Highland Pony Trek Read online

  Highland Pony Trek

  Patricia Leitch

  Contents

  1. The Idea

  2. Plans For Pony-Trekking

  3. Fiona Follows It Through

  4. Confetti

  5. A Last-Minute Set-Back

  6. The First Trekkers

  7. Trouble From Nevil

  8. The Week Ends Eventfully

  9. Summer Days

  10. It Never Rains…

  11. An Exciting Discovery

  12. Dramatic Finale

  The Horse from Black Loch

  The Horse from Black Loch: 1

  Also by Patricia Leitch

  About the Author

  Jane Badger Books

  1

  The Idea

  THE HIGHLAND landscape lay bleak and cold under the searching east wind. It was nearly the end of March but there was no sign of spring. The trees against the chill, grey sky were bare skeletons that moved uneasily to the wind’s force. Only the pines were dark and shadowy with their winter-worn needles and dried cones. The grass showed no new growth. It was still withered and bleached to shades of brown and gold.

  The rocky moorland reached down to a wide bay, the landward edges of which were piled high with smooth pebbles carried in by the winter’s storms. Between the pebbles and the sea there was a strip of sandy shingle and then the great rolling surge of the Atlantic.

  Two girls cantered along the shingle on their ponies. One was riding a young, black horse of nearly sixteen hands. Although not a pure thoroughbred he was well bred with an arching neck, proud head and fine, clean legs. As he cantered along the sands he tossed his head, fretting against the slight control of the snaffle bridle. Tiny specks of froth flew from his lips to wither into nothing on his sleek, ebony coat. His eyes were wide and glistening, his nostrils drawn back showing their blood-red inner lining, and his ears were sharply pricked above the neat fringe of his mane and forelock.

  The pony following behind him was just under fourteen hands. She was a pale, creamy fawn with a dark mane and tail and the black eel stripe, typical of so many Highland ponies, running along her back from withers to tail. In her dense winter coat she was as woolly as a teddy bear. Her bright pony eyes peered through the mass of her thick forelock and her head was level with her knees as she battered along, striving desperately to overtake the black horse who galloped ahead of her with effortless grace.

  The two girls were obviously sisters. They both had brown, curling hair cut short all over their heads; hazel-brown eyes under long black lashes; straight, tip-tilted noses; wide, generous mouths that twisted upwards at the corners; square, determined chins and skins tanned brown with being outside in all weathers.

  The girl on the black horse was Fiona McKean. She was seventeen, tall and slender. She rode Jester bareback, never moving as her horse shied suddenly at a clump of menacing seaweed.

  Morag McKean was fifteen. She was smaller than her sister and as sturdy as Jazz, the Highland pony which she rode. Her short, blunt fingers. tugged without effect on Jazz’s reins, her knees gripped Jazz’s hairy sides as she struggled to stay aboard while her pony galloped madly after Jester.

  “If you don’t stop I’ll come off,” she shouted to her sister, but Fiona galloped on.

  Jazz had seen Jester shy and when she reached the clump of seaweed she shied in sympathy. Morag sailed off and landed in the midst of the wet, slimy weed.

  “I told you I would,” Morag said as Fiona reined Jester in and, turning, came back to inspect her sister’s plight.

  “Well, don’t just sit there,” said Fiona sharply. “There’s no point in rolling in the stuff. Your jeans are in a bad enough state without that.”

  “If you’d stopped when I asked you to I wouldn’t have come off,” Morag said, struggling to her feet.

  “Imagine that now. Born in the saddle and every time we go faster than a walk you’re yelling at me to stop.”

  “I am not. It’s all right for you sitting up there on that thing. You came off just as often as anyone when you rode Jazz.”

  “Rubbish, I only came off when we jumped her.”

  “Stranger to the truth,” retorted her sister.

  “Oh, get back on and stop blethering.”

