The Snow Pony

by Alison Lester

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Alison Lester is the well-known creator of many popular and award-winning children’s books. She grew up on a cattle farm by the sea, in Gippsland, south-eastern Victoria. She writes about Australian country life with honesty, humour and affection, and an irrepressible sense of adventure.

  The Quicksand Pony was shortlisted for the National Children’s Award, Festival Awards for Literature, and was the winner of the WA Young Readers Book Awards. The Snow Pony was shortlisted for both YABBA and KOALA awards, reflecting its popularity with young readers of horse stories.

  Alison is involved in many community art projects, and travelled to Antarctica to run the Kids Antarctic Art Project. She spends part of every year in remote Indigenous communities, helping children and adults write and draw about their own lives.

  In 2012, Alison Lester became Australia’s first Children’s Book Laureate, a position shared with Boori Monty Pryor.

  PRAISE FOR THE SNOW PONY

  Lester tells a gripping yarn, brimming with classic pictures. Her heroes are risk-taking battlers…Readers will embrace the joy of a fast ride through the snow.

  Australian Book Review

  Absorbing and moving…Tears will be shed! Australian Centre for Youth Literature

  The powerful relationship between Dusty and her horse… is a friendship which, against all odds, wins through. The novel is sure to be swooped on.

  Reading Time

  An engrossing adventure story.

  The Sunday Age

  This is a fantastic Australian adventure with depth and character.

  Viewpoint

  A gripping novel that is sensitive without being sentimental… an excellent read for young people in the 10 to 15 age range.

  School Library Association (UK)

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many thanks to Helen Packer, Sue van der Heide and Sue Indian for the photographs, Dusty for the name, Ruth Grüner for her wonderful design, and everyone who shared their stories with me.

  This paperback edition published by Allen & Unwin in 2016

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2001

  Copyright © Text and Photographs, Alison Lester 2001

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin – Australia

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  Allen & Unwin – UK

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  London WC1N 3JZ, UK

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ·

  ISBN (AUS) 9781760292133

  ISBN (UK) 9781743368640

  eISBN 9781952533624

  Front cover photograph by Nicole Emanuel

  Back cover photograph by Sue van der Heide

  Photographs on pages 50, 90 by Sue Indian

  Cover design by Sandra Nobes

  Front cover image: Nicole Emanuel

  Text design by Ruth Grüner

  Typeset by Sandra Nobes

  FOR MUM

  CONTENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PART ONE

  1 THE PLAINS

  2 THE WILLOWS

  3 THE SURPRISE

  4 THE BATTLE

  5 A ONE-GIRL HORSE

  6 THE ACCIDENT

  7 NEW SCHOOL

  8 TOUGH TIMES IN BANJO

  9 THE GELANTIPY COWS

  10 POOR SPOT

  11 QUICKSILVER

  12 THE MORNING AFTER

  PART TWO

  13 THE SHOOTING PARTY

  14 HEADING FOR THE HILLS

  15 MUSTERING

  16 THE SHOWDOWN

  17 JADE’S RUN

  18 OUT OF THE NIGHT

  19 SNOWED IN

  20 THE ROAN COW

  21 MAKING PLANS

  22 RIDING FOR HELP

  23 THE CALL OF THE WILD

  24 SMOKEY PLAIN

  25 SLEEPING IN

  A NOTE FROM ALISON LESTER

  1

  The Plains

  Dusty was eleven when they found the Snow Pony. She and her father had driven up to the high plains at the start of spring, skidding through the mud and melting snow, to check their house up there for winter storm damage. She always looked forward to that first visit after the road opened, when the snow-covered plains looked clean and uninhabited.

  Back then, Dusty loved being with her dad, just her and him. It was good with Mum and Stewie around as well, but when it was just the two of them, Dusty felt as if they were a team, ready for anything. She felt there was nothing Jack couldn’t handle. When she was tiny he had seemed so powerful she’d thought for a while that he must be boss of the whole country – the prime minister or even king of Australia – and that nobody was telling her in case she got a swollen head. Jack Riley always won, always beat his opponent – the misbehaving horse, the cranky bullock, the headstrong dog, the truck that wouldn’t start – and she was his sidekick, his right-hand man. He didn’t say it to her, but she’d heard him telling other cattlemen, at sales and musters: ‘Yeah, this is Dusty. She’s my right-hand man.’

  Sometimes she wondered how Stewie, her little brother, felt about it. Jack didn’t spend nearly as much time with him, and Dusty knew that people thought it was strange that she worked outside with her dad while Stewie stayed inside drawing space monsters and making mobiles and tagging along after Mum. Stewie just didn’t like the farm work very much. He had nearly died when he was a baby, and Jack said that Rita had been over-protective of him ever since.

