The black kid grinned. It was a reassuring grin, but there was something else there too.
The other men had realised something was happening now. They drifted over: Young Mike and Flash Jack and Chookie Neilson, and a couple of the stockmen in from the hills. McWhirty even caught a glimpse of Mrs Connolly peering through the kitchen window.
He held his breath.
The black kid rested his hands on the horse’s neck. Then he linked his hands over the horse’s neck, and dropped his left shoulder and simultaneously swung his right leg up and over the animal’s back. It was a smooth leap, despite the crippled leg. The black kid sat straight and proud on the stallion’s back and grinned at the men below him.
One hand held the horse’s mane now. The other stroked the smooth black coat, while he bent and whispered in the horse’s ear.
The stallion began to move, one step, two steps … It was impossible, thought McWhirty, staring at the boy. He had never ridden the stallion before. The only time he had ever been on his back he had been thrown down into the dust. But this time the boy was in control.
The boy had watched, thought McWhirty. And he had understood.
Maybe the horse understood something too.
Slowly, slowly, the great black horse walked around the horse yard, lifting his feet proudly and steadily, step by step. It was almost as though they were showing off, thought McWhirty, the black kid and the stallion both.
The boy bent down to the horse’s ear again. He whispered something and patted the muscled neck.
The stallion began to trot and then to canter around the yard, round and round and round, the black kid clinging to his mane, his raggy-trousered knees clinging to his back.
The black kid laughed. He glanced just once at Alf McWhirty, then looked away. He leant forward, close to the animal’s neck, and held even more tightly to the mane. The knees in their dusty, baggy moleskins clung tightly too.
And then the stallion swerved across the yard. The massive haunches crouched, then he was rising up and up and up.
The stallion leapt the fence, the black kid still upon his back, and galloped away across the paddock and through the trees, and all that was left was the echo of laughter and the thunder of hooves.
That was the last anyone ever saw of the stallion or the black kid either.
Colonel Gloucester gave chase of course. The Colonel was at his best in an emergency when he could take command. He had the horses saddled up in minutes with all the men, including himself, ready for the chase. They went in all directions, the Colonel down towards the river where the camp had been, McWhirty high into the hills, Flash Jack down the track to town and Young Mike along the flats.
By late afternoon, half the district was looking for the black kid and the stallion. But a horse like that stallion can gallop faster than the wind. A horse like that can gallop an entire day and be ready to gallop again all the next.
There was no horse in the district that could catch a horse like that.
The Colonel sent word to the magistrate, and the magistrate sent messages around the colony. But the colony was large, and there were many black horses and many, many places where a horse and boy could hide.
The magistrate sent troopers to all the camps too. But there was no black horse, and no black child who walked with a limp that they could find.
A week later Alf McWhirty quit the Colonel’s employment and left the farm. The Colonel’s temper was still high and there was no shortage of places for a man who knew horses like McWhirty, even if the pay wasn’t as high. And besides, he had his savings, and no fares that needed paying now.
Five years later the Colonel gave up horse breeding and moved back to Sydney.
That’s the end of the story. Or is it? … Maybe, just maybe, there’s another chapter still to tell.
It was ten years after Colonel Gloucester went back to Sydney, twenty years after the black kid leapt the fence and galloped laughing back into the bush. A bloke named Jim Kearney was out fencing, repairing the boundary between his place and the Mossops’.
Old Mossop had sold his place about six months before. Jim and his wife hadn’t met the new owners yet. They seemed to keep to themselves.
It wasn’t much of a fence, the one Jim was repairing, just two strands of wire strung between the trees, but it kept the cattle in alright. But there’d been a storm the week before and there were branches down over the wire and once cattle get the idea they can walk through fences, no fence will hold them.
Jim was down off his horse for the fifth time that day, chopping at a fallen tree with his axe, when he heard the hoof beats. He put the axe down and wiped the sweat from his eyes and, as he told his wife that night, there it was: this great black horse cantering through the trees on the other side of the fence. Even at first glance you could see it was no ordinary horse. This horse knew that it was king.