  Morag hauled Jazz over to a convenient boulder and tried to remount. It was on the tip of Fiona’s tongue to taunt her sister with her lack of spring when suddenly, like an icy wind on a July day, she remembered that tonight her mother was going to answer the letter.

  For a week the letter had lain behind the brass clock on the mantelpiece. It was from a Mr. Lee­-Houghton offering to buy their home, Invermorden Lodge, and all their land for fifteen thousand pounds. Sandy, the postman, had drawn it from his vast canvas bag and handed it to Jessie Ferguson, their daily help, saying that he didna fancy that one, that it was from the English and had the smooth feel to it. When their mother had opened it Neil, their fourteen- year-old brother, Morag and herself had laughed and joked about it, but their mother had said nothing, only putting it back in the envelope and sticking it behind the brass clock where it had lain unanswered but not forgotten.

  Then last night Fiona, who had been reading in bed, had gone downstairs for a little something with which to ward off night starvation and had discovered her mother sitting over the dying embers of the fire with the abominable Lee­Houghton’s letter in her hand.

  “When are you going to answer it?” she had asked her mother. “Tell him just what we think of him. The cheek of the man thinking he could buy our home. As if we’d sell Invermorden. I’ll write to him for you if you like.”

  Fiona had cut herself a slice of bread and was just about to butter it when she felt the strained silence in the room and suddenly realised that her mother hadn’t answered her. With a cold clutch of fear she had remembered that her mother had never joked about the letter, had never joined with them in making up insulting replies to the Lee-Houghton.

  “I’ll write the letter for you,” Fiona had said again. “I’ll tell him that never in a thousand, million years would we sell Invermorden,” but her voice dried in her throat as she looked across at her mother’s face.

  “I don’t think we can afford to refuse his offer. It is easily double what Invermorden is worth.”

  Her mother spoke so slowly that Fiona could hardly make sense of the cold, hard words, but at last she realised what her mother had said.

  “No!” Fiona had shouted. “No! We’ll never sell Invermorden. Never, I tell you, never. If Daddy were here he would never let you, never, never.”

  Four years ago, Mr. McKean had been killed in a car crash. As if it were yesterday Fiona remembered the knock on the door. She had opened it and Donald McDonald, twisting his policeman’s hat in his hands, had asked for her mother. In the kitchen he had twisted his hat more and more rapidly as he struggled for words to tell Mrs. McKean that her husband had been killed outright when a lorry had smashed into the car in which he was a passenger. After the funeral, a lawyer had come from Edinburgh to discuss the future with Mrs. McKean. He had advised selling Invermorden and moving to a smaller house where the upkeep would not be so great. He said that wealthy industrialists were willing to pay fantastic prices for small estates like Invermorden and that now was the time to sell. Mrs. McKean had shaken her head stubbornly and refused to listen to him. They had rented most of their land to neighbouring farmers, Mrs. McKean had advertised for paying guests, and in the summer the lodge was filled with holiday­makers. For the first three summers they were booked out, but last year hadn’t been so busy. There had been several weeks when they had had empty rooms, and in September their only boarders had been three retired teachers, who consumed jugs of coffee and complained bitterly about the weather.

  “If Daddy were alive there would be no question of selling Invermorden,” said Mrs. McKean in a tired voice. “Don’t think that I want to sell it any more than you do, but I’ve thought and thought about it and I feel I can’t ignore such a good offer.”

  “But we can manage with the money from the P.G.s. Now I’ve left school I can help or get a job. Morag can leave school too and work. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do to save Invermorden.”

  “Last year the P.G.s more or less weren’t, and from the look of things this year they’re going to be fewer and farther between than ever. I’d a talk with Neil’s headmaster yesterday and he was saying that Neil was showing exceptional promise in scientific subjects and that without doubt he must go on to university. Before I spoke to Mr. Kyle I thought, as you did, that Daddy would have wanted us to go on living here for as long as we could, but I know that he would rather Neil had his chance. If we are to live here while Neil goes to university we would need to have some form of steady income. If I sell, I can invest the money, which should give us enough to live comfortably in a smaller house and let you and Morag go to a domestic science college or something like that.”

