Barmah Brumbies

by Soraya Nicholas

  ‘So you’ll train them and then sell them?’ Poppy asked.

  ‘Why, do you want to buy one from me?’ Sienna asked with laugh.

  ‘Don’t go getting any ideas, Poppy,’ said Aunt Sophie. Everyone laughed and Poppy shrugged sheepishly.

  ‘This could be a long day, everyone,’ said Penny, ‘so let’s go slow and stay alert.’

  Poppy gathered up her reins. A quiver of excitement ran through her as they all started to head in the same direction they’d gone walking earlier in the week. Jack had said he’d seen the brumbies only a short distance away that morning, and Poppy hoped they’d be able to muster them in, but she knew it was unlikely. There were so many places for them to run and hide, and this was their home, so they had a huge advantage.

  They rode under the shady canopy of trees through the forest. It felt like no time at all before Jack, who had been easily keeping up on foot, held up a hand. They all halted.

  ‘No more talking. Not a word,’ he said.

  Poppy looked sideways at Milly and then Katie. Had he seen something? Was he just being cautious or was there actually a . . .

  Jack motioned for them to spread out and he put his head down and quietly moved away in a big arc.

  No way!

  Poppy’s heart felt like it was about to leap out of her chest. Her eyes were like saucers as she stared through the trees. The brumbies were right there. She saw the magnificent side profile of the two colts, heads held high in defiance, manes and forelocks scruffy and unkempt.

  A high-pitched whinny and snort, followed by a series of smaller calls, echoed through the trees from behind Poppy, sending shivers through her entire body and making Crystal skitterish. She pulled back lightly on her reins, looking around, wondering whose horse was making such a fuss.

  And then she saw who it was.

  Storm.

  Her beautiful brumby had called out, and the look on Aunt Sophie’s face was a mixture of fear and excitement.

  What would happen now?

  ‘Lead the way back, nice and slow,’ Penny said in a soft voice.

  Poppy’s eyes darted from Sophie and back to Penny again. Penny waved at them all to go wide, and Poppy urged Crystal on, careful not to stare at the brumbies and moving well away from them so they could all come around and muster them in from behind. Some of the riders would take up the rear with Jack, and the others would fan out to the side. Except, it appeared, for Aunt Sophie.

  The wild horses were slowly and steadily following Storm as he neighed and carried on as if he was trying to tell them something.

  It was almost impossible to stay silent, but Poppy rode on, slipping her hand down to stroke Crystal’s neck every now and then to calm her. She wondered why Storm’s antics weren’t scaring the colts, but for some reason he had their attention and they were eager to follow him.

  Just as she was thinking how easy the whole thing had been, one of the colts, the one that didn’t appear to be injured but was rangy with his ribs slightly protruding, darted out to the right. She sucked back a breath and kicked Crystal on, moving wide and around him, spurred into action.

  She had to clamp her mouth shut to stop from speaking, she was so used to encouraging Crystal verbally.

  Go!

  She issued the command silently, screaming it inside her head.

  Go!

  Crystal was fast and the colt stopped when he saw them coming around in front of him. He veered back to his mate, but he was spooked now – prancing and rolling his eyes – and Poppy hoped she hadn’t put too much pressure on him.

  She looked back at Uncle Mark and received a quick thumbs up in reply, and she settled back into the saddle, happy that she must have done the right thing.

  The whole point of what they were doing was to stop the horses from getting too stressed, but she guessed there was no way to stop them from being upset. They were wild animals, not used to any human interaction, and she felt a pang of guilt about what they were doing, knowing how terrified they would be if they did get them into the yards.

  The colts attempted a couple of half-hearted dashes, but each time a rider appeared to herd them back. Storm continued to beckon and whinny and they followed willingly. Poppy wondered if it was because they weren’t yet in a mob and didn’t know how to look after themselves without being told what to do by a dominant stallion or mare.

  Suddenly the yards came into sight and Poppy breathed a sigh of relief. The horse trucks and any evidence of humans were long gone, which meant the area shouldn’t look too scary and unfamiliar to the horses, although she bet it smelt different to them.

  She rolled her eyes at her thoughts. The timber railings alone were probably way scary to the brumbies.

