Silver Brumby Kingdom (7 page)

The sensation of fear and horror was still sufficiently close to make him more cautious as he got nearer to the Limestone Creek. Right at its unction with the river he paused, because he was nearing the country where he might find the black stallion, and because there must could have been a sound . . . He stood among some wattles and listened. Even to Lightning the silence seemed strange — the mopokes and possums were quiet — but Baringa would have felt with every sense that something else was listening too.

The other stallion was black, and invisible in the night Lightning began to feel a shivering go down his spine. He waited and waited in the wattle clump. The absence of all bush sounds made the night itself seem filled with waiting danger.

If that black stallion had killed Baringa and Bolder, the killer. but he must have Dawn.

Then he heard a faint sound — and he felt fairly sure it came from the other side of the river. The sound was moving upstream on the far bank. . . . Hooves squelching on wet ground? Horses brushing through thick scrub? Lightning began to walk warily up his side of the creek.

He began to get more and more tense. Sometimes he could hear whatever it was, and sometimes he could not. Perhaps, if it were a horse, the hooves were soundless on soft ground.

Then Lightning grew tenser still. Could it be that the other was stopping and listening too — listening to him? He waited. There was silence: then the other — or was it two? — walked on. Silence again. Then as the faint sound of movement started up, Lightning stepped carefully forward.

Gently placing each hoof down, he went on stopping and listening: walking a few steps: stopping, wondering, always kept going by the burning wish for Dawn. Otherwise it might really have been wiser to put off any possible meeting with the black stallion, whose mares he had stolen, at least until daylight, when the black would be plainly visible.

There came the sound of hooves splashing in water, clattering on stones. Definitely more than the hooves of one horse were splashing through shallow water. Then there was only the sound of the stream. The water was deep, in the middle, Lightning knew. He hurried to the bank, wondering what was happening, slipped at the edge, and made a loud clatter on the rocks, but did not slide right out into the open.

He peered through the teatree at the fast-moving water, oily in the darkness. It was just possible to see the dark shadow of a horse in midstream, and to realise that the dark horse had heard the noise of his slip, because he was standing quite still, staring in Lightning’s direction. The more easily seen white mare kept on forcing her way through the deep water, not caring what noise she made. Most of her body was submerged, but Lightning just had time to realise that she did not look like Dawn, before the black started to move again — move straight towards him — and as he came, never took his eyes off the place where Lightning stood.

He must see through the teatree, Lighthing thought — unaware that, for a second, one silver leg had just faintly showed — and he pressed himself quietly backwards, then moved away, quite fast, while the black was still forging on through the flooded stream.

All thought of Dawn was temporarily gone. Lightning was sure the white mare was a stranger, and he only thought of escaping as quickly as he could.

When he heard the sound of the black getting out of the water, he slowed down and crept through the teatree and wattle scrub. The black thudded and crashed around for a while, and then seemed to be heading towards the track. Lightning had absolutely no wish to get into a fight with him, and stayed quite quiet.

Grey dawn began, and when the light had become strong enough, Lightning saw him and saw his white mare, a bluish shadow beside him — a round, plump shadow.

It was certainly not Dawn, and, just as certainly, the black looked a fierce and arrogant fellow. Lightning had fought lots of fights in the last two years, and won most, he had plenty of confidence that he was the most magnificent stallion in the mountains, and was sure, or nearly sure, that he could beat anyone, but there was no point in seeking a fight with this very strong-looking horse — much better to slip away and find Dawn, for Dawn must become his.

The horse, having found nothing, gave a disgusted, angry sort of snort, and suddenly — to Lightning’s amazement — started furiously down the river again, but this time on the eastern bank.

Lightning hastened back to Quambat, and only when he had gone a few miles did the creeping feeling leave the hide of his back.

All the usual Quambat horses were grazing on the flat, as he got there, except for one. A big dun stallion was missing. Lighting had beaten him in a fight, about eighteen months ago, and never taken any notice of him since. Had he heard the whisper that Baringa was dead? Had he remembered playing with Dawn when she was a dancing slip of silver light, and gone to find her now?

Lightning hastened up the flat to Goonda and Yarolala.

“Where has the dun gone?” he asked Goonda, barely waiting to touch her nose.

Goonda looked troubled.

“I don’t know, but every mare, every horse is saying that Baringa is dead. Perhaps he went to look for Dawn.”

