She stayed with him there, until Son of Storm came back, much later, looking for her.
Son of Storm had chased the strawberry roan a long way, until that big horse had turned, crossed the river, and then gone up and up, till he stood on the Divide. Then he had gone thundering, falling and rolling down the other side. Son of Storm had stood watching him going down what was a great, precipitous gully that seemed never to end, nor did it seem to have a floor. When the big horse vanished from sight, Son of Storm left and returned to Dandaloo and Choopa.
A nankeen kestrel was hovering over the Great Geehi Gorge, its breast glittering silver in the early sunlight. It would tell the tale forever, so that every bush bird and animal would know how the gentle Son of Storm had chased the big red roan onto the Divide, and then down and down. And the kestrel would also have seen there by the little waterfall on the creek the tiny jewel of the red roan’s herd, a perfectly formed, but miniature, filly, who stood watching her sire come rolling and sliding down the last remaining snowdrift in that steep gully.
The kestrel stored everything he saw in his memory. He saw that filly, no bigger than a snowflake, and touched with pink, like the snow is, in spring, touched with wind-borne dust; he saw her step back in behind some rocks as though she did not wish to be seen watching that undignified descent.
The kestrel continued to hover and see all that was to be seen. He would be able to create a wonderful bush legend that would grow and grow as it spread through the mountain forests. Currawongs would turn it into a song. Lyrebirds would mimic it. Sacred kingfishers would carry it with them up north. Rainbow birds would take it with them over Torres Strait.
Now Choopa went wandering back to the Snowy River. Perhaps he might recapture an elusive secret if he drank the water once more. Perhaps if he went up, over the Divide to the double lake again …?
On the bank of the Snowy he lay down to sleep. What was it that the kestrel had called? Something about a miniature filly, daughter of the strawberry roan? The jewel of his whole herd … no bigger than a snowflake and as beautiful …?
Dandaloo watched him and then lay down on the sweet, soft snowgrass, and folded her legs beneath her. She did not sleep peacefully. What if the strawberry roan had come for Choopa — what then? No wonderful clowning somersaults and dancing would preserve the little dwarf from that aggressive horse.
Choopa woke, and Dandaloo knew, by the way he started up and arched his neck, that he had been dreaming that he was big and tall, a strong stallion.
And that was so.
Choopa had woken from dreams of perfection, but at the same time he knew that no big, tall, strong stallion was ever befriended by wallabies, echidnas, or wombats, nor could a big stallion turn such somersaults as he, that charmed herds of brumbies so that they all loved him.
If that big roan stallion confronted him, he would just have to do all his tricks most beautifully — as though Franz were watching, and the music playing.
Calling to Dandaloo and Son of Storm, Choopa set off up the river to a shallower crossing place. They would spend the night at the double lake after crossing the Divide at the Northcote Pass, above the Canyon.
Son of Storm went along happily. They would be far enough away from that great western gully down which the strawberry roan had blundered, galloped, stumbled, and rolled, to be quite safe. Anyway, he thought, Old Strawberry might not be feeling too wonderful.
Old Strawberry was not. He had picked himself up at the bottom of the snowdrift. He was on almost the only flat place in all that steep gully below Sentinel Peak — and he could see that beautiful miniature daughter of his standing where she must have seen his whole undignified descent. She looked as if she thought it very funny.
The tiny filly was beautiful, indeed, almost white like snow, so they called her Jounama, but her ears were touched with strawberry roan, and there were strawberry parts on her fine legs, and her mane and tail were brushed lightly with pale roan. Who could have anything as perfect in their herd? Then he thought of that ugly blue-roan dwarf, and thought how it had better keep away. Never had Strawberry seen anything so weird … and dancing! It should never have survived. If he, Old Strawberry, ever saw the blue-roan dwarf again, he would make sure it no longer survived!
While the last rays of sunset were in the sky above the deep gully, Old Strawberry lay down and slept.
