Baringa stood quite still for a few seconds and merged so with the atmosphere and the rocks that “the killer”, if it were really he, made a mistake, and came in too much to one side. Then Baringa, momentarily possessing the form of a horse in the blueness, gave him a tremendous blow on the head.
Yarolala watched Baringa streak forward to follow up his advantage with yet another crashing blow, but the other horse seemed less shaken by the hit on the head than one could have expected, and, as Baringa came through the blue air, be dodged out of the way and then back to attack.
There they were, dodging, leaping, rearing — a whirl of horse, and nothing taking substantial form in that moment before it was light. Then light came sliding over the sky, and there were two distinct horses fighting a strange fight that rarely brought them close enough to touch each other. Baringa’s enemy was a chestnut. The roans had said the killer horse was chestnut, tall, rangy. This must be he, Yarolala thought. Bolder, they called him. He was a horse that wandered far and wide, they had said. Yarolala was trembling. Yes, this must be Bolder, and he did indeed look like a killer.
Baringa seemed lighter, she thought. He might be swifter too, but in nimbleness they were completely even.
Just then Baringa must have decided that these rocks, in which Bolder obviously knew every foothold, every crack, were no place to fight, because he took a wild leap through the gold-glittering air and landed on a little grassy flat below the rocks. Rocks and trees enclosed this flat, but on the grass Bolder would have no advantage. There Baringa waited for his attacker, his brave, yet gentle head thrown up, his silver mane glistening.
Bolder sprang after him, and they danced round and round each other in the snowgrass ring. While they fought on and on, neither doing much damage to the other, Yarolala moved down through the trees so that she could see them better.
“They will fight till they, are exhausted and then fight again,” she thought, but what would happen in the end? A horse was never given a name for being a killer for nothing. She wondered if Baringa were anxious, then she saw that he was enjoying the soft snowgrass underfoot: She watched him do several light springs.
Bolder came dancing in to strike him. Baringa stood his ground, then dodged at the last minute, got in a good kick at the chestnut’s shoulder, and was out of reach again. in a flash. Then Yarolala knew that Baringa had determined to attack, but that even the nimble chestnut could not guess how, or where.
Baringa darted here, there, everywhere. He circled fast around the other horse. Then he was coming in on the chestnut’s forequarter, but like a snake, from side to side, and fast, so fast. His teeth had grabbed. They missed the hold for which he had aimed — on the wither — but they sank into Bolder’s neck. For a few minutes the two horses were locked together, dancing and swaying in the sunlight. Yarolala saw Bolder getting himself ready for a mighty heave — Baringa must have felt it. Before he could be thrown off Baringa let go his grip, twisted on his haunches, and struck again at Bolder’s head.
Once more they were dancing around and around each other. Baringa looked as though he were enjoying himself and also as though he could go on for hours.
They did go on and on. Yarolala crept off to get a drink in the middle of the morning. When she came back, the little, churned-up grassy flat was empty, and her heart gave a jolt inside her. Had she lost Baringa again, when, in a way, she had barely found him? But no! The two stallions had backed to the trees, one on each side of the grassy flat, and were regaining breath and strength. They were each bloodstained in places, but neither of them were much hurt. Perhaps they might go on fighting so long that Bolder, the killer, might find himself exhausted before he could kill. However, when the fight started again. Bolder was making a much more determined attack — and much nastier. He had apparently got tired of trying to wear Baringa down.
Baringa did not seem worried.
They fought on and on. Twice Bolder got a strong grip with his teeth: twice Baringa flung him off. Several times Baringa got a grip of Bolder, and each time he was thrown off. They were too evenly matched, but it had become quite clear that if Baringa made a single mistake, Bolder would kill him.
By the time the sun had passed its zenith, it was also becoming clear that it might be necessary for Baringa to kill Bolder.
