The Snow Pony Read online

  Dusty knew every gully and every stand of trees on their farm. She knew it so well that she felt part of the land. She loved the smell of the earth in summer – warm and woody – a combination of dirt, twigs, gumnuts and grass seeds. She even liked the smell of the cattleyards: dust in summer, mud in winter, with creosote from the oiled rails, the chemical odour of the drenches and dips they used to treat the cattle, the sweat, blood and – always – cow manure.

  She and her dad worked well together in the yards. When they were selecting cattle from a mob they worked on foot, each holding a length of lightweight black poly-pipe to direct the cattle. Jack would pick out cattle in the yard and call out directions to Dusty, on sentry duty at the gate, ‘Okay, let in this old baldy cow with the bent horn. Block the next two. We want this roan one … and the one after her … not this one with the patch on her eye.’ And all the time he’d be moving through the yard, pushing cattle one way or another with a tap of his plastic cane.

  Stewie sometimes hung around the cattleyards when they were working, but he didn’t join in. ‘You just keep well out the way!’ yelled Jack. Once, Stewie had been daydreaming and let a mob of cows escape through the gate he was meant to be guarding. They’d got into the vegetable patch and trampled all that summer’s supply of lettuce.

  Dusty’s life was the farm. She loved the horses, the cattle, the dogs, the cats, and talked to them all the time. Her best friend, Sally, thought she was crazy when she waved to the horses. ‘They can’t wave back, you know, Dusty. They haven’t got arms.’ Sally could always make Dusty laugh. She was tiny and fair with thick glasses that made her look slightly cross-eyed. Her parents ran Hillside Holidays, where people from the city came to fish and hike and eat the gourmet meals that Sally’s mother cooked. Their property was in the same valley, but closer to town, so Sally and Dusty had travelled to school together ever since preps. They were the only two girls in that year, so it was a good thing they got on so well.

  ‘Opposites must attract,’ Dusty overheard Sally’s mum saying once to Rita, ‘because you couldn’t get two more different kids. Sal’s away with the fairies most of the time, reading, painting, dreaming, making lists.’ She laughed. ‘I’ve never known anyone to make lists like her. Then you’ve got Dusty, so practical and capable and even physically so different. She looks like she’s been carved from a bit of red gum, she’s so muscular and strong.’

  The truth was that even though Dusty loved the horse and cattle work and proving she was as capable as an adult, she relished those playful times with Sally when she could just be a kid. When Sally stayed at The Willows she rode alongside Dusty on Jack’s old grey gelding, and stock work was always fun then. Jack had bellowed at her once, when she chased some cows in the wrong direction, so she didn’t actually do anything now, just tagged along. She was always doing nutty things like drawing on Spook with charcoal, or folding his ears under the browband so he looked like a camel. Dusty wished the farm work could always be such fun, instead of everything having to go like clockwork – with a drama if it didn’t – and always having to impress her dad.

  ‘He really blows his top, doesn’t he?’ Sally grinned after he’d yelled at her. ‘My dad doesn’t care if the cows get in the wrong paddock.’

  ‘But your farm isn’t a proper farm, Sally.’ Even though Jack had embarrassed her, Dusty felt she had to stick up for him. ‘Your cows are just there for the tourists. It really matters on this farm if things aren’t right.’ But even as she said it, Dusty knew that Sally had a point. Jack was way too grumpy and pernickety about his work.

  Sally’s father was almost the opposite. ‘No hassles’ was his favourite saying, and that’s what Jack called him when Sally wasn’t around. Milo was tall and lean, with stringy arm muscles, an American accent and long grey hair that he wore in a ponytail. Once, when he came to pick up Sally, he’d had one of her scrunchies holding his hair in place and Jack had gone on about it for hours after they left. But Dusty loved the way he didn’t care about what he looked like. One really hot day at Sally’s, Dusty had even seen him wearing an old dress. ‘Much better air circulation, Dusty. Lets the air flow. Men wear skirts all the time in Fiji.’

  Milo did all the maintenance at Hillside Holidays, entertained the guests with his guitar, and painted endless pictures of his black-and-white cows. The Rileys’ house cow, Spot, had come from Milo’s herd. Her mother had died when she was only a few days old, and Milo had given her to Dusty to raise. Dusty had fed her, first from a bottle, then a bucket, and she’d grown into a lovely cow who was so quiet that Dusty and Sally could both sit on her back.

