Moonlight: Star of the Show Read Online Free PDF

speak in case she got choked up again.
    Alice felt herself go red and patted Scout as she turned him round. It struck her as she felt his warm, sturdy neck beneath her fingers that Moonlight was as real a pony as Scout, and witha rush she suddenly knew what it would be like if that feeling was taken away for ever. She’d had Scout on loan for just over a year after falling in love with him when she caught sight of him wandering on the marshes, thin and neglected. His owner had agreed to loan him and Alice knew already that her life would never be the same if he wasn’t around. He was everything to her, her best friend in the whole world.
    She guessed everyone else was feeling the same because after Charlie swung into the saddle they headed back to Blackberry Farm in silence.

Chapter Three
    “Maybe we should just give up,” Rosie sighed as she collapsed onto a hay bale in the den, rubbing Beanie behind his ears.
    “No way,” Charlie replied, quick as a flash.
    Although no one had said anything, it was pretty clear as they looked round at one another that they were all thinking the same thing: that the case was hopeless and Moonlight would most probably be miles away by now. But that didn’t mean they could just give up, whatever the odds were of actually finding Moonlight.
    After the visit to Hawthorn Farm, somehow they all seemed to understand that looking for Poppy’s pony was no longer a game, or a way to get a reward or to appear in a magazine. It wassomething they had to do. It felt as desperate as if it was one of their own ponies that had been stolen.
    “I agree,” Mia sniffed, pulling out her notebook. Her eyes looked slightly red from where she’d been wiping them as they’d ridden back. “Let’s look at what we’ve got so far.”
    They all gathered round. Mia had stuck in the ‘missing’ advert from Pony Mad at the top of the page. Underneath she had written, in her neat handwriting:
    Clue 1
Solid metal gate, standard. New padlocks on there – maybe put on since the theft of Moonlight?
     
    Clue 2
No tack was stolen with Moonlight.
     
    Clue 3
Tracks on the pa…
    “It’s not much to go on,” Charlie said, trying hard not to sound disappointed. Alice kept staring at the page. She couldn’t help thinking that they were missing something but couldn’t work out what. Then she jumped up.
    “I’ve got it!” she cried, so loudly that even Scout started out in the field. “Rosie was right!”
    Everyone looked up at Alice expectantly.
    “I knew it!” Rosie said proudly, a grin spreading all over her round, pink-cheeked face. Then she frowned. “Er, how am I right, exactly? I mean, I know I am, that much is obvious, it’s just that I can’t quite see…” She bent over the notebook again, scanning the few lines of handwriting. Her hair, still smelling of cowpat, fell forward and marked the page with a green streak, much to Mia’s disgust.
    “I mean that your observation about the tracks might not be so useless after all. In fact, it might prove crucial to our investigation.” Alice paced up and down as she thought. “Because whenwe looked at the lane, there were hoof prints everywhere in the dusty pathway.”
    “Lots of hoof prints,” Rosie nodded enthusiastically, “but I still don’t get how that’s a clue…”
    “Well, it’s not so much the hoof prints themselves,” Alice explained. “It’s just that we were so busy looking at them that we didn’t think about tyre tracks, did we?”
    Alice absently picked up the ginger yard cat, Pumpkin, as he rubbed purring around her legs.
    “So?” Charlie asked, confused. “What about them?”
    “Well, that drive was only short, wasn’t it?” Alice said, frowning as she thought hard but starting to feel a buzz of excitement at the same time. “At one end was a seriously busy road, at the other a narrow bridleway into the woods. The only place to have loaded Moonlight into a trailer or a horsebox would have been right outside the