The Girl from Snowy River

by Jackie French

  She couldn’t handle this, not alone. He was worse than the swaggie who’d been here three years before, who’d had a friend called Blinky no one but he could see. Blinky had told him it was wrong to hurt people, the swaggie said, with strange intentness, and Mum had locked the door and made them hide under the bed till Dad came back and saw him off with the shotgun.

  Sympathy warred with terror. She wished she had the shotgun now. Even empty, it might have scared this man away. She had to get him down to the Macks’. Mr Mack would know what to do. She grabbed Snow King’s mane, intending to swing up on him again. Mr Morris snatched her hand. ‘Don’t go!’

  ‘I’m not. I mean, I’m riding down to the Macks’. You can follow me down the track. Mrs Mack will give us some lunch. She’ll give us apple pie.’

  ‘Don’t want apple pie.’

  She tried to pull her hand away. He wrenched it back, so hard she let go of the lead rope. Snow King skittered a few paces off. She glanced at him desperately, then at the man. She tried to keep her voice calm. ‘Mr Morris, please let me go.’

  ‘Need someone to take care of me. That’s what they said at the hospital. You’ll take care of me, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, edging away, wishing Snow King would stay still long enough for her to scramble back on him. ‘Mrs Mack will too. You come down the valley with me to the Macks’.’

  ‘Give us a kiss first,’ he said. ‘That’s right, ain’t it? You know I never been kissed. Went all that way to France and never a kiss. It ain’t right. But Felicity McAlpine will kiss me.’

  ‘No!’ She backed away, his breath sour in her face, then tripped, falling heavily backwards. She landed on something sharp — a rock. It almost seemed to cut right into her body, the pain of it was so intense. The man was on her, his stink worse. His weight pressed her down into the rock so hard she screamed.

  The pain blinded her. She blinked it away, trying to shove him off with her arms. Her legs must be trapped under his — she couldn’t shift them at all.

  She flung him back and realised she was stronger than him, her brain not as fuddled. (‘Know what the greatest weapon in the world is?’ whispered Dad. ‘The human mind. An old sergeant told me that.’)

  She had to get away from him, find a weapon, a stick, a stone. She still couldn’t move her legs even though he was off her, but she could roll. She rolled once, her back screaming pain, and then again, off the track then down the slope, faster and faster, rolling down while he scrambled after her, his hands groping in front of him now his feet had left the track. ‘Felicity McAlpine? Where are you? Felicity McAlpine?’

  Her back was fire. Her legs were cold. (‘…it had got cold,’ said Nicholas. ‘It’s never cold in Vietnam.’ But Nicholas was fifty years away.)

  ‘Felicity McAlpine!’

  Her body tumbled against another rock, her face prickled by the grass. She forced herself up onto her elbows, saw a stick, managed to grab the end of it and haul it to her.

  Where was Sergeant Morris? She held the stick, ready to poke it at his face, to shove, waiting for the thud of his footstep, the plaintive cry of his voice. Instead she heard hoofbeats and then a scream. The scream went on and on.

  She couldn’t move. She had to move. She pushed her head up. (‘I managed to push myself up onto my elbows,’ said Nicholas.) The man was lying on the ground. His head and chest were bloody. Snow King stood over him. The horse’s hooves were red as well.

  Chapter 21

  10 April 1920

  Dear Diary,

  Even in these pages I won’t write about what happened that day. Can’t write about it. Maybe it would be easier if I could.

  She tried to crawl. She couldn’t. It was as though the rolling had taken all the movement that was in her. She managed at last to heave onto her back, which hurt so much the sky turned black, instead of grey.

  The man in the scrub above her didn’t move.

  For a while Snow King stood over her. She felt his breath, knew if she turned her head she’d see red hooves.

  She couldn’t bear to.

  She lay there. Time went on.

  Snow King moved away. She heard his teeth tearing at the grass. The man — the soldier — Sergeant Morris lay quite still. She knew he’d never move again.

  All she could do was lie there and try not to scream with the pain. And then she realised she should scream, as loud as she could. Maybe the White boys were up the mountainside after rabbits or trying to sneak off with any of the Greens’ calves that hadn’t been branded yet, or Mr Mullins could be out looking for a straggling sheep. She screamed and screamed and heard the echoes.

  She screamed for Sandy, screamed for Andy.

