Once again the echoes came back, from further and further, and as the last one died away, deep silence settled down.
The night grew darker with cloud — darker, deeper — and Lightning’s confidence in himself as the most beautiful horse, and the unbeatable stallion of Quambat Flat, became less and less. He barely slept at all. Once a mopoke called and he jumped so hard that a broken branch stuck into his rump. Then, when he was almost asleep, vague, uneasy pictures of that ill-tempered black stallion kept floating through the night, so that real sleep never came. He wished he were already headed back for Quambat.
At last the light started to filter through the trees — and there were those hoof marks leading him on towards the head of the Berrima River, the hoof prints of lovely, dancing mares, that in his mind kept taking the shape of Dawn and that other one — white and silver mares dancing — so that the prints had infinite attraction. Lightning kept following for hours, without thought.
The little creek ran into another small stream which was the head of the Berrima. Here other tracks led in several directions. The hoof marks which Lightning had been so carefully following seemed to vanish. He searched desperately because he felt quite certain they were Dawn’s and that other filly’s. Finally he found that they had crossed the stream and gone up, not down, on a very faint track on the other side, up onto the Berrima Range.
While he had been searching for the spoor be had time to realise how heavy the clouds were becoming. He had again begun to feel that he was a long way from home: then he found the tacks again and forgot everything except the certainty that he must soon find Dawn. His moments of anxiety, however, made him go faster now, faster and faster, panting upwards on a track that grew very faint — but still held the hoof marks. The faster he went, the further he got from home.
At the top of the Berrima Range, once again there were several tracks. A wide, well-defined one went along the top, and on it were many hoof prints. The tracks which Lightning was following went straight over the ridge and down the other side.
Once again, as he paused, Lightning noticed how the clouds were massing. Then down he plunged through the thick timber, and went trotting down the track, slipping and sliding when it got wet.
He heard black cockatoos screaming with unearthly cries overhead, but he did not have time to think that a storm was surely coming.
He trotted into a clear valley with a small creek in it, and this, in turn, ran into a larger valley and a larger stream. All tracks vanished in the thick snowgrass. Lightning stood, head thrown up, looking around. There was no sign of any mares — no horses at all.
A hot wind came in gusts. In the distance he heard the rumble of thunder. The wind lifted the silver mane on the strong crest of his neck. Suddenly the sensation of being completely alone filled him, just like it had filled him during the night. Then, the hoof marks were only hidden by darkness, now they were far more hopelessly lost in the thick snowgrass. Though he had followed them for miles, he had not found the mares who had made them, and he was far from home. He neighed a long, lonely neigh.
There was no one to see the big silver stallion, no one to hear his call. He walked to the edge of the river, found a crossing place, and splashed through. There were many hoof marks in the mud and at the edge of the river, which had been much higher recently. Lightning studied them all, but could not find the two lovely sets of prints, He went back to search through the grass for another path, but the grass grew too thickly.
The wind came again, and the thunder sounded closer, rolling among rocks, echoing off the heavy clouds. Lightning stood alone in the empty valley of the Ingegoodbee, and called and called.
The only living things that seemed to take any notice of him came stepping and swaying out of the bush.
Lightning started with fright, but he realised immediately that they were the emus, the same emus.
The birds came quite close, and they looked him up and down.
“What on earth are you doing here?” they asked.
Lightning looked angry for a moment, and then thought that politeness might get him further.
“I have been following Dawn’s spoor,” he said.
“Dawn’s!” The emus looked completely surprised, and Lightning knew that their amazement was real. All of a sudden he realised that he had been quite wrong. After all Dale’s Creek must be the place where Baringa ran.
“Is Dawn in Dale’s Creek?” he asked.
The emus were still looking amazed.
“You do believe that nothing can ever befall you, don’t you?’ one emu said. “Why are you so far from the mares you stole? That black will assuredly come for them, and if you are not there, what will stop him taking all your mares.”
Lightning simply snorted his disdain. However, he felt very uncomfortable. The quickest way home was the way he had come, over the Pilot, so he turned that way as soon as the fierce-looking birds had gone.
After a moment or so he began to canter, and, even when the track began to go up through the bush, he kept trotting as best he could. Instead of a picture in his mind of dancing white mares, he could only think of that black stallion at Quambat Flat. He did not want those roan mares to go back to their black, but, most of all, he could not bear to think of losing his beautiful Goonda.
Thunder was rumbling closer than ever, as he scrambled up the last steep part of the track on to the Pilot and into the silver forest The wind steamed through the trees. Lightning stood still, thinking that something moved, but it was only the wind and the cry of the wind through the trees. The afternoon was getting dark, hours before nightfall. Lightning began to hurry through the forest, cantering along a grassy glade till thick, dead, silver trees stopped him.
For a moment he seemed to be yarded by the interwoven limbs and trunks which were all glittering in an oblique light that shone from a narrow space between the clouds. Lightning bathed out as the strange light died away, and thunder crashed again.
The more he hurried through the forest, the more he seemed to get entangled with the stiff, dead limbs which were vibrating in the wind. He entered another grassy glade and he galloped. At last he was through those ghostly trees, and bounding down the slopes of the Pilot.