  Both young horses suddenly stopped, hooves digging into the ground and sending up a billow of dirt around them. Poppy held Crystal in check. She waited, watching, wondering what they were going to do. Sophie halted Storm, but he let out a high-pitched whinny and pawed at the ground. The colts hesitated and Poppy saw some of the other riders start to move forward from the corner of her eye. She nudged Crystal on, keeping her walk slow and her gaze steady.

  This was the test. If they got them close enough to the yards, they’d have to be quick and nimble to actually get them in there without either brumby making a run for it and sidestepping.

  She looked ahead to the yards and wondered how different it would have been to be mustering in cattle over a hundred years earlier to this same spot. She bet those riders were hot and sweaty after hours in the saddle searching for their herd, and they wouldn’t have had the same camping comforts either.

  Oh no!

  Both brumbies darted in her direction. They were moving fast, bursting into a canter where they saw a gap, and she rode hard to block them, kicking Crystal and rising out of the saddle, reins thrust forward to give her horse her head.

  They galloped straight and Crystal seemed to know exactly what to do. She skidded to a stop just in time to avoid a collision, doing a little rear as she put on her brakes, and the colts darted back the way they’d come from. Aunt Sophie rode Storm into the yards. He called out frantically to them again and again.

  Poppy stayed alert, eyes never leaving the brumbies as she kept her spot. She tried not to groan when Milly and Katie almost lost them at one point and gasped when they narrowly avoided riding into one another, yanking their horses sideways just in time.

  Please keep going. Please keep going. Poppy repeated the words over and over in her mind.

  Where were the other riders who had stayed behind? She couldn’t see them anywhere, but maybe the brumbies knew.

  And then they suddenly appeared – three other riders on horseback emerging from the dense trees past the yards, ready to block that side. And then two more people on foot.

  One of the colts neighed and did an impressive rear, but the one with the leg injury looked tired.

  It was Penny who rode forward this time, slapping her thigh. ‘Yah, yah!’ she yelled out. ‘Yah!’

  Poppy’s heart broke as she saw the frightened look on their faces, the whites of their eyes that were almost rolling in their heads, the panicked calls and the spinning around and around. She wished she could tell them what was happening, that there was nothing to be scared of. She wanted to cry, thinking of the poor brumbies that were run and roped, or even worse, killed by people in helicopters with a rifle in hand.

  One of the brumbies moved forward, toward Storm and away from the group of horses and riders, and they all rode forward as if it had been perfectly planned. Poppy held Crystal steady as Penny and Jack flapped and yelled to get the other colt scared and moving.

  Storm called one last time and the colts suddenly turned and trotted through the gate.

  A man leapt from nowhere and slammed the gate shut with a bang.

  They’d done it! They’d actually managed to muster two wild brumbies into a yard to be re-homed!

  Poppy glanced down and saw that her T-shirt was soaked in sw
eat, her hands shaking.

  ‘That was awesome!’ Milly said, riding up beside Poppy, her voice high with excitement.

  ‘Better than awesome,’ Katie replied. ‘I can’t believe it happened so easily.’

  ‘It was Storm,’ Poppy blurted. ‘It was him, right? I mean, I wasn’t imagining how they just started to follow him in, was I?’

  Katie and Milly nodded their heads in agreement.

  ‘Great work, girls!’ Penny praised, breathing hard as she rode past them.

  ‘What happens now?’ Katie asked.

  ‘We organise a truck to transport these two,’ said a voice from behind them, ‘and I get them back to my place once Mark has taken a look over them from a distance. He did good today, your brumby.’

  Poppy turned to see it was Sienna and smiled.

  ‘Can we visit you and see what you do with them?’ Milly blurted.

  ‘Sure can,’ Sienna said. ‘Then maybe you can help me to convince Poppy that she should try her hand at breaking a brumby on her own one day soon?’

  Poppy’s cheeks ignited with heat and she looked down at her hands, clutching the reins tight.

  ‘Isn’t that right, Poppy?’

  Milly and Katie both gave her long, hard stares, but Poppy refused to look back at them. It wasn’t like it had been her idea, and she definitely didn’t agree with Sienna that she should be working with brumbies. Not yet. Unless it was her Storm.

