One day the colts had wandered low enough to see into the Big Boggy Creek. Thowra had learnt now, in The Brolga’s country, to use all the cunning Bel Bel had taught him and keep hidden in the fringe of trees, or in patches of light and shade. Often he had only just remembered in time to check his impulse to leap up on to a high rock before he had looked properly around first.
This time they peered into the valley of the Big Boggy from some hop scrub. There were a few cattle grazing along the grassy floor of the valley, the sight of which made them very cautious, but there was no sign of anything else. All seemed very peaceful, with no movement, other than that of the head-down cattle. Thowra leapt from one granite block to another till he was on top of a great heap of rocks. There was still nothing disquieting to see. Storm came up beside him.
‘It is too open,’ said Thowra regretfully. ‘We would be foolish to go there, though some of that good grass would be nice.’
They stood for quite a while, looking down longingly, and then moved slowly along the southern slopes, keeping the delicious-looking valley in sight. All of a sudden Thowra stopped and raised his head, his nostrils curling as he sniffed the air.
‘Smoke!’ He moved to a steep edge to see.
First he looked at the northern sky to judge if the wind had brought the smoke from a distant fire, then he looked closely into the valley. It was a second or so before he saw anything, then it was just a thin ribbon of smoke winding up through some snowgums, on the other side of the valley where a tiny creek came down. Just at that moment a man walked down the creek a few yards, and stopped to fill something with water.
‘Man!’ he hissed to Storm. ‘We must go before there is any chance of him seeing us.’
They slid — one horse a dark shadow, one a piece of dappled, moving light and shade — through the scrub, heading towards their small hanging valley. And there, in the valley of the Big Boggy, drinking tea from his quart-pot, was a very young man who could think of nothing but the sight of a beautiful cream-coloured colt with flowing silver mane and tail, poised high above him on a heap of granite rock.
The two young horses made their way back to their camping-ground, and the young man, when he had finished his lunch, crossed the Big Boggy and started up the mountain towards the granite rock.
Thowra did not really think he had been seen, or he and Storm would have been far more worried, but he remembered how Bel Bel had shown him how to track other horses, and how not to leave tracks. Instinctively he chose snowgrass or rocks to walk on, wherever possible.
Thus it was that the young man tracked them easily from the granite rocks to the hop scrub, and then had the greatest difficulty in picking up their trail. He lost it so often that he gave up, as evening drew on, and lit his fire, boiled his quartpot, and presently rolled up in the one blanket he had carried in front of his saddle, and went to sleep.
Thowra and Storm smelt the smoke from their hidden valley. Bel Bel and Mirri smelt the smoke, and The Brolga smelt it, too.
The man’s little fire burnt all night long because it was a cold night and he, with only one blanket, kept waking and throwing on another log. His horse, picketed close to him, snuffled and stamped throughout the night.
It was only by luck — bad luck — that the man found Thowra’s and Storm’s hiding-place the next morning. He had failed to find their trail and just happened to ride out on to one of the few places that overlooked their hanging valley. There he sat on his tame black horse, the sleepy-looking, very young man, who suddenly became wide awake as he saw below him, on a carpet of snow-daisies, a good-looking bay colt and the supremely beautiful creamy.
The young man sat perfectly still, only his eyes moving as he looked at the valley, trying to find a way in, trying to see if there would also be a way out for the brumbies to take. Just then — and this was good luck — his horse whinnied.
Thowra, who for a moment or two had experienced a prickly feeling in his hair, knew instantly they were being watched. He threw up his head, the early sunlight like water on his rippling, lovely coat, and saw the man trying hastily to back out of sight.
As though caught in a willy-willy, Thowra whirled round and away, followed by Storm, into the clump of low snowgum and heather that hid the narrow opening into a gorge. But they heard, as they went, the crashing of rocks as the man came straight down the cliff on which he had been standing.