“Which way did he go?”

“He went in the night.”

Lightning trotted off to the dun’s usual camping place under a candlebark. Baringa, he knew, would have been able to track him from there, but though he searched for his hoof marks for a tong time, he could not find them, so he did not know which way to go.

Lightning, in fact, had no idea where Baringa ran except that he knew he used to go up on to the Pilot and had definitely come down off that mountain, the day they went seeking Yarolala together.

There really were only two possible places, he thought, the Pilot and Dale’s Creek.

Dale’s Creek was where he had seen Yarolala with the emus: Dale’s Creek was burnt into his memory by the fire; Dale’s Creek was an eerie, quiet place that made one’s coat prickle, a place where few birds sang.

Lightning set off for the Pilot.

The usual way to the Pilot lay up through Cloud’s grazing ground. Lightning was wondering, as he went up, if Cloud — sire of Dawn and head of Quambat for years — knew where Baringa ran, wondering if he dared ask him? He knew that Cloud had been angry each time he had tried to take Dawn from Baringa. Cloud had never seemed to realise that he was the finest stallion and that Dawn should have wanted to run with him.

A lot of the day had passed when Lightning got up to the top of the flat. Cloud, with his mare, Mist, and his sister, Cirrus, were standing in the sunlight, but the old horse did not look as serene as usual.

Lightning was too anxious to find Dawn — and possibly that other one, if Baringa really had captured her — to worry about what Cloud was thinking, so he trotted up to them, and only just remembered his manners.

“Hail, O Cloud,” he said, and then waited, because how could he be sure that Cloud knew Baringa was dead?

Cloud also waited.

The two stallions looked at each other and the two mares looked at them. Even Cirrus’s foal watched curiously.

At last Lightning started to move on. Cloud said nothing at all, for he did not know what would be the best for his daughter, Dawn and his other daughter, if it were true that she really existed and had been won by Baringa. He felt, too, that Lightning had stored up trouble for himself and all at Quambat by stealing those roan mares. Cloud knew well that the black stallion was an ill-tempered horse. He could not think of any reason why the black had not already arrived at Quambat Flat, looking for his mares. The only thing of which he felt certain was that Dawn would pick her own stallion, if Baringa were really dead. Cloud mourned Baringa, because he loved the younger horse.

Lightning, made rather less confident by Cloud’s disapproving silence, jogged steadily through the bush until the country became too steep and too thickly suckered, when he slowed up.

Shadows of strange horses flitted through the thick snow-gums and through the oblique bars of sunlight, the bands of shade. Lightning wished he knew some of them instead of feeling like an unwanted stranger in this country where he had rarely been before. He had no very pleasant memories of this area, either, for it was here, when he was only a two-year-old, that the grey stallion, Steel, had chased him . . . here, in fact, where Baringa had saved him by calling aloud to distract Steel. That Lightning had beaten Steel afterwards, and taken the best of his mares, had not wiped away the memory of that terrifying sunset gallop.

Lightning was not exactly thinking of it now, as he pushed through the thick suckers and went out on to the open ridge, but the picture of the country had been stamped on to his mind with fear, so that though he was now a mature stallion and not a frightened two-year-old as he stepped out into the open, among the rocks and low bushes, and the purple patches of sarsaparilla all glowing with life in the late sunlight, a slow feeling of apprehension began to seep right through him.

It was nearly sunset now. Soon he would become a burnished golden horse, just as he had on that evening — a golden horse standing out for all to see on the empty hillside. The only thing that was different was the odd patch of snow lying in little gullies.

The rocks rolled under his feet and went thudding, booming, crashing through the quiet and empty air. That noise, too would draw attention to him — but why should he feel fearful? Why, when no horse could beat him, should fear come on the cool air?

He constantly looked behind, but nothing followed him. He looked below, but there was nothing there. Only a sparrow hawk hovered out in the air above Dale’s Creek, and far away, almost over the Murray, he could see two wedgetail eagles, like specks in the sky. That was all. Above, on the mountain, there was no living thing to be seen. He was entirely alone.

Hoof on rolling rock, hoof on grey, granitic soil, knee brushing bitter pea bush, muscles in the back straining — Lightning went on, with ever the cold touch of fear, until, pushing upward with his strong quarters, he was over the last climb, and stepping into a grassy glade on top.

