WHEN JESS RODE through Harry’s front gate later that morning, Lawson’s brumbies seemed to be settling well. Jess stabled Dodger and Opal and joined her friends at the yards. She took a moment to watch how the wildies interacted with each other, so unlike the domestic horses. They moved about the yards as one, a mob. Some were shorter, some taller, but they were all cut from the same stuff, with identical white-striped faces, and behaved as though they had the same thoughts pulsing through their minds. If one startled, they all startled. If one looked to the left, the others did likewise. They all stood facing the road, or they all stood facing the stables. One might wander a short distance away and get a drink from the trough but it would then return to the mob and face the same direction as the others.
Grace was in the round yard, working with the bay colt. She walked behind, driving him forward with a gentle flick of her rope. The horse stopped and swung his tail at her, ears flat back, and she calmly drove him on again. Every time the horse stopped and swung his tail, Grace clicked him up again.
After several minutes, more stops and more flicks of the rope, the colt turned its face towards Grace. Jess smiled. She had watched this process dozens of times with Biyanga’s youngsters. ‘Joining up’, ‘hooking up’, ‘latching on’, ‘shadowing’ – different trainers called it different things, but it was always magic to watch. Jess stood there, entranced, watching for the signs, waiting for the magic to happen. Grace turned her shoulder to the colt.
‘He’s coming,’ Jess mouthed. Grace winked while the horse walked cautiously towards her with an outstretched nose. She stood dead still. The horse took another tentative step and placed its nose on her shoulder, then snuffled up and knocked her cap off, eyeing it curiously as it fell to the ground. Grace was trying to hold back a chuckle.
Jess left her with the colt and found Luke in the arena with the pale chestnut, Buddy. He slid his hand down behind the back of the little horse’s fetlock and picked up its foot. He held it for a moment and then placed it back on the ground, running his hand back up the horse’s leg and patting him on the shoulder.
‘He doesn’t seem to mind that,’ she said.
Luke left the rope dangling from Buddy’s halter and walked over to Jess.
‘So how are your brumbies going?’ she asked. ‘Are you going to start handling them too?’
‘The stallion’s not too good. Nor are his mares. I need to move them out to clean the yards, but they go nuts every time I go near the gate.’
‘Are they eating? Drinking?’
He shrugged. ‘Not really.’
‘Do you want some help from Opal?’
‘That’d be good.’
Jess went and got her from the stables while Luke finished with Buddy.
‘See if you can get her to lead them into another yard while I clean out the old one,’ said Luke.
Jess led Opal in and out of the yards and the injured brumbies followed tentatively behind.
‘She’s a natural at coaching,’ said Luke from the sidelines. ‘She really seems to understand the job.’
Jess smiled and nodded as she tied Opal by the gate. The filly just had a way about her that seemed to calm and reassure their flighty nerves. ‘I think she’s enjoying it too.’
She helped Luke muck out the yard. When it was clean, Opal brought the brumbies back in, introduced them to biscuits of fresh grassy hay and showed them that the dry, wispy stems were good to eat. The two mares and the buckskin foal nibbled tentatively, but the stallion stood, tight-lipped, with his ears back, still refusing to eat. His blue eyes darted nervously at every small noise or movement. He looked gaunt, hollow-flanked, with sunken eyes. But his head was still high, tense, and braced against this new world.
‘Sapphire’s going to take more time than the others,’ said Luke.
‘Getting the mares to eat is a start,’ Jess answered. ‘Hopefully he’ll follow their lead.’
Jess watched the two mares, standing with their sides touching, then looked proudly at Opal. What her secret was Jess didn’t know, but having Opal around somehow gave Jess hope that with persistence and patience, maybe these wildies could form a bond with humans.
By Friday afternoon, Jess was well on top of her study and ready to work the entire weekend with the brumbies. Grace and Rosie would both come and help too. The three of them planned to sleep in the spare room at Annie’s.
Jess spent the afternoon grooming Buddy while Luke tried to catch and halter some of the others. But his mind didn’t seem to be on the job. He appeared to be lost in his own thoughts.
That night, as she drifted towards sleep, Jess was stirred by a hissing sound.
‘Jessy, psst. Jess!’ Luke peered through the bedroom door. ‘Jess,’ he whispered again.
