The Silver Brumby
Thowra and Storm had learnt enough by now to know that this would be a terrific fight, and they wandered up on the grassy hill dreaming of perhaps seeing the great Brolga and his herd.
The restless mares grazed their way on to the southern-most flank of the hill and there, below, on a flat valley floor, were The Brolga and his mares and foals.
Storm started to whinny with excitement, but Mirri gave him a swift nip on the shoulder.
‘Be quiet, silly fellow,’ she said. ‘They might not be pleased to see us.’
Thowra was trembling.
‘See,’ said Bel Bel, ‘three grey filly foals.’
‘Come on,’ Mirri nudged Storm, ‘we’d better get back the other way.’
The sun was lovely and warm, and it was good to be up above the valley looking down on all the familiar country with its gleaming creeks that ran on down till they joined together and rushed over the rocky rapids. These rapids were the start of the huge waterfall that tumbled down, and down, and down, how far, no brumby knew.
That day there was a particularly shining look to all the snowgums, as if the sunlight was dripping off their leaves. The four looked around with satisfaction, grazed back across the face of the hill, slept for a while in the sun, and then started wandering back towards their own herd.
Bel Bel looked behind her several times, as was her usual habit, and just as evening was drawing on, she saw something which made her heart jolt inside her. Nose down to their tracks, following a long way behind, was The Brolga with several other horses — young colts and dry mares, she guessed.
‘We’d better run for it, Mirri, as fast as the foals can go,’ she said. ‘Look behind!’
Mirri looked back over her shoulder and snorted quite quietly, but her ears flickered back and forth.
‘You two should know your way back to the herd,’ she said sharply to Storm. ‘Bel Bel and I will just plod along and keep The Brolga thinking.’
‘It would be better to keep together,’ said Bel Bel, knowing that even in the dusk her foal would show up clearly. ‘Come quickly.’
She led off at a hard gallop with the foals following and Mirri bringing up the rear. She knew that The Brolga and his companions would hear them as soon as they started to gallop, but there was a good chance that, despite the slow foals, their lead on The Brolga would allow them to reach their own herd before he caught up with them.
‘Hurry,’ she called back over her shoulder. ‘Hurry!’ And though she could hear no sound except their own hoof-beats, she caught a glimpse of galloping horses way behind.
They galloped on and on and she could hear the foals beside her blowing. Then she led them splashing through the creek and swung round some rocks and up into the narrow valley where Yarraman’s herd had spent each night for some time now. There, she raised her head and let out a high-pitched neigh for help, urging the foals on.
In the gloom near the top of the valley she saw Yarraman, head up, light golden mane and tail foaming, trotting along, looking inquiringly down the valley. She called again and he and some of the herd behind him started to gallop.
From behind her she heard the wild scream of a stallion. She looked back again. The Brolga was standing at the turn into the valley, one foot raised, his head thrown up as he called.
Bel Bel whistled through her teeth. Now what was going to happen? She slowed up. The foals need not gallop so fast; The Brolga would forget all about everyone except Yarraman.
Yarraman began to gallop in earnest. He went thundering past them down the valley, golden mane and tail streaming out on the wind that was made by his own speed. The two mares stopped and turned round to watch. The Brolga was advancing up the valley, rearing and screaming. Bel Bel looked at Thowra, who was giving little whinnies of fear, his eyes and nostrils dilated.
‘Oh, well, he must learn what fighting is like,’ she thought, ‘because he, too, will have to fight.’
As he drew close to The Brolga, Yarraman stopped in his headlong gallop and pawed the ground, screaming. Then the two horses advanced, rearing and trumpeting until they were within striking distance of each other and could aim wicked blows with their forefeet.
Even in the half light into which, being grey, The Brolga seemed to fade, the other horses could see how much less heavy and less developed he was than Yarraman. They all knew, too, that in years of fighting, Yarraman had learnt every trick. Perhaps, they thought, he will not consider it right or worth his while to kill or maim a much younger horse, and will only punish him for following some of his herd.
