Read Online The Silver Brumby by Elyne Mitchell - Free Book Online Page A

He moved to a steep edge to see.
    First he looked at the northern sky to judge if the wind had brought the smoke from a distant fire, then he looked closely into the valley. It was a second or so before he saw anything, then it was just a thin ribbon of smoke winding up through some snowgums, on the other side of the valley where a tiny creek came down. Just at that moment a man walked down the creek a few yards, and stopped to fill something with water.
    ‘Man!’ he hissed to Storm. ‘We must go before there is any chance of him seeing us.’
    They slid — one horse a dark shadow, one a piece of dappled, moving light and shade — through the scrub, heading towards their small hanging valley. And there, in the valley of the Big Boggy, drinking tea from his quart-pot, was a very young man who could think of nothing but the sight of a beautiful cream-coloured colt with flowing silver mane and tail, poised high above him on a heap of granite rock.
    The two young horses made their way back to their camping-ground, and the young man, when he had finished his lunch, crossed the Big Boggy and started up the mountain towards the granite rock.
    Thowra did not really think he had been seen, or he and Storm would have been far more worried, but he remembered how Bel Bel had shown him how to track other horses, and how not to leave tracks. Instinctively he chose snowgrass or rocks to walk on, wherever possible.
    Thus it was that the young man tracked them easily from the granite rocks to the hop scrub, and then had the greatest difficulty in picking up their trail. He lost it so often that he gave up, as evening drew on, and lit his fire, boiled his quartpot, and presently rolled up in the one blanket he had carried in front of his saddle, and went to sleep.
    Thowra and Storm smelt the smoke from their hidden valley. Bel Bel and Mirri smelt the smoke, and The Brolga smelt it, too.
    The man’s little fire burnt all night long because it was a cold night and he, with only one blanket, kept waking and throwing on another log. His horse, picketed close to him, snuffled and stamped throughout the night.
    It was only by luck — bad luck — that the man found Thowra’s and Storm’s hiding-place the next morning. He had failed to find their trail and just happened to ride out on to one of the few places that overlooked their hanging valley. There he sat on his tame black horse, the sleepy-looking, very young man, who suddenly became wide awake as he saw below him, on a carpet of snow-daisies, a good-looking bay colt and the supremely beautiful creamy.
    The young man sat perfectly still, only his eyes moving as he looked at the valley, trying to find a way in, trying to see if there would also be a way out for the brumbies to take. Just then — and this was good luck — his horse whinnied.
    Thowra, who for a moment or two had experienced a prickly feeling in his hair, knew instantly they were being watched. He threw up his head, the early sunlight like water on his rippling, lovely coat, and saw the man trying hastily to back out of sight.
    As though caught in a willy-willy, Thowra whirled round and away, followed by Storm, into the clump of low snowgum and heather that hid the narrow opening into a gorge. But they heard, as they went, the crashing of rocks as the man came straight down the cliff on which he had been standing.
    ‘If he gets down unhurt, he’ll be after us, pretty close,’ Thowra thought, and strained his ears to hear what was happening behind. The crashing of rocks continued, purposeful crashing, as if someone kept forcing a horse down, not as if he had fallen and gone bouncing down among the boulders.
    Thowra and Storm burst out of the scrub and up the rocky gorge. Suddenly Thowra turned right, leaping like a goat from rock to rock up the side of the gorge. He had noticed not long before that there might be a possible place of escape up this way, and now was certainly the time to use it. No ridden horse, he