The Bolds to the Rescue Read online

  “Mais non,” said Fifi, looking from Minty and Molly to the pony and back again. “It is something else. Why are they so terrified? I have the bad feeling. Le mauvais pressentiment!”

  Suddenly Moll’s agitation erupted, and she simultaneously went down onto all fours and began to paw at the ground while shaking her head up and down with such force that her hat flew up in the air. “NEEEEIGHH!” she cried.

  “Uh-oh,” said Miranda, jumping from her pram to retrieve the hat.

  Moll’s behavior set off Minty Boy, who whinnied loudly then pawed the air with his front hooves, snorting and pulling his lips back to reveal his very horse-like teeth.

  “Steady, Minty, old boy!” said Uncle Tony. “Try to stay calm! You’ll give the game away.”

  “Mummy, look!” cried a little boy who was in the cotton candy line. “Why are those people acting like that?”

  “I don’t know, dear,” answered his mother, looking warily over. “But try not to stare. I expect they aren’t feeling too well.”

  Mrs. Bold was scared now—it looked very much as if Minty Boy and Gangster’s Moll were about to lose control completely and revert to racehorse behavior in public. If they started galloping around the fair in a panic, then the incident would quickly become not only out of control but also dangerous. Children and adults might be trampled or accidentally kicked—to say nothing of the whole household’s cover being blown. People were already starting to stare and back away.

  “Deep breaths, Molly,” said Mr. Bold desperately. “Hold it together, both of you, please!”

  “I—I—can’t!” said Minty Boy. “It’s not the pony, it’s . . . the MAN looking after them!”

  “Who, dear?” asked Mrs. Bold, turning to have a look. By now the man’s attention had been drawn to the Bolds’ posse. He abandoned the pony and walked toward them, grim-faced, carrying a rope.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ trembled Gangster’s Moll. ‘It’s DODGY DEAN . . . and I think he’s spotted us!’

  By now both horses were on all fours and had lost their cowboy hats. The dungarees, gingham shirts, and face paint did little to hide the truth, unfortunately.

  “Well, I never,” growled Dodgy Dean, a thick-set man with missing teeth, a scraggly beard, and fuzzy hair tied in a greasy ponytail at the back of his head. “If it isn’t our two runaways! Thought you’d given me the slip, did ya?” he said, roughly pushing poor Tony and the twins out of his way. “Stand back, please, folks!”

  “I’m sorry, everyone,” said Minty Boy hurriedly, “but we’re going to have to run for it!” Just as Dean was reaching out to grab them, the two horses whinnied a fierce battle cry, reared up once, then leaped in the air, right over Dean’s head. Parents pulled their children out of the horses’ path, women screamed and men shouted as Minty and Molly broke into a gallop. Clods of earth flew up in the air behind them and into the eyes of Dodgy Dean, who was in hot pursuit.

  “Come ’ere, you wretched beasts!”

  In the chaos that ensued, Mr. McNumpty urgently insisted that the rest of the party hurry home to safety before anyone put two and two together and realized this was not a group of humans.

  “I’ll stay here and see if I can help Molly and Minty escape, or maybe track them down once they’ve gotten away. I’ve got the nose for it,” he said, tapping the side of his powerful bear snout. “Who knows how this is all going to end.”

  “Thank you, Nigel,” said Mr. Bold. “Fifi, Roger, Sheila—you get yourselves home with us. Quick, now! This is no place for you.”

  Police sirens wailed in the distance and a man was shouting through the loudspeaker for everyone to stay out of the way of the two rampaging horses wearing dungarees. There was crying and chaos in all directions. The thunderous noise of Molly and Minty’s galloping hooves echoed around the fairgrounds, and the two thoroughbreds could just about be seen through a cloud of dusty earth, racing around the perimeter of the high fence enclosure, obviously in too much of a panic to find their way out. Shocked and shaken families were running out of the gate in droves.

  “I thought those two didn’t like running,” said Bobby. “They’re certainly making up for it now.”

  “Maybe they just don’t like running with jockeys on their backs,” suggested Betty.

  “Hurry, kids! Let’s go,” cried Mrs. Bold. “We can’t help here. Let’s get back to safety!”

