“Well I warned you,” Erica said when she heard about Jacky’s dismal disgrace on the hunting field. “I told you it wasn’t like Pony Club things.”
And Celia Grunter sang, “A-Hunting We Will Go,” every time she saw Jacky.
“I don’t know how I’m going to survive this winter,” Jacky confided to her mother. “I am in the valley of despair.”
“Are you dear?” said Mrs Munro brightly.
“Yes I am. Only riding at weekends and then only hacking. Erica says we won’t be able to use the paddock until the spring. Three whole months before I can start schooling Flicka again. January, February, March. Goodness knows what she’ll be like by then. She was mucking about like anything on the road the other day. Ever since we went hunting she’s done nothing but pull, pull, pull,” and Jacky swung away irritably to wander through the house and think how unfair it all was.
Now that the ponies were in at nights, Jacky always cycled home with Erica to muck out Flicka’s box, put down her bed for the night and put in her feed, hay and water.
“It’s hard labour, that’s all it is,” said Erica, forking straw for Firebird’s bed.
“I wouldn’t mind if we could only ride,” said Jacky, putting down a full water bucket. She loved seeing Flicka settled for the night, standing warm and cosy in deep yellow straw, her head buried in the trough as she crunched oats and chop and nuts.
Jacky never stopped being thankful for all the Dawsons had done for her and often she would imagine how difficult it would have been trying to keep Flicka in the garage patch during the long winter. All the time Jacky knew that she should have been getting on with schooling and jumping Flicka. But every weekend was either wet and the ground too soft for jumping, or frosty and the ground too hard. On the few days when Jacky did manage to persuade Erica to let her ride in the paddock, Flicka pulled like a train and at the sight of a jump she became so excited that Jacky could hardly hold her. She would gallop round and round, taking great leaps over Erica’s poles and cans, while Jacky hauled helplessly on her reins.
“She’s fresh,” Jacky would think, trying to make excuses. “She’s young and she’s never been in at nights before. She’s never forgotten that hunt.”
But when she was being honest with herself Jacky knew that something had gone very wrong. She knew that she shouldn’t pull at Flicka’s mouth the way she was doing, but when Flicka was galloping madly round the jumps for the third or fourth time, Jacky couldn’t think of anything else to do except to pull even harder on the reins. Flicka in her turn pulled more than ever and their jumping usually ended in a fight to see who was the strongest—a fight that Flicka always won.
“You’re making her worse,” said Erica. “And if you don’t stop churning up that paddock it will be so rutted and dusty in the summer we won’t be able to use it then either.”
Jacky went home to read instructional books on riding and have nightmares about Flicka, head tossing, tail switching as she charged like a guided missile at unending jumps.
It snowed heavily in the middle of February and Mrs Dawson made Erica stack her tin cans, boxes and poles under cover.
“If you’d left them in the field we could have jumped in the snow,” moaned Jacky.
“It rots them,” said Erica. “We wouldn’t have had any left by the spring.”
The spring took a long time to come. The snow lay like a white blanket that nothing could melt. Miss Hope wrote a nasty letter to Jacky’s father saying that she wasn’t paying attention in class. And Jacky spent most of her time worrying about Flicka’s jumping.
In April the snow vanished overnight, trees inched into green and Mrs Marshall sent Jacky a letter.
Dear Jacky,
We are having a first try-out of the “possibles” for this year’s Pony Club Team for the Inter Branch Comp. on Saturday 22nd at 10.00 a.m. at my house. Nothing too difficult. I don’t expect fit ponies yet. Just one or two jumps. I want to get the team fixed up as soon as poss. so we can all train together. Hope to see you Sat.
Yours sincerely,
Helen Marshall.
“Jacky, what’s wrong?” demanded Mrs Munro as her daughter’s cry of dismay echoed round the dining-room.
“But surely that is what you were so pleased about last summer,” said her mother after Jacky had explained.
“Oh, you don’t understand, Mummy. That was last summer when Flicka was jumping well and everything was different. I didn’t think she’d be picking the team for ages yet.”
“Doesn’t leave you much time to get things organized,” her father said. “This Saturday she wants to see you.”
“I know! Not tomorrow but the next day!”
“You’ll need to work hard tomorrow evening,” Mrs Munro said consolingly. But on Friday Miss Hope kept Jacky in after because she had caught her reading School for Young Riders under the desk, and in the end Jacky only had time for about an hour’s schooling over Erica’s jumps.
“Cor!” exclaimed Erica after Flicka had soared over the jumps like a whirlwind and twice round the field before Jacky could even bring her to a ‘trot. “Honestly, I don’t think Mrs Marshall will be very pleased if she behaves like that.”
“I wish you were coming.”
“So do I. Mrs Marshall asked me when she met me a week or two ago, but I said I was more interested in just dressage and I explained about Firebird’s leg, and now Mummy’s gone and made an appointment for me at the dentist.”
“All the same, I do wish you were coming,” Jacky said again.
She wished it even more the next morning when she rode Flicka into Mrs Marshall’s field and saw Celia sitting astride a new chestnut pony.
“Don’t tell me you’ve had the cheek to bring that creature,” Celia shouted in a loud mocking voice, so that the six other Pony Club members who were considered “possibles” turned round and stared at Flicka.
