The Horse Who Bit a Bushranger

by Jackie French

  The other convicts had gone on a cart pulled by a pair of dappled draught horses. Reverend Hassall, it seemed, owned several properties, but only one farm needed more workmen, and it wasn’t the one Roman John was taking Billy to.

  ‘Sir? Where they goin’?’ Billy tried to keep his voice steady. Even the walk to the dray had exhausted him, and that steady lash of sunlight didn’t help either.

  Roman John hooked up a rope that had worked loose before he replied. The dray was heavily loaded. Casks and wooden boxes were lashed down, so they didn’t slide as the dray lurched through the ruts in the cobbles. ‘They’re off to Parramatta.’

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘Out over the mountains.’

  ‘What mountains?’

  ‘The Blue Mountains.’

  Is that their name, wondered Billy, or is the mountains really blue?

  Roman John checked the rope again, then settled down beside Billy, leaning back against what felt like a sack o’ potatoes or turnips. ‘Right, this is what you need to know. You work, and you’ll get fed, and a place to sleep, and clothes when yours wear out. If you don’t work you’ll get the whip—’

  ‘Who’ll do the whippin’?’

  ‘Me,’ said Roman John evenly. ‘I don’t tolerate slackers, boy. If you steal or try to run they’ll hang you—not me, but the magistrate. Also: watch out for snakes. They’re fast and there are a lot of them and they can kill you fast. Watch out for spiders in your clothes, the shiny crawlers that live in holes and the black ones with red backs. They’ll kill you faster than the snakes. Stay off the rum. Most of it’s hooch. It’ll send you blind or mad. And don’t think you can hide out in the bush. Most who try that end up dead.’

  ‘The peelers get ‘em?’

  Roman John’s lips parted in an almost-smile. ‘No. Just the bush. They die of thirst or madness.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Billy. There didn’t seem much else to say. He looked out at Sydney Town instead. His eyes were almost used to the light now, though they still watered so things were blurred.

  The bullocks slowly dragged the dray up the road from the harbour. The hill was steep at first, and made the bullocks strain. There were houses on either side, mostly terraces like he’d known back home, but some fine houses too. Ragged children with grubby faces yelled as they passed. One of the boys threw a stone. A couple of mothers looked up warily as the bullocks passed, then went back to their chat. Just like home, thought Billy, though most of the spratts looked better fed and not as pale. Even if they wore rags at least they weren’t all pinched with cold.

  The birds scratching at the horse and bullock droppings in the street were different too: great swarms of red and green or white birds instead of sparrows and pigeons.

  Most of the trees in the gardens were fruit trees from home, but there were a few of the ‘bush’ trees, blue-green with high thin tops. The smoke from the chimneys smelt different too. Wood smoke, he reckoned, not coke or coal like London. You could hardly see it against the too-blue sky once it left the chimneys.

  Here and there people with dark skins and black hair, their feet bare and their clothes in rags, squatted against fences. Billy looked at them curiously. He’d heard there were naked savages called Indians in New South Wales. But the rags these people wore were the remains of clothes you’d see on any East London street.

  At first the street was filled with traffic: bullock drays like their own, carts and horses. The horses looked better fed than most of the ones Billy had known. Most of ‘em were good quality nags, draught horses with good strong hocks, or gentlemen’s hacks well groomed and shiny. Billy tried to see Jem’s cart among the others, but it was either too far ahead or had gone up one of the side roads.

  The houses grew grander the further they travelled. They had gardens with flowers in ‘em now, and paddocks for horses or milk cows or goats. Dogs barked; horses looked curiously over sapling fences.

  The bullocks plodded hypnotically. Billy’s eyes closed. He didn’t want to sleep; after so many months of blackness he wanted to drink in everything he could see and smell and hear. But his body was weak.

  He slept.

  Dusk was falling when he opened his eyes again. He’d been pillowed on the lumpy sacks. He felt stiff; his eyes were sore; his body ached; and his skin felt hot from so much sunlight.

