Kirsty would love that dress, thought Flinty. She’d love the purple lace-up shoes too, practical but somehow also elegant. The woman turned to speak to the man at her side, and Flinty saw what the loose silk dress hadn’t quite disguised.
Miss Matilda was pregnant.
So this was the famous daughter of the swaggie, the hero of Australia’s most loved song, the girl who’d turned a barren holding into an empire and then given half of it away to her native manager and his sons and cousins. Even at first glance Flinty could see why she was ‘Miss Matilda’ still, not ‘Mrs Thomas Thompson’. Flinty knew of no other property with a native manager. But ‘Miss Matilda’ did things her own way. This woman needed a name of her own.
And even half an empire was still the biggest property around. The man beside her must be her husband, the inventor of one of the radios they’d used in the trenches, and other things Joey had rabbited on about when she had been half listening, just thinking that inventions and factories had made him rich, one fortune married to another, and that Miss Matilda and Thomas Thompson must be quite a couple.
They were.
Even as Flinty watched Miss Matilda laughed, patting the bulge at her middle. ‘I wish I was going with you. But I won’t be riding anywhere till this one’s dropped…’ She glanced at the boy beside her. ‘And I know I said that, but if you say “dropped” about a woman who’s expecting, you’ll get a paddling.’
The boy grinned, showing a gap where his baby teeth had fallen out. ‘Yes, Mum. Just as we don’t use words like b—’
‘Biscuit,’ said Mr Thompson firmly. He gave his wife a look, half amusement, half concern, and total love, so open and even intimate that Flinty felt a pang, and looked at Sandy, who was staring at the ground. ‘All this fuss about a horse,’ he added. ‘At least motorcars don’t gallop off by themselves into the bush.’
Miss Matilda laughed again. ‘Horses breed other horses. You show me a car that can do that, and I’ll go into the car breeding business with you.’ She looked at the riders again. ‘I wouldn’t be riding with you anyway, not in the country you’re going to. I don’t pretend to have your skill and experience. But my heart will be riding with you today. My great-grandfather had a hankering to win the Melbourne Cup, and the old Regret line is the best chance I know of getting it.’ She grinned. ‘And when we do I’ll invite every one of you who helped bring in Repentance.’
‘A share of a thousand pound will do me and the boys nicely, thanks all the same, Miss Matilda. I ain’t got a hankering to go to Melbourne town.’ The speaker was an old man with skin like cracked leather, a crinkle of white beard, and eyes as green as the Drinkwater garden’s English trees. His ‘boys’ were natives, one with white hair and a wrinkled beardless face under his battered hat, the other a few years older than Andy, with paler skin and a sharper nose — perhaps a half-caste.
‘Well, the rest of us’ll be there, and with bells on, Mr Clancy.’ This man had the dark skin of a native too. Was he Pete Sampson, wondered Flinty, the man Sandy had known in France? Apart from the man who must be Mr Sampson, the manager, the other three riders were white men, all in their thirties or forties, their stockhorses strong shouldered and a good hand higher than Empress, at least.
Flinty made her way through the watchers. She took Empress’s bridle from Sandy, trying to look as if there was no question she had a right to be there.
Sandy nodded towards her. ‘This is Flinty McAlpine. The neighbour I told you about.’ Flinty was glad he used her nickname. It looked like Sandy was doing his best for her, but not lying either.
‘Good rider?’ Miss Matilda’s sharp eyes assessed the figure in front of her.
‘Better than me,’ said Sandy.
Miss Matilda nodded. ‘Pleased to meet you, Flinty McAlpine. Any relation to Andy McAlpine?’
‘Brother.’ Flinty let out a breath of relief. So far so good. She tried to make her voice as deep — and the words as ambiguous — as she could.
Miss Matilda stepped back and looked at Flinty thoughtfully. But all she said was, ‘You lost another brother at Bullecourt, didn’t you? And your father earlier this year?’
Flinty nodded.
‘I’m sorry.’ The words held genuine sympathy. ‘There’s always a job at Drinkwater for any man who’s served his country, and for his relatives too.’
