The Winter Pony (24 page)

It took a few tugs to get the old pony moving. Chinaman didn’t want to leave that place. Then he kept looking back, turning his head this way and that way, still making the sad little cries that had spooked Patrick.

A hundred yards on, he stopped altogether. He stomped his feet in the snow, raised his head, and let out a shrill sort of shriek. It was the cry I’d known, when I was young, as the gathering call of the silvery stallion.

I was sure that Chinaman was calling to Blucher. And I was sure that Patrick knew it. My friend’s breaths came a little more quickly. His hand tightened on my halter, as though he didn’t want me to look back, or was afraid to look back himself, in case he saw the ghost of Blucher rising gray and shimmering from the snow.

Storm followed storm. It snowed, it stopped, it snowed again as we made our way south from one old camp to another. The Barrier was either hidden by blizzards or veiled in the white mist that blinded men and ponies. We saw no land for days, but trekked along, guided by the compass, from one old cairn to the next.

Mr. Wright kept thinking that every mile was the last for his old pony. But Mr. Oates was right, of course. Both Chinaman and Jehu kept slogging on, though the going got worse all the time. I could see that neither pony would last much longer, but they kept pushing themselves on, not wanting to be left behind. Patrick kept telling me, “You’re doing well, James Pigg. You’re a good lad.” But I was getting tired too. I felt nearly as old as Chinaman.

We reached Bluff Depot, where I had turned back the year before with poor old Blucher and Blossom. We picked up the supplies they had dragged so far, and we carried them on to the south. A day later, Patrick gave me half an oil cake in the middle of the march and told me, “You’ve come a hundred miles, James Pigg.”

Then we went another fifty.

Even the strongest ponies were starting to wear out, but we struggled every day in a line that stretched far along the Barrier. Then we reached One Ton Depot, where Captain Scott had buried his last supplies the summer before, where he’d turned back to spare his ponies.

I could see the old wall where Guts and Punch and Uncle Bill had sheltered. The marks of their hooves were still punched through the snow around the big cairn that marked the place. All of them were dead, but that wall still stood.

Nobby had been there. But if he was sad, he didn’t show it. He barely glanced at the wall, then watched the men get out their shovels and stared at one little spot on the snow. He never took his eyes from it, and as soon as the men went near it, he whinnied with excitement.

Patrick was putting my blanket on my back just then. He heard Nobby’s shrill cry, saw him watching the digging, and I felt his hands tremble at the edge of my blanket. “Now, what’s buried there?” he asked himself.

The men dug through the snow, then dropped their shovels and knelt by the hole they’d made. When they reached into the snow, Nobby shrieked again, stomping his little hooves. Then Patrick laughed as the men brought up a bale of frozen fodder.

There was a lot of pony food buried there at One Ton Depot. We had a day of rest as the men sorted out the supplies and rearranged the sledges. Captain Scott had long talks with the men, making plans for “the march on the summit,” as he called it. He lightened the loads for Jehu and Chinaman, and added to Christopher’s, to Michael’s, to the other strong ponies. He lightened mine as well, making me think that I
might be part of the dash. But when we trekked away to the south, I saw that the men had saved weight by leaving out forage and oil cakes, and that made no sense to me. How were we supposed to eat, I wondered, if the food was far behind us?

When we trekked away toward the south, a huge amount of pony food still sat on the snow. I thought of pulling on my tether to make Patrick see it. But he could hardly have missed the bales of fodder, the boxes of biscuits, lying as though abandoned.

The sun made it harder for us. He filled the sky with a terrible glare, a brightness that softened the surface until even Christopher was exhausted by plunging through hollows where the snow was soft as swamp mud.

Icicles grew from our nostrils again. Mr. Wright used his windproof jacket to cover Chinaman’s nose, to shield his pony from the cold wind.

Thirteen miles a day. That was the goal set by Captain Scott, and we struggled along to meet it. But me and Jehu and Chinaman barely managed to keep ahead of the others. As the men packed up our lunchtime camps, we could see Christopher plodding up along our tracks with Mr. Oates beside him. When we stopped at the end of the march, we could hear the dogs coming quickly from the distance.

