The Gentle Grey Mare Became a Virago
Rain began to beat more wildly. Thunder rumbled again. Clouds pressed down lower, folding round tree, and bush, and horses — black clouds making thick black darkness. Burra knew that Coolawyn and the foal, and Brinda, were to one side; he could barely see even the ghostly white stallion who had come up the ridge.
That white horse stopped for one instant. It must have been shocked to find a second stallion there, on the ridge — he would have to defeat two stallions. It would be quite a battle, even for a horse that had an advantage in the dark.
Burra was shocked, too.
The white stallion hurled himself forward, straight for Burra, and Burra only saw him charge at the very last moment, for the cloud was so thick and dark.
Through that cloud, the third horse came into the fight with flailing legs.
A great blast of wind drove them into a heap together. There was the cracking of branches, and a huge rumbling of thunder. The weather truce was entirely broken and three stallions were battling in the dark, in the roaring wind, and rumbling thunder.
Lightning began to flicker. The white stallion seemed to become more desperate. A scream from an owl made Coolawyn jump with fright, and she took Yarra and Brinda a few yards further up the hill, out of the way of the almost invisible, snorting, rearing, striking horses.
Even when the weird scene was momentarily lit up by lightning, Coolawyn could not tell who was likely to win.
Burra seemed to be trying to drive off the big stranger, but it was Burra whom the white stallion was determined to defeat.
Burra shook him off furiously, but all that action was invisible in the pitch darkness. The wind came raging over the heights above them.
The stranger stallion was knocked off balance, and Burra sprang at him, just as that white horse launched himself at Burra. The double weight sent the stranger horse slithering down the side of the ridge. The white stallion was quick and nimble on his feet. He swung in to attack Burra, who was a few feet further down the side of the ridge, on steep and slippery ground. The big stranger was still crashing and scrambling down below him. Burra had to struggle to keep his foothold and his balance, struggle not to slide after him. The white stallion’s attack was almost too much, but he pushed himself backwards and the white stallion’s striking hoof only slid off his shoulder.
They both recovered balance on the track.
It was then that Coolawyn could see them both, for the sky was momentarily filled with sheet lightning again. The white stallion was rearing up to strike with both forefeet, but in the glare his eyes shut, and he dropped down without striking.
The lightning faded away: the sky was black again, and after the vivid light, the night seemed darker than ever. Coolawyn could not see them at all — just hear the snorting and thumping and muffled squeals. As her eyes got more accustomed to the dark, she could just make out the two fighting horses, and could tell that the white stallion seemed to have the advantage. The stranger stallion had not climbed back on to the ridge.
Thunder rumbled louder and deeper, and from a large area of sky. It sounded like a warning.
The white stallion attacked Burra with feverish intensity, almost as if time were short, as though he knew that that warning was for him. Then light blazed all over the sky; every tree seemed afire. The two horses were clear for Coolawyn to see.
The white stallion’s eyes closed, and he simply stood … quite still.
Burra looked at him in huge surprise, then he just pushed him to one side, called Coolawyn, and walked up the brilliantly lit track. Coolawyn, Yarra and Brinda followed.
Coolawyn looked back once or twice, but the white stallion had backed into a tree’s shadow, and as the thunder rumbled, lightning lit up the whole mountain world.
Coolawyn and the white foal and Brinda walked up the track, and Burra came in behind them. Each one of them, except Yarra, listened for any sound that would tell that they were being followed. Occasionally when the lightning subsided, briefly, and there was darkness, a horse could be heard. That sound would stop when there was warning thunder and when the sky became a dome of light.
Burra and Coolawyn both realised that those times were when the white stallion stood still, then they, in turn, hurried on. Coolawyn, Yarra and Brinda, especially the foal, were all very tired by the time they reached the belt of snow gums at the top of the spur. Burra went ahead then, through the limbs that were lashing in the wind and blocking the track.
