Silver Brumby Echoing

by Elyne Mitchell

  In the Cascades, the great stallion, Yarraman, Son of Storm’s grandsire, had ruled for years. Thowra and Storm had been here as mischievous foals and yearlings. The Brolga had defeated Yarraman, here, and then Thowra had returned here as King of the Cascade brumbies years later, after he had defeated The Brolga.

  If anyone, man or horse, had been watching them there, they might have seen, as night came on, the little cavalcade of brumbies, led by the blue roan mare, threading its way, in single file, up the bare slopes out of the Cascades. Dandaloo, in the lead, with the so-small blue roan foal climbing close beside her. Wingilla and her filly foal following close, and dear, faithful Son of Storm bringing up the rear.

  They rested among the snow gums that were on either side of a lovely saddle where the white-cupped gentiana trembled in the gentle south breeze, and from where they could see the rocky peaks of the Ramshead Range.

  Dandaloo was tingling with excitement. The marvellously loved country, the thrilling country, was ahead of them. There were the peaks among which she had galloped when she was very young, when the red-and-white Hereford cattle grazed the high country, where, perhaps, one might catch a fleeting glimpse of Bel Bel with her silver foal at foot. No road had gone through Dead Horse Gap when Bel Bel roamed, but now they would have to cross the gap at night, and they would have to hurry across, into the thick snow gums, at the place where a hut once had been.

  Son of Storm was being very wary. The road belonged to men much more than the old hut ever had, but the old hut was gone. No billy was hanging on a wire hook near the door that was no longer there — no billy to blow in the wind and frighten Thowra and Storm when they were curious two-year-olds. There was no smell of smoke, now, no high-fence yards out of which Thowra had stolen Golden.

  It seemed to Dandaloo that memories … action … spirits were all around them … in every whispering tussock of snowgrass … in every rustling cluster of leaves.

  Choopa and the filly foal, Bri Bri, were infected by the excitement — feeling very strongly the presence of all that had happened here, over all those long years of sun and of snow.

  A strange little summer mist flowed up from the Crackenback River, that night in which they crossed Dead Horse Gap, as though to hide the man-made road and muffle the sound of their hooves on its hard surface, and this mist seemed to hold the shadow of the old hut and long-gone yards, the wonderful grace of Thowra leaping the high fence.

  Through the mist they flitted across the Gap, like ghosts themselves, but this time there were no silver horses — only Wingilla, daughter of the Silver Brumby and Boon Boon, and her foal, Bri Bri, by Son of Storm. Thus it was, that those of the bloodlines of the two great friends, Thowra and Storm, were back in the high mountains, climbing upwards, alongside the old blue roan mare and her dwarf foal — the spellmaker.

  Silently through the drifting summer mist, and up through the snow gum thickets they climbed, and then grazed their way onwards and upwards, feeling quite safe now they were leaving the road behind them. At last they passed a big build-up of rocks and the ridge flattened out a little, and the snow gums became more wide spaced.

  First light came sliding up the Crackenback River Valley, throwing long mysterious shadows of rock and trees. Then, suddenly, Dandaloo saw one shadow on its own — a long, stretched out shape of a man standing on top of a big rock.

  A dream? The shadow moved on the snowgrass and was gone. The man who had been standing on a great rock, whose shadow had been made by the rising sun, slid down behind a tree, and watched the cavalcade move on slowly, up the ridge, watched the little blue-roan colt dance his way through beams of early sunlight, and the dewdrops on his fetlocks made spangles of sunlight swinging on his legs.

  A currawong flew over, calling, calling. It saw the man and it saw the brumbies: it saw the excited jiggling, prancing of the two foals. There was the dwarf, the spellmaker of whom the birds of the air had all been singing for the space of several moons — the one of whom the flying phalanger had spread such unbelievable tales.

  Streams and birds, and whispering grass might tell the tales, and the giant glider too, but slowly the men who walked and the men who rode were also beginning to have their stories of the blue roan dancing foal.

