The Girl from Snowy River

by Jackie French

  The days continued. Mr White promised her a puppy from the next litter. They’d be good pups, he said, a bit of dingo in them to make them tough, but not enough to make them wild.

  She rode Snow King for the first time the week after Nicholas left, slipping into the saddle as he stood in the yard. The big horse shifted uneasily for a few seconds, accustoming himself to the weight, then seemed almost amused that she had taken so long. She urged him forwards, using the same hand signals she’d taught him to recognise when she had exercised him on the lunge rope in the paddock.

  Snow King stepped up to the gate almost politely, paused while she bent to open it and then paced across the paddock like a gentleman. When she finally slipped off his back he stared at her, the liquid brown eyes seeming to say, ‘We could challenge the wind, you and me. Why do we walk?’

  She patted his neck and fed him his apple. ‘One day we’ll fly,’ she whispered to him. For the first time since Nicholas had left, she did not feel lonely.

  Chapter 20

  11 March 1920

  Dear Diary,

  I took Snow King out on the road today. I let him canter, then move into a gallop, just past the Rock. His ears didn’t even flicker as we edged through the mist. I don’t think ghosts frighten Snow King. I don’t think anything does.

  The mist is still there, even though Nicholas isn’t. I sit there sometimes, just in case he comes back, but I know he won’t. He said he knows he doesn’t, not for ages, which means that someone in the future must have told him. I’ve thought and thought about it, and the only person who could know I didn’t see him for months would be me. Does he know me in the future?

  Or maybe someone has read my diary. I keep it up in the linen cupboard, but maybe when I’m old I don’t care if anyone reads what I wrote when I was seventeen.

  I wish I’d asked Nicholas how many months he thought he’d be away. But maybe he didn’t know how many. Maybe no one can tell how long it will take someone to learn to use new legs. But he said that we’ll meet again. He said I’ll have children. He said that something ‘very, very’ good would happen. I have to hold on to that, and not miss him too much, not be scared of ‘something bad’. You get through bad things — I know, enough bad things have happened to me already. But I don’t think getting through one bad time makes it any easier to deal with the next one. If anything it’s worse, because there is less happiness to remember.

  Sandy called by with a ham from old Mr Green. They’ve killed the weaner piglets to salt down, and make ham and bacon for winter. Ham and eggs again! There, that’s a happy thing.

  I’d made date scones. Sandy sat on the verandah and ate three, and had two cups of tea. That’s a happy thing too, because we talked almost like the old days, before he kissed me, when we were just friends. We mostly talked about Snow King. He agreed there is no hurry to find a trainer. It can damage a young horse if you race him too soon. Snow King won’t reach his full strength till he’s about four.

  I asked Sandy if he’d heard any more about his Soldier Settler block yet, but he just shrugged and said he’d chop some wood for me. That was the end of our talking. I don’t even know if he’s been offered a Soldier Settler block yet, or if he has to take the first one he’s offered. He chopped the big stumps that Joey can’t manage. They’re tough and will burn overnight during winter, but I’d rather have talked to him more.

  Mum used to say that no man could manage a farm alone without a good feed in his belly, and a wife to put it there. But Sandy isn’t even going to the dances downriver, where he might meet girls. Joey says that Toby Mack and the Mullins boys and Amy all went down to the dance at Gibber’s Creek — they stayed at the Mullinses’ cousin’s place. But Sandy said he didn’t want to go.

  Amy is going to marry one of the Browns’ cousins, the one whose sister married the Middletons’ rouseabout and moved down to Sydney. I hope he knows what he’s getting himself into. At least there’s no worry about Andy marrying her now. Imagine having to live with her! Not that Andy would have married her, and anyway, he must have met girls a thousand times prettier than Amy White up north. She never even came up to say she was sorry after Mum and Dad died, but I bet she comes up now to show off her trousseau and engagement ring.

  Amy is the only girl near my age in the valley, and now she’ll be gone too. We never really got on — she and the White boys used to ping the rest of us with a pea shooter at school, and I don’t think even Mr Ross got her to read a book in her life — but it feels funny that I’ll be the only unmarried young woman in the valley, just the same.