Yarolala was becoming desperate. Here, on this little tree-encircled flat, there was no place for Baringa to force Bolder off a cliff, as she knew Thowra had done to a horse called Arrow, years ago. Here, on the snowgrass, he was going to have to kill him with his own hooves, his own teeth, and if he did not do it, now, she was sure he would be killed by Bolder himself, and the crows would eat the flesh from his bones.
The stallions fought and fought. The sun dropped lower into a band of cloud. Several times they drew back and watched each other, their breath seeming to batter throats and chests, their blood running more freely now from bites and kicks. Sometimes they drank from the small creek. Yarolala could tell that Baringa had become angry. After all, he had done nothing to earn the savageness of Bolder’s attack.
At last both horses were nearing exhaustion. Once Baringa slipped, and Bolder’s fierce onslaught made it even clearer that he would kill if he was not killed or severely damaged himself.
The snowgrass was torn up and the loose soil flew in dust all around. The horses were fighting desperately, each trying to finish off the fight before complete exhaustion claimed him. In the fading light, the rose-red of the sky coloured the dusty air. Blood coloured the horses. Suddenly Bolder made a gigantic spring. He had Baringa: he was pressing him to the ground.
Panic seized Yarolala. It seemed certain that Baringa would be killed. Just as she had found him, a horse who had no reason to fight him was going to kill him . . . but Baringa rose with all his strength and shook Bolder off.
For quite a while Baringa made no attack, but rested, just keeping himself from being damaged. Bolder must have thought he was becoming really exhausted because he redoubled his efforts to kill. Yarolala could see that Baringa had recovered a little.
At last Bolder made a rather wild rush at him. Baringa moved very slightly to one side and then swung round and fastened on to Bolder’s wither. This time he had him too firmly to be shaken off, but the two horses still struggled on in the rosy dust. Evening came and they were still locked together, though not moving as much. It was impossible far the terrified Yarolala to see which horse had a grip of the other. It was dark when she saw the two shadow horses sink to the ground and then fall apart, their limbs setting in strange attitudes.
Hidden amongst the trees, Yarolala gave an anguished call. She stood there, shaking, for some minutes, bat the two shapes of horses never moved, and already seemed to be taking on the rigidity of death.
Suddenly, possessed by horror, Yarolala turned and started to gallon away from the smell of dust and blood, and from the two bodies.
Seven
Yarolala needed all the courage of the Yarraman breed — all the brains too. Horror and fear must be kept under control. She stopped her mad gallop through the night — stopped dead — then almost stopped breathing. Someone Was galloping along the track towards her. She must get off the track to Quambat and hide.
Her heart was pounding, and she trembled all over, but she stepped carefully to one side of the track, mined in towards the river, and then in the direction of Quanabat again, walking as quietly as possible.
The thundering, galloping horse was coming closer. Yarolala, frightened almost more than she could bear, kept walking, parallel with the Quambat track along which he galloped, but keeping herself well hidden in the trees.
The horse went pounding past.
Yarolala stood still for a moment, shaking violently, then she turned through denser bush towards the Limestone Creek. She would cross it, keeping away from all tracks, find somewhere to hide for the night, and make her way back to Quambat later. Though there had been no other horse with her when she left Quambat Flat, then she had been seekin
g Baringa. Now she was completely alone. No hope, no scent upheld her. In the end, when she knew this stallion was not returning, she would have to go back to Lightning.
The thud of galloping hooves stopped, and instead of it she heard the sound of rushing water. The night was even emptier than before. Every leaf that touched her hide sent tenor through her. She caine to the stream. Somehow it seemed that if she could cross that, the horse might never find her. She would walk a little downstream in the water so that if he followed her scent right to the edge, and then crossed, there would be no scent on the bank just opposite.
The water was ice-cold, the current strong. Even near the edge, the force of the stream tore at her fine legs, and it was difficult not to fall among the boulders.
