The Winter Pony (22 page)

When I was sent first, with Jehu and Chinaman, I knew for
certain that I was a crock. We were so slow that we needed a head start. Mr. Oates and the others were just beginning to wrestle with Christopher when Patrick led me off. He carried a compass but watched for the fading tracks of the motor sledges, now just shallow bands that were sometimes hard to see.

The sun swooped low and disappeared as we walked along to the south. But soon he rose again and wheeled across the sky as though in a great hurry to get ahead of us. Patrick had his goggles on, while I wore my new dark fringes clipped to my halter. The gleam of the Barrier shimmered right through them, but it was hard to see very much. When Patrick called out to the others—“What’s that up there, do you think?”—I had to squint and turn my head, and I still couldn’t tell what he was looking at.

Mr. Atkinson came up beside us. He lifted his goggles and held a hand above his eyes as Jehu nibbled at my shoulder. “Hard to tell in this light,” he said. “I think it’s a tent. Seems a long way away.”

We hurried a bit, over snow that the wind had smoothed as flat as a floor. But the thing wasn’t far away at all. And it wasn’t even a tent. The sun’s strange light made everything look tall that day, and more distant than it was. After just a hundred yards, we reached an empty fuel tin with a bit of rolled-up paper stuck in its spout.

There was a message from the motor party written on the paper:
Hope to meet at 80° 30’
. Mr. Atkinson looked at the date on the note. “They’re five days ahead,” he said. “They’re doing jolly well, aren’t they?”

He sounded jealous. He sighed as he stared down at
the ghostly tracks of the two machines. They must have been far ahead, rattling on and on across the snowy waves, never slowing down, never getting tired, towing their sledges in dead-straight lines. It seemed funny to think of sledges dragging sledges. But I envied them myself. I had to tug and tug to get my own sledge moving again. The crossbar thumped against my legs. Patrick helped with a little pull on the traces, and away we went with Jehu and Chinaman puffing behind us.

The wind fell as we marched, and by the time we stopped, it was calm. The sun glared his light off the snow, trying to trick us into thinking the air was warmer than it really was. He could fool my back, but not my feet and my belly. They knew very well how cold it was.

I felt a bit tired after the first day on the Barrier. But Chinaman and Jehu were much worse. They didn’t eat, and couldn’t sleep, but just stood and shivered in the sun, their backs glistening with sweat that was partly frozen, partly thawed.

The other ponies arrived soon after us. The big ones like Snatcher and Bones and Christopher came charging into camp, snorting like killer whales, their handlers half running beside them. Their heavy sledges—three-quarter tons full—rocked and jolted along. Little Michael, Nobby, and the rest drew up in a straggling bunch, with Captain Scott at the very back, leading a sad-looking Snippets.

There were ten of us gathered together. Ten ponies tied in a row along the picket line. It was strange to think that I’d been in the very same place before the winter, just starting out, in a group of eight. And of those eight, only me and
Nobby were left. I wondered if the same thing might happen again.

Many of the ponies looked older now; some were gray and patchy. The men seemed older too, not laughing anymore as they’d laughed the last time we were here. No one talked about the books they were reading. No one talked very much at all.

The next day, not far from camp, we found a dark spot on the snow. Patrick took off a mitten and touched it with his fingertip.

“Oil,” he said. “Must be bleeding from one of those motor sledges.”

Soon there was a trail of the motor’s blood, drop after drop, that led us right to the sledge itself. It lay dead on the snow, quiet and cold and still. The poor old thing, I thought. It had staggered on for a long way. It had gone as far as it could go, then fallen in its tracks, just like Weary Willy.

There were ruts in the snow, and footprints all around. It was easy to see what had happened. The drivers had harnessed themselves to the motor’s sledge and gone on with the other machine, pulling like horses. There were deep gouges in the snow where they’d struggled to get the thing moving. It must have been nearly as heavy as mine.

We left the motor lying on top of the snow, its parts strewn around as though wolves had got at it. And we went on again, into a rising wind.

I expected another blizzard. The men made another
monstrous wall at the camp and I huddled behind it, shivering. But instead of snow came a white haze, and the coldest weather I’d seen for a while. I shook until my bones were rattling.

I thought of the motor sledge lying abandoned on the Barrier. Then at last I fell asleep, and I dreamed a bad dream. I was back in the forest, in the grassy place with all my old herd around me, my mother at my side. It was the day the men had come to catch me, and I knew it was going to happen; I knew the men were coming. But I couldn’t stop it. Then I saw the silvery stallion towering up.

It was just like the way it had happened, except the men were on foot, and they were Mr. Oates and Captain Scott and Patrick. The stallion shrieked and kicked. Then Patrick saw me across the clearing and came walking toward me. I was more scared in my dream than I’d been in the meadow. I didn’t want to be captured. But in my dream I couldn’t run; I couldn’t even move. Patrick tried to tempt me with a biscuit that he held out in his hand. “Come on now,” he said, stepping slowly closer. “There’s a good lad.”

I woke up as he touched me. I woke up and there he was. He stood right in front of me with a bit of biscuit in his fingers. He was smiling, happy to see me. But I thought I was in the forest, not out on the Barrier behind the big pony wall, and I believed he’d come to capture me. I pulled away, confused and afraid, meaning to dash for the trees, just as I’d done when I was very young. But I only tugged against the tether line, with a shock that made me scream. I startled Jehu beside me, who startled Christopher, who wheeled away with his hooves flashing.

