Dora at Follyfoot Read online

  The usually peaceful scene was broken up into movement. In the largest field, Barney was chasing round without a halter, nipping and kicking at the other horses.

  Dora hurried home, dumped the shopping bags in the kitchen, and tried for more than an hour to catch the bay pony.

  The field was too big and the grass was too sweet, and Barney did not want to go back to work. He was not afraid of Dora any more, but he teased her, letting her come near with the rope, even letting her slide the end halfway up his neck, then jerking away and galloping off, bucking and kicking like a prairie horse.

  Hopeless. Dora sat down on a tree stump and gloomily tied knots in the rope. After a while, something bumped her hunched shoulders. It was Barney. He kept his head down and let her put the rope round his neck and lead him back to the stable.

  Steve was shovelling gravel from the cart into a muddy gateway. Dora had to pass him. She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything.

  ‘Took you two hours to catch him.’ Steve said it for her. ‘Well, he’s got to go out, same as the others. No one gets special treatment.’

  That was a lie. All the horses got special treatment, according to their needs and natures.

  But Dora said, sick of the row, hating the stupid barrier of stubborn pride that had grown up between them, ‘I found out how to catch him. Turn my back. Ignore him.’

  ‘You’re very good at that, aren’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Ignoring people.’

  He drove his shovel into the gravel and threw it with a rattle and clatter that made Barney jump and pull Dora away.

  The row was still on.

  It was still stupidly smouldering when Bernard Fox strode into the Farm the next morning, bathed and shaved and laundered and pressed, looking all about him with the bright, critical air of a Lord of creation.

  He had come to check on Ron Stryker.

  There was a nip in the air today, and Ron had gone back into the tent-like garment which had once been a military greatcoat, years and years ago. The cloth was worn and torn. The ripped pockets flapped like spaniel ears. The buttons were gone and the coat hung open, the trailing bottom edge raking up a line of dust and hay seeds as Ron moved slowly about his work.

  From the back, it was hard to see exactly what was moving. Bernard Fox had to ask. Dora looked at Steve, who turned away and whistled. He would not help her out.

  ‘That? Oh – it’s Ronald Stryker,’ she said. ‘The new stable-hand I told you about.’

  Ron turned his head at the enchanting sound of his own name. A cigarette hung on his bottom lip. His red hair was held down by a piece of baling twine.

  ‘How do?’ He set down what he was carrying and came up with what he fancied was a winning smile. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘And I you,’ said Bernard Fox, whose manners were as polished as his boots. ‘I’m keeping an eye on things here for the Colonel. He is expecting my advice about employing you permanently.’

  ‘No, he ain’t,’ said Ron cheerfully. ‘Dora’s already wrote and got the reply, “Good old Ron Stryker, best news I’ve heard for months.”’

  ‘In those very words?’

  ‘Well, in the Colonel’s words. Set him up no end.’

  This was a slap in the eye for Bernard Fox, and put him in the mood to find fault with everything.

  Ron’s coat went first.

  ‘It’s nippy today.’ He clutched it round him. ‘I suffer with me chest.’

  ‘A little hard work will soon warm you up.’ Bernard Fox rubbed his hands, and started on Slugger. The old man was scouring out buckets with hot water and soda, wearing an apron made out of a bran sack.

  ‘Looks like hell,’ Bernard Fox said. ‘What if visitors came in and saw you like that?’

  ‘We run this place for the horses, not the visitors,’ Slugger muttered. But Bernard went on, ‘Haven’t you got overalls?’

  There were a couple of brown work coats in the tack room which nobody ever bothered to wear. Slugger was forced into one of them, too big for him, too long in the sleeves. He went on scouring and rinsing, getting himself much wetter than when he was wearing his comfortable sack.

  Bernard Fox had the morning to spare, alas, and stayed ‘to give a hand’. He found the work of the Farm grossly disorganised, and sketched out a timetable and rota of duties, which he tacked up in the feed shed. He did not exactly hammer in the tacks himself. He supervised Steve hammering.

