The Girl from Snowy River Read online

  Dedication

  To Nina, Fabia and Evangeline, who keep the spirit

  of the girls from Snowy River; to Angela, with love

  and gratitude always for helping create the horses in

  this book and so much more; but most of all to Robyn,

  who rides the mountains with love and understanding,

  and who fights to keep her valley safe.

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Jackie French

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  22 November 1919

  Dear Diary,

  Today I met a ghost…

  He came out of the fog unexpectedly. Though how else do you appear in fog? One moment the two flat slabs of the Rock loomed dark in front of her, the mist sifting about them thick as flour, then suddenly there was a stranger — a young man in a bathchair — wheeling across the stone and gazing out over the valley.

  Empress snorted and tried to back away, her hooves cutting deep into the mud of the track. Flinty patted her neck, trying to assess the stranger. He didn’t look like a swaggie, not with that too-pale skin. And how could a swaggie travel in a bathchair? No, Empress was just nervous. Horses hated passing the Rock.

  ‘There’s ghosts up on that Rock,’ old Dusty Jim muttered, especially between fencing jobs when he’d been at the bottle harder than usual. But Dusty Jim saw fairies and once an elephant that turned out to be another of the mountain’s boulders. There was no such thing as ghosts. Except, she thought involuntarily, in my brother’s eyes.

  But even if you didn’t believe in ghosts, the Rock felt different from the mountain slopes around it. Long ago, perhaps, mountain giants had played catch with a massive boulder, and had dropped it here at the edge of the mountain, from such a height that it split in two. Now the two flat halves perched like a verandah above the valley.

  Most days the fog drifted down from the gullies higher up, like icing sugar sprinkled on a sponge cake. Other times a saucer of mist, looking as solid as white sauce on a dish of cauliflower, sat on the Rock between Rock Farm and the valley below. The air around the Rock was always cold, as though the sunlight slid away down the slopes on either side.

  Suddenly Flinty was glad of the solid farmhouse up the track behind her. Rock Farm might have got its name from the Rock, and even been made of mountain stone, but the house that Dad had built looked like it had drunk in years of warmth and happiness.

  Empress quivered again. Flinty stroked her neck. ‘Good morning!’ she called to the stranger.

  The man glanced at her from his bathchair, surprised, as though he hadn’t heard the hoofbeats approaching. Young, twenty-one perhaps — Andy’s age; four years older than her — dressed in a blue shirt and thick blue trousers that ended in emptiness below his knees. His mouth looked carved in a straight line, too hard to smile.

  ‘Is it?’ His voice wasn’t bitter, exactly. It sounded blank, like Andy’s at the train station when he’d finally come back from the Great War, when they’d had to tell him Dad had died of the influenza while he was half a world away on the ship coming home. Andy had sounded like that the day he’d left them to go droving too, his eyes shadowed as though they still saw the mud of France and not the twisted shapes of snow gums.

  Now here was another man maimed by the war. Flinty tried not to stare at the place where the empty trousers dangled over the chair. She forced her voice to sound cheerful. ‘Well, it’s not raining. Or snowing. Or blowing a gale. Are you visiting nearby?’

  She wondered who could have wheeled a crippled man onto the Rock. The Mullinses’ farm was an hour’s ride downhill, and this man looked too well dressed — and sober — to be staying with old Dusty Jim. Captain McAlpine had chosen his house site for its snow gums and their irregular trunks weathered cream and green and orange, for the high peaks that glinted in the summer rain, or gleamed blue-white in winter: not for close neighbours, or even good soil.

  But men back from the war did odd things. A crippled ex-soldier would find peace on the Rock, if he didn’t count the trickle of gum leaves in the breeze, the faint hoosh of the creek below, the background song of magpies and a few cicadas.

  The stranger didn’t answer her. Instead he swung the wheels of his chair so all she could see were his back and the chair’s. It was made of silver metal, not clunky looking like the wooden ones she’d seen in the newspapers.

  Another ex-soldier who refused to talk. Being crippled didn’t excuse his rudeness. Suddenly she wanted to yell, ‘Speak to me!’ It was as though war was a secret girls weren’t allowed to share.

  The men who’d marched away weren’t the only ones who’d suffered. She’d lost a brother at Bullecourt, Mum to heartbreak, Dad to the influenza brought back by the soldiers. Her older brother was off with cattle, fleeing his memories. The boy she loved had come back a man she hardly knew.

  I may not have lost my legs, she thought, but I’ve lost those I love forever. The war had savaged Mum, and Mrs Mack, and every woman in the valley. The war was over but the pain was still there, for her and the families left behind, not just for the men who had been maimed.

  We’re all bits that the war didn’t take, Flinty thought, gazing at the stranger’s back. But those left behind had a right to know more about the beast who’d chewed their lives and spat the remnants out.

  Well, maybe, just maybe, she’d get one soldier to talk today. She turned her back on the stranger and his bathchair, and walked Empress through the edges of the fog till the track ahead was clear, then cantered down through the puddles to the valley.

