Clever Chicks

by Rebecca Johnson

  ‘We’ve looked down every track, in every direction,’ she said, quite aware that she was talking to a horse, but this place was starting to really give her the creeps, so right now, any company was good company.

  Hannah and Talika had both had a turn at being ‘in’ so now it was Abbey’s go. At first, Abbey had liked the game because she and Pepper were really good at hiding, but now that it was her turn to hunt, she wasn’t so sure.

  She wasn’t the kind of girl who scared easily, but if you stood anywhere on the cattle station where she grew up, you could literally see for miles in every direction. Here, you could see a couple of metres in front and behind you, and then only as far as the next wall of cane. Abbey started to feel trapped by the cane. She didn’t like the way the three-metre high sticks bent inwards at the top, making her feel even more unnerved.

  Without warning, there was a rustling sound behind her and Pepper lurched forwards. Abbey spun him around, just in time to see a small brown hare dart from one side of the track to the other.

  ‘Steady, mate,’ she said, keeping a firm rein. Soothing her horse also helped calm her own nerves. Pepper was as jumpy as she felt, and he was normally calm in any situation. ‘You don’t like this either, do you?’

  The breeze was only light, but it tickled the green leaves of the long, brown stalks of cane and made a shhhhh sound.

  Abbey had an idea. It was a long shot, but she rang Talika on her mobile phone. Perhaps, even if her friend was smart enough not to answer it, the ringtone would give their hiding place away. But Tali’s phone was either switched to silent or she was too far away, because Abbey couldn’t hear it ringing. She cantered along the top of the rows again, glancing down each empty lane as it flashed past. She stopped when she reached the fence and a grove of mango trees at the far end of the cane fields. There was some fresh, green grass there and she let Pep put his head down to eat for a while. Perhaps it would calm them both.

  Abbey could feel herself starting to get angry. She often felt angry when she was scared. It was probably a form of self-protection she’d learnt from being raised in a house with four big brothers who were always looking for an opportunity to scare the living daylights out of their siblings by jumping out of barns and wardrobes.

  ‘I can see how you can hide two girls, Pep,’ she said out loud, ‘but how the heck do you hide two horses as well?’

  Surely they wouldn’t have played a trick on her and headed back to school?

  Abbey tried to dismiss the idea immediately. She’d been sharing a room with Hannah and Talika for a few months now, and being mean was not in their nature at all. But the thought lurked in her mind.

  ‘Hannah!’ she bellowed, hearing the frustration in her own voice. ‘Talika!’

  Pepper danced around on the spot as Abbey strained her ears to listen.

  Shhhhhh came the long reply from the sugarcane.

  Abbey started to canter again, this time heading towards the gate that led back to school.

  ‘Hannah!’ she screamed it this time, but it wasn’t Hannah who answered. It was a very familiar and very welcome bark from a dog.

  ‘Whoa,’ she said, and Pepper screeched to a halt.

  ‘Drover!’ she yelled.

  ‘Woof!’ came the happy reply.

  She kept calling, and the dog kept replying. She trotted along a lane she’d looked down a dozen times. Still she saw nothing.

  Her whistle sealed the deal, and the dog came charging out from the centre of the cane block.

  ‘Drover,’ said Abbey, climbing down from Pepper and full of concern. ‘Where are they?’

  A fit of laughter answered that question for her. Abbey led her horse a few more metres, following the sound and found the opening that Drover had emerged from. It had been completely out of view from the top of the track. There, sitting on their horses and killing themselves laughing, were Talika and Hannah.

  ‘Holy cow!’ said Abbey, leading her horse through a gap into what could only be described as a huge room-like space in a block of cane about the size of a tennis court. The cane had been cut and harvested from the inside, but a thick wall of stems was left around the perimeter, protecting whatever was in there from view from every angle, except the air.

  ‘What is this place?’ asked Abbey, a huge feeling of relief washing over her at being reunited with her friends. Pepper touched noses with Bedazzled and snorted loudly.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Talika, excitedly, ‘but it is such a cool place. It is the best arena for trotting and cantering around. Hannah’s been giving me a riding lesson while we waited for you to find us.’

