The high tops of the mountains! Bare rolling tops, and rocky peaks like Targangil, steep western cliffs and gullies. All high, wild mountains breed wild, wild weather. Fierce storms may suddenly come out of a clear day in such places as this.
The man on foot knew about storms, here in these mountains, and one in particular which had nearly brought death and disaster to a scientific expedition, long, long ago. It was because the storm had nearly wiped out the expedition, near Lake Cootapatamba, and because the man had seen the big painting done by the artist on the expedition, that he was thinking about it. The artist, von Guerard, came from Vienna where Franz had lived and worked. That painting depicted a clear and lovely day, like this day, but the man knew that ‘out of the blue’ a storm had come. The storm separated the expedition members, one being lost for so long that they thought him dead, another collapsing, and their poor, patient packhorse, Tommy, tethered to a rock of the South Ramshead, nearly dying of exposure.
Tommy was in the man’s thoughts, too, because as he noticed a thin line of cloud, far to the northwest, he also noticed that old blue roan mare, the one he had seen on the Ramshead Ridge. He saw her go down to drink at Lake Cootapatamba, and saw her ridiculous foal gallop to the water’s edge, fall, and then somersault into the bright water of the lake.
It was late in the day, too late, perhaps, to be in such an exposed place, but the man — who was experienced in the mountains of his own homeland — had set up a tent on the further side of Mt Etheridge, well sheltered, and he was quite sure of his safety. He should have thought more deeply. That rocky mountain used once to be called Dead Horse Mountain, because a mob of brumbies had died there, so long ago, caught by a bitter snowfall and yarding themselves. It was here, too, where two skiers had died some years back.
He saw that the old blue roan was fidgety, and that the noble-looking brown stallion was quietly gathering up the two foals and the young buckskin filly.
Suddenly, out of the blue, the wind was roaring down from the high, domed mountain, rampaging in fog and cloud over the pass at the head of the lake. The lake vanished. The brumbies vanished. The big snowdrift above Cootapatamba was completely hidden by the driven clouds.
The wind hurled the man against a rock, tore at him. He gripped a slab of granite with his ungloved hands, and hung on. He thought he heard a frenzied neigh — a foal’s neigh — but he could see nothing. His eyelids were beaten together, glued by tears, and flying cloud, and grit, and even wind-borne sugary particles of summer-hard snow from the drift.
It was a little blue roan foal with strangely misshapen legs that he was wondering about. How would anything so small withstand a wind of such strength? Anyway, how could these brumbies find shelter? The man knew he would have to fight his way around to the other side of Etheridge to find his tent — if it were still there.
Once, as he tried to struggle across the raging wind, he thought a horse was in the cloud just ahead of him, and the faint, ghostly shape of a very small foal … After that, just the darkness of wild, black cloud, grey fog, and wind.
Son of Storm had realised that the wind was coming just before it hit them, and he had marshalled his little herd. Almost immediately it was obvious that neither of the foals would be able to fight their way through the gale. All he could do was try to keep them all together, and go with the wind, but they would have to get around the head of the lake first.
Choopa tried, with all his courage and determination, to keep going. The appalling strength of the wind flung him off balance, and he kept falling, and they made no progress at all.
Dandaloo stayed beside her foal as though they were nearly glued to each other. Son of Storm tried to force Wingilla to stay with the old mare and keep Bri Bri with her — but Bri Bri was feather-light; the wind just picked her up and blew her away, and they could not see her. The little filly gave a terrified neigh, as she disappeared into the grey fog. Choopa heard her and struggled up to try to get to her, went a few steps and was blown over again. He fell into the little gully where the white purslane grew, and Dandaloo quickly lay down beside him, on the windward side, to protect him, and put one foreleg over him so that the wind could not carry him away.
They heard a cry carried in the wind, but there was nothing she could do except save her foal. She was tired and old, and the wind was full of voices. They might freeze where they lay. She pressed even closer to Choopa, trying to warm him. Twice a man or a shadow seemed to stumble past in the impenetrable fog.
There was no sign of Son of Storm or Wingilla and her foal. Cloud and fog enfolded them, and it was so cold.
She raised her head and neighed, calling Son of Storm. An answer came — a neigh all shredded and carried away by the wind. She curled her body closer round her foal.