The rider pulled the horse to a stop. Jim stepped forward and now he could see that the horse was much older than he’d thought. There was grey around his eyes and down his muzzle, and his teeth, when he bent to snatch some grass under the trees, were long and yellow.
The horse’s rider slipped down off his back and held out his hand and stepped over to Jim. He limped a bit, Jim noticed, but not too bad.
‘G’day,’ said the rider. ‘Wal Mowbray.’
The rider’s hand was black, not white, though of course neither man was white or black: the rider’s skin was brownish, the colour of the soil along the river bank, and Jim’s was brown as well, a different colour brown from a year’s work in the sun.
Jim hesitated. But he’d spent years droving before he married Jean and bought the farm; it’d been black stockmen who’d taught him most of what he knew, so he took the hand, even though the colour was a bit of a shock. As far as he knew there were no Aboriginal stockmen around here, and the local tribe had been moved down to the coast years before.
‘Jim Kearney,’ said Jim.
The rider nodded. ‘Need a hand?’ he asked. There was a bit of an accent, but not that you’d notice thought Jim.
‘Wouldn’t mind,’ said Jim.
It was easier with two. Jim finished cutting through the tree. They hauled it off the fence together, and repaired the broken strands of wire, then rode along the fence line in silence, down towards the river.
The sun was high above them when they reached the river that formed the far boundary for both farms and stopped to let their horses drink.
‘Good horse,’ said Jim, breaking the silence. ‘What’s he called?’
‘Thunder,’ said Wal. He looked at Jim’s horse with an experienced eye. No-one could call Billy Boy a good horse, so he said, ‘Looks like he’s got a good bit of work in him,’ instead.
Jim snorted. ‘The only time he gets a move on is when he’s heading home to a feed.’
‘You a stockman on the Mossop place then?’ asked Jim. He’d half a notion that the rider might be looking for a job, might have lent him a hand hoping he’d take him on.
Wal shook his head. ‘It’s the Mowbray place now. I’m the owner. Me and me Uncle Alf. Well, I call him uncle. He married my aunt, at any road.’
‘Cattle?’ asked Jim.
‘Yeah. And horses. Got a contract with a buyer for the East India Company.’
Jim nodded, slightly envious. There was good money in quality horses, and by the look of the black stallion the Mowbray horses should be good.
‘You married then?’ asked Jim.
‘Yeah. You?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jim. ‘Her name’s Jean.’
‘Mine’s Sue,’ said Wal, and with that they went to finish the fence.
The afternoon was only half done when they had finished the last bit up the hill. It was good to work with someone else again, thought Jim. The work was done in less than half the time.
They could see the Mossop–Mowbray place on the rise above the river. There’d been changes since Jim had seen it last. The old house was still there,
but there was a new house standing next to it, connected to the old house by a passage.
The new house had stone chimneys and a wide verandah. The old bark roof was gone from the old house too, and a new corrugated iron one shone in its place.
There were rows of cabbages and turnips and fruit-tree saplings nearer the house and hens strutting between the fruit trees and dogs asleep in the shade under the verandah.
And there were horses — mostly black, but there were chestnut ones as well — in the newly fenced paddocks next to the corn and in the new yards by the house.
‘Looks good,’ said Jim, a little enviously. He and Jean were still at the slab hut and bark roof stage, but he planned to get her a proper iron stove next cattle sale.
The black rider hesitated. ‘You want to come down to the house then?’ he offered. ‘We killed a beast yesterday. Let you have a hindquarter if you want.’
‘Wouldn’t mind,’ said Jim gratefully. ‘The missus would be glad of it.’
The two men rode down the hill together. The mutton was hanging in a fly-proof meat safe in the shed. Wal unhooked it and chopped off a hindquarter with an axe.