  He supervised the horses coming in from the top field. The Follyfoot way was to open the stable doors, put the feed in the mangers, open the gate of the field and let each horse walk into its own box. They never went wrong. It was a splendid sight to see them come into the yard as a herd, and split up, each with his mind set on his own manger. But Bernard Fox nearly had a fit when he saw this beautiful routine.

  ‘Each horse must be led in and out separately. You can’t have them charging about like the Calgary Stampede!’

  Anything less like a stampede than the orderly disappearance of hindquarters into doorways would be hard to imagine.

  Callie got into trouble for mounting Hero by her patent method of standing astride his neck when his head was down to grass, and sliding down on to his back as he lifted his head. When Bernard Fox objected, she dismounted by her other patent method of sliding down over his tail.

  ‘You are the child who is supposed to be breaking the colt?’ Bernard’s marmalade moustache was stiff with disapproval.

  It stiffened again when he heard about Barney. ‘The Colonel has often told me this farm is only for horses in need.’

  ‘He is in need.’ Dora’s heart sank. Steve was listening. Now he would side with Bernard Fox and Barney would get thrown out. ‘He’s in need of retraining. Barney’s a good pony, but he’s been terribly messed up.’

  ‘That’s not your job, even if you were qualified.’ Bernard Fox did not like to be argued with. ‘He should go to a professional.’

  ‘We can’t afford it. Anyway, he needs love too.’

  ‘You talk like a stupid girl.’

  ‘I am a stupid girl,’ Dora said desperately, hanging on to Barney’s halter as if it were her only support.

  ‘And a rude one too,’ Bernard Fox said curtly. ‘I’d never employ you, and I wonder the Colonel does. Phyllis Weatherby told me a lot of things about you. I’ve given you every chance, but now I see that it’s my duty to write to the Colonel and tell him what’s going on.’

  ‘Oh, please—’ Dora could hardly speak, but suddenly Steve was there between her and Bernard Fox.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Leave her alone. Dora’s all right. She’s the best worker we’ve got.’

  He was so aggressive that Bernard’s boots stepped two paces back. ‘We’ll see. I’m keeping an eye on all of you, and don’t forget it.’ He jerked his head at Barney. ‘What are you going to do about that pony?’

  ‘Keep it,’ Steve said. ‘Dora’s right. He does need us. There’s more than one way of saving a horse. A good one is happier working properly. And Barney will be.’

  As soon as Bernard Fox had driven away in his car with the silver thoroughbred on the radiator, they undid all his reforms.

  Slugger took off the brown overall and threw it behind the rain barrel. Steve tore down the rota sheet, crumpled it up and threw it at a cat. Callie mounted Hero by sliding down his neck. Ron shrugged himself into his greatcoat again, although the sun was out in warmth. They opened the doors of the horses that had been fed and let them stampede out to graze.

  ‘Yuh-hoo!’ Ron gave a cowboy yell as they clattered round the barn and down the grassy track between the fences, stiff old legs stretching gladly, heads forward, snorting, tails up like ancient parodies of colts.

  Dora and Steve watched them go.

  ‘Thanks,’ Dora said, ‘for saving my neck. And Barney’s.’

  Steve hedged. ‘I’m not going to let that Fox come in here and muck us about.’

  ‘But th
anks.’ They smiled. The row was over.

  Chapter 12

  WHEN DORA GAINED Barney’s trust enough to start jumping him, she saw what he really was. He jumped wide and clean, judging his strides to the take off, and cantered on with his eyes and ears on the next jump.

  He was a good pony hunter, a bit slow, but a miniature horse without any pony habits. He was still nervous of new fences, but when he knew them, and knew that Dora would not jerk his mouth, he obviously enjoyed jumping. Callie’s summer holidays had started at last. She and Dora made a small course of jumps round the outside of the field – gorse stuffed between two fallen logs, sheep hurdles, a couple of old doors for a wall, dead branches piled wide for a spread jump – and schooled him round it with great joy. Not since the days of the grey horse, David, had they had anything so good to ride.

  And then of course the Bunkers had to ring up.

  They had not bothered to come over and see the pony, but the father rang up after weeks of silence and asked if they had sold Barney for him yet.

  ‘That wasn’t the idea.’ Dora was taken aback. ‘I’m working with him.’

