Plenty of Ponies, page 16
“Now,” said Colonel Howard, when Warrior had been returned to the pack and the landlady had been soothed, “I have explained to you the duties of each member of the staff and I want to give one or two of you the opportunity of studying them at first hand. Ruth,” he went on, looking at the bun-faced girl with the plaits, “I want you to help Jim—that was the first whipper-in— and Brian, you go with Andrew.” Ruth and Brian looked very pleased with themselves as they rode out to join the whips. The Esmonds looked at each other doubtfully and wondered whether to be jealous.
“And now,” said Colonel Howard, “I want someone with a loud voice to be my understudy and learn about the arduous and unending duties of the Field Master. I know whom I want, but I can’t see him.” He cast an eye over the crowd of children until it lighted on Lewis. “Yes,” he said, “you on the liver chestnut, come on.”
“Go on,” said Paul to Lewis, who was sitting with his mouth open.
“Good luck,” said Charlotte.
“Ooh, I’m glad it’s not me,” said Julian as the riders made way for Lewis and he rode through them looking as though he were on the way to the guillotine.
“I think he’s lucky,” said Paul. “I wish he’d chosen me.”
“Good morning,” said Colonel Howard to Lewis. “I hope that you’re good at cursing people?”
“Good morning,” answered Lewis, feeling slightly foolish and wishing that he could think of cheeky replies like Paul. “I think I’m fairly good because I get a lot of practice on my younger brothers and sisters.”
“Good,” said Colonel Howard. “Well, I think that we’re all ready to move off; would you shout ‘Hounds, please,’ at the field.” Lewis yelled it at the top of his voice and they set off for the first cover. He felt rather self-conscious riding at the head of the long cavalcade, but he decided that he would rather be there than with Brian and Ruth, who became entangled with the whippers-in each time they slowed up to hasten a lingering hound.
“Quite a good scenting day,” remarked Colonel Howard, “and we ought to find a fox in Lyn Valley Wood. Not that we want to travel too fast to-day,” he added, looking back at the field, “or the ground will be littered.”
“I hope it’s not one of the duties of the Field Master to catch their horses then,” said Lewis.
“No, I’d have resigned a long time ago if it was,” said Colonel Howard. “No, we have to stay up in front and try to control the ones that don’t come off. Even at the moment we’re exerting a restraining influence, you know if we weren’t here they’d be riding on the top of the hounds and getting in the way of the whips. Even adult fields do that. It’s quite amazing.”
The other Esmonds, determined not to be left behind, gradually worked their way to the fore, and when the field halted beside Lyn Valley Wood there were not many horses between them and Lewis. Colonel Howard explained to Lewis that he had brought the field on the down wind side of the cover so that they could hear what was going on, and then he turned in his saddle and began to survey the field, much to the other Esmonds’ indignation.
“Doesn’t he know that it’s rude to stare?” said Tina indignantly.
“Sush,” said Charlotte, “don’t talk so loudly, we don’t want to have Lewis ticking us off.”
“Your family look very smart to-day,” said the Colonel, turning back to Lewis, “but I think that you’d better tell your brother to let out his martingale a hole. It’s a little on the tight side and his pony won’t be able to spread himself properly when he jumps.”
“Shall I tell him now?” asked Lewis.
“Yes, and tell him to be quick,” said Colonel Howard. “We don’t want to wait for him if the hounds run.”
Lewis told Paul what the Colonel had said and held the Turk while he adjusted the martingale, then he rejoined the Colonel, who was talking to Mrs. Wainwright, who had come out to pick up the children who fell off.
Just as every one was becoming bored with the covert and beginning to talk and wonder when the huntsman was going to blow the hounds out, there was a high whimper, followed by a burst of hound music, which grew louder as more and more hounds joined in. The sound sent a thrill of excitement down Lewis’s spine and he felt Solomon stiffen beneath him; standing motionless with pricked ears, he watched the wood intently. The hounds were hunting towards the far end of the wood, and the Colonel led the field forward for a few yards. In the covert the huntsman was blowing the gone-away and then, suddenly, the note of the music changed as the hounds burst out at the far end of the covert and raced across the open fields. The Colonel galloped up the side of the wood through an already open gate and, pausing only for a second to let a hound go on ahead, galloped after the huntsman. The first field was fenced with wire and one of the whippers-in dragged open the heavy gate. The Colonel shouted back that the last person through was to shut it and, seeing that there was plenty of foot followers to do so, galloped on.
