The Quicksand Pony Read Online Free PDF Page B

littered with driftwood and seaweed thrown up by the violent waves. Biddy skittered about on her pony, looking for treasures. She peered closely at any bottles, in case there was a message inside.
    Once, in the old days, Grandpa had found a crate of bananas. Bananas were a luxury back then, he told Biddy, so they’d had a big feed of them, and packed the rest in their saddlebags. They hadn’t gone much further down the beach when they found another box, about the same size as the first. More bananas, they thought, and whipped the lid off—only to find a dead body inside. Some poor soul had been buried at sea, and washed ashore. Grandpa said he never ate bananas after that, but Biddy was sure she’d seen him.
    Her parents rode together in an easy silence, their horses striding out, heads down into the wind and squalling rain. Sooty oyster-catchers and sandpipers darted along the waterline, and crying seagulls, chased by the dogs, wheeled overhead.

It took all morning to ride along the beach, and it was a relief to get out of the howling wind and into the shelter of the bush when they reached Brandy Creek. The rain had stopped and they laid their oilskin coats out on the mossy bank and had lunch. Biddy was tired already, but she wouldn’t dare let her parents know that. A thin bit of sun crept through the cloud, and the small fire her mother made to boil the billy warmed her. Corned beef sandwiches, hot sweet black tea in a chipped enamel mug, and a slab of fruitcake filled her up. She’d never drink black tea at home, but it seemed just the thing here in the bush. The three of them snuggled together like a family of lions and snoozed until Mum’s dog, Top, woke them, trying to get into the food bag.
    â€˜Get out of it, you mongrel of a thing,’ growled Biddy. ‘That’s our food.’
    â€˜Hey, Bid,’ her mother teased, ‘imagine if he ate all our food and we had to live on witchetty grubs until we got home!’
    â€˜Like the Biddy I’m named after. She lived out here and survived on what she could find. Grandpa told me.’
    They rode through the lightly timbered gullies that afternoon, calling to the cattle and putting out little piles of salt for them. These cattle had been bred up in the high country and were used to coming out of the bush to get the salt they craved so much.
    Biddy was the salt girl. She waited on Bella in a clearing, with the heavy bag of salt on the pommel of her saddle. She called to the cattle, ‘Saaalt! Saaalt!’ over and over.
    Slowly the steers trickled down the gullies and ridges. They were wary at first, because they hadn’t seen a horse and rider for months, but they soon settled to lick the salt from the ground. Biddy rode around the edge of the mob, keeping the cattle together and soothing them with her voice.
    Her parents had taken the dogs and headed in opposite directions to search some of the remote places that they knew the cattle loved. Mum took Top, because he wouldn’t work for Dad, and Dad took Nugget, because he wouldn’t work for Mum. Neither of the dogs worked for Biddy, which made her really mad. It was as if they didn’t think she knew how things should be done. She could whistle and yell until she was blue in the face and they’d just give her a sly doggy smile and keep on doing what they were doing.
    Biddy hoped her parents wouldn’t take too long to get back with the other cattle. The mob was a bit jumpy. The steers kept looking at old Blue, the packhorse, who was tethered beside a thick mass of paperbarks and swordgrass. It was as if they thought he had two heads and was going to attack them. Biddy couldn’t see what was so scary about Blue. He was just standing there, half asleep, resting one back leg. But the cattle continued to snort and stare at him.
    Finally, way off in the distance, she heard stockwhips cracking and dogs barking. Good, either Mum or Dad would be back soon,