  “We don’t want to go to any kind of college,” muttered Fiona irritably. “There must be some other way of making money. Don’t answer the letter until tomorrow night. Give me time to think.”

  Fiona watched unseeing as her sister squirmed and wriggled her way on to Jazz’s back. “There must be some way,” she said, speaking aloud without realising it.

  “Some way for what?” demanded Morag, now triumphantly upright on Jazz.

  “To keep Invermorden,” Fiona said looking down at her sister. “I suppose you may as well know. You’ll have to know sometime and Mummy didn’t say not to tell yo
u.”

  “What?”

  “She’s going to sell Invermorden to the Lee­-Houghton.”

  “She can’t!”

  “Oh, yes, she can. Mr. Kyle told her that Neil should go on to the university. His brains are too good to waste or something, not that I’ve ever noticed it, and there’s hardly any P.G.s booked, so unless she sells we won’t have enough to keep Invermorden going.”

  “I’ll leave school and go and be a waitress,” said Morag without hesitation. “You too. Between us and what paying guests there are we’d make enough. Better just to have Invermorden in the winter than not have it at all.”

  “Mum’d never let us do it. You know that.”

  “Then we’ll do something else. Any kind of work. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It wouldn’t be enough. Even if Neil gets a grant he wouldn’t be earning money for years and years.”

  “Why have the P.G.s stopped coming? There’s smashing food. Nobody’s a better cook than Jessie, and there’s the boat and the ponies, and we never charged a halfpenny extra for them. What more do they want?”

  “Cinemas, dance halls, television, amusements,” said Fiona as they rode up the shore and went cautiously over the piled pebbles to reach the rough grass beyond. “They want coaches to take them on tours to other places. All the things we haven’t got, that’s what they want.” She spat out the “they” as if she were speaking of a hideous race of aliens.

  They rode over the wind-whitened grass in silence until they reached a high ridge of land where, still without speaking, they reined in their horses and stood looking down on their home.

  It was built of grey stone. Foursquare and solid it stood behind a wind-break of Scots firs sheltering in a hollow of the moor. Beyond the grey ribbon of the road that ran behind it, the land rose steeply, cold, reaching shoulders littered with slabs of rock and inhabited by black-faced sheep. Land that reared up to lose itself in mist or stood, appearing as brittle as shell, against the summer skies.

  They saw Neil standing in the doorway of the stables. He had given hay to their other Highland ponies who were gathered round it in the corner of their field eating greedily.

  “We could sell the ponies,” said Morag staring at the four fat pastel shapes straining to swallow as much hay as they possibly could in the least possible time.

  “What do you think we’ll be doing when we leave here?” asked Fiona as they rode on down to the lodge.

  As they passed, the ponies laid their ears and scowled at Jazz and Jester warning them to move on and not loiter in the vicinity of their hay. There were four Highlands, Spud, Diamond, Boxer and Pepsi. Spud was grey, Diamond black with a white diamond shape left from an old wound on his near quarter, and Boxer was a blue roan. They were all geldings, about the same size as Jazz and just as hairy. Pepsi was a piebald mare, thirteen hands high and probably more Shetland than Highland.

  “You’ll get some in a minute,” Morag told Jazz who was veering dangerously close to Pepsi’s ever ready heels.

  Fiona dismounted and led Jester to his loose-box. He was the only horse that was kept in, and as Fiona took off his bridle she wondered uneasily if the expense of Jester was really necessary. It was one thing to tell Morag that the ponies would have to be sold; quite another to contemplate selling Jester. But if they moved, would she be able to keep him? Fiona didn’t dare to think about it. She fetched her box of grooming things and, picking up her dandy brush, started to groom Jester.