Then all around him the Pilot’s dead and silver forest wove wind-streaming limbs — countless silver trees, all dead and stiff in the form into which the wind had blown them when they lived, long years ago — and Lightning was a silver horse moving through them, afraid of he knew not what.

The sun had already set and the light itself was chill silver. He walked very slowly, each footfall silent on the grass, and he looked to either side, looked ahead, and constantly looked back. Cold and biting, the evening south wind sprang up from Suggan Buggan way. He shivered, and his shiver was not entirely from the cold. It was no wonder Baringa had chosen this place, he thought, and if Dawn were still here, she would be part of the petrified forest, and difficult to see — Dawn or that other one.

He wandered through the bleached trees, jumping nervously whenever the wind moved the branches so that they rattled together. He felt sure that someone or something was hidden in the trees, yet there was no trace of horses having been there. Where, he wondered, had the dun stallion gone, he was not here.

He went out of the dead trees and was among the living, the small, wind-tortured trees that grew almost up to the bare summit. On he walked, slowly, hesitatingly, along the grassy glades. He knew that Dawn had once been here, but he was less certain that she was here now. Whatever he had felt so strongly present in among the trees was surely only loneliness. He reached the summit and went right to the top of the rocks. Baringa had stood there, he knew, but Baringa was dead. The wind, unbroken by any tree or higher peak, was the cold, touch of this loneliness.

There were huge thunderheads just starting to boil up to the north-west, the weather changing swiftly as it does in the spring. If the south wind died down, a storm might come.

Lightning turned, stumbling on the rough rocks, and hurried down. He went to the south-eastern edge of the long summit ridge and stared down into the tangle of bush. It looked empty also, but he well knew that it probably hid many horses. Perhaps Dawn was there. He searched along the ridge till he found a track down. Soon he was enclosed in the dense bush, unable to see out, and dropping downwards fast. It would be a long climb up. Perhaps there was some lovely river flat down below, hidden by this thick bush, where Baringa had hidden, and where his mares were still grazing, waiting and waiting for him to come home.

On this side of the mountain there were many more drifts of snow still remaining, and the track was wet and slippery. Sometimes Lightning almost slid on his haunches. He was getting rather worried. He had never been so far on his own, and it would soon be dark.

He came to a small grass clearing where there was a spring and the start of a creek. He dropped his nose to drink at the first small pool — silver nose touching dark water — and suddenly saw two distinct sets of hoof prints. With his nose still in the water, but not drinking, he stared at the hoof marks. Eight marks! Small, neat! Surety they were made by two young mares!

Lightning quickly sucked up some water and then, nose to ground, started to follow the spoor. Since there was only the one narrow track in the thick bush, this was not difficult, at least not while there was light, but darkness was coming. He hastened on, only looking now and then to make sure the two sets of hoof marks were still going down the track. The track on the wet, black earth was in darkness before the day had completely gone. He knew that the spoor he had been following were not really fresh, perhaps nearly two days old, and there was no scent.

Night seemed to rise up from the ground and it closed in. He knew he would have to stop in case there were tracks branching off, and he missed the way the spoor went. As soon as he stopped he felt the immensity of the bush all around, and he wished he had Goonda with him.

There was no sound in the darkness. He got off the track and pressed himself into the bush, to stand and wait for daybreak, to stand and perhaps sleep.

At the start of the night, the stars shone brightly in the strip of sky which he could see, but as the hours spun by, clouds began to pass over.

Lightning felt as though everything around him grew larger and larger. At last he could no longer bear the silence and aloneness, and he raised his head and called. He heard his own neigh ringing out to the sky, echoing off unseen hillsides, and then the silence that followed it, because there was no answer at all.

If those young mares were anywhere near, surely they would answer. He tried again, this time throwing out to the wide air a call that held all the excitement and enticement that he, Lightning, son of Thowra, the most beautiful horse in the mountains, could offer.

Once again the echoes came back, from further and further, and as the last one died away, deep silence settled down.

The night grew darker with cloud — darker, deeper — and Lightning’s confidence in himself as the most beautiful horse, and the unbeatable stallion of Quambat Flat, became less and less. He barely slept at all. Once a mopoke called and he jumped so hard that a broken branch stuck into his rump. Then, when he was almost asleep, vague, uneasy pictures of that ill-tempered black stallion kept floating through the night, so that real sleep never came. He wished he were already headed back for Quambat.