A flying phallanger barked somewhere above her. Yarolala jumped and snorted. Fear walked all around her and within her. There was fear In the moving water, as it caught the rather dim starlight and glittered black, fear in the silence, fear in the sound, fear, oh fear in the sudden sigh of a rising wind.
She decided to cross the creek, and immediately found herself floundering in far deeper water than she had expected. It had been a hot day the sky was indeed partly hazed by cloud, and now the wind moaned far away in the hills above. Perhaps the weather was changing again, snow melting higher up. Yarolala forced her way through the bitter stream. She would follow the creek down for a while, till she found a good place, and then hide herself and wait to find out, if the could, what the horse was doing.
There was also fear in the thought that she might lead another stallion to Quambat. Perhaps it was the black, owner of the five roans that Lightning had stolen.
Presently she heard him coming slowly back — so slowly that he must be nose to ground, trying to pick up her scent, but the sound of the water made it difficult to tell exactly where he was. Then she knew he was quite close to the creek, but upstream, where she had first entered it.
She began to tremble so violently that she thought she would give herself away if he came near. The teatree around her moved: she must indeed give off the scent of fear but how could she stop being afraid?
She heard the horse crossing the stream, and heard his hooves clattering on the stones as he shook the water from his coat. Now she must be still, still . . . Yarolala called up all her courage the courage with which generations of her ancestors had galloped over the sunlit mountains by day, the starlit mountains at night, forced their way through the snows of winter, fought, lived and loved.
She quieted her trembling and waited.
The horse moved off further from the creek, and she could only just make out his shape, for he was indeed as black as night. Perhaps he thought she had kept going straight away across country.
The tenseness went out of Yarolala’s muscles. She felt very tired and without hope. She sank down on to the soft ground among the teatree.
In front of her eyes the fight seemed still to be continuing . . . Baringa rearing, striking, Baringa, silver and beautiful, dancing round and round that rangy chestnut . . . Half-sleeping, wholly exhausted, she dreamed of the silver horse, image after image seeming to float in the air before her, and then sometimes she was still following his scent. Once the ghost of a silver horse, blood-stained as he had been, seemed to flit through the teatree, and there was the illusive scent.
She became completely awake as she heard the black returning, smashing around though the bush. He passed fairly close; he went; he came back. All night through he roamed among the trees and scrub around the creek.
Yarolala must have gone to sleep before dawn, for she was woken by the heavy wing beat of a magpie and then its lovely carolling. There was no other sound except the birds. An occasional rustle would only be a possum retiring to sleep, or a wombat going slowly through the undergrowth to his burrow. Once she heard the thump, thump of a kangaroo hopping. She could not hear anything to indicate whether the black stallion were close or not.
She was afraid to move, and yet she wanted to go far away from the bodies of the two horses.
“Wait,” something seemed to say to her, and then she told herself: “Go. There is nothing near.”
She listened and listened. No sound came, other than the bush noises and the rush of the water.
She began to move forward, easing cramped limbs, pressing through the teatree. Then she heard the sound of hooves — not four hooves, but eight. She sank back into her thick covering, but this time in a place from which she could see the stream. There she stood, watching. At last out of the long-leafed black sallee trees there stepped the black stallion followed by a little, round, white mare.
Yarolala stared. Even in the short time that she had been at Quambat Flat she had heard murmurs of Baringa’s beautiful mare, Dawn, and also she had heard the emus say: “He has mares who are the gun and the moon to him.”
Had Baringa lost his mares to the black stallion and come searching for them, only to be killed by Bolder?
Just then the black blew through his nose, a queer, half-fearful snort, almost as though he smelt the horrifying smell of blood, and away he went, followed, more leisurely, by the round, white mare.
He seemed to go off in such a purposeful way that Yarolala decided she would try once more to go to Quambat Flat. She wriggled out of the teatree and went straight into the water without ever wondering what scent the black had found and followed.
The stream was even higher, and she noticed clouds overhead. She crossed with difficulty and rejoined the Quambat crack. It was because she saw the black’s churned-up hoof marks on the track that she went on the grass at the side. It would be better if she left no track.