‘Go away,’ Grace grumbled at him. ‘Or I’ll tell Annie you’re in here.’
‘Shut up, Grace,’ he shot back at her. ‘I’ll tell Annie you snuck out with Elliot last night.’
Grace sat bolt upright. ‘I did not!’
‘I didn’t know you snuck out with Elliot.’ Jess squinted into the dark room.
‘That’s because I didn’t!’ hissed Grace.
‘It’ll be your word against mine,’ chuckled Luke.
‘Get out of here!’ Grace hurled her pillow at the door.
Jess flipped her quilt off. ‘What’s the matter?’ She stumbled into the hallway and closed the door behind her.
Luke was already sitting at the dining-room table in front of a laptop. ‘I just got an email from a lady at a brumby rescue group and she said there’ve been more.’
‘More what?’
‘More tablelands brumbies put through the sales. Stallions, mostly. They’re always creamy and they’re always scarred. It’s been happening for months. Someone’s systematically running them, Jess.’
‘Isn’t that illegal?’
‘Totally,’ said Luke. ‘But no one seems able to stop them.’ He chewed at an already short fingernail.
‘Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now. Time to stop worrying – go and sit on the couch,’ Jess ordered, closing the laptop.
She went to the linen cupboard and grabbed a blanket, then returned to find him lying on the couch with his hands behind his head. She threw the blanket over him and snuggled in alongside.
He wrapped his arms around her. She could feel the cool moonstone that always hung around his neck on a worn leather strap that had been replaced several times.
‘These people are going to wipe them out if they keep catching all the stallions,’ mumbled Luke quietly.
‘They’ve already been wiped out,’ said Jess. ‘The national parks people have already massacred most of the herds in the tablelands. They shot them from helicopters.’ The Guy Fawkes massacre – when six hundred wild horses were shot in the middle of the foaling season, their carcasses left to rot – had been well publicised.
‘I reckon there are more, Jess. Ones they don’t know about.’ Luke paused. ‘When I was really little, I used to hear brumbies at night, their hoofbeats.’
‘Wow, that would have been cool.’
‘I’ve never forgotten them. My father reckoned they were ghosts. He called them Saladin’s spirits.’
‘I’ve heard of Saladin,’ said Jess. More than a hundred years ago, a creamy stallion of that name had been crossed with a thoroughbred. The descendants formed a foundation sire for the stockhorses, but many also ran wild in the gorge country of the New South Wales tablelands. They had creamy genes, and some had blue eyes.
Luke was quiet for a while. ‘Mum called them the night raiders. The stallions would come at night for the mares. One took her best horse, Stormy-girl. She used to write stories about her, living with the wild horses. After mum died, her best friend used to read the stories to me.’
Luke lingered on that thought a moment longer before continuing. ‘I remember seeing Stormy-girl and the wild stallion outside my bedroom window. She was a coloured mare, you could see her white patches moving in the dark.’ Luke turned to Jess. ‘We lived at the bottom of a big mountain.’
‘Really?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, sounding suddenly muddled. ‘I don’t know if it was a dream or if it was real.’
‘You must have been pretty young.’
‘I was only four.’
Jess lay in Luke’s arms, imagining a mare called Stormy-girl galloping through the trees with a wild brumby stallion. ‘Did she ever go looking for her? Try to get her back?’
‘Yeah,’ said Luke quietly. ‘In Mum’s stories there was a place.’ His voice took on a story-telling tone. ‘There’s a place on the tablelands where all the boundaries meet, a no-man’s land where wild horses live.’ He smiled fondly, as though filled with good memories. ‘That’s how her stories always started.’
‘Go on,’ whispered Jess.
‘In a landlocked valley, wild and unclaimed, Saladin’s spirit is born to the blue-eyed brumbies. The place is so exquisitely special, it must be kept secret.’
He laughed suddenly. ‘I’m being stupid.’
‘No, no, go on. It’s a good story.’
‘She called it Brumby Mountain,’ Luke continued. ‘She told me it was real. I can’t remember much more.’ He paused and his voice changed again. ‘I know it’s really stupid, but I’ve got it in my head that that’s where these brumbies are coming from. They’ve got the blue eyes. They’re creamy like Saladin. People wouldn’t get away with brumby-running in the national parks these days. So where are the runners catching these horses?’
