The Silver Brumby (15 page)

Thowra’s full herd, in that lovely spring, was becoming fairly large — large for a cream-coloured stallion who depended on speed and ghost-like movement for his safety.

Golden had Kunama, each of the three grey mares had yearlings still with them, and two had foals at foot, and there was also Arrow’s black mare and her yearling. A herd of this size could not really move about without trace or track, but that hardly mattered. In the spring Thowra had only one thing to fear now, and that was Man — men could not follow a spoor as well as wild horses could, and there was no living horse that Thowra feared.

Perhaps there had never been a time when Thowra was so full of joy in being alive. The joy was different from the joy he and Storm had felt, up there on the Ramshead before they gathered their herds. This time it was a joy like owning the world, as though — and perhaps he was right — there never was and never would be again such a mountain stallion as he, Thowra.

Even the danger of Golden’s master being still in the mountains and out to capture her again only seemed to add a spice to life. If there was only one man after him, why, he could lead that man a chase to end all chases! No, until the stockmen and their dogs were in the hills there was nothing really to fear, and many men and dogs could not come now, with the snow deep in the mountains above and the rivers in wild spring spate.

At the top end of the Cascades the grass was good, the sun shone, warm and life-giving. The foals grew, and the coats of all the horses became shiny.

Several times Thowra went back to Dead Horse hut to see if anyone was there, but each time nothing moved but the wind through the Gap, swaying an old strip of green hide that hung outside the hut, rattling a piece of galvanised iron.

It was while he was up at Dead Horse Gap, one glittering spring day, that the Brolga came looking for Golden.

Boon Boon heard him first, heard his excited scream a mile away, and she gathered the herd together and started them uphill, where banks of snow still lay, all molten gold in the sunshine, to the place where Thowra would surely be coming soon. But The Brolga had already picked up Golden’s spoor, and though he did not hurry, stopping to prance and snort, cavort and roar, he could easily catch a herd with young foals in it.

‘You yearling colts will have to harry him,’ Boon Boon said to her own yearling. ‘But don’t get too close. Draw him off, annoy him, but only a little or he may kill you.’

Filled with importance, the colts trotted back to The Brolga, dancing and showing off, trying to scream like stallions — but The Brolga soon got tired of chasing these little Sons of Thowra, and he went on for the herd again.

When Boon Boon saw him coming faster, she said to the other mares:

‘It is better to plant the foals in the thick scrub; we can come back for them,’ and she led them to a patch of dense heather. Only the mares with foals went through it and planted their young ones, the others galloped around the outside; then they all joined up together again, and galloped across a flat square of snowgrass and upwards to a belt of trees. There they stopped because The Brolga was very close and they knew they might be able to dodge him in the trees.

Boon Boon was pretty sure he would not bother about any of them except Golden, whom he would try to drive back to his own herd.

‘Dodge and dodge!’ she said to Golden. ‘And don’t let him drive you back.’

The snowgums were tall ones and there were a few candle-barks among them with high, straight trunks. There were plenty of opportunities to dodge and move about — but, of course, that could not go on for ever. Unless help came The Brolga must win in the end — and Golden was worrying about Kunama, her lovely foal.

A fleet, light mare could swing and turn neatly round the trees; and without much effort, Golden managed to keep a thick patch of snowgums between herself and The Brolga. Twice the great grey horse tried to break through and come straight for her, but each time she had gone and was behind some other barrier — almost as much of a shining will-o’-the-wisp as Thowra himself.

The Brolga was screaming with excitement, and Thowra, way up in the snow on top of Bob’s Ridge, heard him at last. When he got down, it was Golden that he saw.

Thowra gave one shattering, tremendous roar of rage, and The Brolga stopped, ears pricked, the breath snorting through his nostrils. Then Thowra came like a furious storm cloud.

‘Go!’ he said to Golden, and as The Brolga tried to follow her, he sprang on him with flailing hooves and bared teeth, and when he reared up, under some tall candle-barks, his great mane and tail, in the flickering, moving light and shade, did indeed look like a foaming waterfall, as Bel Bel had once thought they would.

Here was the most beautiful stallion the great mountains had ever seen, in his full strength, fighting for his mate, and it was as though everything round was hushed and still: no wind blew, and the leaves held themselves in perfect quiet. Even the sound of a little stream was muted, and neither the red lowrie nor the jays flew by. There was nothing but the pounding hooves and tearing breath of the two huge horses.

The herd knew that it was not just for Golden that the two stallions fought, but for their lives. One must die so that the other could be the supreme ruler of the Cascade brumbies.

This time Thowra had no fear of losing.

A year ago he would have used every snowgum to help him to dodge. Now he drove his old enemy into a little open space under three tall candlebarks, and there fought him, not only with his usual weapon of nimbleness, but his new-found mature strength. The Brolga was the first horse he had ever seen fight — it was he who had eventually killed his own father.

Thowra remembered seeing him and his herd go past that cloud window on the top of the Brindle Bull, remembered the feeling of cold foreboding and fear at the sight. Now, as he fought The Brolga below the candlebarks, it seemed as if his whole life had been leading up to this moment of destroying the grey stallion. Had not Bel Bel told him to wait until he reached his full strength? Was it not the way of the wild that the old king of the stallions must be killed?

While they fought, the mares came drifting back to watch, peering through the snowgum leaves at the two powerful horses — Thowra’s mares, and three of them The Brolga’s daughters. The sun passed below the hills, then sunk behind the lower ranges of the Murray Valley, while the two horses strained and fought, hooves thudding on damp ground or on hide and flesh and bone. As darkness came The Brolga was beaten to the ground.

