Brumby Mountain (6 page)

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?'

6

GRACE'S FACE APPEARED
through the tiny window of the flat. ‘Brumby-spotting?' She looked at her mum. ‘How good would that be, to see them in the wild? Can we go?'

Mrs Arnold looked taken aback. ‘Where?'

‘I know a place,' said Luke.

‘Oh, here we go,' she said, heavy with cynicism. ‘I know a place too. In fact I know hundreds of places. Doesn't mean I'm gonna find a brumby.'

‘It's in the tablelands. Mathews' Flat.'

Mrs Arnold sighed. ‘Where you were born. You want to go back there.'

She looked at Annie.

Annie shrugged. ‘Think about it, Judy. It'd be good for Luke to go, connect with his past a bit. I could throw some hay to the horses while he's gone. Lawson would help.'

Mrs Arnold's shoulders dropped resignedly.

Jess grinned. She could feel an adventure coming on.

It seemed to take hours to make all the necessary phone calls. Caroline wanted to speak to everyone: Jess, Luke, Mrs Arnold, Annie and then Jess again. But she finally said yes. ‘Let
me
break it to your father,' she said before she hung up. ‘And you must take some decent food. I don't want you eating truck-stop garbage all the way there.'

Luke agreed to wait until the next weekend. Grace and Mrs Arnold would follow behind in Mrs Arnold's four-wheel drive. Luke refused point-blank to ride in the car with her or let her tow his horse. ‘I want to take my own car,' he insisted.

Luke picked Jess up before daybreak on Saturday morning. Filth and Fang panted happily in the back of the HQ ute. Jess gave them quick pats before she loaded Dodger next to Luke's big black gelding, Legsy, then closed the tail ramp and hugged her parents goodbye.

They drove through Coachwood Crossing and turned south towards the freeway as the sun was rising. A sense of freedom filled Jess and she wondered what the weekend might bring.

A few Ks down the road she noticed there was no four-wheel drive behind them. ‘Shouldn't we wait for Mrs A to catch up?' she asked, staring out the back window.

‘We can join up with them later. I want to make a detour first.'

‘Where to?

‘Brisbane sales are on. Won't be long – half an hour, max. You can text her if you like.'

‘You didn't tell me about this.' She whacked him on the arm. ‘I promised I'd be good!'

He looked at her bag on the seat beside him. ‘Your phone got Google?'

Jess groaned. ‘Luke, you're hopeless!'

‘Look up the sales. See what time they start.'

She pulled her phone from her bag and googled the Brisbane saleyards while Luke drove.

‘Bidding starts at eleven a.m. with the yarded horses, which are knackery suspects and unbroken types,' she read off her phone. ‘Then riding horses are sold through a ring. Saddlery is at the completion of the horse sales.'

‘We've got time,' said Luke, checking his watch.

Jess sent Mrs Arnold a brief text suggesting a time for a rendezvous at the Mathews' Flat Hotel and then turned the phone off so as not to hear her protests.

The saleyards were a sea of steel pipes and stamped concrete. Laneways ran through yard after yard and bridges and ramps crossed overhead, with stockmen and auctioneers yodelling prices and upping the bids. Most horses stood listlessly, a few seemed agitated. There were all types, from magnificent broken-down racing stallions to aged kids' ponies and fluffy miniatures. Some had obvious vices like wind-sucking, others looked completely innocent. Some were in appalling condition.

A small foal in particular looked too young to be away from its mother. It was scrawny, with a wormy belly and too many bones showing. Flies crawled in its ears but it seemed too lethargic to shake its tiny head.

‘Probably pick that one up for twenty bucks,' said a grey-faced man as he walked past. ‘Hasn't got enough meat on it for the doggers.'

Jess shuddered and was relieved when two women entered the yard and began discussing how to get it home.

People walked in and out of the yards, lifting horses' lips and checking teeth. They poked and prodded, picked up legs and inspected hooves.

Crowds of people crushed around the horse under auction, yelling and nodding and placing their bids. The auctioneer called ‘All done' and moved quickly to the next horse.

And then Jess spotted them. Unlike the resigned-looking domestic horses, the brumbies were freaking out. Their nostrils flared as they sniffed warily at new and dangerous smells and they huddled closely together for safety, tense and on edge.

‘There they are!' said Luke, heading towards them.