‘Good bit of meat on that,’ said Jim appreciatively. He paused. ‘Might see if the missus would like to come over tomorrow,’ he offered. ‘She can meet your missus and all. Bring you over some cheese if you want; Jean’s good with cheese.’
He’d have to talk hard to convince her, he thought, what with them being black and all. But he thought that she’d come round. Wal and the Mowbrays looked like being good neighbours to have, and besides, it had been six months since Jean had talked to anyone except him and the cockatoo, and sometimes she said the cockatoo had more conversation than Jim did.
‘The wife’d like that,’ said Wal. He spoke with an accent, Jim realised, though it was hard to say what it was. ‘Bought her some china last time I was in town, teacups and that. That thin stuff, all roses and gold paint. She’ll be glad to show it off.’
Jim mounted Billy Boy again. The horse sensed it was heading home now and stepped more briskly up the hill.
That was when he saw the kid. He was on a black horse, a younger version of the stallion that Wal had ridden today. Wal’s son, Jim reckoned, and the horse would be Thunder’s son or even great grandson perhaps.
The boy saw him, laughed and waved his hat high above his head. Then he was gone, and only the echo of the hoof beats sang across the hill.
So that is the end of the story of a family called Mowbray (or Muurruubarraay perhaps) and a horse called Thunder, and their farm by the river.
Or is it?
Stories never really end. There are still black horses by the river and their riders still urge them through the trees and laugh as they gallop across the hills.
The Baker’s Horse
Winters were the worst — dark streets and a cold wind bringing the smells of garbage bins and dunny cans. The bakery was all warmth behind us, its golden light and the hot smell of bread spilling out into the night.
I had to be careful where I trod in winter. The streets were rutted and the gloom sucked all the goodness from the street lights. Old Sam wore his checked coat in winter and Young Bob’s nose ran all the time. Sometimes it rained. The cart had a roof that kept the bread dry, and a sort of verandah roof where Old Sam and Bob sat behind me, but the cold drops would run miserably down my back and legs. Mrs Sam used to make a hot mash for me when it rained.
Summer was easier. The horizon was pale pink even before Old Sam had finished loading the loaves onto the cart. We clip-clopped down the street in the soft dawn light, carrying the hot bread, the loaves in the cart warm and fragrant behind us.
It was good bread we carried in those days — long white loaves or brown, flat tops and charcoaled high tops, malt loaves, round milk loaves and fruit bread on Thursdays — not so much variety as we had carried before The War, though why The War should stop us carrying fancy breads, I never understood.
Young Bob leapt on and off the wagon, poking the loaves wrapped in their tissue paper into the letter boxes, or resting them between the box and the fence, or placing them in the box put there on purpose because the owner had a dog who liked fresh bread. Old Sam’s bones creaked too much to jump on and off the wagon himself now, and Young Sam was at The War.
I wasn’t sure where The War was. It was a place a long way off at any rate, I thought, near Sydney maybe, or even Melbourne.
Early mornings it was just us and sleepless dogs, who’d bark at us just for the pleasure of it, even though we passed that way each night. Dogs have no intelligence in my opinion. They’ve more bark than brains.
Sometimes a cat would stalk across the road, and glance at us indignantly. Cats think they own the world. Sometimes a possum would grunt up in the tree tops, or a baby would cry as we passed a house, and the light would flick on as its mother got up to nurse it.
But mostly it was just the clip-clop of my hooves, Old Sam’s soft ‘gee up, boy’ and the sniffles of Bob wiping his nose on his sleeve. Young Bob’s feet were always cold in winter. None of the kids wore shoes back then. I saw Bob wriggle his toes in my droppings to warm them more than once.
The evening star would fade in the night sky, the stars would lose their gleam. There’d be early morning shift-workers, off up to the tram with their lunch bags in their hands. They’d tip their hats to Sam and the politest would greet me too. ‘How you going, Snowy Boy? Alright? Been a long night, old man?’
