Brumby Mountain (8 page)

‘But don't worry, even if we have to put you up at home, we won't let you sleep out in the cold tonight,' said their hostess. She looked up. ‘Dunno what I can do, it's just not anywhere!'

‘Can't we break in somehow?' suggested Luke.

The woman looked thoughtful, then shrugged. ‘We could try, I s'pose.' She came around the counter. ‘This way,' she said, pushing the big old door open and stepping out into the cold.

They traipsed behind her until they all stood in front of the bunkhouse door, trying to rub some warmth into their arms.

‘Smoke rings, look!' said Grace, making like a fish and puffing misty little rings into the air in front of her.

‘Where'd you learn that?' snapped Mrs Arnold.

‘Harry showed me,' said Grace, sounding delighted. She popped out a few more.

Mrs Arnold shifted about with her hands in her pockets. ‘Can we get in or what?'

Their hostess looked at the deadlock and frowned. Luke reached out to the window and with one hand slid the sash up. Jess had never seen a window slide up so smooth and fast.

The woman looked pleased. ‘Allow me,' she said, clambering in headfirst. ‘Well, bugger me,' she called from inside. ‘I found the key!' She appeared at the doorway with a big smile and a key dangling from one hand. ‘You wouldn't believe it, though, the beds aren't made up. Can you give me half an hour? Have a drink on the house while you're waiting.'

Jess was glad to be back in the pub next to the fire. It was cosy and warm, which she was quite sure the bunkhouse would not be. The bar had begun to fill with people and the noise level had reached a merry rumble of laughter and storytelling. Mrs Arnold came back from the bar with a tray of drinks. ‘Well, I'll only need one of these,' she said, lifting a schooner of port from the tray and beholding the size of it.

‘Like port, do ya?' grinned the stockman by the fire.

‘I do,' said Mrs Arnold in a low growl, ‘and I hate ringers.'

The man chuckled, unabashed. Grace chortled.

‘Three pink lemonades for you lot,' Mrs Arnold said, handing the tray to Luke. ‘You'll have to stay in the pool room, no minors allowed in here.'

‘Thanks,' said Luke in a flat voice. He didn't point out that he was in fact eighteen.

The pool room was also small with a fireplace, and through the door to the pub they could see and hear everything that went on anyway. A barmaid walked in with some old egg cartons, a few sticks and a log. ‘That oughta get you started,' she said, dumping it into the wood basket and hurrying back to the bar.

They'd just burned through the egg cartons without so much as a lick of flame catching on the log when their hostess came bouncing back in. ‘Room's ready!'

At the bar, Mrs Arnold ushered Luke in front of her. ‘He'll get it, he's loaded.'

‘No, I'm not,' Luke protested.

‘Well, I don't have any money. This was your bloody holiday, remember. Consider it my chaperoning fee.'

Luke handed the woman his credit card. She read the name on the front, then looked up and eyed him with great curiosity. ‘You from around here?'

‘I was born here, eighteen years ago,' said Luke.

The woman looked like she'd seen a ghost. ‘You Matty's boy?' she whispered.

She looked at the lone stockman and tilted her head, gesturing for him to come over. She handed him Luke's card. ‘Look at the name on this.'

The man held it up and pulled a pair of specs out of his top pocket. He read it carefully, then frowned. He looked at Luke. ‘You're Matilda Matheson's son.'

Luke nodded.

‘Luker the puker,' said the stockman with amazement. ‘Don't you be barfing all over me floors again.' He slammed an open hand across Luke's back, nearly fulfilling his own prophecy. Then he looked at Mrs Arnold with distaste. ‘
She
the mum you got?'

The woman came around from the counter. ‘You're little Luke. They took you away.' She had her hands over her mouth and was looking Luke over, as though trying to find a trace of his mother. ‘Matilda was my best friend. What are you doing here? Where have you been? Have you been okay?' She spoke in a rush.

Luke just looked stupefied. ‘You're Kitty. Kitty and Steve.'