  ‘Well, that’s great,’ said Abbey, ‘but Pepper and I nearly had a heart attack out there. Cane fields can be so creepy when you’re by yourself.’ Abbey said it with a smile, but her friends realised that she’d been genuinely frightened.

  ‘We’re sorry we scared you,’ said Hannah. ‘Time kind of got away on us with the riding lesson and all.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Abbey. ‘I’m just glad you didn’t trick me and head home.’

  ‘We’d never do that,’ smiled Talika, and Abbey knew she was telling the truth.

  ‘Hands and heels down, and grip with your knees,’ said Hannah as Pudding trotted past for about the fiftieth time with Talika bobbing up and down on his back.

  ‘You do realise she’ll probably have to carry that fat little pony home on her back?’ laughed Abbey. ‘He’s never had so much exercise!’

  ‘We’re just lucky he hasn’t decided that cane is nice to eat. That’s why this is such a good spot to train him, it’s almost like he’s forgotten about food for five minutes!’

  ‘You’re going so well, Tali,’ said Abbey as their friend cantered past. ‘Try to do a flying change in the centre of your figure eight.’

  Talika nodded and clicked her tongue to keep Pudding cantering.

  ‘Keep your inside leg pressed gently to the girth and your outside leg pressed just behind the girth,’ called Hannah. ‘When you cross the centre line, swap the positions of your legs so that your new inside leg is on the girth and your new outside leg is behind the girth.’

  ‘Try to keep your hands soft and let Pud stretch through his back as he changes over,’ added Abbey.

  ‘He just keeps speeding up when I move my feet, but then stays on the same leg,’ complained Talika as she pulled the little pony up in front of her friends at the end of her practice.

  ‘It’s hard,’ said Hannah, sympathetically. ‘It took me ages to learn how to do it on Bedazzled.’

  ‘He has been a very good boy for trying, haven’t you, Pud?’ said Talika, giving his neck a hug. ‘I’ve almost forgiven you for your naughtiness this morning.’

  ‘I think he might be getting tired,’ said Abbey, leaning down to pat the little brown pony whose head barely reached the top of her saddle. ‘If we overdo it, he’ll never let us catch him again.’

  ‘Come to think of it, I’m tired too,’ said Hannah. ‘What time is it?’

  Talika pulled her phone from her back pocket. ‘Holy moly,’ she said, ‘it’s nearly lunch-time! Chuckles will go bananas if we are late again. We will be on wash-up duty for a month.’

  Mrs Bristow seemed to have taken a dislike to the three friends right from the beginning of their time at the boarding school, and it wasn’t going to be any easier now after the chick incident.

  ‘How fast did that time go?’ said Hannah, breathlessly. The three girls and the dog cantered along the row to head home. ‘We’ve been here for hours!’

  ‘Whoa,’ said Abbey as they rounded the corner that led to the gate back out onto the road. ‘Something’s going on.’

  They pulled their horses up and stared a few hundred metres ahead, not sure whether to proceed. They could see a group of people standing around at the field’s entrance, with several vehicles parked nearby. They had closed the gate and were attaching a sign to it and tying striped plastic ribbon to the fences.

  ‘Are we no
t allowed to ride here?’ said Talika.

  ‘No, we’re definitely here with permission,’ said Abbey. ‘I was there when Mr McPhail rang and made the arrangement with the sugarcane farmer, and he was totally fine with it.’

  ‘I guess we better see what’s happening,’ said Hannah.

  ‘Come on, Drover,’ said Abbey. ‘You stay with me.’

  The group walked towards the people fussing over the sign. None of them seemed to have noticed the girls at first, but when a taller man saw them he didn’t look at all pleased.

  It was then that Abbey noticed they were all wearing protective suits over their clothes, like the ones she had seen Dr Brown, the vet who treated all the animals at school, wear when she was performing an operation on an animal out in the field.

  ‘Where have you girls come from?’ said the man rather aggressively.

  ‘The cane fields,’ said Hannah, politely. ‘We have permission from Mr Challis to ride here.’

  ‘Where in the cane fields, girls?’ asked a woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties, her face filled with concern.