As the sun set, the scent of eucalyptus leaves, of Alpine ash trees, that grow in the gullies below the great rock crags, came drifting up the Canyon. The three brumbies at the double lake in the Northcote Canyon slept too, undisturbed by any wild thoughts blowing through from the stallion further along the western escarpment of the Snowy Mountains.
Four
The strawberry roan’s sleep was very disturbed. He had never before been chased by an angry, screaming mare. Never before had a stallion given him such a beating as that given him by Son of Storm … and that ridiculous, bumping, bouncing, rolling, slithering descent of the steep gully still rankled in his mind, so that his sleep was not peaceful. He woke hours before dawn and, without a real plan in his mind as to what he would do when he got up on to the Divide, he set off up the steep slope.
He found it very difficult to climb up again because he kept slipping and sliding back down on his flanks. He got off the snowdrift onto snowgrass, but then he found that the grass was almost impossible to climb, too … the ground beneath the grass was frozen, hard as rocks, and every time he took a step his hoof slipped back. He even fell and slid down, enveloped in a cloud of flying frost.
Then, in the dawn sky, he saw that kestrel. It had been joined by two brown hawks whose wild cries seemed to be taking up the kestrel’s story, and were now loudly reporting on his effort to climb up the steep gully below The Sentinel.
It was his gully, and he wished they would all be quiet and vanish away.
The brown hawks flew southward, along the western face of the Range. Only birds of the air could go across the western face. Man or horse could only loop the ridges and gullies. Up a ridge … down a gully. Not even skiers, who, on a steep snow face would appear to have the gift of wings, can cut across the western face’s chasms and cliffs.
Strawberry did not know where the screaming mare and the strong brown stallion had gone … or that dwarf who was probably with them … but he was sure that, wherever they were, they would hear the brown hawks’ description of the silly stallion that was trying to climb out of the gully, below The Sentinel. If they came to find him, instead of his finding them, they would slide and slide down the Sentinel gully. It was much more slippery than it had been the afternoon before.
Ice must have come in the night.
The kestrel went along with the swift brown hawks, across the crags and cliffs of that precipitous western scarp. Then they zoomed across the knife-cut of Little Austria, and were below the walls of the Canyon. They called as they went — calls that would wake even exhausted, deeply sleeping brumbies.
Choopa heard the hawks in his sleep and half-woke. He had been dreaming, and in his dream he was as tall and strong as that strawberry roan, swifter too, and his legs did not swing on to the side, tripping him, but he could still somersault, still leap and dance, still do Franz’s airs-above-the-ground, so that the strawberry roan stallion would be amazed, and not try to kill him.
Suddenly he became wide awake and there, on the hillside above him, outlined by dawn, he saw that roan stallion.
Old Strawberry had succeeded in climbing that gully, and had gone along the Divide until he was above the Canyon … hovering there were the brown hawks.
Because Choopa was still in his dream, he imagined himself a tall, full-grown stallion. He threw up his head, arched his neck and neighed a trumpeting stallion neigh, then sprang forward. He felt his hooves sliding instead of biting into snowgrass and granular soil. There was a strange, tinkling, slithering sound.
The sun just topped Carruther’s Peak and Mount Lee. In a few seconds, the brilliant beams of the dawn had
come down the back of Mount Lee, reaching the slope on which Old Strawberry stood, and that slope was shining like glass.
Choopa took another leap forward, landed and slipped backwards. There was the same slithering sound, and as Strawberry took a step forward little discs of ice, golden light round their rims, flew and slid from his hooves.
Strawberry’s snorting fear blew the discs faster. Choopa stood still in amazement. He heard Dandaloo and Son of Storm stirring from sleep behind him. He did not want them to wake yet. If he could climb the slippery slope, he wanted this fight to be his. He would repay that dizzying blow on the head that Strawberry had given him, and then drive Strawberry up to the Divide, and down into the steep gully.
Little discs of ice flew from his hooves as he went springing up the slope. Shining ice slipped away from every sliding step that Strawberry took towards him. The tinkling, rustling world was a-gleam and a-glitter. It was also moving.
