‘They’re beautiful, Dad,’ she whispered.
He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘They are.’ His voice sounded awed.
The horses wheeled, trotting off and then turning to look at them again. They seemed as fascinated by the humans as Rachel was by them.
‘Come on, love,’ Mike said. ‘We’ve got to meet the rangers, and set up our campsite. There’ll be plenty of time for looking at horses tomorrow.’
Rachel didn’t want to take her eyes off the two brumbies. She backed towards the car and climbed in, still watching them. Mike started the engine and turned left onto the track bound for Mulan. Rachel waited for the horses to run away, but as the car picked up speed they broke into a canter alongside.
‘They’re coming with us!’ Rachel cried. The two horses cantered in the same direction as the car, weaving effortlessly through the ant mounds and spinifex, looking as though they enjoyed the game.
Rachel hung out the window, looking back until the brumbies dropped out of sight. The horses weren’t afraid of humans — not yet. That might all change once they realised she and her father were there to capture them.
Rachel hadn’t even thought to be curious about the people they were going to meet until they drove into Mulan community. Her father had told her about the place during their drive. It was one of the most remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia. Fewer than two hundred people lived there, mostly Aborigines, and a handful of white workers from the shop and the art centre, plus some who helped manage the Indigenous Protected Area.
It wasn’t as if she’d never seen Aboriginal people before. In Armidale there was an Aboriginal cultural centre with a gallery and café, and her mother took them there often if they were in town. But Rachel had never visited an Aboriginal community.
Lots of old cars lay around, some up on blocks, looking as if they hadn’t been running for a long time. The tin-and-wood houses had deep, shady verandahs to keep out the sun. There was a school, a shop, an art centre, and kids and dogs everywhere. Some stared at her, some ignored her. She didn’t know whether to wave and smile, or keep her head down.
‘It’s rude to stare in traditional culture,’ Mike said. ‘Especially at someone older than you.’
‘OK,’ Rachel said, trying not to stare.
‘The people here are mostly Walmajarri, the traditional owners of the lake. Mulan community started back in 1977, but they’ve lived around the lake for many thousands of years.’
‘Have you been here before, Dad?’
‘Yeah, I visited a long time ago, but I don’t know that much about the local culture.’ Mike braked and pointed. ‘There’s the ranger supervisor’s office. We need to go in and fix up our paperwork. Coming?’
‘Sure,’ Rachel said, hopping out of the car.
The ranger supervisor who creaked open the door of the ramshackle house was a white man called Rob. He made Mike a cup of tea and poured Rachel a glass of water while her father signed some forms and arranged payments. Mike was buying any horses they caught from the traditional owners, plus paying wages to the men who were going to help them with the trapping. They had also agreed that the community could keep some of the captured brumbies. They were planning to expand the cattle grazing, returning parts of the land to a pastoral station like it had been fifty years earlier, and the captured brumbies would become stockhorses, as their ancestors had been.
‘Eddie’s the traditional owner you’ll be dealing with — he’s the head ranger,’ Rob said. ‘He and the Paruku Rangers are out now, but they’ll come down to your camp for a yarn in the morning.’
‘Who are the Paruku Rangers?’ Rachel asked.
Rob smiled at her. ‘The boys who work in the Indigenous Protected Area. They’re like national park rangers.’
He looked back at Mike. ‘The stockyards are all ready, and there’s a trailer and a mattress like you asked. Eddie thinks you’re crazy, by the way.’
‘I reckon he’s right, but the Sheik wants the horses and my job is to work out how,’ Mike said.
‘Early morning’s the best time to see the brumbies — they always go down for a drink around dawn,’ Rob said. ‘Good luck.’
Rachel swallowed her water as the two men shook hands, and they headed outside.
A bunch of kids ran away from their car, laughing. Rachel saw they’d scrawled words on the dusty windows.
‘What do they say?’ she asked her father.
He shrugged. ‘It’s in Walmajarri, I guess. Probably something pretty funny.’
They clambered back into the car. As they drove through the community and turned onto the track to the lake, Rachel wondered what the kids had said about them.
