LUKE FINALLY AGREED to let Mrs Arnold look at his wrist. ‘Doesn’t look broken to me,’ she said, giving it a squeeze. He shrieked and pulled away.
‘Well, maybe a little hairline fracture,’ she conceded. She found two straight sticks and ripped half an old shirt into bandages, then used the other half to make a sling.
Luke snatched it from her with his other hand. ‘I’ll do it myself,’ he grumbled. ‘I don’t want you going anywhere near it.’ He began using his teeth and his good arm to wrap his wrist. ‘Some chaperone you are.’
‘Need some help?’ asked Jess.
He handed her the torn rags. ‘Thanks.’
Jess gently strapped his wrist and slung it snugly against his chest. There was no obvious bump or swelling but she could see the veins in his forearm pulsating strongly as she helped put his jacket back over his shoulders.
‘I’m going to call the dogs back,’ Luke said, putting two fingers between his teeth and giving an ear-splitting whistle.
As he set off to find his dogs, Jess turned to the others. ‘Why would someone tie up that mare?’ she asked.
‘Like I said, to lure the stallions,’ said Mrs Arnold. ‘They let them fight over the mares for days until they’re exhausted. Then the runners come back and try to catch them.’
‘Don’t they realise how cruel that is?’ said Jess.
Mrs Arnold snorted. ‘It’s just a sport to them. They don’t care about the horses. Half the time they just go back home and forget about them. They do the same with their traps. They come back months later, when it suits them, and find a pile of carcasses in there.’
‘Was she a wild mare, do you think?’
‘Nah, she had brands. They probably just picked her up from the knackery.’ She cast her eyes over the surrounding hills. ‘They’ll have traps set around here for sure.’
‘Let’s look for them,’ said Jess, ‘and pull them apart.’
‘Okay,’ Mrs Arnold said. ‘But they’ll be well hidden.’ She climbed into the car and pulled Jack’s maps out of the glovebox. ‘Maybe the old fella will give us some clues.’
She carefully unfolded the topographic map over the steering wheel and ran her finger over Jack’s little Xs and marks. ‘If I were going to trap brumbies, where would I put yards?’ she mumbled to herself.
‘Near their water,’ said Grace, poking her head in the window.
‘Where you could get a truck in,’ added Jess.
‘Somewhere not far from where they tied the mare . . . We’ll have to go out on foot,’ said Mrs Arnold, closing the map. ‘Wish we still had horses.’
‘So do I,’ said Jess, with gnawing apprehension. ‘I hope they went back to Matty’s Creek.’
Mrs Arnold gave her a reassuring wink. ‘I can’t imagine old Dodger wanting to join the wild bush horses,’ she said. ‘Or Legsy. They both like two good feeds a day and a warm rug. They’ll be okay. They’ll follow the old one down.’
Jess hoped she was right. She found an old jumper in the back of the fourbie and wrapped it around her head and neck to keep warm, then set off for the ridge-top with icy mist blowing from her lungs and snow sticking to her clothes like little barbed icicles.
The snowflakes grew thicker as she walked, and they began to stick to the gum leaves and grasses. At the ridge-top Jess looked out across a whirling white blizzard. She could no longer see the layers of distant mountains. She and Grace trailed Mrs Arnold along a narrow brumby track across the ridge-top and through sparser eucalypt forest.
‘Tyre marks,’ Grace suddenly yelled. ‘A truck has been through here!’
They followed the ground-up muddy tracks through a trickling stream, around rocks, past deep ruts and disturbed ground where a vehicle might have been bogged. At the top of another hill Mrs Arnold abruptly stopped and put her hands on her hips.
‘There! Knew it wouldn’t be too far away.’
In a small, flat hollow was a set of heavy steel cattle yards, built out of panels and linked together with metal pins. They were the portable kind that could be easily dismantled and thrown on the back of a truck. They’d been set up as a funnel-shaped laneway, leading into a square yard.
‘Trap yards,’ said Grace.
‘No, they’re not,’ said Mrs Arnold, as she approached them. ‘There’s no salt and no lucerne. No one-way gate, and no water. These are holding yards.’
