The Winter Pony (23 page)

We found the body of the last motor sledge just a little way from the camp. The drivers had left another note saying they were going ahead, man-hauling for One Ton Depot.

We passed the thing in a strange sort of mist that shone with a white light. The men in goggles, the ponies with their fringes on, we marched steadily south.

The wind rose slowly. But soon we were leaning against it, our heads down again as blowing snow whipped up around us.

We camped early, too cold to go on. The wind became a
blizzard, piling snow against the pony wall, thrashing the sides of the tents till the canvas shook and boomed.

Captain Scott came out of his tent and stood all alone in the wind. With his hands behind his back, he squinted terribly into the blizzard. Then he came and stood among the ponies, as though trying to see for himself how much shelter we got from the wall. He put his hand on my back, at the edge of the blanket, in the snow-clotted tangles of my mane.

A feeling of gloom came out of him. I could feel it through his hand, a sense of gathering despair, or of dwindling hope. Then he looked toward the wind with an angry face, as though the wind was a person, as though the blizzard was blowing just to annoy him.

The snow gusted around us, over the wall. It piled up on my blanket. It piled up on the ground and banked against the tents, against the sledges and the fodder bales. When Captain Scott took his hand from my back, his mitten was white with snow.

I twitched my ears. Beside me, Jehu was doing the same thing. He swung his head to the north, toward the faintest sounds.

Out of the blizzard came the dogs. Faint and gray in the whirling snow, their faces caked with white, they ran at an easy lope. The sledges slid along, and I saw the men running beside them, made fat in their sledging clothes. I heard the Russian commands called out against the wind, and the words sent my old fears shivering through me.

The men veered to the right and stopped. They made their camp downwind of ours, and the dogs started up a mournful howling that sounded far too much like wolves.

Captain Scott was watching them, his hand moving like a brush to keep the snow from his eyes.

“So they
can
travel in this,” he said to himself. “Still, you can’t trust them. It’s ponies you want on the Barrier.” He turned to face me. He took off his mitten and thrust his bare hand under my blanket, trying to feel how much snow had gathered there. He kept talking in sad tones. “The motors are gone. The dogs can’t last. It’s up to you lot now.”

He pulled out his hand. He tightened the edges of my blanket, then gave me a solid and friendly thump. “My life’s in your hands, James Pigg,” he said.

IN
bright sunshine, with a cold wind blowing, we followed the old cairns across the Barrier. It was a good day’s march with ten miles covered. But the crocks and I were going a bit slowly, and the others caught us up in the afternoon, with a mile or two to go.

Christopher came first. He thundered past with his breaths puffing white, his great hooves slamming the snow. Mr. Oates held his tether, but the pony led the man, barreling on as if he was heading for his stable. Victor was close behind him, with little Birdie Bowers trotting at his side. Snatcher followed, then Nobby and Michael. They all went by, one by one, last of all Captain Scott and Snippets.

I felt sorry for Patrick, stuck at the back with me and the
crocks, and I pressed myself harder, digging in with my hooves. But he held me back.

“It’s all right, James Pigg,” he said. “You’re doing just fine.”

A moment later, Mr. Wright called out from behind us: “Hold up a minute, will you? I think my sledge meter’s jammed.”

We stopped and waited. Patrick fed me a little piece of biscuit that he found in his pocket. Then I heard Chinaman whinny, and turned my head to see him standing by himself in his harness. Mr. Wright was clearing snow from the wheel that trailed behind his sledge. The pony whinnied again—a sad sound. He didn’t like to be left alone back there, with the big ponies far ahead. Christopher, in the lead, had crossed a wave of snow and was slipping away behind it.

Chinaman snorted. I heard a jingle from his buckles, a rattle from the sledge, a sudden shout from Mr. Wright. Then Chinaman went galloping past us. It startled me to see him rushing past, going as fast as he could go across the Barrier.

“Wait! Wait!” shouted Mr. Wright. And a moment later,
he
went past us, running flat out, with his mittens flying from their tethers. His long legs sprang like a cricket’s as he bounded across the snow. “Stop!” he shouted.

But Chinaman kept running. And Mr. Wright kept chasing him. And suddenly, Jehu, with a toss of his head, broke loose from Mr. Atkinson and went running after the both of them.

Mr. Atkinson was too surprised to move. He gaped at the three figures loping over the snow, and then he started laughing. Patrick laughed as well, and up ahead, the men looked back and saw the two old ponies plowing along in their wild sort of canter, with Mr. Wright racing between them, and soon the sound of laughter filled the wide Barrier.

Nobody had thought Chinaman remembered how to run, he was so old. They had given up on Jehu right at the start, and now rewarded the little pony with a nickname: the Barrier Wonder.

That was the nicest day of all, everyone happy as they pitched their tents and built the pony walls. I hoped every day would be like that, but the next morning took us back into misery.