‘If he gets down unhurt, he’ll be after us, pretty close,’ Thowra thought, and strained his ears to hear what was happening behind. The crashing of rocks continued, purposeful crashing, as if someone kept forcing a horse down, not as if he had fallen and gone bouncing down among the boulders.
Thowra and Storm burst out of the scrub and up the rocky gorge. Suddenly Thowra turned right, leaping like a goat from rock to rock up the side of the gorge. He had noticed not long before that there might be a possible place of escape up this way, and now was certainly the time to use it. No ridden horse, he thought, would be able to follow.
He and Storm were blowing and sweating when they reached the top of the wall. They turned and looked down and saw the man already following. He leapt off his tame horse and started leading it up behind him. Thowra did not wait to see how he got on, but picked his way carefully over a great slope of wet and mossy rock.
‘Keep off the moss, if you can,’ he warned Storm. ‘It will show our track. If we leave no track from the top of the cliff it will give us a few minutes extra.’ His feet slipped, then, with a grating clatter, and he went down on his side on the cold rock, but he leapt up and went on, then across some spongy, wet snowgrass, and into the cover of the trees.
There they stopped for a second and listened. There was no sound. Off they went again, as fast as they could up the steep hill, trying not to set hoof on any soft, wet earth. Then, ringing out through the bush came the sound of a shod horse’s hoof on a rock.
‘He must be good, that tame horse,’ thought Thowra, but he did not guess that he was extremely good, nor that he had been fed on oats, and bran, and chaff, on which a horse can gallop much faster than on mountain grass, however sweet and lovely that grass may be.
Thowra began to feel frightened. They were near a great semicircle of rock cliffs that enclosed most evil-seeming bogs — the soft-surfaced, green bogs in which a horse could flounder and sink from sight, black mud bogs that were bottomless, and the squelching sphagnum bogs that no horse really trusted. But both he and Storm knew a track through all this, so, gasping for breath, he made straight for the lower arm of the cliffs.
Thowra stood on the rocks above the great hollow filled with bogs, and then took a flying leap on to a patch that he knew was solid ground. In a minute Storm was beside him — and had left no track to show where they had entered the hollow.
They could not go any faster than a walk, hearing all the time the squelch of water in sphagnum, feeling the awful, unstable surface under their hooves. Behind them, Thowra was sure he could hear a horse galloping. If he tried to go faster he kept imagining himself sinking in the great, treacherous mud holes. He looked up at the dark, water-stained cliff above him, and knew there was no escape there if the man caught up with them. He started to trot in terror, but nearly floundered into an innocent-looking green patch, and had to back out.
The other side was not far away, and they reached it before the man appeared. Ahead of them lay some wide, open country where they would have to gallop as fast as they possibly could. All of a sudden Thowra knew why he had come just this way. Sometimes The Brolga and his herd grazed here; and other wild brumbies — even the stallion that had killed Yarraman — would be better company than a lone man with a lasso. Also, perhaps, if there were numbers of horses, the man would not know which one to chase.
But there was no sign of any other brumbies; they must be in a higher grazing-ground still. With pounding hearts, the two colts galloped across the wide, open snowgrass, leaping the little streams, galloping with all their might for the trees and cover before
the man saw them.
Thowra looked back over his shoulder once. There he came, sitting well down in the saddle, leaning forward over the powerful horse’s neck. In that glance, Thowra realized that the tame horse was a four- or five-year-old, and therefore much stronger than he and Storm. He was desperate now, and could think only of reaching the herd.
The great black horse and its rider were gaining and gaining on them, even though they had a long start. Thowra and Storm stretched their legs even farther with each stride, and made tremendous efforts to go faster, faster. The trees were not far away. Thowra could see them through a red mist of exhaustion. The sunlight dancing on the leaves seemed like sparks or waves of light. He must reach that line of trees. He was done; he could not get his breath fast enough. Then he felt the vibration on the ground of the other horse drawing closer.
Hiss-s-s came the sound of the rope through the air.