Lightning was not a naturally sure-footed horse, but now he was more than half-afraid — afraid of the storm, of the loneliness, of the death that had claimed Baringa, of the lurking menace in the black stallion — so he went leaping down the steep slopes, sending rocks and stones flying, but the thunder was louder than all the noise he made.
Sometimes he was going far faster than he meant to go, quite unable to check his speed on the rolling stones and the loose earth: sometimes he bounded in proppy, stiff-legged jumps from one rock slab to another. And the last shafts of light that often came between the clouds as the sun set, shone in his eyes, made his coat glitter. The gusty wind fanned mane and forelock, dried sweat, as the huge silver horse went madly jumping, sliding, crashing down the hillside.
His heart was pounding, sweat dripped off his neck and belly, and he was gasping for breath when he at last reached the bottom. Once he was back in familiar country, his fears quieted down.
He trotted through the bush towards the track that went between the Tin Mine and Quambat Flat, and was just starting along it, homewards, when he saw two young colts walking in his direction. He knew these two quite well. They were not much more than yearlings, two half-brothers who usually played at the lower end of the flat.
They would know whether all was well at Quambat. If the black stallion had not gone to Quambat before the storm started, it was unlikely that he would come seeking his mares in all this thunder, and, now that he had come so far, Lightning felt that he might as well go to Dale’s Creek, provided all was well with his herd.
He stopped the colts.
“Greetings,” he said. “Is everything peaceful at Quambat Flat, or has a black stallion from Limestone been there?”
“Greetings, O Lightning,” they replied. ?
??Nothing has disturbed us. No black stallion has come. Everyone is restless, that is all, restless because they have heard that Baringa is dead.”
Lightning thanked them and watched them go on their way, then, feeling quite certain of Goonda’s safety, he turned into the bush towards Dale’s Creek.
As he dropped lower, the thunder seemed to reverberate among the mountains all around. He had the feeling that he must hurry, though he knew that his mares were still quite safe, and, anyway, as soon as he was down on to the creek, in that secretive place of teatree and black sallee trees, the same haunting fear began to creep into him, the haunting fear that always came to him when he was in this valley. Now the silence was continually broken by the rolling thunder. Lightning hurried.
So far there was absolutely no sign of any other horses. Daylight would go soon and he must hurry, hurry, hurry.
There was a small patch of bare earth and for a little way he could see a track going down the valley. He went forward quickly, to look for hoof marks, and there was a set of broad, strong prints, there on the bare patch, and leading on down the track.
Lightning should have known the dun’s spoor, but he did not. However, he felt convinced that these prints were his, and he followed them at a canter.
The path faded out, but every now and then it was there for a few yards, faded again, and then reappeared, all the way down the creek, and each time he found it, the hoof marks were on it.
Though he was hurrying so much, Lightning did notice that there were no other tracks about, no fresh droppings.
The evening was closing in with great claps of thunder. Soon darkness would come completely, and as it grew more difficult to see the hoof marks, Lightning began to feel more and more uncomfortable. Without realising that he was doing so, he started to go slower, and he looked around a good deal more, peered into the teatree clumps before going through them, stopped and listened.
The thunder made it almost impossible to hear anything else, but if the rumbling and crashing stopped, the silence was intense and fearful.
At last Lightning could no longer see the hoof prints. He had come a long way, and the wide, soft valley had closed in. On one side there was a high plateau, and on the other side the ridge went up steeply. The thunder continually rolled. The gusty wind moaned in the trees.
Was Dawn nowhere to be found in all the mountains?
Suddenly Lightning propped. There was something lying with its head in the creek.
“Baringa!” he thought, but even in the night the body was too dark to be that of a silver horse.
There was an ear-splitting crack, and the whole sky was lit up with lightning.
The dark heap became a horse, became dun-coloured and never moved.
Lightning turned, and, as the valley was lit with silver light over and over again, and the thunder pealed, cracked, rolled, he galloped for home.
Nine
Long drifts of snow still lay on the hills that surrounded the Cascades Valley. They glittered in the early spring sunshine. The silver horse, trotting down between them, often gave a leap and a bound as though from sheer joy. He was a very big horse, and the wedgetail eagles, who had been high in the sky above the Murray, came floating over to see him, and dipped their wings in salute.
Thowra, the great Silver Stallion, sire of Lightning, grandsire of Baringa, had been held prisoner by the snow, in his Secret Valley, for longer than the horses down in the south. Now, just the day Lightning set forth on to the Pilot, he was out in the mountains again, light-footed and gay, intending to see how Baringa and Lightning were, intending to go to his mares, Koora and Cirrus.
He would gallop in the sun, dance and play, gallop and dance by starlight and moonshine. There was only one other horse who seemed to be part of the sunbeam or a flash of moonlight on snow — and that was Baringa.
It was Baringa whom Thowra would visit first, but he might see his beloved half-brother, Storm, on the way.
