They’re waiting for me to give up when the riding gets tough, thought Flinty. But I can ride this country! This land is mine, and Empress’s.
She patted the pony’s neck. Empress gave a short snort, as though she understood. She kept well behind the group as the riders crossed a gully and climbed the ridge beyond. There was still no sign of the brumbies yet, beyond the hoof prints and droppings.
Once up on the narrow ridge she urged Empress faster. If she were too far behind she wouldn’t be able to catch up when they found the brumbies. The pony surged forwards.
Mr Clancy held up a hand. It wasn’t much of a signal — he might have been brushing away a fly. The other riders all reined in. All at once Flinty realised these men had worked together so often that they could read each other’s movements. It wasn’t just horsemanship they’d be relying on today, but experience, working with each other.
For the first time doubt flickered. She could ride and scan terrain as well as any man, but she had never worked with this team.
It was too late to head back now. She urged Empress along the ridge top, with its thin trees and sparse tussocks, towards the group of riders. Then she saw why Mr Clancy had halted.
The brumbies grazed below them on a small flat by a thin creek, all rocks and scrubby she-oaks, about a dozen of them gathered around one big white stallion, his muscles rippling under what was left of his winter coat.
It had to be Repentance. The rest were mares and young horses, all of them shades of brown except for a dappled mare, and a young horse, a colt by the look of him, just beginning to turn the grey that would one day be white. Two of the brumbies were lying down, but even as she watched the dappled mare gave a sharp whinny. Instantly the others scrambled to their feet. The brumbies gazed up at the riders on the ridge, then at their stallion.
The stallion stared at the hunters for a second. He reared in challenge. His hooves struck the ground. Then he was racing. Sparks seemed to fly between his hooves and the rocks below as he led his mob up between the trees towards the far ridge.
Mr Sampson raised his whip in the air and gave a bellow. The riders spread out, galloping down the ridge, their horses leaping, sidestepping, almost sliding at times. Flinty urged Empress to follow them.
It was harder than she’d thought, galloping down a slope she’d never ridden before. Wombat holes lurked behind boulders and the hop scrub hid them all. She could feel Empress tense and focused below her, her own eyes searching for any clue that might show danger in their path.
A stumble here could kill her; it could kill Empress or at best lame her so badly she might have to be put down. But it was almost like she and her pony shared one mind, four eyes. Sometimes Empress would see the danger and step around or leap across; at other times Flinty guided her.
The men were still in front of her, still spread out across the hill. Dust spurted out from under their hooves. The brumbies flowed like water down the hill, keeping close together, then across this gully’s pools between tumbled boulders. They picked up the pace as they surged again up the next ridge.
The mountains’ still silence was broken by flying dust and hooves striking the ground, the urgent breathing of the horses, the yells of men and cracking whips. The brumby stallion had vanished over the ridge above them, and the young grey horse too; the mares and a few foals were not far behind.
Empress’s breath began to blow hard as they pounded up the mountain after them. Now Flinty understood the stallion’s cunning. His brumby mob was fresh. The hunters’ horses had not only travelled miles today, but carried riders too. They couldn’t catch the brumbies in a chase uphill.
The brumby hunters’ only chance to get the whole mob was to outwit them, to catch them before they could climb the next hill, to head them off so they fled down the gully to be caught where the crevasses joined and the trap had been set, further down.
She could hear the other horses labouring, their sides heaving. Empress was faring better — she’d had a longer rest at Jackson’s Flat, and carried a slender girl, not a large man. But one more ridge might exhaust them all. We have to head the brumbies off in the next gully, she thought.
Mr Clancy reached the summit first, with his boys and Mr Sampson just behind. They paused as the other riders joined them, reining in their horses, looking down. Why had they stopped? The brumbies would get away!
She surged past them, hearing the clang as Empress’s hooves dislodged a rock. She just had time to notice the shock on the men’s faces, then she and Empress were beyond, heading down the hill.
