Down below, Benni and the mares had heard the first “wumpf” and the roaring of rocks, the clatter of stones. Then, through the mist and the rain, the stones began to pelt down.
Koora gave a wild neigh to call Dilkara, and leapt for the side of the gully and the left-hand ridge. Benni, usually so quiet, barked in horror. Each animal sprang away from the leaping wave of rocks.
Then through the air a silver horse was somersaulting. He was there and then he was hidden from sight, on the other side of the ridge, and it was impossible to get through the falling rocks to see what had happened to him.
As soon as the rock-fall had almost quietened, Benni went bounding through the last flying stones, across all the loose rubble and over the ridge till he saw Baringa picking his way rather slowly amongst the great scatter of rock. There were only some small splashes of blood blending with the rain on his coat, and though he walked slowly and kept shaking his head, he seemed all right. He was alive and he might not have been.
He raised his head, saw Benni and gave a low nicker. Benni hopped down to him and they touched each other, nose to nose — warm, trembling noses.
Benni watched him as they went on together. “He is not really hurt,” he thought. “If he gets cold he will stiffen, but if he keeps going he should be all right.” To Baringa he said: “Surely the other ridge would not fall too? We will have to go up that because this one may fall still more.”
The other ridge, though steep and difficult, was at least solid.
At last the horses and the two kangaroos scrambled up into the wind and the lashing rain on top of the High Plateau.
Baringa, who was aching all over, turned thankfully towards the north-eastern end, towards the cliff above the Canyon. If he kept on now, he would get there, but if he stopped he might become too sore to move. The rain came down so hard that there was no need to worry about their tracks remaining. They skirted round patches of dirty, granular snow all patterned over with twigs and dead snowgum leaves, pitted with gumnuts. Even up here little runnels of water were everywhere.
When they reached the edge, Baringa and Benni peered anxiously over into the Canyon. If great flood-waters filled it they would have to stay up above, on the Plateau, in the roaring wind and the rain.
The creek was over its banks, but much of the flat was above water.
“It is too high to cross,” said Benni with a sigh. “We will have to go back along the Plateau and into the, creek much higher up.” So wearily they went back along the Plateau and turned down into Dale’s Creek, into the teatree, the silence, the loneliness and mystery of that valley.
They crossed the creek and got into the Canyon down the steep cliffs on its eastern side, hours later than when they had first looked into it.
There were the rocks and the trees they knew so well, under which they could shelter. There was a little food, and there was the sense of well-being and safety engendered by being in their own hidden place which Baringa had found when he and Dawn first ran together and needed somewhere secure to live, where the older stallions could not molest them.
That night Baringa needed comfort and security, for gradually he stiffened so that he could barely move.
For several days the rain poured down. At first Baringa grew stiffer and stiffer, then he began to loosen up, but his back was very sore where it had been twisted as the rocks threw him out into the air. He could not even walk easily. There was no possibility of him going to find Dawn till he could move more freely.
Benni went out one day after the rain had stopped. He hopped along up Dales creek, then towards the track between Quambat and the Tin Mine, to see if any one was about. It was there he saw Lightning — just leaving the track and starting towards Dale’s Creek, nosing about as though he were looking for something. Benni watched for a while, then quietly headed back to the Canyon.
“Baringa,” he said. “Lightning is nosing around in Dale’s Creek. It might be a good thing if you went right round and came down from the Pilot towards him . . . if you can.”
“I’ll have to,” Baringa answered. “I can move more now that it is a little warmer. Perhaps I will make my back better, if I trot about a little, and be able to go to look for Dawn tomorrow — if I make sure that there will be no trouble from Lightning, and see him safely home to Quambat.”
Moving very stiffly still, Baringa climbed out of the Canyon and went along the ridge that divided Dale’s Creek from the Tin Mine. He forced himself to trot along, and after he had been going for a while, though his back ached badly, no other horse just seeing him would have been able to tell that he had been hurt.
When he drew near to the Tin Mine-Quambat track, he went with the greatest care. He could see nothing, hear nothing. He examined the bare, wet earth of the track: Lightning had not passed there. With even greater care, he walked back towards Quambat Flat alongside the path till he came to where Lightning’s tracks turned down towards Dale’s Creek, then he looked and listened.
He could hear sounds from not very far away, rather as though Lightning were coming back to the track. Baringa went silently a little way up through the bush towards the Pilot, then, when he was sure Lightning was almost on the track again, he came down towards him, making just enough noise for Lightning to hear. Lightning must be certain to look up and see him coming down off the Pilot. If he could make Lightning think that he and Dawn lived in the silver forest of dead trees that was on top of the Pilot, so much the better.
Lightning looked up as Baringa carefully bumped one hoof against a log and let a branch break under another. Baringa saw him jump as though a fly had stung him.
Baringa walked a little further towards him and then he jumped, too, as if he had only just seen Lightning. it was necessary to pretend that he had not seen him at all this spring, that he had not known whether he had survived the heavy Winter or not.
