Hide & Seek - Alyssa Brugman [31]
The horse had shoes on. Shelby stared, fascinated, at the nails driven up through the hoof wall – at how small the horse's feet were compared to the barefoot horses at the stables. The bit the girl was using was equally strange to Shelby, with long, curved shanks hanging down from either side of the horse's mouth.
'Great day for it,' said Shelby, dragging her eyes away.
Close up she could see why Erin thought the girl was 'foreign'. She had olive skin, thick black hair and dark shapely eyebrows.
The girl nodded, but kept her horse moving along the trail.
'My name is Shelby.'
'Good for you,' the girl said and rode on.
Shelby watched her retreating back, feeling flustered. Normally she would just ride on, or yell out something rude. More likely she would ride on, and then a few minutes later think of the clever thing she could have yelled out – but she was deep undercover. She had to make friends, otherwise she wouldn't find out what she needed to know.
'Are you new around here? I could show you the best trails. What's your name?'
'Narnia,' the girl called over her shoulder.
'Narnia? I've never heard of anyone called that. Like the movie?' asked Shelby.
'No, like Narnia business.'
'That's a good one,' Shelby said with genuine admiration, pushing Blue into a trot to catch up.
'So where are you from, Narnia?'
'No.'
Shelby paused, 'Oh I get it. You're quick! Why are you working so hard not to be friends with me?'
This time it was the girl's turn to pause. 'Because you're one of those Edel people. You don't want to be friends. You're just snooping.'
Shelby didn't try to deny it. She decided to 'high-light' instead. 'I'm friends with Chad. You're Keisha, right? He told me about you. He said we'd get along.'
They came to an intersection on the trail. Keisha stopped her horse and looked down each path. Even on a loose rein the horse held its head vertical. Shelby admired its muscly crest. Everything about it was majestic and strong. Shelby thought if she had a horse like that she wouldn't even care if she rode it. She could just watch it in the paddock all day long.
Shelby pointed. 'That way leads up to the corner shop. There's a lookout, but you can turn off before that and go to the Pony Club grounds. They have jumps and sporting poles, but they lock it away in a shed so people don't steal them.' Shelby blanched, worried Keisha might think she meant that Keisha would steal the equipment. 'They leave out the cavalletti, though, and there's a dressage arena. If you go straight ahead you'll end up at the causeway over the creek. There's a place we call the dippers, where the trail goes up and down through the water, but it's better in summer.'
Keisha frowned, but she didn't say anything.
'If I were you I would go left. After a little way there's a windy hill and it's pretty. You'll see a rock face with a spring coming out of it. The water drips down and there's moss and ferns growing underneath it. There's also a waterfall a bit further along on the other side. You can gallop up the hill and there are some good turns. Watch out for bushwalkers, though. Or if you walk up you usually see a family of choughs.'
'Of what?'
'They're birds. They look like a crow but they're white under their wings. They travel in a big family. Have you seen The Princess Bride?'
Keisha nodded.
'Remember the "shrieking eels"? The choughs have a call kind of like that.'
'Thanks,' Keisha said, turning her horse to the left.
Shelby watched her ride away, thinking that going undercover was harder than she had imagined. Now the whole afternoon stretched out in front of her, and she hadn't learned anything new.
21 Stand Aside
'What should I do, Blue? Do you want to check it out anyway?'
Shelby expected the little paint pony to head for home but instead he happily jogged up the hill towards the water tower,