Stacy Gregg - Liberty and the Dream Ride

Pony Club Secrets

Liberty and the Dream Ride

STACY GREGG

www.stacygregg.co.uk

HarperCollins Children's Books An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

Text copyright © Stacy Gregg 2011

Illustrations © Fiona Land 2011

Cover design copyright © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020 Cover photography © Shutterstock.comCBBC logo © British Broadcasting Corporation 2016

Stacy Gregg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN 9780007299317

Ebook Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007427253

Version 2020-08-18

Congratulations and thanks to India Lambeth who won our competition to “name a pony”. India’s horse Avatar appears in this book.

For Parker, who arrived just in time. Here’s hoping that your future will be filled with ponies…

Contents

Cover

Title Page Pony Club Secrets Liberty and the Dream Ride STACY GREGG

Copyright www.stacygregg.co.uk HarperCollins Children's Books An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF Text copyright © Stacy Gregg 2011 Illustrations © Fiona Land 2011 Cover design copyright © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020 Cover photography © Shutterstock.com CBBC logo © British Broadcasting Corporation 2016 Stacy Gregg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks. HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN 9780007299317 Ebook Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007427253 Version 2020-08-18

Dedication Congratulations and thanks to India Lambeth who won our competition to “name a pony”. India’s horse Avatar appears in this book. For Parker, who arrived just in time. Here’s hoping that your future will be filled with ponies…

Map

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Coming Soon: Stacy Gregg’s Pony Club Secrets

Nightstorm and the Grand Slam

Book One - Mystic and the Midnight Ride

Book Two - Blaze and the Dark Rider

Keep Reading …

About the Author

The Pony Club Secrets series

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

The horses inside the belly of the 747 cargo plane were restless. For eleven long hours they had been cooped up in their tiny stalls, unable to move or do anything more than nibble at their hay nets. Now, at last, they were almost there. Dawn was breaking across the skies above Los Angeles and very soon the plane would be landing and the horses would be craned down on to the tarmac in their shipping stalls, ready to be moved on to their final destinations.

There were three horses in the transporter stalls on this flight. In the first was a sleek mahogany bay Thoroughbred, bound for the racetracks of Flushing Meadows and Belmont. Too nervous to eat, the bay horse hadn’t touched his hay net for the entire journey. He was anxiously moving about in his tiny stall, disturbed by the whine of the plane engines and the strange smells and sounds all around him, an atmosphere so different to his serene life in the stables back home in England.

Beside the Thoroughbred, standing in the next stall, was a chestnut stallion. He was even bigger than the bay, standing at seventeen hands. He was solidly built, a heavy-set Oldenburg with a muscular physique that could have been carved from granite. The sire of countless colts and fillies, this Oldenburg stallion possessed a bloodline that was valuable beyond measure. Like the Thoroughbred, he had been restless throughout the flight, fretting and snorting at every sudden bump and jolt of turbulence.

The third horse onboard the plane looked positively tiny by comparison. He was a mere pony – standing only fourteen-two hands high. Unlike the Thoroughbred and the Oldenburg, who clearly had noble blood in their veins, this pony was a ragamuffin. His stocky conformation and coarse chestnut and white skewbald coat betrayed his lack of breeding. He had spent most of his life sleeping rough without so much as a rug, even in winter. He had never been pampered and he certainly wasn’t accustomed to being on fancy jet planes. And yet, of all the three horses, he was the one that had coped the best with this epic journey. He had settled immediately in his stall and during the course of the trip he’d eaten his way through a miraculous eight netfuls of hay and kept the two grooms assigned to his care constantly on their feet with his antics and demands.

“He’s a real comedian,” the groom with bushy eyebrows said as he offered the skewbald water from the bucket he was holding. He stood and watched the gelding make a fuss, snorting and blowing theatrically as he drank.

“Did you see the way he swiped my sandwich out of my hand this morning?” the other groom, a sandy-haired man replied. “Man, he is one cheeky pony! I’m really gonna miss the little fella.”