‘So you think there might be a breakaway mob, hiding out somewhere, that the parks don’t know about?’
‘Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?’ said Luke.
‘Not really,’ Jess said. ‘If only they could tell us. If only Sapphire could talk.’
Luke sighed. ‘Sapphire.’
Jess didn’t answer. She didn’t need to point out what a mess the horse was.
‘I did the wrong thing, trying to save him. I’ve just made him suffer more.’
Jess leaned over and flicked off the lamp. ‘Get some sleep.’
She snuggled into his arms but he barely hugged her back. She could almost hear him thinking. Again, she could feel the pull that the horses, the mountain, the property, were having over him.
The next morning the front door slammed and Lawson walked into the lounge room. ‘Your dad’s outside, Jessica. He just pulled up in the driveway.’
Luke exploded off the couch, sending Jess sprawling to the floor with the blanket wrapped around her head. She hurriedly pulled it off and jumped to her feet, checking that her pyjamas were where they were supposed to be.
Lawson roared with laughter.
‘Pig,’ she muttered.
Luke mumbled a few curses and flopped back onto the couch.
‘Hey, I just got a phone call from a bloke called Frank O’Brien,’ said Lawson, using his toe to peel off a boot, then kicking it into a shoe basket by the front door. ‘He does horse starting clinics with teenagers. He’s coming out to have a look at my brumbies tomorrow afternoon. He needs some young ones for a workshop that’s coming up in a few weeks.’
‘Oh, that’s fantastic,’ said Jess. ‘Your brumbies would be perfect.’
‘He said as long as they can lead and tie up, he’ll take them,’ said Lawson.
‘That shouldn’t be too hard,’ said Luke. ‘Yours are just about ready to go.’ He sighed. ‘My ones are just nuts, though. I can’t get anywhere near them yet.’
‘Still haven’t settled?’ asked Lawson.
Luke pulled a face and shook his head. ‘Nup.’
Lawson walked to the kitchen, and Jess followed. Annie already had a big pot of tea steeping, a mountain of toast and some sausages and eggs sizzling in a pan. Jess’s home-grown asparagus sat on top, warming. It had become the new breakfast tradition.
‘You two looked sweet cuddled up on the couch like that,’ Annie said, rolling some sausages over with the tongs. ‘You reminded me of me and Harry years ago. We used to snog for hours.’
‘Told you she’d be cool,’ said Luke in Jess’s ear. ‘I’m going down to the flat. See you later.’
Jess poured herself a mug of tea and squirted some honey into it. ‘He’s stressed out about the brumbies,’ she said to Annie. ‘He couldn’t sleep.’
‘He’s always been a bit like that. Can’t keep still for long,’ Annie answered. ‘He used to have nightmares when he was younger.’
‘Yeah, he told me.’
‘We used to find him fast asleep in Biyanga’s stable in the mornings, all curled up in the wood shavings around the stallion’s feet. He used to sneak out the bedroom window, through the courtyard and down to the stables. He said the sounds of the horses made him sleep.’
‘And when the horses don’t sleep, he doesn’t either.’
‘Something like that,’ smiled Annie. She paused and looked thoughtful. ‘But especially so with these ones, I think. They’re from the same country as him. Luke was born in the tablelands. He has the same mountain spirit running through his veins as that old stallion. There’s a connection there, somehow.’
The front door swung open again and Grace’s mum, in holey tracky-dacks and a flannelette shirt, kicked off a pair of steel-capped boots as she entered. ‘Hey, Annie,’ she called out in her blokey voice. She walked into the kitchen and gave her sister-in-law a quick hug. ‘Came to see the brumbies, but the smell of your cooking got to me.’
‘Get yourself a plate, love,’ said Annie.
Mrs Arnold helped herself to some sausages and eggs and pulled up a stool at the bench while Annie poured her a mug of tea. ‘Grace reckons the stallion’s a total nut job.’
‘It is. Luke’s really upset about it,’ said Jess, hoping Mrs Arnold wouldn’t go down there and start bullying him around.