‘You remember us!' Kitty laughed and gave him a hug. She wiped a finger along the rim of her eyes. ‘Matty's boy. My Matty. I miss her every day.' Then she laughed. ‘You've got her beautiful hair.'

‘What about my father?' asked Luke. ‘Did you know Ernest Matheson?'

‘Yeah, we knew Ernest, though we never knew that was his real name till his funeral. Everyone around here just called him Jack. That's him there!'

Steve pointed to a black-and-white photo pinned to the wall behind the bar. A man in a singlet and an old bushie's hat was pouring a beer down the throat of a horse. There were others in the photo, laughing.

‘That was taken before the accident,' said Steve. ‘They were good times back then. Real good times.'

‘That's Rambo,' said Kitty, pointing to the horse in the photo. ‘He's still at Matty's Creek. He and Jack were best mates.'

‘I think we saw him,' said Jess, looking at the photo. ‘He was up on the hill.'

‘Yeah, that'd be him. That's near where Jack's buried, in the cemetery up there, next to Matty. Rambo never leaves the hill paddock. He knows Jack's there.'

They spent the rest of the night sitting at a tall table next to a roaring fire, eating gravy-soaked chips and listening to Luke's history unfold.

‘Your dad was driving the night your mum died, Luke. He was pissed. Tried to drive through the crossing while it was flooded. Always the hero, the larrikin,' said Steve as he finished downing another schooner. ‘He never got over it. He was just a different person after that. Did some time in prison, that's when you got taken away, then he went back to that farmhouse and just kinda lived like a hermit.'

‘You used to look after me,' said Luke to Kitty.

‘You were only four when the trial came up and Jack went to jail.' She looked at Luke with tears in her eyes. ‘They wouldn't let me keep you. I promised Matty I'd look after you.'

‘The mongrels,' said Steve, ‘they said we didn't fit the criteria to be foster carers. We were like bloody family. Your dad did four years. By the time he got out, he thought you'd be better off without him.'

‘Were you?' asked Kitty, and Jess could feel the weight in her words.

Both Mrs Arnold and Grace watched Luke, waiting for the answer. His face was still but Jess could see that his mind was processing. Would he tell them about being shunted from one foster home to another, about being bashed, kicked out of school?

‘Eventually,' Luke said, sparing them the full truth, ‘I met a really good bloke called Harry. He taught me to break in horses. He was the best, a real father to me.'

Kitty smiled warmly.

‘He was my uncle,' said Grace proudly.

‘My brother,' said Mrs Arnold, shooting a gnarly look at Steve.

Then all of sudden everyone was getting emotional about Harry. They told stories about droving and camp–drafting, about the number of people who had ridden through town on the day of his funeral, Harry doing the full monty on the back of the bushfire brigade's truck. Judy told stories that neither Jess nor Luke had even heard before. Finally the stories came around to brumbies.

‘Well, you've certainly got brumbies in your blood,' said Steve, raising his glass at Luke. ‘Doesn't surprise me at all that you're involved with horses. Your old man used to disappear for weeks up in those mountains. He knew them all, didn't he, Kit?'

‘Yep. He kept records of all the foals each year and always knew if one went missing or if it was injured.'

‘That's why we're here,' said Mrs Arnold. ‘Some bastards have been putting some rough-lookin' brumbies through the sales up north. All we know is that they're from the tablelands.'

‘Doesn't surprise me,' said Steve. ‘There's been all sorts of trouble up on the mountain lately.'

‘Catching a brumby has always been an initiation thing with the young fellas around here,' said Kitty. ‘Like a rite of passage. Some of those horses trace back to the Walers. These kids' ancestors were in the war, they rode those horses into battle. They see it as their right to be allowed to catch them.'

‘Most just take a few photos and let them go,' said Steve. ‘Or they might break them in, if they know what they're doing. They make top station horses.'