The screaming was tremendous. All that could be seen were the two horses, on their hind legs, one a streak of chestnut, pale in the pale light, the other a fainter streak of grey in the gloom, sometimes locked together, biting, striking. Occasionally they broke apart, dropped to the ground and danced around to get in a good position to kick. Yarraman tried not to let The Brolga break away too often because the lighter, younger horse was more nimble on his feet and he had already managed to give one very savage kick.
All the watching horses were trembling and sweating with fear and excitement. Those from The Brolga’s herd had drawn a little down the valley. Sometimes their neighs could be heard above the noise of the two stallions.
‘Listen! They are calling the foolish one away,’ said Bel Bel, and added softly, ‘it grows dark.’
Soon they could barely see the two horses.
‘See! They are backing off, looking at each other,’ Mirri murmured. ‘It is too dark, and Yarraman has punished him enough.’
Bel Bel could just distinguish the grey shadow of The Brolga, risen on his hind legs again, but backing down the valley. Then it was night.
Yarraman, snorting, whinnying, and tossing his fine head, a dark stain of blood on his shoulder and neck, came trotting up the valley.
Leading the foals a dance
Not long after this, when the weather was becoming much warmer, Yarraman suddenly led his herd off, away from the Cascades towards the rough range that the mares had pointed out to the foals on the other side of the Crackenback River. When they got there there was a whole new world to be discovered — not the wide valleys and spacious grassland of the Cascades, with large snowgums and sometimes candlebarks, but rough, rocky ridges and stunted trees, tiny threads of streams, and hidden pockets of snowgrass.
The foals enjoyed it. They played hide-and-seek in among the rocky tors and challenged each other to races down the steep hillsides where the stones broke away from under their hooves and went clattering down, down, even faster than they could go. Best of all were the bathing parties in the Crackenback, when the days grew really hot, and they could splash and blow bubbles in the water where it ran over the cool, brown stones and the shining mica; and then they would chase each other and roll in the sand.
The foals were two months old, and Mirri and Bel Bel had lost no opportunity of teaching them their way around the new country. None of the other mares wandered so far off on their own and, when it came to a really good game of hide-and-seek, none of the other foals knew the country as well as Thowra and Storm did.
Brownie was a lazy mare. She stayed around near Yarraman, queening it, as Mirri had guessed she would, and Arrow learnt little else than to be a nuisance — in fact, what else could Brownie teach him, Bel Bel said — but he was still the biggest and strongest foal in the herd. Several times he had given Thowra or Storm vicious bites, and once Thowra was lamed for a week by a kick on the hock.
Then, one hot, sultry day, with big thunder clouds sitting lazily along the mountain tops, Arrow was stung, it seemed, to thorough nastiness by the great March flies, and he chased Thowra, biting him unmercifully.
Thowra called Storm:
‘Come on!’ he said. ‘He won’t catch us!’ And away they galloped with Arrow and half the other foals after them.
‘We’ll lead them a dance,’ Thowra said to Storm, as they galloped side by side down into a steep ravine. ‘If we can lose Arrow, we will!’
> They went crashing down, Arrow and his followers not far behind, down, down the rocky slope and then into some very thick scrub. Here, Thowra pulled up sharply on his haunches, and swung on to a tiny narrow track that led towards the head of the ravine.
They heard the other foals go thundering by straight on down, while they went trotting quietly on, making as little sound as possible. The track turned upwards, and they knew they would be quite a height above the other foals when they got out of the scrub.
Thowra led the way on to the rocky hillside again and, surefooted as a wild goat, cantered across it upwards to the tumbled mass of rock that formed the headwall of the ravine. He and Storm had found a track through, but he was pretty certain Arrow would not know it. He looked down once and saw the other foals far below, but already starting in pursuit.
