The Winter Pony Read online

  The dog could have attacked. It could have torn my throat wide open before anyone could help.

  But it didn’t. It stood facing me squarely, then bowed down on the snow with its front legs straight. It touched its chin to the ground. A feeling passed between us—a feeling of thanks and understanding. Then Gran came up beside the dog, grabbed a fistful of fur and neck, and hauled the creature away.

  Behind me, on the other side of the crevasse, the men had freed the sledge and pushed it over the chasm to make a bridge. They worked there, hoisting the dogs two by two. With my head swung sideways I watched the dogs thrashing up to the surface, rolling out onto the snow. My load grew lighter and lighter, until there was nothing there at all.

  Then Mr. Scott went down into the crevasse. There were still the two dogs on the shelf, and he was too kindly to leave them. So he tied himself to the rope and stepped backward over the edge.

  “Lower away!” he shouted. “Smartly now.” The Barrier swallowed him up. The rope hissed through the snow, and the men leaned over the edge, watching.

  “Easy now!” His voice echoed in the crevasse. He went very slowly for the last bit, so his weight wouldn’t break the ledge. “Right, I’ve got them,” he shouted up at us. And a moment later, “Good gracious, they’re both asleep!”

  Captain Scott sent up the dogs, then up he came himself. Before he even reached the surface, a big battle broke out among the dogs, one team against the other. The men had to leave the captain dangling while they sorted it out. It was a long time before everyone stood on the surface again.

  When Captain Scott heard about Blucher and Blossom, all the air came out of him in a great sigh, as though someone had squashed him like a puffball. He looked to the south, over the horizon.

  “I should have sent them back sooner,” he said.

  “It wouldn’t have made much difference, I think,” said Mr. Teddy. “They were the worst of the crocks.”

  Captain Scott shook his head. “Such a waste.” His voice was so quiet that he might have been speaking to himself. “Such a dreadful waste.”

  He sounded very sorry and sad. I wished I could tell him that he was wrong, that it was not a waste. But I wasn’t sure if Blossom and Blucher would have wanted me to do that.

  Captain Scott stayed just long enough to eat a meal. He was eager to reach the hut, to see if there was news from his ship. As he passed on his way to the sledge, he stopped to give me a bit of biscuit from his pocket.

  “Thank goodness James Pigg is all right,” he said.

  A moment later he was gone. The two teams of dogs ran side by side, bounding over the Barrier in a flurry of snow. We all watched until we couldn’t see them anymore, then settled back to our waiting.

  I had always liked to see winter settling in. It meant an end to the flies and the heat. It slowed down the wolves; it put the bears into hiding. It made everything so soft and still.

  But now I felt scared instead of happy. There was no shelter or stable out on the Barrier, no grass beneath the snow. The sun was going away, the darkness coming quickly. And I saw that winter would be long and hard.

  We passed the time by hauling more supplies to Corner Camp. We trekked there and back and were heading north when a blizzard overtook us. It was the worst we’d seen. We made a camp on the Barrier, but the tents were soon covered in mounds of snow. Behind my wall, I stood in white slush as deep as my belly.

  When the weather cleared, the men dug us out slowly. They kept glancing toward the south, talking of Mr. Oates and Birdie Bowers and all the others, wondering how they’d coped with the blizzard. They were trying to laugh but sounded worried.

  No one wanted to say that he’d given up hope. But as soon as the surface hardened again, we packed up and moved along. My sledge was nearly empty, quite easy to pull once I got it moving. But I stopped often to watch for Uncle Bill and the ponies, though it meant pulling hard for a while to get moving again. A white fog fell thickly on the Barrier, but still I kept looking back, though I never saw anything but whiteness behind me. In the end, I heard the men and ponies long before I saw them. The crunch of hooves and boots came out of the mist.

  Patrick didn’t understand why I stopped again so suddenly. “What’s the matter, lad?” he asked.

  I twitched my ears, trying to hear where the sounds were coming from. There was a grinding from the sledges behind us now, and a soft thump as a pony’s crossbar touched the snow. I raised my head; I twitched my ears.