They kept searching and found a four-wheel-drive ute with a large livestock crate on the back, thinly camouflaged under a few broken gum-tree branches. The number–plates were missing and the back window was smashed in. Attached to the crate was a heavy-duty winch, the kind used to drag large boats onto trailers. Jess felt her stomach churn as images of struggling brumbies shot through her mind. She looked at the large snap hook, dangling from the wound-up chain. So it was true. They really did use boat winches to load them.
She thought of Sapphire’s mares and the little buckskin foal back at Harry’s place, with their scarred faces and bruised souls. She imagined Sapphire, chained to the side of this truck, being hauled by the head and tail through this rough country, fighting all the way. All the romance of wild bush horses and bearded stockmen gathered to the fray suddenly made her feel sick. This was the reality of brumby-running, staring her in the face. She had already seen where the wretched creatures ended up.
Mrs Arnold pulled open the door of the vehicle and pointed to wires dangling from the ignition. ‘It’s been hot-wired,’ she said. ‘Wonder if it’s stolen.’ In the passenger footwell they found food wrappers, empty cigarette packets and beer bottles. ‘Teenagers,’ she grunted with disapproval. There was more rubbish scattered on the ground outside the car, and tyre marks all through the dirt. It looked like other vehicles had been there, too.
Mrs Arnold pulled out her phone and began taking photos of the car and yards and the damage to the forest. She reached into the driver’s side and pulled the bonnet release, taking photos of the engine and chassis numbers. ‘For the cops,’ she said to Jess.
‘Let’s pull the yards apart! That’ll stop them,’ said Grace.
‘No, they’ll just put them back together again,’ said Mrs Arnold. ‘We need to do more than that. Start pulling out the pins and put them in your pockets. We’ll take them with us.’
Jess and Grace began work on the yards, pulling the pins from top and bottom and letting each panel fall to the ground with a clang.
When all the panels lay in a heap, Mrs Arnold climbed inside the runners’ car. ‘Let’s see if the old girl goes,’ she said, fumbling with the wires and giving it a kick in the guts. It spluttered and gave a few false starts, then coughed to life with a billow of black smoke behind it.
‘Get out of the way!’ she yelled, as the last few panels fell to the ground. She crunched the car into gear and pointed it straight at them.
Jess and Grace leapt out of the way and then cheered with delight as Mrs Arnold ploughed over the pile of steel, then roared the ute back and forth, grinding the gears and revving the engine. The panels buckled and bent under the weight of the car until they lay in a mangled heap. After a final defiant roar and blurt of smoke, Mrs Arnold killed the engine and stepped out with a satisfied gleam in her eye.
‘Woo hoo! Madam Demolition strikes again,’ whooped Grace, punching the air.
Jess was doubled over with laughter. She looked over her shoulder. ‘I hope those runners don’t come checking their traps any time soon.’
‘Wasn’t us,’ said Mrs Arnold, slamming the car door shut and climbing down off the mountain of tangled steel. ‘We just found it like this, didn’t we, girls?’
‘Yep,’ said Jess, still chuckling.
‘We better skedaddle, just in case,’ Mrs Arnold grinned. ‘One more thing.’ She opened the bonnet of the car, reached in, fumbled about and resurfaced with two small pieces of wire in her hand. ‘Let’s take these too,’ she said, handing them to Grace. She set off into the forest, leaving the car with its bonnet gaping open.
‘Wonder how Luke went with the dogs,’ said Jess, skipping behind her.
They headed back to the LandCruiser full of triumph and satisfaction, their pockets heavy with metal pins.
‘That was about five grand’s worth of yard panels,’ said Grace, bouncing over a log. ‘I know, ’cause Dad just bought some at the start of the year, and that’s how much they cost.’
‘Another reason I want all the pins,’ said Mrs Arnold slyly. ‘I’m going back for the gates, too. Reckon I could get them on my roof racks?’ She looked sideways at Jess. ‘My demolition fee.’
‘You slippery old woman,’ chuckled Grace.
Jess hurried to the ridge-top, keen to see Luke and the dogs again. From the top, through the whirling snow and the gusts of wind, she could see Luke crouching, his shoulders slumped. Something wasn’t right.