  No one came.

  She thought instead. Thought about Nicholas, far in the future, getting his new legs. There’re bad things going to come, he’d said. Well, this was bad.

  Maybe…maybe this was why he’d told her about the boy he’d killed, so she wouldn’t cry, as she was crying now, for poor Sergeant Morris, off to war and never been kissed, his mind blown away in France, his body lying here as well as his poor silly dreams of a sweetheart, a girl who had written to him once, and sent him a cake, on the last day that he was whole.

  War is all of us, she thought. All who fought, and all who cheered as they enlisted, as those young men marched away.

  She hoped Sergeant Morris had eaten his fruitcake before it happened. She hoped he’d at least had that.

  The sun was above her now, almost hidden in the clouds. Slowly, very slowly, it began to ride down the far side of the sky. Joey and Kirsty would be back soon. Her brother and sister shouldn’t find her like this, but there was nothing she could do.

  And then at last she heard the steady clop of Empress’s hooves.

  ‘Flinty!’ She heard Joey dismount and then his shout: ‘Kirsty, don’t come any closer. I said don’t get off! Go and get Mr Mack: ride fast as you can.’

  ‘Tell them to bring a door,’ she whispered. That’s what they’d done when Billy Mullins broke his leg. Had she broken her legs? Was that why she couldn’t move them?

  ‘Tell him to bring a door!’ yelled Joey. Suddenly he sounded just like Andy.

  She let the blackness take her.

  Chapter 22

  I think of pain differently now. There is pain that hurts, pain that is agony, and there is pain that is so bad you can no longer feel it. Your body just says ‘hold on’.

  The blackness turned to white, and then to pain again. She woke to find her body flying up a hill. No, not flying, lying on a door, jolting so every movement hurt. Uphill — they were taking her home, not down to the Macks’. She was glad. She needed to be home, even if her legs were broken.

  ‘Shh, girl, they’ve gone to get the doctor. Soon have you in your bed.’ It was Mr Mack’s voice.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Flinty.’ That was Sandy’s voice, from the end of the door by her feet. His voice sounded strange, rough, like he had an apple in his throat.

  ‘Kirsty?’

  ‘Don’t you go worrying,’ said Mr Mack. ‘Kirsty’s already up at the house. She’ll have the fire all warm for you. Rock Farm’s closer than our place, or we’d have taken you there.’

  She tried to sit up, found it brought the blackness back. This time she managed not to scream.

  ‘Snow King?’

  ‘Joey led him and Empress back to the house.’ There was a pause. ‘That horse was standing by you. Guarding you,’ said Mr Mack.

  ‘The man…he’s Sergeant Morris. He knew Jeff, and Andy in the war…’

  ‘Toby said Jones the mailman gave a stranger a lift this morning. Says the bloke was acting all confused like. Poor fellow must have tripped,’ said Mr Mack matter-of-factly.

  ‘But —’ She tried to speak through the pain.

  ‘Hush, Flinty, hush,’ said Sandy.

  ‘He tripped,’ said Mr Mack firmly. ‘Fell down a cliff, I reckon. Easy to do up here. Managed to crawl back near the track afore
he died. That’s what we’ll tell his folks. That’s what it’s best to say.’

  His folks are dead, she thought. She couldn’t say it. Instead she waited for the bouncing to stop, for the softness of her bed, for the moment when the pain would go.

  Chapter 23

  Why is it that you can bear pain, but someone’s kindness makes you cry?

  The pain didn’t go.

  She lay in her bed, still fully dressed, though Joey had gently pulled off her boots. She couldn’t sit up to do it for herself or even move her legs. Kirsty sat with her, holding her hand. She had washed Flinty’s face with a warm flannel and her hands too, and put a hot water bottle in her bed to warm it. Sandy sat by the bed, looking strangely helpless, as though he wanted to chop wood, build her a horse yard, do anything to help but just sit here.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said. He’d been saying it on and off for at least an hour. He made a move as though to take the hand Kirsty wasn’t holding, but pulled back.

  Flinty nodded weakly. She couldn’t have been badly hurt! It was just a backward stumble onto a rock — poor sad Sergeant Morris hadn’t had a chance to hurt her more.