  3

  The surprise

  Dusty sat outside Christanis’ milk bar, sharing Sally’s Twisties. She was fizzing like a sherbert bomb. Dad had sent a message with a log truck coming down the mountains that he would be home that afternoon with the cattle. He and his mate, Fred, had gone up to The Plains a week ago to muster and drive the cattle back to The Willows, and Dusty knew he was going to try to catch the Snow Pony. It was six months since Dusty and Jack had surprised the brumbies in the hayshed, and all through the summer holidays and the start of grade six Dusty had never stopped thinking about the beautiful mare.

  ‘Why do you want her so much anyway?’ Sally asked, through a mouthful of yellow crumbs. ‘You’ve got heaps of horses to ride. You’ve got too many horses. Nearly every weekend you go to a show with your mum and jump those big scary horses of hers.’

  ‘That’s just it.’ Dusty reached for another handful. ‘None of those horses are mine, or Mum’s for that matter. They’re all horses she’s schooling for other people, getting them started.’

  Rita had been a champion showjumper when she was young and although she didn’t compete any more, she had a steady business training jumping horses for other people.

  She and Jack had met because of her showjumping. She had been heading back to her parents’ property, near Melbourne, after doing the East Gippsland shows, when her old truck had spluttered to a stop on the highway. Jack always joked that he stopped because she looked so angry, as if she were about to lay into the old truck with a stick, but it was her wild red corkscrewing hair that really caught his eye. He helped her get the motor started, then insisted on following her to the next town in case she broke down again. He stood talking with her for so long at the service station that her horses started stamping in the truck. By the time she drove away he had her telephone number and address, and the next weekend he drove down from Banjo and took her to the movies.

  ‘Her old boyfriend didn’t stand a chance,’ he used to tell the kids proudly. ‘I swept her off her feet.’ Rita said it was just like the song, Twenty four hours from Tulsa –meeting a dark stranger as she drove home. In a way, that was the start of Dusty’s name, too, because Dusty Springfield sang that song and Rita loved all her albums.

  When her parents talked about that chance meeting, twenty years ago, Dusty thought how lucky it was that they’d met, because they seemed perfect together. Dad was slim, dark and blue-eyed. Mum was just a bit taller than him, and more solid, with golden freckled skin, crazy hair and green-grey eyes that you could never tell a lie to.

  Dusty scrounged for the last crumbs at the bottom of the Twisties bag. ‘No, those thoroughbreds are all the same. I want a special horse, and Sal, she’s so special. You should have seen her that night.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you’ve told me a hundred times. The snow, the moonlight, the spots on her back, the Z-shaped scar.’ Sally scrunched up the empty Twisties bag and lobbed it into the bin. ‘In the hole, rock and roll!’ She turned to Dusty, laughing, but Dusty hadn’t noticed her good shot. She was gazing down the road out of town, lost in thought.

  ‘I just hope that she’s still there, so Dad can catch her. He saw her and the pinto when they took the cows up before Christmas, but they might have gone somewhere else over the summer. I might never see her again.’

  Sally started to laugh at Dusty being such a drama queen, then rea
lised how serious she was and put her arm around her friend. ‘You’ll get her, Dusty, I know. If anyone can catch a wild horse, it’s your dad.’

  The ute came around the corner and Dusty stood up.

  ‘Good luck!’ Sally gave her a thumbs up.

  ‘Yeah, see you, Sal.’ Dusty’s stomach was churning.

  Stewie was sitting next to Rita; he’d had the day off school again. She threw her bag in the back and slid in beside him.

  ‘We’re gunna drive up and meet Dad with the cattle.’ His face was beaming and he was singing some made-up song under his breath, just loud enough for Dusty to pick up a word here and there. ‘Up in the mountains lived a horse, horse, horse, da da-da da-da of course, dah dah …’

  Dusty tried to ignore him. He drove her crazy when he was hyper like this. She leant forward to look at her mother’s face, and it was excited, too. They knew something, and Dusty thought she knew too, but she wasn’t game to say – just in case it wasn’t true. I bet he’s got the Snow Pony, she thought. I bet he’s caught her.