‘We've got no problems with that,' said Judy. ‘Harry used to do the same thing, catch one here or there and train it up. It's the idiots without a clue, the ones who dump them at the saleyards to be dogged with their legs half ripped off that we don't like.'

Then Jess told them about Sapphire and the golden palomino they had seen at the Brisbane saleyards. ‘We have reports about other ones, too,' she said. ‘They all have blue eyes.'

‘It's all the blow-ins,' said Steve. ‘They come down here and want to go brumby-running. It's just a sport to them. But they cause all sorts of trouble. Horses injured. Stock all stirred up, not to mention the damage to the bush.'

‘The locals have always kept the brumbies in these hills kinda quiet,' said Kitty. ‘Not many people knew they existed. But word seems to have got out.'

‘It's their colour,' said Mrs Arnold. ‘The blue eyes and the golden pelt. They'd be quite a prize to catch, I imagine.'

‘They're gonna wipe those horses out if they keep going,' said Luke. ‘I'm going for a ride up there tomorrow. I want to see what's going on.'

‘You wanna be careful,' warned Steve. ‘About five different boundaries meet up there. It's a no-man's land, virtually lawless. There's all sorts of crazy people doing stupid things.'

Luke shot Jess a look.

‘It's real,' Jess whispered with awe. ‘A no-man's land. Where the boundaries meet . . . '

She wanted to go there, too.

9

AS THEY LEFT
the warmth of the pub later that night, Grace looked crushed. ‘I want to go up the mountain too but Mum wouldn't let me bring a horse.'

‘Take old Rambo,' said Kitty, as she showed them to the bunkhouse again. ‘He's old, but by geez he knows those mountains.'

Luke coughed.

Grace looked at him pleadingly. He shrugged. ‘Okay.'

When they got to their room, it was freezing cold and no one had remembered to turn the tiny oil heater on. The beds were saggy and covered with purple chenille bedspreads with only one blanket. Kitty didn't seem to mind when Luke's two wolf-dogs slunk in after them.

‘Cockroach spray. How thoughtful,' said Grace after Kitty had left. She picked up a blue can from a small timber dresser and gave it a shake.

‘Here's the continental breakfast,' said Jess, opening a big plastic tub full of cups and plates and pulling out a snack pack of cornflakes.

‘Any milk?' asked Mrs Arnold, peering over her shoulder.

‘Can't see any.'

‘Hmmm, crunchy.'

‘I bags Fang for the night,' said Grace, whistling the big black dog up onto her bed. ‘Lie down, boy!'

Luke appeared at the doorway with his swag.

‘Where do you think you're going?' said Mrs Arnold, blocking the entrance.

‘Out of the cold,' he answered, looking over her shoulder. ‘It's arctic out here!'

‘You got a whole house down the road – this is the girls' room!'

To Jess's horror, Mrs Arnold closed the door on him. Luke banged angrily on it. ‘The house is full of black snakes and rats. Anyway, I paid for that room!'

‘You've got a swag,' she called back, sounding unconcerned. ‘Or are ya still
Little Lukey
?' She beat him to the window and flicked the catch across the top of the sash.

‘HEYYYY!'
he yelled.

‘Keep your voice down. You'll wake the other guests.' Mrs Arnold flung the curtain shut and turned to the girls. ‘Get changed and into bed. Big day tomorrow.'

‘Can I at least have my dogs?' Luke called from outside.

‘No, they'll freeze out there!' Mrs Arnold plonked her overnight bag on the bed that was under the window, effectively blocking any chance of him communicating with Jess. Filth leapt onto the fourth bed and nuzzled into the chenille bedspread gratefully.

‘There you go, little doggy,' said Mrs Arnold, giving him a pat. ‘You snuggle up there and stay warm.'

Jess curled into a heat-conserving ball and let the details of Luke's past churn around in her head. She wondered where he would sleep and hoped he wouldn't go back to the property. After listening for the engine of the ute to fire up for what seemed like hours, she finally relaxed and gave a low whistle. ‘Filth,' she whispered softly.