Suddenly Flinty saw Drinkwater’s neat paddocks in a different light. There must be many men as rootless as Andy, or just plain jobless now the war was over. Matilda and Thomas Thompson had the money to employ as many men as they wanted — or who needed a job. Drinkwater had benefited from it. But Flinty suspected that the man and woman in front of her would employ any deserving man in need, even if they only had a halfpenny in their pockets.
‘Time to go.’ The words were said by a dark-faced, dark-eyed man, beard as white as snow against his black skin. Mr Sampson, Drinkwater’s manager, thought Flinty. She had never seen an Aboriginal manager before, only stockmen.
Mr Sampson stared at the slender rider in the tattered hat, the shabby jacket not disguising her lack of bulk. ‘You’re a bit young for this game, lad.’ Around them the other riders checked saddle girths. Horses whinnied and snuffled the air.
‘Seventeen,’ said Sandy. Again, the word was true — she couldn’t imagine Sandy lying. But she guessed Mr Sampson heard the reluctance in his voice.
Mr Sampson looked at Flinty’s smooth cheeks, her hands — too small for a seventeen-year-old boy’s. He shook his head. ‘Doesn’t look seventeen. It’s hard riding where we’re going.’
‘They breed us tough round Snowy River,’ said Sandy.
Mr Sampson looked at Miss Matilda.
‘Up to you,’ said Miss Matilda.
Mr Sampson shook his head again. ‘Can’t risk it. Not with a young ’un I ain’t worked with before.’ He mounted his horse swiftly, as though that was the end of the discussion.
Flinty felt like the earth had slipped away from her. She stared at the ground, willing herself not to cry, here in front of everyone. All her hopes, all her planning, dashed in half a minute. Sandy had done his best for her. But her face was too young looking for a seventeen-year-old boy’s. Her slenderness was strength in a girl, but if she’d met a boy with her build she too would have doubted his power to stay the day. Nor could she try to persuade Mr Sampson to change his mind — she couldn’t tell them she’d been riding after brumbies with Dad and Sandy and Jeff and Andy since she was ten years old. They’d know she was a girl before she’d said a dozen words.
And why should they risk taking her? There would be a dozen men here today happy to take her place, if they’d wanted more riders. She suddenly realised that taking another rider would mean a smaller reward for each of the others, a one-tenth share instead of one-ninth. She calculated swiftly. Eleven pounds less for each of them. Not a fortune, compared to a hundred pounds, but enough to make a difference to most of the riders here.
She looked up to find Miss Matilda watching her. ‘How about two guineas for two weeks’ work here, helping when they bring the brumbies back?’ She nodded at the riders. ‘You can even have your own room with this lot gone.’
Two guineas was good money, more than a young man could expect for farm work. This was charity — and kindness.
But not enough. She couldn’t keep up the deception for two weeks either. And she’d left a note for Joey and Kirsty, saying she’d be back in a week, that she’d left another note in the Macks’ letterbox asking that they be collected in the cart and kept at the bigger farm till her return. They’d worry if she was gone too long. She had a sudden vision of Nicholas waiting for her in the mist too.
He’d called her the girl from Snowy River. It looked as though he’d been wrong. There had to be some way to get the money they needed. But just now she wanted to get away from this place of humiliation as quickly as she could.
She shook her head at Miss Matilda’s offer and managed a smile of sorts at Sandy to thank him for trying. S
andy looked relieved, and excited too. Sandy always looked happiest in the saddle. She hadn’t seen him look as… Sandy-like…since he left for the war. ‘See you in the valley,’ he said, then hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, Flinty.’
She shrugged, not trusting her voice to sound boyish enough with everyone still listening.
She turned and tied Empress up at the stockyard again, then ducked back to the dunnies so that the brumby hunters could leave while she was gone. The brumbies had been last seen at Jackson’s Flat, halfway back towards the valley. The last thing she wanted was to have to ride with the hunters through her own country, discarded.