  ‘Lots of places,’ said Talika. ‘We were playing hide-and-seek on our horses. What you do is . . .’

  ‘We all know how to play hide-and-seek,’ snapped the man. ‘How far up towards the next property did you go?’

  ‘Not really that far,’ said Hannah, sounding a little cross at being questioned in such an unfriendly way.

  ‘Only past the third lot of rows,’ said Talika.

  The group, which Abbey could now see con sisted of three men and three women, gathered in a huddle and started to speak over the top of each other as if the girls weren’t even there.

  ‘I went right down to the fence at the other end,’ said Abbey, loudly enough to be heard over the commotion. ‘I couldn’t find the others when it was my turn to be in. I rode all the way up to the big mango trees.’

  They all stopped speaking at once.

  ‘So we have no choice then,’ said the uptight man, and the others nodded.

  ‘No choice about what?’ said Hannah. ‘Would somebody please tell us what’s going on here? We’re already late back for lunch at school, and if you keep us any longer we’ll be in real trouble with Mrs Bristow, and she’s terrifying!’

  Abbey and Talika nodded in agreement.

  The kinder-looking woman stepped forwards. ‘Have you girls heard of the Hendra virus?’

  Abbey had, and her friends nodded that they had too.

  ‘Well,’ continued the woman, ‘there has been a suspected outbreak of Hendra at the horse stud that shares a border with this property. Hendra virus is a very serious disease in horses. A horse at the stud is very sick, suffering virus-like symptoms. Until we know for sure, by law, we have to take a lot of precautions.’

  ‘And you girls may have now exposed your horses to the virus by riding on a property where the infected horse might have entered,’ sneered the unfriendly man, as if they’d done it deliberately.

  The woman held up her hand, and this seemed to have a silencing effect on him. It was now clear that she was in charge.

  ‘Thanks, Bruce,’ she said calmly. ‘Perhaps you and the others could finish tying off the quarantine tape, and I’ll have a talk to the girls.’

  Bruce stomped away, muttering under his breath.

  ‘Now, girls,’ continued the woman, ‘the important thing here is to stay calm.’ She smiled and glanced in the direction of Bruce, who was snapping at another guy about the way he was fastening the tape.

  ‘My name is Dr Jamison and I work for Biosecurity, a government department that keeps a check on diseases in the country. As you probably already know, Hendra virus is a pretty big deal,’ she said, ‘and people can tend to panic about it. This case has not been confirmed yet, but unfortunately, until we have the results, your horses will need to be kept under quarantine.’

  Abbey was gobsmacked. ‘What do you mean quarantined? Are you saying we can’t take the horses home?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman, ‘but girls, I need you to stay really calm here, so we can work out the best thing to do for you, the horses and your dog. The chances of your animals being in any kind of danger are very, very slim, but we need to be particularly careful with this virus and not take any risks.’

  ‘He’s not our dog,’ said Talika. ‘He belongs to our teacher, Mr McPhail.’

  Abbey could hear that Talika’s voice was a little unsteady.

  ‘So you girls are from the boarding school down the road? Is that right?’

  They nodded in unison.

  ‘Willowvale Girls Grammar,’ said Talika. ‘We are part of the Vet Cadet program there.’

  ‘I have the phone number here in my phone,’ said Hannah. ‘Our principal is Ms Sterling, but she’s not usually there on a Saturday. You should ask for Mr McPhail, our animal husbandry teacher or Miss Beckett, our boarding house supervisor.’

  ‘Can you tell me your names, girls?’ she said, pulling a notepad from her inside pocket.

  Dr Jamison dialled the number and stepped away from the girls while she spoke on the phone. She nodded towards a younger man, who retrieved a leash from one of the cars and clipped it onto Drover’s collar.

  Panic was starting to build in Abbey’s chest. ‘Where are you taking Drover?’ she asked.

  Dr Jamison was off the phone and coming back over.

  ‘We’re not taking him away. We just don’t want the dog to wander off. I’ve spoken to Mr McPhail and he’s on his way,’ she said.