Thowra shied violently at the sound, and the rope struck him a blow on the shoulder and then fell to the ground. Two more strides and the brumbies were in the trees.
The man would try to head them out into the open, Thowra knew, because he would not be able to rope them in the trees. Somehow they had to stay in timber till they reached the herd’s next grazing-place. A flock of jays sent out warning cries, but the colts, with sweat streaming off them, did not hear.
Thowra realized they could hold their lead in timber, particularly if it was thick and low scrubby stuff. He was almost sure, now, that he was the one the man was after, and his terror drove him on ever faster. He knew this belt of timber went right to the top of the outside rim of a grassy basin. Perhaps the herd would be in the basin. The timber was thinner near the top and the man was gaining on him. Just as he reached the crest of the rim, he gave a wild, sobbing neigh for help. If the herd were not there it would be no use going into the open country, but they might be there. He paused for a second to look down, and saw the startled mob of brumbies below him. Once more he neighed, and then plunged down among them.
There were several shrill answering neighs, and an angry stallion roar, but the man came thundering down right beside him, taking no notice of the mob of brumbies.
Thowra knew that the black horse and rider were coming up almost alongside him now. Soon there would be the sound of the rope. Hiss-s-s! There it was! Again he leapt sideways. Again it struck him on the shoulder.
Then there were horses going everywhere, and Thowra was among them, legs stretching, stretching, breath sobbing . . . and someone was galloping shoulder to shoulder with him, pushing him to one side.
He was too tired, his eyes too blurred to see that it was a creamy mare, but even in his exhaustion he half realized that it was his mother, that somehow this had all happened before and he must just go where she took him. He did not see the leggy chestnut foal at her side.
Among the thunder of hooves and the wild galloping there was the different sound, quite close, of the shod horse, the jingle of his bit, the creak of his saddle. He had almost come up with them, and Thowra could go no faster, but he saw that there was some very thick scrub starting on their right and knew that Bel Bel must have somewhere to hide them and be going to wheel him into it. So he was ready for her when she swung him round and into a low tunnel of prickly scrub. There she pushed ahead of him into the lead. For the first time he saw the leggy foal.
The scrub closed in behind them and they were suddenly surrounded in silence, though they could still hear the black horse crashing on over boulders.
Bel Bel led at quite a smart pace till she stopped abruptly at the steep bank of a creek that flowed in a complete tunnel of wattle, blanket-woods and tree-fern. She jumped down into the water and turned upstream, only letting Thowra stop to drink for a moment, and then urging him on and on.
All sounds of other horses were getting very distant, but Bel Bel did not stop.
Thowra plodded after her up the stream, sometimes snatching a mouthful of the cold water, still panting, still trembling. He wondered where Storm had gone, but he knew he would be all right. It was he, Thowra, that the man on the black horse had been chasing.
The stream became very narrow and Thowra guessed they must be near the top of the mountain.
‘Where we are going, we may find Mirri and Storm,’ Bel Bel said; but when they stopped in a little sandy cove that was completely hidden in scrub, there was no one there.
‘They will come,’ she said again. ‘Lie down to rest.’ And when Thowra woke, hours later, Storm was asleep beside him.
Mirri and Bel Bel were standing looking at them while they placidly let their foals drink. Presently they led the two colts to a little field of snowgrass, and, as they themselves started back to the herd, Bel Bel said to her cream-coloured son:
‘Don’t go back to where you were grazing. That man will remember you, and remember your haunts. Have you forgotten why I named you Thowra? I said then, at the time you were born, that every man would be after you, and you would have to be as fleet as the wind.’
A time to race with the wind
Thowra and Storm moved back on to the Main Range as soon as autumn began changing towards winter. For a while they stayed in the timbered country below the Ramshead, and often spent the lovely bright days galloping on the snowgrass between the granite tors. Sometimes there were other young horses near — and once Thowra was given quite a beating by a three-year-old stallion who came along with two or three young mares and seemed to want to fight him just because he looked different — but mostly they were on their own, and day after day was filled with a sort of wild joy as the weather grew colder and colder, and they galloped to keep warm, chasing sometimes a dingo, a hare, or a slinking red fox.