  “Tourists,” she thought, as she worked to clean her horse. “Some new way to attract them, to make them come to Invermorden.” But who would want to go anywhere else, she brooded. Merely to mention the breakers that crashed in from the ocean, the wide, free sweep of the land, the welcome of the lodge, surely these things should be enough to bring people flocking to stay. There was so much to do, the rowing boat, fishing from the rocks or the boat, sea birds and seals to watch and the ponies to ride. But these things were no use if the wrong people came: elderly ladies who should have been at Brighton; families with young children who wanted flat, safe, sandy beaches; or teenagers who wanted bright lights and amusements. Fiona remembered the young married couple who arrived one June evening. They had got out of Davie’s taxi and stood flanked by their cases, staring about them in the dim, midgy evening, at the moorland, the mountains and the sea. “There’s nothing anywhere,” the girl had said. “Oh, John, let’s go home.” But luckily for Mrs. McKean, Davie had noticed the way the wind was blowing and had removed both himself and his taxi. The guests were trapped: but by Friday they were wanting to stay another week. The ponies had made their holiday. Patient and obliging they had plodded round their field to the accompaniment of the girl’s shrill squeaks and the man’s deeper but no less petrified “whoas” and “steadies”. By the end of their week they could both trot and the man had cantered. Fiona grinned to herself thinking about the man’s loud boasting once he was back on firm ground.

  Morag took off Jazz’s bridle and holding him by the forelock she put him out in the field with the others. She was just shutting the gate when she heard Neil give a yell, jump up from slouching in the stable doorway, and come running towards her.

  “I’ve thought of it,” he shouted. He grabbed Morag by the arm and pulled her towards Jester’s box.

  “I’ve got it. I’ve got it,” Neil yelled, making Jester lunge away from him and Fiona look up scowling from her grooming.

  “Got what?” Fiona demanded. “And for goodness’ sake stop acting like an idiot.”

  “Pony-trekking! Mum told me she was going to sell unless we could think of some way to make money, so we’ll turn Invermorden into a trekking centre. We’ve got the ponies, the land, everything. Fiona can run it and Morag and I’ll help.”

  Fiona and Morag stared at Neil open-mouthed. For a second there was silence in the loose-box broken only by the rustling of straw as Jester moved, pulling at his hay net and eyeing Neil warily.

  “We could, you know,” Fiona said slowly. “We would only need three or four more ponies and the country round here would be ideal for trekking.”

  “It’s a smashing, terrific idea,” gasped Morag. “Why on earth didn’t we think of it before?”

  “What about your further education?” Fiona asked Neil.

  “It’s years before I’ll be old enough to go to Uni., and I’ll get scholarships and things,” said Neil confidently. “And by that time you’ll have built the trekking up into a going concern. You’ll be making money hand over fist at it.”

  “We could charge thirteen guineas a week, that’s eight pounds more than Mum got from the P.G.s,” said Fiona thoughtfully.

  “Packed lunches in the middle of the day,” said Neil grinning happily at the reception which his idea had received.

  “It won’t cost any more to keep the ponies,” Morag said.

  “They’d need more feeding,” Fiona said. “That and shoeing.”

  “Oh, we could. We must,” declared Neil.

  “Come on and tell Mum,” Fiona said, tossing her brush back into the grooming box.

  They burst out of the loose-box door together, Neil latching it behind them. They ran across the stable yard, jumped the low wall on to the grass in front of the house and tore round into the kitchen.

  “Fiona’s going to run pony-trekking,” Morag yelled at her mother. “And everything’ll be all right.”

  “You won’t have to sell Invermorden,” Neil shouted and threw his arms round his mother’s neck.

  2

  Plans For Pony-Trekking

  “UNHAND ME BOY,” Mrs. McKean cried, pushing Neil away with her soapy hands. She had been washing up when her children had burst in upon her.

  “It’s a splendiferous idea,” declared Morag.

  “Honestly, it is,” Fiona said. “We’ve got everything for it and there’s me to run it.”