  Patrick shuffled sideways as I turned in the harness. Then, together, we peered into the fog. Somewhere in the mist, a pony snorted and a man spoke softly.

  Patrick put his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Hello, the party.” A moment later, someone shouted back: “Hello yourself.”

  Uncle Bill was first to appear from the fog, plodding along in the lead. Little Birdie Bowers took shape at his side, and the others came after him, stepping out of the white and the gray. All covered with frost, they looked like creatures made of ice.

  Guts was next. Then Punch, then Nobby close behind him. They seemed thin and cold and tired. They barely raised their heads to look at me, and I felt a bit ashamed to be standing there and watching them. Then they passed by me and disappeared into the fog again, trekking along to the north, heading for the winter station. I watched until Nobby had faded away, then waited for Weary Willy.

  A long time went by. In the swirls of white, I saw things that weren’t there: a fox, a bird, a butterfly. Patrick grew tired of waiting. He wanted to turn me around and follow the others. But when he tugged on my halter, I held my ground.

  Patrick knew me well enough then to know what I was thinking. “I’m sure they’ll be along,” he said. “No sense in standing here, lad. We’ll hear the story from Birdie.”

  But I still didn’t move. I listened so carefully that I heard the thumpa-thump of Patrick’s heart through his bones and his skin and his clothes. Then I heard the ring of a hoof on a patch of ice. I snorted, and Weary Willy answered with the smallest little breath.

  He came out of the fog like a sack of bones, his skin hanging down from his belly. His eyes were a sickly yellow, his nostrils limp and fluttering.

  I had seen starving ponies—plenty of them—but few as bad as Weary. He might have been on his way to the slaughtering house, plodding along on the last hundred yards of his life. Mr. Oates on his right side, young Gran on his left, were trying to help him along. But old Weary barely had the strength to lift his hooves, and didn’t care where he placed them. So he stumbled and lurched on the trail. He didn’t even turn his head to look at me.

  We fell into line behind them, Patrick and I, Mr. Forde and Mr. Teddy. I was glad that everyone was together again, all of us heading north to our winter place.

  But I worried about Weary. With his every step, I thought he’d fall. He struggled on, though, and was rewarded with kindness when we straggled into Safety Camp. Gran built him a very nice wall, then put extra sacks on his back. But the cold that came with the darkness was almost too much for the old pony. I listened to him breathing, a wheeze and a whistle that faded away until I thought each breath was his last.

  When the sun came up, he was still there, though ragged and limp. And Mr. Oates was still at his side.

  Gran brought hot mash, and that seemed to perk up poor Weary. If he could go another few miles, he’d reach the stable. He’d be warm and sheltered there. He could stuff himself with oil cakes and forage.

  It was a good day for marching, clear and cold. But Weary couldn’t walk, and Mr. Oates wouldn’t leave him behind. So everyone stayed, with the wind tearing at the tents, whipping flurries over the pony walls.

  He was just a few miles from the stable, just a couple of days from a straw bed and a hot stove. He must have known it himself. But, just as surely, I knew that he would never make it, that he would die out there on the Barrier.

  The men would build another lonely cairn, to mark the grave of another pony. They would erect a spike o
f snow in a world of snow, and it scared me to think of Weary Willy lying in the ice as it carried him slowly to the sea. It would be years and years and years before he reached it, the Barrier moved so slowly. But one day he would tumble out from the edge, frozen and stiff, and the killer whales would tear away his legs. I wondered: Would anyone be there to see him? Would they wonder who he was, and why he was, and could they ever guess in a thousand years how far he’d come to get there?

  It was a sad day. And it was a sad night that followed, with Weary shivering away, breathing his rasping breaths.

  I remembered how stubborn and lazy he’d been. I remembered him fighting the dogs and kicking his wall. But I didn’t want to think about that, so I remembered Jehu instead, until a terrible fear came over me that I would never see him again, either. Then I tried to think of happy times in my life from before I knew the Englishmen. But I had to go all the way back to my days running free in the forest, to the time when I had never heard of people.

  When the morning came, I tried not to look at Weary. I watched the tents instead, and finally Patrick came out to feed me an oil cake. As I ate the first half, he rubbed the coldness out of my legs. “You’ll be glad to get into your stable, won’t you, James Pigg?” he said. “Any day now.”