The two silver stallions greeted each other with friendliness.
“Where are you going?” Baringa asked cheerfully.
“I thought I would go over to the Ingegoodbee, and try to find that lovely chestnut mare we saw when Thowra brought us through to the south,” Lightning answered. “Why don’t you come too?”
Baringa remembered the golden chestnut with silver mane and tail. Thowra had told him that she was a throw-back to her great-grandsire, Yarraman, for she was a daughter of Son of Storm, and Storm was Thowra’s half-brother and great friend, both of them sired by Yarraman, Yarraman was Baringa’s great-grandsire too.
“I will go with you,” he answered, realising that was the only way in which he could know what Lightning was up to.
“I have seen the mare some time ago, running in the herd of a chestnut who is not of the Yarraman line — rather plain. His bimble is under the Pilot, close to where the Tin Mine Creek heads.”
“You seem to know,” Lightning said, and his voice had a suspicious edge to it, his eyes a suspicious gleam. “Is the chestnut horse quite a fighter?”
“I don’t know,” Baringa replied carelessly.
“Well, let’s go,” said Lightning, setting off at a trot.
Baringa let him lead along the track, then he followed through the bush at one side, where his hooves would leave no mark and where his silver shape was not visible.
After a few minutes Lightning turned round suspiciously.
“Where are you?” he asked, his voice almost angry.
“Here,” Baringa answered, poking his head through a bush.
Lightning snorted and went on.
Presently he swung round again. Before he could speak, Baringa stuck his head out from some hop scrub on the other side of the track.
“Why can’t you get behind and follow me properly?”
“I’m coming, never fear,” he said. “Keep going.”
Lightning’s temper was rather frayed by the time they reached the Tin Mine Creek.
“Now where to?” he asked Baringa, and he sounded sharp.
“Up the creek,” said Baringa.
“It might be better if you kept in the bush along here.”
“I will go as I wish to go,” answered Lightning. “I don’t think there is a horse in the bush to beat me!”
“No?”
“Come on,” said Lightning. “This is going to be fun.”
There were great patches of snow all the way up, and often the track ran fetlock-deep with water from the melting snow. It was possible, Baringa could see, that much of the chestnut stallion’s bimble around the head of the creek could still be under a huge drift. He wondered where the herd might be — but most herds would be making back to their own country now.
Lightning led on and on, right to the Tin Mine Creek, and then turned upwards. In places the valley was a sheet of water. It was all boggy, and the brown, lifeless grass was muddied. There was no grazing and there were no horses to be seen in all the wide, gentle valley which Baringa thought of as always green and fresh, and golden with daisies.
Somehow there should be horses about. He looked far and wide again — and nearly bogged.
He pulled each foreleg out, squelching, and stood for a moment, to ease the pain in his back. It would not do for another horse — or even Lightning — to know that he had been hurt and might not be able to fight as well as usual, nor gallop as fast. The slippery, wet ground had been bad enough, each slip had wrenched his back, but bogs were even worse.
Lightning went on. It was Baringa who saw the first hoof marks, but Lightning was heading in the right direction, so he kept quiet and just saw to it that he, himself, was even better hidden and left no track. Lightning was expecting fun — well, there could be fun if he burst on to a mob of horses unexpectedly.
Their way was blocked, after a while, by a broad drift of snow. Even there Lightning missed seeing the tracks which crossed the drift just above where he did. He was starting to get impatient, and had quickened his pace. The snow was solid and soon he broke into a canter.
Baringa went along more carefully, on the top tracks, fitting his hooves into the spoor of, he imagined, a tall mare. The stallion’s hoof marks were too close together for comfortable movement. He noticed how wide-splayed his hooves were, not like the usual mountain breed. One was badly broken: probably he was a soft-hooved horse, could be bad-boned.
Lightning stopped, turned round to make sure Baringa was coming, and then started off smartly again. There was a thicker bank of trees ahead. Baringa, in spite of the pain in his back, hurried forward. He was sure he remembered something about this particular piece of country. He and Dawn had climbed up this way to the Pilot (if only his back would recover enough for him to get through the flooded river, he could go to find Dawn) and surely there was a hollow on the other side of the trees, a hollow that was usually filled with sweet grass? There was such depth of snow in the drift that it masked the fact that the belt of trees grew on a small ridge. Baringa got there only a little later than Lightning.
Lightning cantered through the trees, not worrying if the country ahead were clear or not. Baringa stopped, saw the herd ahead in the sweet grass hollow which was now a mixture of water, mud and snow, and then saw Lightning, unable to stop, sliding fast down a great bank of snow, sitting back on to his haunches, gathering speed, snow frothing up around him.
The herd simply stood and stared. There was the chestnut mare and the chestnut stallion: there were other mares,
Lightning slid faster and faster, and the stallion gathered himself together and rushed towards him. Baringa watched carefully from the trees. Lightning was going to be well off balance when he hit the bottom. He was on his side: he was rolling over: he was up!
