Scout and the Mystery of the Marsh Ponies by Belinda Rapley Page A

hoped that he wouldn’t now be alone on Dragonfly Marsh for long. As the four rode back to Blackberry Farm,Alice and Charlie filled Mia and Rosie in properly. As soon as they’d reached the yard and untacked, Rosie rushed to get the old newspaper article.
    “It was definitely Mrs Hawk!” Alice cried, studying it closely. “The woman in the caravan was the spitting image of the woman in the picture here!”
    “One thing’s for sure, the name Hawk suits her way better than ‘Valentine’ ever did!” Rosie puffed.
    “And no wonder her hair always looked like straw,” Mia said critically. “That wig was not great quality.”
    “That’s hardly the most important fact right now,” Charlie commented as they all walked over to the barn with their nets, stuffing them full of sweet-smelling, soft hay before carrying them back to the yard for the ponies to eat while the girls groomed them.
    “No,” Mia agreed. “The most important fact is that Mrs Hawk has been banned from keepingponies, but she’s found what she thought was a sneaky way round it.”
    “And I bet that’s why she moved Scout to Dragonfly Marsh after her moonlight flit from Hollow Hill!” Alice burst out. “He was the first pony Jock noticed marshy hooves on, so that’s when she must have switched from being Mrs Hawk to being Mrs Valentine.”
    “Exactly!” Charlie said as she heaved on the haynet to pull it as high as it could go before tying it up to the baler twine on the ring outside Pirate’s stable. He tucked in greedily, hungry after the long ride. “The marsh is so big, the ponies could almost get lost out there. It’s the perfect place to hide ponies you’ve been banned from owning!”
    “And as well as hiding her ponies on the marsh,” Rosie continued, “she moved away from her cottage at Hollow Hill, changed her name and her appearance…”
    “… and carried on buying ponies with Roger Green’s help,” Charlie said crossly. “Only since herban she put them out on loan rather than keeping them on Hollow Common.”
    “And it meant she could keep the fact that she still owned ponies a secret,” Alice sighed, giving Scout lots of mints. “After all, anyone coming to try the ponies would have to try the pony at the loan home, rather than at Mrs Hawk’s.”
    She turned on the yard tap and sluiced buckets of warm water over his neck, back and legs, rinsing off all the mud and dried, crinkled sweat before splashing her own face and drying it on her T-shirt. Charlie did the same. Mia watched in horror as Charlie left long mud streaks smeared across her T-shirt without a care.
    “Clever, really,” Rosie said, giving Dancer a hug, “but not clever enough to fool the Pony Detectives.”
    “So what do we do now?” Alice asked.
    “There’s a number for the RSPCA on the article,” Mia said, picking up the cutting once more as Wish shook her head then rubbed theside of her nose against an outstretched foreleg.
    Mia took her phone out of her pocket and dialled the number, checking it against the paper. She was put on hold, and paced up and down the yard until she was put through to someone and could explain their discovery: that the banned Mrs Hawk still owned ponies, even though they were out on loan. She also mentioned that Mrs Hawk had just bought a dun pony who’d been turned out on Dragonfly Marsh all alone.
    “You’ll come out? Brilliant!” Mia said excitedly. Then her face dropped. “Oh, is that the soonest you can make it? It’s just that Mrs Val—I mean, Mrs Hawk’ s due to come here tomorrow at three o’clock. She’s planning to sell on one of the ponies she’s not even meant to own, and she might be gone by the time you get here…”
    Mia gave the address for Blackberry Farm before ending the call.
    “So?” Alice asked, her stomach in a tight knot.
    “The earliest they think they’ll be able to makeit is four tomorrow,” Mia explained, taking a deep breath, “but they’ve said that they’ll