At last the light started to filter through the trees — and there were those hoof marks leading him on towards the head of the Berrima River, the hoof prints of lovely, dancing mares, that in his mind kept taking the shape of Dawn and that other one — white and silver mares dancing — so that the prints had infinite attraction. Lightning kept following for hours, without thought.

The little creek ran into another small stream which was the head of the Berrima. Here other tracks led in several directions. The hoof marks which Lightning had been so carefully following seemed to vanish. He searched desperately because he felt quite certain they were Dawn’s and that other filly’s. Finally he found that they had crossed the stream and gone up, not down, on a very faint track on the other side, up onto the Berrima Range.

While he had been searching for the spoor be had time to realise how heavy the clouds were becoming. He had again begun to feel that he was a long way from home: then he found the tacks again and forgot everything except the certainty that he must soon find Dawn. His moments of anxiety, however, made him go faster now, faster and faster, panting upwards on a track that grew very faint — but still held the hoof marks. The faster he went, the further he got from home.

At the top of the Berrima Range, once again there were several tracks. A wide, well-defined one went along the top, and on it were many hoof prints. The tracks which Lightning was following went straight over the ridge and down the other side.

Once again, as he paused, Lightning noticed how the clouds were massing. Then down he plunged through the thick timber, and went trotting down the track, slipping and sliding when it got wet.

He heard black cockatoos screaming with unearthly cries overhead, but he did not have time to think that a storm was surely coming.

He trotted into a clear valley with a small creek in it, and this, in turn, ran into a larger valley and a larger stream. All tracks vanished in the thick snowgrass. Lightning stood, head thrown up, looking around. There was no sign of any mares — no horses at all.

A hot wind came in gusts. In the distance he heard the rumble of thunder. The wind lifted the silver mane on the strong crest of his neck. Suddenly the sensation of being completely alone filled him, just like it had filled him during the night. Then, the hoof marks were only hidden by darkness, now they were far more hopelessly lost in the thick snowgrass. Though he had followed them for miles, he had not found the mares who had made them, and he was far from home. He neighed a long, lonely neigh.

There was no one to see the big silver stallion, no one to hear his call. He walked to the edge of the river, found a crossing place, and splashed through. There were many hoof marks in the mud and at the edge of the river, which had been much higher recently. Lightning studied them all, but could not find the two lovely sets of prints, He went back to search through the grass for another path, but the grass grew too thickly.

The wind came again, and the thunder sounded closer, rolling among rocks, echoing off the heavy clouds. Lightning stood alone in the empty valley of the Ingegoodbee, and called and called.

The only living things that seemed to take any notice of him came stepping and swaying out of the bush.

Lightning started with fright, but he realised immediately that they were the emus, the same emus.

The birds came quite close, and they looked him up and down.

“What on earth are you doing here?” they asked.

Lightning looked angry for a moment, and then thought that politeness might get him further.

“I have been following Dawn’s spoor,” he said.

“
Dawn’s
!” The emus looked completely surprised, and Lightning knew that their amazement was real. All of a sudden he realised that he had been quite wrong. After all Dale’s Creek must be the place where Baringa ran.

“Is Dawn in Dale’s Creek?” he asked.

The emus were still looking amazed.

“You do believe that nothing can ever befall you, don’t you?’ one emu said. “Why are you so far from the mares you stole? That black will assuredly come for them, and if you are not there, what will stop him taking all your mares.”

Lightning simply snorted his disdain. However, he felt very uncomfortable. The quickest way home was the way he had come, over the Pilot, so he turned that way as soon as the fierce-looking birds had gone.

After a moment or so he began to canter, and, even when the track began to go up through the bush, he kept trotting as best he could. Instead of a picture in his mind of dancing white mares, he could only think of that black stallion at Quambat Flat. He did not want those roan mares to go back to their black, but, most of all, he could not bear to think of losing his beautiful Goonda.

Thunder was rumbling closer than ever, as he scrambled up the last steep part of the track on to the Pilot and into the silver forest The wind steamed through the trees. Lightning stood still, thinking that something moved, but it was only the wind and the cry of the wind through the trees. The afternoon was getting dark, hours before nightfall. Lightning began to hurry through the forest, cantering along a grassy glade till thick, dead, silver trees stopped him.