Coolawyn knew that Yarra was totally exhausted and she kept watching him and in close contact. Even so, she did not miss him for a second, when a particularly strong blast of wind lashed branches across her face. Then he had gone. Coolawyn stopped immediately, fear almost choking her. She began looking all around, behind her, and called softly. There was no answer, and the wind carried away any scent.
Burra searched too. He was annoyed. He should be back with his herd. He began to get impatient. For some time he had felt that this foal had brought the brumbies of the night. He could not help feeling that they would be well rid of him, but he knew that Coolawyn would not leave him, and, if she stayed alone, searching … the stallion, king of the night, would assuredly find her, and steal her, force her to go with him.
Coolawyn kept on searching, but Yarra had slid beneath an alpine grevillea, and a network of fallen branches, and he was so sound asleep that he did not hear her.
Coolawyn became quite desperate. She had fought so hard to pull that foal out of the raging flood and nothing must take him from her. She kept on looking and the wind blew harder.
When Burra tried to take her away to join his herd she would not go, and Brinda stayed with her looking for that white foal.
Piccaninny dawn came and the wind dropped. Coolawyn stood quite still, tired out. Then she heard a sound and there suddenly, and seeming to be enormous, was the white stallion. He started to dig at some of the fallen branches.
Coolawyn froze.
A terrified cry came from beneath the branches.
Yarra! It was undoubtedly Yarra, though Coolawyn could not see him. He had to be somewhere near the feet of the white stallion. She raced forward, calling her foal, calling Burra as she went.
She saw the white stallion raking the fallen branches apart, heard Yarra screaming, and there she was in a second, her teeth bared, her ears laid back. Yarra raised his head out of the fallen branches. The stallion made a grab at his neck.
Quick as the lightning that had always stopped the stallion in his tracks, Coolawyn leapt through the branches and leaves, knocking the stallion’s head out of the way. There she was, standing over her foal, protecting him.
She stood with her hooves planted four square about the foal. Even though she had thought that stallion extraordinarily beautiful, he had menaced her foal. She bared her teeth at him, and snaked her neck like a stallion would, threatening the big white horse with all the ferocity she knew.
The white horse was startled to see the gentle, pale grey mare turn into such a virago, and he stepped back a little way. There they stood, staring at each other, the menace in the attitude of the white stallion slowly fading away, and Coolawyn standing firm, but a little less aggressive, though she was still held in the grip of fear and horror.
Piccaninny dawn … a soft grey light … For the first time, Coolawyn could see that magnificent stallion’s head quite clearly, see that his eyes were the same unusual colour as Yarra’s — as though the sunset had touched them.
He was looking at her with a kind of respect.
Her lips relaxed over her bared teeth, but she tossed her head in a fierce gesture of dismissal. Yarra had to be protected … Yarra was the most important thing in her life.
Then, through the trees, she saw that mare with the other foal who was exactly like Yarra. They must have followed all the way. Coolawyn knew she must out-stare the stallion and force him to go back to the white mare, get rid of him, but perhaps the mare and foal were not even real ?
?? she was so tired, so worried. The beautiful stallion must go, and let her take Yarra through the snow gums to the Cascade valley. Then all would be well. A sort of peace would come, the peace that had never been since the flood.
Thunder was rumbling round, warning again, and some big drops of rain fell.
Coolawyn did not move — simply stood over the foal. The foal she was carrying stirred within her as lightning filled the sky, and she saw the stallion close his eyes, saw him back slowly through the tangled snow-gum limbs. Far, far below a mare called.
The real dawn took a long time coming. Yarra slept, exhausted. Down the spur, as light filtered through the polished trunks and limbs of the snow gums, that other white foal could no longer move he was so tired, and he dropped to the ground and slept, too.
The rumbling thunder and the sheet lightning were all part of the forces of life and death.