For a few seconds all she felt was triumph, then the wild horses spread out below her. All at once she realised her mistake. The men had stopped for a reason — to work out exactly where each needed to ride to keep the mob together.
One rider couldn’t turn a brumby mob. Even as she thought it the brumbies began to separate. Once they straggled across the slope the men behind had little chance of getting them all together again.
Had she ruined the muster for everyone?
Again, it was too late to stop now. The brumby mob had seen her, were already heading in different directions. All she could do was go on, hope that by some miracle she could turn the whole mob to her will. But how?
The dappled mare, she thought desperately. The mare was slower than the stallion, or maybe keeping to the rear to watch out for the others. She had been the lookout. Would the other horses follow her? Flinty raised her stockwhip high and gave a yell.
The dappled mare turned as Empress and Flinty surged towards her, instinctively seeking the easiest way down the gully — exactly as Flinty had hoped — towards the trap. The other mares halted for a moment, their eyes rolling, then they followed the dappled mare down the gully. The young grey colt followed them.
But not the stallion. The grandson of old Regret galloped a short way up the next ridge. He bellowed out a call that was both challenge and warning.
Flinty felt despair bite. It was the stallion that Miss Matilda wanted, the horse that was worth a thousand pounds.
She’d spoiled it all! No one would ever catch Repentance once he’d galloped up the hill.
All she could do now was head after the mares, keep them moving towards the trap, stop any of them breaking away uphill. Unless…
She glanced up at the stallion again. He’d halted, his eyes looking wildly from the hunters to his herd below. Flinty remembered Dad saying, ‘A good stallion looks out for his mares.’
Repentance thought his mares were safe now, heading fast downhill. He couldn’t know that a trap awaited them. He planned to sniff them out again tonight, tomorrow, or in a few days’ time.
She needed to convince the big horse his mares were in danger. Now!
Even as she thought it she nudged Empress with her heels again, to keep her moving down the gully. She reached for her other whip, the big one Dad had plaited for her sixteenth birthday. She swung it up around her head and yelled, just like Dad had done.
‘Hoooo-eeee!’ The whip cracked above her, like an axe striking a billet of hard dry wood. A white cockatoo screamed an alarm call as his flock hurled themselves towards the sky.
The dappled mare swung her head to glance back, showing the whites of her eyes. Another mare whinnied in terror. Flinty cracked her whip again. One of the mares stumbled in fright, then righted herself. They were running faster now, truly frightened for the first time since they’d seen the hunters, heads tossing, eyes rolling, as they stumbled down the gully.
Dimly she was aware of Mr Sampson and the others making their way behind her down the mountainside. But they’d never catch Repentance now. She galloped after the mares, keeping well away from the stallion, leaving him free to follow the herd if he chose. The great horse hadn’t moved, still staring from his mares to the hunters. And now she didn’t dare look back at him. The hidden ground was full of wombat holes, and any slip was death. Empress’s neck was white with foam, her breath heaving.
Suddenly she heard hoofbeat
s behind her. Has Mr Sampson caught up already? she wondered, just as a white shape flashed on her right. Repentance!
She edged Empress further up the slope, leaving the stallion a clear path so he could pass her, think he’d beaten her. She watched, almost too exhausted for triumph, as Repentance rejoined his mares, the one great thundering bunch of them, imagining they were escaping as she galloped more slowly after them, letting them tire themselves like a torrent down the creek bed in their rush to be free.
But the men still had to get the brumbies into the trap. All at once she was aware of other riders on both sides of her, a line of them, in case some of the horses tried to make a break back up either slope.
But they didn’t. Down and down the brumbies galloped, fleeing the sound of men, of whips. The muster pounded after them, whips cracking, yells echoing from the cliffs, a mob of grey currawongs rising too, shrieking at the noise.
And Flinty was with them now. She’d never ridden so hard, so far. Nothing in all her rides with Dad had been like this. She felt Empress’s ribcage swell and fall and knew she would have to stop soon. She peered desperately ahead, hoping for the flash of white rags among the trees.
