Hide and Seek by Alyssa Brugman Read Free Book Online

they rode for a while in silence. The young girl on Blue stroked his neck care-fully, and Blue gave Shelby an indulgent look that made her smile.
    At the end of the laneway Lindsey opened the gate to the back paddock and the trail riders rode through, waiting in a loose group on the other side. Several of the horses reefed the reins from their riders' hands and grazed. Shelby shook her head. Such bad manners!
    They set off again, riding along the fence line. Erin looked at Shelby over her shoulder. 'I have been meaning to ask you something, Shelby.'
    'What's that, Erin?'
    Erin frowned towards the horizon. 'If mouses are called mice, and louses are called lice, how come houses aren't called hice?'
    Shelby shook her head. 'I don't know, Erin. It's a mystery.'
    Soon they were busy as Lindsey took the more experienced group for a canter and Erin rode at the head of the beginner group. Shelby stayed at the back looking after the stragglers.
    Many of the younger girls had questions, which Shelby was happy to answer, but she was a little dis-tracted. She wondered what that traded glance between her two friends was about. Thinking back, Lindsey had said ' You know he's Aboriginal ,' more like an accusation than an observation, and then Hayley added trail bike riding as though they were ticking off a list of faults.

11 Equus Caballus
    Later in the afternoon while Erin had her lesson with Miss Anita and Lindsey took new clients on a tour around the property, Shelby saddled Blue and took him out into the Gully alone.
    They headed down the hill and across the causeway. On the other side they stopped. Shelby had the choice of the left trail that led to the Pony Club, or the right, which brought her up to the streets behind her house, or she could head straight across to the far side of the Gully.
    'Which way do you think?' she asked the pony. Blue turned his head around and sniffed at her boot. She reached forward and patted his neck just behind his ears. He was starting to get his fluffy winter coat.
    Blue pricked his ears forward and a moment later Shelby thought she heard a buzzing sound. She wondered if it was a trail bike. It might be Chad. Or it could be someone using a chainsaw to cut up all those branches that had come down in the storm.
    'Come on, woolly bear,' she said, steering him straight ahead towards the sound.
    Shelby pushed him into an easy, ground-covering canter. Blue was much rougher to ride than other horses, but she trusted him, and so she sat back, pushing her weight into her heels, and relaxed into the cadence of his hoof beats.
    Every now and then she would hear the blurting, buzzing sound of the engine, but when she reached the steeper, zigzagging trail on the far side of the Gully the sound stopped, and Shelby started to wonder if she had imagined it.
    Looming above she could see the grey, cone-shaped water tower. Chad had said the horse circus was near here. According to his description it should be just beyond these bends. She came to the corner with the old lounge suite, faded and disintegrating now, and littered with old beer bottles, but arranged in an L-shape, as it would be if it was in a house.
    There was a new fence along the left-hand side of the straight, just the way Chad had described. On the other side of the fence, parked haphazardly in the dirt paddock ribboned with tyre tracks, were six mighty semitrailers, splashed in bright colours, and each sign-written in scrolled font – Equus Caballus.
    'The circus!' Shelby whispered. She stopped Blue in the trees and hopped off, peeking through the branches to get a closer look.
    Next to the trucks there was a wooden round yard with a sand base. The man standing in the middle wore dirty black jodhpurs, top boots and a blue singlet top. He had long black hair tied in a ponytail and fierce dark eyebrows. He held a bright red lunge whip in one hand.
    Inside the round yard, three grey ponies trotted around in a circle in single file, and then, when the man