  Sienna grinned and walked off, her back so straight in the saddle as she rode her brumby away. Poppy felt the familiar pang of guilt as she looked at the magnificent wild colts pressed hard against the timber fence. Would they be so scruffy-looking next time she saw them, or glossy and groomed like any other domestic horse? Would they buck and resist training or calmly take it all in their stride?

  ‘I think you redeemed yourself today, girls,’ Aunt Sophie called out. She was sitting on the timber rail at the far end of the yards, watching them.

  ‘Thanks, Mrs D!’ Milly yelled back.

  Poppy rode Crystal over to her. ‘Where’s Storm?’ she asked.

  ‘In there,’ Aunt Sophie said, pointing past the wild colts. ‘I have the oddest feeling that they know they’re related.’

  Poppy stood up on her stirrups, balls of her feet pressed hard to the iron as she stared over the railings. Her heart skipped a beat.

  Storm was standing quietly in the yard, resting one rear leg, his ears turned forward as he seemed to study the two colts. She wondered if he was silently telling them something, if he’d already managed to calm them.

  ‘He’s something special, that brumby of yours,’ Aunt Sophie said. ‘And if I hadn’t seen it today with my own eyes, I don’t know I would have believed it.’

  Poppy didn’t have to ask her aunt what she was talking about because she’d seen it, too. She had no doubt in her mind now that he did know where he was. Barmah was in his blood and it always would be.

  She slowly moved Crystal away as the members of the Brumby Association and Uncle Mark climbed up on the rails to check the colts. It was almost time to go home, and that meant having two nights at Starlight Stables and then heading home for the rest of the week.

  ‘Storm’s a lucky boy,’ Katie mused as they rode along.

  Poppy held out a hand and gently touched a low-hanging tree branch.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Because he has you, and he always will,’ Katie replied.

  Poppy craned her neck to see her brumby, just making out his white blaze that stretched down the front of his face to the tip of his nose. She guessed he was lucky. So many of the Barmah brumbies were safe, but for how long? Her Storm was safe forever, and now the two brumbies that they’d helped to rescue would be safe, too.

  ‘Anyone hungry?’ Milly asked, interrupting Poppy’s thoughts.

  Poppy met Katie’s eyes and they burst into laughter.

  ‘What?’ Milly asked.

  ‘You,’ Poppy chuckled. ‘It doesn’t matter what we’re doing, you’re always starving!’

  Milly suddenly kicked Joe on and flew past them, dodging a tree and spraying them in dirt as she hoofed it away.

  ‘Told you,’ Katie groaned as they both wiped their faces and coughed at the dust. ‘She always gets us back way better than we could ever get her!’

  Poppy looked at Katie’s brown, dust-smeared face.

  ‘We’ll figure out a way to get her back one day,’ she giggled. ‘Trust me.’

  ‘You really think so?’ Katie sighed.

  Poppy leaned over and held out her hand, pinky finger raised. They linked them.

  ‘I don’t just think so. I promise.’

  As a horse-crazy girl, Soraya dreamed of owning her own pony and riding every day. For years, pony books like The Saddle Club had to suffice, until the day she finally convinced her parents to buy her a horse. There were plenty of adventures on horseback throughout her childhood, and lots of stories scribbled in notebooks, which eventually became inspiration for Soraya’s very own pony series. Soraya now lives with her husband and children on a small farm in her native New Zealand, surrounded by four-legged friends and still vividly recalling what it felt like to be 12 years old and head over heels in love with horses.

  Penguin Random House would like to give special thanks to Isabella Carter, Emily Mitchell and India James Timms – the faces of Poppy, Milly and Katie on the book covers.

  Special thanks must also go to Trish, Caroline, Ben and the team at Valley Park Riding School, Templestowe, Victoria, for their tremendous help in hosting the photoshoot for the covers at Valley Park, and, of course, to the four-legged stars: Alfie and Joe from Valley Park Riding School, and Carinda Park Vegas and his owner Annette Vellios.

  Thank you, too, to Caitlin Maloney from Ragamuffin Pet Photography for taking the perfect shots that are the covers.

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  First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2018

  Text copyright © Soraya Nicholas, 2018

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Design by Marina Messiha © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Cover photograph © Caitlin Maloney, Ragamuffin Pet Photography

  penguin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-760-14679-5

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