The dark horse can smell the Two-Legs nearby in the dark. Smoke, with the greasy smell of a dead creature on a fire. The sharp, nostril-burning tang that comes with the roaring shiny monsters, the ones that move faster than a gallop. He hears the human voices, sometimes soft, sometimes ringing out loudly.
The mob is restless. The best grazing ground is far enough away from the Two-Legs, but they must go to the lake to drink, and the path takes them close to the place where the orange flames flicker into the night.
The dark horse dozes and wakes until the moon rises and the orange flames have disappeared. As always, when there are Two-Legs by the lake, he can’t settle. Itches to move over there.
The other horses snort at him in annoyance when he shifts and stamps long after the foals have dozed off. His mare, her belly heavy, is the only other one wide awake.
He nips her neck. Come?
She follows when he steps away from the warmth of the others. The two of them cross the plain around the lake’s edge, with its powdery white soil. At other times it is covered in water, and the plants there are different, stalks with tiny red bulbs that pop between his teeth. He only eats them when there’s nothing else.
The moon hangs over the trees, casting long shadows, and as he draws close he smells the ash of the dead fire. Nearby, the big, shiny shape of the monster, and two humped-up shapes on the ground.
The horses stand in the striped light of the coolibahs a long time, concealed by light and dark, nostrils flaring, drinking in the night. Nothing moves.
Grass is sweet here and he moves forwards a few steps, ears flickering, alert. The mare pushes up beside him. With her rounded belly she is hungrier than he is. She puts a head down and rips up a mouthful of grass, the crunch of it loud in the dark. One of the shapes by the dead fire stirs and they both freeze, but then it stills again.
He watches her tearing at the grass and, when he’s satisfied, he lowers his head and takes a few mouthfuls. Another stir by the fire makes them both start and shy away, but once again he comes back. He sniffs deeply. Ash, the acrid burn of the monster, the strange, sweet-salty smell of the Two-Legs. It is different from anything else in the desert, and he can’t stop himself smelling it and smelling it, trying to understand.
His skin prickles and, when he looks up, he sees a gleam in the moonlight. There are eyes on him, watching him. One of the Two-Legs is awake.
He doesn’t like it. He snorts to the mare and whirls around, his skin shivering as if trying to shake off a cloud of flies. She doesn’t want to leave the sweet grass and he nips her hard, her hide rasping under his blunt teeth, till she lays back her ears and strikes out at him. She catches his agitation and breaks suddenly into a canter, and they are off, their hooves thudding on the ground, leaving the Two-Leg smell and the gleaming eyes behind them, heading to the lake and the safety of the herd.
A birdcall trilled through the quiet air and Rachel’s eyes flickered open. The sky was pale pink down on the horizon, the last stars fading in the dark blue above her head. The white trunks of the coolibahs that fringed the campsite glowed in the half-dark. Another bird answered the first. High in the sky, a flock of huge, long-legged birds flew in a wobbly V-shape, their honking cries harsh on the air.
She blinked. She remembered during the night the thudding
of hooves coming up through the ground beneath her swag, and the rich horse smell she loved drifting over to where she lay. But it might have been a dream.
‘Dad?’ she whispered. ‘Are you awake?’
Mike stirred and rolled over. ‘No,’ he murmured, not opening his eyes.
‘The brumbies will be going down to drink,’ she said.
‘It’s cold,’ he said. ‘And I haven’t had a coffee.’
Rachel sat up. ‘Come on. You can have a coffee when we get back.’
Grumbling, Mike got out of bed and they both pulled warm clothes on top of their sleeping thermals. It would warm up soon, but Rachel was still cold after the freezing desert night, and she dressed in beanie, gloves and her thickest jacket.
They started through the grove of coolibahs, down the path towards the lake. A flock of tiny birds fluttered past, chirruping sweetly. They landed for a moment on a bush and hung like tiny green jewels.
‘Budgies!’ Mike said, as they took off again in a flash of green.