The rather ungainly chestnut stallion looked as if he did nor know what to do.
Some of the mares threw up their heads and tails, and galloped through the mud to the other side of the hollow, but the Yarraman mare stood still.
She was certainly handsome — golden and silver in the sunshine, and a bank of gold-lit snow behind her — but Baringa could only think of two mares in all the mountains, Dawn and Moon.
Lightning regained his balance and his dignity, and walked straight up to the chestnut mare as though the stallion did not exist.
The stallion snorted with fury.
Lightning stretched his nose out to the mare. Baringa wondered if he were going to be silly enough to let the chestnut stallion get in the first blow, but suddenly Lightning whipped round to make a spring at the horse.
Unfortunately the ground was more than muddy, and Lightning’s feet went from under him.
The chestnut was so surprised that he missed the opportunity of jumping on top of the fallen horse.
Lightning heaved himself up out of the mud. This time he moved more cautiously, but it was obvious to Baringa that the floor of the hollow was either bog or sheets of firmer ground which were as slippery as ice.
Lightning made a few cantering strides towards the other horse, tried to stop so that he could rise on his hind legs and strike, but simply went sliding on till he cashed into the chestnut’s shoulder. This turned out to be an unexpectedly useful action, because it pushed the chestnut into a bog. Soon mud was flying everywhere, Baringa could barely see the two horses.
The chestnut’s big, flat feet should be a help, he thought, and they were, because he did not sink as easily as Lightning did. For a moment or so the mud was only flying up about girth high, and Baringa could see them both, almost stuck fast, snaking their necks and trying to bite each other. The chestnut got his legs free first, struggled out on to firm ground, and landed a few blows on to Lightning’s shoulders, but he was not much of a fighter, he backed away as soon as Lightning began to pull himself out of the bog. Then Lightning tried to chase him but his legs went slithering in every direction. The great, wide feet got a better grip, and the chestnut kept out of range. Lightning, following, was blinded by the churned-up mud.
Baringa had pushed himself right in among the arched over branches of a bowed snowgum so that he would not be easily seen, but just then, as Lightning floundered into another bog hole, he noticed that the chestnut mare kept gazing at the trees in which he was hidden, Soon he was certain that, out of the puzzle of cream hide and cream bark, silver hair and silver bark, tracery of red-brown twig and black branch, and the over-all covering of olive-green leaves, she had pieced together the silver horse that was himself. He did not feel very worried about this. He could not realise that not one mare who had seen them, even as colts when they went south with Thowra, would ever forget them, nor would he realise that even then, when only a yearling, he was the most unforgettable of the two.
He watched the two horses floundering, slipping, sliding, falling, and rarely getting in either a blow or a bite. He hoped they were not just going to collapse of exhaustion. He was anxious to see Lightning at least started on his way home to Quambat, and his back was hurting.
The shadows were already growing long when, with some relief, he saw Lightning backing away from the chestnut, and the chestnut making no effort to follow him.
Baringa slid out quietly from among the branches. Lightning started in surprise when he saw him there, having apparently forgotten everything except the fight and the mare.
“Come on. Let’s get out of this,” said Baringa.
“I want that mare,” Lightning answered.
“I’d say that was up to her.” Baringa’s words had an edge to them. “You’re neither of you — you or the chestnut stallion — worth an empty gumnut at the moment. I’m going. You’d better come, or you’ll meet another horse when you are too exhausted to fight,” and he began to move off into the trees, silently blending into the pattern of light and shade, trunk and branch, leaf and grass.
“Come!” Lightning called imperiously to the mare, and he followed Baringa. There was no movement from the chestnut stallion, who stood blowing and sweating.
The mare did not move either, but when they had been gone a few minutes, she too had gone.
As the sunset light flared and died, Baringa real
ised that one other had joined them. He looked back and saw her following. The three kept jogging on through the bush.
Darkness had closed in before they reached Quambat, but there was sufficient light from a great full moon for Lightning to see his herd of roans and go straight to Goonda.
Baringa vanished then, slid away to one side through leafy trunks that had been badly burnt the summer before — vanished so that even the chestnut mare, who would have followed him through fire and blizzard, never saw him go, though she knew almost immediately that he had gone.
Five
The full moon was now only a three-quarter moon shining down on Quambat Flat. For the second time the chestnut mare, Yarolala, had gone, and Lightning knew that she was searching for Baringa. He had been furious to find that she did not really wish to be his, that it was Baringa with whom she longed to run. Now she had gone again. Oh well, last time she failed to find him and she had come back to Quambat. She would come back this time.
He grazed quietly beside Goonda, who, as the grass started to grow, was becoming even lovelier than the stolen blue roans, but he could not stop restlessly wondering about Baringa. Baringa had more than one mare: who was the second one? Baringa had come down off the Pilot, but did he run there always? Where did that other white filly run, and why had no one heard of her since the big fire, last summer? Could Baringa own her now? This was a question that had been eating into Lightning ever since he came back to Quambat when the snow melted.