‘Poor horse,’ said Mrs Arnold. ‘Brumby-running is a disgusting practice. Bunch of idiots, all galloping around thinking they’re the Man from Snowy River, injuring their horses, injuring themselves.’ She hacked into a sausage and kept talking. ‘The stockmen in Banjo’s poem never used a boat winch to haul them onto a truck, they never chained the brumbies to a four-wheel drive and dragged them through the bush. It’s a disgrace what goes on these days.’
Jess left Mrs Arnold with Annie and headed down to the yards. Grace was working with the bay colt again.
‘Did Lawson tell you about the clinic?’ Jess called out.
‘Yeah,’ Grace called back. ‘These guys will be perfect for it. This one is catching on really fast.’
Jess left her to it and went to find Luke. She found him sitting under the coachwood tree with his head in his hands.
Sapphire paced from one end of the yard to another. The stallion was a sad sight, thin and ribby, so dehydrated that his flanks had sunk into his belly.
‘Where are his mares?’ Jess asked.
‘We had to separate him from them,’ Luke said glumly. ‘He hurt one. He didn’t mean it. He was charging at one of the domestic horses and she got in the way.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I’ve rung John.’
Jess’s heart sank. She sat next to him and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Need a therapy pet?’
He laughed half-heartedly and put an arm around her shoulder.
‘You don’t have to hang around,’ she said. ‘Lawson and John will take care of it.’
‘I want to be here. It wouldn’t be right for me to cop out.’
‘Mind if I do?’ She had enough bad memories of horses being destroyed without adding to them.
He shook his head.
‘Don’t do it where his mares can see,’ she said quietly.
Jess left Luke at the yards and set about finding jobs to do. She saw John’s four-wheel drive pull up at the front gate and made herself busy, trying not to think about what was happening in the stallion’s yard. She went to the stables and did a poo patrol, trying to ignore the hum of a backhoe engine and the tractor putting outside. She tried to block out images of the creamy stallion being dragged down the laneway, his feet in chains and head dragging behind. His blue eyes, she knew, would be open and empty as he was thrown into a big hole and then buried forever, away from his mares, away from his mountains. It was too depressing.
Luke didn’t come up for lunch. Jess walked down to the stables and knocked on the door of his flat. Fang nudged the door open with his nose and wagged his tail when he saw Jess. The flat was a small square stable with a concrete floor, now converted into a room. A long, bench-style table sectioned off the kitchenette, which had one sink, a toaster oven and a bar fridge with stickers all over it. There was stuff all over the bench – farrier’s tools, jumpers, empty soft-drink cans, a few dirty plates and mugs.
A small two-seater couch and an old cable reel with a TV on it were all that could squeeze into the rest of the flat. Luke lay on the couch with his boots hanging over the armrest and his arms around Filth, staring at the wall like a ghost. When Jess came in, the dog gave a single lazy tail-wag and closed his eyes again. Luke hid his face behind Filth’s long shaggy body.
‘You okay?’
Luke kept his face buried in the dog’s chest. He shook his head twice.
‘Want some time to yourself?’
He shook his head again. ‘I want to go back there.’
‘Go back where?’
‘To Mathews’ Flat. I can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘About your parents?’
‘Yeah, and the property and the horses. All of it. I want to stop whoever’s running those brumbies.’ He looked up at her suddenly. ‘Come with me, Jessy. I don’t want to leave you behind this time. I miss you too much. We could throw some hay on the back and take the horses.’
‘I can’t just take off. I have school and home, horses to take care of and a job – and so do you. What about Lawson? What about all these brumbies?’
‘She’s right, Luke.’ Annie appeared at the doorway of the flat. Judy Arnold stood next to her. ‘I’m responsible for Jess while she stays here. I told her parents I’d take care of her.’
Luke looked annoyed. ‘Next weekend is a long weekend. I’d have her back in time for school the following Tuesday, I promise!’
Annie shook her head. ‘Not without her parents’ permission.’
Jess sighed. There was no way her mum and dad would let her take off to another state without an adult. There’d been enough drama about that when she had wanted to go droving last year. It was only when Mrs Arnold had agreed to . . . ‘Mrs Arnold!’
Judy Arnold scowled. ‘What?’
Jess smiled sweetly. ‘Fancy a brumby-spotting holiday?’