This just suits the Turk, thought Paul; he was galloping easily, just behind the Colonel and Lewis, and not pulling at all. Julian patted Frosty; he noticed with pleasure that she wasn’t puffing yet and, though he was already some way behind his brothers and sisters, there were still plenty of people behind him. October and Delight were galloping side by side; like their riders, they had forgotten everything but the thrill of the chase.
After galloping across three or four fields, they came to some slip rails; the Master, Lewis and most of the older children jumped them, but, before Julian’s turn came someone took down the top bar and Frosty cleared the other two with ease.
Lewis soon lost all count of time and all sense of direction. He was concerned only with the hounds and how best to follow them from field to field. When he saw a jumpable fence his heart sang; a gate was bearable, but a barbed wire fence or a hedge with a strand of wire in it filled him with a furious frustration. Colonel Howard knew the country well, and in one field they caught up the huntsman and the first whip, who had paused to look for a way out. Ruth had been left behind at a trappy stile in the corner of a wood, which had caused a number of ponies to refuse. Lewis, looking back, saw only Charlotte, Helen on the grey, and Robert Hendrick on the cart-horsy cob, which was a magnificent hunter. At last, when the horses, already dark with sweat, were showing signs of distress, the hounds checked in a small wood, thick with undergrowth.
Pulling up, they turned the horses’ heads to the wind and then, as the hounds seemed to have lost the scent entirely, dismounted and loosened their girths.
“That was marvellous,” said Lewis, patting Solomon.
“A very nice little run,” agreed Colonel Howard, “but a bit too fast for most of the field, I’m afraid. The hounds were hunting magnificently,” he added enthusiastically, “and those four horses were going well.”
“Delight was wonderful,” said Charlotte to Lewis. “She didn’t refuse anything, not even that horrid stile.”
“I wonder where the others have got to,” said Lewis, looking a little worried. “I expect Julian got stuck a long way back, but I can’t think what’s happened to Paul, or Tina for that matter.”
“Tina got stuck at the stile,” said Charlotte. “She was an idiot; she didn’t take my lead and then several ponies refused and that upset October. However, I expect she got over in the end. But I haven’t seen Paul or Julian for ages.”
“They’ll turn up,” said Colonel Howard. “This check is just what they need and there are plenty of people to keep an eye on them and show them the way round the bigger jumps.”
After a while the Master mounted his black mare and rode her about as he didn’t want her to get cold; the four children followed his example. The huntsman brought the hounds out of the wood and cast them across a newly ploughed field on the far side of it.
“I expect that’s where he went,” said Colonel Howard. “He seemed to be making for Dingle Bottom, but there won’t be much scent on that plough.”
It was wonderful, thought Lewis, to stand on a hill watching the hounds working and looking down over the rolling countryside and at the distant blue hills and the wine-coloured beech woods; suddenly he wished, with a fierceness that surprised him, that he could paint—like Charlotte—or write poetry—like Julian.
