The Snow Pony

by Alison Lester

  They ate their porridge like sleepy owls, blinking in the kitchen light and not speaking as Jack banged in and out of the house, sorting and packing. Dusty waited for the tension to rise, as it often did when her father was trying to get something done by a certain time, but he stayed determinedly cheerful, just chipping them now and again: ‘Come on eat up, get your sleeping-bags rolled up, no you can’t take a pillow, Stew, I think you should wear your oilskin coats, you’ll need hats and gloves, too.’

  Even when Stewie brought his sleeping-bag out to be loaded, rolled into a hopeless, floppy sausage that would unravel within an hour, Jack didn’t lose his cool. ‘Bring it over here, mate, and we’ll roll it up again. That’s right, spread it out on the verandah.’

  The only one who got yelled at was Spike, when he walked on the sleeping-bag with his muddy paws.

  As Dusty cleaned her teeth, she looked at her reflection in the tarnished mirror that hung over the basin and raised an eyebrow, as if to say, ‘How’s he going?’ and her reflection grinned wryly, nodding back, ‘He’s going all right.’

  15

  Mustering

  ‘Remember the time Captain bolted here with you, Stewie?’ asked Jack, as they rode on to the first big plain beyond the house. Streaks of red showed through sullen clouds in the eastern sky and a biting wind sliced around them. It was just light enough to see, and the snow gums circling the plain stood out like ghosts in the morning gloom. Stew laughed at the memory of the day. He’d been seven years old. Rita had been riding a young horse she was educating, so she had let Stewie ride Captain. It was his first time on a big horse, and when they began to canter the unfamiliar movement of Captain’s long stride gave him a fright, so he gripped hard with his legs. The trouble was, he’d forgotten he was wearing spurs, and the tighter he clung, the more he poked the spurs into the horse’s sides.

  Captain took off like a rocket and kept going. The rest of the family reined in their horses and sat gaping at the big bay flash-circling the plain. They had never seen Captain move so fast. Finally they’d realised what was making him bolt and they’d started yelling at Stew, every time his circuit brought him close enough to hear: ‘Stick your feet out! Stop gripping him with your heels! Pull the spurs out of him!’

  Afterwards Stewie said the wind was rushing so loudly in his ears he couldn’t hear anything. But he must have stopped spurring the poor horse because eventually Captain flew up to the other horses and halted with such a sudden prop that Stewie sailed straight over his head, did a somersault in midair and landed on his feet. It was the most amazing thing Dusty had ever seen. Jack got off his horse and walked across to his shaken son. ‘I think we’d better take those spurs off, mate,’ he had said, and Dusty and her mum just howled with laughter.

  They rode on in silence, following the bridle path that generations of riders had used before them, winding through the snow gums, crossing another plain and slipping into the trees again. They had too much gear tied to their saddles to go any faster than a walk: food, oats for the horses, the bag of shoeing gear, woollen horse rugs, two billies, their sleeping bags bundled in plastic, and bags of salt for the cattle, all bumped and rattled as the horses stepped out. After a summer on the high plains the cattle craved salt, and would come running for it when they heard the call, ‘Saaaalt!’

  The Snow Pony’s ears were pricked, but she felt relaxed and easy, almost as if she was thinking, oh, this, yes, I remember this. After plodding along on Spook for the last two trips, Dusty felt like she was floating through the country on her beautiful, free-moving horse.

  The bridle path wound across the plains and by mid-morning it had brought them to the four-wheel-drive track that ran out to their hut from the Mountain Road.

  ‘Whoa!’ Jack reined in his horse and leant over the salt and saddle bags tied to the front of his saddle, peering down at the track.

  ‘What can you see, Dad? Have they come out here?’ Dusty had been worrying all morning that the shooters might be at their hut. It wasn’t really their hut. The Rileys had built and maintained it, but it was on crown land and, like all the huts on the high plains, it was open to anyone who needed shelter.

  Jack turned his horse and rode a little way along the track, all the time leaning and searching for tracks. ‘No, I think we’re in luck. There hasn’t been a vehicle along here for weeks.’