The watchers had melted back to their own jobs or farms when she got back. Miss Matilda and her family had vanished too. Flinty could see the horsemen in the distance, the horses’ hooves kicking up sand as they headed up into the ranges, Mr Sampson on his big gelding, Sandy looking young beside the others.
She mounted Empress slowly. She’d be back at the Macks’ by nightfall. She signalled to Empress to walk, following the same path as the riders. It was strange to see the horizon meet the sky so far away. She hadn’t been down here on the plains for months, not since she’d come with the Macks to meet Sandy’s train. It had been years since she’d been to Jackson’s Flat too. The last time had been with Jeff, just before the war. Sandy had been at the dentist’s in Gibber’s Creek, so it had been just the two of them.
Valley legend said there was a cave near Jackson’s Flat in which a bushranger had buried stolen treasure way back in the gold rushes. They’d never found the cave — Flinty doubted there was any cave to find, for it wasn’t limestone country — but they had found a ridge that was easy riding down to the plains. The bushranger had probably used the route to leave the police bewildered.
I’ll use the short cut today, she thought. Empress could scramble up that ridge as easily as she’d walk up the track. She’d be past Jackson’s Flat long before the brumby hunters arrived, and not have to ride with the humiliation of the hoof prints and droppings in front of her, reminding her how she’d failed.
She’d be there before the brumby hunters…
Flinty grinned, and urged Empress to a canter. Too young for mustering in rough country? She’d show them! She’d be at Jackson’s Flat waiting for them, Empress not even winded.
How could they not accept her then? She’d show the men of the plains how a girl from Snowy River could ride!
It was mid-morning when she got to Jackson’s Flat, pushing through the last of the hop bushes. The scrub was thicker this year. There’d been fewer cattle to trample it since the men had left for war, so many stock turned into cans of bully beef to feed the armies.
She dismounted and gazed around.
Hoof prints! The unmistakeable scent of horse.
The brumby hunters had been here already! How had they got here before her? She looked at the hoof prints again…
Small prints — foal sized — among the large ones. Suddenly she felt like throwing her hat up into the air. Brumbies! They were still near — no more than a short ride away, for the scent of horse was fresh, the pile of droppings shiny. The wild horses would have found a place to wait out the heat of the day, down in the gully probably, before heading off to the creek to drink and graze at dusk.
She hauled off her saddlebags — no point Empress carrying unnecessary weight on the chase — and lugged them over next to a tree leaning like an old man bent from a hundred years of wind. She drank from her water bag, then poured a little water into her hands for Empress. Not too much, not before the big ride ahead, but enough. Empress’s warm whiskery lips were comforting on her skin.
‘We’ll show them, won’t we, girl?’
Empress nickered, as though she’d understood, then dropped her head; her big teeth tore at the tussocks as Flinty sat with her back against a snow-gum trunk. The shadows shortened as the sun drew higher towards midday. A lizard darted onto a rock, grabbed a tiny insect, then retreated.
This was her world. The eagle, soaring on the hot air rising from below, the creak of the branches, the hard ground with its gleams of quartz, the pale everlastings, the little white flowers Mum had called baby faces, the bush cherries Dad had shown her and Jeff how to find and eat…
She heard the brumby hunters long before she saw them: the clomp of hooves, the mutter of the men. She stayed where she was, letting them see her — see a boy, relaxed and confident, waiting for them under a tree, his pony cropping the tussocks. Someone who knew this land so well ‘he’ could get here long before the older, more experienced riders.
Mr Clancy saw her first. He grinned, and she knew he’d read her message. ‘Well,’ he said.
‘Flinty!’ said Sandy. He sounded half exasperated, half proud; he was almost laughing and still wholly there in a way she hadn’t seen him since the war. ‘I might’ve known. Told you Flinty was good,’ he added to Mr Sampson.
‘Took a short cut,’ said Flinty casually, trying to make her voice as gruff as possible. There was no way she could avoid speaking now. The other riders stared at her. Mr Clancy and his ‘boys’ laughed. A couple of the men scowled, shown up by a youngster.
The older of Mr Clancy’s ‘boys’ said something to Mr Clancy, gesturing at Flinty, his black face wrinkled like a windfall apple.