Thowra had been with Storm more recently than with Baringa. During the winter’s heavy snow the two half-brothers had been caught in the Cascades and forced to make downwards on to the Murray River. There they had seen Baringa and his mares, Lightning and his herd, and even the black stallion, and then they had pushed on and on, round the mountains till they eventually got back to their own herds — a great journey even for those two great horses.
Thowra was rested now, coat gleaming, the vigour of spring and life in every movement. He leapt from one snowgrass bank of a creek to another. The rush of air, the shining water beneath him, the springiness of the snowgrass — all was exciting. He cantered down a sunny slope.
A dead snowgum down the little valley seemed to be flowering, and the huge flowers were white-backed magpies who exploded from the tree, flew up, and sang to the sun, and the sky, and the silver horse.
Thowra greeted them with a neigh, and their song rang out, accompanying his gay canter down to the floor of the Cascade Valley.
Thowra sent another neigh ringing to the birds, and then set off, up the valley, at a purposeful trot, towards the gap on the skyline, and then along the ridges and hill-tops to Stockwhip Gap where he should find Storm. It would be very good to graze for an hour or so with Storm and the main herd — half of which was really his — and perhaps to shake up and frighten the white-faced, blue stallion who now had his bimble below the gap, and whom Thowra had ever teased.
On he trotted. He saw only a very few young horses — some of them just starting to collect their own herds, all swift and vigorous and with no foals at foot to hamper a quick escape if men appeared.
A lovely dun-coloured filly, almost golden, flitted like a shaft from the sunset, through the snowgums. Thowra knew her to be a daughter of his, and he called her.
“Take heed,” he neighed. “If men come, you are too beautiful.”
“I am swift, O Thowra,” came the answer, “and just now I am young and free.”
“Free, free, free,” his hoofs whispered on the soft grass — and then, as he cantered: “Young and free, young and free.” And the sunlight warmed him, the breeze cooled him, a drink from a stream poured the swiftness of the blizzard into his body, for in the blizzards were the streams born.
Thowra trotted and cantered over the kingdom which he had won years ago from the grey stallion, the Brolga.
Storm had been expecting him, and when he saw the flicker of silver, the proud toss of mane, between the big, old snowgums on Stockwhip Gap, he gave a great neigh of welcome, and cantered towards him. In the herd, scattered among the tees, the little flickering whisper went round:
“The Silver Stallion,” and a neat, pale blue roan filly, a daughter of Whiteface’s, who had attached herself to the herd and made up her mind that she would be Thowra’s, began to dance a little through the trees, towards the two huge stallions.
Thowra was far too pleased to see Storm again to take any notice. He saw that Storm looked a little older, perhaps had not completely recovered from their gruelling journey and the shortage of food. It was not just in his own imagination that Thowra was still vigorous and young. Every animal and every bird of the bush simply thought of Thowra as for ever in his prime, for ever filled with spirit.
Now the two stallions were bucking and rearing around each other with pleasure. The pale roan filly waited. Thowra looked very handsome. She was sure he must be more handsome than the silver horse about whom her father’s herd were murmuring.
She started to romp and play with the other fillies, but as soon as Thowra stopped his game with Storm, she went out on her own again to arouse his interest, to be the one beautiful filly dancing apart on the edge of the ridge:
Thowra was too filled with his own longing to travelling the ranges, footloose, by day and by night, even to think of her twice — though of course he noticed her, because he noticed everything.
The filly, feeling annoyed that her beauty had not caught his interest, at last went down the open snowgrass valley that led to the east and towa
rds the Charcoal Range. Her sire’s herd were likely to be there, and from them she might learn more of the other silver horse, for word seemed to have come somehow, borne by the birds, or the flying phallangers, just rumours; perhaps something in the call of a kurrawong which told of the mysterious comings and goings of a silver horse, perhaps something in the sad threnody of a plover, crying of sorrow and death.
It was not because of the filly that Thowra went walking down through the trees. He could not be at Stockwhip Gap without visiting old Whiteface, teasing him a little, and finding out what were the rumours which were borne on the mountain winds, for Whiteface always seemed to hear a great deal.
He saw the filly prancing and gambolling her way down the open snowgrass, and, for the first time, he realised she was lovely, but he still did not take any real notice of her.
She knew he was walking down through the trees and she went more slowly, so that they reached Whiteface’s herd at the same time. Whiteface showed very little pleasure at the sight of Thowra!
His lack of appreciation of Thowra’s visit earned him a rather firm bite on one ear.
“What news flies on the wind?” Thowra asked.
Whiteface looked dumb.
“No news. We have all been too taken up with finding food.”
Thowra began to cast his eye over Whiteface’s herd. It was then that the filly, desperately wanting Thowra to choose her, said:
“What of the rumours of a silver stallion walking on his own? What of the whispers of death? You were all murmuring of these things only a few hours ago.” She moved closer to Thowra because she had given away the news which her sire had refused him, all to get his attention.
Thowra saw another rather good-looking filly give her a spiteful nip as he said:
“Death for whom?”
“One of the young silver horses,” Whiteface answered, and every line of his body said: “You’d better get going,” but he was not fool enough to say it aloud.
“Which?” Thowra was suddenly more fierce and menacing than Whiteface had ever seen him.