  As they rode down into the clearing, the clouds parted for a moment and a shaft of sunlight played on the hut like a spotlight through the mist. Dusty’s heart skipped a beat to see it, sitting in front of the gnarled trees like a little cat, with the silvered rails of the yards spread behind. The shingles of the original roof had been covered with corrugated iron many years ago and the tin, pitched steeply so that snow would slide off it, was dented and rusty. The walls were made of logs, silver with age and chocked on top of each other, and the chimney, built on the end of the hut, was corrugated iron too, with an exterior framework of wooden poles and a stone base.

  A sagging verandah had been tacked on to the front of the hut and it made the two tiny windows look as though they were peeping from under a battered felt hat. Firewood was stacked under the windows, the sawn ends of the logs round and orange. At the end of the verandah were the dog kennels – two ancient hollow logs, silver and lichen-covered.

  Dusty hooked Snow’s reins on to a piece of rusty wire hanging off the verandah rail, and ran to the door. She poked her hand through a tiny hole carved in it and felt for the string, up and to the right, where she knew it would be. She pulled, and the door swung open with a creak.

  It was dark and very still inside. The only things moving were tiny motes of dust swirling through the shafts of light angling down from the windows. Dusty’s riding boots sounded hollow on the uneven slab floor. Everything was the same: the bunks, made of curving snow gum branches worn smooth by decades of sleepyheads climbing in and out of them, held lumpy ticking mattresses; the mouse-proof cupboard still leant a bit to one side where the milo tin replacing the missing leg wasn’t quite big enough. The fireplace was huge, with a cast iron frame that swung around to support the camp oven, griddle pan and billy over the open fire. A pile of wood – a mixture of dry leaves, twigs, branches and logs – was stacked beside the fireplace, left by the last person to stay in the hut. It was an unwritten rule on the high plains that after you stayed at a hut you left enough wood for the next person to start their fire. Many a rider or bushwalker had been glad of that consideration over the years, when they stumbled, cold and exhausted, into a hut after hours of slogging through a blizzard. The poles and rafters in the hut were scarred with names and dates, burnt into them with the red-hot poker on countless flickering firelit nights by visitors leaving their mark.

  The chinks between the logs were stuffed with mud, sphagnum moss and newspaper to keep the draughts out. Last autumn, Dusty had pulled a wedge of wadded newspaper out of a crack and carefully laid out the pieces that fell apart as she unfolded it. Jack and Rita and Stewie had leant over her shoulders and pieced together the date and stories from the fragments.

  ‘Wednesday the twenty-eighth of May, nineteen twenty-three. That’s seventy-four years ago!’ Rita was always quick at sums.

  ‘You and Dad weren’t even born then,’ said Stewie slowly. They squinted in the candle light to read the tiny print.

  ‘Look! It says something about a drought in Banjo.’ Dusty held a tiny fragment steady with her finger. ‘And here’s another story about the high plains. The snow came early and everyone got caught with their cattle up here. No, horses … two hundred and fifty horses. Why did they have such a big mob of horses?’ She smiled to think what a fine sight that many horses would make, galloping through the snow.

  ‘Your grandparents ran horses up here for a while, too,’ Jack told her, ‘but they’d stopped a few years before that storm. Back then, everyone needed a horse. Once the motor car came out, there wasn’t the demand for horses, so they switched over to cattle. But they used to breed horses for th
e Indian army, too, and crossbred horses like Captain – Clydesdale thoroughbred crosses. Clumpers, they called them. They bred them, broke them, ran them up here, then sold them. That generation were wonderful horsemen.’

  ‘And horsewomen,’ Rita added. ‘Your Auntie Bess broke in a heap of those horses. She used to tie one of the horse’s back legs up with a strap and hop on.’ She turned to Dusty. ‘Remember Great Auntie Bess? You came with me to see her in hospital when you were little.’

  Dusty remembered the tiny woman, frail and trembling in her pink nightie. It was hard to imagine her bouncing around the yards on a big bucking Captain.

