The Silver Brumby (11 page)

Now that Arrow was dead, Thowra could be undisputed king of any other stallions who spent the summer with his herd on Paddy Rush’s Bogong, and there was more room there than on the Brindle Bull. Pleased to be going there, he led his mares to the old grazing ground where he had been with Yarraman’s herd when he was as small as his own foals.

It was exciting, too, going over all the country that he and Storm had explored; finding some scrub grown far thicker, some burnt and offering no cover at all; finding again the rock paths and the ravine where they had lost Arrow.

He examined very closely the cliff that Bel Bel and Mirri had once made them jump down to avoid the manhunt, and realized it still offered a good place of escape. He showed it to Golden and taught her how to make the twisting jump that was needed, then showed her the way into the scrub. Always he was teaching her to be quiet and try and leave no track, and at last she had lost the fourth shoe.

Boon Boon, with her cream foal, might become the object of a hunt, too, so she also tried to jump down the cliff, and then took her foal over it.

Every day, Thowra went to a vantage spot where he could look out over the Crackenback towards the Dead Horse hut, and spent hours watching. Somehow he was sure the owner of Golden would not be long in returning. And only about five days after they had reached Paddy Rush’s Bogong, he saw the far-away specks of men on horseback heading towards the Brindle Bull. Just for a moment they were visible, then they had vanished into the bush. He went back to the herd and took them off into some almost impenetrable scrub, the snow-gums and heather closing around them and leaving no trace.

There was a tiny clearing on the banks of a creek, inside their hiding-place; and the foals lay there, beside their mothers, while the mares and stallion listened and listened all day long.

At night they all crept out to feed with the shy wombats and wallabies, and listened to the mopokes calling. Just before dawn, they were hidden again in the silent, aromatic scrub. Another day started to pass very slowly. The sky had become grey-milky, and the black cockatoos were crying in the trees. The still air in their clearing became very oppressive. Thowra felt his coat pricking uncomfortably. It was too still, and the cockatoos’ cry was full of foreboding. He wished he knew what was happening on the Brindle Bull.

The wind started to blow, hot and menacing, and the silence was broken by the roar it made through the trees, by the groaning, lashing boughs. Thowra was now thoroughly uncomfortable. Even through the torrent of sound made by the storm he thought he could hear movement on the mountain — not galloping, but animals creeping, hiding.

Ordering the herd to stay absolutely quiet, he went cautiously out through the dense scrub, working this way and that so that he could be sure no enemies were approaching through the cover to their hiding place. He saw nothing until he reached the very edge of the belt of timber and heather. The long, clear glade beyond was empty, but, moving along through the next belt of trees, he could see, in amongst the bending, wind-contorted limbs, a file of horses, with small grey foals beside their mothers, and there, in the lead, just behind The Brolga, was his own mother, Bel Bel.

Something must have made Bel Bel look in his direction. He was sure he was hidden from sight, but it was as though she looked through all the leaves and heather hiding him, and saw his eyes. She moved her head in a nod of recognition, but made no other sign.

Thowra went back to his herd. That night he would not let them go out to graze. Tremendous rain started soon after dark, and they took shelter under the thick trees, but they were all getting hungry and restless. Thowra himself wandered to and fro through the scrub.

At last, after midnight, he saw Bel Bel coming through the rain and the darkness, through the grotesquely moving trees.

‘Well, my son of the wind and the rain and the storm,’ she said, ‘it would seem as if you have brought more than a little trouble on us all through stealing this filly from the men.’

‘What has happened?’ asked Thowra.

‘The Brolga is very angry,’ she said. ‘The men came, creeping, searching, trying to find you and this filly they call Golden. There were men everywhere. At first they did not bother about us, but then perhaps they were angry that they did not find you, and they started chasing and roping. That’s why we left. Next they will come here. You will have to go farther away.’

‘I know this mountain and all its hiding-places very well,’ Thowra said.

‘Yes, my son, I know you do, but there are a lot of you to hide. You will have to go farther down the river. The country is rough there and the grazing is not good, but it would be better to have a summer of poor food — and to remain free.’