  The brumbies climbed on. They went quite slowly so they would not tire out the two foals. By morning they were hiding in the last of the snow gums just below the lovely grass basin, big and wide and steep-sided, below the rocky tors of the South Ramshead.

  The man had skirted around, out of sight of the horses, out of any drift of air that might carry his scent.

  From a crevice between the two rocky tors, he saw the brumbies emerge carefully from the gnarled snow gums on a little rocky knoll, saw them in the snowgrass basin, saw them start to roll.

  He stood quite still and watched.

  The horses were obviously enjoying themselves — the old blue mother and the brown stallion seemed to know all the best rolling places, seemed to know the red-tipped pardalote who called ‘witty-chu’ from the topmost line of snow-bent trees, knew that the bird’s call, or that of its son or grandson, would sound for many years.

  The man was still about, hours later. Dandaloo had led them all up as high as they could climb on the South Ramshead. The man saw them silhouetted against the sunset sky.

  They stood at the edge, above the steep drop into the Leatherbarrel Creek, looking across at the highest mountains.

  The man saw that there was an eagerness in each one, as though they were on the verge of finding out some secret which they sought. That blue dwarf got up and did a twirling, whirling, leaping dance that looked as if it were a celebration of the sunset and the mountains. He was on a small snowgrass platform between two rocky tors and he took off with a few galloping strides into the basin, but he seemed to fall over those strangely swinging legs. He fell and somersaulted, sprang up and fell again, somersaulting in a glow of sunset light.

  The man barely believed what he had seen — a faery tableau in a children’s pantomime.

  The Man, the Blizzard and the Brumbies

  The high tops of the mountains! Bare rolling tops, and rocky peaks like Targangil, steep western cliffs and gullies. All high, wild mountains breed wild, wild weather. Fierce storms may suddenly come out of a clear day in such places as this.

  The man on foot knew about storms, here in these mountains, and one in particular which had nearly brought death and disaster to a scientific expedition, long, long ago. It was because the storm had nearly wiped out the expedition, near Lake Cootapatamba, and because the man had seen the big painting done by the artist on the expedition, that he was thinking about it. The artist, von Guerard, came from Vienna where Franz had lived and worked. That painting depicted a clear and lovely day, like this day, but the man knew that ‘out of the blue’ a storm had come. The storm separated the expedition members, one being lost for so long that they thought him dead, another collapsing, and their poor, patient packhorse, Tommy, tethered to a rock of the South Ramshead, nearly dying of exposure.

  Tommy was in the man’s thoughts, too, because as he noticed a thin line of cloud, far to the north-west, he also noticed that old blue roan mare, the one he had seen on the Ramshead Ridge. He saw her go down to drink at Lake Cootapatamba, and saw her ridiculous foal gallop to the water’s edge, fall, and then somersault into the bright water of the lake.

  It was late in the day, too late, perhaps, to be in such an exposed place, but the man — who was experienced in the mountains of his own homeland — had set up a tent on the further side of Mt Etheridge, well sheltered, and he was quite sure of his safety. He should have thought more deeply. That rocky mountain used once to be called Dead Horse Mountain, because a mob of brumbies had died there, so long ago, caught by a bitter snowfall and yarding themselves. It was here, too, where two skiers had died some years back.

  He saw that the old blue roan was fidgety, and that the noble-looking brown stallion was quietly gathering up the two foals and t
he young buckskin filly.

  Suddenly, out of the blue, the wind was roaring down from the high, domed mountain, rampaging in fog and cloud over the pass at the head of the lake. The lake vanished. The brumbies vanished. The big snowdrift above Cootapatamba was completely hidden by the driven clouds.

  The wind hurled the man against a rock, tore at him. He gripped a slab of granite with his ungloved hands, and hung on. He thought he heard a frenzied neigh — a foal’s neigh — but he could see nothing. His eyelids were beaten together, glued by tears, and flying cloud, and grit, and even wind-borne sugary particles of summer-hard snow from the drift.

  It was a little blue roan foal with strangely misshapen legs that he was wondering about. How would anything so small withstand a wind of such strength? Anyway, how could these brumbies find shelter? The man knew he would have to fight his way around to the other side of Etheridge to find his tent — if it were still there.