  He rubbed my shoulders and my neck. He fed me the rest of the oil cake, then peered across the Barrier with his eyes squinted. “Now, who’s that coming this way in such a dreadful hurry?” he asked.

  The men came on skis, in long fast strides, driving with their ski poles, pumping with their arms.

  Everyone piled out of their tents. We watched the little figures growing larger. The skis flashed sunlight, kicking up sparkles of snow.

  “It’s Captain Scott,” said Mr. Oates.

  “Yes,” said Birdie Bowers, squinting. “And Thomas Crean, I think.”

  He was right. The two men had dashed from the hut at the lonely place and didn’t waste any time by chatting. “Get the ponies moving,” shouted Captain Scott before he’d even joined us. “The ice is going out.”

  Mr. Oates looked alarmed. Birdie Bowers stared up at him with the same frightened look. Patrick reached out and touched my shoulder. “Steady, James,” he said, as though to steady himself.

  I remembered our trek around the glacier, where Guts had fallen through a hole to the sea. The ice had been dangerous then, the floes already breaking apart. If we couldn’t get back across, and back around the glacier, we’d be stuck on the Barrier when winter came, sure to freeze to death.

  “What about Weary Willy?” asked Mr. Oates.

  Captain Scott looked toward the poor old pony. Weary stood shivering behind the wall, his nose nearly touching the ground. “Titus, there isn’t much time,” he said.

  “I can’t leave him behind.” Mr. Oates tightened his wind helmet. “I shall stay.”

  He turned and walked away. Captain Scott watched him for a moment, then sighed. “Wait,” he said. “I’ll stay with you.” He bent down to free his feet from the bindings of his skis.

  The rest of us left in a terrible hurry. Tents and camping gear were thrown in a muddle onto the sledges. I and the other ponies were harnessed, and we set off toward the sea. Mr. Crean came with us, leaving his skis for Mr. Oates. My last sight of old Weary was sad but lovely: the pony shivering in his tattered green blanket; a man on each side of him rubbing and petting; the haunting hugeness of the Barrier stretching forever behind them. Then Patrick turned my head and we plodded along in the line.

  In the lead were Uncle Bill and Birdie Bowers. At the back were me and Patrick. When we reached the edge of the Barrier, we were spread in a straggly line high above the sea.

  Below us, the floating ice was streaked with blue, colored by sea and sky. Through gaps between the floes swam killer whales and leopard seals, while penguins stood, like little specks, scattered all around. The tracks of the dogsleds wove across the ice, broken already by the shifting floes.

  A black mist was gathering high above us. It fell quickly, like a thing swooping upon us, and it blotted out the sun as we started down a snowy slope toward the ice. It settled on the land, thick as night, with a feeling of gloom and despair.

  Far ahead, Uncle Bill was swallowed by the blackness. I watched for the marks of his big hooves in the snow, and knew he was all right as long as I could see them. Patrick sang to me softly, so I wasn’t afraid.

  For once my sledge moved easily. It moved too easily on the slope; it nearly ran me over. Patrick had to walk behind and hold it back as I trotted down through the black fog.

  At the bottom, I found Uncle Bill and Guts and Nobby and Punch. They were out of breath, their ribs heaving. We all gathered close together and set off as one, across the floating ice.

  Nearly right away, the immense cliff of the Barrier vanished behind us. Birdie Bowers led the way by his compass, as though through a tunnel in the mist. I heard the curious sounds of penguins, the booming breaths of killer whales, the scary creaks and cracks of the ice. Patrick had stopped singing. He tightened his fist in my halter, his knuckles pressing more tightly on my cheek.

  The men were anxious to get off the ice. It was thick but not solid. I sometimes felt it shifting underneath me, though the men didn’t seem to notice. As the sledges dragged along, water bubbled up through thin little cracks that split the surface into giant shards.

  I snorted and shook my head, hoping the men would see that the ice wasn’t safe. The farther we went, the more I worried. I saw more cracks, wider cracks, and a place where I was sure a pony could fall through. But it was a long time before Birdie Bowers stopped Uncle Bill and looked around with a worried expression.