The white stallion could not force the white mare and the second exhausted foal to move, and he was bothered by that mare’s call from below. He should be with his herd. He was thinking, too, of a pale grey mare standing over the foal that seemed, in his memory, to be part of the raging flood. If only there had not been that flood, there would be no disturbing memories. Life had gone wrong.
Sheet lightning filled the sky again. Both stallion and white mare closed their eyes. Far below, that mare called again. The white stallion knew he should go to his herd, and just then he heard a blundering noise down the track and he remembered the big, stranger stallion. What if he made downwards and tried to steal a lovely white filly?
Way up in the entangled, wind-tossed snow gums, Coolawyn stood over the sleeping Yarra.
For Coolawyn, even though she was still afraid that the white mare would steal Yarra, and afraid that the stallion might kill him, there was somewhere a memory of a vision enfolded in the wind and the rain of a beautiful white horse below the towering alpine ash.
Other Eyes Did See Burra
The rain stopped just when the white stallion and his mare and foal were level with the gully where the red-eyed moths lived. A cloud of moths with big wings like paperbark closed in behind them. When daylight came, their eyes would not seem so bright. There was the same fluttering of wings as had driven Coolawyn, Brinda and Yarra up the track. This time the moths were urging the white stallion with the sunset-touched eyes downwards and back to his herd.
The whisper of the wings seemed to murmur a warning. The warning was not loud, and it was not a warning of brilliant, blinding light.
The white stallion stopped for a second because he felt sure that the fluttering wings had muffled a sound that came from far below. His unusually acute hearing had heard the sound of a horse blundering its way down the spur, and also the far away call of a mare. He had to hurry. There had been that strange stallion when he and Burra had met together. Was he now going down the track to steal a filly from the white brumby’s herd? It was something that had never happened. The moths kept touching his rump. Hurry! Hurry!
There were no wind-whispered stories in the bush of a brumby of the night ever having fought with another. The legends only told of the gallopers by night being heard very occasionally, and that when they came they always stole a filly. It was possible that Brinda was the only captured filly who had ever come back, and she was very lame.
Why had the sound of their galloping hooves in the dark struck fear in the brumby herds? Why had no one ever retaliated by even wanting to steal a filly from the night brumby herd?
Burra was half-asleep on his feet, and he was suddenly wondering if there might be more than one herd that galloped by night? Why were they never seen in daytime? And there were more questions bothering him. Why had Yarra been so keen to follow that other white foal? Why had the bright lightning made that white stallion back off? He was certainly not afraid of fighting.
Daylight came, and there was nothing unusual — nothing amiss. They could all relax.
For days they grazed peacefully, seeming to forget that sinister thundering of galloping hooves that had come in the night. Only Burra and Yarra were restless. Burra knew it was time to find out the truth, and to drive that white herd so far away that they would never come back. It was possible that they had gone for ever, now the flood had subsided. Burra did not know why he was impelled to go to find them, but something forced him to go. Surely the only answer was to drive the herd far away.
So, one morning, before the robin sang his early song in the black sallee tree, Burra was gone.
The band of snow gums was still shadowed with darkness, but occasionally the shadows moved with a stir of air, as though some unseen horse had brushed by. Back in the Cascade Valley, a plover called its sad dirge for times past and for ancient ghosts.
Burra jumped each time a branch moved. His skin was creeping; a leaf, touching his rump, made him spring forward.
Something was ahead. Was it only a shadow moving in the dawn wind? Whisper of air sliding through branches, whisper of ancient happenings and things still to come. The plover cried again, and for a moment Burra thought he saw a grey stallion, fierce and intractable, barring his way, but it was only a dream, and it was only a dream that a silver stallion was gliding down the aisles of mountain ash on ahead.
Who were these horses who had lived here once, and were ghosts going so proudly through the great trees? Perhaps it was only his dreams that brought them back. Who was he, Burra? Was he only a ghost searching for another ghost or a dream? Why did that white stallion close his eyes and stand quite still when the sky was alight? And what was it that stopped him, Burra, from fighting him when he stood defenceless? What was the power possessed by that horse?
