The Horse Who Bit a Bushranger Read Online Free Page A

our mob to me. We had been separated in the crush during the day. There was comfort in familiar smells, the foals nudging at their mothers for more milk. The sound of munching was a comfort too, and the gentle slip of water. Far off I could hear ducks complaining about our noise.
    A fire flared in the darkness. For a moment I felt edgy, wondering if it would spread. But the shadows of men surrounded it. It seemed the men could keep fire contained, just like they ruled us.
    The moon rose. We grazed and dozed and grazed again.
    Then in the morning we began to walk once more.
    Day after day we walked. It was a slow pace. Even the foals could keep up. We stopped to drink, to eat. After a while even I stopped trying to get away. Walking, eating, walking…
    I lost myself in the rhythm of our days.

CHAPTER 6
Billy, 1831
    There were only two other people in the dray, though it were pulled by nine big bullocks; the foreman, Roman John, and the bullock driver, who didn’t seem to have a name, and only spoke to the bullocks—in a stream of worse swearin’ than Billy had ever heard back at Mr Higgins’s. He lashed his whip across the backs of his cattle. Two driver’s assistants walked beside the dray, prodding at the great beasts with whips and rods.
    The other convicts had gone on a cart pulled by a pair of dappled draught horses. Reverend Hassall, it seemed, owned several properties, but only one farm needed more workmen, and it wasn’t the one Roman John was taking Billy to.
    ‘Sir? Where they goin’?’ Billy tried to keep his voice steady. Even the walk to the dray had exhausted him, and that steady lash of sunlight didn’t help either.
    Roman John hooked up a rope that had worked loose before he replied. The dray was heavily loaded.Casks and wooden boxes were lashed down, so they didn’t slide as the dray lurched through the ruts in the cobbles. ‘They’re off to Parramatta.’
    ‘What about us?’
    ‘Out over the mountains.’
    ‘What mountains?’
    ‘The Blue Mountains.’
    Is that their name, wondered Billy, or is the mountains really blue?
    Roman John checked the rope again, then settled down beside Billy, leaning back against what felt like a sack o’ potatoes or turnips. ‘Right, this is what you need to know. You work, and you’ll get fed, and a place to sleep, and clothes when yours wear out. If you don’t work you’ll get the whip—’
    ‘Who’ll do the whippin’?’
    ‘Me,’ said Roman John evenly. ‘I don’t tolerate slackers, boy. If you steal or try to run they’ll hang you—not me, but the magistrate. Also: watch out for snakes. They’re fast and there are a lot of them and they can kill you fast. Watch out for spiders in your clothes, the shiny crawlers that live in holes and the black ones with red backs. They’ll kill you faster than the snakes. Stay off the rum. Most of it’s hooch. It’ll send you blind or mad. And don’t think you can hide out in the bush. Most who try that end up dead.’
    ‘The peelers get ‘em?’
    Roman John’s lips parted in an almost-smile. ‘No. Just the bush. They die of thirst or madness.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Billy. There didn’t seem much else to say. He looked out at Sydney Town instead. His eyes were almost used to the light now, though they still watered so things were blurred.
    The bullocks slowly dragged the dray up the road from the harbour. The hill was steep at first, and made the bullocks strain. There were houses on either side, mostly terraces like he’d known back home, but some fine houses too. Ragged children with grubby faces yelled as they passed. One of the boys threw a stone. A couple of mothers looked up warily as the bullocks passed, then went back to their chat. Just like home, thought Billy, though most of the spratts looked better fed and not as pale. Even if they wore rags at least they weren’t all pinched with cold.
    The birds scratching at the horse and bullock droppings in the street were different too: great swarms