  “I don’t like the look of this ice,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with it?” asked Mr. Crean.

  “I think it’s moving.” Birdie Bowers stamped a foot, as though that tiny weight could shift the ice. “How much farther to the hut, do you think?”

  No one could say for sure. We couldn’t see fifty feet in any direction, and Birdie’s compass—though a wizard at finding direction—didn’t have a clue about distance.

  “I think we should turn back,” said Birdie. “Make for the harder ice along the shore. We can give the ponies a rest and wait for the fog to lift.”

  The ice creaked just then. It sounded like a great tree swaying in the wind. But out there in the fog, on top of the sea, it was a heart-stopping sound.

  Suddenly, every man agreed with Birdie. We wheeled the sledges around and started back along our trail.

  “Look at this. Oh, look at this,” said Birdie. Cracks that had been a hair’s thickness when we crossed them were wide enough that a man could slip his thumb inside them. Cherry peered through his glass eyes, but they didn’t let him see any farther through the fog.

  We all hurried along, trying to reach solid ice before dark.

  It was Nobby who set the pace. He pulled his sledge forward step by step, with growing pauses between them. His breath wheezed and rasped. Even with a man helping him, poor Nobby could not go faster than a snail.

  We didn’t make it to the shore. We stopped at the first solid-looking bit of ice, and Birdie had a little walk around, in and out of the fog’s black edge. “It isn’t great,” he said, with an awful worry. “But I think it might do.”

  The men built their camp. They spaced the sledges apart, set up our picket line, and piled up crumbly walls of snow. Soon their little stoves were hissing away, and I smelled our mash growing hot and bubbly.

  When the sun went down, it brought the darkest night of all my life. I could not see my own hind hooves. I couldn’t see the snow below my head, and I had a terrible thought that I was floating away in the fog. I imagined myself a thousand feet up, blowing south with the wind, an invisible sea below me. Frightened, I stamped my feet; I touched my nose to the ground, to make sure that it was still there.

  Again, I couldn’t sleep. I watched the fog break up hours later, when the moon came out and pushed it away. Then th
e southern lights flashed blue and green across the sky, and they filled my mind with memories of the northern forests. I remembered running under northern lights that were just the same, running at a full gallop with the cold wind in my lungs, my mane blowing back, running just for the sake of running.

  It was the last time I had ever run like that, free and fearless. It was before the men had come and taken me. I’d been weighted down ever since by logs and carts and sledges.

  The thought made me terribly sad. I looked toward the tents and found it comforting to see them, dark and shadowy against the shining lights.

  I could see the other ponies behind their walls, Guts not far away at all, Uncle Bill—asleep, it seemed—his head swaying very slowly. I imagined they were all thinking, like me, of times long past.

  The sun came up again, small and meek. It still stretched its long shadows over the ice, but it had lost a great deal of the fierceness and heat it had shown just weeks before. I imagined it was fading away before its winter hibernation.

  As the day brightened, I was surprised to see great patches of empty sea all around us. The floe was breaking up. Our own bit of ice was fractured by the narrow sort of cracks that had startled Birdie Bowers. There was one between my feet, another right beside me. A thicker one, wide as a plank, zigzagged under Guts and passed below his wall.

  I snorted loudly, hoping the men would come out of their tents.

  Then, with an almighty bang, the ice split along the zigzagging line. That crack, in an instant, was wider than a pony, and I was nearly thrown to the ice by the movement of the floe. When I looked at Guts, he was gone.

  His wall stood cleaved in two. His tether line hung broken. It was as though an invisible giant had swung a giant axe and opened the ice underneath the pony. The edges of the wall were still crumbling, the blocks toppling into black water. But of Guts, not a hair was showing.

  From the tent came a shout. “The ponies!” cried Birdie Bowers. “They’re helping themselves to the oats.”

  He thought what he’d heard was a sledge overturning, and he was out of the tent in a flash. He didn’t bother with his boots but came running out in his socks and nearly stepped right through the crack, nearly right off the ice and into the sea. But he caught himself at the edge. He looked left and right, his face drawn into wrinkles and ridges.