse has a saddle sore or if there’s a stone stuck in a shoe. Even if you are in a screaming hurry, you should always give your horse a quick groom all over to check that it is OK.”

  “Now,” Kate said, “when I call your name, can you come up please and grab your bucket of brushes and your tack. And remember to carry the saddles with your arms through the gullet the way we showed you.”

  Lucy and Sophie were both struggling to carry their own saddles, so Issie helped them to lug their gear back to the loose boxes.

  “Will you help us put the saddles on too?” Sophie asked. “The thing is, when we ride at the riding school they always have our ponies ready for us.”

  “So you’ve never even groomed a horse before? Or put on a saddle and bridle?” Issie was stunned. “That’s awful. Horses aren’t just furry bicycles that you can park up at the end of the day, you know!” The girls giggled nervously at this.

  “Come on,” Issie smiled at them, “it won’t take you long to learn. I’ll give you a grooming lesson right now.”

  And so Issie showed Sophie and Lucy how to groom their ponies, starting at the head and working back towards the tail, using the body brush on the soft parts of the horse where the saddle went, and the dandy brush to scrub the mud off their ponies’ hocks.

  “I think I’m hurting him!” Sophie wailed as she snagged her mane comb in Pippen’s thick grey mane.

  “He’s fine,” Issie reassured her. “Ponies’ manes really aren’t very sensitive.”

  Lucy, meanwhile, was trying to pick out Molly’s hooves, but kept getting nervous and shrieking every time Molly tried to help by obediently picking up her feet. It took forever for Sophie and Lucy to get Molly and Pippen groomed, and even longer to saddle up.

  “Are you lot ready yet?” Stella stuck her head over the stall door. “It’s almost lunchtime and we haven’t even started riding!”

  Eventually, all eight riders had their ponies tacked up, their helmets on and their stirrups at the right length, and they were riding around the arena.

  “Keep two horse lengths between you and the horse in front of you,” Kate called out as the riders wal
ked around. “And trot on! Rising trot, everyone. Come on, Arthur, keep Glennie moving!”

  “He won’t go!” Kelly-Anne, who was bouncing about in the saddle like a sack of potatoes with wobbly hands, was having trouble getting Julian to trot.

  “Just put your legs, try and keep your hands still and don’t jag him in the mouth. He’ll move forward,” Kate instructed. But Kelly-Anne wasn’t having any of it.

  Kate, Issie and Stella were forced to watch in horror as Kelly-Anne lifted her legs up and away from her pony’s sides and then brought them down again with a bang, giving Julian an almighty boot in the sides and digging her heels hard into his ribcage!

  Julian, not used to being kicked in the tummy, got such a shock that he bolted forward into a frantic canter and Kelly-Anne, who hadn’t been expecting him to move quite so suddenly, let out a squeal as she lost her balance. Julian, realising his rider was in trouble, came to a sudden stop and Kelly-Anne flew forward, out of the saddle and landed smack flat on her bottom in the middle of the arena in front of the entire ride, whereupon she immediately burst into floods of tears.

  “Well, that’s a brilliant start,” Stella muttered to Issie under her breath as Kate rushed forward to help Kelly-Anne up, grabbing Julian’s reins with one hand.

  “Are you OK?” Kate asked as she picked Kelly-Anne up off the ground.

  “I’m fine. He’s a stupid horse. I was just making him go!” Kelly-Anne said defiantly.

  “That’s not how you make a horse go!” said Kate.

  “Well, that’s how I do it,” Kelly-Anne sniffed.

  “I can see that!” said Kate. She turned to Issie and Stella. “I think we’d better run through some basic rules before we even try the rest of them at a canter.”

  “Uh-huh,” Issie nodded.

  “I think I saw a whiteboard and a felt pen in the tack room,” Stella said. “It might help if we write them down!”

  When Stella returned a few moments later with the whiteboard, she had already written a title across the top: The Blackthorn Farm Riding School’s Five Commandments

  “Umm, Stella? Aren’t there supposed to be ten commandments?” Kate asked.

  “They’ll never remember ten!” Stella said. “Five is enough to start with.”

  “OK,” Issie said to the riders. “Can anyone tell me the first rule? What is the most important thing when you are riding?”

  “Ummm, being nice to your pony?” Sophie said.

  “Excellent!” Issie said. “What else?”

  A hand shot up from one of the other riders. “Ummm, don’t kick?” Tina said.

  Pretty soon everyone had their hands up (except for Kelly-Anne, who was still in a sulk about being told off) and in no time at all Stella had written up her list.

  The Blackthorn Farm Riding School’s Five Commandments

  Always treat your pony with kindness. A good rider makes their pony happy.

  Never kick your pony to make him go. A squeeze is enough.

  Never yank on the reins to make him stop. A squeeze is enough too!

  Do not flap your arms and legs. You are a rider, not a chicken.

  A good rider is quiet in the saddle. Keep your heels down, your eyes up and your hands steady.

  The lesson was short and simple that morning. The girls made their pupils clamber around in the saddle doing round-the-world, before swinging their legs to the front and the back to do heel clicks. Then they played the Mounting Game. Stella popped a series of yellow, red and blue feed bins on the ground. The riders had to dismount and pick up an object out of their grooming kits before remounting, trotting up to the bin and throwing the items in one by one. They had to dismount again to get the next piece until their grooming kits were empty and the bins were full. They finished the morning session by making all the riders show them the perfect position in the saddle.