  Jack leant on the mantelpiece, gazing down into the flames, lost in the past. ‘I can remember Dad telling me about that time. He was just a kid then and they were up here mustering and got caught by the early snow, too. He had a big strong mare and she plunged through the snow drifts and made a path and the cattle followed. His brother, your Great Uncle Harry, was at the back of the mob and he said it was like riding through a canyon, the walls of the channel they made in the snow were so high.’

  They had talked for hours that night, and Dusty and Stewie soaked up the stories about their family and the old days on the high plains. Dusty looked around the hut and hoped they’d talk like that again tonight.

  ‘Hey! Lost in space?’ Jack stepped sideways through the doorway, his arms full, and dropped a saddlebag on the table. ‘Make the sandwiches while Stewie and I get this gear unpacked.’

  Dusty undid the buckles on the leather bag. Everything she needed was there: a newspaper that she unfolded and spread out as a tablecloth, a solid chunk of corned beef, wrapped in silver foil, a pocket knife, a loaf of sourdough bread, and a jar of Rita’s relish. She cut and spread, and soon had three mighty sandwiches ready, the bread as thick as doorsteps. There was no time for a cup of tea, but they each had fruit juice in a box. Stewie set the fire and brought a billy of water from the plastic pipe that fed down from the spring, and Jack put everything away. When they got back to the hut it would be late in the day, so it was good to have everything ready.

  They rode away from the hut, following the track to the southern lease. The wind had dropped and the horses strode out, happy to be free of the bags and bundles that had bumped on them all morning. Dusty and Stewie dropped the reins on their horses’ necks and peeled a mandarin each before they put their gloves on, throwing bits of peel at their father as he rode ahead of them, trying to land a piece in the brim of his hat. Digger padded faithfully at Drover’s heels and Spike, the young dog, tail waving like a banner, weaved excitedly up and down the track between the horses. Every now and then they had to detour through the bush, winding between trees and ducking under branches because a tree had fallen over the track. Dusty jumped most of the fallen trees, trotting up first and checking that the far side of the log was clear for landing, then taking the Snow Pony back and cantering in to fly over it.

  ‘She might as well have wings,’ Jack said to Stewie as they bashed through the bush.

  This is what a fish must feel like in water, thought Dusty. The Snow Pony felt totally at home in this place.

  The small clearings they rode through were carpeted with clover – lush green feed that had thrived on the high plains since it was introduced by cattlemen many years ago. Captain swiped mouthfuls of it as he walked along, ignoring Stewie’s kicking.

  ‘There’s usually cattle up here.’ Jack looked anxiously up at the sky through the tree tops. ‘I really don’t like the look of this sky. It feels like snow. And that would explain why the cattle aren’t here. They’re down in the gullies, sheltering.’ He turned to Dusty. ‘You can feel it, can’t you? The atmosphere actually feels different. They say the creeks rise just before a big break in the weather.’

  When they reached the bottom plain they saw that Jack was right. Nearly fifty cows were grazing there with their calves, and when Jack put out salt and called, another forty odd came bellowing and bawling out of the trees. Stewie stayed on the plain, riding around the edges and turning back any cows that tried to stray back into the bush, while Dusty and Jack cantered further down the track to search the sheltered gullies that they knew the cattle loved.

  Dusty remembered the muster last autumn, when she had ridden down here on Spook with Rita, looking for cattle, and they’d found the area devastated. Wild winds had swept along the side of the valley, bringing down trees and branches. At first the horses panicked in the criss-cross of logs, and Rita was worried that they would fall. The horses had to wriggle through tiny gaps between trees, jump over logs from a standstill, slide down banks and scramble through fallen branches. In one tree-choked gully the smell of death made the horses spook and snort. Rita left Dusty holding them and climbed through the branches to find the rotting bodies of four cows. The storm had brought trees crashing down around them in an impenetrable tangle, imprisoning the poor beasts. They had died of thirst, their calves with them. In the end they were fifteen short in their count, so they reckoned the same thing had happened in other places.

  By three o’clock Dusty and Jack had found another twenty cows, scattered in small groups along the valley, and herded them back up the track to the bottom plain to join Stewie and the big mob. They called as they went so that any cows further out would hear and follow them to the hut. It was not unusual to wake at the hut on the second day and find cows standing patiently at the slip rails, waiting to join the mob in the yards.