  Once, as he tried to struggle across the raging wind, he thought a horse was in the cloud just ahead of him, and the faint, ghostly shape of a very small foal … After that, just the darkness of wild, black cloud, grey fog, and wind.

  Son of Storm had realised that the wind was coming just before it hit them, and he had marshalled his little herd. Almost immediately it was obvious that neither of the foals would be able to fight their way through the gale. All he could do was try to keep them all together, and go with the wind, but they would have to get around the head of the lake first.

  Choopa tried, with all his courage and determination, to keep going. The appalling strength of the wind flung him off balance, and he kept falling, and they made no progress at all.

  Dandaloo stayed beside her foal as though they were nearly glued to each other. Son of Storm tried to force Wingilla to stay with the old mare and keep Bri Bri with her — but Bri Bri was feather-light; the wind just picked her up and blew her away, and they could not see her. The little filly gave a terrified neigh, as she disappeared into the grey fog. Choopa heard her and struggled up to try to get to her, went a few steps and was blown over again. He fell into the little gully where the white purslane grew, and Dandaloo quickly lay down beside him, on the windward side, to protect him, and put one foreleg over him so that the wind could not carry him away.

  They heard a cry carried in the wind, but there was nothing she could do except save her foal. She was tired and old, and the wind was full of voices. They might freeze where they lay. She pressed even closer to Choopa, trying to warm him. Twice a man or a shadow seemed to stumble past in the impenetrable fog.

  There was no sign of Son of Storm or Wingilla and her foal. Cloud and fog enfolded them, and it was so cold.

  She raised her head and neighed, calling Son of Storm. An answer came — a neigh all shredded and carried away by the wind. She curled her body closer round her foal.

  She could not see Son of Storm through the blasting cloud, could not see him somehow forcing Bri Bri to stay between Wingilla and himself, as they fought their way back towards her call. Then Son of Storm was pushing Bri Bri and Wingilla to lie down beside Choopa, and he lay on the windward side of them all.

  Was a man near? Did something go past?

  Huddled together, the little group of horses were not frozen, though Son of Storm, protecting them all from the wind, was fearfully cold — making himself endure.

  The clouds hurtled past, filling the sky, constantly moving, but always there, pouring over them with never a break. Each horse, except Choopa who was nearly covered by Dandaloo’s legs, felt their hide stung with wind-whipped sprigs of heath, twigs and gravel.

  Did a man go reeling, stumbling past again? Were there other horses calling with faint voices in the storm?

  Dandaloo felt Choopa’s warmth, as he lay cradled by her legs and her body and with Bri Bri on his other side. She wondered about ‘the tribe’. It was lucky they had stayed well into the timber on the other side of Dead Horse Gap.

  The man’s tent, though made to stand up in an antarctic wind, had gone. At least, he did not locate it. He walked and walked till he fell into a dry, wind-scooped hollow below a rock, and there he stayed till the wind abated, some time during the night. When he came out from under the rock, at first light, snow powdered the mountains.

  After sunshine had warmed the world, he began to wonder if he had ever seen that little mob of brumbies. Had he dreamt seeing them huddled in a heap in the worst darkness of the storm?

  Later, in Jindabyne, he might never have mentioned the brumbies lost in the storm, if a stockman in the pub had not asked him where he had sheltered from the blizzard, and said that there had been a lot of brumbies die there, once. Without thinking before he spoke, the man told of the group of horses he had seen, and said that among them was a very small blue roan, part-crippled foal.

  The stockman took notice, and his interest somehow made the man careful to say no more. After all, what was true and what might be dreams caused by exhaustion — even fear? But why was that stockman so curious? Maybe he was not just imagining that there was something very unusual about that foal.

  The next day he drove his car up to the pass above the Snowy River, and walked along the road to Etheridge and the Seaman’s Memorial Hut. He had not meant to go out in the mountains again, immediately, but for some reason he felt he must know if that foal had died there by Lake Cootapatamba.