  “You need to think of a straight line from your ear to your elbow to your heel,” Issie said as she adjusted Lucy’s leg so that it was back against the girth. “You must maintain that vertical line at all times.”

  “Can anyone tell me what other straight line you must keep at all times?” Stella asked.

  “Umm, is it the elbow to the bit?” asked Tina.

  “That’s right! Imagine a line straight from the horse’s bit to your elbow–that means your hands are in the right position.”

  “That’s easy,” Kelly-Anne snorted.

  “Yes, but you haven’t actually tried moving yet, have you?” said Stella. “It’s easy to maintain the perfect position when you’re just sitting there, but wait until you start trotting–or cantering!”

  “Yeah, you had the perfect position until you fell off on your bum!” George grinned at Kelly-Anne.

  “George!” Issie cautioned him. “Everyone falls off. Horsey people have a saying: you have to fall off seven times before you are a real rider.”

  “Anyway,” Kate looked at her watch, “I think we’ve all had enough for the morning. It’s lunchtime. Let’s get these ponies untacked.”

  It took almost as long for Lucy and Sophie to unsaddle the horses as it had taken for them to tack up. As Issie helped them, she drilled the girls on their general knowledge.

  “We’ll play Pony Questions,” Issie told them. “Let’s see who can be the first one to give me the right answer. Are you ready?” The girls nodded.

  “What colour is a piebald?”

  “Ohh!” Sophie’s hand shot up. “Black and white!”

  “Excellent! And what is another name for a piebald? The name the Americans use? We should really use it for Diablo because he’s a Quarter Horse…”

  “A paint?” Sophie guessed.

  “That’s right!” said Issie. “Next question then. Who can point to their horse’s fetlock?” Lucy pointed to the bottom of her pony’s leg.

  “Very good, Lucy!”

  The girls loved Pony Questions and were begging Issie for more as they walked back up the road from the stables. When Issie finally arrived in the kitchen she found Aidan valiantly defending the last piece of chicken pie for her.

  “Are the sheep all OK?” asked Issie.

  “They’re fine,” Aidan said. “We got them all up the bank again and then Hester dropped me back here so I could help with lunch. She’s gone to help Bill Stokes fix the fence–the landslide took out a whole section along the Coast Road.”

  Aidan passed her the pie. “George and Arthur both wanted to eat your piece,” he explained. “You’d have been forced to survive on one of Hester’s leftover scones.”

  “Ughh!” Issie took the plate gratefully. “Thanks! I’m so starving. It’s been a tough morning.”

  “Want to sit outside?” Aidan asked. They walked out to the back verandah and sat down on the steps that led to the garden with their lunch plates on their laps.

  “So how are your students?” Aidan wanted to know.

  “They can all ride,” Issie said. “Well, I’m not so sure about Kelly-Anne, but the rest of them can. They don’t know the first thing about ponies though. It’s like they’ve had everything done for them.”

  “You’ll sort them out,” Aidan said. “In three weeks time they’ll all be riding like experts.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Issie groaned. “They’re probably desperate for the weekend to come so that they can go home and get away from us bossing them around!”

  Aidan shifted about uncomfortably and looked down at his feet. “Yeah, I was thinking about that, about the weekend. I know you’ve got lots to do during the week with the riding school and everything, but I was thinking maybe this Saturday, when you’re not working, we could pack a picnic and go for a ride. With the film work drying up I’ve had some spare time to build a cross-country course across the farm. It’s pretty basic, but there are about ten jumps and some of them are quite good. We could ride the horses over a couple of them and then go for a swim at Lake Deepwater…”

  “That sounds cool!” Issie said, “I’ll tell Stella and Kat
e and…”

  “No!” Aidan blurted out. “I meant just the two of us. You know, like on a date.” Aidan looked at her and as his piercing blue eyes locked with her own Issie suddenly felt her heart hammering in her chest, pounding so loud that she barely heard the words that came next.

  “Issie…do you want to go out with me?”

  Chapter 8

  Aidan’s words hung in the air. He had asked her out!

  “Aidan, I, umm…” Issie didn’t know what to say.

  “Never mind,” Aidan said, looking uncomfortable. “I was just thinking that…look, it’s OK. You don’t have to…”

  “No,” Issie said. “I mean, no, I want to. I mean yes. My answer is yes. Yes, Aidan, I’d love to.”

  “Great!” Aidan looked relieved. “Great! I…”

  “Hey, you two!” Stella was suddenly right there behind them with her lunch plate in her hands. “Is this a private conversation or can anyone join in?”

  “Actually…” Issie began, but it was too late as Stella sat down, squeezing herself in between Issie and Aidan.

  “Come on, make a bit of room!”

  “Here, you can have my seat,” Aidan said. “I’d better go anyway. I’ll see you back at the stables in an hour, OK?” Aidan stood up to leave and Stella took his place.

  “So?” Stella said to Issie as they watched him walk off. “How are things with Aidan then?”

  Issie felt herself blushing hot pink. “He just asked me out.”

  “Ohmygod!”

  “We’re going to go on a picnic to the lake on Saturday.”

  “But it’s only Tuesday. That’s ages away!”

  “I know!” Issie groaned. “I wish it was Saturday now. It’s going to feel like forever.”

  “What did he say exactly?” Stella said. “I want to know all the details!”

  “We’re going riding to try out this new cross-country course and go swimming at the lake.”

  “Cool,” Stella said. “I’ll tell Kate. She loves crosscountry. What time are we going?”