Free Lonely Girl by Josephine Cox

the yard, he kept close to the buildings, quietly checking as he went, determined to catch the thieves red-handed. This time, he was ready for them. Pausing to listen and look, he could neither see nor hear anything untoward, although his every instinct told him they must be there.
    Next, he cut a way through to the smaller stable yard, where he quickly checked on every stable and every horse, but he found nothing to concern him. He pushed on, as silently as possible, checking one building after another, determined to catch the perpetrators of the recent theft.
    Had he known that Rosie was planning to leave the house to look for him, he would instantly have abandoned his search and returned to her.

    ‘I’m almost sure that was Daddy I saw just now,’ Rosie confided in the patient dog, ‘but what if it wasn’t him? What if it was the bad men who took all the saddles during the summer?’ Her father had had to spend his much-needed savings on some second-hand replacements.
    Her voice broke into a sob. ‘I don’t want to go out there, Barney, because Daddy said not to, and it’s dark … I don’t like the dark.’ She would never admit that particular fear to her father, but she could tell Barney, being safe in the knowledge that he would not betray her trust. ‘Oh, Barney, where is he? I’m sure something bad must have happened.’
    Having kept her tears back for so long, she wrapped her arms around her beloved friend and unashamedly cried on his shoulder.
    Soon gathering herself, her courage strengthened by the presence of the large dog, she was up and running to the bedroom door. ‘Come on, Barney! Let’s go and find him!’
    As though sensing the enormity of what she was about to do, Barney stubbornly sat on his haunches: he was going nowhere and neither was she. When Rosie ran back to pull him up he sat firm, with a look in his eye that warned her he would not be moved.
    ‘All right then, I’ll go without you.’
    Hoping he would change his mind once she had her coat on, Rosie ran down to the hallway where she collected her long mac from the peg, and quickly slipped it on, but Barney had moved only as far as the top of the stairs, where he sat still with a look of contempt on his weathered old face.
    ‘I’m going, Barney.’ Rosie was determined. ‘You can stay here if you want, but I have to go … I mean it, Barney. I’m going outside to look for him, whether you come with me or not.’ Reluctant to leave him here, she collected his lead and stood by the door, teasingly dangling it in the air. When it seemed he was as determined to stay as she was to go, Rosie pretended to leave. But the minute she dropped the lead, Barney ran downstairs and sat upright before her, one paw scraping the lead towards him, while he looked up at her with a sorry face.
    Rosie was greatly relieved. ‘Oh, thank you, Barney.’ She wrapped her arms about his warm silky back and hugged him to her. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me go all on my own.’
    She quickly attached the lead to the leather collar about his fat neck, then gave him another swift hug while she whispered in his ear, ‘Thank you for coming with me. I pretend to be brave, but I would have been frightened all on my own. Just remember, Barney, when we get outside we must be very careful because we don’t really know who’s hiding out there.’
    A moment or so later, they were both suitably dressed for the outdoors.
    ‘Come on, Barney, we need a torch!’ Rosie made a search for the long torch, which she recalled was kept somewhere here.
    ‘I’m not sure where it is exactly,’ she admitted to her dog, who was sniffing in every corner, ‘but I know Daddy keeps a spare one, and it’s in here somewhere.’
    Eventually she found it tucked away in the shoe cupboard by the door. She was pleased to find a short, sturdy walking stick in the umbrella stand, too. It had a fat, knobby handle and was light to carry.
    ‘Here, Barney, you can look after that.’ She