At last Mr Clancy nodded to Mr Sampson. ‘Let the lad come.’
Chapter 10
3 March 1917
Dear Diary,
It’s been different with Andy and Jeff gone. Dad’s started treating me like a son, a bit, not just a girl. He let me break and train Empress all by myself, and when he went riding up the mountain after the Macks’ sheep last month I went with him. I don’t think he ever talks to Andy and Jeff like he talks to me though. Or do men talk to other blokes about watching the shadows turn purple in autumn, or how they wait every year for the swallows to fly back? Dad arrived with the swallows his first year here.
I’m pretty sure he tells them things he wouldn’t tell me, of course, especially Andy, being the oldest. But sometimes these days Dad forgets that I’m just a girl.
She’d imagined that she’d have the triumph of telling the riders that the brumbies were just down the ridge, as well as beating them up to Jackson’s Flat. But the men had recognised the prints and scent of horses too.
‘How far off, do you think?’ asked Mr Sampson, as Mr Clancy sniffed the wind from the gullies. The old drover glanced at his oldest boy. The boy shrugged. Mr Clancy nodded as though the shrug meant something. ‘Over the next ridge from this, I’d say. The gullies all lead down to the creek below the Flat,’ he added.
Mr Sampson sucked his teeth thoughtfully. ‘That’s where we’ll drive them then. Down whichever gully we can. Need a pen across at the creek where the gullies meet.’ He pointed at Flinty, then Sandy, then Mr Clancy’s oldest boy. ‘You head down there, and get the pen set up. You know the sort of thing. Ropes between the trees, white rag tied to them — a galloping horse will see it as a barrier. Brush piled up on the rope too, if you’ve time.’ He turned to stare across the ridges again, evaluating the country.
No! thought Flinty. She hadn’t come all this way just to put up brush fences! She glanced at Sandy. He shrugged at her. Suddenly she realised that this was exactly what he’d expected. Sandy had been asked on this muster because Pete Sampson knew he was hard working and reliable. Sandy hadn’t even ridden much since he’d left for war. So this is why he didn’t argue more, she thought. He’d expected that their job would be stringing rope, then patrolling the pen to make sure the brumbies didn’t break past.
Well, she hadn’t spent her childhood behind a horse and plough at the Macks’. She’d come here to ride!
She nodded at Sandy as though to say she agreed. She saw him relax and turn Bessie to troop back down the hill to find the point where the creeks ran together, while Mr Sampson, Mr Clancy and the stockmen vanished down the hillside. She let them get half a minute ahead, then turned Empress to follow them.
‘Flinty!’ yelled Sandy.
She ignored him. She heard the clatter of hooves on rock as he urged his horse next to Empress. ‘Flinty, don’t be an idiot. You’ll get your share of the reward anyway. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. No!’ She didn’t know what she wanted. She’d come today for the money, that magic hundred pounds. But there was another important idea driving her too.
Ever since Dad died, she’d been left out of the world of men. Andy had inherited the farm, just because he was a boy; and as if that wasn’t enough it was Andy who was free to go to Queensland droving, while she stayed behind scrubbing floors and making rabbit stew…
But Nicholas had said she was the girl from Snowy River. Today she’d show them how a girl could ride.
Sandy stared at her with almost desperation. ‘Flinty, for Pete’s sake, you can’t follow them. It’s dangerous!’
‘I’ve been riding these hills since I was two years old. You’d better go get that yard ready.’ Flinty squeezed her knees into Empress’s sides. She could feel Empress’s exuberance match hers as they left him sitting there.
She saw the other riders again within a minute. Their horses ambled down the slope, picking their way through the hop bushes, following the brumby tracks.
Mr Clancy noticed her first. He drew his horse close to Mr Sampson and said something. Mr Sampson looked back at her too.
She waited for someone to yell at her to go back. Perhaps, if they had insisted, she might have. But instead the men seemed to ignore her, lounging back relaxed in their big saddles, letting their horses choose their own paths and pace, skirting wombat holes and lichened rocks.
The Girl from Snowy River Page 7