As she spoke Thowra saw the fire and sparkle in her eyes. She was old now, but the courage of the ‘lone wolf’ mare was undiminished.

“Where is Mirri?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Mirri died last year,’ Bel Bel answered sadly. ‘It will be my turn soon, but I have a great wish that my bones should bleach up high on the Ramshead.’

‘And mine, too, some day,’ Thowra said. ‘What does The Brolga mean to do now? Stay here, or go back to his grounds on the Brindle Bull?’

‘I don’t know. He may fancy this mountain and hunt you out.’

‘Hunt me out!’

‘Yes. You couldn’t beat him in a fight. He’d like Golden, too, you know that.’

‘Oh well,’ Thowra said. ‘I’ll wait and see where he goes, and what the men do.’

‘I wouldn’t wait. I’d go before the men come after you because of your beautiful cream hide and the filly’s, or before The Brolga kills you for both.’ And Bel Bel was gone as silently as she had come, fading into the dark and the storm, vanishing behind the beating, wind-twisted boughs of the snowgums.

Thowra thought over what she had said. His mother knew so much, and all she had taught him had been good. He knew it would be better to go now, taking his herd away under cover of the night and the wild rain.

Ghost-like, he flitted back through the scrub: like ghosts his herd followed him out, and followed him all through the night, up and down steep slopes, over rocks, across streams, along the soft snowgrass glades, around the top of Paddy Rush’s Bogong and down the other side: up and down and along ever rougher and rougher country.

Dawn came, and across a break in the stormy eastern sky a flight of brown teal winged their way. There was water close, plenty of water, in the Crackenback River and many small creeks, but the grass grew only in odd tussocks, and the herd was very hungry.

Thowra led them on and on. Somewhere, he thought, there must be better grazing than this. Down on the river there might be more grass, but men came there. The only thing to do was to cut away from the river, and see what lay in the hills.

In the weeks that followed, Thowra taught Golden all he could about the bush, about keeping herself hidden, about making no sound, and leaving no track.

One night, Boon Boon came to him.

‘There is not enough food here for mares that are feeding hungry foals,’ she said. ‘We are getting thin and weak, and our foals do not grow enough.’

Thowra, too, was tired of the rough, uninteresting country, and of always feeling hungry.

‘We will go then,’ he said, ‘back to Paddy Rush’s Bogong.’

When they got back to the mountains, he did not lead his herd straight to the grazing grounds. He left them hidden some distance away, and went up himself, late in the evening, examining the ground, the grass, the shrubs, all the way for any tracks of other horses, wild or tame. The only signs he saw were weeks old. When he carefully peered into the grazing ground, there was no one there, and as he walked all over it, looking and sniffing with the greatest thoroughness, he realized that no horses had been there for at least three weeks.

He went back for the herd.

After the sparse grazing on the hills down the river, the mares never lifted their heads from the sweet grass. They fed all day without ceasing. Thowra and Golden, too, were very hungry, but not with the urgent hunger of the mares with foals at foot, so when Thowra started off to have another look round, Golden followed him.

Only scattered cattle could be seen over on the Main Range, but down on the crossing of the Crackenback there was a small mob of horses.

‘Storm!’ said Thowra excitedly, and started down to meet him, as usual going where he could leave no tracks and in timber where he would be invisible from the other side of the river.

It was late afternoon when the two horses met. Red sunlight gilded Thowra as he advanced, playfully rearing, to meet his half-brother, his brother of the wind and the rain.

Storm reared up, too, a magnificent bay horse now, and they nipped each other joyfully, cavorted and danced. At last, when their greetings were over, Thowra asked:

‘Are you coming to the grazing ground?’

‘For a night or perhaps two,’ Storm answered. ‘The men seek everywhere for you and Golden, and anyway there will be too many of us.’

As they climbed up the hill, Thowra reflected how his theft of Golden had made life very dangerous and uncomfortable — how everyone said so, and yet no one seemed to blame him for taking her. He remembered that night at the Dead Horse hut, when he had first rubbed noses with her through the rails, and knew he would steal her all over again if he had to. He looked back at her, saw her putting her neat hooves carefully where he put his, saw her outlined in burning gold by the setting sun. She was lovely, and she was his.