They had to let their pace drop to a walk when they reached the rocks, and for a moment it was hard to find the start of their track; then they picked their way carefully through, and round and over the great rough rocks with almost a sheer wall of rock up on one side of them and a tremendous drop on the other.
They could hear the other foals crashing and stumbling across the side of the hill, but they didn’t stop or look back: they had to watch every step they took on their precipice or they might find themselves hurtling down through space to the floor of the ravine, far below. Thowra felt his coat prickling with fear, and then the sweat running on his neck and flanks. How foolish it would be to fall! But at last they were over, and there, safe on the other side, they neighed and mocked at Arrow who was still looking for a way across the head-wall.
At this, Arrow became so angry that he started to climb right round over the top. Thowra and Storm could afford to rest before galloping off. Then they were off again, through very broken country of granite tors, rough scrub, and low snow-gums, directly away from where the mares had been grazing. There was no grass here, and Thowra guessed that the other foals had never bothered to explore this way.
Both foals noticed how hot it had become. Thowra’s cream coat was all dark with sweat. They stopped for a moment to get their breath and watched black clouds massing over the sky.
‘We may be glad we know our way,’ Thowra said.
The others were drawing nearer, so they led them on, up a little hill. Already the grey mist was sitting on top of it.
As soon as they saw the other foals following up the hill, they went through the mist and quickly down the other side, then jumped down into a sharp-sided creek bed that cut straight across the foot of the hill. They turned east up the creek and trotted along, presently stopping for a drink.
There was no sound of pursuit, although once Thowra thought he heard a neigh.
‘This creek will take us nearly all the way home,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Storm answered. ‘Come!’
‘I’m wondering about the others.’
They both looked around. Clouds had boiled up and poured right over the mountains, and it was impossible to see more than a few yards.
‘It’s all very well to get Arrow lost on a fine day,’ Thowra said, ‘but the weather is changing. Also,’ he added, ‘the mothers of the other foals will be wild with us, even if they do think Arrow deserves all he gets.’
‘That is quite true,’ Storm said. ‘Perhaps we had better go and find them.’
They went back along the creek, and scrambled up on to the hillside again. Now, they could hear neighing coming from the top of the hill.
Storm threw up his head to listen:
‘I expect they are wandering round in circles,’ he said. ‘Don’t let’s hurry; give them time to get to know what it’s like being lost in a cloud.’
But when they reached the top of the hill they could just make out the group of foals through the cloud, all huddled together in the shelter of some rocks.
Thowra and Storm went up to them, emerging like shadows out of the mist.
‘Don’t you know your way home?’ Storm asked.
Arrow said nothing, but the other foals came crowding round.
‘Can you lead us back even through these clouds?’ they asked.
Thowra looked at them without speaking for a moment, then he turned to Arrow.
‘Do you want to go home, O swift Arrow?’
Arrow nodded glumly. Just then there was a great roll of thunder, and a whip-like streak of lightning seemed to strike the rocks. Thowra took no notice.
‘Are you going to behave yourself and be nicer to everyone else?’ he asked Arrow.
There was no answer.
‘Oh well,’ said Thowra, ‘Storm and I will go home on our own,’ and he moved as if to go back into the cloud and mist. More lightning blazed behind him, and he seemed to be made of silver.
The other foals crowded after them but Arrow stood quite still.
‘Arrow will behave, or we will all set on him this minute,’ spoke up Star, a brown filly who had always wished she could go wandering with Thowra and Storm and their mothers.
‘All right,’ Thowra and Storm both agreed. ‘Follow us then, closely.’ Their last words were almost lost in the rumble of thunder and the sudden sound of pouring rain.
Shivering with cold now as well as fear, the foals followed them as they turned and made their way down into the more sheltered creek bed. Here, the noise of the thunder was almost like something striking at them, and Thowra noticed with pleasure that Arrow was as frightened as the others.
