The Silver Brumby Read Online Free PDF

that they were nearly at the end of the valley.
    ‘Now!’ said Bel Bel, and edged him out of the mob, neighing to Mirri as they went.
    Only a few strides and they would be in the trees. Thowra realized it was Storm beside him and that the two mares were driving them. He felt a searing cut across the face from a whip. A dog fastened on his heel and he heard Bel Bel’s scream of rage, but his mother and Mirri forced him on.
    There was a jumble of men’s voices, one calling:
    ‘Hold the ones we’ve got!’ Another singing out: ‘No! I swear I’ll have the creamies.’
    Then they were in the trees and pounding over rocks, one man and his dog still with them. Bel Bel raced into the lead and Thowra suddenly knew why. There was quite a drop ahead of them, over some rocks. He and Storm had played there often and knew just where to jump. All at once he felt strong enough to go at the faster pace that his mother was setting.
    Bel Bel leapt over the edge, jumping on to a little rocky shelf, sliding down from it on her haunches, jumping again, and he was following, legs trembling so much that he could barely stand up when he landed.
    Standing at the foot of the little cliff, legs apart, shaking, shaking, he looked up. Mirri and Storm were nearly safely down, but the man had reined in on the top and was left behind.
    ‘Come on,’ said Bel Bel, and the four brumbies vanished into the trees.

Man, the invader
    That night the weather changed suddenly. Stars faded under cloud, a whining wind crept around the rock tors and down the grassy lanes between the snowgums. Far up on the range, the dingoes howled.
    Where Mirri and Bel Bel and their two foals lay, there was no other sound except the whining wind and the dingoes, but nearer the top of the range there were rustlings and stealthy movements. Kangaroos that had been driven from their usual haunts were carefully looking around and starting home again. Birds were disturbed and anxious, unable to settle for the night. Brumbies who had escaped the hunt or broken out of the yard, footsore and exhausted, moved fearfully into the back country.
    A large camp fire blazed in the grassy valley and nearly a dozen men slept around it. In the rough yard they had built, there were about fifteen brumbies. There would have been more, but a great heavy colt, in trying to jump out, had smashed one corner of the yard, and quite a few, including Brownie and Arrow, had escaped. Yarrarnan and others of the herd had never been in the original round-up.
    All night long the brumbies trapped in the yard neighed and called, walked and walked, and neighed. Rain came in fitful showers, hissing in the fire, steaming on the brumbies’ sweating coats. Raindrops woke Bel Bel and Mirri, who were barely sleeping anyway, but no raindrop could have disturbed the two exhausted foals. They slept deeply, occasionally half-neighing at the ugliness of a dream.
    During the next day they lay quietly hidden in thick snow-gums and hop scrub by a water soak where the wombats and shy brown wallabies came to drink. They could hear the noise of whips and voices, but knew that it was only the sound of the preparations the men were now making to take the brumbies away with them. It was very unlikely that there would be any more hunting unless the creamies were seen, so it was better to lie low till the men had gone.
    Before midday, the sounds of whip cracks had become far distant and by afternoon the, bush had returned to its usual silence — silence that is not silence but the blend of water music, the sound of wind, of moving branches and moving soft-footed animals, and the song of birds. All that was different was the hanging smell of smoke; and there, in the camping valley was the trampled, spoiled grass, the dead fire, and the hidden remains of the trap-yard.
    Bel Bel and Mirri did not go to see what was left; they took their foals and skirted round the valley to the north and east, searching till they found brumby tracks, and