  A shadow darkened the door. She’d known Joey had been growing — she’d had to lengthen his trousers twice in the past year — but she hadn’t realised how much. ‘Kirsty, make us a cup of tea? Would you like a cup, Flinty?’

  Flinty nodded. Actually she felt that she’d be sick if she swallowed anything, but Kirsty needed to do something, not just sit with her. It would be hours till Dr Sparrow got here, maybe not till tomorrow morning, as he didn’t like riding at night — too drunk, Dad used to say. Drunk by lunchtime, dead drunk by dinner…

  Dead, like Sergeant Morris.

  She waited till Kirsty had left the room. ‘How’s Snow King?’ she whispered.

  ‘He’s fine. Safe in the paddock. I washed his hooves,’ said Joey. Once again she thought how like Andy he was. ‘They had mud all over them.’

  Not mud. Blood, she thought, and Joey knew it too. So did Sandy and Mr Mack. But she didn’t say it, knew Joey and Sandy and Mr Mack would never mention it again. Snow King was no killer. He had just protected what was his. He had killed but wasn’t a killer, like Nicholas, like Andy too, and maybe even Sandy and Jeff, as well as poor Mr Morris…

  If she’d had a shotgun she might have shot him, and she’d have been a killer too. Or maybe she wouldn’t have, and then he might have hurt her even worse than he had.

  It was too hard. She shut her eyes again. Kirsty came in softly with the tea. Sandy held Flinty’s head up so she could sip the hot, sweet brew. It was funny to feel Sandy’s hands again after so many years, rough and strong and gentle. It was as though a little of his strength flowed into her. She felt better after the tea — not her legs, but her mind seemed to clear. Time passed, and pain stayed with it. Kirsty fed her a few spoonfuls of cut-up rabbit and potato stew, till the smell made her sick.

  ‘Go and eat,’ she told them.

  ‘Kirsty will go,’ said Sandy. ‘I’ll stay here until the doctor comes.’

  Dusk had turned to dark. Kirsty drew the curtains and lit the lamp just as they heard hoofbeats outside. Surely it wasn’t the doctor already.

  She heard Joey’s voice, then Mrs Mack’s, asking him to see to her horse. But Mrs Mack never rode…

  Then she was there, taking off Mr Mack’s oilskin coat, putting a carpetbag down on the floor, bending to kiss Flinty, all warm and with the scent of apple pie on her skin and in her hair.

  ‘You don’t ride,’ said Flinty weakly.

  Mrs Mack sat on the chair Kirsty had just left. ‘I can ride if I have to. It’s just easier with Sally and the cart these days. But Johnno has taken the cart to get the doctor. Don’t you worry — the lamps will show the way and Dr Sparrow can sleep in the back till they get here.’

  She turned to Kirsty. ‘Could you unpack the saddlebags, dear? There are some supplies in there. My night things are in the carpetbag. I’ll be staying,’ she added to Flinty. ‘Just for a few days.’

  ‘But how will they manage without you?’ She thought of Mr Mack and the boys coming into an empty house, an empty table. She doubted any of them had so much as toasted a slice of bread by the fire for themselves before.

  ‘Annie will look out for them.’ Annie was her daughter-in-law, who lived just across the creek. ‘Sandy, you go and help Kirsty.’ Then, as he protested, ‘No, off with you. There are times when women need to be alone.’

  Sandy left reluctantly, with a last unreadable gaze at Flinty. Mrs Mack waited till Kirsty was in the kitchen and Sandy had shut the door, then said quietly, ‘Did that bloke hurt you, lovey?’

  Flinty knew what she meant. ‘He tried to. But I fell over getting away from him and rolled clear. And then —’

  ‘And then the poor man died from the bad fall he’d had earlier. The rocks are slippery if you go off the track this time of year,’ said Mrs Mack resolutely. ‘That’s what we’ll tell anyone who asks, not that it’s any business of anyone beyond the valley. No need to even say you met him.’

  ‘But won’t people think it’s strange, the two of us being hurt the same day?’

  ‘Strange things happen,’ said Mrs Mack. ‘The important thing now is getting you better.’

  ‘It can’t be really bad,’ said Flinty.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mrs Mack. ‘You’ll be up and about by tomorrow.’

  Then why did you bring your carpetbag? thought Flinty. Why won’t Sandy go home? But she said nothing, as Kirsty came in again, and Mrs Mack went to make up the bed in Mum and Dad’s old room, and one for Sandy in with Joey.