Strong winds made the marching very cold. Then a blizzard stopped us after only five miles and covered the Barrier with fresh snow that made the slogging harder when we started out again.

All of us bogged in the pits of snow, but again the bigger ponies passed me. Chinaman had to struggle for every yard, heaving huge breaths, with his ribs bending in and out. He didn’t have the strength to keep the sledge moving, so hurled himself at the harness to shift it along a foot at a time.

Mr. Wright tried to help him, but there wasn’t much he could do. When we staggered into camp, he asked Mr. Oates to have a look at Chinaman. “It’s not proper to drive him like this,” he said.

Mr. Oates examined the pony. “That’s the fellow. That’s the soldier,” he said as he moved from tail to head.

Mr. Wright hovered nearby. “It doesn’t look good for him, does it?” he asked.

“Frankly, it doesn’t look good for any of them,” said Mr. Oates. He rubbed Chinaman’s shoulder. “You should be proud of this one. He’s done very well.”

“But how much farther can he go?” asked Mr. Wright. “Another mile or two, and that’s it?”

“Oh, I think he’s got days yet,” said Mr. Oates. “His spirits are good, and that’s the thing. It isn’t muscle and bone that will carry him on, you know. It’s spirit.”

“But to make him work till the end …” Mr. Wright let his voice fall away. “To the very end?”

“He would want nothing less,” said Mr. Oates. He walked along the tether line, stopping again at Jehu. I snorted, trying to call him closer. “Yes, I see you there, James Pigg,” he said.

Mr. Atkinson followed him. “It seems so calculated,” he said.

“Well, you see, you’re thinking like a person, Silas. You want to think like a horse instead.” Mr. Oates touched a finger to his head, tapping through the wool of his balaclava. “There’s a lot of bone up there, but not much else. Believe me.”

Well, that seemed a bit insulting. But I didn’t mind too much if it came from Mr. Oates.

He ran his hand down Jehu’s neck, up across the pony’s ribs, down again along the flank. All the time, he kept walking toward me.

“Most men—most people—want the same thing,” he told Mr. Wright. “A good life of good work, then out to pasture—in our own way—until the end arrives some long time later. But not so for a horse, and a pony’s surely no different.”

He was smiling at me now as he reached up his hands to my forehead. “The saddest horses I’ve ever seen are the ones put out to pasture,” he said. “They get listless, they get fat, they stand by the fence forever, looking out at the world they knew. They’re trapped by that fence, you see. People think the pasture’s a kindness. But to a horse it’s a prison.”

Mr. Wright sighed. “Do you believe that truly?”

“I do,” said Mr. Oates. “A horse doesn’t dream of the pastures. If anything it lives in dread of them.”

He was almost right. I did not dream of pastures, when pastures were fields of dirt and nibbled-down grass and rusty old buckets to drink from. But I didn’t dream of harnesses, either. I worked because it pleased him, and because it pleased Patrick and Captain Scott and all the others who had been very kind.

Mr. Oates rubbed his hand down the long flat of my nose, then cupped it under my mouth. I snorted. I made the happiest sounds that I knew, but to the men, it was just a murmuring flutter of lips and gums.

Mr. Wright chuckled. “You’d think he’s trying to talk to you.”

“In his way, he is,” said Mr. Oates.

I lowered my head to let him rub the space between my ears.

“I understand horses better than I understand people,” he said. “I prefer their company most of the time, to be honest. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: A horse would sooner die in harness than rot in a field.”

Mr. Wright didn’t look convinced. He came up beside Mr. Oates and idly stroked my nose. “Aren’t you giving them your own thoughts?”

“Only because we think the same way,” said Mr. Oates. “Soldiers and horses. We don’t hope to die old.”

He was so nearly right. I didn’t want to die old if it meant being alone and frightened. But it wasn’t the harness that made me work, or the tether that stopped me from running away. Christopher was proof of that, with all his fears and battles. If I had the choice, I would rather grow old with
Mr. Oates. But I’d sooner die in harness than disappoint him. Not that it seemed to matter much. Everything was already decided, and a pony didn’t have many choices to make.

The next day’s march brought us to the place where Blucher was buried. The flagstaff still marked the spot, and all around it the snow was fresh and deep. It was an eerie place, with the little pole tipping in the wind, back and forth, as though Blucher was pushing up from below, trying to struggle from his icy grave.

Chinaman had never been there. I watched as he veered from his path ahead of me, pulling Mr. Atkinson sideways till he stood right above the grave. He made a sad sort of whine, then pawed the snow gently with a forefoot. His gesture made me think of my mother, when she had helped me to my feet on my first day on Earth.

Mr. Atkinson frowned. He didn’t know that Blucher was buried there. But Patrick did, and he looked at Chinaman with astonishment. When the pony whined again, he seemed almost afraid. “This gives me the willies,” he said. “Let’s get him away from here.”