Brumby Mountain

by Karen Wood

  For a moment, Jess felt she had been transported back to Coachwood Crossing. ‘There’s only one person missing,’ she said.

  ‘No, there’s not,’ grinned Corey.

  Jess felt two slim hands wrap over her eyes. She would know them anywhere. ‘Sharsy!’ She spun around to find her bestie grinning at her. ‘How did you get here?’ she squeaked.

  ‘Canningdale is only an hour’s drive away. Corey picked me up,’ said Shara. ‘I heard there was a big housewarming party on, and a brumby release!’

  ‘I can’t wait to see those mares gallop back into the mountain,’ said Grace excitedly. ‘There was no way I was going to miss that.’

  They ordered meals and pushed several tables together, rearranging the tiny pub lounge until it resembled a private function room. Barker joined them and, as the meals were the last ones to be served in the pub for the night, so did Kitty and Steve.

  Kitty shared more memories of her friendship with Matilda, or Matty, as she called her. Their times together sounded so much like the adventures Jess had shared with her girlfriends: long trail rides and cattle drives, brumby-spotting and birthing foals. Luke listened quietly and intently.

  Jess watched her three best girlfriends, all laughing around the table together in their riding jeans and woolly jumpers. She couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like to ever lose one of them as Kitty had lost Matty.

  Kitty told Luke about his parents’ wedding, at the small timber church with the four square windows. They hadn’t been able to squeeze everyone in. She told them how Matilda had met Jack, a logger from Dorrigo, in this very pub. After that, Jack came back every Friday night to see the band that used to play in the beer garden and Matilda would turn herself inside out trying to find the right dress to wear. ‘She was so crazy about this Jack fella.’

  He was a charmer, a larrikin, and would dance Matilda from one end of the beer garden to the other, nearly knocking people’s plates from their tables, and upsetting the old cockies who had come for a quiet beer.

  The forty hectares on the river was their wedding present from Matilda’s parents, who cut it off their own land. ‘Cut off the bit with the crappy old house on it and went and built a nice new one for themselves,’ said Kitty.

  ‘So Jack Ernest Matheson was never a local,’ said Jess. ‘He was a blow-in.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Kitty. ‘It was Matty’s family who were the locals, not Jack’s.’

  Jess sighed. There went her theory of the name Matheson somehow being linked to the original settlers of this mountain range.

  The subject came back around to the brumbies and the wild horses. Rambo was a wedding gift from Matty to Jack. She had trapped him as a yearling colt with salt and lucerne at the back of her parents’ property. They had broken him in together, as well as several others.

  ‘They loved riding through those mountains,’ said Kitty. ‘They would disappear nearly every weekend. Matty used to tell stories, about secret glades and special places. She wanted to write books about them.’

  ‘I remember her stories,’ said Luke. ‘You used to read them to me.’

  Kitty looked delighted. ‘You remember!’

  ‘It’s like being in a storybook when you’re up there,’ agreed Jess. ‘It’s so beautiful.’

  ‘Especially when it snows,’ said Grace.

  ‘You were lucky to see that,’ said Steve. ‘It doesn’t snow up there every year.’

  ‘Here’s to the brumbies,’ said Mrs Arnold, raising a schooner of port, ‘and their little part of the world. May they run free for years to come.’

  Jess noticed that Barker was the only one not to raise his glass. She looked at him questioningly.

  ‘What’s up, Barky?’ said Steve, still jovial.

  The sergeant exhaled and his face seemed grim. He looked around at all of them, as though he was about to deliver bad news.

  ‘What?’ said Kitty, smiling.

  ‘They won’t be up there for years to come. Haven’t you heard?’ he said in a quiet voice.

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘The council have put out public notices. If that land’s not claimed by next month, the brumbies will be culled and the land will be auctioned off.’

  Everyone looked at Barker, aghast. ‘Hey?’

  He gave a helpless shrug. ‘There’s more than five thousand hectares of unclaimed private title up there. It’s been vacant for nearly fifty years. Everyone wants a piece of it. The national parks want the feral horses culled and the land returned to wilderness. The forestry department wants to log it. The police want to stop all the illegal shooting that goes on up there. The farmers all want to see it subdivided and turned into grazing properties. It’s such fertile country and it’s being taken over by feral horses, rednecks and weeds.’