She could not see Son of Storm through the blasting cloud, could not see him somehow forcing Bri Bri to stay between Wingilla and himself, as they fought their way back towards her call. Then Son of Storm was pushing Bri Bri and Wingilla to lie down beside Choopa, and he lay on the windward side of them all.
Was a man near? Did something go past?
Huddled together, the little group of horses were not frozen, though Son of Storm, protecting them all from the wind, was fearfully cold — making himself endure.
The clouds hurtled past, filling the sky, constantly moving, but always there, pouring over them with never a break. Each horse, except Choopa who was nearly covered by Dandaloo’s legs, felt their hide stung with wind-whipped sprigs of heath, twigs and gravel.
Did a man go reeling, stumbling past again? Were there other horses calling with faint voices in the storm?
Dandaloo felt Choopa’s warmth, as he lay cradled by her legs and her body and with Bri Bri on his other side. She wondered about ‘the tribe’. It was lucky they had stayed well into the timber on the other side of Dead Horse Gap.
The man’s tent, though made to stand up in an antarctic wind, had gone. At least, he did not locate it. He walked and walked till he fell into a dry, wind-scooped hollow below a rock, and there he stayed till the wind abated, some time during the night. When he came out from under the rock, at first light, snow powdered the mountains.
After sunshine had warmed the world, he began to wonder if he had ever seen that little mob of brumbies. Had he dreamt seeing them huddled in a heap in the worst darkness of the storm?
Later, in Jindabyne, he might never have mentioned the brumbies lost in the storm, if a stockman in the pub had not asked him where he had sheltered from the blizzard, and said that there had been a lot of brumbies die there, once. Without thinking before he spoke, the man told of the group of horses he had seen, and said that among them was a very small blue roan, part-crippled foal.
The stockman took notice, and his interest somehow made the man careful to say no more. After all, what was true and what might be dreams caused by exhaustion — even fear? But why was that stockman so curious? Maybe he was not just imagining that there was something very unusual about that foal.
The next day he drove his car up to the pass above the Snowy River, and walked along the road to Etheridge and the Seaman’s Memorial Hut. He had not meant to go out in the mountains again, immediately, but for some reason he felt he must know if that foal had died there by Lake Cootapatamba.
The stockman had said that it was strange: ‘We saw an old blue mare and a very small foal, but they were near Quambat Flat. They survived the fire all right, and we caught the mare after the fire, but she was let go, she’s that old.’ He had turned to a man sitting quietly eating his lunch. The man nodded.
The first stockman had gone on: ‘We should’ve kept her and the foal. My kids would have liked to have the foal. I reck’n it will not live through the winter anyway.’ Then he had looked puzzled. ‘I can’t think that it and its mother would have got right up to Kosci.’
The man, Franz, was still thinking about all that the stockman had said. He walked along the road and hopped across the shallow crossing, near one of the heads of the Snowy River, where there were more boulders, and the water was shallow.
When he reached the ridge on which the Seaman’s Memorial Hut stood, he could look across at the place where he had set up his tent, at the feet of the Etheridge rocks. There was no sign of the tent. He would walk over, later, to look. First he wanted to get to Cootapatamba. There were several things that he wanted to know: How much had he imagined in that wild storm? Had the horses really huddled together? Were they alive, now, or dead?
There was no obvious sign of a horse.
He went down from Rawson’s Pass to the shore of the lake, half-expected to see a blue roan foal lying dead at the edge of the water and perhaps its mother too. There was nothing.
He had a queer vision in his mind of a heap of horses lying together. He felt he had almost fallen into a little hollow with them — but there was no heap of bodies. He found himself walking beside a little gully that ran down to the lake. White purslane grew thickly, filling the gully. As he looked, he saw that some of it was uprooted, some of it squashed. There were indeed hoof marks and in one place the indentation of a very small front hoof.
So he did not dream it: perhaps they had all lain down in this very shallow gully: perhaps he really had seen those horses lying close together: perhaps the clouds had lightened just sufficiently for him to make out their heaped-together bodies. But where were they now?
The only answer he got to his questions was the aftermath of the storm whipping the lake into big waves, and no sign of a little blue roan foal and his mother. If they lived near Quambat Flat, that foal must have managed the long distance and the climb. After all, he had seen the little band climbing up on to the South Ramshead.
They might even go back that way.