  ‘We’re getting another pony for Jim. His riding teacher, Count Podgorsky, tells us we should, and Nicholson says he’ll get rid of that brute for me. I want you to take him back there right away.’

  ‘Look, Mr Bunker.’ Dora’s brain did not always work fast in emergencies, but now it whirled. ‘Give me a bit longer.’

  ‘Waste of time.’

  ‘He’s shaping into a good pony hunter. You’ll get more money for him.’ That argument had worked when Dora and Steve wanted to stop the Colonel selling the grey horse, David.

  ‘I’m prepared to take a loss.’

  ‘The Nicholsons took the profit,’ Dora said bitterly.

  ‘They’ve been very decent about it. They’re going to find us a top grade pony to make up for our bad luck with this one.’

  ‘Very nice of them.’ The sarcasm was lost on Mr Bunker.

  ‘So you’ll take him over there?’

  ‘Not just yet.’

  ‘I’ll pay you.’

  ‘Oh God, it isn’t that!’ The stupidity of the whole thing made Dora explode. ‘I can’t let the Nicholsons sell Barney to somebody else who hasn’t a clue.’

  ‘What do you mean, somebody else?’

  ‘Somebody. He’s doing so well. Give me a bit longer, please? Come over here, and I’ll show you how he—’

  ‘I’ve no more time to discuss it.’ Mr Bunker had exhausted his capacity for talking about horses. ‘Sometimes I wish we’d never got into this lark.’

  So do I, Dora thought, but she said, ‘Then you’ll leave it to me?’

  ‘Just don’t bother me, girl. I’m a busy man.’

  Dora and Callie had been riding Barney in one of the old junky saddles. When she heard nothing more from Mr Bunker, Dora went to the local tack shop and bought a second-hand saddle on credit.

  ‘What security?’ the saddler asked.

  ‘My wages,’ Dora promised. ‘I’ll pay you something each month.’ When she got home with the saddle on her handlebars, she found Ron Stryker fussing with his motorbike. He was wearing his purple jacket with the fringes and his white-trim cowboy boots. They were too tight, so he walked on his heels with the pointed toes turned up.

  ‘What you got there?’

  ‘Grand piano.’ Dora lifted the saddle from her bicycle. ‘What you got?’

  ‘Three-decker bus.’ Ron spat on the rear-view mirror of the motorbike and polished it with his sleeve. ‘Want to come?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘See my mates.’

  ‘What to do?’

  ‘Oh, hang around. Have some laughs. Nothing much. Mystery tour. Come on.’

  Dora did not like Ron’s mates, but she had nothing to do this afternoon, and she enjoyed riding on the back of the bike with the wind in her face and hair and the speed seeming faster than it was.

  Ron wore his flashy helmet with stars and stripes on the front and a skull and crossbones on the back. Dora wore the crash helmet that Callie’s father used to wear when he rode Wonderboy in steeplechases, before he died.

  The ‘mystery tour’ turned out to be a horse auction on the outskirts of the town in the valley, a sleazy place of broken-down sheds and cattle pens patched with tin and barbed wire.

  ‘I don’t want to stop here.’ Dora had heard about these second-rate auction sales to which no one would send a good horse, and no horse lover would send any horse at all.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Ron. ‘I’ve got a date with one of the boys.’ He got off the bike and propped it on the stand, leaving Dora sitting on the pillion in the steeplechase helmet.

  Some boys stopped and whistled at her half-heartedly, but in shirt and slacks and the helmet, they were not sure if she was a girl or a boy, so they walked on.

  A man in town clothes, who did not look as if he had anything to do with country animals, was leading a skeleton that had once been a horse into a long shed. Dora took off her helmet, shook out her hair, swung her leg off the bike and followed.

  Tied along each side of the shed were twenty or thirty of the most miserable horses Dora had ever seen, even in her experience at Follyfoot. Each bony rump had a Lot number on it, like a parcel. There were no partitions between most of the horses. There didn’t need to be. None of them had the energy or heart to make trouble.

  Dora walked sadly between the skinny hindquarters. The tails seemed to be set unusually low, because the muscle above sloped away.