Strawberry could see Choopa below him — just a dwarf trying to climb up the bright ice — and Strawberry felt a longing to destroy. He began to slither and slide down the slope, but he did not trumpet his rage as he might have, because he could see Son of Storm and that virago of a mare were waking.
The front of Choopa’s hooves bit through the frost, but barely cut into the frozen earth. He did not slip or slide backwards very much. To Choopa it seemed as if he, himself, was big and strong, a fierce fighter. It was he who trumpeted angrily.
Son of Storm and Dandaloo heard him, and both thought that perhaps they should get a little closer to the action — if there were action — so they, too, started slowly up the ice-coated slope, but they both understood how much Choopa wanted to fight that roan, how much he wanted to avenge that savage blow on the side of his head.
Though knowing full well that the little dancing dwarf had no chance of damaging that big, strong horse, they wanted him to go on believing he could. His fight should not be taken from him. They did not hurry, but they did watch closely.
As the blue roan dwarf and the red roan stallion got closer together, and both were hurrying as best they could, Son of Storm and Dandaloo saw the flurry of flying frost crystals as the two roans — large and small — got closer together. Then they stood still and watched.
They saw Choopa make a rush at Old Strawberry and then dance away to the side; Strawberry followed clumsily. Choopa sprang at him, then cheerfully danced away. This went on over and over again.
Dandaloo could see Choopa’s plan. If he could, he would lead Strawberry to the edge of the lake, but what then?
Choopa had explored the lake very thoroughly when he was there a year ago, and he knew they were very close to the place where the stony shelf was very narrow before it dropped off into deep, freezing water, where centuries ago ice had remained, summer and winter, even after its parent glacier had gone.
Dandaloo and Son of Storm watched every manoeuvre Choopa made, every move that forced Strawberry in the direction in which he, Choopa, wanted him to go.
Dandaloo knew that the shelf was narrow just there.
There was something else that no one, only Old Strawberry, knew.
The two dodging, springing, striking horses moved ever closer to the verge of the lake.
Then, right at the edge of the water, Choopa leapt to one side, and somersaulted back behind Strawberry. The big, red roan teetered, for a moment, on the rim of the shelf, looked around at the clowning little dwarf — and fell with a large splash into the lake.
Choopa rose on his hind legs, saluting the roan stallion who had sunk and come up again, angry and spluttering. Strawberry had fallen into the lake exactly where Choopa had meant him to — at the place where there was very little shelf — so he had nothing on which to get out.
Dandaloo and Son of Storm both realised that Choopa had deliberately led the big roan to the particular part of the lake where there was almost no shallow shelf. Now the other thing that no-one — except perhaps Strawberry — knew, became apparent, as Strawberry, floundering furiously, tried to scramble out of the lake.
Choopa stepped closer, to peer down into the clear water, and the shale under his hooves gave way. With a little snort of amusement, he went head first into the icy glacial lake, knocking Strawberry off his foothold on the shelf.
Choopa turned and swam swiftly to the place where he knew he could climb out. Strawberry, scrambling again, sank and came up.
Choopa, swimming hard as he was, could tell that Strawberry was one of very few horses that could not, or would not, swim.
In his floundering struggles, Strawberry seemed to follow Choopa, and where Choopa could scramble ashore, Strawberry found footholds and scrambled, too.
Somehow they all — Choopa, Dandaloo, and Son of Storm — could see that Old Strawberry’s aggressive wish to destroy had gone, at least for the moment.
It was Son of Storm who decided that it would be best if Strawberry went back to his own bimble, and started to drive him up towards Carruther’s Peak, knowing he would be almost at the Divide. Perhaps, once there, he would have to go down that steep gully below the Sentinel.
Because Choopa deeply did not want to leave the high country, when Son of Storm returned from driving Strawberry up towards the Divide, the three of them started to graze on some sunlit grass.
Choopa was determined to see that steep gully above Old Strawberry’s home, but he stayed with Dandaloo and Son of Storm.
