The Silver Brumby (8 page)

Men with pack-horses, stocking up the huts, came earlier than the mobs of cattle that year. They were there, at Dead Horse hut, before the brumbies got any warning, and Thowra, grazing with his mares on some open snowgrass about half a mile away, knew he had been seen.

He melted backwards into the forest, but it was time to go from the Main Range, and, without waiting a moment, he took his mares with him and set off for the Brindle Bull. In the evening, they crossed the full-foaming river, fighting through the current, and the red stain of the sunset on the water reminded Thowra of the blood that had run from his wounds into the creek after his fight with Arrow. He wondered where Arrow would spend the summer, and thought probably on Paddy Rush’s Bogong, and that there would be more chance of keeping his little herd on the Brindle Bull, where The Brolga grazed, than too close to Arrow.

Instinctively, when they climbed the mountain the next day, he led his herd towards the hanging valley on the south slope. They would be safe there for a little while. The man with the black horse would more likely look for them at the Cascades in the early summer. Also he knew that if Storm were coming he might come there too. And one bright evening, when the kurrawongs were calling and the grey, red-crested gang-gangs chattering in the trees, Storm came down their track, and the two young stallions trotted up to greet each other, whinnying softly.

‘Brothers of the wind are we,’ Thowra said, as they nipped each other playfully. ‘It is good that we should be together again,’ and for all that summer and the crisp autumn, and during the winter with its snow and cold winds, and while their young mares were getting heavier with foal, the two stallions and their herds ran together.

Neither the summer nor the autumn were quiet. There seemed often to be men about. The man on the black horse chased them several times, but all the cunning that Bel Bel had taught Thowra, and his ever-increasing speed, kept him safe. Twice Storm took the two herds away and left the men galloping after Thowra so that Thowra had more chance of vanishing down a tunnel of scrub or into a deep hole in a stream. But it was never so easy to escape if the men had dogs.

Round the camp-fires the legends of the cream brumby — his speed, his cunning, his extraordinary beauty — grew and grew. The cattle heard them in the soft starlight nights, and gradually Bel Bel, running with The Brolga, heard these tales and was pleased and afraid, all at the same time. There was one foal she had had that she would never forget.

Some of the stories that were woven round Thowra were queer stories, too. There was one that Bel Bel heard of how some men were sleeping in the open round a camp-fire one night, and of how one of the company had woken wish the feeling of being watched. Then, in the trees, he had seen a pale stallion vanishing from sight. There was another tale of two men and their pack-horses, and of how they had observed a wraithlike horse appear and disappear in the bush beside their track, keeping pace with them for several miles. All this worried Bel Bel. She kept saying to Mirri that the tales they heard could not be true, but she wondered.

They were true, of course. Thowra was so curious! However, more than once he had saved the two small herds from being hunted by knowing where the men were and which way they were going. As his strength and his speed increased he could not help enjoying the excitement and danger of watching the men and their horses, and of pitting his cunning against them. He knew that one of the legends about him was that he had never left a hoofmark by which he could be traced. He knew, too, that many of the stockmen did not believe he really existed. This much he heard from the grazing red and white cattle, or from the single beasts he met in the river pools.

As the months went by he even felt less anxiety about Arrow, forgetting that Arrow, also, would be growing in strength with each passing day. They did not see each other until the winter, neither having sought the other out. It did not suit Arrow to fight without winning, but his summer and autumn had been less troubled by stockmen — every man in the mountains, whether they believed in the silver stallion’s existence or not being out to catch Thowra — and Arrow had come to regard himself as invincible. However, when the two stallions saw each other in the distance, there was no real reason to fight — there was food enough for all, and springtime was the time to fight for mares — so they went on their separate ways.

The winter’s storms came then, and in the whirling, swirling snow Thowra and his herd of three grey mares were often invisible, often able to play tricks on the others, and enjoy the wild games.

So Thowra’s first year with a herd of his own passed very happily, and he felt within himself the mounting tide of energy and joy which even the intense cold and the great storms could not quench. Then when the first warm, scent-laden winds came, and the warm rains to wash away the thawing snow, Thowra’s strength rose with the streams, grew with the grass and the buds and leaves.

All the mountains, the silent, rolling, grey-green hills, the great rock cliffs and crags, the rushing streams, and the dense forests, were his kingdom, possessed, because of his joy, his speed, his strength and his beauty, possessed perhaps even more than Arrow possessed them, or The Brolga — possessed, really, because of what Bel Bel had given him, the wanderlust and the understanding of every sign of bird and beast and weather.