Sometimes we’d hear the clink of the milkman’s cart a few streets away from us, but his route and times were different from ours and we never met.
Dawn would come with magpies and kookaburras yelling their heads off for no good reason at all, if you ask me, and housewives in dressing gowns and scarves around their curlers would watch from their windows till we’d passed, so they could duck out and get their bread without Old Sam seeing them in their nightdresses.
More often there’d be kids waiting at the gate. They’d take the loaf from Bob and tear the crusts off before they were halfway up the garden paths, to get their teeth into the soft warm bread.
‘A mouse must have got it!’ we’d hear them yelling as they ran in the door, but we reckoned their mothers knew the mice had two long legs and no fur.
We had to have our run finished early so the women got the bread in time to make the lunches for the men off to work and the children off to school, then they could settle down with another cup of tea and a slice or two of toast or fresh bread maybe, with plum jam or maybe strawberry or melon. (I got to know the jams from the crusts that Young Bob fed me sometimes; melon was my favourite, I believe.)
Mr Gordon’s was the last house on our round. He’d be waiting at the front gate for us, and every morning he would say, ‘Thought you’d never get here. Reckon I can have my breakfast now.’
He’d take the loaf from Young Bob and every Friday, regular, would slip a threepence in his hand. Mr Gordon’s wife had died two years before, and both boys and his daughter too were at The War, like our Young Sam.
And then we’d wander homeward more slowly than before, although the cart wasn’t as heavy, and halfway back Mrs Jamieson would come to join us, pushing her pram with the baby in one end and a couple of buckets behind and a small spade to shovel up my droppings as we went.
‘It’s an outing for me and an outing for baby too,’ she’d say. She was someone for Old Sam to talk to as well, because once the deliveries were over Young Bob ran off home to get his lunch for school. Mrs Jamieson said my droppings made the best rose food she’d ever had.
Mrs Jamieson had the best garden in the district. Sometimes she’d bring a giant cabbage for Old Sam and a carrot or two for me, still with their green tops on them. In spring sometimes, just after the wattle trees had finished blooming, she’d hand Old Sam up a bunch of roses for Mrs Sam, and Old Sam would say to me, ‘You see old Snowy Boy? You see what your doings have gone and done? Never thought they’d smell as good as this, would you?’
as he breathed the deep scent of the roses.
Then we’d be home and Sam would lead me round the back and brush me down, give me my oats and maybe a biscuit of hay (if it was winter when the grass lost its goodness) and put me out in the paddock next door. I would munch and doze and watch the children coming home and then the men, and wait for it all again tomorrow.
We worked six days a week and on Sunday we rested. Families, all dressed-up, would pass by on their way to church, and there would be tennis in the afternoons with everyone done up in white, and children on their billycarts flying down the street or double-dinking on their bicycles.
And so it went, till one day Young Sam came home from The War.
Even I heard the uproar in my paddock then — the yelling and the screaming then a party with balloons, and Mrs Sam so happy she came out under the clothes line to cry.
But things were different the next morning.
We delivered our bread as usual, me and Old Sam and Bob, and when we got home there was Young Sam and Mrs Sam to greet us. Young Sam held the brush this time, and it was him who brushed me down, all the while talking to his father.
‘You see it’s like this, Dad,’ he said, ‘no need to push yourself now I’m back. You take it easy and tend the garden maybe. Mum says there’s a million things want doing round the house. And as for this old boy here —’ he gave my neck a pat, ‘well, I’ve got the offer of a van, been up on blocks all war it has, a real beauty, it’s a steal …’
That was the last day I carried the bread. The last day for Old Sam too.
They put me in my paddock, and that was where I stayed. It wasn’t easy, I confess, those first few days. The fence around my paddock was like a prison wall, barring me from the streets I’d called my own.
What is a horse to do when his whole life has been with a man, helping him, working with him, then suddenly the work goes on, but you are left behind?
No, those first few days weren’t easy.
The Book of Horses and Unicorns Page 13