  Four people left once they’d finished tying the tape and, luckily, Bruce was one of them. Now only Dr Jamison and the young man who held Drover on the leash remained.

  ‘So, will we have to be in quarantine too?’ said Abbey.

  ‘No,’ smiled Dr Jamison. ‘Humans can only get the virus if they come into contact with a horse showing symptoms, which your horses clearly aren’t. Horses with Hendra have trouble breathing and have a frothy, sometimes bloodstained discharge coming from their nose. There’s never been any cases of human-to-human transmission, and even people who have been in close contact with someone infected by Hendra virus have been tested and shown no evidence of the virus.’

  ‘But our horses could get it?’ asked Hannah, rubbing Bedazzled’s neck and looking really worried.

  ‘Honestly, even if the sick horse does have Hendra, which we don’t even know yet, the chance of your horses being affected is extremely slim,’ said the doctor.

  ‘But I rode right down to that property’s fence line,’ said Abbey.

  ‘The thing is,’ said the doctor, gently, ‘the disease is mostly spread by flying foxes. If a horse eats grass that has had waste from an infected flying fox on it, it can get the virus. Did you let your horse eat any grass down there, perhaps under the mango trees?’ Abbey could tell that the doctor was trying to sound very casual with this question, but her eyes didn’t leave Abbey’s face.

  ‘A little bit,’ said Abbey. ‘But he wasn’t that interested. We only stayed there for a minute and then came back.’

  Dr Jamison smiled and nodded, but Abbey could see that she was a little more concerned than she had been in the beginning.

  ‘The virus can’t be transmitted by air, or from flying foxes to humans, from dogs to humans or even the environment to humans. So, as I said before, we’re just going to hang onto the horses until we can be sure that they’re all in the clear.’

  ‘So dogs can get it too then?’ said Abbey, looking down at Drover who was wagging his tail at her.

  ‘The few dogs that have had it were in very close contact with sick horses that had Hendra virus. Even then, they showed no symptoms or weren’t sick themselves but it was detected through blood tests. Did Drover come down to the mango trees with you?’

  Abbey shook her head. ‘He was hiding with the others.’

  The doctor smiled.

  Mr McPhail’s car came into view. Abbey could see there was someone else in the vehicle with him. They pulled up and he
and Miss Beckett got out. They looked very surprised to see the three girls on their horses on the other side of a barricade of signs and tape.

  Poor Drover got really excited when he saw Mr McPhail. He tried to run over to his owner, but was held back by the guy with the lead. The dog whimpered and wagged his tail.

  The adults introduced themselves to each other, then Dr Jamison explained the situation. ‘So, it really is best that the horses stay here as a precaution, just until the blood test of the sick horse from the stud next door comes back,’ she said.

  ‘But is there a yard in this paddock they can be kept in safely?’ said Mr McPhail, sounding very concerned.

  ‘I’m not actually sure,’ said the doctor. She looked at the girls.

  ‘Have you seen a cattle yard anywhere inside the cane farm?’ asked their teacher.

  The girls all shook their heads.

  ‘What about the space in the cane block we were riding in?’ said Talika. ‘Could we barricade the entrance? They would be quite protected in there.’

  They explained the space they’d found cut into the cane block. ‘It’s the weirdest thing. It’s like a secret room in the cane.’

  ‘Some cane farmers cut long lengths of sugarcane and plant them in another area for regrowing. They use the cane from the middle of a block because it’s often the strongest and healthiest,’ said Mr McPhail.

  ‘I don’t want to leave Bedazzled in a cane paddock. Anyone could steal him!’ said Hannah.

  ‘And I don’t want to leave Pepper if there’s a chance he’ll get sick,’ said Abbey, starting to feel more and more frightened by the whole situation.

  ‘There will be people patrolling the area until the quarantine is lifted,’ said Dr Jamison. ‘And a vet will be constantly checking your horses, and people from Biosecurity will bring them food and water every morning. They will get plenty of attention, trust me. Can you show me this area, girls?’

  ‘How can we help?’ asked their teacher, from the other side of the fence.

  ‘Are you able to bring feed, water and anything else the horses may need for the next twenty-four hours, please?’ said the doctor.