  But the air were cool. It smelt different from the harbour here, of trees and bullocks, not the salt smell of the sea and whale oil from the ships. He sat up and stretched.

  The dray were no longer moving. The bullocks had been unhitched, and were drinking at a stream. He could see a hut not far away, with smoke coming from its chimney. There were other drays stopped in front of them and behind, the animals grazing or drinking.

  Where were Roman John? And then he saw him, sitting at a small fire by the dray.

  ‘Finally woke up, have you? It’s all right, boy. It’ll take you a few weeks to get your strength back. You’re young, at least. Some of the older men never get over the voyage. Hungry?’

  Billy nodded, and slid off the dray. His legs still felt unsteady. He sat next to the welcome warmth of the flames. The fire smelt odd. It must be the wood, he thought. A different land, and different trees.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Springwood. We camp here for the night. The animals need to be fresh for the haul up the mountain tomorrow. Here.’ Roman John used a stick to poke something from the edge of the fire toward him.

  It was a potato, the skin black but the inside warm and floury. If it had been cooler he’d have gulped it down. Billy nibbled it, tossing it from hand to hand so it didn’t burn him, grateful for both the heat and food.

  ‘Plenty more.’ Roman John poked another across to him. ‘I put in enough for breakfast and tomorrow’s lunch too. Can’t be bothered making damper.’ He nodded at the hut. ‘The driver’s in there, and more fool him. His plate of stew and tankard of rotgut’ll cost him as much as a good sow, then as soon as he’s drunk they’ll try to pick his pockets. We’re better off out here, where I can keep an eye on the dray.’

  Billy nodded. He wondered if there were aught in the driver’s pockets worth nabbing. But they’d know it were him, sure as eggs. He felt his eyes closing again.

  ‘Sleep, boy. There’s empty sacks. Wrap yourself up and get underneath the dray. Reckon it’s going to rain tonight.’ He sighed. ‘Just what we don’t need—rain and mountains. But you can’t choose the weather. I’ll sit here a while before I join you.’

  A strange bird was sitting on a branch laughing at him. Billy rubbed his eyes and peered out from under the dray. Was he on the ship still, dreaming in the darkness? But there the bird was, white and brown, poking its beak up at the sky. And the damp feeling was wet sacks underneath him, not seawater. The overseer had been right. It must have rained. He began to roll out from under the dray, then froze.

  Snake.

  It was black, with a flash of red on its belly. It lay like a stick, unmoving, only a few feet away. But no stick had eyes like that.

  Snakes here could kill you…but Roman John hadn’t said what to do when you woke up with one. If he moved again it might strike. Should he just lie here, and hope it slithered away?

  Instead he rolled swiftly out the other side, then stood up. ‘Snake!’ he yelled.

  Roman John peered down from the dray.

  ‘Where?’

  Billy pointed. But it had gone.

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘Red ‘n’ black’.

  ‘Not too bad. More scared of you than you of it. It’s the browns and tigers that go for you. Tigers won’t let go, either, just keep pumping poison. Come on. The driver’s almost ready, and almost sober too. Hop on.’

  It was slow going up the mountains. They may have looked blue in the distance, but here they were green and mud. The mist turned to drizzle then to a steady soaking rain. Billy sat wrapped in the wet sacks, trying to ignore the water dripping down his face.

  At last the clo
uds seeped away. Suddenly the sun was back again, almost as hot as the day before. Steam rose from the track, and from the sacks too.

  ‘Here.’ Roman John passed Billy some cold black potatoes, then handed a couple to the driver. The driver grunted his thanks.

  There were about a dozen drays in front of and behind them now, some drawn by only a couple of bullocks, others heavy laden, with great teams of twenty animals, and men on either side urging them to keep in line with whips and sticks. Horses strained in front of lighter carts and, once, a mail carriage passed, top-hatted passengers sitting inside in comfort while the horses panted at a canter. Damp dogs ran from dray to dray, barking at each other and the bullocks, rolling in the horse dung, and darting after wallabies, strange hopping beasts that looked out at them startled from the brush. The bullock drivers lashed their beasts, and swore. They had more swear words than even Blue Jimmy back home. They also had fewer teeth, so it was hard to make out what words they used.