  The swallows are swooping high after flies. I suppose they’ll be off for winter soon.

  It was time to cut the grass hay to feed the horses through the winter, for the cold days when they would need more than the poor winter grass to give them energy and the colder days when snow covered the ground.

  The hay cutter had lain unused in the barn since Viscount, the big draught horse, went to war: there were only the two horses to feed this winter, not the thirty to a hundred they’d been used to.

  Flinty and Joey took turns with the scythe, swinging it back and forth through the red-stemmed grass, laden with seed heads, the clouds of finches flying up, chattering their annoyance, the mice scurrying. A weekend was long enough to cut two paddocks. It was harder work turning the grass, raking it back and forth over the next two weeks, hoping it wouldn’t get rained on and spoiled. They could afford to buy hay, but that fifty pounds could be used for so many other things.

  It didn’t rain. Kirsty helped them rake the hay into mounds, and tie it in rough sheaves, then carry barrowload after barrowload down to the hayshed.

  Time next to pick the pears and bottle them; to make crabapple jelly; to harvest the late apples, wrapping each one in newspaper so it would last through the winter, and then the quinces and late pears, brown skinned and hard. And each week the washing, a full day stoking up the copper, stirring the clothes about, the rinsing, the hanging, the folding, the ironing; every day the milking, the hens, the meals to make. The jobs hadn’t been so bad before, not with company. Now they were drudgery, each one no sooner finished than it was time to do it again.

  The weekdays were lonely, except for the hours spent with Snow King, teaching him to trot, to respond to the pressure of knees, heels and hands, but never the whip. Flinty supposed that jockeys had to use the whip, but she hated the thought of anyone striking Snow King. He ran for the love of her, for the love of running. He’d win because he knew he was the king.

  The weekends were better, with Joey and Kirsty at home during the day. Each weekend brought something they had achieved together, every success a sign that they could carry on, even without Andy or their parents; not just the shed full of hay but the big pile of firewood, the jars of crab-apple jelly as good as Mum’s, the sacks of potatoes, enough to see them through to next Christmas when the first of the new potatoes would be ready, great plaited ropes of onions.

  They spent two weekends harvesting the corn, storing the cobs in the big barrels to keep away the rats. The corn would be chook food through the winter, and extra energy for the horses too. Rock Farm had once grown oats for hay as well, but that was more than they could manage this year.

  Flinty let Empress and Snow King into the corn paddock with its straggling stems for them to chew and trample down, and its soil ready for their manure. For the first time in longer than she could remember she felt a deep, sure happiness: the fulfilment of achievement, the joy in the mountain tops rearing up against the sky, the scents of gum trees and snow mixed with those of hot dirt and far-off chimney smoke. Dad had said you could smell the world up here, as the winds gathered the breezes together to roar across the mountains.

  Sometimes Flinty could almost hear Nicholas’s whisper just behind her: ‘Something bad. Something bad.’ But nothing bad happened, except for a bush rat that nested in the drawer that held Kirsty’s woollens, so they had to spend a week washing them to get out the stink.r />
  Kirsty’s birthday. Flinty killed a rooster to roast, like Mum had done each birthday, and made her sister a new dress out of the material she’d brought back from town, using an old one of Mum’s for a pattern, adding ruffles at the sleeves and hem. The newspapers Mr Mack passed on to them said women’s skirts were belted about the hips instead of the waist, like the one she’d seen on Miss Matilda, and worn knee length now, but that didn’t sound proper and, anyway, Kirsty wanted to dress like the other girls at school, not like a mannequin in the newspaper.

  She watched them ride down the track to school the next day, Kirsty proud in what had been her Sunday dress — the new one was for best now — Joey behind her. Autumn had turned the birch trees yellow.

  The mist swirled about the Rock again, but then it usually did, had done before she met Nicholas. It would still wisp down the gullies, she knew now, in fifty years’ time, and maybe in another five hundred years too.

  It was a grey day. Grey clouds. Grey air. The hawthorn berries down at the Macks’ were deep red, which meant that it’d be a hard winter, but she reckoned there was rain coming before the snow.