  Barker looked from face to face and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but the days of those wild horses up there are seriously numbered.’

  Everyone at the table stopped talking and the celebratory atmosphere took a sharp dive. Mrs Arnold muttered something profoundly rude.

  Jess’s thoughts went immediately to the small pond at the bottom of the big granite cliffs. The place, on the tablelands, where the boundaries met. She had seen it with her own eyes. The unclaimed place, where Saladin’s spirit was born to the blue-eyed brumbies . . .

  The place, so exquisitely special . . .

  It was about to be destroyed.

  Later that night, Jess found Luke outside in the cabin of the truck. On the back, the brumbies munched noisily. ‘Hey,’ she said softly.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, and held out a hand to her.

  She climbed up and sat on the bench seat next to him. ‘We can’t just let them shoot all the brumbies and auction off their home like that.’

  ‘I don’t know how we can stop them,’ said Luke. ‘I can’t take on that many horses, Jess. I can’t save them all. There are too many of them up there. What would I do with them? I don’t even know what to do with these mares on the back now.’

  ‘You have forty hectares.’

  ‘But how would I keep them in? The fences on my place are so old they’ve nearly all fallen over.’

  Jess was quiet for a while, and they both sat there, adrift in their own thoughts.

  ‘The secret place, the one your mum talked about. I’ve seen it,’ she finally whispered. ‘Rambo took me there. It’s a foaling place.’

  ‘I know.’ Luke nodded solemnly. ‘I’ve seen it too.’

  Kitty fussed around in the bunkhouse, billowing fresh white sheets over the beds. ‘Wasn’t expecting so many of you,’ she chirped.

  Jess took the other side of the sheet and helped her tuck it in.

  ‘Some sneaky backpacker stole one of my chenille bedspreads,’ Kitty said, as she ripped a brand-new quilt from its packaging. ‘It was nearly fifty years old, retro.’ She looked suspiciously at Mrs Arnold.

  ‘Probably time to replace them anyway,’ mumbled Mrs Arnold, shooting a threatening look at Jess and Grace.

  The thick padded quilt was a welcome upgrade from the flimsy chenille, but Jess’s thoughts were not so comfortable. In only a few weeks Brumby Mountain would be auctioned off. The unclaimed pocket of land with the breakaway herd of brumbies would be claimed. And, most likely, the horses would be trapped, shot, or run off the land.

  ‘How could so much land just be forgotten?’ she wondered out loud. ‘Has anyone even tried to track down the original Mathews family?’

  ‘Why would they?’ said Mrs Arnold, as she pulled the quilt over her shoulders and snapped off the light.

  Jess lay in the darkness, trying to put the pieces of Luke’s history together. She couldn’t let go of the idea that, somehow, he was connected to that land and the horses up there. But she couldn’t quite work out how.

  26

  THE NEXT MORNING the sound of a chainsaw echoed off the granite cliffs surrounding Matty’s Creek. Jess found Luke and Lawson splitting posts to make a yard for the brumby mar
es. Steve was on a tractor with a posthole digger on the back groaning and spiralling into the ground.

  The truck, with the brumbies on board, was parked by the river under the shade of the trees. Jess heard them whinnying in the back. A soft, brown nose appeared at one of the upper windows.

  Luke pulled off his earmuffs and dropped his axe when he saw Jess. He waved her into the shed, away from the noise of the chainsaw. ‘They know they’re home,’ he said. ‘They haven’t stopped calling since we got here. There are horses up in the hills calling back.’

  ‘Are you going to let them go?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ said Luke. ‘Not until I know they won’t be shot.’

  Jess noticed that the shed had been cleared out. The boys’ swags were rolled out on the raised boards of the mezzanine floor. Below, on the ground, was a table, chairs and an old forty-four-gallon drum that had been cut to make a wood stove.

  ‘Home sweet home, hey?’ she said.

  Luke nodded. ‘For the moment; till I get the rats and snakes out of the house.’