  Chapter 2

  12 January 1916

  Dear Diary,

  Sandy kissed me! Proper kisses, on the lips. Three times, and the last two times in front of everyone.

  The last two days have been… I’m not sure what they have been. Strange. Wonderful, except I’m crying as I write this now. I don’t know what I feel. My brain is overfull, like Mum’s mixing bowl when she makes the Christmas puddings.

  Two days shouldn’t have so much in them. I feel like I’ve turned a corner and suddenly everything has changed.

  We all got up even before the kookaburras yesterday morning to go down to meet the enlistment march from Delegate. It said in last week’s newspaper they were coming to Rocky Valley. Dad reckoned it was about a three-hour march to get here from their last camp, but we didn’t know what time they’d set out, so we all wanted to have everything ready early.

  I wore my Sunday dress, the one with the blue flounces, even though
it meant I had to sit in the cart instead of riding Empress. Joey and Kirsty kept singing, ‘ Oh, we don’t want to lose you, But we think you ought to go.’ Mr Ross made us all come down to the school to practise.

  Mum didn’t sing. She was quiet the whole way down. Dad kept giving her little hugs when he thought we weren’t looking. I think they were remembering how Andy enlisted at the start of the war. Joey and Kirsty are too young to read the pages in the newspaper about all the men who have been killed or wounded. But that’s why this enlistment march is so important. We can’t beat the Huns without more men to fight, and not enough are enlisting now, and that makes it more dangerous for the men already over there, like our Andy, and Rick and Toby Mack, and the other valley boys.

  I couldn’t sing either, looking at Mum’s face, and neither did Jeff. He looked funny, sort of determined and scared. I thought maybe he was embarrassed because he was only fifteen, too young to enlist.

  We were the last in the valley to get there, but we had the furthest to come. There was bunting all across the schoolhouse. I helped Mum carry in the plates of food — she’d made her coconut cake, and I’d made egg and ham pie. There was enough food on the trestle tables to feed the whole army. We didn’t know how many men were coming. Fourteen men enlisted when the march began at Delegate, but there’d be the recruiting sergeant and other army people, as well as the men who had enlisted on their way here. I hoped there were a hundred men, but I don’t suppose there are a hundred men between here and Delegate.

  And then we waited. I talked to Amy for a while. Her dress wasn’t as pretty as mine. She said she was going to try to get one of the soldiers to write to her ‘as the boys here are all useless’, which just means they know she’s got a tongue as mean as a red-bellied black snake. She’d set her cap at Andy for a while, but I know he doesn’t write to her. Anyhow, she is only thirteen, same as me, so Andy is miles too old for her, and miles too good too.

  So I went to talk to Jeff and Sandy instead. They were whispering together but stopped when I came up, which hurt a bit, because they are my best friends in the world, and I didn’t think we had any secrets.

  Then suddenly there was this weird wailing sound, like the bunyip is supposed to make, but it was music too. Dad yelled out, ‘Bagpipes!’ and grinned — I suppose Dad remembered bagpipes from when he was in the Indian Army. All of us from school lined up, ready to sing.

  The piper came first, a red glint among the she-oak trees. The music wailed but challenged you too, like it was telling the enemy, ‘We’re here, and we can beat you.’ The piper wore a skirt and long white socks, which should have looked funny but looked fierce instead.

  The men marched behind him, and a boy with a drum. We all waited as they marched up the track. I counted twenty volunteers and three soldiers in uniform. Then Dad yelled out, ‘Three cheers for our brave young men!’ And everyone called out hip hip hurray. Mr Ross lifted his arms and we began to sing.

  ‘Oh, we don’t want to lose you,

  But we think you ought to go,

  For your King and your country

  Both need you so.

  We shall want you and miss you,

  But with all our might and main,

  We will cheer you, thank you, kiss you,

  When you come back again.’

  Everyone cheered, and then Snowy White, who’d been sent home from the army when he was shot in the knee at Gallipoli, yelled out, ‘Well, the kissing can start now then, ladies. I’m ready!’ And we all laughed.

  Mr Ross made a speech. He quoted Lord Nelson — he always quotes him at school — about how ‘England expects that every man will do his duty’. Then Reverend Postlewhistle, who comes up from Gibber’s Creek to give the services every month, said that no man of honour could see women and children maimed and slaughtered, and how the Huns don’t spare women and spear children on their bayonets. He said, ‘Go, for the glory of God and for your country.’

  The recruiting sergeant sat at Mr Ross’s desk so that any of the valley men could enlist. I felt bad because there were hardly any men here left to join the army, only Horace Brown who turned eighteen a week ago. All the others are too old, like Dad and Mr Mack, or married and can’t be spared, like Johnno Mack, now his brothers have gone.

  Mum, Mrs Mack and Mutti Green gave the marchers a cup of tea and a scone to last them till dinner. The schoolyard smelled of grilled mutton chops and smoke. I watched the bagpiper stride back and forth by the sliprails, then Sandy came up and said, ‘I’ve joined up. And Jeff.’

  I looked at him with my mouth open. A fly could have buzzed in and out and I’d never have noticed. ‘But you’re only fifteen.’