  The thought of Blue Jimmy gave him a pang. Home, in the warm attic…

  But would he really rather be there, in the smoky streets, than here? Birds sang like tiny bells around them. All he had to do was lounge in the dray, and eat potatoes.

  He blinked at the thought. O’ course he’d rather be back home! The streets he knew, the flatties with pockets to be picked. What were Jem doing now?

  Suddenly the dray in front stopped. Billy looked up. They’d come to a block of huts. Men in muddy rags huddled on blocks of wood. One ran up and held out a skeletal hand. ‘Tobacco, maties?’ he wheedled.

  Roman John shook his head. The bullock driver swore, as did his helpers. The man slunk over to another dray.

  ‘Can’t offer him anything,’ said Roman John quietly, ‘or we’d have them all wanting a handout.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Road gang.’

  ‘Convicts?’

  Roman John nodded.

  Billy shivered. This is what he might have been, if Roman John hadn’t taken him—ragged, starved, his callused hands blue-tipped with cold.

  ‘Why’ve we stopped?’

  ‘This is Soldier’s Pinch. Some poor soldier got his foot crushed here, when a wheel ran over it. It’s downhill from here.’

  ‘Going down is easier than going up, ain’t it?’ asked Billy.

  ‘No,’ said Roman John.

  The rain seeped down on them again: thin rain, cold as snow and twice as wet. The bullock drivers were silent. This road was too bad even to curse. It was almost vertical, so steep that even he and Roman John needed sticks to stop them sliding in the mud.

  It was three miles down to the bottom of the slope. Billy and Roman John waited in the drizzle as the first dray began to slide down the sloping track, half its bullocks yoked behind and the wheels locked to try to slow the whole thing down.

  Billy peered through the thickening mist. At times the bullocks were knee-deep in mud. Even the dogs walked silently now, as though they knew that the slightest slip might mean disaster.

  Suddenly there was a yell, not far from where they stood. Billy ran after Roman John.

  At first all he could see was mud…but now the mud was moving, a struggling muddle of animals and, suddenly, another colour.

  Blood.

  Bullockies slid down toward them, yelling instructions to each other, somehow working out how in the heaving mass to cut the tethers to let the animals free. One by one the bullocks staggered to their feet, lowing, trying to find firm ground to stand on. Billy looked for the driver…

  He felt Roman John grab his arm. ‘Come away, boy. Now.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘We can be no help here. His mates will sit with him. All you or I can do is let the man die without faces gawping down on him.’

  Billy followed Roman John. It was raining heavily now. The water made a wall around him so that it was impossible to make out more than a few feet of mud and greenery. He kept seeing the muddy stumps where the driver’s legs had been.

  What was this country, where even driving down a road in a bullock dray could kill you?

  CHAPTER 7

  Billy, 1831

  It took the rest of the day before their own dray reached the bottom. Roman John let out a sigh. ‘They say ghosts haunt this road. Ghosts of those who built it, ghosts of those who died along it.’

  Billy looked around at the mist and darkening shadows. ‘Are there really ghosts?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Not the sort that wail in white and go boo. But the pain and the misery—yes, you can feel that all right. Or else you should.’

  It was too damp that night to light a fire. They ate cold potatoes, and slept, wrapped again in hessian sacks. There were no ghosts, just the lowing of the bullocks, and the sad singing around the fire of the bullocky’s companions, mourning his loss with a keg of rum—the only way they knew how.

  Three days after that they left the road—muddy and rutted as it was—and headed out onto what was hardly even a track, just axe marks on the trees to show the way.

  ‘Two more days and we’ll be there,’ said Roman John, stretching. ‘Ah, all this jolting makes my back ache. But at least the food has lasted us this time.’ He patted the sack of potatoes. ‘Should see us there with some to spare.’