  The stockman had said that it was strange: ‘We saw an old blue mare and a very small foal, but they were near Quambat Flat. They survived the fire all right, and we caught the mare after the fire, but she was let go, she’s that old.’ He had turned to a man sitting quietly eating his lunch. The man nodded.

  The first stockman had gone on: ‘We should’ve kept her and the foal. My kids would have liked to have the foal. I reck’n it will not live through the winter anyway.’ Then he had looked puzzled. ‘I can’t think that it and its mother would have got right up to Kosci.’

  The man, Franz, was still thinking about all that the stockman had said. He walked along the road and hopped across the shallow crossing, near one of the heads of the Snowy River, where there were more boulders, and the water was shallow.

  When he reached the ridge on which the Seaman’s Memorial Hut stood, he could look across at the place where he had set up his tent, at the feet of the Etheridge rocks. There was no sign of the tent. He would walk over, later, to look. First he wanted to get to Cootapatamba. There were several things that he wanted to know: How much had he imagined in that wild storm? Had the horses really huddled together? Were they alive, now, or dead?

  There was no obvious sign of a horse.

  He went down from Rawson’s Pass to the shore of the lake, half-expected to see a blue roan foal lying dead at the edge of the water and perhaps its mother too. There was nothing.

  He had a queer vision in his mind of a heap of horses lying together. He felt he had almost fallen into a little hollow with them — but there was no heap of bodies. He found himself walking beside a little gully that ran down to the lake. White purslane grew thickly, filling the gully. As he looked, he saw that some of it was uprooted, some of it squashed. There were indeed hoof marks and in one place the indentation of a very small front hoof.

  So he did not dream it: perhaps they had all lain down in this very shallow gully: perhaps he really had seen those horses lying close together: perhaps the clouds had lightened just sufficiently for him to make out their heaped-together bodies. But where were they now?

  The only answer he got to his questions was the aftermath of the storm whipping the lake into big waves, and no sign of a little blue roan foal and his mother. If they lived near Quambat Flat, that foal must have managed the long distance and the climb. After all, he had seen the little band climbing up on to the South Ramshead.

  They might even go back that way.

  Blue and White Foal Poised in a Rear in Lake Albina

  Snow had fallen, bitter cold, on blue roan hides, brown, and buckskin. Neither Dandaloo nor S
on of Storm were surprised by the frozen touch of the wind-driven flakes, nor, when first light came, the white dusting over snowgrass and rocks. Wingilla, too, had seen snow before, in Thowra’s Secret Valley, but Choopa was amazed at the sight. Amazement made him jump away from the cold touch of snow on his ear tips. Then there came the blinding brightness, when the sun’s oblique rays came from under a bank of cloud and turned the snow-dusted grass into glittering silver.

  The two foals chased each other around, bucking, rearing, sliding, tossing up clouds of snow, while the warmth of life flowed through them again, and when they rolled, their coats shone with snow crystals.

  There was no man to see them — no one to see the buckskin shining like gold, and the blue roan seeming like part of the sky, his mane spangled, his blue and white hide starred all over.

  Dandaloo saw her star-dusted foal, and she began to leap and buck herself. That ugly foal seemed so beautiful. She knew, now, that even if he did not grow, already the high mountains were conferring some strength on him. Already the snow, which might have killed, had given the kind of blessing which she could understand. She was old now and had lived for so long with the wild mountain seasons, lived at the sources of rivers, and, over and over again, been part of creation when she gave birth to foals. She was an old mare, and wise. She felt the spirit of Bel Bel which had come to her at the time of the ball of fire, when the bush was set alight.

  What was ahead now? Bel Bel’s bones had bleached on the South Ramshead … during the night’s blizzard, the cloud-buffeted mountains had seemed to be peopled by many horses of long ago, and even the men who had been lost here … particularly one man who seemed to be with them.

  Usually if a day dawns clear and fine after a big storm, clouds gather again quickly. This day stayed fine. The snow soon melted. Only little pockets of it remained in hollows in which foals could roll.