Every handler fussed over his pony to keep us warm behind our walls, blanketed and fed. But just as Mr. Oates had said, it was only spirit that kept Chinaman moving. Every day, I could see dread in his eyes as Mr. Wright backed him into his
harness. Then off he went with a grim determination. The men began to call him Thunderbolt, a name they used with both amusement and admiration.

I led the way. My hooves left tracks where there were no tracks. In the hours around midnight, when the sun was low and the day was coldest, I punched through the soft crust that froze on the Barrier. With the steady pace that Patrick set, the sound was like the drumming of a faraway army. I was proud to be the leader, breaking trail for every pony from worn-out old Jehu to the fierce Christopher. Even Captain Scott walked in the tracks I made.

I was the one who found the cairn as big as a mountain, towering so high from the snow that I saw it from more than nine miles away. I found the motor party camped just beyond it, the men in their seventh day of waiting. They had dragged their sledge nearly as far as I had dragged mine. And now they fell in with us and dragged it some more, heaving together in the harness. They were hungry and tired, nearly as thin as Jehu.

I was pleased that I could help Jehu. He plodded in my tracks, down the grooves of my sledge runners. He could hardly haul the sledge, although his load had been lightened again and again, and now a team of dogs could have hauled it easily. He could barely lift his hooves.

He looked worse than the tired old mare who had wandered away from my band of ponies. But he never slowed, or never stopped to rest. He just walked along, one step at a time, as though his legs were parts of an engine.

JEHU
was dying, and everyone knew it. He had worked till the end of his days.

But Mr. Atkinson was terribly sad, and he believed it was a cruelty to push the pony any farther. So on the morning of the twenty-fourth of November, at the end of a night’s long march, Mr. Atkinson fed his little pony a biscuit. He combed the forelock with his fingers, then petted Jehu one last time.

Mr. Oates had the pistol. He led the pony away from the rest of us, making quiet little clucking sounds as he did it. A few of the men, like Cherry, gave Jehu a pet as he passed. “Good lad,” they said. “Well done,” they told him.

Jehu looked back, puzzled because Mr. Atkinson wasn’t going along with him. But Mr. Atkinson didn’t see that. He had turned his back on the pony and was rubbing his ears as
if they were cold. I thought he was masking the sound of Jehu’s wheezing breaths.

Suddenly, all of the men were busy with little jobs. Captain Scott had to nip into his tent for a moment. Birdie Bowers had to crouch down beside his sledge and tug at the lashings. Patrick had to comb my mane a hundred times, with his left hand tight on my halter and his cheek pressed so firmly against my neck that I could feel the frosty stiffness of his beard.

I heard a click of metal, and then the clap of the gunshot, so loud that it seemed to shatter the air.

I tried to jump away, but Patrick was still holding me tightly. Along the picket line, other ponies leapt and twitched. One of them shrieked and another whinnied, and the gunshot still seemed to ring in the air.

Then I heard the soft thud of Jehu collapsing.

Mr. Atkinson didn’t move for a long time. Then he walked toward his pony, passing Mr. Oates, who was walking back, both of them watching their own feet. Mr. Atkinson knelt in the snow and began to unbuckle Jehu’s halter. I could feel his despair from all the way across the camp.

That night, the dogs had a feast, which rather turned my stomach. I heard them growl and snap at each other, the dog Osman the loudest of all. I saw blood dripping from his muzzle and his mane, blood on his fangs and paws.

I was glad that Jehu wasn’t there to see that.

It was a long, sad rest I had, through the brightest part of
the day to the start of the next night’s march. I kept thinking of Jehu, remembering how happy he had been to roll in the snow when the ship first arrived. Though I was sorry he was gone, I was even sorrier for the men, and especially for Mr. Oates. He came out by himself while the other men were sleeping, and went from pony to pony just to tighten blankets, pet a nose, or rub an ear. I remembered what he’d said on the ice in the terrible time the year before: “I shall be sick if I have to kill another horse like the last one.” He seemed so mixed up inside that I couldn’t sort out what he was thinking.