Where was the trap? Were they even driving them down the right gully? Had she got it so wrong that the brumbies were heading the wrong way? But this gully had to lead to the trap in the canyon: she knew this country like she knew her own feet. One more bend and they’d be there…
And there it was. Not much of a barrier — rope stretched between the trees, hung with white bits of cloth, branches tucked in and out. Repentance alone could have broken through it.
But he didn’t know it. The stallion halted, confused, at what looked like a solid barrier. His mares stumbled around him, baffled, blowing and beaten, as the men closed in.
Flinty was aware of Empress’s shuddering frame. The sweat ran down her own sides and pooled under her; somewhere she had lost her hat and her knitted cap — her plaits were flying free.
‘Got them,’ said Mr Sampson calmly, his white beard not even blown by the wind.
Chapter 11
26 November 1919
Dear Diary,
Some things you know happen only once in your life. Your first kiss, the first time you stand on a mountain you have climbed all by yourself, the first time you know that you and your horse are working as one.
Even when I was riding after the brumbies, even when I had no idea what would happen later, I knew I’d never chase brumbies like that again. This wasn’t just the first, but the only.
No one said anything about her being a girl. No one congratulated her on her ride either. I was, thought Flinty as she rubbed Empress down roughly with some dried grass, both very good and very stupid. Her ride was one only a horse and rider who knew the land and each other could have made. It could also have lost them all the prize.
Now Sandy and the men from Drinkwater worked at making the barrier more solid, keeping an eye on the brumby mob, huddled together and bewildered, while Mr Clancy’s boys made a fire and boiled the billy.
Flinty let her mare catch her breath, then led her to a pool above the brumby enclosure to drink a little, before guiding her back towards the campfire, where she could graze. Empress didn’t need to be hobbled to stay close. Flinty busied herself collecting dead wood, dragging the branches over to the fire where the billy tea already boiled and, by the smell of it, a damper was cooking in the ashes.
Suddenly she was starving.
The older of Mr Clancy’s boys grinned, a white smile in the dark face under the big hat. A slender hand grasped a green branch and hauled the damper out of the coals, broke it open into two white floury halves, and handed her one of them with another grin. The native’s big grey shirt finally showed the shape inside it.
‘Oh,’ said Flinty.
The ‘boy’ nodded, amused. The other boy — who was really a man in his twenties, with dark skin paler than his mother’s — reached into the saddlebags and brought out a jar of pale green bush honey. Flinty poured a bit onto the damper. She bit down into the heat and sweetness, then gulped at the tea, strong as boiled wattle bark, sweet with honey.
‘Any left for me?’ Mr Clancy crouched beside them. ‘I see you’ve met the missus,’ he added to Flinty.
‘I…I don’t understand.’
‘White man, black wife.’ Mrs Clancy shrugged. Her voice was sweet, with a slight accent. ‘People shake their heads. But when they see a native in trousers, all they see is just another stockman. We went to Queensland droving, when we first met. Didn’t come back till folks had forgotten the white man, black wife. People see what they want.’
‘But the men today…’ Flinty gestured at the Drinkwater stockmen, at Mr Sampson.
Mrs Clancy laughed, as if that was all the answer needed. She poured a mug of tea from the billy for her husband.
And maybe she’s right, thought Flinty. If you didn’t talk about something you didn’t have to defend it. It just…was…like the mountains, like the snow. The Clancys’ marriage was a partnership so solid it didn’t need a house and wedding ring to make it real. Mrs Clancy’s disguise meant the white man could pretend — even to themselves perhaps — that the person they rode with and respected was a ‘boy’, not a wife. At another time, or another place in town, or even their homes — they might think differently. Not here.
And somehow she couldn’t see Mr Clancy, or his wife or son, ever wanting to settle down in a town — where people might talk or, worse, refuse to talk to them, to throw stones or horse pats at their windows. Flinty would go back to her house when this was over, and live under a roof, even if it was surrounded by mountains.
The Clancys’ roof was the sky.