  ‘Are you going to restore it?’

  ‘Don’t know if it’s worth it. Steve’s gonna have a look at it with me later. It’s all patched up with fibro and asbestos. It was pretty shonky to begin with.’

  ‘Least it’s got a toilet,’ said Jess.

  Luke laughed. ‘The bowl’s cracked.’ He shrugged. ‘But the plumbing still works.’

  ‘Did you have another look through it?’ she asked. ‘To see if there was anything from your parents worth keeping?’

  ‘Yeah, I found a few old things, but I think locals and vandals got to it before me.’ He pointed to a collection of old tins and cups, some enamel plates and bone-handled cutlery on the table.

  Jess picked up one of the tins. It was a small tea canister, enamelled blue with a picture on it. ‘It’s like the one in the hut,’ she said. ‘Look, it’s got a picture of a little bird on it.’

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ said Luke, stepping closer and peering over her shoulder.

  Jess set it back on the table. ‘Makes me wonder who put the tea in the hut,’ she said, creasing her brow.

  ‘Dunno, but I have to get these yards built,’ Luke said suddenly. ‘I can’t keep these brumbies stuck in the back of the truck. And if the land gets sold, I’ll have to fence this place off from the mountain. The brumbies won’t be able to come and go any more.’

  ‘You could put a gate in,’ Jess suggested.

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t know what to do with Rambo,’ said Luke. ‘I don’t know whether to let him out or lock him in.’

  That was a tricky one. Suddenly she shared Luke’s sense of urgency. ‘He’s better off in here if all his friends are going to get shot anyway.’ Then she shuddered. What a horrible thing to say.

  Luke looked grim as he began splitting posts again.

  Jess wandered over to the house. Holding her jumper up over her nose, she pulled the old flyscreen open, then pushed at the broken door and scraped it across the floor.

  Inside, there was a doorway to her left, another to her right, and the tiny kitchen at the end. A quick glance revealed that the rooms were a mess of upside-down bedsprings and old chaff bags filled with rubbish, broken bottles and graffiti. Someone had already gone through all the stuff. Panels of fibro sheeting hung from the ceiling and up in the roof cavity she could see beams of wood and corrugated iron. A rat scooted across one of the beams and she squirmed.

  Luke had taken the table and chairs from the kitchen, and the two cupboard doors below the sink swung open. Yellowed newspaper, an old can of flyspray, rusty steel wool and an old dishwashing brush lay among scattered rat droppings. Gingham curtains hung from a small window, limp and faded.

  The fireplace, Jess noticed, was made of stone: rugged pieces stacked and stuck together with some sort of concretey stuff, just like the hut by the river. She banged her fist on the wall and heard no echo. Something very solid was behind the fibro sheets. She pulled at a broken bit and saw slabs of raw-cut timber behind the wall.

  It was an old hut, just like the one by the river, covered with modern materials and turned into a kitchen. Jess looked at the floor and noticed it was made from hardwood rather than the ply sheeting used in the rest of the small shack. The other two rooms must have been added on.

  Jess walked back into the hall and squeezed herself into the first room, pushing sacks stuffed with more sacks – used feedbags, maybe – away with her leg. They were frayed with mouse holes. Beyond them she could see an old glass-doored dresser, filled with books and papers and ornaments. The glass was broken and the clutter spilled out onto the floor.

  She sat on the edge of a dusty couch and brushed shards of glass off the papers. They were mostly old vinyl record covers, more newspapers and a handwritten shopping list. Matilda’s handwriting, maybe? Jess folded it and put it in her pocket for Luke. Was there any more of her writing, Jess wondered, as she began searching through the old TV remotes, tubes of hand cream and other stuff. She pulled it all out of the dresser but, judging by the way it came out, so random and disorganised, she guessed someone had been through it before her.

  She searched beneath and behind the dresser, and rummaged through more junk under the couch and between the old sacks, but found nothing.

  In the other room she found more mess, empty beer bottles and cigarette butts strewn across the floor. Picture hooks hung empty on the walls, and cut wires hung from the ceiling where the light fitting had been removed. As Luke had said, anything of any value was long gone, most likely pilfered by local kids.