  They drove up the winding gravel road that followed the river into the mountains, and Dusty anticipated the cattle around every bend. Finally, there they were – her father walking in front of the cows, leading his horse, the dogs flitting behind him like red shadows, but no grey brumby. Rita stopped the car and Jack leant in the window to kiss her.

  ‘Good to see you all.’ He looked at their faces – Rita and Stewie beaming and Dusty disappointed – and couldn’t bear to see Dusty so sad. ‘There’s something for you at the back of the mob, mate.’ He was grinning like a fool.

  Dusty screamed. ‘You got her? Oh, Dad! Is she okay?’

  He nodded. ‘Yep, she’s good. I’ll tell you later about catching her. But I’ve got to keep going now, these cows are starting to bank up.’ The cows were crowding around the car, sniffing curiously. ‘Fred’s leading her off his big horse.’ He swung into the saddle and called the dogs to heel, then rode down the road so the cows could follow.

  It seemed to take forever for the mob to pass, and it felt as though their car was swimming upstream while three hundred cows moved past them. The calves that had gone up to the high plains last spring as babies were returning as cheeky weanlings, and they propped and spooked at the car.

  Finally, Fred came around the corner on his big crossbred horse, Chester, feathery fetlocks swishing as each enormous hoof clopped to the ground. The grey brumby trailed alongside him like a waterlogged dinghy being towed by a tugboat. She was haltered and tied to the horn on Fred’s roping saddle. Dusty could see by the dried runs of muddy sweat caked on the mare’s legs that she had struggled hard, but she was showing no resistance now, just staring warily at the ute. Chester’s massive strength had worn her into submission.

  ‘You’ve got yourself a wild one here, girl.’ Fred stopped beside them. ‘A real lively one. She fought like a cat for the first day, especially when the old pinto turned back. He’s quiet as a house cow. We thought he was going to follow us all the way home, but he stopped at Bryce’s Cutting, where the road drops down to the river. It was like he couldn’t bear to leave the plains.’

  Dusty remembered the box-headed brumby that had been with the Snow Pony the night they first saw her, and how closely they’d stuck together. The mare would miss him. She couldn’t see the brumby past Chester’s bulk.

  ‘Can I come around that side and have a look at her?’

  ‘Sure.’ Fred glanced back. ‘But be careful. She’s wild and she moves like lightning.’

  Dusty edged under the arc of Chester’s neck, keeping close to him, ready to duck back if the mare went berserk. ‘Whoa, girl,’ she crooned softly. ‘You’ve had a hard time, haven’t you?’

  The Snow Pony was standing close to Chester’s hindquarters, the halter rope hanging in a loop, and she didn’t pull back and take up the slack as the girl inched towards her. Dusty caught her smell for the first time, sharper than a normal horse.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Fred murmured, sitting very still. ‘She went off like a rocket every time we touched her. She doesn’t mind the other horses, but she hates us.’

  The Snow Pony wasn’t going off, though. She didn’t even look fearful as Dusty gently offered her hand to smell. She sniffed it casually and stood in the same relaxed position beside Chester. Dusty moved slowly to her shoulder, her heart racing in case the mare struck out, but she didn’t. She stood there like a tired old pony, her ears pricked towards Dusty’s voice, and let the girl stroke her neck.

  ‘Well I’ll be …’ Fred said softly. ‘She must be a ladies’ horse.’

  Fred was right. When they began to handle the Snow Pony it was obvious that she was much more relaxed with Dusty and Rita than Jack, or even Stewie. They worked on her all that winter, teaching her to lead first, picking her feet up, rubbing around her ears and introducing her to things she’d never seen before, like plastic bags and buckets.

  Dusty spent all her spare time with the Snow Pony, talking to her in a soft sing-song voice, telling her what had gone on at school that day, her secret thoughts, things she would never tell anyone. She caressed and groomed her until she knew every part of the mare, every whorl of hair, every variation in colour and every scratch and scar.

  Rita always had to call Dusty to dinner. She was at the yards with her horse every night, talking, stroking, feeding her, then warming herself against the mare’s body as the chilly darkness settled around them. When she did finally come inside and sit at the table she talked endlessly about the Snow Pony: how cute she looked when she pricked her ears, how round her feet were and wasn’t it good that they were all black, and did they know that she had fourteen white spots on her back? Finally Rita spoke for the whole family and told her to put a sock in it.