  She should go and feed the hens, collect the eggs. The brown snakes would get them if she didn’t. Once a snake started raiding the henhouse it wouldn’t stop. She’d have to wait with the spade then chop its head off, kill it like Nicholas had killed the little boy. That memory lingered, like the rat stink in Kirsty’s woollens.

  Maybe that’s why the men don’t tell us their stories, she thought dully. Because then we remember them and are haunted by them too.

  She’d written to Andy, just like she’d promised. There hadn’t been a reply. Perhaps Andy hadn’t even got the letter yet. She’d addressed it to the station where he’d been working, but he might be droving for weeks or months before he got back there. Maybe the mail hadn’t even got through. There’d been a flood up north. She didn’t even know where Andy was exactly, so she couldn’t look it up in Dad’s old atlas.

  And still nothing bad happened: it seemed impossible that anything could happen under the gentle autumn sky. Nicholas’s words had implied it would be soon, before he would get back with his new legs. But nothing had. Nothing except being lonely, lonely like she’d never known you could be lonely, growing up with three brothers and a sister, like a mob of puppies underfoot, Mum said sometimes, riding up into the hills with Dad and Jeff, Sandy and Andy.

  She should go and see Snow King. She could ride him around the paddock now, though she still used the yard to saddle him up and an apple to keep him sweet. He would never be a quiet horse — a kingfisher’s swoop would make him shy. But he allowed her to saddle him, to sit on his back, to urge him forwards, faster or slower.

  She needed a friend today, and Snow King was her only real companion now. She could talk to him about anything — about Sandy, about Nicholas, about her worry that Empress might stumble on the way down to school, or Andy have an accident way up north. It didn’t matter that he didn’t understand her words.

  But she didn’t feel like talking today. She fed Snow King his apple, stroking his mane. She was about to get his saddle and bridle, then hesitated. She didn’t want the leather between them, the metal bit in Snow King’s mouth. This once she wanted it to be just the two of them: the girl and horse. Only in the paddock, of course. It would be foolish to ride any further…

  He was a gentleman. A complete and utter darling. He almost winked at her, as if to say, ‘This is just between you and me, eh? I know it’s not the way it’s done.’

  He trotted around the paddock, with her leaning into his neck.

  She couldn’t resist. She nudged him, so he turned to the paddock gate. She bent down, unlatched it. Snow King waited till it had swung open, then walked out without her urging. Through the front gate, telling herself they’d head back in a moment, just a minute more. Out along the track and down the mountain. She kneed him to a canter.

  He put his head down instead. He began to gallop, down the track, past the Rock. She gave him his head…just her, the wind and the horse.

  Impossible that she should control something so powerful. Impossible that he’d want to be controlled, that he’d accept her as his leader just as he’d accepted the stallion, his father. No, she thought, as the Rock vanished behind them in the turn of the track. This is friendship, not mastery. This is love.

  She could hear Mr Clancy say, ‘Well.’ It was time to stop. It wasn’t just the danger. Snow King was too young to be ridden hard, on a track of puddles and ruts. He hadn’t had time to learn how to judge the ground with a rider on his back, nor did she have enough control riding bareback to guide him now.

  Snow King would gallop until he tired, which might be hours. The wind was his brother just like it was hers, but she was the older friend, had to be the sensible one. She eased the pressure of her knees, just a little, and sat back to tell him she no longer wanted such speed. And then more, till he slowed to a canter, hardly out of breath.

  You’ll win the Melbourne Cup, you darling horse, she thought. And Kirsty will be there in a new pink dress, belted around her hips just like in the fashion pages of the newspaper, and Andy will put the Cup up on the mantelpiece. Wouldn’t Dad have loved to win the Cup…?

  Someone moved in the distance. A man, on foot, plodding along the track. She sat back even further, to tell Snow King to settle to a walk, and peered at the figure shambling up the hill.

  None of the neighbours would have walked up here — why walk when you could ride, or bring a cart? It was getting too cold for swaggies, now snow lurked in the clouds. Swaggies headed north with the swallows, where it was warm, not here among the rocks where a blizzard could trap you, freeze you till your body was found in next year’s thaw.