She hurried along, and as she hurried she began to feel afraid. Perhaps the black stallion might come back; something dreadful must be going to happen; everything seemed wrong; Baringa was dead. Then the rain started to fall.
The day had been warm and now the rain was very cold. It came faster and faster. Yarolala’s forelock and mane were matted and dripping. Her chestnut coat was streaked with water and dirt. For a while she sheltered in a thick grove of wattles, but even if it poured with rain, she knew she would rather keep moving and get to Quambat — the only place where she belonged at all.
She was soaked, tired and miserable when she reached the lower end of Quambat Flat. There was no movement on the clear country. Lightning and his mares were among thick trees. She caught sight of Goonda’s very pale roan foal first and then saw Lightning himself, further back in the trees. Cloud and Mist, and Cirrus were nowhere to be seen.
Yarolala did not know how Lightning might behave towards her. She stood miserably in the rain, gazing up the flat towards him, and only felt the loss of Baringa more strongly.
At last she walked sadly and slowly up the flat because there was nothing else for her to do, and, as she walked, the great drops solidified into wet snow-flakes.
Lightning and his mares were all shivering, with eyes half shut against the flakes, so that no one saw her.
In a very few minutes her chestnut back was covered with wet snow, and snow was thick in her forelock, on her eyelashes. She plodded on.
It was Goonda who saw her first, saw the dejection in her walk.
Had the emus been right — that Baringa wanted no other mares? No other mares except . . . ? She wondered what other mare except Dawn Baringa did have. When Yarolala was temporarily hidden behind a few trees, Goonda moved off, as though wandering aimlessly, and joined her.
Lightning noticed Goonda go drifting down the flat, because Goonda had become so beautiful that he looked at her often, but he did not follow. There was no reason why he should leave the shelter of the trees. No danger would come to Goonda today, in all the rain and snow.
Thus it was that Goonda found Yarolala first — saw her before she expected to be seen, with her head drooping almost to the ground, and the snow, which she had not bothered to shake off, lying thick on her back.
She jumped so violently when she heard Goonda that it w
as quite clear that she had been very afraid as well as miserable. Goonda walked up and extended her gentle red nose to touch Yarolala’s. Then she rubbed her roan neck over the top of the snow-covered chestnut neck with its silver mane, and presently began scratching and nibbling at the snow which clung to the chestnut hair.
Yarolala moved closer to Goonda for company, and soon began rubbing her head against her. Neither of them noticed Lightning coming through the snow, the big, feather flakes dense around him, but suddenly he was there, a great, silver stallion, and Goonda knew by Yarolala’s trembling and the despair in her eyes that something terrible must have happened.
Lightning had been feeling very angry with Yarolala, perhaps insulted by her obvious preference for Baringa, but what was the use in being angry? If he nipped at her and was cross, she might just vanish again. Also his beautiful Goonda stood right beside her . . .
“Come back to the herd,” he said, and the two mares followed. Only Goonda suspected that Yarolala had nowhere else to go.
The other mares could not help noticing how miserable she looked. It was not just the snow matting her mane and forelock and her silver tail that flew so free when she galloped. They knew that Yarolala was deeply unhappy.
Even when the sun came flashing on the snow the next morning, melted it away, made everything seem to become green and growing, Yarolala did not bother to eat, and her coat only looked rougher.
Goonda felt very sorry for her and stayed close all day. Lightning stayed close too, because he rarely went far from Goonda, and because he felt sure that Yarolala knew some very strange things, and he was extremely curious.
The roan mares were curious too, because they felt fairly sure she had been down to the Limestone.
The next day was sunny again. Cloud and Mist with Cirrus and her silver foal, were back at the top of the flat, basking in the hot sun. Several patches of sarsaparilla were suddenly covered with purple flowers. The grass was sweeter. Lightning felt as though he owned this marvellous, brightening world.