Spring was coming to all this mountain kingdom. Foals would be born, young kangaroos, possums, and wombats would be snugly in their mothers’ pouches, the hawks and great wedge-tail eagles would hatch their young, fat dingo pups would roll in the sunshine, and the wild horses would fight for their mares and gallop over the hills in all the glory of their strength.

Bel Bel listened to the trumpeting spring calls of the stallions that were in and around the valley of the Cascades. First she heard Arrow’s call, followed by The Brolga’s ringing answer, and now with a challenge in its sound. Then she heard Thowra’s call, and knew undoubtedly it was his.

All the love of the high, wild places, all the amazing joy in being alive sounded in his voice.

Bel Bel, who was growing old, knew that she would indeed live on in her cream son, and she could imagine him standing high above the valley on a rocky promontory, the sunlight on his shining cream coat and on the streaming silver of his mane and tail, calling out for joy.

When she heard Arrow’s call again it sounded closer to Thowra. Bel Bel started moving in the same direction, with a sudden sense of foreboding. Then she heard her son again, and a clangour of echoes, and knew he must be moving up a narrow valley. She started climbing up a ridge, lithely and swiftly, in spite of her age.

Again she heard Arrow, shriller and more urgent, and by the faint echo, she knew he was entering the valley. This time Thowra definitely answered him in a ringing challenge; and now Thowra had risen out of the valley because the sound of his challenge rang out over the hills.

Bel Bel started to move faster. She knew the ridge she was on rose to quite a high knob then dropped and climbed again. From the knob she would have a commanding view.

Had the time come when the vast mountains were no longer vast enough for two such stallions as Arrow and Thowra? Arrow, Bel Bel knew, had only become more jealous and mean-spirited as he grew up. He had wanted Thowra’s grey mares badly enough last year. This year he had probably made up his mind to get them.

Often, as she climbed, she heard their trumpeting, challenging cries.

Round some rocks she came face to face with a dingo: both she and the yellow dog jumped nervously, and went on their way.

A roaring challenge from Arrow echoed and echoed round the narrow valley, but from far above came the mocking answer, as though Thowra was laughing there in the sun.

Bel Bel was not laughing, though. She had seen Arrow often lately and noticed that he was an almost mature horse, heavy and strong, so like his father, Yarraman, in all except temperament. And Thowra, Thowra was much more her son than Yarraman’s, fleet of foot, like she was, and lithe. In this fight, now, he would be fighting for his life.

Up and up, Bel Bel climbed, hearing all the time the wild stallion calls that grew fiercer and more insistent. At last, she reached the top of the knob and stood there scanning the surrounding country. Far away, she could see Thowra and his mares, but Arrow was not yet in sight. She waited and watched. Between her and Thowra there was a stretch of very rough bush country with some great heaps of granite rocks and one or two high cliff faces, but opposite, where Thowra was, there were open fields of snowgrass.

As she watched she saw the three mares disappear from sight into the bush and then saw Thowra rear on his hind legs, almost as though dancing with joy; then he screamed his defiance. Arrow was coming up out of the valley into view!

The big chestnut came slowly, stopping now and then to paw the ground in anger and anticipation.

Bel Bel held her breath. What was Thowra going to do? She thought she knew: she
hoped
she knew.

Arrow’s mares were in sight now; and Arrow was advancing slowly, his screams becoming shriller and shriller. Bel Bel, even from that distance, could almost sense his quivering fury. It would have taken a better-tempered horse than Arrow to remain calm against Thowra’s taunting. The creamy danced and mocked with a rudeness unbelievable, but his movements were quiet and rhythmical, taking none of the energy he would soon need.

Arrow stopped and pawed the ground, then came on again, rearing, snorting, screaming.

Thowra roared a mocking challenge in reply; waited till Arrow got quite close, and then pirouetted and galloped on to some rocks a hundred yards away.

Bel Bel heaved a sigh.

Arrow broke into a gallop and followed, obviously trusting to the impetus of his rush to knock Thowra clean off the rocks. Thowra danced to one side, swung round, and struck him a drumming kick in the ribs, one calculated to infuritate more than to damage, and Arrow went flying down the other side of the rocks, pulled up on his haunches, and came back at him.

Thowra waited a moment and then leapt down and away to another vantage point. This time it was only a grassy hillock and he did not let Arrow get close enough to strike or bite him, but, giving a derisive roar, galloped back to the heap of rocks.