Had Mrs Clancy guessed Flinty was a girl, back there at Jackson’s Flat? Was that why she asked her husband to let her ride with them? Mrs Clancy must know better than anyone — except maybe her husband — that a woman could ride as well, and as long, as any man. Perhaps she had seen the need to do just that in Flinty’s face as well.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except the good damper in her hand, the knowledge that — somehow — she hadn’t messed this up.
Meanwhile the other riders were gathering at the fire, with only Sandy and Pete Sampson still on horseback in case the brumbies broke out of the makeshift yard. But the captives were still quiet, their heads down. Even Repentance looked subdued, as though he knew what was coming now and didn’t find the memory of the Drinkwater paddocks too bad. Some of the mares were even drinking, or pulling at the grass. The grey colt looked up at Flinty, meeting her eyes for a second before turning away to the others.
A grand horse, thought Flinty. One day that colt would be as white as his father and as strong, or even stronger. The stallion was magnificent. But the young horse had gone almost as fast today, despite his youth. Even now he held his head up as though to say, ‘I stay here because I choose to be with the others. But if I wished I could leave you all behind.’
‘Good pony you have there,’ said Mr Clancy, leaning back against a tree and nodding at Empress, her head down among the tussocks. He took a sip of his sweet tea, his expression strangely grim. ‘Favouring her right hind leg. You noticed?’
‘No!’ Flinty leaped up and ran across to Empress. The pony stepped towards her, limping slightly, as Mr Clancy had said. Flinty ran her hand down her leg and lifted the hoof, trying to find the trouble.
‘Strained a muscle, I’d say.’ Mr Clancy had come up behind her, his mug still in his hand.
‘How bad?’ asked Flinty anxiously.
He shrugged. ‘Give her a week or two, and she might get over it. Might always limp too.’
Dad had shown her how to put hot fomentations on a horse’s leg, warm cloths or hot bran poultices, or even a hot cow-manure plaster. She had no bran or cow manure, but she could warm her spare shirt in hot water and stay up all night, like Dad had sometimes done with an injured horse, reapplying the hot cloths…
Mr Cla
ncy must have guessed some of this from her expression. His face lost its grimness. He looked at her over his mug. ‘That was a wild ride you gave her.’
‘But we got them,’ said Flinty defensively.
‘Reckon that’s the last wild ride your pony will ever manage.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Saw a ride like that, must have been forty years ago now. Bloke wrote a poem about it.’
‘“The Man from Snowy River”,’ said Flinty.
Mr Clancy nodded again. He ran his hands down Empress’s leg. The mare let him, shivering slightly.
‘Could be worse.’ Mr Clancy straightened. ‘Reckon she’ll get over it if you let her go easy for a while, as long as she’s never ridden that hard again. Poets, well, they like things exciting. You know what really happened on that ride?’
‘The man from Snowy River brought all the brumbies back by himself.’
‘Well, he did that. He did something else as well. That boy rode his horse to death. Oh, he headed off the brumbies all right. The colt from old Regret went back where he belonged. But I saw the mount break his heart trying to do what his rider wanted. He just went down, the young man tumbling after him. The boy was all right. A few bumps and bruises. But his horse…’ The old man shrugged. ‘About the size of your mare here. Touch of Timor pony, three parts thoroughbred, maybe. Lying there among the hop, his sides white with foam, still as the rocks. Grown men cried,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘It’s a sight you don’t see often, something like that.’
‘What…what happened to the rider?’
‘He sat there, the pony’s head in his lap, while we rounded up the brumbies. Was still there the next morning too. I gave him one of my spares to ride. Had to leave the pony where he was. Can’t bury a horse,’ said Mr Clancy, all emotion gone from his voice. Like Andy’s, thought Flinty, when he spoke about the war. Some things were beyond feeling.
‘You think I could have killed Empress?’
‘Or lamed her. But you were lucky,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘And you’ve earned a hundred pounds.’ He gave Empress a final pat and sloped back towards the campfire.
The Girl from Snowy River Page 8