Storm had four mares and foals with him. It would mean quite a number of them on the grazing ground if they all stayed together. Storm was probably wise not to stay long, but, now that they were together, he realized how much he had missed his company.

‘Where have you just come from?’ he asked Storm.

‘The back of the Brindle Bull.’

‘What’s going on there?’

‘Well, men are always appearing everywhere. They don’t bother about us ordinary coloured horses, but they make things pretty uncertain. Also, there’s no room for anyone else but The Brolga there.’ Then, as he walked along beside Thowra, he added: ‘I didn’t really expect to find you here. Wouldn’t be surprised if The Brolga doesn’t come over and fight you for Golden — and, anyway, the men will come here soon.’

‘Couldn’t find enough good grass anywhere else, but I like this country,’ said Thowra, ‘and I know all the hiding places.’

They went steadily on up the hill, not hurrying the mares and foals, and keeping well inside the timber. They did not see a man sitting absolutely still on a chestnut horse high up on a rocky crag. The man stared and stared at the movement in the timber, then he, too, went on up the mountain.

Only a man who had begun to know something of the silver brumby’s cunning would have guessed that he was there in the trees — that the faint suggestion of movement in the timber meant horses led by ‘Silver’. This man was Thowra’s old enemy, the man on the black horse. The last of the daylight went, then, but the man had seen enough.

About an hour later, an almost full moon rose over the eastern hills, throwing its eerie light into the clearings and long glades, making queer shadows among the trees, leaving pools of darkness in deep hollows or gullies. The wild horses went on up through the timber, never having to move in clear country until they were nearly at the grazing ground.

As a matter of course, Thowra stopped and looked cautiously out through the trees before he led the other horses into the bright moonlight. This time the man was well hidden, and he saw clearly the beautiful cream stallion step out of the trees; and the man held his breath when he saw, just behind the stallion, the filly, Golden.

The horses went through the moonlit clearing and into a gully filled with black sallee trees and were lost to view again, among the long, drooping leaves, the dark boughs and trunks, the festoons of old man’s beard.

The man waited a while and then rode across the clear ground into the black sallees and followed the horses up the hill.

The herd was peacefully spread out in the wide valley when Thowra got back to them. Little foals lay asleep on the grass, sleeping mares standing over them. But Boon Boon was wide awake and neighing softly. When she saw the number of horses with Thowra she moved nervously around and stood over her little creamy foal. When they were all down in the moon-filled valley there was quite a mob of horses.

It was Thowra who heard the jangle of a bit first. He looked up, saw the horse and its rider.

‘Go!’ he urged. ‘Go all ways! Don’t stay together!’ When Golden tried to come with him he bared his teeth and turned her in another direction. A man by himself might get confused in the moonlight, and be unable to make up his mind which horse to follow. If he chased Golden, Thowra thought he might manage to cut in and confuse him — and he felt extremely confident of evading a rope.

The man did chase Golden, of course. He had made up his mind to go for her, thinking that perhaps if he caught her and tied her up, he might get her brumby stallion later. He was gaining on Golden, and had got his lasso ready, when there were suddenly two creamies galloping ahead of him, and, as soon as the second one was there, they began to twist and weave, and dodge in a way that made it almost impossible to keep them separate in his mind. But this man had learnt a lot since he first used to hunt Thowra. For one thing, he had become skilled with the rope. Several times, as they galloped, he could have lassoed Thowra — and Thowra knew this — but it was Golden he really wanted.

Just before they reached the trees would be the danger time. Then, Thowra knew, the man might rope either of them rather than lose both.

Thowra’s heart was thudding with fear and anger. The line of trees, black in the moonlight, was still some yards off. The man was almost alongside.

‘Prop and swing right round, then towards the trees again,’ he told Golden, and propped, swinging himself straight across the front of the pursuing horse.

The man must have thought very quickly and decided that he would not now get Golden before she reached the timber and its concealing shadows. The rope went whistling through the moonlight and round Thowra’s neck.

With a squeal of rage and terror the stallion galloped faster than he had ever galloped before, straight for the trees, and instead of being able to hold him, the man and his horse had to go off with him in his crazy gallop.