Elyne Mitchell - The Silver Brumby

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. Brownie 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.

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.

When Thowra made to jump up on a large rocky outcrop, Bel Bel nipped him and pushed him back.

“Don’t be so silly,” she said, “making yourself a clear mark for anyone to see! Keep in the trees and keep quiet.”

Sometimes they stopped to listen, but for a while there was no sound except that of a kurrawong and the chatter of gang gangs in the trees. Then, during one such stop, they heard a faint sound of movement, so faint that no one except those who lived in the bush would have heard it, and they knew it was something wild like themselves. Presently three silver-grey kangaroos went hopping by.

Thowra and Storm were delighted to see them, but both Bel Bel and Mirri looked worried. Not long afterwards, they saw four young colts making up the hill too.

They came to a small clear stream where the foals wanted to play.

“Have a drink, but not too much, and come on,” said Bel Bel. Three black cockatoos flew out of the trees by the water, with their weird, wild crying, and the foals jumped back, startled.

Mirri looked back fearfully.

“Something’s happening, I’m sure,” she muttered.

Even a gust of wind rustling the shiny leaves made the mares start nervously, then they saw some of their own herd heading towards their main camping ground which was in an unexpected hanging valley not far from the top of the range. They caught up to these mares and foals, and Bel Bel said: “Have you seen anything strange as you travelled homewards at midday?”

One was Star’s dam, and she answered fearfully:“No, but we heard the sound of horsemen and a faint whip crack. What business have men here?”

Then through the bush, some distance off, they saw several more kangaroos flitting between the trees, upwards, upwards.

Bel Bel turned to Mirri.

“We’re being driven uphill,” she said. “There must be a great many men.”

“Well, we’re going,” said Star’s mother. “We’ll be safer with Yarraman and the others.”

Bel Bel looked at Mirri.

“It must be us wild horses they’re after, not kangaroos,” she said.

“Good luck!” said Mirri to the others, as they jogged away, then to Bel Bel, “Shall we try to go across the hill and escape the men?”

“That’s the best thing I can think of. We might make the ravine and hide there, but the men will probably have dogs and though we might race them, it’s not going to be so easy with the foals – but we must go.” And, as usual, the creamy mare led off, the two foals following her, and Mirri close behind them.