  The Rileys were cattle farmers, and had been for four generations. Dusty and Stewie were the fifth. The Willows, where Dusty and her family lived, was their home property, but it was their other land, fifty kilometres away, high above the snowline in the mountains, that made the Rileys’ farm so special. They called it The Plains, because of the wide expanses of alpine grassland up there. At the start of every summer they took three days to walk the cows and their little calves up to The Plains. The cattle stayed there until Easter, growing strong on the lush clover that grew under the twisted snow gums, while the paddocks below at The Willows turned brown in the blistering summer sun.

  Each year in autumn, before snow came to The Plains, the Rileys would muster their herd of three hundred Hereford cows and calves and drive them back down the mountain to The Willows. The calves were about ten months old by then, ready to be weaned and sold at the Banjo calf sales. Calves from the high country had a reputation for growing into fine bullocks, so cattle buyers came from all over eastern Australia to bid for them. When there had been good rains over summer, and plenty of grass to fatten the calves, prices were high, but in times of drought the cheque from the calf sales was pitiful.

  The Plains was so remote and the landscape so different from anywhere else that going there was like going to another country, and Dusty and Stewie were always nagging their parents to spend a whole winter
there. ‘Go on, Mum,’ Dusty would plead, her dark eyes dancing just at the thought of it. ‘It’d be fantastic. Stew and I could do correspondence school, and you and Dad could make whips and bridles and sell them when we came back down … When the weather was good we could ski out to Nelson’s Spur and look for brumbies. We might even see a deer! We could have skiing races, just the four of us.’

  The last time they had talked about it, at Christmas, Rita went along with the game for a while, pulling Dusty’s head on to her lap and ruffling her glossy black hair. ‘You and Stewie would miss the TV too much,’ she teased. ‘You couldn’t live without TV.’

  They talked about what they’d miss, the supplies they’d take, how to grow bean shoots in a jar, for fresh greens, and then both their voices trailed away and they sat together in silence, not saying but thinking that it wouldn’t really be any fun at all. In the old days, before the drought, it would have worked, but now that Dad was always tense and angry the thought of being locked up with him for the whole winter was a nightmare.

  But back when Dusty and Jack went up to The Plains that spring, two and a half years ago, things hadn’t yet turned bad. They arrived on a grey evening without a breath of wind. The homestead stood like a lonely doll’s house among the snow gums. The carpet of white around the house was dotted with holes where sticks and leaves had started to fall through the melting snow.

  Dusty slammed the door of the truck. ‘Throw us the key Dad, and I’ll …’

  A sudden crashing from the shed tore the silence apart. Two horses charged past the house in a panic of mud, snow and flying mane.

  ‘What the …?’ Jack looked at Dusty and raised his eyebrows. ‘Where did they come from?’

  Together they walked to the shed. The gate across the front was open and bent.

  ‘Do you think they did that on purpose, Dad? Broke in so they could get to the hay? I didn’t think horses were that clever.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘They must have been starving. Must have been up here at the start of winter then couldn’t get down to the lower country through the snow. The brumbies always shelter on the north side over winter, where the snow’s not so deep and it’s warmer. Look at the mess. Been camped in here a long time.’

  It looked more like they’d been wrestling inside the shed, thought Dusty. The hay was normally stacked neatly at the back, but now there were broken bales all over the place. The earth floor was a stinking mess of rotten hay and manure.

  ‘Mmmnn. I hope you’re feeling strong, mate. We’ll have to clean that up tomorrow.’ Jack turned and shaded his eyes to look across the home paddock. The horses stood in the far corner, looking nervously back to the shed. ‘Well, they don’t seem to want to clear out,’ he said. ‘You’d think they’d have disappeared by now.’

  Dusty squinted to see them better. A pinto and a dun – no, a grey. ‘Maybe they haven’t got anywhere else to go. Maybe they want to stay with us.’ Suddenly she grabbed her father’s arm. ‘Maybe one of them can be a pony for me! A wild horse, like the Silver Brumby!’

  Jack smiled ruefully and shook his head. ‘You’re a dreamer. No, even if you could catch them, I doubt you’d ever tame that grey. She looked as wild as the wind.’

  Dusty was dreaming. A laughing polar bear was rolling her through the snow, pushing her over and over …

  ‘Dusty! Wake up!’

  She opened her eyes. Her father was kneeling beside her swag.

  ‘Dad! I thought you were a polar bear …’

  ‘Ssshhh!’ He put his finger in front of his lips. ‘Keep quiet!’

  Dusty looked around the lounge room. After dinner last night they had rolled out their swags and slept in front of the fire. The bedrooms were always freezing, and Dusty felt a bit spooky without Stewie in the other bed.

  ‘Why are the dogs inside?’

  Digger and Spike were never allowed in the house, but now they were basking in the glow of the fire, looking very smug.

  ‘I didn’t want them to frighten away the brumbies, if they came back. And they have.’

  Dusty tiptoed to the window and peered through a rip in the blind. The yard was flooded with moonlight, and moving silently through it were the horses, pale blue and ghostly. The pinto was a typical brumby, with a big box-shaped head and a runty body that looked as if it were made of spare parts from other horses. But the grey was beautiful. Her shaggy winter coat and poor condition couldn’t hide her graceful lines.

  ‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’ Jack whispered. ‘And she’s not fully grown yet. She’s only a baby.’

  The grey mare was closer to the house than the pinto, and Dusty could see the tension in her finely boned head. Her mane and tail were much darker than her coat; almost black. At first Dusty thought the horse had patches of snow on her rump, but now she could see that they were actually white dots scattered over her grey coat, like a patterned blanket.

  The horses went into the shed and Dusty imagined herself scampering over the snow, shutting the gate behind them, catching them, and then taming the snowy one for herself, but she knew it was a fantasy. These were wild horses. They’d have to be trapped in the main yards, with high solid fences that they couldn’t jump. The moon was behind the shed, so she couldn’t see in – it was as if the horses disappeared into a black hole. A muffled thump came from inside and Dusty started to giggle as she imagined the horses wrestling amongst the hay bales.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ Jack said, but suddenly Digger was at the window, barking hysterically. The snowy brumby came flying out of the shed and Dusty had never seen anything move so fast or so lightly. Her hooves barely touched the ground, and she was gone before the pinto was even past the gate. As the mare flashed past the window, Dusty could see an open wound on her shoulder; an ugly tear ringed with a ragged crust of dried blood and pus. Jack saw it, too.

  ‘She’s had dingoes after her. No wonder she’s scared of dogs.’ He turned to Dusty. ‘What a horse! Maybe we should have a go at catching her. I’ve known blokes ride brumbies they’ve caught in the bush and some of them were pretty smart horses, too, but I wouldn’t call them kids’ ponies.’

  Dusty huffed, her father knew she could handle a difficult horse. ‘I haven’t been riding Shetland ponies all my life.’

  Jack laughed. ‘I know. I know you’re a good rider, but this would be something else again. It would make those young thoroughbreds you help your mother with seem like donkeys. Still, we’ll give it a go. If they hang around, we might try and catch her when we come up to muster next autumn. She’ll have filled out a bit by then. If she’ll let herself be gentled and broken in, she might turn out all right. You never know, maybe she will be your pony.’

  Dusty and Jack slept. The old brown blinds kept out the moonlight, and in the darkened house Digger listened with pricked ears, but didn’t bark again. The horses moved like wraiths back across the snowy yard and fed in the shed, and not a sound disturbed the night.

  2

  The Willows

  Dusty lived a long way from everywhere. It took four hours to drive from the city to Bankstown, their nearest big town, then another hour to Banjo, their little town, then another fifteen minutes out to The Willows. The country became more and more hilly as you got close to their farm, and when Dusty imagined looking back from outer space she pictured them tucked away in one of a thousand little wrinkles on the earth’s surface.

  The farm was at the end of Crystal Creek Road, a dipping single lane of gravel that meandered down a wide valley ringed with folding hills.

  Her great-grandparents had built their house on the far side of the creek, and it always felt special to Dusty that you had to go over a bridge to get home. It was like being in a castle with a moat and drawbridge. The bridge was made of loosely bolted planks and it clanked and rattled like a grumpy old man every time a car crossed over.

  If you turned right after the bridge you came to the stockyards and sheds. Left brought you to the house, almost hidden by an overgrow
n garden. The creek was so close that Dusty could hear the water gurgling as she lay in bed at night. The house was a rambling weatherboard building with a corrugated iron roof and four brick chimneys. A concrete path led you through the towering box hedge, past the rotary clothesline and under the date palm that Great Grandma had planted. Once, when Dusty was a tiny girl, she had run over Tabby’s tail with her trike, as the cat lay sunning herself on the path. The crooked crack in the path always reminded her of the matching kink in her old cat’s tail.

  Everyone used the back door. There wasn’t even a path to the front door; you only went out there on summer evenings to sit on the verandah and watch the light fading over the creek, or to hide, curled-up with a book, when there were jobs to be done. The back porch had been closed-in years ago and it was always a mess; the transition zone between the farm and the house. Here you took off your boots and your muddy trousers, hung up your coat, washed in the laundry trough, and then came into the house. The first room was the kitchen and it was the hub of the house – the nerve centre, Jack used to call it. Everything happened here: homework, cooking, sewing and planning.

  The colours of the kitchen took you by surprise when you first walked in, because the cupboard doors were all painted different colours: red, yellow, blue and green. Dusty’s grandmother had seen the look in a magazine in the 1950s, and painted it herself. Since then, no one had had the heart to change it. ‘Anyway,’ said Rita, ‘if we wait long enough it’ll come back into fashion.’

  The rest of the house was much grander than the kitchen. A wide passage led to the glass-panelled front door with a leadlight window of gum leaves and blossoms above it. The lounge room was on one side at the front, and Stewie and Dusty’s bedroom was on the other, with its own fireplace. Dusty sometimes thought about moving into the spare room and having a room of her own, but Stewie was scared of the dark, and she’d miss going to sleep with the flickering fire and the sound of the creek.