I reared up. And without meaning to, I struck out at
Patrick. My knees slammed against his chest. The biscuit flew from his hand as he fell backward.

He landed flat on the snow, and suddenly there was a look of dread in his eyes, of fear that I was about to stomp him right into the snow. He even held up a hand to save himself.

I lowered my head, of course. I blinked my eyes; I licked my lips, my tongue flickering like a snake’s. I wanted Patrick to know I would never hurt him, not for the whole world. He could get up and beat me if he wanted, and all I would do was stand there and wait for him to finish.

But he crawled away from me. On his back. Using his elbows for levers, pushing with his feet. And that look of fear stayed in his eyes until he had gone far enough that I couldn’t possibly reach him. Then he stood up—slowly—and he said in a whisper, “What’s the matter with you, Jimmy Pigg? What’s wrong with you, lad?”

I ached to feel his hand on my nose, but I knew he didn’t trust me. I could see that in the way he stood, in the way he held his hands. I snorted and moved closer, and he only moved away. He went back to the tents, where the men were up and working, getting ready for the march. When he came later to put on my harness, his hands trembled all the time he stood beside me.

I was as gentle as a rabbit. I made no sound; I didn’t move a muscle. But still Patrick smelled of nervousness. He kept talking, yet his voice was different. “Easy now,” he said. “Easy now.” He said it again and again, like a bird with its call. “Easy now.”

I was afraid that he would never trust me again. I was afraid he didn’t like me anymore. When we set out with Jehu
and Chinaman, it was the same as all the other days, and terribly different too. Patrick didn’t stand so close to me. He led me by my rope instead of my halter. If I stumbled or lurched, he was quick to leap even farther away.

We went along for hours. They all seemed long and sad, as though time had turned to a sort of mush that I had to slosh aside. I kept remembering the way Patrick had looked up at me from the ground, and I felt like a rotten old apple, all brown and horrid inside. I wished Patrick could know that he’d scared me out of a dream. And then, quite suddenly, he let go of the rope and took my halter instead. His glove slipped under the leather strap, back into its old place. His head tipped sideways and pressed against me. I pushed back. I snorted softly.

“Oh, James Pigg,” he said. “Did I startle you this morning? Is that what it was?” He tightened his hand. He whispered to me. “You’re a good lad, James Pigg.”

I wanted to believe that Patrick knew what I was thinking. But it seemed a little bit impossible. No man had ever done that—or even bothered to try. But no man had ever cared for me like Patrick did.

At the end of the march that day, we came to Corner Camp. The men dug out the buried supplies and loaded our sledges. They uncovered bales of forage that had been under the snow for nine months and let us chew away. I thought it was delicious. The frozen stems crackled in my teeth.

Each pony tucked into the fodder as he arrived at the
camp. We went at it like pigs, even turning down our oil cakes to feast on the fodder.

As I stood eating by the wall, I watched Christopher come into the camp with Mr. Oates. The man kept a firm hand on his rope, not giving the pony an inch to spare. The crossbar swayed and hit the snow. The pony stepped higher, faster, as though trying to outrun it. So Mr. Oates checked him with a sharp pull on the rope. Then Christopher kicked out with his hind legs and tried to skitter sideways.

In a flash, I was thinking of the crowds at the horse fair. I heard the noise and the shouts and the cries of the horses. I remembered a man trying to pull a boy by the hand, the boy not wanting to go. He had leaned back, digging his heels into the ground, screaming as he struggled and squirmed.

Christopher was just like that boy. All the way across the snow, he tried to buck and kick, to run away. Mr. Oates stared grimly ahead, marching along—for once like a soldier.

It took four men to get Christopher out of his harness. The mean pony fought them all, like a bear in a pack of wolves. I hated to see it. I hated to hear it. Christopher whirled himself around, trying to bite at every arm and leg that came near him, and he didn’t give up until he was exhausted, until he stood bent and heaving, as trembly as a shrew.

I understood it then. Christopher was terrified.

The men thought he was mean. They thought he was vicious and angry. But the pony was only frightened, scared of his harness, of the feel of the sledge dragging behind him, of the trapped sort of feeling that came with the collar and traces. He was so scared of men that he couldn’t stand to have one beside him holding his halter or rope. Of course he struggled!
Of course he fought! I wished Captain Scott would see it for himself. And poor Mr. Oates. I saw him staring at the pony with tears in his eyes, because he hated the battles just as much as Christopher did.

At Corner Camp, Mr. Oates had a good look at all the ponies. I was feeling a bit stronger, and I was glad that he noticed. “Much improved,” he said, smiling proudly. He told Captain Scott that I was getting fitter from my exercise. But he said the same for Jehu and Chinaman, and I thought they looked a little worse every day.

When I left that camp, I was pulling nearly five hundred pounds. I remembered the last time I was here, when Captain Scott had pointed the way to the Pole, a straight line across the Barrier. Even he looked different now, a little bit thinner and a lot more worried. As he trudged along ahead of me, leading the way to the south, I thought his wish to reach the Pole was stronger than ever. He would do it, I thought, no matter what it meant for his dogs and ponies, and maybe even for his men.