The Crowstarver by Dick King-Smith Page A

Major Yorke dislike selling such old friends, he was also a sucker for acquiring new ones, and only the fact that his wife reined him in very tightly, especially on his Irish trips, stopped Outoverdown Farm from being covered in horses.
    One day however, when Mrs Yorke was away visiting relatives, a most intriguing advertisement caught Mister’s eye. There had been an American travelling roadshow in the county, a kind of blend of circus and fun fair, one of whose attractions had been a rodeo. Now the whole outfit was packing up and returning to the States, and the owners had decided to sell all the rodeo horses, six of them, rather than ship them back home.
    The broncos, as the advertisement styled them, were to be sold at auction in Salisbury market.
    At this sale, perhaps because he was temporarily free of Mrs Yorke’s restraining hand, perhaps because no-one else seemed especially keen to bid for these half dozen rather wild-looking beasts, Mister had a rush of blood to the head and bought the whole lot.
    When the haulier arrived back at Outoverdown Farm with them, Mister was waiting, with the horseman, at the junction of theroad with the drove, up which Percy Pound had already ridden his motorbike. He would open the gate into the most southerly piece of downland, and then wait there, to turn the horses in, for the drove continued on beyond the boundary of the farm, until it eventually met the next main road.
    â€˜We’re going to run them up into the Far Hanging. They’re a bit on the frisky side, I think, so they can let some steam off for a while and then we’ll see what we can do with them,’ said Mister.
    â€˜Up to your weight, are they, sir?’ asked Ephraim, as the haulier was unscrewing the clamps prior to letting down the tailboard of the cattle-lorry.
    â€˜I don’t know about that,’ said Mister.‘To tell you the truth, Ephraim, I bought them because I felt sorry for ’em, I suppose. They haven’t had much of a life – these rodeo chaps, they put a cinch round the horse’s belly and draw it up tight, to make ’em buck, you know, damned cruel.’
    At this point, the haulier dropped the tailboard and opened out its wings. Then suddenly there was a violent explosion from the dark interior, and out rushed the rodeo horses and thundered down the tailboard and set off up the drove, neighing and whinnying, leaping and kickinglike mad things, as though this was their first taste of freedom for ages, which it probably was.
    â€˜They’m bucking broncos all right, sir,’ said Ephraim.
    He just had time to see – before they settled into a gallop – that they were strong-looking animals and of unusual colours. Four were piebalds, one a pale red, one a greyish yellow, or, as the sale catalogue listed them, using American terms: ‘Four pintos, one sorrel, one buckskin’.
    Farmer and horseman began the long walk up the drove after the horses but before they had gone very far, they heard the noise of the foreman’s motorbike returning.
    â€˜You got a right lot there, sir,’ he said grumpily as he stopped beside them (the wind was sharp and his knee was hurting). ‘Take some breaking, they will. They come up to me full gallop and then off and away over the Far Hanging like the wind. Wouldn’t surprise me if they was to jump the boundary fence and keep going. They could be in Dorset by tonight. Mebbe they’re making for America. Best place for ’em, from what I could see.’
    â€˜Oh they’ll be all right,’ said Mister. ‘They’ll soon settle down.’
    But they didn’t.
    Over the next few days they behaved like the wild creatures they were, mustangs, feral horses rounded up specifically to be used in a ‘Wild West’ show. For all their captive lives they had been used to a routine wherein they were penned while some likely lad was lowered on to one or other of them. Then the