When Colts Ran Read Online Free

easing the sulky to a stop, his cheeks colouring and something getting into his manner as he told Colts about the distances foals travelled following their mothers in mile after mile of loyal pursuit. They would never run as far again in all their born days with so little to fuel them. They had the whole greatness of their lives in them from the start.
    â€˜You’d know that.’
    â€˜Me?’
    â€˜Because you’re a runner,’ said the man a bit slyly. ‘Streaky as bacon, speedy as a wheel.’
    Colts turned aside, admitted nothing. But it was the greatest feeling a boy could be given – being known but not pinned down.
    In the kitchen a tall wife greeted him and he was fed on mutton chops, eggs with hard skirts fried in fat, cups of dark tea with sticks in them. Toast was made by burning slices of bread on the hotplate of the wood stove. He was hungry and grateful, but he hated that kitchen. You didn’t always have to do your washing up in a kerosene tin cut at the diagonal, saving the soapsuds for the roses, all eaten by bugs.
    They asked his name.
    â€˜Kingsley,’ he said after a struggle.
    â€˜Just “Kingsley”?’
    â€˜Colts.’
    The two looked at each other and their eyes said, ‘Limestone Hills, Dunc Buckler’s kid.’
    â€˜What about a day’s work,’ said the woman, ‘because we’re a bit stuck.’
    â€˜Only if he’s keen,’ said the man, ‘before he pushes along.’
    â€˜I’m ready,’ said Colts, lifting his jaw.
    The woman looked round startled when he came back into the kitchen to get his hat and heard her on the telephone asking for Limestone Hills, Mrs Buckler.
    Through cleaning a feed bin and hauling heavy sacks of seed wheat onto a horse-drawn wagon, Colts’s fingernails bled, his eyes ran red-rimmed and sore that day, and he developed a rasping cough. Through digging a post-hole to a depth of three feet, his hands were raw by smoko time.
    The farmer was a First War man. ‘You’re looking for trouble,’ he said as they yarned of the scrap, leaning on shovels. ‘You’re scared you’ll miss out. You think fighting will give you that. Well, it might, so get on with it, son, and you’ll soon find out.’
    A rabbit plague was on and the man handed him a pea rifle. There were so many bunnies coming in for a drink they barely stirred when Colts walked through them shooting from the hip, rippled hunched furry nothings with nowhere to go.
    In the full day’s work Colts understood something about labour that seeded a thought in his brain. The heave of a strainer post made its own dumb impact down the end of its hole and stood there throwing a hard shadow into the day.
    When he came back to the house there was a figure on a motorcycle waiting. Not a male, he saw when he came closer, but a woman in trousers with a hat and the front brim turned up. He recognised the bike, too. It was Buckler’s old BSA 250cc with sidecar from Limestone Hills, which Faye – hair flying back – had so loved to ride, spinning around like a willy-willy as Colts sat in the sidecar laughing and hanging on.

TWO
    THEY HADN’T SPOKEN ABOUT FAYE but her presence was everywhere at Limestone Hills. They reached there on dark. Mementoes of past holidays lay where she’d left them over the years – a play table made of twigs, arrangements of fossilised shells, a book with a gumleaf bookmark, The Green Hat by Michael Arlen with a sentence underlined and the word ‘sigh!’ pencilled in the margin. That night Colts carried a hurricane lamp, sweeping its bars of light into corners of his old room. It was a whitewashed cave with fig trees over the window, where a tawny frogmouth came and sat unblinking.
    A smell of warm fat was in the air. There was a leg of mutton in the oven. Veronica promised the crunchy burnt outer slices he loved, which he called Vegemite. Faye always