  It can’t be that bad, she told herself again. Not from just a silly fall. It can’t be that bad at all.

  Chapter 24

  I think my body knew before my mind did. Or maybe I just refused to listen to what I knew.

  ‘It’s a broken back,’ said Dr Sparrow. His breath stank of rum; his clothes reeked of rum-soaked old sweat. His hands shook as he put them back in his trouser pockets after he’d examined her.

  Flinty lay on her stomach, her shirt pulled up, her trousers slightly down, Sandy, Joey and Mrs Mack on either side of Dr Sparrow, Kirsty behind them. Mrs Mack had told her to stay in the kitchen, but she’d crept back. Flinty would have done the same.

  ‘But it can’t be! I only tripped. I landed on a rock.’ The last sentence was hard to add.

  ‘It snapped your back,’ said Dr Sparrow, his words still slurred from his day’s drinking, despite the long drive through the mountains. ‘See this spot here?’ She felt his fingers, surprisingly gentle despite the alcoholic tremor, trace a pattern on her back. ‘Feel this lump? That’s where the spine has broken.’

  Flinty wriggled her hand around to feel it. He was right. It was like a chicken egg. Strangely it didn’t hurt to touch it, although if she moved the wrong way the pain seared back like a branding iron.

  ‘Are you sure that’s what it is?’ asked Mrs Mack quietly. ‘Maybe you should look at her legs?’

  Dr Sparrow stared at Mrs Mack blearily. ‘Are you the doctor or am I, madam? What will looking at her legs tell me?’ He blinked at Flinty. ‘Do your legs hurt?’

  ‘No, sir,’ whispered Flinty. Her knee did hurt — she must have knocked it — but she wasn’t going to bother the doctor with a bruised knee.

  Dr Sparrow turned back to Mrs Mack. ‘See? It’s her back that’s the problem.’

  ‘How long till it gets better?’ A broken leg takes months to heal, thought Flinty. Months, lying here in bed! She couldn’t do it, not with so much that had to be done. But she’d have no choice —

  ‘Never gets better,’ said Dr Sparrow abruptly. Drunk or not, annoyed about having to come all the way up here, she could tell he didn’t like saying this. ‘Backs don’t heal.’

  ‘But…but they have to. Other bones mend!’

  ‘Not backs.’ He snapped his bag shut, as though to say there was nothing in his bag that could help her. ‘She
’s going to be like this for the rest of her life.’

  ‘But she has to get better!’ Kirsty made it sound like getting better was a dress you could make, a jumper you could knit.

  ‘Shh,’ said Joey. He picked Kirsty up, big as she was, and hugged her. Her legs almost dangled to the ground, but she rested her face on his shoulder, comforted. Joey knows, thought Flinty. Or he suspected. Maybe Mrs Mack had warned him what the doctor might say. Because Mrs Mack must have guessed how bad it was, or she wouldn’t have come prepared to stay.

  Sandy said nothing. She had to crane her neck to see him. His face looked as blank as the Rock, but she thought she could see tears. Sandy, crying! Crying for me, she thought. No, for all of us, for Joey and Kirsty too.

  The doctor seemed impatient now. He knows we don’t have any alcohol here, she realised. He’ll have to get back to town to get more grog… Her mind shied away from what he’d said, watching him sway out of the room, listening to Mrs Mack’s low voice in the hall beyond.

  ‘What should we do for her, doctor?’

  ‘How do I know? I’m not a nurse. It’s nursing she needs now, not doctoring. Feed her. Keep her clean.’ The voice hesitated. ‘There are homes for cripples down in Sydney. Places that will take her if she can’t be cared for here…’

  Sydney! No, thought Flinty. Please, no…

  ‘We can look after her.’ Joey’s voice sounded far older than twelve.

  ‘Flinty’s not going anywhere.’ Kirsty sounded older too, her tears gone.

  ‘We’ll manage,’ said Mrs Mack, and suddenly Flinty knew that they would, that there’d never be any more talk of sending her to a cripples’ home.

  A cripple. That was her now.

  Chapter 25

  Sandy kissed my cheek when the doctor left. I think that made it all more real than anything the doctor said. A kiss on the cheek for a cripple, not on the lips for a girl you might love. How can any man love a cripple?