  Dusty talked constantly about her horse to Sally, too, and although Sally joked about it, putting her hands over her ears and singing to drown out the horsey words, Dusty’s preoccupation with the Snow Pony bored her. Dusty never wanted to play at Sally’s any more, and when Sally went to the Rileys’ she spent all her time sitting on the fence watching Dusty with her horse. It was torture for Sally to sit still and not make any sudden movements that might startle the Snow Pony, and no matter how hard she tried, she always did something to frighten the mare. Dusty never said anything, but Sally could tell when she was mad because her mouth set in a tight line and she started talking more to the Snow Pony and less to her. After this had happened a couple of times, Sally stopped asking to come over because she knew what it would be like: her getting bored on the fence and Dusty getting grumpy.

  Rita thought the Snow Pony would make a good showjumper. There was something about the line of her shoulder and her slight goose rump that suggested she would be. ‘We won’t push it,’ she told Dusty. ‘I’ve seen too many horses ruined by jumping them before they’re ready. She’s still only a four-year-old. We’ll let her fill out a bit more.’

  But the Snow Pony hadn’t been prepared to wait. She lived in the high stockyards for three weeks after Fred led her down from the plains, because Jack was afraid she might crash into a wire fence while she was still wild, or escape and run all the way back to her piebald mate on the plains. Chester’s half brother, Captain – Rita’s horse – lived in the little creek paddock beside the stockyards and he fell in love with the Snow Pony as soon as he saw her. He was so big he could reach right over the yard fence and rub his teeth back and forward gently on her wither, while she reached up and did the same thing to the side of his neck. When Jack finally decided that she was quiet enough to let into the holding paddock, she was so fond of Captain that nothing would have induced her to run away.

  One morning as they drove to school, Dusty noticed that the Snow Pony was in Captain’s paddock and assumed her father had put the mare there. When she got home from school that night he asked her why she’d done it. Mystified, they caught the Snow Pony and led her back to her paddock, then watched as she galloped across the paddock, whinnying madly to Captain.
She looked as wild as she did that first night they saw her. She raced towards the fence and Dusty cried out, ‘Dad! She’s going to crash!’ But there was no twanging wire or screams of pain. The Snow Pony flew over the fence like an arrow and propped beside Captain in a swirl of mane.

  ‘How’s that?’ Dusty turned to her father in excitement but he was shaking his head.

  ‘That’s feral. I don’t think we’ll ever tame this one.’

  As Dusty got to know the Snow Pony, the horse began to know and trust her in return. At first she always had to be tempted with some oats to be caught, and any sudden movement made her leap as though she’d received a jolt of electricity. It was a slow process teaching an animal, whose only defence was flight, to stay and trust them. Dusty learned just how patient you had to be with a young horse; not to expect too much, not to expect every lesson to be remembered.

  ‘A horse can take a long time to learn something,’ Jack told her, ‘but once they’ve learned it, they never forget. And that goes for bad things as well as good. If you hurt a horse, he’ll remember it. Look at old Spook. Since that mongrel farrier, Donahue, lost his temper and beat him, he’s always been hard to shoe. He associates having his feet picked up with pain.’

  Dusty ran her hand softly down the Snow Pony’s shoulder. That was never going to happen to her horse.

  The short winter days had usually closed to darkness by the time Dusty got home from school, so Jack saved most of the handling sessions for the weekend. They were ‘breaking her in’. A lot of people didn’t like to use that term, because it implied that you were breaking the horse’s spirit, but Jack reckoned it was fair enough.

  ‘You can love her as much as you like,’ he told Dusty. ‘But you’ve got to be the boss. I’ve seen too many spoilt horses that have been “gentled”. Charlie Hicks sent a horse down to some cowboy at Maffra last year and when it came back it was useless. Didn’t know a thing. When he rang up to complain, the fella told Charlie the horse would do anything for a carrot.’ Jack laughed at the memory. ‘Charlie said to me, “I’m not walkin’ round with a pocket full of bleedin’ carrots.” And he’s right. The horse is here to serve you. There’s things she has to learn, and I’m not going to hurt her, but I will be tough if I have to.’