  But where is there? thought Billy. And where was Jem?

  CHAPTER 8

  The Horse, 1831

  It was mid-afternoon when I broke free.

  The men had pushed us hard all day. It was dry country, the grass burnt by summer’s heat. Most of the mares plodded, their hides dusty. I took my usual place behind the others, watching for danger.

  But danger was all around us. The men, with their whips, and their horses who did their bidding, instead of running free as we had done.

  At last we came to a stream, dry like the others, except for a few small holes that smelt of wallaby and possum. I watched the men stretch their white stuff between the trees to stop us getting away. They no longer used brush fencing now we were so used to staying all together.

  Most horses follow each other. That is why each mob has a boss mare, who leads the way. That’s why each mob has a king, like me.

  A horse who will fight to get away.

  This was my chance. If I could get over that white barrier I might get free. And where I led, perhaps the rest would follow…

  I eyed the barrier. No, I couldn’t leap over it—there was no room to jump properly with all the other horses around. But now I looked at it more closely the white stuff looked as fragile as a thorn-bush branch. I could push through branches. Why not through this? Why had I never looked properly at it before?

  Because I had been scared and shocked. Because I too had followed the others, assuming we couldn’t get away.

  I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Could I do it? I pawed the ground, tossed my head and snorted, and started trotting around the enclosure. The other horses shifted uneasily.

  I neighed a warning to White Foot and the others. My own mob looked up, preparing to follow my lead. Even some of the others saw me as their King now. I broke into a canter, did a twisting buck, then turned and galloped from the end of our enclosure toward the barrier.

  Nearer…nearer…my chest met the white stuff. It snapped.

  I was free!

  I felt like trumpeting in triumph but there was no time. I had to get clear before the men could catch me on their horses! Behind me I could hear others following. I slowed to let them pass. Not as many as I’d hoped. But there went White Foot, still leading the way, and her half-grown foal too. There went my other mares…

  The men on horses were busy lashing at the others to keep them back, and tying up the white stuff again. I wished the others had the courage to follow me, but I couldn’t mourn them now, or even call them to follow. Two of the men began to ride in my direction, their whips lashing through the air. One had long grey whiskers, and one a red beard.

  A whip stung my hindquarters. I galloped after the
others, trusting White Foot to find the clearest way. Once again we had the advantage, for the horses following us had men on their backs. They would tire before we did.

  Our hoofs thundered on the heat-hard ground. Dust rose about us, dirt and powdered grass. A bang ripped the air behind me. It smelt like lightning.

  I heard a yell behind me. ‘Aim for the horse in front!’

  Another bang. White Foot fell. Blood gushed from her side. A hole had opened there. Why? How? For a second she struggled to get up, then her eyes glazed, and she lay still.

  Her foal screamed in terror. It skittered around her, showing the whites of its eyes. The other horses halted.

  The bang came again. Another horse shuddered to the ground. She writhed in the dust, trying frantically to run again, then lay back, panting, as her blood welled.

  I cantered around the fallen horses, tossing my head. The men and their mounts circled us, whips lashing. The man with grey whiskers yelled, ‘I’ll shoot the big white one! He’s the ringleader!’ He pointed something long and thin at me.

  ‘No!’ The man with the red beard reined his horse in next to Grey Whiskers, and pushed the long thing away. ‘He’s magnificent! He’ll fetch a hundred pounds at least.’

  ‘If you can break him.’

  Red Beard showed his teeth. ‘I can break any horse.’

  I cantered around White Foot, trembling and snorting, smelling her blood. I could protect her from dingoes, from native cats; I could scare eagles away from her foals. But now I didn’t even know how she had been hurt.

  I knew who had done it though. It was men.

  I reared. I hated them. I hated every man. I hadn’t hated Highest. That had been an honourable fight, horse to horse. Whatever had happened here had no honour. It was bad.