The blue crane, that Choopa had first seen at the Townsend Spur, came back that night and flew round and round, over Choopa, as though with a strange tale to tell. Choopa, Son of Storm and Dandaloo all noted her slow wing beat. It was obvious that she had travelled a long way.
Choopa was lying in the shelter of a great rock, but he got up onto his feet, acknowledging that the crane might have some sort of message. No trees grew around the lake, not a branch on which a crane could alight and rest, and Choopa knew that a bird of the heron family could not hover like a kestrel.
This blue crane had been near them since they reached the double lake. Then, at the Snowy River, the kestrel had seemed to take over and always be near as the carrier of tales … the kestrel, the all-seeing eye above the Geehi Gorge.
Perhaps the blue crane with the harsh voice had flown in company with the kestrel, spreading the tale of what had happened in the gully below Sentinel Peak.
The kestrel, of course, saw and reported what was truth. The blue crane was a gossip, and by the time she got back to Lake Albina she was too exhausted to be able quite to remember what had happened in Sentinel gully. She knew the kestrel had seen Old Strawberry sliding on a snowdrift. In fact, she herself had seen him picking himself up at the waterfall in the creek in Sentinel Gully, but the news she was bursting to tell was that she had seen the tiny filly — ‘the jewel of Old Strawberry’s herd’. The kestrel said she was his pride.
Choopa listened and barely understood all he was hearing about the ‘jewel’, of fabulous, miniature beauty.
He was miniature too, but the only time he was a fabulous beauty was when he danced his airs-above-the-ground for Franz, with a spotlight on his fetlocks all roped around with spangles. People cheered, then — as he danced in the circus ring — as if he was a fabulous beauty.
Choopa put his head down on the soft snowgrass. If he’d been a dog he would have howled. There were tears in his eyes when Dandaloo and Son of Storm walked over to him, and Dandaloo bent and rubbed her face into his and snuffled at his ears. Then she gently nipped Son of Storm before she snuffled at Choopa again. Choopa knew she was asking Son of Storm for protection of her dwarf son. Really, there was no need to ask Son of Storm. From the moment he had peered in moonlight at Dandaloo’s ugly little newborn foal, Son of Storm had helped her protect him.
How was Son of Storm to know he had fathered this foal? Dandaloo belonged to a very big, fierce stallion who had a large herd that mostly ran on Quambat Flat. Surely, Dandaloo had taken him along with her and Choopa over the high tops. Surely, he and
Dandaloo were very close friends. Surely, Son of Storm admired Choopa’s courage — this beautiful, brave, dancing dwarf. He gave the nearest little ear a gentle nip as though he were making a promise of friendship and protection forever.
The little horse sighed again and rubbed his head on the good snowgrass. Dandaloo and Son of Storm lay down beside him, Dandaloo’s mane touching his ear. In the dark of the night, an owl flew over, calling as it looked down on the three sleepers — the big brown stallion, the small, old roan mare, and her dwarf roan, two years old — all sleeping close enough to touch each other.
So the owl saw them lying there by the lake, and he saw Strawberry climbing up again onto the Divide, and the owl’s story added on to the kestrel’s. Some of each tale got altered and twisted, but basically the tale that got around somehow simply left all the animals wondering.
Five
Choopa got up in the dark of the night to go after Old Strawberry. Dandaloo knew immediately he woke, and she got up quickly and followed him, nudging Son of Storm to come too. Strawberry would be far too cunning to let a tadpole like Choopa lead him into a deep, freezing lake again. Strawberry would punish him.
She hurried forward in the dark.
Both Choopa and Dandaloo knew that a cluster of big rocks was on top of the first ridge they were climbing. It was possible that Strawberry might be resting among them. Choopa stopped and peered at the rocks through the starlight. After all, one of the rocks up near the top of the pass where he was dancing to the music that came up from the valley had suddenly become Strawberry, and given him that blow to his head. Choopa shook his white-blotched blue head as he thought of it.
That blow had to be avenged. He moved a few steps closer to those rocks that overlooked the Canyon and the opposite slopes above his lake.
Dandaloo and Son of Storm crept after him.