Closer to the lake Rachel saw the shapes of tall grey creatures that looked like they were on stilts. She’d seen on the information signs at the campsite that brolgas lived at the lake. But before they could get close, the huge birds took off, rising up with big slow wing-beats, and she realised she’d seen brolgas flying overhead when she’d woken. Down on the lake, about half a kilometre ahead of them on the plain, the water glowed deep blue, reflecting the sky, and dozens of black swans arched their necks.
There was so much to see that Rachel hardly knew where to look, but then her father put a hand on her arm and pointed. A cloud of dust was rising in the distance.
‘Crouch down,’ he said, and they both dropped to their haunches.
It was a herd of about a dozen horses, Rachel saw, cantering straight towards her and her father. She took hold of his sleeve, suddenly afraid the brumbies might run right over the top of them.
‘They can see us, don’t worry,’ he murmured.
The sound of the hooves was loud in the morning silence. She’d thought that perhaps all the brumbies would be bays and chestnuts, but to her surprise she could see dappled greys, creams and a palomino as well.
As the brumbies approached, they split into two groups, shifting course left and right to go around them. Rachel gasped as they swept past just a few metres away, tossing their heads and snorting. She and her father both stood up when they’d passed.
‘There are more grazing down near the lake,’ Mike said, gesturing. ‘Let’s check them out.’
He set off at a brisk pace and Rachel hurried after him. She’d expected they would be hiding and creeping up on the horses silently, but the herd seemed curious and came much closer than she’d imagined.
They walked towards a small mob of greys, whose coats varied in colour from cream to steel. When the horses turned to face Rachel and Mike, they looked just like a family.
‘Stop,’ Mike said softly, as the horses started to shift around uneasily. ‘Crouch down again.’
It’s like a dance, Rachel thought. If they kept walking towards them, the brumbies would start to get nervous and back away. Once she and Mike halted and stayed still, the horses pricked up their ears curiously and moved towards them. They did the same thing that the two horses at the turnoff had done the day before, breaking off to circle away from them at a trot or canter, and then coming back, heads high, ears pricked forwards.
‘Why do they do that?’ she whispered. ‘Why don’t they just run away?’
Mike shrugged. ‘I guess they’re trying to work out if we’re a danger to them.’
They got up and kept walking, skirting around the greys. There was another, larger group of horses on the open plain surrounding the lake, with several mares and their foals. The mothers were more anxious about the approaching humans than the greys had been, and Mike waved Rachel into a crouch further away.
A neigh rang out and a horse cantered forwards to challenge them. ‘The stallion,’ Mike murmured. ‘He’s protecting his mares. We won’t go any closer to him.’
The stallion trotted up and down, stopping to paw the ground and neigh in their direction. He was a beautiful creature, with his pale cream coat and dark mane and tail. Behind him, the mares and foals waited nervously. She could see a couple of light-coloured foals that must have been his, and some darker ones too.
He reminded her of Thowra, and Rachel hoped her father wouldn’t want him. She hated to think of this stallion living in a stable.
‘Is he the sort you’re looking for?’ she asked, afraid of what he might answer.
Mike didn’t reply straight away. ‘I’m not sure yet,’ he said at last. ‘I’m just getting a feel for them at the moment, trying to see the bloodlines and the family types. You can tell there are lots of different strains even just in these small groups and I need to pick the right ones. Let’s look at some more.’
They backed off from the stallion and headed away from the lake again, towards a large area of open grassland ringed by trees, where it looked like the brumbies went to graze after drinking. Rachel studied the brumbies gathered there. She’d always been around ponies and horses, but she felt as though she’d never seen creatures like these before. They were so full of life! Every single one of them was alert, even when grazing. When two mobs of horses met, they danced and sniffed and kicked out and squealed. Several times, groups broke into a gallop across the plain for no reason that Rachel could see, except perhaps for the joy of it.
At home, their horses were perfectly content to stand in stables, or in their paddocks, eating or daydreaming. But here the horses were always interacting, always alert, always moving.