* * *
Paul had been delighted with the Turk’s behaviour and early in the run he had come to the conclusion that Colonel Howard knew what he was talking about. It was marvellous to feel that you could stop your pony if you felt inclined and not to have your arms pulled out of their sockets or your nose bleeding. He had grinned cheerfully at Charlotte, who had been beside him, and settled down to enjoy the exhilaration of the Turk’s smooth, effortless gallop. It was during a wait at a narrow swinging gate that he noticed the girl on a chestnut horse who seemed to think she knew a quicker way round. He watched her gallop off to the left in a purposeful manner and then, tired of waiting his turn while the hounds were disappearing over the hillside, he turned and galloped after her. At the corner of the field she popped over a low rail into a copse and carefully avoiding a single strand of barbed wire which seemed to divide the copse in two, she jumped out into the next field over a low hedge. Paul followed her and was delighted to find himself well ahead of most of the field. Then he heard a shout behind him. He slowed the Turk up a little and was just deciding that he had imagined it when he heard it again, this time quite plainly a cry for help. For a moment he cantered on indecisively, but he heard the shout again and, looking regretfully at the nice little hedge in front of him, he pulled up the astounded Turk and galloped sorrowfully back towards the copse, feeling that all the pleasure in the day had gone. Standing beside the strand of barbed wire, which ran through the copse, was Mrs. Wainwright, looking very green and shaken, and besides her stood her dark-brown mare, Shamrock, bridleless and with blood spurting out of her forearm in a nerve-racking torrent.
“Oh dear,” said Paul.
“I can’t get the tourniquet on. She won’t stand still. Oh dear, oh dear, I know she’ll bleed to death,” said Mrs. Wainwright helplessly. “Do you think you could fetch Mr. Munkwell’s groom—the Irishman who was riding the young horse. He’d know what to do.”
“The one on the grey?” asked Paul, and when she said yes he turned and galloped after the field without another word. The Turk, thinking that his master had regained his senses at last and that it was up to him to catch up with the hounds again, galloped his fastest. When they had crossed three or four fields and jumped a hedge and some rails, Paul saw the groom ahead. He was a long way behind the rest of the field because he was taking the young horse very quietly. Paul shouted at him but the man paid no attention until Paul caught up with him; then when, cantering by his side, Paul explained what had happened, he said that he couldn’t go back now, couldn’t Paul see that the hounds were running?
And he galloped away.
Paul felt very indignant; he stood for a moment, and then as there was no one else near, he turned the mystified Turk and rode back to the copse at full speed.
“Oh dear, oh dear—what shall I do?” said Mrs. Wainwright when he told her what the Irish groom had said. “I suppose you don’t know if there’s a house anywhere nearby?” she asked.
“No,” answered Paul. “I don’t know this part of the country at all.”
He jumped the Turk over the hedge, and, dismounting, picked up Shamrock’s bridle. It was obvious, he thought, undoing the curb chain, that Mrs Wainwright had galloped into the wire and when Shamrock had fallen her rider had gone over her head and hung on to the reins as she got up. Evidently her throat lash had been too loose.
He put the bridle on with difficulty, for the mare was over sixteen hands high.
Mrs. Wainwright had hit the ground rather hard, decided Paul, for, instead of being helpful, she was sitting on a tree stump muttering that her horse was bleeding to death. Paul tried to remember all the things which Lewis had told him about arteries and stopping bleeding, and the first thing that he remembered was that horses took ages to bleed to death—much longer than people. He shouted this piece of information at Mrs. Wainwright.
Then he untied the hunting tie which, with a hunting whip, she had tried to use as a tourniquet, and, screwing up his nose a little for it was sodden with blood, he put a pebble into one of its folds and tied it tightly round Shamrock’s forearm so that the pebble pressed on the artery just above the wound. “You’ve got a trailer, haven’t you?” he asked Mrs. Wainwright as he tied the knot, and when she replied that she had he told her his plan. They were to walk along together until they found a ride through the wood that looked as though it led somewhere, then Paul was to ride at full speed to the nearest house, ring up Brigadier Wainwright and tell him to drive to the spot where the woodland path came out on to a road; there Mrs. Wainwright would be waiting. She said gloomily that Shamrock would be dead by that time, and Paul replied hopefully that it would take twelve hours for her to die through loss of blood, though really he hadn’t the least idea of how long it took, and he asked for Mrs. Wainwright’s telephone number.
He was delighted to see a broad track when they had been walking for only a few minutes, and then, riding at full gallop, he was overjoyed to find how quickly he reached civilisation. The first building he saw was a church and he made for the vicarage at once. The vicar’s wife, who was nervous of horses, received a terse explanation and the Turk to hold while Paul made a dash for her telephone.