It was Boon Boon who neighed first, and then Golden — Golden who had no instinct to tell her that the old king should be killed. And Thowra, knowing his enemy would never trouble him again, left him, defeated but still living, below the shadowy trees. He had won his prize for the third time!

Thowra, half-bucking, half-kicking, shaking the foam from his glorious mane — cantered over to Golden and Boon Boon, his two favourite mares. Then he called all his herd away and they travelled down into the Cascades by the bright light of the moon. A mopoke called them, sitting white and stiff on a dead branch: possums peered at them out of the trees: a dingo went trotting past, and later they heard him howling, the answering call from his mate echoing round some wooded hollow.

The ghostly herd, all its light-coloured horses blanched by the moonlight — trotted in single file down the narrowing valley that led into the Cascades.

Thowra stepped out proudly in the lead, head and tail held high, gleaming silver. Golden followed, with Kunama’s tiny head close to her flank and the little trotting feet keeping up with her swinging strides, and Boon Boon came next with the other grey mares and their foals after her, all silver-white, pale, made mysterious by the moon. Arrow’s black mare, like a dark shadow, brought up the rear with the yearlings. On and on they went, at this swinging, proud walk — the king of the Cascade brumbies and his herd.

Four kangaroos stood still to see them pass, and some brown rock wallabies watched from below the moon-gleaming snow-gum leaves. The slow old wombats saw the proud herd and knew a fight had been fought and won. But even the wild little bush animals knew that a horse of that unusual colour was nowhere safe. They themselves were the soft colour of the bush — able to merge into their surroundings at the first sound of an enemy, be it dingo, dog or man — but Thowra and Golden, Boon Boon’s colt, and now Kunama, were only invisible in a snowstorm.

Just for a night of moonlight, just for a month of spring, while the rivers roared and the snows still lay thick, Thowra could be the proud and wonderful stallion, like no other brumby stallion ever before seen — lord of all the herds, lord of all the grey, green hills and valleys, of the shining streams, and the great rock tors. Later, when the men came once more to the mountains, he would have to gallop again with the wind, his brother, but for this short time he could live in all his wild joy and strength.

Down, down, to the Cascades, the ghost herd went, one after the other, and The Brolga’s herd, who had come to Thowra’s end of the valley, looking for their stallion, saw them coming and knew The Brolga had been beaten.

In silence Thowra came stepping downwards till he was quite close to them, then he reared up and screamed his triumph, and the valley rolled the echoes back and forth, back and forth. Thowra waited till the sound had died on the night air, and called again. This time, after the echo faded away, there was absolute quiet; no mopoke called, no dingo howled, there was not even the rustling sound of a bush animal going home — all was still. Thowra, the silver stallion, had entered his kingdom.

Even the spring, that year, was shining and perfect for a shining, perfect horse, and Thowra roamed with the big herd of brumbies up and down the valley of the Cascades, safe and unworried. But he knew two things — that he could never have a herd of that size because with them he could not escape from men; that he must find out if there was more grass country higher up the stream from his wonderful Hidden Flat so that he and Golden and Boon Boon and their foals could escape there from any manhunt.

One day, Thowra went off on his own to explore above the Hidden Flat. For hours he trotted along through the bush, watching with joy every magnificent sign of spring — a robin redbreast catching thrip on a drift of snow, a lowrie flashing red and blue across a glittering pool, the foaming streams, the new growth in thç grass, buds on shrubs. Down by the Crackenback the wattles were in flower and the golden balls fell on to his back, stuck to his mane. Underfoot were the little puce Black-eyed Susans. The Bitter Pea scrub was flowering, brown and gold, nearly shoulder high to a cream stallion. The mountain world was bursting into flower, everything filled with joy in living.

Thowra crossed the river and jogged on, up on to Paddy Rush’s Bogong and down the other side — careful, now, to leave no track as he neared his Hidden Flat.

Down he dropped into the valley and then started to force his way round the cliffs at the head of the grassy flats. The sun was already dropping into the west when he found a steep and dangerous way round, and moved cautiously along a wallaby track that hung perilously above the bright-glittering stream.

At last he got round the great bluff, and below him there was a narrow gorge with towering cliffs on either side. The wallaby track led on and Thowra followed it, creeping, creeping. It became wider, and though there was still the tremendous drop below, he could walk freely. The gorge ended in another bluff, but there was still a good track round it. Thowra went on. Suddenly he found himself on quite a wide rock platform looking into a wonderful valley that was big enough to graze a dozen horses for several months, and cut off all around by enormous tiers of cliffs.

This was exactly what he was looking for, if only he could find a way down. Here was a beautiful valley, and, by the way the cliffs rose, it would not be overlooked from above.

He searched all round the lookout platform, but, except for the track by which he had come, there were steep cliffs, and the platform itself jutted out into space. Thowra went back down the slope a little way, searching, searching for some track which would lead him into the valley. At one place a few turpentine bushes clung to the rocks below the track, and it seemed to Thowra that a faint path went through them. Wondering if he would hurtle into space, he braced his fore-feet carefully and pushed his head through. He could still see a tiny path. He stepped gingerly forward between more bushes. The path was there all right. Forward again, and still the path went faintly through the bushes and turned down towards the bluff.

Soon the bushes ended, and Thowra was on a narrow ledge. He realized that it passed through below the lookout platform.

In half an hour he was in the valley, drinking at the stream, nibbling the grass. In the morning he would examine the cliffs for any place that he could, jump down if he was ever hard-pressed to escape. He wished Bel Bel was with him, but Bel Bel must have stayed on the Range for the snows to cover her.

Thowra had found a home for himself and whatever mares he wanted to bring.