“Why shouldn’t she?” asked Dorothy Sloan. “It is Mrs Marshall, not you or your mother who chooses the team.”
“I’d have had more sense than to ask someone who can’t even control their pony.”
“At least I don’t cast off ponies as if they were old shoes,” stated Jacky.
“I suppose you mean Prince. Goodness he was such a slug. Calypso is a million times better.”
“Prince was a super pony until you ruined him,” said Arthur Paterson, a boy who came from the other side of Tarentshire and rode a dun cob.
Celia ignored him. “Anyway,” she said, “I expect I’ll be jumping Calypso at the Horse of the Year Show. That’s why Daddy bought him for me.”
Before anyone had time to ask Celia what she meant, Mrs Marshall left the group of parents she had been talking to and came over to explain what she wanted them to do.
“I’ve decided to choose the team much earlier this year and then we can really get going and train as a team. Now, first I want to see you going over the show jumps at the other end of the field and then I’ve got a little course laid out with six cross-country jumps. Ride your ponies in for a minute and when you feel they’re ready, come down to the jumps and we’ll get started.”
“It’s now that everything begins to go wrong,” Jacky thought as she tried to circle Flicka at a collected canter but only managed to stop her bursting into a tearaway gallop by yanking at the reins. “Oh, behave yourself, Flicka. They’re only tiny jumps. Nothing to get so excited about.”
As she waited for her turn to jump she felt as if she were sitting on a keg of gunpowder that might explode at any minute.
“You next,” Mrs Marshall said, smiling at Jacky. “Take your time now,” but before she had finished speaking Flicka had bounded past her.
In a thundering of hoofs and a rushing of cold air Jacky was carried over the jumps. Flicka was going so fast that she could hardly tell when they were actually jumping or when they were galloping in great, leaping bounds.
By pulling one rein with both hands Jacky just managed to turn Flicka and steer her over the rest of the jumps. She cleared them all effortlessly but they had almost reached the far end of the field before Jacky regained control.
By the time they had joined the others again Mrs Marshall had taken everyone across to the start of the cross country.
“Eight jumps,” she was saying. “Over the log, in and out the chicken coops, downhill and over the water jump, those two walls between the flags, back over the stile and finish up over the log in the opposite direction.”
Turning, she saw that Jacky had returned. “Did you get carted?” she asked her, laughing at Flicka. “She does hot up, doesn’t she? Perhaps you might be safer not to try the cross country?”
“What is that ridiculous child doing now?” Mrs Grunter, who was standing watching with two other doting mothers, spoke in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “When she rode those old crocks she wouldn’t jump and now she has a pony that will jump she’s afraid of it!”
“Of course I’ll try,” said Jacky instantly. “Could I go first, please? Waiting makes her more excited than ever.”
“Try to steady her before she gets away from you,” advised Mrs Marshall, nodding.
“Okay,” said Jacky as Flicka battered down the field and soared over the log with feet to spare. She flung herself at the chicken coops, clearing what was meant to be an in and out with one huge leap.
“Steady, steady,” muttered Jacky, fighting to pull Flicka’s head up, pulling desperately on her reins to try to slow her uncontrollable speed.
But on the slope leading down to the water jump she had no hope of slowing Flicka down. Jacky could do nothing. She had no strength left to pull any harder. She could only grip the saddle tighter between her knees and brace her feet against the stirrups as the black pony careered wildly down towards the water jump.
A split second before it happened, Jacky knew that Flicka was coming down. She felt her stumble in the soft ground, felt her struggle to stay upright, but she was going too fast to save herself.
Suddenly Jacky was flying through the air and, during that second, she caught a glimpse of Flicka turning a complete somersault.
After that everything was muddled. There were the terrible moments when Flicka lay struggling on the ground and the relief when she surged to her feet and cantered back to the other ponies, unhurt. There was picking herself up and telling everyone who had come crowding round that she was quite all right, that she really was all right. Then there was leading Flicka back to Erica’s, ignoring people who stared rudely at their mud-spattered state, and there was trying not to think about how pleased Celia and Mrs Grunter would be.
Jacky led Flicka into her box, stripped off her muddy tack and fetching a curry comb and dandy brush tried to clean her pony. But the mud was too wet to brush off and the more Jacky groomed the more it clung stickily to Flicka’s sides.
At last Jacky could bear it no longer. Standing staring at her filthy pony she let the tears run down her cheeks. All the hopes she had built around Flicka had all crumbled into nothing. She, Jacky Munro, had ruined a young pony. She had a pony that could jump brilliantly but she had turned her into a useless runaway. Jacky’s tears left two white streaks down her muddy face.
“I’m sorry, Flicka. I didn’t mean to ruin you,” and she threw her arms round her pony’s neck and sobbed into her mane.
Roderick, who had been schooling Midas in the paddock, rode through the yard, meaning to exercise for an hour on the roads. He heard the sound of crying and jumped off Midas to investigate. He led Midas across to Flicka’s box and stood for a minute wondering if Jacky had hurt herself, but it didn’t look that sort of crying to him.
“Something wrong?” he asked.