In places the creek bed widened, and there was grass or sand over which they could canter; sometimes they walked through stones. Then the creek turned in a long northward curve that led them back towards where the herd had been. Even when they were quite close to the mares, the clouds were so heavy and black that only Thowra and Storm knew they had arrived back.
Quietly they led the foals into the herd. They could tell by the restless moving of the mares that they were worried. Brown gave a silly-sounding neigh when she saw Arrow and started sniffing him all over.
‘What have you been up to?’ muttered Bel Bel as Thowra came up beside her for a drink.
‘Maybe Arrow won’t be such a bully for a while,’ Thowra answered.
‘Take care — that colt may always be bigger and stronger than you,’ Bel Bel said.
Just then Star’s mother came up.
‘No good will come of you teaching your sons to be so independent,’ she said to Bel Bel and Mirri angrily, and then turned to Thowra. ‘Where have you led our foals to, today?’ But Star, looking miserable, said:
‘It was our fault — and Arrow’s.’
‘That Arrow!’ said the mare sourly. ‘He will grow into a bad horse.’
‘He’ll be a bad enemy,’ said Mirri, looking with meaning at her own son and at Thowra.
Brumby drive
On very clear days the wild horses could see the cattle grazing on the other side of the Crackenback River. Sometimes they might meet an odd beast down drinking, but the horses mostly kept to drinking places where the cattle never came, because where there were cattle there could be men.
One day Bel Bel and Mirri and the two foals were climbing up behind a particularly high granite tor. They were still in the trees, and out of sight themselves, when they saw a man standing upon the top of the tor, gazing over the country.
The wild horses came to a dead stop, nostrils quivering. There the man stood, a wide hat shading his eyes, a red scarf round his neck, wearing faded riding-trousers, and with a coiled whip in his hand.
‘Stockman,’ whispered Bel Bel. ‘His tame horse must be somewhere, and maybe a mate or two. Our scent must be blowing straight to him.’
‘He won’t smell it,’ said Mirri scornfully.
‘His horse may, though.’
Sure enough, there came the sound of neighing and stamping, and even the jingle of a bit.
‘It’s not very far away. We must go!’ Bel Bel turned to Thowra: ‘Look well at the man, my son. He is your greatest enemy.’
Thowra
could not really remember the man who had tried to catch him as he slept on the slopes of the Ramshead Range, but that day had planted the fear of Man deeply in him. All he said now was:
‘Let’s go!’
They moved away quietly, and that evening, as they grazed with the herd by a wide creek bed, where good grass grew, Bel Bel and Mirri told Yarraman and the gathered mares and yearlings what they had seen.
‘I don’t like it,’ said Bel Bel. ‘He was a mountain man and he will have come here for some purpose, not just curiosity.’
‘They are sure to know that many of us always spend the summer here,’ Mirri said. ‘It wouldn’t be good if they came back to hunt us.’
‘We know this country too well,’ boasted Yarraman, but he did not look overpleased.
The two mares kept an even more careful watch on their foals, and would never let them go down to the river except very early and very late when men who live in huts or tents are always busy with their queer cans of water that bubble by their smoking fires.
Once again, the man was seen, this time by Yarraman himself as he and the herd were in their customary grazing ground. The man was standing right above them as though he were cut out of rock.
The news of this was very disquieting to Bel Bel and Mirri, and they kept an even stricter watch.
There were many hot, sleepy days that summer, but though the foals lay in the grass, flat out, their switching tails their only sign of life, the two mothers kept watch in turns, never, during the day, sleeping at the same time. Even so, they were both sleepy enough, standing in the shade of a low snowgum, to get badly frightened when they heard an unusual noise far below them.
What was it? Something was moving through dead timber the way no wild animal would move! Perhaps a tame horse with a man on its back?
They could not smell anything. Nostrils to the wind, they listened. There was the sound again, something unusual going through the bush, they were sure. They roused the sleeping foals and began to move quietly upwards.