  The man on the track didn’t belong here. The men of the valley were all angles, strong of arm and leg, from loping up mountains and sitting astride a horse. This man looked like his body was too heavy for his feet.

  She rode towards him slowly, puzzled and wary. He was about Andy’s age, she saw as she drew closer, dressed in what looked like an army uniform, but blue, not khaki. Men who have been wounded wear blue, don’t they? she thought. Was this man still in the army? Or just wearing his uniform? Was that allowed?

  The stranger peered up at her and she saw he had a scar running right down over his eye, puckered and purple. He blinked at her. His eyes looked clouded, and his face rippled with scar tissue.

  ‘Hey, mister.’ The man’s voice was gruff, as though the inside of his throat was scarred too. ‘This the road to Rock Farm?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said cautiously. Snow King stepped back nervously and tried to rear. She patted his neck to quieten him.

  He tried to peer closer at the sound of her voice. ‘You a girl? I don’t see too good. It was the gas. See better when it’s brighter…’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The words came automatically, but she meant them too. He looked alone and lost — a bit like she felt just now. ‘Who were you looking for?’ she asked more gently.

  ‘Me mate. Jeff.’

  Was this the person who had sent the letter? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, quietly. ‘Jeff died in the war. Nearly three years ago now.’

  The stranger looked at her blearily. ‘I knew that. I was there. Saw him die, saw the holes in his guts. He was dead afore the gas hit us.’

  Shock bit her. She could see it, see Jeff bleed. She could even smell the gun smoke and the blood. This is what Sandy wouldn’t tell me, she thought. This is what Andy won’t say. So I don’t have to see Jeff’s death every time I think of him. So I can think of him laughing, riding up the track, not bleeding in the smoke and noise.

  The man still peered at her. He shook his head. ‘It’s Andy I want if Jeff ain’t here. Can’t be if he’s dead, can he? Andy’s me mate too.’

  ‘You’re a friend of Andy’s?’

  He took off his blue cap, the politeness so automatic even his fuddled brain didn’t have to think about it. ‘Sergeant B
ertie Morris, at your service.’ The words should have been military. They were slurred instead.

  ‘Bertie Morris! But I wrote to you! Jeff,’ she managed to say his name, ‘Jeff wrote to us and said Sergeant Bertie Morris didn’t have any family, and could I write to you! Mum and I made you a cake.’

  ‘A fruitcake,’ he said eagerly. He sounded more in control now. ‘It were a real good fruitcake. And a pair of socks and a comforter.’

  ‘Mr Morris!’ Snow King began to edge away. She slid off, patting his neck, holding his rope halter. ‘Don’t mind Snow King. I’m still breaking him in. He’s a beauty, isn’t he?’

  Mr Morris didn’t even look at the horse. He stared at her, his neck poking forwards like a chook’s. Trying to see me, poor man, she thought. ‘You’re Felicity. Felicity McAlpine.’

  ‘Yes. But Andy’s not here. He’s up in Queensland droving. I don’t know where he is, exactly.’

  ‘Felicity McAlpine,’ he said again, frowning as though it was too hard to think of more than one thing at a time, one important thing he mustn’t forget… ‘You’re the one I’m looking for. Not Jeff. Not Andy.’

  Suddenly she was uneasy again. She stepped away slightly. Snow King whinnied and stamped his feet. ‘Why are you still in uniform? Haven’t you been demobbed yet?’

  ‘Been in hospital,’ he said. ‘Don’t like it. Said I could go home for the weekend.’ He smiled and it looked like a baby’s smile, innocent but sort of empty too. ‘Told them I was going to my sweetheart’s house.’

  ‘Who’s your sweetheart?’

  ‘Why, you of course. Felicity McAlpine. You wrote to me, sent me a cake, the same day I got this.’ He touched the scar over his eye. ‘Gassed us too, but I didn’t know till later. All of them coughing and screaming, but I missed that, on account of my head.’ He grinned as though he had been clever, being blown unconscious while deadly gas seeped around him.