‘It’s all the stallions,’ Mike said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘In the wild they make up a huge proportion of the population. They’re always on the lookout for mares, always wanting to compete and steal each other’s females. That’s pretty much all they think about. The lead mares actually run the show and choose where the mob eats and drinks.’
A fly buzzed onto Rachel’s cheek and she realised it was getting hot. The sun had risen and the temperature was climbing fast. The cream stallion let out a ringing neigh and cantered around his mares. All the horses began to move, and before Rachel knew it, every brumby on the plain had disappeared into the trees in a wave of dust. As if saying goodbye to them, a huge flock of pink-and-grey galahs swooped over the clearing, squawking as they came down for a landing.
‘Let’s head back to camp,’ Mike said, standing up and waving off the flies. ‘I need a coffee, and then we’ve got to work out how we’re going to catch these creatures.’
Rachel was quiet all the way back. She couldn’t stop thinking about the cream stallion with the black mane and tail, and his herd of mares and foals.
Chapter 6
Eddie, the head ranger, stood by the side of the campfire with hands in his pockets. Behind him, a boy he’d introduced as Dan, who looked about sixteen, seemed to be staring into the distance, though Rachel couldn’t see his eyes. Eddie looked pretty cool, she thought, with his ranger vest and dark sunnies pushed up on his head. Dan wore shorts and a T-shirt and kept his sunnies lowered.
She lowered her own eyes, remembering what Mike had told her: ‘Keep your eyes on the ground, and be polite. Best to just let the grownups talk, for now.’
She wondered how you knew when to speak if you were staring at the ground. She risked a glance at her father. He was busily making billy tea, and so far he hadn’t said anything at all about the horses. They’d just talked about the weather. It was midmorning and she could tell it would be really hot by lunchtime. Flies were buzzing around and she was glad of the repellent she’d put on earlier.
‘How are the yards going?’ Mike asked at last when the tea had been made and Eddie had accepted a cup.
‘The rangers fixed ’em up,’ Eddie said. ‘They’re ready. But how d’you plan to get the horses there?’
‘Not sure yet,’ Mike said. ‘I saw a fence on the way i
n. Maybe we can drive them along the fence into some kind of trap?’
Eddie laughed and shook his head. ‘Those horses run straight through fences. Won’t get ’em that way.’
Mike stared at the ground. ‘What about drinking or grazing places? Somewhere I can get close enough to shoot them with the dart gun.’
‘The waterholes’d be good,’ Eddie said. ‘But it’s too late in the year. They’re dry. All the horses drink at the lake. Big open space. Pretty hard to drive ’em anywhere. They’ll just run away if they want.’
‘Hell,’ Mike murmured, looking worried. ‘Any ideas?’
Eddie pushed his sunnies back and squinted into the sky. ‘Reckon you get two, three choppers, you might be able to get around and push them into a bunch. Hang out the side, you could get close enough for a shot.’
‘Helicopters? Where would we get them? I mean, the Sheik has the money, but —’
Eddie laughed out loud, and Rachel looked up to see Dan was grinning too.
‘I’m kidding,’ Eddie said. ‘Just get up a tree with your gun and wait. If there’s enough of us, we’ll run the horses to you.’
Mike’s face cleared and he grinned too. ‘You had me there. Right, I reckon we’ll need about six or eight blokes for this. The Sheik is paying them, of course.’
‘Your Sheik’s got too much money,’ Eddie said, shaking his head. ‘Must be horses he can get easier than this?’
‘He wants these ones,’ Mike said. ‘Special desert horses.’
‘Whatever. What happens when they’re darted?’
‘I’ll check their age and health while they’re asleep, and if they’re the right sort of horse, then we’ll roll and slide them onto the trailer and tow them to the yards before they wake up,’ Mike said. ‘I’ll geld any stallions that I take, and you’ll want your stockhorses gelded too. Even if we end up letting them go again, a few geldings might help keep the population down.’
‘Stallions aren’t the problem,’ Eddie said. ‘There’s too many mares. Most of ’em breed every year. That’s why the herd’s so big.’
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