Dawn light began to filter in between the great trees, slanting through the rough trunks; the spectral horses grew fainter. The bark stripping from high branches creaked in the dawn wind. Soon sunlight would filter in bars between the tree trunks. Soon there would be warmth on Burra’s grey coat.
He felt the strength of the dawn taking possession of him; warmth and light coming down the corridors of mountain ash, and he drew unto himself some of the great strength of those huge trees and of the hundreds of years in which they had stood, guardians of the steep slopes.
Horses and cattle had gone down that track, year after year, till the cattle never came to the mountains again, but there were no white horses of which Burra might catch even a glimpse.
It was then that Burra, trotting down the wide aisles, beneath the tall, sighing trees, remembered that strange red eye, or red star, that had stared out of the mint bushes, that night of the flood.
Who was the white stallion — who was he? And why was he, Burra, searching for a white stallion who closed his eyes when the lightning flashed? But the white stallion certainly posed a danger to Coolawyn.
Burra went on down the track with swinging strides. Now that he had made up his mind to drive that white stallion away, far away for ever, he felt pleased and happy. Once he had found the midnight gallopers and driven them away down the river, there would be nothing more to worry about — although, there was that white foal that Coolawyn had brought back to the herd, after the flood …
Into the back of his mind, as he neared the gully out of which the moths had come, arose another picture, and this one was of a white mare who had a white foal, one that was exactly like Yarra, so alike that he had indeed thought it was Coolawyn’s foal of the flood.
Brilliant sunlight was glinting on every shining leaf, when Burra reached the foot of the spur. There was no sign of the gallopers by night. Where did he expect to find them? Why did he expect to find them?
Burra walked across the grassy clearing to the bank of Cascade Creek, where it rushed to join the Indi River. He should cross that deep, extremely swift and boulder-filled creek and see if the white horses were somewhere on the other side. He found himself thinking that they were bound to be sheltering among trees.
He walked up and down the stretch of creek, seeking a place to cross. Then he went in, sc
rabbling over rocks, splashing into deeper pools — great grey horse forcing his way across, and the spray around him was a shining cloud on this wonderful, glittering morning.
Perhaps it was not a day for brumbies who galloped in the darkness of the night to be found, but Burra, grey and handsome and full of strength, did not think of that.
He clambered out the other side of the creek, and shook the water out of his coat, till he was haloed around with a million faceted diamonds. Almost as though he was aware of his beauty, he stood for a moment, poised on tiptoes, with all the future his. Had Coolawyn seen him then, she would have seen that a mantle of power and strength had descended on him from the sunlight and the life-giving glory of the sun.
He was suddenly feeling a longing for his herd, a longing to be back with them, but first he had to frighten that white stallion and his herd so that they never came back to the Ingegoodbee Valley, Burra’s bimble. Burra knew that he was too great a stallion to hurt that white horse from whom emanated some sort of magnetic power. There was no need to do anything more than let him know that he was never to come near again, never to steal a filly … or mare.
The white horses with the strange eyes were nowhere to be seen.
Burra searched all day, to and fro through miles of forest, until he began to feel they must have returned to their own country, and that they would not be coming thieving fillies any more.
He leapt around with happiness in the late afternoon sunlight. Low, slanting sunbeams penetrated the forest, but Burra did not see because he was playing and dancing in the brilliant sunshafts.
Hidden from penetrating light, other eyes did see Burra.
The White Herd’s Drumming Hooves
In the last light, Burra hurried back to find his herd. As darkness crept up from the floor of the forest, tall, white ribbon gums became slim ghosts and then faded.
The bush sounds began stealthily; whispering and murmuring as the daytime sleepers stirred to life with the setting of the sun. Red eyes, green eyes that could gleam in starlight were eagerly regarding the new night. Each night was a renewal of life, and something exciting might come their way.