  When they got back to Stewie and the main mob, Dusty rode the Snow Pony back along the track, heading for the hut, and called the cows to follow her. ‘Come on, old girls, come on, come on.’ Jack stayed beside the track where it led up from the plain, to count the cows as they passed, and Stewie and the dogs hunted them off the grassy flats.

  It was hard work because the cows didn’t want to leave. Usually they were happy to begin the journey home, but not today. They ducked and dodged and cut back and even bailed up the dogs as Stewie raced up and down on Captain, cracking his stockwhip and shouting at them to move. Jack finally abandoned his counting position and rode back to help. Stew’s language was getting worse and worse as his frustration grew. Even Captain got sick of the cattle being so stubborn and snaked his head forward to bite the slow ones on the bum with his big yellow teeth.

  Finally they had them on the track heading to the hut, but it was a difficult journey with cows constantly trying to sneak into the bush and dogs and riders turning them back. Jack nearly blew his socks off yelling at Spike, who seemed to be in the wrong place all the time. Finally he got off Drover and called Spike. Stewie was frightened he was going to hurt the young dog, but he just strapped one of Spike’s front paws into his collar and got back on his horse.

  ‘He’s got too much energy,’ he called in answer to Stewie’s puzzled stare. ‘If he has to run on three legs for a while it will slow him down, and he’ll stop being stupid.’

  Dusty rode at the front of the mob, stretching her legs out of the stirrups and wriggling her toes to try to warm up her feet. The Snow Pony had gone like a dream all day. It was very cold and still, and the sky looked dirty through the trees. She could hear from the yelling and whip-cracking behind her that Jack and Stewie were having a difficult time, and she felt glad that she was riding in the lead. Suddenly the Snow Pony stopped dead, head up and looking straight ahead. Dusty patted her shoulder.

  ‘What’s wrong, girl?’

  The mare was trembling and tense. She felt as if she might turn and run in a split second. Then Dusty heard it, above the noise of dogs and whips and shouting – a sharp crack that came down through the trees from the direction of the hut. She listened, and there it was again. It seemed as though someone was answering the sound of Jack and Stewie’s whips, but it wasn’t a whip making that noise. It was a much sharper crack – louder and harder. It was the crack of a gun.

  16

  The showdown

  Dusty wanted to turn the cows and ride back to her father, but the leaders knew
where they were going now and no amount of shouting would turn them back. They pushed up behind the Snow Pony, who pranced and side-stepped like a dervish, suddenly in a lather of sweat, forcing her towards the hut. Dusty knew it had to be the hunters at the hut, but she couldn’t get back to tell her father. The cows were strung out along the track for almost a kilometre. She could never battle past them, or get through the bush in time.

  She looked at the front cows, old Curly Horn and Red Eye leading the mob as usual, and she knew she couldn’t abandon them. They were plodding on determinedly, unperturbed by the shots or the panicking horse in front of them. If the shooters were the same people who had shot Hillbilly, they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a cow.

  The shots were louder as Dusty got closer to the hut and she started to shout and cooee, hoping they would hear her calls and stop shooting. They didn’t, but the combination of shouting and being shaken to bits on her panicked horse made Dusty wild. When she was little, Rita used to tell her to growl at her pony when he misbehaved. ‘He’ll know you’re cross with him, and a big voice will always make you feel much braver, too.’ It worked. By the time the Snow Pony danced around the final turn before the hut, Dusty was furious. ‘Stop it!’ she screamed, ‘Stop shooting those bloody guns!’

  The shooting did stop, but when Dusty looked around the clearing in front of the hut, her anger turned to fear. The gunman lounged on the bonnet of a battered troop carrier that sat crookedly outside the hut. He was a big dirty man, dressed in typical hunter’s clothes: plaid shirt, beanie, jeans and boots. He swung a bottle of whisky in one hand and pointed the gun skywards with the other. He was laughing at Dusty, a mean laugh that didn’t sound funny at all. Swags, eskies, slabs of beer and camping gear were strewn around the clearing; there was mess everywhere.