  Mr. McNumpty promised he’d let everyone know what was going on as soon as possible, and Mr. and Mrs. Bold ushered their frightened party out of the park and along Fairfield Road to Number 41.

  Fifi was almost overcome with the afternoon’s drama. As soon as they got home she flopped on the sofa with a damp cloth covering her eyes, and Betty fanned her with a copy of Vogue magazine.

  Sheila had a long soak in the bath. As she lay there in the warm, fragrant bubbles, she thought what a shame it was that she wasn’t allowed to deal with Dodgy Dean in the way a wild crocodile would have. “Snap, snap, swallow!” she thought to herself. “Problem solved.”

  Roger was sitting alone in Mr. McNumpty’s back bedroom, feeling very confused. During all the chaos, a lady from the Coconut Shy game booth had slipped him a piece of paper with her phone number and given him a wink. But he didn’t have a phone to call her with, and even if he had he couldn’t understand what she wanted to speak to him about. So in the end he decided to just eat the piece of paper.

  Uncle Tony and Miranda sat dazed and worried in the kitchen. The twins crouched anxiously at the front window, looking to see if Molly and Minty or Mr. McNumpty might make it home.

  Mr. and Mrs. Bold paced nervously up and down the garden, trying to make sense of the afternoon’s events and wondering how it had all gone so horribly wrong.

  “Everything was fine. Splendid, in fact, and then—bang, smash, wallop—it all went crazy!” said Mr. Bold, shaking his head in bewilderment.

  “Didn’t it just!” Amelia sighed sadly as she wrung her hands together. “They just weren’t ready for today. It was too soon. It’s all my fault. Poor Minty Boy! Poor Molly! I’ll never forgive myself if that man catches them and sends them to Belgium to be eaten. It’s just too awful!” Big tears splashed down her furry cheeks, and Mr. Bold stopped pacing up and down to give his wife a hug.

  But for once he couldn’t think of a joke to cheer her up.

  Chapter 13

  Back at the park after half an hour of chasing and hollering, Dodgy Dean had finally managed to corner the exhausted and terrified Minty and Molly between the fence and the Coconut Shy booth. The two horses hated running, and they’d had enough and had to give in.

  “Gotcha!” spat Dean triumphantly. He tied his rope into a lasso, looped it over the poor horses’ heads and pulled them roughly back toward the yellow horse trailer, the very one they had escaped from several weeks before. Their human clothes had flown off in the chase, and they walked with bowed heads, sweating and panting, their muscles quivering from all the excercise.

  “This is it, my dear friend,” whispered Gangster’s Moll to Minty.

  “Yes, Sweet Moll,” said Minty Boy softly. “There’s no escape now, for sure.”

  The two walked meekly into the filthy trailer. There was no point in resisting anymore. It was all over.

  “Weird, innit, how you two turned up at a fair in Teddington, wearing dungarees and cowboy hats?” Dean laughed at them as he secured the door. “I’m not taking any chances with you this time. Straight to the slaughterhouse for you two. You won’t be able to run away once you’re dead.”

  And because Molly and Minty had escaped before, Dean decided to not only double-lock the trailer but to fix the steel bar across it and add chains and padlocks, just to be sure.

  Molly and Minty had been in the darkened trailer for several minutes before they realized that the poor bedraggled pony was locked in with them too. He was so tired after his day’s work that he could barely keep his eyes open.

  “Afternoon,” he said sadly, with a Scottish acce
nt. “My name is Hamish. Count yourselves lucky. The slaughterhouse is better than the life I live, I promise you.” And then he fell into an exhausted sleep as Dodgy Dean got into the cab of the horse trailer and began to drive away.

  Chapter 14

  No one felt like going to bed that night in the Bold household. They were all too concerned about their friends. They gathered in the lounge to fret and worry together. But slowly, as the hours passed, one by one they all fell into a troubled sleep.

  It was gone midnight when a breathless Mr. McNumpty tapped on the front door. Mr. Bold opened it and the grizzly bear staggered in, asking for water.

  “Wake up, everyone,” said Mr. Bold. “Nigel’s back, and hopefully he has some news. Make some space for him on the sofa.”

  They all gathered around Mr. McNumpty anxiously.

