‘Instinct,’ Irina said. ‘They always try to keep together, and run for open country. It isn’t in their nature to go in amongst the trees, and the stallion wouldn’t let them, either. Horses don’t hide for safety – they run. They obey their nature – and it will be their undoing,’ she added.
On the other side of the headland, at the end of the wood, there was another gully, and beyond it the corral had been built, a wide-open funnel at the end from which the horses would approach, narrowing into a bottleneck with a double gate. Up on the top of the gully another group of men waited with brushwood hurdles to jump down behind the herd and close the gap to stop them breaking back; and here, too, Anne and Irina and the children joined the other women and children to watch from the safe eminence.
It was hot, even so early in the day, and airless, and clouds of tiny black flies rose from the bracken to torment the ponies; but the ring of their bits as they shook their heads, and the occasional stamp of a hoof, were the only sounds. Everyone was silent, waiting in almost unbearable tension for the arrival of the herd.
They heard them before they saw them, a soft drumming sound that was so low and heavy it was almost felt rather than heard, like the beating of one’s own heart. Its vibration increased as it drew nearer, and became audible as a thunder of hooves on the hard-baked track; and then the distant sound of pursuit reached their ears, the men yipping and cracking their whips to drive them on.
Then suddenly out of the wood the stallion appeared, leading his mares now that the track was too narrow for him to circle them. He cantered, head up, bright eyes everywhere, his mane and tail streaming out with the wind of his passage. Then, as he reached the point where the gully sides rose short but sheer like cliffs, he stopped dead. Behind him the mares crowded up but did not pass, while he stood staring suspiciously about him.
Anne thought how beautiful he looked: wild and proud; the master of his mares, but their protector, too, going first into danger on their behalf, offering his life for them, and for the right to mate them; and somehow the beauty and the pride made her feel sad. She wanted to cry, because they, the human beings, were deceiving him, trapping him; and though she knew it was foolish, because no harm would come to him, she felt they were small, mean creatures, beside his greatness, his noble strength.
He looked at the people lining the gully top, and at the inviting open space before him at the gully mouth, and he seemed to sense that something was wrong. His mares pressed against him, and one tried to pass, but he snapped at her to hold her back. His ears went forward and back, and he snorted, misliking the situation, and held the great press of bodies behind him by the sheer force of his presence.
Then Natasha tugged urgently at Anne’s arm, and whispered, ‘Oh look, there’s Quassy!’
Anne had seen her at the same instant, as she flung up her head and the headcollar and rope became visible. She was near the front, and apart from the headcollar she looked no different from any of those other black and brown and grey bodies; with her dusty coat, tangled mane and wary eyes, she was just another wild mare trying to escape from the hated smell of men. Anne’s heart ached for her, too.
Behind them the men redoubled their shouts and whipcracking, and the mares surged forward more urgently. The stallion looked again suspiciously at that inviting gap; and then, there being nothing else for it, trotted forward. Anne was conscious of everyone’s letting out their breath in relief. The herd surged by, a sea of long bodies, wild manes, upflung heads; the foals pressed to their mothers’ sides, only their tiny faces visible in the mass of warm bodies, as they did what was born in them for survival. In a brown and black and white stream, the horses poured through the narrow gap and spread out into the space beyond. Anne turned her pony and rode to the other edge of the gully to see the finale.
The paddock rails were visible to the stallion now; and all around the circumference were people, lining the rails, making escape impossible. Now the lie was exposed to him. The open space was not what it seemed: the paddock rails curved in again, narrowing ahead into a trap. He snorted and began to run back and forth across the width of the paddock, whirling, ears back, just out of reach of the hated men who hemmed him in. The mares pressed in behind him, driving him towards the bottleneck; he ran back and forth, more and more urgently, kicking out as he spun around at the end of each shortening run, angry, afraid.
‘What will they do with him?’ Anne asked breathlessly, of no one in particular. Surely no one could hold that white storm? Then there was a confusion of shouting and a flurry of movement, as at the last moment when it would be possible, the stallion charged the rails, and with a power born of desperation sprang into the air, clearing both the rails and the instinctively ducking heads of the men beyond them. It was a soaring, stunning jump, at least five and a half feet upwards, perhaps fifteen feet outwards, hard to believe even though they witnessed it with their own eyes. He landed in a spurt of dust, and swerving violently, galloped at an astonishing speed for the open country.
Everyone was shouting and exclaiming with excitement. ‘Did you see?’ Irina cried needlessly, her eyes shining. ‘What a jump! He must have cleared six feet!’
‘I’m glad he got away. They’ll never catch him now,’ Anne said, her eyes unaccountably moist.
‘They don’t want to. Once he was through the bottleneck he’d have been let go anyway,’ Irina said. ‘His job is to look after the mares out in the wild – he is never brought in or tamed.’
‘Where will he go now?’
‘Not far,’ Irina said. ‘He’ll hang around just out of reach, waiting to see what becomes of his wives, and when they are released, he’ll come and gather them up, and take them back to the valley. But I’m glad I saw that jump! I don’t suppose anyone’s ever seen a horse jump higher.’
The corral was filling up now, and Sergei came riding up to the gully-top to say to Anne, ‘Quassy’s up there, and she looks all right, as far as one can see.’
‘Yes, I saw her go past. What happens now?’
‘Since the stallion’s gone, Feodor’s going to go in and try to get hold of her. She may be a little wild. Do you want to come down and watch?’
‘Of course,’ Anne said. ‘But wouldn’t it be better if I went in to her? She knows me.’
Sergei grinned. ‘Foolish! You don’t really think anyone will let you climb into a corral full of wild horses, do you?’
With no one driving them, and no stallion to lead them, the mares were growing quieter, no longer milling about, but standing still, watchful, yet not panicking; one or two even suckled their young foals. When Anne and Sergei reached the paddock rails, Feodor with a rope in his hand was preparing to climb in.
‘Going to see if I can get up to that mare of yours, Anna,’ he said as they came up. ‘See if she’ll let me near her.’
‘She ought to,’ Anne said. ‘She’s as gentle as a kitten to handle.’
‘That was before she had a whole day of freedom on the range, and with the stallion for company,’ Feodor said with a grin. ‘It changes priorities, you know. But we’ll see.’
Anne watched with amazement and distress as her previous docile, gentle mare proved impossible to catch. In a while, Feodor was back.
‘She’s not having it,’ he said, climbing back over to safety. ‘Unfortunately, there’s just enough room in there for them to move about. If they were packed tighter, I’d be able to take her, but I don’t want to upset them any more. We’ll get her when she goes through the bottleneck. One thing, though – she’s not lame. Seems to be perfectly sound, from the way she was dodging me and kicking out.’ He turned to his head man, hovering at his side. ‘All right, let’s get on with it.’