The snow was late that year, and in the clear autumn light the rocks looked purple, and the snowgums blended every red and orange and green with their ghostly silver grey. Thowra became lighter in colour as he got his winter coat, and, even more than in other winters, he looked silver rather than cream.
In the early mornings ice encased each blade of grass and leaf of heather along the little creeks; it crackled where the colts stepped. Often a glaze of ice on a shallow pool shivered and skidded away from their hooves. In the grass, the white frost brushed off on to their legs with every step. It was cold, so cold, but while the bright weather lasted, exciting and lovely, too.
Then came grey, bitter days with the north wind tearing over the mountains, when the young horses vied their speed with the wind’s, galloping headlong down the springy grass towards the trees — and the trees were beating and lashing, like the wind-tossed mane on a wild horse.
At night they could hear the wind roaring in the mountains above them, or wailing and howling round the granite tors of the Ramshead Range. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether a dingo howled or whether it was just the wind between the rocks.
Thowra and Storm were becoming — as Brownie had said they would — lone wolves, like their two mothers.
Even the first flurry of snow did not drive them down lower — there was still grass to eat and a snowstorm to race through. Was there ever such a time as this, Thowra wondered, feeling his own strength as something that was his but yet part of the wind and the snow, and the great strength of the mountains. It was a time to gallop and a time to play; a time to race with the wind; a time to sleep below the rocks while the dingoes howled; a time for him and Storm to be alone in all their exciting strength — a time that was soon ending. With the spring would start a new period of the colts’ lives, but between them and the spring lay this winter, and now the snow started to fall in earnest, and they were driven downwards for grass, at first as far as the headwaters of the Crackenback and the hut on the Gap called the Dead Horse hut, and then on to the Cascades.
Thowra, though still terribly afraid of men, was also becoming very curious about them. If he found any old signs of them he could not keep away — as long as he knew the men had gone — and a hut seemed to him almost like magic. It was, after all, from thes
e huts that their smoke came most often — and the fires that men lit were undoubtedly magic.
Dead Horse hut had a roof of loose galvanized iron, and it creaked in the wind just as Storm was trying to persuade Thowra to walk past the hut without stopping to look all round it. Both colts leapt nervously back into the trees as they heard the sound and then, when it was repeated again and again as the cold wind streamed through the Gap, they crept forward once more. Nothing would now stop Thowra going carefully up to the hut to look and smell — and jump with fright each time the iron creaked. Storm stood in the trees, disapproving, until at last he realized that no harm was going to come to them and he too walked up cautiously, with nose outstretched.
A very old saddle had been thrown down on the wood-heap under the skillion roof. It smelt of horse, and they were bothered and backed away. Next they inspected the killing gallows which stood, like a windmill, stark against the snow-laden sky. Near the gallows was a newly built stockyard with unusually high fences.
‘If they catch any horses that will be where they put them. That’s a yard, like Mirri used to tell us about,’ said Storm.
‘You’d need to be able to jump,’ said Thowra, measuring the rails with his eye. ‘I could jump in, but I don’t know whether I could get out.’
‘Don’t try,’ said Storm. ‘The gate is tightly shut.’
‘You’d nearly get out at this lower corner, if you had to,’ Thowra said, but he turned around then, away from the hut. Storm gladly followed him up the next ridge, leaving the scents of man and tame horse behind them.
That night the black clouds massed up against the mountains and they knew that a really heavy snowstorm was coming. Instead of camping near good water and grass they kept jogging along towards the Cascades. They must get into lower country, but how many horses were wintering there at present, they did not know. Thowra felt he could beat Arrow now, if he had to fight him, but of course Arrow was not the only colt in the mountains.