Brigadier Wainwright seemed very efficient, but when he asked where he was to meet his wife Paul realised that he didn’t know the name of the village, and he had to tell the Brigadier to hold on while he asked the vicar’s wife. She told him that it was Chilston, and the Brigadier said that he knew the place and would be there in twenty minutes. The vicar’s wife, who seemed to have lost her nervousness of horses, refused the twopence Paul offered her in payment of the telephone call and said that he must wash because he looked as though he had had a frightful accident himself, but Paul, who was used to being covered in blood, said that he hadn’t time, he must ride back and see what Mrs. Wainwright was doing. He mounted and thanked her several times before riding back to the wood. He found Mrs. Wainwright waiting where he had told her and she seemed less gloomy now that her husband was on his way and her horse still showed no signs of dying—in fact the bleeding had slowed up. Paul ate his sandwiches and led the Turk up and down. It was a long, dismal wait and it seemed that far more than twenty minutes passed before the Brigadier arrived with the trailer, a groom and a veterinary surgeon. Then, as there was nothing else to do, Paul said that he would go and try to find the rest of the field. The Wainwrights both thanked him profusely for all his help, but, saying that it was nothing, Paul mounted the Turk and cantered back through the wood, jumped the hedge and galloped across the fields until he came to the point where he had last seen the hounds. There he pulled up to a trot and began to look for farm labourers or any one else who might have seen them. For some way the countryside seemed deserted, and Paul rode on and on feeling more and more miserable and cursing the unkind fate which had made Mrs. Wainwright gallop into wire during such a wonderful run. At last, just as he was beginning to feel he had better try to find his way home, he met a man cutting a hedge who said, oh yes, he’d seen the hounds some time ago and they were making for Dingle Bottom Woods, and he thought he’d heard the horn not many minutes since. He pointed out Dingle Bottom—a long wooded valley—and Paul thanked him and rode downhill feeling quite cheerful again. He rode briskly through the woods, stopping occasionally to listen for the sound of the horn, and joined the field just as the huntsman was blowing the hounds out of the cover. All the other Esmonds were there, standing close to Lewis, who was still with the Master.
“Hallo,” said Paul.
“Hallo,” said the others with relief, which quickly turned to horror when they saw the mess he was in. “What on earth have you been doing?” “Have you fallen off?” “Are you all right?” asked Lewis, Tina and Charlotte all at once, while Julian turned slightly green and Colonel Howard looked round to see what was the matter.
“It’s all right,” said Paul, rather pleased with the sensation which he had caused. “It’s not my blood.” He told them what had happened.
“You seem to have acted in a very resourceful manner,” said Colonel Howard, to Paul’s surprise and embarrassment. “Mrs. Wainwright will never live it down. She comes to a Children’s Meet to look after the children and has to be escorted home by one of them. It was a pity you missed the hunt though,” the Colonel went on. “We had a nice little run and all your family went very well.” The Esmonds felt nearly as embarrassed by these unexpected compliments as they had been by the lectures they were given on Boxing Day. But, as they rode homeward through the gathering dusk, they and some of the other children whose way lay in the same direction talked to the Colonel about their ponies and hunting and horse shows, and, as Lewis said afterwards, he became quite human. At the cross-roads, where the hounds took the road to Fenwick, the Esmonds pulled up and said good night and thank you very much. “Good night,” said the Colonel, “I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves; I’ve no complaints, and I hope to see you at the Pony Club rallies next holidays.”
The Esmonds barely noticed their long ride home, so busy were they recounting the day’s experiences. Everyone had to tell everyone else how marvellously his pony had jumped each fence. They all agreed that it had been a lovely day, even Paul, who had missed most of it. “We shall have to give up grumbling about being rich now,” said Lewis, “because if Grandfather hadn’t died and we still lived at the cottage, we certainly couldn’t have hunted or possessed such jolly good ponies. When I’m a famous specialist,” he went on, “I shall retire and become an M.F.H.; it must be a wonderful feeling; your hounds in front of you, the field behind you and all England to gallop over.”