  “Well,” he began, after gulping down the water and catching his breath a little. He looked very tired and windswept. “I’m afraid it isn’t good news. Minty and Molly have been captured by that ruffian. I know I’m a bear and I should have used my teeth and claws to save them, but the police were watching. They’d have shot me on the spot if they had known I was a grizzly bear.”

  Mrs. Bold patted his shoulder kindly.

  “And what has Dodgy Dean done with them?” asked Roger.

  “He’s locked and bolted them in the horse trailer. I found an abandoned bicycle in a hedge at the fairgrounds and borrowed it. Luckily the trailer is such a battered old banger it couldn’t go very fast. I managed to follow them all the way to the abattoir in Hayes. Dodgy Dean is parked outside, guarding them until morning. My poor legs have never worked so hard!”

  “Non!” gasped Fifi, pressing a silk handkerchief to her forehead as if she were about to faint.

  “What’s an abattoir?” asked the twins.

  “Er, it’s . . . not a very nice place for animals,” said Mrs. Bold.

  “But what is it?”

  “You know how you see animals in the fields, running about?” said their mother.

  “Yes,” nodded the twins in unison.

  “Then you see meat in the butcher’s or on the shelves in the supermarket? All packed up neatly?”

  “Yes,” said the twins again. “We’ve been to Minnie’s house—her dad’s a butcher.”

  “Well, an abattoir is where the in-between process happens.”

  “Or to put it another way, my dears,” explained Sheila, drawing a green claw across her throat, “goodbye to Minty Boy and Gangster’s Moll, and hello to horse steaks . . .”

  “Argh!” said Betty. “They’ve been killed?”

  “You’ve got it,” said Sheila. “Taken there and—”

  “Well, not quite yet!” interrupted Mr. McNumpty. “But they will be if we can’t get them out of there before dawn when the abattoir opens. We need a plan of action—and fast!”

  “Thinking caps on, everyone!” said Mr. Bold.

  But for a long time there was only silence in the room.

  “The trouble is,” said Roger, sounding very concerned, “we are all animals. For us to go anywhere near a slaughterhouse is madness, surely?”

  “You mean we get ‘processed’ too?” squeaked Miranda.

  Roger nodded solemnly. “Especially me. I’ve seen fields full of sheep driven off in the past. And they never come home again.”

  “Our poor friends!” wailed Fifi. “Quelle horreur!”

  “This is no time to be sheepish and timid,” said Mr. Bold firmly. “We need to be brave and determined. This is a life-or-death situation.”

  “We’ve got to get there and rescue them!” said Bobby, jumping up and punching the air. “Show that nasty Dean what happens when he messes with us Bolds!”

  “That’s my boy!” said Mrs. Bold, patting him affectionately on the back. “Come on, everyone. Be positive!”

  But there was only silence again, apart from the sound of Mr. McNumpty scratching his chin.

  Uncle Tony was sitting thoughtfully in his armchair when he stood up and cleared his throat. “There must be something,” he said. Everyone turned to look expectantly at him. “Well, er, give me a moment. Look at the skills we have between us: we’ve got a crocodile who snaps, a poodle who sings, a grizzly bear who can bite and scratch, hyenas who can dig, a sheep with horns, a monkey who can do acrobatics—not to mention flying, squawking seagulls. And what has stupid Dodgy Dean got?”

  “Er, the keys to the trailer’s padlocks?” said Roger.

  “Apart from that, then?” continued Uncle Tony.

  “You’re right!” shouted Mr. Bold. “There IS something we can do about this! Well done, Tony. You’ve given me an idea! I’m such a clever hyena, I really am! Bobby and Betty, go and grab a couple of blankets and some ropes. Everybody else, in the car at once. I’ll tell you my plan as we drive to Hayes. And we won’t need any human clothes for this,” he said, starting to take off his pajamas. “We shall do this au naturel. It’s our animal skills that will save the day! Bobby, can you quickly lean out the window, call the seagulls, and tell them to follow us? We’ll be needing all the help we can get.

  “Pay attention, everyone. We will only have one chance at this. But if it works, we should ALL be back here in time for breakfast—including Minty Boy and Gangster’s Moll!

  “One last thing . . .”