  ‘Mum signed the papers. And your mum too, for Jeff. And I’m tall for my age,’ said Sandy. Then he added, ‘I thought you’d be proud. It’s for Andy and Rick and all the others. We can’t let them down.’

  ‘I am proud,’ I said. I was too. I started to cry, and Sandy said, ‘Flinty.’ He grabbed my hand and led me down to the creek behind the schoolhouse.

  I thought he just wanted to get me away before Amy or someone saw me crying. But he put his hands on my shoulders and then his face came closer to mine and somehow I knew what to do, or almost. I don’t think Sandy has kissed anyone either, not properly. Our noses got in the way at first, and then we didn’t want to stop, or let each other go. I wanted to feel him warm against me forever. He tasted so good, like apple teacake. I know that sounds silly, but it’s true.

  Then someone clanged the bell to say it was dinnertime. We broke apart and Sandy said, ‘You’ll write to me?’ and I knew he meant write to him because I was his girl, not just a friend.

  I said, ‘You’ll take care?’ and I meant, ‘Don’t get killed, please come back safe, I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t come home.’

  And then we went, holding hands, and everyone saw and smiled, and Amy smirked at me, but I only cared about Sandy. We ate chops, and cheese and tomato pie, and apple cake. He kissed me good night, just quickly on the lips, in front of everyone, when we went back up the mountain that night — Jeff had to pack, of course.

  I could still feel Sandy’s lips on mine, all the way in the cart back home. I can still feel them now.

  I didn’t sleep that night. I don’t think Jeff did either, or Mum or Dad. I could hear them talking in the kitchen. I think Dad was telling Jeff things a soldier needs to know, and Mum — I think Mum was just looking at him, making every second with him count.

  I kept thinking: Sandy, Sandy, Sandy. It’s funny. I’ve known Sandy all my life. All us kids played together — when there’s only eleven of you at school it doesn’t matter how old you are, or if you’re a boy or a girl, and anyway, there were only two of us girls at school, me and Amy. There are always more boys than girls born in the valley, even with sheep and horses. It’s a good thing roosters taste good.

  I remember when I was six years old, and Sandy was eight, and he tackled me when we were playing football so I fell down and split my lip. Sandy saw me dripping blood and stopped to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then I grabbed the ball and scored a try. Another boy would have been mad, but Sandy laughed, and always chose me for his team after that.

  I can’t really remember when we stopped touching, not even sitting wedged side by side in the cart to school. I was ten, I think, and he was twelve. It was almost like we knew there was something special going to happen for us, and we had to stop touching till it happened.

  We went down in the cart before dawn. I had my blue dress on again — I’d sponged off the gravy stain. Jeff sat between Mum and Dad on the front seat, not in the back of the cart with me and Joey and Kirsty.

  The marchers had slept in the schoolhouse. Mrs Mack and the other women were serving them scrambled eggs and making toast on a campfire with about a hundred pots of jam. Sandy was sitting with them but he came over to the cart and helped me down, just like I was a lady, not waiting for me to jump down myself. I don’t think I let go of his hand till the drum
began to beat again. The piper puffed into his bagpipes and started to play.

  Sandy said, ‘I’ve got to go.’

  I said, ‘I know.’

  He kissed me again, on the lips, in front of everyone, then ran to where the men were lining up. Jeff hugged each one of us, but Mum longest. He said, ‘I’ll be right, Mum. You’re not to worry,’ then he went and stood beside Sandy.

  Sandy didn’t look at me then, or Mrs Mack, just straight in front, like all the other men, with Jeff beside him. They didn’t look young. They looked like men, like soldiers. I knew exactly what I was feeling then: proud. It hurt, but I was proud of that too. Like Dad says, it’s supposed to hurt when you make a sacrifice for your country. That is what sacrifice means.

  The sergeant called, ‘Attention! Quick march!’

  They began to march. Sandy did look back then, and so did Jeff.

  I waved, and cried and smiled at the same time, like Mum and Mrs Mack, so Sandy and Jeff remember us smiling not sobbing as they left. The bagpipes wailed again, and the drum beat. I wanted to run after them, like the little kids did, but I wanted to be a young woman too. If Sandy is a man now then I have to be a woman, not a little girl. I stood there and listened till I couldn’t even hear the echoes. But maybe the bagpiper stopped playing once they were out of sight.

  And then I helped wash up and we got into the cart and came home.

  Mum looked too tired to put on dinner. I said I’d make shepherd’s pie with the leftover mutton in the cool safe.

  I’d just put it in the oven for the potato to brown when I heard this wailing, like the bagpipes. For a second I thought they had all come back, that the war was suddenly over. Then I saw Mum, sitting down on the Rock, her face in her hands. Suddenly I realised Jeff was gone too — I mean really realised it — and I’d hardly even paid attention, didn’t even know if he looked scared or excited, I’d just watched Sandy all the time.

  I ran down to the Rock. Mum saw me and stopped sobbing. Her face was swollen and wet. I hugged her and we just sat on the Rock together, because there wasn’t anything to say.