Bel Bel saw that he was doing everything to goad Arrow to anger. It was a long time since she had watched Thowra really move, and it was clear that because of his speed he had all the advantages if he did not let Arrow really come to grips with him. But if it came to a ding-dong fight, there was no question about it: she was sure Arrow would win.

Thowra remained just sufficiently out of Arrow’s reach to keep the bigger horse at a wild pitch of anger, and Bel Bel watched him leading the way slowly nearer the bush. Once they were among the trees, she would not be able to see how the battle went.

The sweat was breaking out on her already, trickling from behind her ears. Thowra must win, and yet she did not really know how. Supposing Arrow killed him — her beautiful cream foal to whom she had taught everything she knew of the bush!

She saw Thowra gallop through the first of the trees with Arrow close behind. Then there were just flashes of colour as they dodged among the snowgums, and Arrow’s scream rang out shriller and angrier while Thowra mocked him more and more, until it seemed almost as if the cream and silver brumby were laughing aloud.

Then Bel Bel held her breath again. Through the trees it looked as if Arrow had caught Thowra, and was trying to get the first fatal hold above the wither; but she was mistaken. There was Thowra streaking between the trees; there was his derisive cry again, mocking Arrow. For one minute she could see him prancing in a little clearing. He was closer to her now, and it was not just in imagination and memory that she saw his beauty.

For a little longer she watched him galloping down a glade, then they both vanished, and she could only hear the screams, both furious and mocking.

All of a sudden Thowra burst into view, galloping straight for the top of one of the cliffs, Arrow fast on his heels.

Bel Bel stood tense and still.

Thowra checked on the very edge, stones flying in the air, and then, just as Bel Bel had jumped with him years before, over another cliff, he jumped on to a tiny ledge quite some feet below the top. There he stopped, rocking unsteadily for a moment. Bel Bel saw him look up to see what Arrow was doing. And Arrow? Flying through space, carried far out from the cliff face by his speed, was Arrow.

To Bel Bel it seemed ages of time before Arrow crashed on to the ground at the foot of the cliff; until he stopped hurtling through the air; until he crashed and lay absolutely still.

Bel Bel only stayed long enough to see Thowra step carefully along the wallaby track round the cliff from his narrow shelf, and then she set off towards him at a trot. But Thowra had not seen her and she soon saw that he was going to head back to his mares. Bel Bel kept on. She wanted to see what had happened to Arrow. She saw Thowra glance back over his shoulder often, and realized then that he had not been able to see Arrow’s crash from his ledge, and that now he was determined to get back to his mares before Arrow could find them. She kept on towards the bottom of the cliff.

She crossed a bush-filled hollow and drank at a little stream. A brown wallaby sat gravely watching her, and some gang-gangs threw gum-nuts from the trees.

She went on, looking for Arrow. Suddenly she stopped. Somewhere she seemed to have seen the same thing before — a chestnut stallion lying in a crushed and huddled heap, with all the tremendous life completely gone from him. In among the shaley rocks at the foot of the cliff, Arrow lay dead.

Thowra had fought for his life using his own weapon — his speed. He had planned his escape, not Arrow’s death — but Arrow was as dead as Yarraman had been when the mountains were no longer vast enough to hold him and The Brolga.

She stood looking at Arrow. His head, the only part of him which revealed his mean spirit, was doubled underneath his neck and the golden mane flowed over it. Already a crow had arrived, and was advancing on the dead horse with little hops. A flight of lowries, scarlet and royal blue, flew through the trees, heeding neither Bel Bel nor Arrow. Over the rocks moved a little brown lizard.

Bel Bel shuddered and backed away slowly to start on the steep climb round the cliff.

The bush seemed very silent now, after the noise of the two stallions. She began to doubt if she would find Thowra. As he did not know that Arrow was dead, he was certain to take his mares and go right away. Anyway, she would try to find him. But when she got to the top she could not go on without once again going to the cliff edge and taking a last look — perhaps to make sure that Arrow, who had harried her foal from his first day with the herd, was really dead.

She stood on the grey granite edge and looked over. There was the heap of chestnut and gold, and she forgot for a moment that it was Brownie’s son. With his narrower, pinched head not showing, he looked the image of Yarraman.

A sound came from behind her! She turned in a flash. There was Thowra coming out of the bush.

‘Everything was so quiet,’ he said. ‘I had to come and see what had happened.’

‘He could not stop,’ said Bel Bel. ‘He’s down there, dead.’

Thowra peered over the edge, his sweat-stained ears twitching nervously.

‘Come away,’ Bel Bel said, backing. ‘It is too open here. You must go back to your mares — and Arrow’s if you want them.’