  Chapter 15

  So what was this plan? Well, if I tell you it will spoil the surprise. But take it from me, Mr. Bold is as clever as he thinks he is—and rescuing animals is what he’s good at. So it’s a great plan. Fingers crossed it works!

  It was a tight squeeze in the car that night as they drove through the deserted streets toward Hayes. Mr. Bold was driving and Mrs. Bold sat in the front seat with Miranda on her lap. Fifi (much to her horror) sat in the middle in the back, sandwiched between Sheila and Roger, who had the twins perched on their laps. Mr. McNumpty led the way on the “borrowed” bicycle with Uncle Tony perched on the crossbar. Far above them the seagulls glided through the night sky. They flew in a V formation, calling out “V for victory! V for victory!” as they went.

  Mr. McNumpty stopped on a quiet street about half a mile from the abattoir. “I think we should walk from here,” he said. “It’s not too far, and we want to surprise Dodgy Dean.”

  The seagulls perched on a fence, and everyone gathered around Mr. Bold as he whispered his master plan to them.

  “Everything must happen just as I say, understand? It’s the only way it will succeed! We must work together. Tally ho!”

  They all had a part to play in the daring rescue attempt, and as they walked toward their destination the group was very quiet, thinking about their roles.

  A few minutes later they turned a corner into an industrial park.

  “There’s the horse trailer!” whispered Mr. McNumpty, pointing to a large yellow vehicle glowing in the moonlight about a hundred yards ahead. It was parked beside a set of ominous metal gates and a sign that read “HAYES ABATTOIR.” In a few hours those gates would open, and clearly Dean intended to be first in line . . . Those pesky horses had escaped once before and he didn’t want to take any chances this time. They would fetch him a good price!

  “Right,” breathed Mr. Bold. “Operation Rescue is about to be activated! Miranda? Seagulls? Stand by! We only have one stab at this, everyone, so good luck to all. And remember: BE BOLD!”

  The first part of the plan was for the seagulls to glide around the horse trailer and see if Dean was in there. He was snoring soundly in the cab, his head resting on the dashboard.

  “Sound asleep!” reported the seagulls.

  “Excellent!” said Mr. Bold with determination. “Onward with the next stage!”

  Inside the trailer, Minty and Molly were nuzzling each other sorrowfully. They hadn’t been able to sleep a wink, partly because of Hamish’s snoring but also because they knew the fate that awaited them.

  “I was so looking forward to our new life!” sighed Molly, a big horsey tear rolling down her ch
eek.

  “Me too,” said Minty. “We were doing so well too, thanks to the kindness of the Bolds. But now look at us! Dirty, thirsty, hungry and locked up!”

  “And very soon . . .” said Molly, a lump rising in her throat. “We’ll be—”

  “It’ll all be over very quickly,” said Hamish, who had just woken up. “I feel so sorry for you, though. Beautiful horses like you deserve a better life. Unlike mine . . .”

  But just then they heard a very faint tapping on the door.

  “Shssssh!” said Minty. “What’s that noise?”

  All three horses twitched their ears to listen intently. There it was again. Tap, tap, tappety-tap!

  “They’re coming for us!” said Molly, starting to quiver.

  “Who are?” asked Hamish fearfully.

  “It’s time!” said Molly, continuing to shake.

  “Wait a sec,” said Minty. “I think someone is trying to speak to us. Listen!” Straining to hear, they just about made out a few faint, high-pitched words, spoken in a voice so quiet no human would ever hear it.

  “Minty! Molly! It’s Miranda. You hear me?”

  “Yes, yes, we can hear you!” said Molly.

  “Who is Miranda?” asked Hamish.

  “Our friend,” Molly explained quickly. “Marmoset monkey.”

  Hamish frowned. “Aye, of course.”

  “Listen carefully what I tell you,” continued the monkey urgently. “We come rescue you. Keep still and calm until the doors open—then you must run. Fast. Faster than you ever run before. You understand? Back to Fairfield Road. The twins will go with you—they can follow their noses and show you the way home.”

  “Oh, but that’s so far, and we’re not very good at running,” protested Molly.

  “You must!” said Miranda. “It’s your only hope.”

  “Right,” nodded Minty Boy. “We will have to, just once more.”