Three horses, unmistakeably wild, whinnied nervously: a brown mare, a skittish brown foal and a deep golden palomino stallion. He was tall with one rolling blue eye and one brown one, beneath a matted forelock. He had the same broad shoulders and back as Sapphire, and Jess could instantly tell that they were related. This one, though, had the sweat marks of a saddle, and missing skin around his neck.

‘He's so much like Sapphire,' said Jess. ‘He has to be from the same country, from the same bloodlines.'

‘Look at his back leg,' said Luke.

Jess ran her eyes over his hindquarters and down to where a flap of skin hung from the horse's lower leg, like an old sock.

‘Looks like he's been stretched,' said Luke.

‘He's been
what
?'

‘They rope the horse's hind leg, stretch it back and tie it to a tree. Then they get on and off him. If he moves, he falls over. And if he struggles too much, well . . .' He gestured to the horse's hind leg.

‘Contractor brumby-catchers wouldn't bother doing that. Someone's doing this for sport.' Jess turned to Luke. ‘Don't the authorities stop this sort of thing?'

‘They'll say it happened in transport,' said Luke. ‘Wild horses hurt themselves in trucks all the time. It's hard to police.'

The bidding for the brumbies didn't take long. Only one person raised a hand and Jess guessed he was from the knackery. The animals' lives were traded in for a mere fifty bucks. There was some hand-slapping, a nod, and the auctioneers moved on.

Luke had walked away. Jess found him by the carpark, sitting on a patch of grass with his elbows on his knees, tapping a stick on his boot. ‘You okay?' she asked.

He nodded.

‘We couldn't take them home, there's no room. We couldn't . . . '

He gestured for her to stop. ‘It's okay. They're better off, especially the stallion.'

‘The foal . . . '

‘They were a job lot.'

They sat there in silence, listening to the auctioneer in the distance. Suddenly Luke was on his feet, striding towards a small brick building with
Office
written above the door.

‘Where are you going?'

‘Gonna find out where they came from.' He disappeared into the building.

Jess didn't follow. Beyond Luke an unmarked truck with a dirty olive-green crate on the back pulled in and Jess watched as several horses were loaded onto the back. Once full, the truck made its way through the carpark and towards the exit gates. Through the gap between the lower horizontal panels, one ice-blue eye stared at her as the truck rolled past. It was the sort of look that would haunt a person in their dreams.

Luke emerged from the office moments later. ‘All they know is that they're from New South Wales. They wouldn't tell me any more.'

‘At least we know we're headed in the right direction,' said Jess.

Luke was already marching to the car, keys jingling in his hand. They rejoined the highway and headed for the tablelands.

They drove through the city limits and on into the afternoon, with the sun streaming through the window and country music twanging in the cabin. As they travelled up the steep sides of a valley, the road became pitted and potholed and the going slow. The HQ struggled to pull the two horses up the hills and the brakes smoked as it rolled down the other side.

‘Dingo!' Luke hit the brakes and slowed. ‘What have
you
been up to?' he said as the blocky yellow animal stopped on the side of the road and stared at them.

On the back of the ute, Filth and Fang went nuts, growling and barking, nearly flipping themselves inside-out on their chains. The dingo eyed them briefly and slunk away, its thick bushy tail swallowed up by a fold in the land.

‘Must have been after those lambs,' said Jess, pointing to the sheep on the other side of the road.

As they drove into steeper country, the road wound around bends and cut through hillsides. A red-and-white poster strapped to trees became a recurring sight.

1080
WILD
DOG
POISON
Laid on this
property

They saw an enormous dead dog hanging by its two back feet from a star picket. Its tongue was black and shrivelled.

On the back Filth and Fang whined, and Jess caught the rotten smell of it as it wafted through her open window. She cringed. ‘Maybe we shouldn't have brought the dogs with us.'

‘I was just thinking that,' said Luke quietly. ‘Might not be real welcome around here.'

They drove through two more small towns before the road flattened out again and they came to a small intersection. One road led to a concrete river crossing, the other to a small cluster of cream-painted tin buildings. HOTEL was painted across the roof of one, MATTY'S FLAT POST OFFICE was scrawled across another. Out the front of the post office was a prehistoric-looking petrol bowser.

Luke let the ute roll to a stop next to it and cut the engine. Jess got out to stretch her legs and was shocked by the dry, cold air. It had a hardness to it she had never felt before. As she opened the front door to the horse float to check on Dodger and Legsy, a middle-aged man in coveralls came to the door of the post office and eyed them suspiciously.