  She leaned against the doorway and tried to imagine Matilda and Jack living here with a two-year-old Luke, riding their brumbies through the mountains and coming home to a small shack at night. Then she thought of the accident that had separated them all. She suddenly understood why a man as lively as Jack had chosen to live alone, where he didn’t have to face other people, see his own pain and guilt mirrored in their faces.

  As Jess stood propped in the doorway, absorbed in the tragedy of it all, the beam under her hand shifted and there was a creak above her head. She looked up and saw two large sheets of ceiling plaster part, then split down the middle. A beam slid across her field of vision. With startling clarity, she realised the house was collapsing around her.

  She bolted for the front door, only two steps away. All around her, the house moved – slowly at first, and then, as she burst out of the door into the open, it crumpled. In a storm of dust and fibro and timber beams, the front of the house came crashing to the ground. The noise was tremendous. In the nearby paddock, kangaroos leapt off the ground and fled for the cover of the trees. Luke, Lawson and Steve looked up from their work in shock.

  The dust was unbelievable, full of plaster and rat poo and old cigarette ash, billowing with the residue of other peoples’ lives. Jess staggered backwards as it swelled and rolled towards her. She coughed as it entered her lungs.

  Luke slowly, disbelievingly, took the earmuffs from his head again and walked over. He looked at the crumpled mess, then back to Jess, and gave a short, bewildered laugh. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Umm, the house fell down.’

  He gave her a comical accusing stare. ‘No need to wreck the joint.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  There was a loud creak and a second crash as the roof collapsed further into the rubble.

  Jess and Luke jumped back.

  Lawson and Steve appeared alongside them, followed by Grace and Mrs Arnold. They stood staring, dumbstruck, at the sheets of roofing and building rubble. As the dust cleared, a small wood slab hut was revealed, standing there as though the last seventy years had just been peeled off, and they were transported back to another time.

  27

  THE BOYS WORKED ON the yards until lunchtime, cutting and shaping long branches and wiring them to tree trunks. Luke and Lawson put in new posts where there were no trees, and unbolted the gate from the old sheep yards and hung it off a new corner post that Steve h
ad tamped into the ground with a spud bar. When there was only a small section of railing left to build, they stopped for a break.

  ‘Won’t be much longer, girls,’ said Luke.

  ‘Still thinking about renovating?’ asked Mrs Arnold as she sat on the edge of the river eating pies from the local bakery.

  Luke looked forlornly at what was left of the house. ‘Might salvage the bathtub,’ he said. ‘Make a good horse trough.’

  ‘The original hut is cute,’ said Jess. ‘It must be really old. It’s like the one we found in the mountains that time.’

  Luke nodded. ‘Have to burn the rest, though. It’s crawling with termites.’

  ‘Let’s have a bonfire tonight,’ said Grace cheerfully. ‘We’ll all sleep out in our swags!’

  Jess looked hopefully at Mrs Arnold. She nodded. ‘Fine by me. Sounds fun.’

  They spent the afternoon on the snigging chain, behind the tractor, dragging all the timber from the house and stacking it into a huge teepee. Jess raked up piles of debris and tossed all the old sacks of rubbish on top. The corrugated iron was stacked by the shed and the old nails collected in a bucket.

  It was when Lawson looped the snigging chain around a large section of wall and the tractor started pulling that Jess saw it: a flash of metal glinting in the sunlight, between the timber studs and noggings of the walls.

  ‘Stop!’ she yelled, waving her arms at Steve, who was driving the tractor. ‘Stop! There’s something in there.’

  Luke saw it too and began pulling the scraps of splintered timber and broken plasterboard away from the frame. He put his hands into the cavity and jimmied out a large, rectangular tin, the kind Jess’s grandmother would have put a Christmas cake in.

  He prised open the lid, which had nearly rusted closed. It was stuffed full of papers, old and crumbly. Luke carefully pulled them out and laid them on the grass beside him. Beneath them was a small bundle of pound notes, and rattling in the bottom were two rings and a golden necklace.