The Winter Pony (14 page)

The dog Osman veered around the end of a ridge and galloped across the flat space behind it. The others followed him two by two, leaning into the turn. The second team fell back a bit, and someone yelled at them in Russian, telling them to hurry.

I felt the old twinge inside me. I remembered men
screaming
those words, and I saw—in my mind—a red-faced Russian raising a whip, his eyes full of fury.

The memory was more real than the dogs and the sled and the pale streaks of the clouds. I winced from the whip, closing my eyes as I waited for the sting. So I didn’t see the dogs plummet through the snow.

It was the sound that brought me out of my memory, a frantic noise of dogs and men. I saw the dog Osman standing alone in the snow, leaning forward with his feet planted firmly, as though he was pulling a thousand pounds but not moving an inch. Behind him was a gaping hole, a crevasse so wide and deep that every dog except for Osman had vanished inside it. On the other side sat the sledge, tilted at the very lip of the crevasse. Captain Scott and Mr. Meares had leapt clear, but already they were on their feet and hurrying back.

All around the sledge, the snow was cracked and crumbling. The men wrestled it sideways and anchored it firmly where the snow was solid. The traces stretched taut in front of it, into the crevasse and up again on the other side, where the dog Osman was holding the weight of his whole team. He was strangling in his harness, breathing in painful rasps. But he held his ground, and as much as I hated that dog, I had to admit he looked heroic.

A hideous howling came up from the ice. Mr. Teddy and Mr. Forde ran out to help. Patrick untied me from my picket and hurried me around the wall. “They’ll be needing you now, James Pigg,” he said.

I went at a trot as he ran beside me.

It was a bridge of snow that had caved in, a cover for the crevasse. If the sledge had gone another foot or two, if it had weighed another pound, it would have crashed through the snow along with the dogs, taking Captain Scott with it, down and down through the Barrier.

Patrick led me in beside the dog Osman. He could tell I was scared to go near that beast, and he kept talking to me
calmly. “Easy, lad. It’s all right,” he said. But the smell of the dog made me want to run away.

Cherry and Gran had turned their team around and stopped their sledge. They ran across the snow toward Captain Scott.

Patrick took me right to the edge. I looked straight down into the crevasse. It was much wider and deeper than the one that had nearly swallowed me. I could see a hundred feet down, but not all the way to the bottom. The ice was pale blue at the top, growing darker and darker until everything faded away.

Sixty feet down, part of the bridge had jammed between the sides of the crevasse to make a narrow shelf. Two of the dogs lay there, on their sides, absolutely still. The rest dangled from their harnesses, some upside down, some sideways, all howling in terror. Two were swinging back and forth, back and forth, like enormous spiders at the ends of their threads. And every time they swung together, each snarled and snapped, trying to grab the other by the throat.

Then Patrick turned me around and led me up beside the dog Osman. The smell of that dog put into my mind an image of Weary Willy fighting off the team. I was so scared that I shied away, and if not for Patrick, I might have fallen back right into the crevasse. But he kept his hold on my halter and stood between me and the dog. As we went past, the dog Osman raised its head and looked at me. For the first time, I stared straight into a dog’s eyes. I expected a black look of evil, but all I saw was fear and pleading. The dog couldn’t hold on for much longer. Already it trembled with the effort of holding the other dogs, and the weight was slowly dragging it back
toward the crevasse. A long rut was scraped in the snow, carved with the deep slashes of the dog’s claws.

I was not wearing my collar, not rigged for a harness. Cherry brought a rope and put a loop around my shoulders. He cinched me up to the dog harness. Then Patrick stepped me forward, and the weight the dog was holding came onto me instead.

I leaned into it. My hooves slipped, nearly dragging me down. But I planted them solidly and heaved on the rope. I took all the weight on my shoulders. Then Cherry whipped out his knife and freed the dog Osman. The dog bounded forward, then stopped and turned around.

I hadn’t imagined us changing places, with me tethered and the dog standing free. Its mouth was open, its tongue hanging out, a pink slather slithering between enormous fangs, in and out over gums as black as coal.

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.