  ‘Who will buy them?’ Ron was down at the end, talking to a lanky boy with pimples, whom Dora had seen at the Nicholsons’ when the Bunkers were buying the pony.

  ‘Dog food makers, some of ’em.’

  ‘I wish we could take them all back to the Farm.’

  ‘Yeah, you would.’ Although he pretended to be tough and cynical, Ron had worked long enough at the Farm to have more feeling than he admitted. But not in front of his friend.

  ‘Some of them have been good horses. Look at that head. It could even be a thoroughbred.’

  ‘Oh well,’ Ron said, ‘we all come to it.’ He and his friend from the Nicholsons’ turned away, guffawing about something.

  Dora stood at the open end of the shed and watched a man in breeches, gaiters and a bowler hat lead a proper horse out of another building where the better stock was. It was a well-bred chestnut, very attractive to look at. It must have had something wrong with it to be sold here, but the crowd gathered round the sale ring as it came in, and the bidding started.

  Dora was going out to watch, when she had that feeling that someone was looking at her, concentrating on her from behind, almost like a spoken summons. She turned and saw a rangy cream-coloured horse with an ugly freckled muzzle and enormous knees and hocks, his head turned as far as the rope would allow, looking at her.

  ‘Hullo, friend.’ She went back and pushed between him and the next horse to reach his head. It was a big scarred head, fallen in over the pale eyes and nostrils. His tangled white mane flopped on both sides of a heavy neck. The scars on his shoulders showed that he had been driven in a badly-fitting collar.

  Dora found crumbs of sugar in her pocket, worse than nothing, because the horse lipped and licked at her hand, desperate for more.

  ‘I would if I could, old friend.’ She answered the summons the horse’s eyes had sent to her back. ‘Mon ami. Amigo. I’d take you home and call you Amigo.’

  ‘You like that old skin?’ Ron’s lanky pal had come back into the shed. ‘One of ours.’

  ‘The Nicholsons’?’ She had not seen any horse like this at the dealers’ stables.

  ‘He gets bunches in and sells ’em where he can. You can make quite a bit of money, dead or alive. This ugly old hayburner has got a few pulling years left.’

  ‘What will he sell for?’

  ‘About sixty quid. That’s the reserve Nicholson puts on all of them. If he can’t get it here, he’ll get it somewh
ere else.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ In her pocket among the sugar crumbs, Dora did not think she had sixty pence.

  ‘Going to move along then?’ Ron’s friend watched her suspiciously, as if she might nobble the poor old horse, already nobbled by the years, and working for man.

  She patted Amigo on his strong, hard-working shoulder, and went out to the sale ring.

  Chapter 13

  THERE WERE SEVERAL young horses up for sale, unbroken, or still very green. One of the best that came out was a strawberry roan, polo pony type, with an exquisite square-nosed head and a straight, springy action. Among the crowd, Dora spotted the Nicholsons: father, mother and Chip, watching it from the rail, sharp eyed.

  ‘New Forest-Arab cross,’ the auctioneer described it. ‘Rising four, well broke, but green. You’ll never see a likelier one, ladies and gentlemen.’

  ‘Likely to go lame,’ said a grumbly man next to Dora, who had been crabbing about all the horses.

  He was evidently a well-known character here. People laughed, and the auctioneer said, ‘I’d back his legs before yours, Fred.’

  ‘Back ’em to kick,’ Fred grumbled.

  The young roan was very nervous. He threw up his head and stared and snorted. He pulled in circles round the girl who held him. When she lunged him to show how he moved, he put down his head and bucked round the ring, squealing.

  ‘I wouldn’t take a chance on him,’ the grumbly man said, but the bids were going ahead. You could not always see who made them, because they did not call out. They nodded, or raised a finger without raising their hand from the rail, or coughed, or moved their catalogue slightly. When the roan pony was sold, fairly cheap for what he might become, Dora did not know who had bought him, until she saw Mrs Nicholson lead the pony away, jerking his head down hard when he threw it up in fear of her and the crowd. Dora thought of a slave sold at auction to the highest bidder, powerless over his life, his future unknown.

  When she went to get a cup of tea, she found herself standing next to Chip in the line waiting at the greasy snack bar.